Macaroni! Macaroni! I thought my stomach would become paralysed on the greasy stuff before the journey would end. I vowed that, if I ever reached shore, I would never allow the word macaroni to be mentioned in my presence. The bread was actually so hard that each member of the crew was compelled to soften it in a tub of water—provided for the purpose—before it was possible to sink his teeth in it. When a man is hungry enough he will eat anything. Stew that almost turned my stomach one day and which I refused to eat, I would consider delicious the next.
From Bombay to Suez is something over three thousand miles and at the rate our ship was travelling it would require sixteen days to make the trip. How these days did drag—on a macaroni diet! The long, hot, foodless days and the dark, stuffy nights in vermin-infested and unsanitary quarters made these sixteen days seem like sixteen years. Between meals I was supposed to assist the crew. Because I was paying the captain a small sum for my passage I was let down rather easily on the work. However, I had to appear busy. Each morning I scrubbed the stern deck and gave the place a general clean-up. In the afternoon I washed clothes in a ship-bucket or painted the iron railings and life boats.
The days dragged slowly on, and three times between sunrise and sunset the red wine and macaroni diet stared me in the face. We entered the Red Sea, our journey only half completed; and the thought rose in my mind that I had eight days more of macaroni. However, all good things come to an end and, thank God, the bad ones are not exempt in this respect. On the sixteenth day at midnight the Levanzo pulled into Suez, the eastern entrance of the Canal.
As soon as the old tub dropped anchor I gave the captain twenty dollars for my passage and, with the speed of a fly, was on my way to shore in a small boat propelled by an Arab, leaving the Levanzo to sink in her tracks for all I cared. I was taken to the Customs House where I was subjected to the most rigid examination to be found anywhere in the world, at the hands and mercy of impudent, coarse and treacherous Arabs. These heavy featured, horse-sized human beings—if such they can be called—were the worst type of men I had seen in a long time—and I had seen some tough specimens in the past few months. Fortunately my belongings made up such a meagre collection that I proved of little interest to these huge parasites who prey upon innocent travellers who wend their way through the Canal.
The Sphinx
After an ordeal that lasted two hours, in spite of the size of my luggage, I was liberated. I wandered up the track to the station where I learned that a train for Cairo was to leave at six o'clock in the morning. There was an hotel at Suez but I did not care to pay four dollars of my precious coin for an equal number of hours in bed. I stood in front of the deserted station for something, or anything, to happen. Presently a lean-looking Englishman ambled along. This man, who had a face like a dried prune, entered into conversation with me and I learned that he was a travelling acrobat who, with his wife and little daughter, had just come in from the Far East after a theatrical tour of several months.
"Where are you going to put up?" he asked.
"I don't know. I can't see the hotel for only four hours. I thought I would crawl in one of those passenger coaches on the siding over there," I said, pointing to several cars on an adjacent track.