CHAPTER FIFTEENLydia and Ann spent the following night in the train.
They embarked at Shelal in a Steamer, spending the next two days and nights on the broad Nile, passing Abu Simbel with its great rock Temples and the flooded half-submerged villages.
At Wadi Haifa they boarded another train to cross over the two hundred and fifty miles of desert on the railway made for General Kitchener and his advancing troops in 1898.
They arrived at Khartoum as the sun was sinking into the desert. After the dreary barren wastes that they had been travelling through, it seemed strange to see the well-built modern town with its prosperous white houses and avenues of green trees.
Lydia stepped out of the carriage a little bewildered, dusty and very tired after the long journey.
“Hullo, Constance,” ca
