And in after days it was men’s habit to look back on this one brief glimpse of Egypt and recall it as the most novel and memorable picture of the many which unfolded before their eyes on their voyage to Africa. The fast-moving ship was now sailing the Red Sea, and we were experiencing that for which it is famed—excessive heat. Damp, cold, and wintry it had been in England when the troops had sailed, and men had cursed the weather roundly, as soldiers will, but now, lolling listlessly about deck, victims of oppressive heat, they would fain have recalled a little of that northern temperature for the benefit of bodily comfort. However, the heat brought about one good service, for it caused the “powers that be” to issue orders for all ranks to hand in their home service kit to Stores and be supplied with the light tropical khaki drill outfit customarily worn in hot climates.
The troops were now settled to the routine of ship-board, and in leisure hours even the novelties of sea and new scenes became less astonishing the more they grew familiar with them.
The days in the Red Sea passed without particular incident. The weather remained phenomenally fine, and the sea charmingly clear and blue—almost as blue as that of the Mediterranean. Large numbers of flying fish were seen soon after leaving Port Suez; the first of their kind to be observed. With their transparent wings and long bodies they looked like magnified dragon-flies in their short flights over the water.
About this time the shortening of the hours of daylight was noticeable. On the 26th of April dawn was at 5 a.m. and dusk at 6.45 p.m. The North Pole Star, too, was now low on the horizon, as the ship drew farther and farther away from the northern hemisphere, and nearer to the Equator.
On the 17th day land was in sight on both bows. Strange land; of pronounced geographical change in the formation of the prominent mountains. They were not generally round and rolling and soft as the hills at home, but flat-topped, and severe as a cliff-head at their summit, their steep-rearing slopes terminating abruptly in a definite horizontal line. The whole was apparently rock and boulder, barren of any covering of foliage.
The sight of land was a forewarning of approach to Aden, and late at night, some hours after dark, anchor was dropped outside the harbour.
There was little sleep for anyone on board at Aden, unless you had cast-iron nerves and hearing, for coaling was started almost immediately the ship anchored, and continued throughout the night. The uproar of a thousand puny jabbering Lascars, and the run of the coal down the chutes, made merry music for devils’ ears, but not for sleepless Tommies.
Next morning, before sailing, Aden was viewed from the ship’s side, but it was too far to land to glean much. The settlement was at the base of towering ragged mountains and, judging by the gathering of houses close to the shore front, it was apparently a small place, and principally a military station.
Here, for the first time, numbers of that well-known camp thief, the Egyptian kite, were seen gathering their food by robbing the defenceless gulls of the meat scraps that they picked up overboard.
NEARING EAST AFRICA