Chapter FourThe Duke stood on deck alone.
It was very early in the morning and the sun, rising in the cloud-free, mist-free sky threw a strange mystical light, first red, then yellow, lastly a blinding white, over the landscape.
‘No wonder,’ he thought, ‘the ancient Egyptians worshipped above all other deities, the God of the Sun.’
Every mile they travelled since they had left the Mediterranean for first the Nile delta, which was like a lotus, and then the river itself, he had felt more and more fascinated by the country he wished to see.
Now the river moved through mile after mile of green with cotton and tobacco fields, palm groves and plantations of beans and peas springing from the rich red-brown mud. In the distance, waterless and sun-dried, was the golden desert.
As they went fa
