CHAPTER XVII
THE DESERT CAPITAL
DUSK came on, a feverish, throbbing dusk that went gasping and panting through the sandy vacancies of Khartum. A dazzle clung to the twin minarets of the mosque, and struck the Sirdar's palace, lighting his Star-and-Crescent banner that floated beside the Union Jack. Below, it darkened upon many a mud-built hovel from which languid creatures crept, and began to stir amidst the wide silences of empty streets.
The Blue Nile pulsed against the bank, choking with its rich red silt from Abyssinia which would turn to wheat and cotton for children of the Nile in Lower Egypt. This had been his duty for so many thousand years that Father Nile pursued his drudgery in the changeless, patient way of the East. His thick waters rolled in eddies, against which the lateen sail of a lone noggur made no headway. The winds came puffy and uncertain, hot as the breath of a panting beast that had staggered across the desert. The foremost winds halted at the river, came to a
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