this is a wonderful thing you've given me.' He fished among the remains of a tumbled newspaper and drew out the Mayflower relic.

Hilary drank again. It sure is.'

The old man smoked at his cigar. 'I don't get all this Mayflower business; maybe my law's better'n my history. If I'm to handle this proposition you'd better put me wise a bit.'

Hilary drew a breath; so this was all-the old chap only wanted to mug up a bit of second-hand Mayflower history. What a conscience a little bit of law-breaking did give one!

He plunged into the history of the Mayflower; told all he knew of it, all he knew of contemporary ship-building. It was no small recital, but the old man smoked on placidly.

'And that's a bit of that same ship,' he said at last. 'Well, well!'

'It can't be anything else.' Hilary had recovered himself.
'Built at Plymouth, was she?'

'She was.'

'Oak?'

'British oak.'

Keoghan took the relic in his hand as if he loved it.

'By gosh!' he said, 'that British oak was the stuff. They didn't meet much like it our side of the water.'

'They did not,' said Hilary; 'there's an old buffer in MadrasI'm a sort of secretary of his-he's writing a book all about it. "Hearts of Oak," he calls it.'

'He couldn't do better.' Old Keoghan spoke admiringly. 'Hearts of Oak; a fine name and a fine thing. Ah, I wish I could write books. But, as I told you, I'm a merchant.' His voice changed ever so slightly, yet unmistakably. A timber merchant.'

To Hilary's eyes-those weak, blue, give-away eyes-the Mayflower relic seemed to be unaccountably swelling to enormous dimensions. Old Keoghan looked with his terrible stare first at Hilary and then at the thing in his hand. He threw the lump of wood on the table.

'Son,' he said, ' that's teak.'

VI.

'He had a microscope slide of it,' said Hilary presently to Simon. He showed me it all and how he knew it was teak.

Why in thunder, you silly mug, did you give me a bit of teak, of all things on earth? Any other wood might have done-pine, But whoever saw teak at Plymouth in the

hemlock, anything. 'sixteens?'

'What did he say?'

Simon was openly shivering.

'He told me to beat it back to my job in Madras and quit sitting in a game like this. Then I said we'd sold some of the stuff already.'

"You told him that!' Simon's eyes rounded with horror.

'He'd have found it out if I hadn't. He doesn't miss much, that one. I told him what we'd sold and who to. All exact. And he said "The darn skunks, it serves them darn well right. You better keep that and give it to the poor. Now beat it, son." That's all he said.'

' And what will you do?'

'I'll beat it to-morrow and get on with the Hearts of Oak.' Simon thought of the Syndicate's letter; he cleared his throat for a lie.

'I think we will come up to Madras, too. I am stagnating here. I'm thrown away. This place is dead. Keep your eyes open for a job for me -a decent one.'

Right oh!' said Hilary obligingly. 'I can pull a string or two there all right. I'll get you something decent. Easy as easy !'

They were good bluffers, were Hilary and Simon, but they were not the only bluffers in Ghausti. For no farther off than that unpleasant swamp a grey-headed man stood in a luxuriously appointed tent and looked from his left hand to his right. In the first there was a block of greyish wood and in the second a microscope slide. His keen eyes shone.

'I guess it is teak,' he said to himself. 'Nine bits of ship's wood out of every ten they'd pick up here would be. Anyway he fell for it. And, anyway, it isn't Mayflower.'

He slid his thumb from the label of the microscope slide in his other hand and read there in neat print 'Himalayan Fir.'

Mr. Keoghan chuckled.

HILTON BROWN.

484

MODERN EGYPT: EVERY MAN'S LAND.

BY IAN HAY.

For those Britons who feel constrained, when winter comes, to leave comfortable homes and reliable cooks in South Kensington or Worcestershire in order to sample the dubious delights of the Riviera or Switzerland, it is not a bad plan, before paying the decisive visit to the passport office, to pause and inquire: Are there no other places?' To such, especially if they be too old to indulge in Alpine sports or too wise to play chemin de fer, the new Egypt is respectfully recommended.

6

To get to Cairo to-day is on the whole a less irksome business than to get to Cannes or St. Moritz. It takes longer, but you have fewer changes to make, fewer douanes to weather, and fewer elbows to avoid.

