I shook
hands with him heartily as I parted with him at the quay, and wished
him well through all his troubles. A man who takes a wife and five
young children out into a colony, and that with his pockets but
indifferently lined, certainly has his troubles before him. So he
has at home, no doubt; but, judging for myself, I should always
prefer sticking to the old ship as long as there is a bag of
biscuits in the locker. Poor Robinson! I have never heard a word
of him or his since that day, and sincerely trust that the baby was
none the worse for the little accident in the box.
And now I had the prospect of a week before me at Suez, and the
Robinsons had not been gone half an hour before I began to feel that
I should have been better off even at Cairo. I secured a bedroom at
the hotel--I might have secured sixty bedrooms had I wanted them--
and then went out and stood at the front door, or gate. It is a
large house, built round a quadrangle, looking with one front
towards the head of the Red Sea, and with the other into and on a
sandy, dead-looking, open square. There I stood for ten minutes,
and finding that it was too hot to go forth, returned to the long
cavernous room in which we had breakfasted. In that long cavernous
room I was destined to eat all my meals for the next six days. Now
at Cairo I could, at any rate, see my fellow-creatures at their
food. So I lit a cigar, and began to wonder whether I could survive
the week.
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