It was high noon when we drew into Port Saïd, and I hurried at once to the compound behind the Catholic monastery. I was just in time. Even as I laid my knapsack on the ground and lined up with the rest, the Arab servant issued from the kitchen with those same battered tins in which he had served us months before. Barely had he disappeared again when three of the company swooped down upon me. One I had known at the Asile Rudolph. The second—cheering prospect!—was that identical sun-bleached Boer who had squatted against the wall of the “Home” on the early December morning of my first Egyptian day; in those identical weather-beaten garments which he still inhabited. The third I did not recognize. He was a portly German whose outward appearance stamped him as a successful weaver of Märchen, and he spread his squat legs and gazed at me for some time with what appeared to be an admiring grin before he spoke.
“Sie sprechen Deutsch, nicht wahr?” he began. “You, perhaps, haven’t seen me, but I saw you in Jerusalem. You were making pictures with a photograph machine.” A roar of laughter set his fat sides to shaking. “Donner und Blitzen! I have been on the road a good twenty years; I know about every game die Kunde play. But that certainly is the best I ever fell upon. Ach, what a story! I’ve been telling them of the comrade with the photograph machine ever since, die Kunde, and it’s a tale they never try to beat. Herr Allah, dass ist, aber, gut!” and he bellowed with mirth until the Arab servant, to whom hilarity in one accepting alms was the height of impudence, threatened to summon the black policeman outside the gate.
The dinner over, I left my bundle with the Maltese youth and hurried away to the shipping quarter. As I anticipated, the demand for sailors was nil. The situation was most graphically described, perhaps, by the American consul.
“A man on the beach in this garbage heap,” he testified, “is down and out. He had better be sitting with the penguins on the coast of Patagonia. We haven’t signed on a sailor since I was dumped here. If you ever make a get-away, it will be by stowing away. I can’t advise you to do it, of course; but if I was in your shoes, I’d stick away on the first packet homeward bound, and do it quick, before summer comes along and sends you to the hospital. The skippers are tickled to death to get a white sailor, anyway, for these niggers are not worth the rice the company feeds ’em. You’re welcome to tumble up these office stairs every morning, if you like, but I’m not going to promise to look out for anything for you. I’d only lose my lamps a’ doing it.”
I returned to the Home at nightfall, and shared the kitchen—but not the cupboard—with the Boer. Early the next morning, I reached the water-front in time to see a great steamer nosing her way through the small craft that swarmed about the mouth of the canal. Her lines looked strangely familiar. Had I not known that the Warwickshire was due in Liverpool on this first day of March, I should have expected to see my former messmates peering over the rail of the new arrival. I made out the name on her bow as she dropped anchor opposite the main street, and turned for information to a nearby poster.
S.S. Worcestershire of the Bibby Line, on which I stowed away after taking this picture
Oriental travelers at Port Saïd
“Bibby Line,” ran the notice, “S. S. Worcestershire. Recently launched. Largest, best equipped, fastest steamer plying between England and British Burma. First-class passengers only. Fare to Colombo, thirty-six guineas.”