Gazing At Its Bare And Ghastly Heights, One Of Our Party, Whose
Wit Was Soured By The Want Of Fresh Bread, Surlily Remarked That Such A
Heap Of Ugliness Deserved Ejection From Heaven,-An Irreverence Too
Public To Escape General Denunciation.
We waded on shore, cooked there,
and
[P.223] passed the night; we were short of fresh water, which, combined
with other grievances, made us as surly as bears. Sa'ad the Demon was
especially vicious; his eyes gazed fixedly on the ground, his lips
protruded till you might have held up his face by them, his mouth was
garnished with bad wrinkles, and he never opened it but he grumbled out
a wicked word. He solaced himself that evening by crawling slowly on
all-fours over the boy Mohammed, taking scrupulous care to place one
knee upon the sleeper's face. The youth awoke in a fiery rage: we all
roared with laughter; and the sulky Negro, after savouring the success
of his spite, grimly, as but half satisfied, rolled himself, like a
hedgehog, into a ball; and, resolving to be offensive even in his
forgetfulness, snored violently all night.
We slept upon the sands and arose before dawn (July 17), determined to
make the Rais start in time that day. A slip of land separated us from
our haven, but the wind was foul, and by reason of rocks and shoals, we
had to make a considerable detour.
It was about noon on the twelfth day after our departure from Suez,
when, after slowly beating up the narrow creek leading to Yambu'
harbour, we sprang into a shore-boat and felt new life when bidding an
eternal adieu to the vile "Golden Wire."
I might have escaped much of this hardship and suffering by hiring a
vessel to myself. There would then have been a cabin to retire into at
night, and shade from the sun; moreover, the voyage would have lasted
five, not twelve, days. But I wished to witness the scenes on board a
pilgrim ship,-scenes so much talked of by the Moslem palmer
home-returned. Moreover, the hire was exorbitant, ranging from L40 to
L50, and it would have led to a greater expenditure, as the man who can
afford to take a boat must pay in proportion during his lan
[p.224] journey. In these countries you perforce go on as you begin: to
"break one's expenditure," that is to say, to retrench expenses, is
considered all but impossible. We have now left the land of Egypt.
[FN#1] The reader who has travelled in the East will feel that I am not
exaggerating. And to convince those who know it only by description, I
will refer them to any account of our early campaigns in Sind, where
many a European soldier has been taken up stone dead after sleeping an
hour or two in the morning sun.
[FN#2] The Zodiacal Light on the Red Sea, and in Bombay, is far
brighter than in England.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 155 of 302
Words from 80969 to 81470
of 157964
