st
being composed, in pretty nearly equal proportions, of French, Germans,
and, somewhat to my surprise, Russians. These last, however, it
eventually transpired, had booked only as far as Hong Kong, from whence
it was probable that they intended to proceed to Port Arthur, although
they said nothing to that effect.

We passed through the Straits of Bonifacio and Messina, and in due
course arrived at Port Said without incident, except that, thanks to
Nakamura, I soon became upon friendly and even intimate terms with all
the Japanese passengers in the saloon, as well as the ship's officers.
There was one old gentleman in particular, rejoicing in the name of
Matsudaira Hashimoto, an ex-professor of languages at the Imperial
College of Tokio, who, happening to hear that I was anxious to utilise
the large amount of time occupied by the voyage in acquiring as much
knowledge as possible of the Japanese language, at once came forward
with an offer to gratuitously teach me, in order that, as he remarked, I
might be equipped with a working knowledge of the language upon my
arrival, and so be in a position to immediately render my services
valuable. The old gentleman, it appeared, had been remarkably
successful in his day as a teacher of languages, working upon a system
which he had himself invented; and, luckily for me, his system was so
excellent that, working with me for five hours daily, he actually
succeeded in redeeming his promise so thoroughly that when we at length
reached Yokohama I was able to manage quite fairly well without the
services of an interpreter. This by the way.

It was a part of the skipper's plan to replenish his bunkers at Port
Said, an operation involving a detention of three hours. We therefore
all went ashore, and I posted a letter to my friends, the Gordons,
attaching to it a number of stamps of different denominations, for the
benefit of Ronald, who was an enthusiastic collector. We then roved
about the town, but, finding nothing to interest us, soon returned to
the ship, which we found enveloped in a cloud of coal dust which was
playing havoc with her fresh white paint, despite the canvas screens
spread to protect it.

We got under way again shortly after three o'clock that afternoon, two
of our passengers--Russians who looked very much like military men in
mufti--cutting things so fine that they were actually compelled to
follow after us in a steam launch; and when at length they overtook us