All the recollections of our four-days' stay in Cyprus are of the pleasantest description, as were those also of our voyage to Egypt in two French trawlers. As much cannot be said of the fortnight we spent in Port Saïd, where we passed the first night sleeping on the sand in a transit camp and most of the rest in hospital: nor of our ten days in a troop-train crossing Italy and France. During this time we learnt—what perhaps we needed to be taught—that we were after all the least important people in the world. But to tell of these adventures in detail would be to fill another book. Suffice it to say that we were sustained by a few comic episodes. On one occasion, in Italy, we spent five minutes talking Italian, based on slender memories of school-day Latin, to men in another troop-train, before we discovered that they were Frenchmen. On another, in France, we remember opening a conversation in French with our engine-driver, who proved to be an American.
At length, on the 16th October 1918, five of our party reached England together, preceded by Cochrane, who had managed to arrange for a seat in a "Rapide" across Europe, and followed by the Old Man and Nobby, who had had to remain in hospital in Egypt for another fortnight.
Soon after arrival in England, each of us had the very great honour of being individually received by His Majesty the King. His kindly welcome and sympathetic interest in what we had gone through will ever remain a most happy recollection.
Finally, we arranged a dinner for all our party, the date fixed being 11th November. This, as it turned out, was Armistice Night, and with that night of happy memories and a glimpse of the eight companions once again united, we will draw the tale of our adventures to a close.
FOOTNOTE:
[11] The following is an extract from a letter received from Lieut.-Colonel Keeling since we wrote the above: "At Adana I met the Turkish Miralai (= Brigadier-General)—Beheddin Bey—who was in command on the coast. He was fully expecting the party [i.e., our party], and put all the blame on the men in the boat [i.e., the lighter] to which the motor-boat was tied. These men were all Turks, the Germans being on shore. The loss of the motor-boat was discovered before dawn, and at dawn a hydroplane was sent out to look for her; but she only spotted a small boat a few miles out, presumably the boat with which they had towed the motor-boat to a safe distance before starting the engine. Beheddin Bey drew me a plan showing exactly how everything had happened."
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCLUSION.
There is one note, however, which we feel we must add before laying down our pens. Many of our readers will have already realised that there was something more than mere luck about our escape. St Paul, alluding to his adventures in almost the very same region as that traversed by us, describes experiences very like our own. Like him, we were "in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, ... in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, ... in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness."