rning Frank
noticed two new faces among the firemen, and asked Herrick who they
were.

"Stowaways, lad," said the old tar. "We found 'em hid away among the
cargo last night, and now we're making 'em work their passage. There was
three on 'em altogether, but them two Britishers are all that's any
good. The third was a Maltee lubber, who'd never done nothin' but wait
at table, and sich; so we jist sent him aft to sarve the officers."

That evening there was a sudden cry of "Fire!" and Frank, to whom the
mere thought of a fire at sea had always been a perfect nightmare, was
amazed to see how coolly the men got out their hose-pipes and took their
appointed stations, without the slightest flurry or confusion. In _three
minutes_ all was ready; but happily it proved to be a false alarm.

* * * * *

Ha! what is this long gray band along the southern sky, with one tall
white line standing up from it like a mast, and two black bars
stretching from its edge far into the bright blue waters? Can it be the
coast of Egypt already? It is nothing else. The white streak is Port
Said Light-house; the black bars are the walls of its breakwater,
running their huge piled-up blocks of "concrete" nearly two miles out to
sea.

Frank was greatly amused with the quaint little toy town of 5000
inhabitants, perched between the desert and the sea, where everybody
shut up their stores and went to sleep in the middle of the day; where,
thanks to the deep soft sand, carriages and horsemen went by as
noiselessly as shadows; and where every gust of wind raised a dust-storm
that hid people, houses, and everything else. Here, for the first time,
he saw a _punka_, or monster fan, worked by a rope, and hung from the
ceiling of a room. He was shown over the light-house by a trim little
Arab boy and girl, who, to his great surprise, turned out to be man and
wife; and altogether he had plenty of new impressions to think over when
he at last found himself fairly afloat upon the Suez Canal.[1]

A narrow ribbon of light green water between two interminable
sand-banks, growing gradually higher as they advanced southward; a huge
"dredger" every here and there, lying like a castle upon the water, with
a clamorous garrison of blue-shirted men and red-capped boys; an
occasional tug-boat, disdainfully greeted by Herrick as "Puffing Billy";
a distant caravan, with its endless file of camels and horses and men,
melting away in curve a