Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/111

 There was no time to prolong our chat, for the boat was slowing towards an island which lay in the middle of the stream. On it, amidst shady groves of giant fuchsias and drooping clematis, we saw glistening the gilt and copper roofs of a vast palace, half-hidden in the bower of many-coloured blooms. Gradually, as we approached, we saw its noble proportions, its walls and columns of alabaster-like marble, covered with arabesques and tracings of several tones of gold. It stood close to the water's edge, above a flight of marble steps, up and down which there stalked in stately majesty a number of pink flamingoes. In the branches of acacias and palms many apes chattered shrilly, and beneath the shadows of overhanging leaves we caught sight of a herd of snow-white cows with tall slender horns. A crowd of tiny girls, in turquoise-blue dresses, lined the long flight of steps, and as the Queen's boat was moored below, they all began to sing a sweet-sounding greeting.

"It seems that we are to be the royal lady's guests," I remarked as our boat also drew to the side. "I don't know what you feel, old Girlie, but I, for my part, am ready to collapse if I don't get some food within the next hour."

As soon as we had landed the Queen came up to Hugh and said some pretty words of welcome to him; then, at last, she deigned to take notice of me.

"Wilt thou accompany my lord beneath the humble roof which he will honour with his presence?" she asked. Now I felt that in reply to this invitation it would have been ill-mannered to nod, and again, at that moment, I could not for the life of me recollect a single word of my Egyptian vocabulary. Innate British shyness, when placed face to face with foreign modes of speech, had completely paralysed my tongue and my