“You are getting in here,” said the Maltese, pulling open what appeared to be a heavy pair of shutters; “but be quietness.”
I climbed through after the others. A companion struck a match that lighted up a stone room, once the kitchen of the Home. Closely packed though we were, it soon grew icy cold on the stone floor. Two of the ragged men rose with cries of disgust, and crawled out through the window to tramp up and down the hall. I felt my way to a coffin-shaped cupboard in one corner, laid it lengthwise on the floor, pulled out the shelves, and, crawling inside, closed the doors above me. My sleep was unbroken until morning.
On my second afternoon in Port Said, one of my room-mates at the Home—an Austrian—wandered with me out to the break-water. We lay stretched out, watching the coming and going of the pilot-boats and the sparkle of the canal, that narrowed to a thread far away on the yellow desert.
A portly Greek approached, and asked in Italian if we wanted work. We did, of course. We followed him back to land and along the beach until we came to a hut in the native part of the city. On the earth floor sat two widemouthed stone vessels. The Greek motioned to us to seat ourselves before them, poured into them some kind of small nut, and handed each of us a stone pestle. When we had fallen to work pounding the nuts, he sat down on a stool, prepared his water-bottle pipe, and, except for a wave of the hand now and then as a signal to us to empty the vessels of the beaten mass and refill them, remained utterly motionless for the rest of the day.
Like machines we pounded hour after hour. The pestles were heavy when we began; before the day was over mine weighed at least a ton. What we were beating up, and what we were beating it up for, I do not know to this day. The Austrian said that he knew the use of the product, but fell strangely silent when I asked him to explain. Night sounds were drifting in through the door of the hut when the Greek signed to us to stop. Then he handed each of us five small piasters (12½ cents). We hurried away across the beach to a native shop where mutton sold cheaply.
Two days later I took a “deck-passage” for Beirut, and boarded an old ship flying the English flag. A crowd of Arabs, Turks, and Syrians, Christians and Mohammedans, men and women, squatted on the half-covered deck. In one place were piled a half hundred wooden gratings. What these were for was a mystery to me until my fellow passengers fell to pulling them down, one by one, and spreading their bed-clothes on them! I was the only one of all the multitude without bedding; even the lean, gaunt Bedouins, dressed in tattered filth, had each a roll of ragged blankets in which, after saying their evening prayers with many bowings toward the city of Mecca, they rolled themselves and lay down together. When I stretched out on a bare grating, the entire throng was lying huddled in a dozen separate groups.
Morning broke bright and clear. Far off to the right rose the snow-capped range of the Lebanon Mountains. I strolled anxiously about the deck. In a group of Turks I came upon two who spoke French. I began to talk with them, chiefly because I wanted to ask them questions. I told them a few of my experiences on the highways of Europe. These stories amused them greatly. Then I spoke of my intention of walking to Damascus. They shouted with astonishment. It was plain that some of them did not believe me.
“What!” cried one of the French-speaking Turks, waving a flabby hand toward the snow-banks that covered the wall-like range of mountains. “Go to Damascus on foot! Impossible! You would be buried in the snow. This country is not like Europe! There are thousands of murderous Bedouins between here and Damascus who would glory in cutting the throat of a dog of an unbeliever! Why? I have lived years in Beirut, and no man of my acquaintance, native or Frank [European], would ever undertake such a journey on foot.”
“And you would lose your way and die in the snow,” put in the other.
Throughout the morning the pair were kept busy translating for me what the others of the group said about the absolute foolishness of such an undertaking. It was a story I heard again and again while traveling in the Far East; but it was new to me then, and as I ran my eye along the snow-hooded wall that faded into hazy distance to the north and south, I half believed it.