An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids | Page 8

it is not given--not given as yet--to share in the great deeds
of the present. The envy of your sex has driven us from the paths which
lead to honour. But the deeds of the past are as much ours as yours."
"Oh, quite as much."

"'Tis to your country that we look for enfranchisement from this
thraldom. Yes, Mr. Ingram, the women of America have that strength
of mind which has been wanting to those of Europe. In the United
States woman will at last learn to exercise her proper mission."
Mr. Ingram expressed a sincere wish that such might be the case; and
then wondering at the ingenuity with which Miss Dawkins had
travelled round from Cheops and his Pyramid to the rights of women in
America, he contrived to fall back, under the pretence of asking after
the ailments of Mrs. Damer.
And now at last they were on the sand, in the absolute desert, making
their way up to the very foot of the most northern of the two Pyramids.
They were by this time surrounded by a crowd of Arab guides, or
Arabs professing to be guides, who had already ascertained that Mr.
Damer was the chief of the party, and were accordingly driving him
almost to madness by the offers of their services, and their assurance
that he could not possibly see the outside or the inside of either
structure, or even remain alive upon the ground, unless he at once
accepted their offers made at their own prices.
"Get away, will you?" said he. "I don't want any of you, and I won't
have you! If you take hold of me I'll shoot you!" This was said to one
specially energetic Arab, who, in his efforts to secure his prey, had
caught hold of Mr. Damer by the leg.
"Yes, yes, I say! Englishmen always take me;--me--me, and then no
break him leg. Yes--yes--yes;--I go. Master, say yes. Only one leetle
ten shillings!"
"Abdallah!" shouted Mr. Damer, "why don't you take this man away?
Why don't you make him understand that if all the Pyramids depended
on it, I would not give him sixpence!"
And then Abdallah, thus invoked, came up, and explained to the man in
Arabic that he would gain his object more surely if he would behave
himself a little more quietly; a hint which the man took for one minute,
and for one minute only.

And then poor Mrs. Damer replied to an application for backsheish by
the gift of a sixpence. Unfortunate woman! The word backsheish means,
I believe, a gift; but it has come in Egypt to signify money, and is
eternally dinned into the ears of strangers by Arab suppliants. Mrs.
Damer ought to have known better, as, during the last six weeks she
had never shown her face out of Shepheard's Hotel without being
pestered for backsheish; but she was tired and weak, and foolishly
thought to rid herself of the man who was annoying her.
No sooner had the coin dropped from her hand into that of the Arab,
than she was surrounded by a cluster of beggars, who loudly made their
petitions as though they would, each of them, individually be injured if
treated with less liberality than that first comer. They took hold of her
donkey, her bridle, her saddle, her legs, and at last her arms and hands,
screaming for backsheish in voices that were neither sweet nor mild.
In her dismay she did give away sundry small coins--all, probably, that
she had about her; but this only made the matter worse. Money was
going, and each man, by sufficient energy, might hope to get some of it.
They were very energetic, and so frightened the poor lady that she
would certainly have fallen, had she not been kept on her seat by the
pressure around her.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear! get away," she cried. "I haven't got any more;
indeed I haven't. Go away, I tell you! Mr. Damer! oh, Mr. Damer!" and
then, in the excess of her agony, she uttered one loud, long, and
continuous shriek.
Up came Mr. Damer; up came Abdallah; up came M. Delabordeau; up
came Mr. Ingram, and at last she was rescued. "You shouldn't go away
and leave me to the mercy of these nasty people. As to that Abdallah,
he is of no use to anybody."
"Why you bodder de good lady, you dem blackguard?" said Abdallah,
raising his stick, as though he were going to lay them all low with a
blow. "Now you get noting, you tief!"
The Arabs for a moment retired to a little distance, like flies driven

from a sugar-bowl; but it was easy to see that, like the flies, they would
return at the first vacant moment.
And now