stone jetty in the
middle front of the town; we had to jump out into four feet of water, as
the port has deteriorated a good deal since Solomon used it and called
it Eziongeber. A careful search revealed no one in the town, but water
had been drawn recently from the well inside the fort, and a mud hut out
in the desert behind the town seemed a likely covert to draw.

The cutter's officer accompanied me, leaving the crew ensconced in the
cemetery, which was a wise move, for, when we were close to the hut,
heavy fire was opened on us from a hidden trench some three hundred
yards away. We both dropped and rolled into a shallow depression caused
by rain-wash, where we lay as flat as we could while the flat-nosed soft
lead bullets kicked sand and shingle down the backs of our necks. As we
had only revolvers--expecting resistance, if any, to be made among the
houses--we could not reply, but the ship handed out a few rounds of
percussion shrapnel which shook the Turks up enough for us to withdraw.
Fortunately for us, they were using black powder, and outside four
hundred yards one has time to avoid the bullet by dropping instantly at
the smoke. Otherwise they should have bagged us in spite of the support
of our covering party in the cemetery, for the ground was quite open and
so dusty that they could see the break of their heavy picket-bullets to
a nicety.

We landed in force an hour later and turned them out of it. On
returning, the men who searched the hut (which the ship's guns had
knocked endways) brought me a budget of correspondence. It was chiefly
addressed to the officer in charge and told me that the detachment was
Syrian, which I had already suspected from their using the early pattern
Mauser. It gave other useful information, and the men did well to bring
it along; but I would have given much to have found some channel through
which I could return it. Most of it was private; there were several
congratulatory cards crudely illuminated in colours by hand for the
feast of Muled-en-Nebi (the birthday of the Prophet), which corresponds
with our Christmas. There was also a letter from the officer's wife
enclosing a half-sheet of paper on which a baby hand had imprinted a
smeared outline in ink. It bore the inscription "From your son
Ahmed--his hand and greeting."

Early in the spring of 1916 we managed to persuade the political folk at
Cairo to extend our sphere of action. I had particularly marked down
Um-Lejj as cont