Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/149

Rh you for a few piastres on the Mokattam, and which have been deposited here or there by the sea that swept over this desert a few million years before these two sandstone gentlemen took the seat that, no doubt, in the modern spirit of unrest, they are beginning to get tired of already."

And, lightly humming to himself an adaptation of the irreverent French refrain,

Car ils sont en pierre, en pierre, Pour eux ce n'est pas amusant,

the geologist wandered away in quest of new "indications."

Tama, fortunately, had not heard the conversation, and Shama, who had, had never heard geology talked before, and did not understand it. Hence there was nothing to mar the stony complacency with which, unconscious of their comparative juvenility, they continued staring over the Nile.