Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/71

Rh a rich coating of lampblack. The two knights separate, and having with difficulty forced their steeds a few yards apart, they clash again and yet again, until at last the black champion, who has indeed by this time almost changed places with the white knight, is borne to the earth.

Let us dismiss the phantom of Saladin to his Moslem Paradise, and wander away from this scene of the British soldiers harmless high jinks on a quest of our own. The spot is full of associations which, though much more recent, are almost as grotesquely incongruous with this Yuletide horseplay of the nineteenth century as are those of the First Crusade. For the Citadel of Cairo is overshadowed by the sombre memories of Mohammed Ali, the last of the warlike Princes of Egypt, the statesman and soldier who, assisted by the military abilities of his adopted son, Ibrahim, might, but for the intervention of the Great Powers, have shaken down the tottering throne of the House of