ibly amazed at this new turn, and I looked at him with the same sort of feeling I might be fairly conceived to experience had he, after spinning round on his heel, presented an altogether new face.

"I didn't get brain fever, I did not drop dead either,' he went on. 'I didn't bother myself at all about the sun over my head. I was thinking as coolly as any man that ever sat thinking in the shade. That greasy beast of a skipper poked his big cropped head from under the canvas and screwed his fishy eyes up at me. Donnerwetter! you will die," he growled, and drew in like a turtle. I had seen him. I had heard him. He didn't interrupt me. I was thinking just then that I wouldn't.'

66

"He tried to sound my

thought with an attentive glance dropped on me in passing,-something swift and full of purpose, like a cast of the hand-lead taken in shoaling water. 'Do you mean to say you had been deliberating with yourself whether you would die?' I asked in as impenetrable a tone as I could command. He nodded without stopping. 'Yes, it had come to that as I sat there alone,' he said. He passed on a few steps to the imaginary end of his beat, and when he flung round to come back both his hands were thrust deep into his pockets. He stopped short in front of my chair and looked down. 'Don't you believe it?' he inquired with tense curiosity. I was moved to make a solemn declaration of my readiness to believe implicitly anything he thought fit to tell me.”

"He heard me out with his head on one side, and I had another glimpse through a rent in the mist in which he moved and had his being. The dim candle spluttered within the ball of glass, and that was all I had to see him by; at his back was the dark night with the clear stars, whose distant glitter disposed in retreating planes lured the eye into the depths of a greater darkness; and yet a mysterious light seemed to show me his boyish head, as if in that moment the youth within him had, for the last time, gleamed and expired. 'You are an awful good sort to listen like this,' he said. 'It VOL. CLXVII.-NO. MXII.

does me good. You don't know what it is to me. You don't'

.. words seemed to fail him. It was a distinct glimpse. He was a boy, fair, frank, silly if you will. A youngster of the sort you like to see about you; of the sort you like tc imagine yourself to have been; of the sort whose appearance claims the fellowship of these illusions you had thought gone out, extinct, cold, and which, as if rekindled at the approach of another flame, give a flutter deep, deep down somewhere, give a flutter of light . . . of heat!... Yes; I had a glimpse of him then, .. and it was the last of that kind.

R

'You

don't know what it is for a fellow in my position to be believed—make a clean breast of it to an elder man. It is so difficult so awfully unfair-so hard to understand.'

"The mists were closing again. I don't know how old I appeared to him-and how much wise? Not half as old as I felt just then; not half as uselessly wise as I knew myself to be. Surely in no other craft as in that of the sea do the hearts of those already launched to sink or swim go out so much to the youth on the brink, looking with shining eyes upon that glitter of the vast surface which is only a reflection of his own glances full of fire. There is envy of the past, amusement, and infinite pity. Who could resist it? There is such magnificent vagueness in the impulses that had driven each of us to sea, such a glorious indefiniteness of expectations, such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own and only reward! In other occupations the youngster knows something; he expects -this-that-the other definite thing. In this he only desires, with all his heart, with all his soul-desires-what? He cannot tell. He does not know. What he gets-well, we won't talk of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of reality-in no other is the beginning all illusion-the disenchantment more swiftthe subjugation more complete; and no other has the power to extort bitter love for the sake of unfulfilled hopes.

Hadn't we all commenced with the same desire, ended with the same knowledge, carried the memory of the same cherished glamour through the sordid days of imprecation? Well may those few of us who can speak, looking from under the black shadows of sails at the bewitching face of the moonlit sea, whisper to themselves 'Odi et amo.' It is the very truth. The intoxication of charm imagined, the desire of the subtle spirit for ever escaping, the hate of reality sobering and cruel, are like the shadow of the passionate visitation of the gods-the devouring rage of tenderness entwined with the hot rage of anger. 'Odi et amo' they can say as if speaking to life itself, that for all of us begins with the same glamour, and runs through the days of execration to the obscurity of a common end. What wonder that when some heavy prod gets home the bond is found to be close; that besides the fellowship of the craft there is felt the strength of a wider feeling-the feeling that binds a man to a child. He was there before me, believing that age and wisdom can find a remedy against the pain of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a young fellow in a scrape that is the very devil of a scrape, the sort of scrape greybeards wag at solemnly while they hide a smile. And he had been deliberating upon death-confound him! He had found that to meditate about because he thought he had saved his life, while all its glamour had

"I was so lost, you know. It was the sort of thing one does not expect to happen to one. It was not like a fight, for instance.'

"It was not,' I admitted. He appeared changed, as if he had suddenly matured.

"One couldn't be sure,' he muttered.

"Ah! You were not sure,' I said, and was placated by the sound of a faint sigh that passed between us like the flight of a bird in the night.

"Well, I wasn't,' he said courageously. 'It was something like that wretched story they made up. It was not a lie-but it wasn't truth all the same. It was something. . . . One knows a downright lie. There was not the thickness of a sheet of paper between the right and the wrong of this affair.'

"How much more did you want?' I asked; but I think I spoke so low that he did not catch what I said. He had advanced his argument as though life had been a network of paths separated by chasms. His voice sounded reasonable.

