(This paper was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly for March, 1918)
A PORT SAID MISCELLANY
BY WILLIAM McFEE
I
There has come upon us, suddenly, one of those inexplicable lulls which make the experienced seafarer in the Mediterranean recall bygone voyages out East. It is as if the ship had run abruptly into some sultry and airless chamber of the ocean, a chamber whose cobalt roof has shut down tight, and through which not a breath is moving. The smoke from the funnel, of a sulphurous bronze color, even while our trail yet lies somnolent in a long smear on the horizon, now goes straight to the zenith. The iron bulwarks are as hot as hand can bear, as the westering sun glows full upon the beam. Under the awnings the troops lie gasping on their rubber sheets, enduring silently and uncomprehendingly, like dumb animals.
Far ahead, the escort crosses and recrosses our course. Still farther ahead, a keen eye can detect a slight fraying of the taut blue line of the horizon. Signals break from the escort and are answered from our bridge. I turn to a sergeant who is shambling to and fro by the machine-room door, and inform him that Port Said is in sight, and that he will be in harbor in an hour or so.
And then, just as suddenly as we entered, the door of that heated chamber of the sea opens and we pass out into a warm humid wind. The wind and the news wake everybody. The soldiers, who have encamped on our after-deck during the voyage, suddenly display a feverish activity. Rations are packed, rifles are cleaned, and I am in the full tide of popular favor because I permit oil-reservoirs to be replenished in the machine-room and furnish those priceless fragments of old emery cloth which give such a delectable and silvery gloss to the bolts. Later, I am so popular that I could almost stand for Parliament, for I tell the sergeant that each man can fill his waterbottle with iced water. Which they proceed to do at once, so that said water gets red-hot before the moment of disembarkation!
But take a look at these men on our after-deck while we are coming up to Port Said. You have never seen them before and you will not see them again, for they are bound for Bagdad and beyond. They are very representative, for they are of all ages, races, and regiments. They are going to join units which have been transferred. Three were hours in the water when their ship was torpedoed. Several have come overland across France and Italy, and got most pleasantly hung up at entrancing cities on the way. Others have come out of hospitals and trenches in Macedonia and France and Flanders. They are Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English. The sergeant, now thumbing a worn pocket-book, has seen service in India, China, Egypt, and France.
Behind him, on the hatch, is a boy of eighteen who wears the uniform of the most famous regiment in the British Army. He is small for his age, and he has a most engaging smile. When I asked him how on earth he got into the Army he explained that he had ‘misriprisinted his age.’ He has a chum, a gaunt Highlander, who scarcely opened his lips all the voyage, and who sat on the hatch sewing buttons on their clothes, darning their stockings, and reading a religious pamphlet entitled Doing it Now.