had hung on at
the Continental Hotel, waiting for the hourly expected arrival of the
boat, beginning almost to despair of her ever coming in.

Finally, patience was rewarded, and one afternoon, with all our baggage,
we went on board. We had everything wanted for camping out except tents,
and these were to be hired at Mogador. A great wooden kitchen-box held
pots, pans, knives, etc., and a case contained potted meats, soups,
biscuits, and so forth.

R. and myself were the only women on board when we left Tangier: eight
men joined us at dinner that night, at one long table in the small
saloon, and we were said to fill the boat. She was very small, only
eighteen hundred tons, and there was not much room for walking about on
her; but we never went out of sight of the coast, and, sitting on a
couple of chairs, could see through the glasses whatever was going on on
the beach--which, I must add, was little enough, at a time when the
smallest incidents become of importance. The greater part of the _Arpad_
was given up to cargo. We landed green tea in quantities at Mazagan, and
black-wood, cane-seated chairs for the Jews and Spaniards living there,
as well as bales of goods and casks; but we took nothing on board, and
the _Arpad_ became more and more like an empty egg-shell, with a decided
inclination to roll, on the swell which invariably sets down that coast.

The captain, a small dark Hungarian, when we left Tangier, changed into a
thin tweed suit and straw hat: he did not understand English. There was
no stewardess; but the steward, who did all the waiting at table, spoke a
little German. One of our fellow-passengers was an Englishman, born in
Morocco, without any desire to leave it--his horizon Gibraltar: he was
Dutch Consul at Mazagan. Another man was a grain merchant in Mazagan. All
were interesting, and could tell us a great deal about the country.
Certainly the coast-line, as seen from the deck of the _Arpad_, was
monotonous, desolate, uninviting to a degree: a long low shore,
kh[=a]ki-coloured, treeless, without sign of life, did not raise in us
regrets that we had come by sea, especially when told that what we saw,
was a fairly correct sample of most of the country we should have ridden
through.

[Illustration: LIGHTERS LOADING.

[_To face p. 268._]

On the entire six hundred miles' length of coast south of Cape Spartel,
and down which we were steaming, there is not a single lighthouse, bell,
beacon, or buoy t