Page:The tragedy of the Korosko (IA tragedyofkorosko00doylrich).pdf/51

 from what I have heard to be some difference of opinion about it. Monsieur Fardet, for example, does not seem to think that the danger is a very pressing one.”

“I am not a rich man,” Colonel Cochrane answered after a little pause, “but I am prepared to lay all I am worth, that within three years of the British officers being withdrawn, the Dervishes would be upon the Mediterranean. Where would the civilisation of Egypt be? Where would the hundreds of millions which have been invested in this country? Where the monuments which all nations look upon as most precious memorials of the past?”

“Come now, Colonel,” cried Headingly, laughing, “surely you don’t mean that they would shift the pyramids?”

“You cannot foretell what they would do. There is no iconoclast in the world like an extreme Mohammedan. Last time they overran this country they burned the Alexandrian Library. You know that all representations of the human features are against the letter of the Koran. A statue is always an irreligious