At last he passed by the Ras-el-Tin barracks. He looked curiously at the English soldiers. Some were playing polo on the hard brown space to the left, and from the windows of the building men leaned out, their shirt-sleeves rolled up and their strong arms bared to the sun. They smoked short clay pipes, and innumerable little blue spiral clouds mounted skyward. Obviously the heat did not greatly inconvenience them, for they laughed and sang and drank oceans of beer.
The sight of them annoyed Gregorio. He looked at the pewter mugs shining in the sunlight. He eyed greedily the passage of one from hand to hand; and when one man, after taking a long pull, laughed and held it upside down to show him it was empty, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of anger, and shook his fist impotently at the soldiers, who chaffed him good-naturedly. As he went along by the stables, a friendly lancer, pitying him, probably, too, wearying of his own lonely watch, called to him, and offered him a drink out of a stone bottle. Gregorio drank again feverishly, and handed the bottle back to its owner with a grin, and passed on without a word. The soldier watched him curiously, but said nothing.
When he reached the lighthouse Gregorio flung himself on to the pebble-strewn sand and looked across the bay. The blue water, calm and unruffled as a sheet of glass, spread before him. The ships—Austrian Lloyd mail-boats, P. and O. liners, and grimy coal-hulks—lay motionless against the white side of the jetty.
The khedive’s yacht was bright with bunting, and innumerable fishing-boats near the breakwater made grateful oases in the glare whereon his eyes might rest. But he heeded them not. Angrily he flung lumps of stone and sand into the wavelets at his feet, and pushed back his hat that his face might feel the full heat of the sun. Then he lit a cigarette and began to think.
But what was the good of thinking? The thoughts always formed themselves into the same chain and reached the same conclusion; and ever on the glassy surface of the Levantine sea a woman poised herself and laughed at him.
When the sun fell behind the horizon, and the breakwater, after dashing up one flash of gold, became a blue blur, Gregorio rose to go. As he walked back toward the Penny-farthing Shop he felt angry and unsatisfied. The whole day was wasted. He had done nothing to relieve his wife, nothing to pay off Amos. Madam met him at the door, a flask of wine in her hand. Against his will Gregorio entered her cafe and smiled, but his smile was sour and malevolent.
“You want cheering, my friend,” said madam, laughing.
“I have found nothing to do,” said Gregorio.
“Ah! I told you it would be hard. There are no tourists in Alexandria now. And it is foolish of you to tramp the streets looking for work that you will never find, when you have everything you can want here.”
“Except money, and that’s everything,” put in Gregorio, bluntly.