The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle by Pamela Rushby

Author:Pamela Rushby [Rushby, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760652487
Publisher: Walker Books Australia
Published: 2020-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

Before long, lunch was served in the dining room. Then, a steward indicated, coffee would be served on the awninged upper deck.

Hattie sat, as everyone drank tiny cups of dark coffee, and watched river traffic pass. There were small boats – feluccas – their white sails barely stretched in the reluctant breeze, and rafts of river plants with pale mauve flowers. She could almost fall asleep, she thought, in this heat-filled, breathless afternoon . . . She noticed that Amal, though she had her mathematics book on her knee again, was nodding gently over it.

Then, just as her own eyelids grew heavy, Hattie saw a sudden ripple run over the surface of the water, as if the river had shivered. The still, white sails of the feluccas flapped gently and swelled. The rais shouted something.

At once, all was action. Sailors leaped and with little ceremony stripped back the awning that was protecting the upper deck from the sun.

“I say!” Edgar Raven, his hat tipped over his eyes, sat upright in indignation.

The sailors paid no attention. They stowed the awning and leaped towards the masts at the front and back of the dahabiya.

Hattie stood up and gripped the railing as Rais Abdallah took his place at the front of the dahabiya. The steersman, Osman, moved to his post. Sailors deftly unwound ropes and, pulling heartily on them, dragged the two flaccid sails up the masts. The sails began to belly, to fill. Even Amal put her book aside and took an interest.

“The wind?” Hattie ventured to Omar Shaydi. “The wind is favourable?”

“Yes. Now the wind is favourable.”

Ropes splashed into the water as men on the dock freed the Hetepheres from her moorings. They seized long poles and began to push her away from the dock. The dahabiya slid sideways, curved around as her sails filled tighter and tighter until they strained at their ropes, and moved gracefully away from the bank and into the centre of the great river.

Hattie clutched at her hat as the breeze caught them and swept them along. They passed the feluccas and picked up speed, mats of water weed swishing against them.

Great-uncle Sisyphus, Great-aunt Iphigenia, Amal and the Ravens remained in their chairs on the upper deck, watching the banks of the river flow by at increasing speed. But Hattie ran up and down, leaning over the railing, gazing up at the straining sails, envying the steersman his control of the dahabiya.

“It’s wonderful!” she cried to the rais. “Wonderful!” The sailors, intent on their tasks, grinned widely at her.

Soon the dahabiyas at Boulak were far behind them. On the bank, now, crowded Old Cairo, the spires of small mosques and the bushy heads of date palms silhouetted against a white, heat-filled sky. Far in the distance Hattie could see hills with deep quarries gouged into them. The faint outlines of the three great pyramids of Giza slid by.

Then there were more pyramids, smaller and strangely shaped. “Saqqara,” said Omar Shaydi. “We will go there tomorrow. There will be pyramids.

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