Old Junk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER		PAGE
	Foreword by S. K. Ratcliffe	[ 11]
I.	The African Coast	[ 21]
II.	T he Call	[ 47]
III.	Old Junk	[ 58]
IV.	Bed-Books and Night-Lights	[ 65]
V.	Transfiguration	[ 75]
VI.	The Pit Mouth	[ 80]
VII.	Initiation	[ 86]
VIII.	The Art of Writing	[ 92]
IX.	A First Impression	[ 100]
X.	The Derelict	[ 107]
XI.	The Voyage of the Mona	[ 118]
XII.	The Lascar's Walking-Stick	[ 136]
XIII.	The Extra Hand	[ 144]
XIV.	The Sou'-Wester	[ 152]
XV.	On Leave	[ 157]
XVI.	The Dunes	[ 165]
XVII.	Binding a Spell	[ 174]
XVIII.	A Division on the March	[ 179]
XIX.	Holly-Ho!	[ 185]
XX.	The Ruins	[ 195]
XXI.	Lent, 1918	[ 201]

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I. The African Coast

She is the steamship Celestine, and she is but a little lady. The barometer has fallen, and the wind has risen to hunt the rain. I do not know where Celestine is going, and, what is better, do not care. This is December and this is Algiers, and I am tired of white glare and dust. The trees have slept all day. They have hardly turned a leaf. All day the sky was without a flaw, and the summer silence outside the town, where the dry road goes between hedges of arid prickly pears, was not reticence but vacuity. But I sail tonight, and so the barometer is falling, and I do not know where Celestine will take me. I do not care where I go with one whose godparents looked at her and called her that.

There is one place called Jidjelli we shall see, and there is another called Collo; and there are many others, whose names I shall never learn, tucked away in the folds of the North African hills where they come down to the sea between Algiers and Carthage. They will reveal themselves as I find my way to Tripoli of Barbary. I am bound for Tripoli, without any reason except that I like the name and admire Celestine, who is going part of the journey.