You may travel to Egypt direct by east-bound liner from Tilbury, or you may intercept that same liner at a Mediterranean port, or you may travel overland to Trieste and proceed to Alexandria by Italian steamer. The second of these courses strikes the happy mean. It will not deliver you from the passage of the English Channel, but after that outrage has been endured the usual asperities of Continental travel are surprisingly mitigated. The Customs, for instance; so long as you do not propose to unpack your profane trunk upon the sacred soil of France, the French authorities will treat you with comparative humanity. They will rattle you from Calais to Marseilles with your baggage untouched, and having delivered you there, covered with grit, will wash their hands of you-a privilege usually denied to yourself until you find yourself in your cabin on the ship.

What can Egypt offer to the holiday-maker that the Alps and the Midi can not? Or, to put it in plain Anglo-Saxon, what holiday horrors can you escape in Africa which are inevitable in Europe?

Consider briefly the most potent deterrents to foreign adventure.

The unfamiliar climate. The incomprehensible language. The mysterious food. The rocketing rate of exchange. Above all, the hotel proprietor, with his attendant parasites.

In modern Egypt none of these afflictions are greater than in Europe, and some are sensibly less. The climate is sunny and bracing, though care must be taken at night. As for the language, the sound old rule that if you speak English loud enough and long enough you can make yourself understood anywhere on the face of the globe holds good here as elsewhere. This is just as well, for Egypt is a land of many tongues. The telephone girl at one of the great hotels of Cairo can speak at least four languages fluently, and at a Cairene cinema entertainment which I once patronised the explanatory captions were thrown on to the screen in French, English, Arabic, Greek, and Italian! True, these left something to be desired in the matter of idiom and synchronisation-the English caption, coming last, never by any chance fitted the scene which was being enacted at the time but they at least indicated a hospitable determination on the part of the Egyptians to be all things to all men.

In Egypt, too, the currency difficulty does not arise. The Egyptian pound is quite stable, with practically the same value as the English pound, and five of the hundred piastres into which it is divided make an admirable substitute for a shilling. But actual buying and selling are not such simple matters. Nothing in Egypt, except railway tickets and hotel accommodation, appears to have any fixed price. An article is worth exactly what you can get for it-though not always what you pay for it. Consequently the gradual bridging of the gulf between what he has demanded and what he expects to get is a matter which occupies most of the Egyptian salesman's working day. He enjoys the exercise hugely, and here he has the advantage of the impatient and self-conscious Briton self-conscious, because the Egyptian has an incurable passion for conducting his business in the street, and will follow you for half a mile with a Persian hearth-rug or a bead necklace, chanting: 'Five pound-four pound-five dollar-ten bob!' -until in sheer desperation you hand him all your spare change and slink miserably down the nearest turning, the dejected possessor of something which you could have bought much more quickly and cheaply in Birmingham.

The mention of small change brings us to the considerable question of backsheesh. Backsheesh has more breadth than depth : that is to say, you are expected to tip a great many persons, but none of these expect very much, except possibly some head-waiter or hall-porter with lamentably European ideas. Roughly speaking, there are three classes of person who expect backsheesh. Firstly, the individual who has performed for you some actual service, such as conveying your bag from a train to a cab; secondly, as many friends and relations of his as he can muster before you succeed in driving away; thirdly, total strangers who happen to be passing at the time, and join the mob on the off-chance. Fortunately these gentry are quite humble-minded as to the amount bestowed, but everybody likes to have something. It is no use dropping a twenty-piastre piece into the nearest palm, and saying 'Partagez ça!' If you do, there will probably be a riot, and certainly an outcry in comparison with which community singing becomes a singing becomes a mere whispering chorus.

Cairo to-day is a curious mixture of Paris, Palm Beach, and the unchanging East. The public buildings and hotels are distinctly French. The great blocks of white, airy, balconied flats which are rising everywhere suggest Florida in the height of its recent boom. A stone's throw from all this is the Muski, the bazaar quarter, where the streets are too narrow for vehicles, and in many cases are roofed; where shops are mere holes in the wall, with the proprietor sitting on the floor surrounded by his wares, and a surging tide of humanity jostles and shouts and quarrels and jests from dawn till dusk.

Trams run all over the city-trams open on either side, with voluminously robed humanity not only occupying the seats but massed on the running-boards as well. Whenever a tram stops, this humanity drops off into the road in large clusters, and passing motor-drivers jam down both feet and call despairingly upon Allah. To steer any vehicle in Cairo calls for a combination of dexterity and callousness which is usually only found in the Parisian cabdriver. The Egyptian is not a quick mover. A man who wears his nightshirt not only by night but by day-and a very long nightshirt at that is not at his best when riding a bicycle or