And then away under the same pleasant, placid conditions to the land of Egypt, not a cloud in the sky, hardly a ripple on the sea, and the climatic conditions as regards temperature nearly perfect. We arrived at Port Said in the early dawn, the weather being quite cool enough for an overcoat, picked up our pilot and steamed sedately in to the buoys off the town amidst an extraordinary hush, only broken presently by the hubbub of the coaling Arabs, who worked with an almost fiendish energy to get the six huge lighters of good Welsh fuel into the body of the ship through the side ports, thus producing the minimum of dust. To any one accustomed to disciplined work, the ways of these Arabs are mysterious beyond comprehension. Everybody seems to be in command, and to issue orders in a high yell of which nobody appears to take the slightest notice. The most insignificant, ragged varlet, who has apparently been dozing upon the coal, will suddenly start up and rend the atmosphere with his raucous cries, taking command of the whole flotilla. But nothing happens, except that by and by all the barges are in position and the coal passing begins, every man, as he empties his basket into the shoot and descends the plank, making some mystic passes in front of his face with his left hand, and intoning a few weird words of Arabic, probably an invocation or thanksgiving to Allah.
The police arrangements at Port Said appear to be well-nigh perfect. The boatmen do not pester for hire, because the fare is fixed at threepence per passenger during the daytime and sixpence at night, and it is paid into an office on shore—a penny of backsheesh making the boatman quite happy. On shore it is warm undoubtedly, but other discomforts there are none. No almost savage importunities to buy or go here or there; and as for vice, the unparalleled viciousness for which Port Said has long been a byword—well, if it exists, which I very much doubt, at least to any great extent, it must be deliberately sought for, and that at considerable expense. Certainly as far as I have been able to ascertain, viciousness is not nearly as flagrant in Port Said now as it is in any large city at home or on the Continent. No doubt it was, as a cosmopolitan acquaintance of mine put it, "a gay place once, but these infernal hypocrites of English have made it as tame as a London suburb on a Sunday afternoon." At midday we cast off from the buoys and entered the Canal, having, during our stay, shipped an extension of the rudder and a huge searchlight over the bows, the former because the slow rate of speed admissible in the Canal (about four knots) does not allow the vessel to answer her ordinary rudder quick enough, and the second to permit of the navigation of the Canal by night. At first the scene was quite impressive, especially the amazing contrast between the gigantic dredgers, which lie by the banks and scoop up the bed of the Canal, pouring it out through a huge tube on to the desert beyond, and the nuggars, or Nile boats, of a type dating back two thousand years or more, with their upward-flaring bows and their huge lateen sails. The wind was right aft, so that we were in an almost perfect calm; yet it was cool in the shade, and only over the desert, where an occasional mirage showed itself, did it appear to be hot. As evening came on, the desert scenes aroused strange memories, the unkempt encampments with their groups of couchant camels, the solitary figures engaged in prayer with their faces Mecca-wards, and then a sudden blaze of colour, a golden glory in the West, and the vivid day was done.
As in all such situations, night succeeds day with almost startling suddenness, but surely never did sweeter dark succeed glaring sunshine than now. There was no moon, and in the clear, deep violet of the heavens, from zenith to horizon, the stars glowed incandescently. The air was most invigoratingly cool—in fact, to the incautious ones coming up from the heated saloon after dinner in light evening dress, it was fraught with considerable danger. A solemn hush pervaded space—a silence which only seemed more profound for the gentle s-s-s-h of the returning water to the banks as we glided past—and the sense, hardly due to hearing, of the slow throb of the giant propellers below. Ahead the steep banks glowed white as snow from the touch of the 30,000 candle-power electric light at the bows; astern, a vast, dazzling eye showed where another ship was silently stealing along after us. Even the usual gay chat of passengers exchanging reminiscences was hushed as if by the mental burden of the countless centuries of history round about them. For slowly we were stealing through the world-old desert, almost every grain of whose sands could tell, if vocal, wondrous tales of immemorial civilisations; and it needed no great stretch of imagination to people those solemn breadths with legions of ghostly watchers, whose sphinx-like faces expressed neither anger nor surprise, envy nor contempt, but only deep-browed contemplation of the splendid insolence of the modern engineer who had thus invaded their secret solitudes. And I could not help projecting my mind forward a few thousands of years, passing as swiftly as the space between us and the Ancient Egypt, and wondering whether the ephemera of that day would not class us as contemporary with Sesostris or Assur-banipal, even as we are apt to lose our historical perspective, and to look upon all the early civilisations as practically coeval.
