I hear you can speak the Negro language, as well as Arabic.

That will be specially useful here, for the natives are principally Negro, and speak very little Arabic.
"How about your baggage ?" "One of the native officers has undertaken to get it ashore, and to put a corporal in charge of it, until I know where it is to go." "Well, Fladgate, as you are going to the General's, perhaps you will take Mr.Hilliard with you, and introduce him." "With pleasure.
"Now, Mr.Hilliard, let us be off, at once.

The sun is getting hot, and the sooner we are under shelter, the better." Ten minutes' walk took them to the house formerly occupied by the Egyptian Governor of the town, where General Hunter now had his headquarters.

The General, who was a brevet colonel in the British Army, had joined the Egyptian Army in 1888.

He had, as a captain in the Lancashire regiment, taken part in the Nile Expedition, 1884-85; had been severely wounded at the battle of Ginnis; and again at Toski, where he commanded a brigade.