"My wife shall make a stain for you as soon as she can get the material. There will be no difficulty about that, for we often dye our burnooses brown, especially when we are starting on a long journey."
The sheik's wife and the other women were voluble in their expressions of satisfaction at the change in Edgar. They had been but little in the towns, and the comparatively tight-fitting European garments were, in their eyes, ugly and unbecoming. Seen in the more graceful dress of the Arabs they recognized for the first time that their guest was a good-looking young fellow, tall, active, and not ungraceful in figure, and that he could even compare not unfavourably with Sidi, who was a favourite with the whole camp. Even the men, impassive as they usually were, uttered a few words of satisfaction at Edgar having adopted an Arab costume, and at his appearance in it. On the following day the sheik, taking his son, Edgar, and two of his followers, left the caravan and rode on to Cairo, leaving the others to travel by easy stages to join the rest of the tribe.
"Doubtless we shall find many other sheiks assembled there," he said as they rode along; "the government is sure to have sent orders already for all the Bedouin tribes to hold themselves in readiness to gather there to oppose the advance of the French. The levies of the city and the neighbourhood will also be called out, not so much perhaps to fight as to labour at the fortifications. That they will not ask of the Arabs, for no Arab would work like a fellah. We will fight, but we will leave it to the peasants to work. The Mamelukes will, however, in the first place oppose the Franks. I love them not. They are the oppressors of Egypt, but the lions of the desert are not more courageous. They are proud of themselves, and believe themselves to be invincible. They will not believe that the Franks can stand for a moment against them, and you know that the night that the Franks landed, twenty Mamelukes rode out against them, killed many, and brought in their heads in triumph. They would not ask us to charge with them, but would deem it shame to ask for aid in such an encounter, but they will be willing enough to accept our help in cutting off the fugitives and in preventing others who may land from spreading over the country."