We emerged from the Canal into the Gulf of Suez on one of the most glorious mornings conceivable, a fresh breeze ruffling the dark blue of the Gulf into a myriad sparkling wavelets, the air sweet, cool, and heady as new wine, while the distant mountains lay enfolded in sombre purple. But all this beauty was lost upon our commander, who was loud in his objurgations against the abominable neglect, as he put it, of the authorities in allowing this roadstead at one end of the world's greatest highway to remain almost unnavigable for want of dredging, pointing, as he did so, to where our propellers were churning up the mud, and at the ship, which, by reason of her keel smelling the ground, was almost refusing to answer her helm. However, his annoyances were soon at an end, and in the splendid freshness of the new day, we sped joyously down the Gulf towards the much-dreaded and deeply historical Red Sea.
II THE YOUNG GIANT
Of course the time of year—the middle of March—must be taken into account, otherwise I should ask, in utmost bewilderment, why all this wholesale vituperation of the Red Sea? I am quite prepared to believe also that we have been especially favoured this voyage, as we have never, since leaving London, had an unpleasant day at sea. But when all has been said I am perfectly certain that many other places of my acquaintance, notably the Spanish Main and the East African littoral, are quite equal, if not superior, to the Red Sea in its alleged bad eminence of torridity. No; it was not until we began to near Colombo that the heat waxed at all oppressive, and even then only so to people who persisted in worrying about it. In Colombo it was hot and coal-dusty, and generally unpleasant to the traveller eager for sight-seeing, yet fresh from the coolth of home and even the Suez Canal. But it was over soon, and the latter half of the day was also tempered by a few tremendous tropical rain-showers, heralded by a thunder-clap out of a blue sky which sounded like the crack of doom and brought seriousness to many faces. I thought it was the report of a big gun fired close at hand, and looked vainly about for the smoke-wreath.
Away again at midnight, passing through the narrow way between the ends of the two magnificent breakwaters at nearly full speed, so confidently are these modern twin-screw ships handled, and the long stretch across the Indian Ocean to Fremantle lay before us, the last lap of the ocean passage. So we settled down to quiet enjoyment again, marred only by the digestion of the news heard about the outbreak of Vesuvius, fully justifying my fears when I saw his angry glow on the night of leaving Naples. Swiftly we passed into the realm of the faithful South-east Trades, meeting the world-old swell from the southward and listening half-pityingly, half-contemptuously to the querulous complaints of passengers at the ship's motion, after their unstinted praises of her steadiness before. I reserved most of my pity, however, for the skipper, who had to meet these unwarranted aspersions upon the character of his fine ship, with explanations which his interlocutors did not understand, or, if they did, disbelieved, paid no heed to it, and went on grumbling.
At last, punctual to the appointed hour, in the perfect wharf of a pearly morning, we steamed into the snug harbour of Fremantle, and after a brief delay for turning the ship so that she should be ready to steam right out without delay, we gently glided alongside the wharf, arrived in Australia. It was my first visit to Western Australia, and from what I had heard of the Swan River I had pictured something very different indeed from a waterway, which, though narrow, was deep and secure as a dock, and lined with wharves alongside of which such a ship as the Omrah, drawing 26 feet of water and measuring nearly 9,000 tons, could be berthed with the greatest ease. As the light strengthened and it became possible to make out details, I was charmed at the finished look of everything, the absence of that squalor which, in American ports especially, seems inseparable from shipping quarters. There was nothing unkempt or untidy, and as the sun rose and the clear atmosphere shed its searching light upon every corner, this was most noticeable. One other point, too, about this most modern port was the use of the motor for harbour work, the lighters even being brought alongside by a motor-tug, while two or three others were gliding about the river with that uncanny air of sentience and absence of fuss which is extremely characteristic of the motor-boat, if not of the motor-car.