Mediterranean Nights Read Online Free PDF

were to go ashore and inspect the famous Hall of Columns—that wonderful monument to the greatness of an ancient people which has defied alike the buffets of the elements and the neglect of man for close on four thousand years. Naturally, everyone was talking of Egypt and the Egyptians.
    The girl with the protruding teeth and soulful eyes leaned towards me. ‘How wonderful it must have been to live in those days,’ she lisped, ‘to know the men who planned these marvellous buildings—I am sure they must have had great minds.’
    â€˜Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Life must have been jolly uncomfortable, all the same.’
    â€˜Oh, no, Mr. Waverley,’ she answered me earnestly, ‘think of the ease and luxury in which Cleopatra lived’; she sniffed, and her rather bulging eyes yearned for the romantic. ‘Life must have been wonderful then—so different from this dull and sordid age of commerce.’
    That genial American, Mr. Benjamin P. Hooker, twisted his cigar in the corner of his mouth as he cut in: ‘Say, young lady, these ancient fellows weren’t all they’re painted—no, by Gee.’
    She gave him a little superior smile. ‘They have left their monuments to speak for them, Mr. Hooker—they must have been great men.’
    â€˜I’ll not say they weren’t great men,’ agreed the American, ‘but you can cut out all the milk and honey stuff—right now, take that from me.’
    â€˜Oh, but dear Mr. Hooker, everybody knows that the Egyptians were a most cultured people—the Courts of the Pharaohs were magnificent.’
    Hooker twirled his cigar adroitly with lips and tongue. ‘I guess you’re all wrong,’ he drawled, ‘though I’ve no personal knowledge of those Pharaoh men.’
    â€˜If you read Budge and Flinders Petrie, Mr. Hooker’—there was a trace of asperity in the girl’s tone—‘you wouldbe better qualified to talk upon the subject—if you like I will lend you a little book.’
    He shook his head. ‘That’s sure nice of you, Miss Burridge, but I don’t take much stock in books—still, the way I figure it out, these Egyptian guys would be about on a level with the Carthaginians as far as culture goes.’
    â€˜What have the Cathaginians got to do with it?’ I asked.
    â€˜Say,’ he laughed, ‘have I never told you folks about my little trip to the ancient and honourable city of Carthage—there was a mighty powerful people, if you like.’
    â€˜No,’ I said, ‘but Carthage was destroyed hundreds of years ago, even the ruins have disappeared in the sands.’
    â€˜Maybe,’ he nodded, ‘but I’ve been to Carthage way back in the centuries, all the same. I’ll say it’s a queer yarn, but I’ll hand you out the story if you like?’
    The stout gentleman and the elderly Scottish lady drew their chairs a little closer, and, in an accent redolent of the great cities of the Middle West, Benjamin P. Hooker went on:
    â€˜Well, it was this way—me and the Professor man were quartered in the same hotel way outside Algiers. An’ me bein’ a citizen of the United States, which is entirely synonymous with a seeker after knowledge, it was nohow surprising that I should cultivate that little old man.
    â€˜Say, folks! he was a marvel, and no mistake—I guess there was mighty little he didn’t know. He could tell you the time the moon got up—or the way to make a peach-gin slosh; he knew how many wives Mahomet had—and why the emancipation of women weren’t nohow possible in the Bismarck Isles. Yes, Sir—he was a compendium of Ten Thousand Facts, and a History of the World throughout the ages, done up in one.
    â€˜So when he came to me one morning bright and early with a smile like a churchwarden at a baby-wettin’ on his face, and suggested a trip to the ruins of