"Suppose I had not-I had not-I mean to say, suppose I had stuck to the ship? Well. How much longer? Say a minute

thirty seconds, as it seemed certain then, I would have been overboard; and do you think I would not have laid hold of the first thing that came in my way—oar, life-buoy, grating-anything. Wouldn't you?'

"And be saved,' I interjected.

"I would have meant to be,' he retorted. And that's more than I meant when I'

.. he shivered as if about to swallow some nauseous drug

'jumped,' he pronounced with a convulsive effort, whose stress, as if propagated by the waves of the air, made my body stir a little in the chair. He fixed me with lowering eyes. 'Don't you believe me?' he cried. 'I swear! . . . Confound it! You got me here to talk, and . . . You must! ... You said you would believe.' 'Of course I do,' I protested, in a matter-of-fact tone which

produced a calming effect. 'Forgive me,' he said. 'Of course I wouldn't have talked to you about all this if you had not been a gentleman. I ought to have known. I am -I am a gentleman too

.' 'Yes, yes,' I said hastily. He was looking me squarely in the face, and withdrew his gaze slowly. Now you understand why I didn't after all . . . didn't go out in that way. I wasn't going to be frightened at what I had done. And, anyhow, if I had stuck to the ship I would have done my best to be saved. Men have been known to float for hours-in the open sea-and be picked up not much

the worse for it. I might have lasted it out better than many others. There's nothing the matter with my heart." He withdrew his right fist from his pocket, and the blow he struck on his chest resounded like a muffled detonation in the night.

"No,' I said. He was meditative, with his legs slightly apart and his chin sunk. A hair's breadth,' he muttered. 'Not the breadth of a hair between this and that. And at the time . . .'

"It is difficult to see a hair at midnight,' I put in, a little viciously I fear. Don't you see what I mean by the solidarity of the craft? I was aggrieved against him, as though he had cheated me-me!-of a splendid opportunity to keep up the illusion of my beginnings, as though he had robbed our common life of the last spark of its glamour. And so you cleared out-at once.'

666

Jumped,' he corrected me incisively. 'Jumped-mind!' he repeated, and I wondered at the evident but obscure intention. 'Well, yes! Perhaps I could not see then. But I had plenty of time and any amount of light in that boat. And I could think too. Nobody would know, of course, but this did not make it any easier for me. You've got to believe that too. I did not want all this talk. . . . No ... Yes. . . I won't lie. . I wanted it it is the very thing I wanted—there. Do you think

you or anybody could have made me if I . . . I am-I am not afraid to tell. And I wasn't afraid to think either. I looked it in the face. I wasn't going to run away. At first-at night, if it hadn't been for these fellows I might have . . . No! by heavens! I was not going to give them that satisfaction. They had done enough. They made up a story, and believed it for all I know. But I knew the truth, and I would live it down-alone, with myself. I wasn't going to give in to such a beastly unfair thing. What did it prove after all? I was confoundedly cut up. Sick of life-to tell you the truth; but what would have been the good to shirk it—in -in-that way? That was not the way. I believe I believe it would have-it would have ended-nothing.'

He had been walking up and down, but with the last word he turned short at me.

"What do you believe?' he asked with violence. A pause ensued, and suddenly I felt myself overcome by a profound and hopeless fatigue, as though his voice had startled me out of a dream of wandering through empty spaces whose immensity had harassed my soul and exhausted my body.

"THE Nile is Egypt, and Egypt is the Nile," is a truism which was tersely put by Lord Rosebery during the Fashoda crisis. It follows, then, that a good Nile is of the utmost importance to the prosperity of that country. When the Nile rises too high, great damage is done to the crops immediately behind its banks, from the water of infiltration remaining stagnant for weeks on the cultivated lands, while the breaking of banks and the flooding of considerable areas is of common occurrence. Again, when the Nile is abnormally low, much land in Upper Egypt remains without water, and consequently without crops for a whole year; while Lower Egypt (the delta lying to the north of Cairo) suffers from a scarcity of water during the following summer. The question of loss consequently divides itself naturally into two periods, which should be considered separately.

The height of the Nile for centuries has been measured by the Nilometer at Cairo. The markings on this gauge are in the old measures of pics1 and kirats, 24 kirats making 1 pic. The pics, however, at the lower part of the gauge are greater than those at the top, so that a pic does not always measure the same number of inches; but as the height of the Nile has been measured from time

immemorial in this manner, no other measurement would be of use for purposes of comparison.

A perfect Nile rises to a height of 24 pics at Cairo, and gives the most satisfactory results. When we consider that this year the Nile has not attained a height of 17 pics, it will at once be apparent that this is far short of what is required, and, as a matter of fact, is the lowest of the three bad Niles which have stood out prominently from all others— namely, those of 1877, 1888, and 1899. It is a curious coincidence that they should have occurred at intervals of eleven years with such regularity. Nearly all the irrigation of Upper Egypt is carried on under the ancient system of "basin" irrigation-that is to say, large areas of as nearly the same level as possible are enclosed by earth banks; the flood - waters are allowed to enter these basins; and, should the Nile rise sufficiently, the whole surface is covered, the lower parts to a depth of many feet and the higher parts with a few inches of water only. Thus when the Nile is low the flood does not reach the higher lands, which under those conditions are technically known as sharakee. In 1877 there were upwards of 900,000 acres of sharakee, while this