Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/254

 that mysterious interval of twilight which seems in this wonderful atmosphere to divide the sunset from the afterglow, when, as though instinctively seizing upon the exact moment for throwing down their challenge to the departing day, the lights start out upon the triumphal arches along the shore and festoon the dahabiyehs on the water. The effect, as the sky gradually lightens again with the afterglow, and the lamps twinkle in silver through the flood of liquid gold that bathes land and water alike, is of an almost unearthly beauty. Minute by minute it changes, and the colours on shore and river, on the darkening hulls of the little fleet oi pleasure-vessels, on the distant mountains, on the intervening tracts of verdure, and on the ever-moving crowd upon the bank, are changing every minute; but it is a full half-hour before its last splendours fade away, and night settles down upon the Nile.

By this time we on the steamer begin to grow impatient, for though the Khedive shows