But I have to tell of my own
triumph at Suez, and must therefore hasten on to say that on turning
round quickly with my outstretched hand, I found it clasped by John
Robinson.
"Well, Robinson, is this you?" "Holloa, Walker, what are you doing
here?" That of course was the style of greeting. Elsewhere I
should not have cared much to meet John Robinson, for he was a man
who had never done well in the world. He had been in business and
connected with a fairly good house in Sise Lane, but he had married
early, and things had not exactly gone well with him. I don't think
the house broke, but he did; and so he was driven to take himself
and five children off to Australia. Elsewhere I should not have
cared to come across him, but I was positively glad to be slapped on
the back by anybody on that landing-place in front of Shepheard's
Hotel at Cairo.
I soon learned that Robinson with his wife and children, and indeed
with all the rest of the Australian cargo, were to be passed on to
Suez that afternoon, and after a while I agreed to accompany their
party. I had made up my mind, on coming out from England, that I
would see all the wonders of Egypt, and hitherto I had seen nothing.
I did ride on one day some fifteen miles on a donkey to see the
petrified forest; but the guide, who called himself a dragoman, took
me wrong or cheated me in some way. We rode half the day over a
stony, sandy plain, seeing nothing, with a terrible wind that filled
my mouth with grit, and at last the dragoman got off.
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