1891] A Night Attack by Robbers 47 



dogs increased and mixed with it there were groans, while occasional 

 shots were still being fired at a distance. I went cautiously up to the 

 house where I met an Arab with whom I exchanged greetings. He was 

 probably one of Selim's guards. At the door lay a fellah groaning with 

 his head cut open. There was a light at the window, and women began 

 to scream. On my coming close they told me they had been robbed, 

 and I found the window bars wrenched open. Presently Selim ap- 

 peared at the door [he was a County Court Judge, a Syrian Christian] 

 his face a coagulated mass of blood, and he let me in and told me the 

 history of what had happened. There had been a noise of knocking at 

 his door, and on his opening it, thinking it was the guard, he received 

 a blow from a nab out (a quarter staff) on his shoulder, but managed 

 to slip back inside and bar the door. Then a number of men attacked 

 the house, calling on him to open, and on his refusal they broke through 

 the windows, while he struck at them with a meat chopper, but they 

 pushed him back and got through, six of them, and called for his 

 money. He proposed to them to pay next day, but they declined to 

 wait and broke open his chests of drawers and made search. While this 

 was going on, he hid with his little girl in the scullery, but later issued 

 out again to defend his property, and received three wounds on his 

 head with some sharp instrument. Then the robbers, having found 

 the money they were looking for in his pockets, £37, and hearing me 

 coming, for there was a cry of ' tarbush,' their watchword for the 

 police, decamped. The wounded fellah was a servant whom they had 

 cut down outside with their nabouts, but nobody paid him the least 

 attention, and I had great difficulty in getting him carried inside the 

 house. The ladies begged me to stay on with them, but I refused, as 

 I had my own people to look after, and so went back, and nothing 

 further happened till daybreak. On my return in the morning I found 

 Selim in bed, and heard his story again. The men, he said, were nearly 

 naked, but had their faces masked. They spoke the Mogrebbin dialect. 

 They were Arabs of the West. I then went with Sheykh Hassan Abu 

 Tawil, the chief of our local Arabs and a tracker, and we followed the 

 track of seven men, which was very distinct in the sand, running 

 towards Matarieh. When within a quarter of a mile of the railway 

 station there, they had sat down and then separated, one who had been 

 wearing shoes going to the ostrich farm, the rest towards the tents of 

 Prince Ahmed Pasha's guard. It is generally thought that they are 

 local people, though Abu Tawil insists they are Mogrebbins, who once 

 lived near the Obelisk (of Heliopolis), and come back every year to 

 rob. One of them had enormous footprints, probably a Negro. I 

 have taken Selim Bey into Cairo, first to Baring, who, however, was too 

 busy to see him, and then on with a note from him to Baker Pasha, 



