Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/212

194 Haifa that they will soon test the accuracy of this calculation.

In talk of this kind the golden afternoon wears away in a still, starry, tropical night. Dinner awaits us at the hospitable mess-room looking over the moon-lit Nile, and it is time to bring our walk through the camp to a close. To-morrow we set our faces to the north once more, and leave behind us this furthest outpost of civilisation in Northern Africa, with its garrison of stalwart blacks, and their cheery young English officers, keeping inviolate the Pax Britannica, even as their spiritual fathers in history kept the Roman Peace on those distant barriers of their empire against which, until the day of its decline, the insurging tides of barbarism beat so long in vain.