Wednesday, April 5, 1916. Muskat. Came ashore early this morning. Then came the Admiral and his Staff, and we went to the Sultan’s house. He had about thirty followers. We drank sherbet like scented lip-salve, and the sailors didn’t like it. The Admiral and the Sultan talked. Later the Sultan came here with seven A.D.C.’s and a nephew who talked very good English which he had learned at Harrow. The Sultan has got a lot of rather nice-looking little horses and a monstrous goat with ears that are about 3 feet long. The Sultan gets 5 per cent. of the customs of this place. Jack Marriott went to see a prisoner in the Portuguese fort. He was Sheikh of a village in which a murder had been committed. They had failed to catch the murderer, and so the Sheikh had to suffer imprisonment himself. Not a bad plan, really. It’s the old Anglo-Saxon idea. That sort of thing discourages men from pushing for power and makes them very energetic, for their own sakes, when they have power. Everything seems quiet in the hinterland. The people here are Bunyas, who cheat the Sultan, slim aristocratic Arabs, and gorilla-like negroes. They are mostly armed to the teeth. Sheets of rain fell this afternoon.
Thursday, April 6, 1916. Persian Gulf. We left early this morning. Some very fine king-fish were brought aboard, about 4 feet long. Great heat. We had an excellent telegram about Gorringe’s offensive in Mesopotamia; the Turks driven back. The Admiral in great spirits. I am tremendously glad, because I have always felt that we were coming to a tragedy. I remember the telegram read out to us at Anzac and the cheers—“The Turks are beaten! The way lies open to Bagdad!”—and our enthusiasm and the disappointment after it, and I did not think this would succeed. Hanna, on the left bank of the Tigris, is reported taken. That ought to open Sinn on the right bank.
Friday, April 7, 1916. Persian Gulf.... To-day we were told by wireless telegram that we had a slave of the Sultan’s on board. Quite true; so we have.... He said he had been with the Sultan eight years and that if he were sent back he feared for his throat. He drew his finger across it very tenderly, and everybody roared with laughter. I do not see that the Sultan has a leg to stand on. If the man went to him eight years ago, he went either of his own free will, in which case he can leave, or he was sold, and we do not recognize anything except bondage, no traffic in slavery.
The Philomel’s prisoners have been transferred to us. One of them looks like an old nobleman. His name is Shah Dulla. He held up Chahbar for 4,000 rupees, like other old noblemen, and was captured with seven bearded patriarchs by the Philomel four days ago. They are dignified people.
Friday, April 8, 1916. H.M.S. “Euryalus.” Bushire. A very cold morning with a clear sky. It’s a nuisance having lost all my coats. Here I leave Edward. I hope he will be all right. He is to follow by the first opportunity with the other servants and my kit. McKay, who is a jolly fellow, will look after him. The news this morning is that we have again improved our position and have taken the second Turkish line. The Russians are advancing. There was a fight here a couple of nights ago. Our Agent, his brother and four sepoys were killed last night at Lingah.
Sunday, April 9, 1916. H.M.S. “Imogene.” Shat-el-Arab. Yesterday Commodore Wake came aboard.... He said that an officer had put land mines down, and that some time after this officer had been recalled. People in Bushire naturally wanted him either to remove or to mark his land mines, but he said that they were all right, as they were only exploded by electricity. The following night, however, there were loud explosions when dogs gambolled over these mines, so people still walk like Agag, and walking is not a popular form of exercise round Bushire. To-day we are in a brown waste of waters that I remember well, a dismal hinterland to a future Egypt. We passed a hospital ship early this morning, in these yellow shallow waters. It reminded me of the Dardanelles, but there it was much better, for there the sea and sky were beautiful and the climate, by comparison, excellent.
Ages ago, in Egypt, Machel used to talk of ghosts. This ship conjures them up all right—trips with Sir Nicholas and the children to the island and many other people, some of them still in Constantinople. Sir Nicholas would have been surprised if he could have seen the name of his yacht written on the rocks at Muskat, and, as the Admiral said, he would not have liked any one else in command of his yacht, here or in any other waters. Townshend has telegraphed some time ago to say he could only hold out until April 1st. Here we are at the 9th.
Sunday, April 10, 1916. H.M.S. “Imogene.” Kurna. Yesterday we arrived at Basra. It looked very beautiful and green, but we only had a short time. Everything seemed in a state of great confusion. Two Generals came aboard. They said we had taken two out of three lines of the trenches that we had got to take in the first attack. Then our men had been checked. We ought to have taken the third line last night. The Sinn position still remains to be taken. If we had been successful last night (and we ought to have heard this morning), we have got a chance of relieving Townshend. If not, I am afraid there is not much chance.... The doctors are being pretty hotly criticized, also the Royal Indian Marine, though how they can be expected to know this river I can’t see. Apparently they asked for iron barges from India and were given wooden barges that the banks and the current continually break. They asked here for one type of river-craft from home, and were told they must have another. Lynch out here says that Lynch in London has never been consulted, though they deny this at home. The troops have only two days’ supplies. The soldiers in Basra were cheerful; the wounded also, for the first time, were cheerful, because they thought it had been worth it and that we are going to succeed....
There is a great storm getting up. The river’s a vast rolling flood of yellow water, palm-trees beyond and again beyond that, marshes and glimpses of a skeleton land, with marsh Arabs always in the background, like ghouls, swarming on every battlefield, killing and robbing the wounded on both sides. The Turks, they say in Basra, had said: “Let us both have a truce and go for the Arabs and then we can turn to and fight again.” Nureddin, the Turkish Commander-in-Chief, is supposed to have been at Harrow with Townshend. I should think that it was really a pension at Lausanne. I saw P. Z. Cox yesterday. He and Lady Cox were very good to me years ago in the Gulf.... The Russians have not yet met any considerable Turkish force. If we do not relieve Townshend, and have to fall back, we shall be attacked by all the Arabs, who are well armed. They say a Royal Commission is being sent to India because at home they anticipate a failure here and want a scapegoat, which they have already provided in Nixon.
I dined with Gertrude Bell, Millborrow, whom I had last seen at Bahrein, and Wilson, whom I had known before. We transferred here at Kurna from the Imogene on to a tiny Admiralty gunboat, as usual leaving all our kit. Dick Bevan says that he has a vision of perpetual landings and expeditions until we arrive in China, with always the same troubles, too few mules, too many A.P.M.’s, etc. This is a war threshold to conjure up dreams and visions. It would be hard to find one more tragic. It’s a curious fate that sends us a second time, unprepared, to one of the richest countries in the world that, like Egypt, has combined fertility and desert, with a stream controlling its future.