Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/58

40 this enveloping cloud of Orientals, is to feel oneself confronted with the strangest possible combination of the humanly comic and the historically impressive.

He is a trifle short, is Tommy, and his stature is not increased to the eye by the surmounting pickelhaube, which looks, as no doubt it must look if it is fully to serve its purpose, several sizes too large for its wearer. But he carries himself well, and he could not bestride his charger with more resolute dignity if the charger were Copenhagen and he the Iron Duke. Behind him trots the donkey-boy, rending the air with friendly yells, and dividing his copper visage with a grin which shows his entire four-octave keyboard of dazzling white teeth, while jocular exclamations in Arabic assail the rider's ears from every side. But in comparison with the stony immobility of Atkins's countenance the expression of the Sphinx is one of shy and uneasy self-consciousness. No sign of animation, no evidence even of any perception of