Ibrahim's Best Bust

Prince Mohammed Ah Ibrahim of Egypt is a spectacular figure in Europe's baccarat belt. He traces his ancestry back to Mehemet Ali Pasha, the "Terrible Turk" who conquered all Egypt in 1805, beat the British at Rosetta, decorated the streets of Cairo with the bluish severed heads of British soldiers. Prince Ibrahim disregards his cousin, Egypt's plump King Fuad I, nor is he interested in Egyptian politics. On an income of $150,000 a year, he confines his interests to champagne, roulette, a beautiful wife and numerous attractive friends. Also he takes a sparring partner with him wherever he goes, though boxing circles are more impressed by the fearsome hairiness of His Highness's chest than by the power of his punch. Lastly Prince Ibrahim has a talent for catastrophe.

In a magnificent bust-up near Montelimar in southern France last autumn His Highness wrecked a brand new super-costly Farman,* strewed the highway with a tonneau full of fragile young ladies, escaped unscathed. Some three weeks ago, off the coast of Norway occurred Prince Ibrahim's latest, grandest bust-up. Five minutes after His Highness's famed quarter-million-dollar Diesel yacht Nazpermer ("Beautiful Lady") struck a rock, it sank (TIME, July 29). How it all happened, a Miss Margaret Woolf of Rochester, N. Y., cheerfully told Paris reporters last week. Excerpts:

"When we retired for the night it was still light. . . . The sea was absolutely calm. I was awakened by a terrific crash which threw me partly out of my bunk. . . . I ran in my nightdress out into the saloon where I found the Prince and Princess also in night clothes. . . . Water began coming in on top of me through the portholes. The Prince aided me out on deck, returning to get the Princess. . . . They had told a sailor to swim with me, as the captain said that the ship was sinking so fast it was impossible to make any use of the lifeboats.

"We were about 200 yards from the rocky shore, so I told the sailor I would swim by myself, not that I was brave, but I like swimming. . . . The Princess, who does not swim well, was helped by two sailors, and was almost the last to jump.

"We all clambered ashore over the slimy rocks, most of us almost entirely unclothed. My nightdress was torn, and a sailor gave me an Arab cloak which was wringing wet. One of the ship's officers still wore his fez, but he had no trousers on. . . ."

* Slogan: A Car Rolls, a Farman Glides