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Holgate, being excited, was in a fit state to tell the truth, if he knew it; which was what Dicky had worked for; but Holgate only said:

“It bean’t fear, and it bean’t milk o’ human kindness. It be soort o’ thing a man gets. Aw had it once i’ Bradford, in Little Cornish Street. Aw saw a faace look out o’ window o’ hoose by tinsmith’s shop, an’ that faace was like hell’s picture-aye, ’twas a killiagous faace that! Aw never again could pass that house. ‘Twas a woman’s faace. Horrible ’twas, an’ sore sad an’ flootered aw were, for t’ faace was like a lass aw loved when aw wur a lad.”

“I should think it was something like that,” answered Dicky, his eyes wandering over the peninsula beyond which lay Hasha.

“Summat, aw be sure,” answered Holgate, “an’ ma woord on’t… ah, yon coomes orderly wi’ post for Goovnur. Now it be Hasha, or it be not Hasha, it be time for steam oop.”

Holgate turned to his engine as Dicky mounted the stairs and went to Fielding’s cabin, where the orderly was untying a handkerchief overflowing with letters.

As Fielding read his official letters his face fell more and more. When he had read the last, he sat for a minute without speaking, his brow very black. There was no excuse for pushing past Hasha. He had not been there for over a year. It was his duty to inspect the place: he had a conscience; there was time to get to Hasha that afternoon. With an effort he rose, hurried along the deck, and called down to Holgate: “Full-steam to Hasha!”

Then, with a quick command to the reis, who was already at the wheel, he lighted a cigar, and, joining Dicky Donovan, began to smoke and talk furiously. But he did not talk of Hasha.

At sunset the Amenhotep drew in to the bank by Hasha, and, from the deck, Fielding Bey saluted the mamour, the omdah and his own subordinates, who, buttoning up their coats as they came, hurried to the bank to make salaams to him. Behind them, at a distance, came villagers, a dozen ghaffirs armed with naboots of dom-wood, and a brace of well-mounted, badly-dressed policemen, with seats like a monkey on a stick. The conferences with the mamour and omdah were short, in keeping with the temper of “Fielding Saadat”; and long into the night Dicky lay and looked out of his cabin window to the fires on the banks, where sat Mahommed Seti the servant, the orderly, and some attendant ghaffirs, who, feasting on the remains of the effendi’s supper, kept watch. For Hasha was noted for its robbers. It was even rumoured that the egregious Selamlik Pasha, with the sugar plantation near by–“Trousers,” Dicky called him when he saw him on the morrow, because of the elephantine breeks he wore–was not averse to sending his Abyssinian slaves through the sugar-cane to waylay and rob, and worse, maybe.

By five o’clock next day the inspection was over. The streets had been swept for the Excellency–which is to say Saadat–the first time in a year. The prison had been cleaned of visible horrors, the first time in a month. The last time it was ordered there had been a riot among the starving, infested prisoners; earth had been thrown over the protruding bones of the dear lamented dead in the cemetery; the water of the ablution places in the mosque had been changed; the ragged policemen had new putties; the kourbashes of the tax-gatherers were hid in their yeleks; the egregious Pasha wore a greasy smile, and the submudir, as he conducted Fielding–“whom God preserve and honour!”–through the prison and through the hospital, where goat’s milk had been laid on for this especial day, smirked gently through the bazaar above his Parisian waistcoat.

But Fielding, as he rode on Selamlik Pasha’s gorgeous black donkey from Assiout, with its crimson trappings, knew what proportion of improvement this “hankypanky,” as Dicky called it, bore to the condition of things at the last inspection. He had spoken little all day, and Dicky had noticed that his eye was constantly turning here and there, as though looking for an unwelcome something or somebody.