Prowling dogs, the scavengers of the native quarter, shared the general
hostility, and scurried out of his path, but sullenly, and with bared
teeth. Through occasional sunlit vistas he peeped into main streets in
which loitered numbers of Italian soldiers and civilians. Even a few
carriages appeared, conveying ladies to the shops or public gardens,
now that the intense heat of the sun had subsided. Therefore he found
it scarcely credible that in the fetid slums there should be such
covert hatred of the white race which held undisputed sway in
thoroughfares distant not a stone's throw. And, in puzzling contrast to
the evidences of eye and ear, he was conscious of an uncanny sense of
familiarity with his surroundings. Before the _Aphrodite_ brought him
south by east he had never been nearer Egypt than Paris. Yet the
sights, the sounds, the nauseating smell of this dank bazaar appealed
to him with the breathless realism that the jingle of hansoms, the
steady crunch of omnibuses, the yelling of newsboys and the tar-laden
scent of the wood-paved road might convey when next he entered the
Strand.
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