38 AFRICAN CAMP FIRES. 



figure, bent and wiry. He clambered up and 

 down his mast, fetching things at his master's 

 behest ; leapt nonchalantly for our rail or his own 

 spar, as the case might be, across the staggering 

 abyss ; clung so well with his toes that he might 

 almost have been classified with the quadrum- 

 ana; and between times squatted humped over on 

 the rail, watching us with bright, elfish, alien eyes. 

 At last the big German sailors bundled the 

 whole variegated horde overside. It was time 

 to go, and our anchor chain was already rum- 

 bling in the hawse pipes. They tumbled hastily 

 into their boats ; and at once swarmed up their 

 masts, whence they feverishly continued their in- 

 terrupted bargaining. In fact, so fully embarked 

 on the tides of commerce were they, that they 

 failed to notice the tides of nature widening be- 

 tween us. One old man, in especial, at the very 

 top of his mast, jerked hither and thither by the 

 sea, continued imploringly to offer an utterly 

 ridiculous carved wooden camel long after it 

 was impossible to have completed the trans- 

 action should anybody have been moonstruck 

 enough to have desired it. Our ship's prow 

 swung ; and just at sunset, as the lights of 

 Suez were twinkling out one by one, we headed 

 down the Red Sea. 



