d dripping
black hair.

Here, too, was a huge old man, who was also diving for pennies and tins
of bully-beef. He was fat and sun-browned, and his muscles and chest
were well developed.

"Me dive for bully-beef!" he shouted. "Me dive for bully-beef!"

Never once did he fail to retrieve these tins when they were chucked
overboard.

The tomatoes were very large and ripe, and the tobacco and cigarettes
exceedingly cheap and good. Most of the men got a stock.

The next day we put to sea again.

It was a real voyage of adventure, for here we were, on an unknown
course, sailing under sealed orders, no one knew whither, nor did we
know what would be the climax to this great enterprise.

Would any of us ever return across those blue-green waters?... Or would
our bones lie, a few days hence, bleaching on the yellow sands? ...
Mystery and adventure sailed with us--and each day the heat increased.
The sun blazed from a brazen sky, the shadow of the halyards and the
great ventilators were clear-cut black silhouettes upon the baking
decks.

The decks were crammed with that same khaki crowd of civilians who had
cursed and sworn and drilled and growled for ten long months in the
Old Country. You imagine what desperate adventurers they had suddenly
become. Some had never been out of Ireland, others had been as far as
Portsmouth, and taken a return voyage to the Isle of Wight. And each day
we zigzagged across the blue seas towards some unknown Fate... death,
perhaps... victory or failure--who could tell?

Until one day a thin, yellowish-white streak appeared upon the sea-line;
little groups of palms huddled together, and here and there a white dome
or a needle-minaret. And so we warped into harbour, through the boom and
past the lightships, to join the crowd of transports and battle cruisers
lying off this muddled city--the city of wonderful colour, Alexandria.

CHAPTER VIII. THE CITY OF WONDERFUL COLOUR: ALEXANDRIA

Scarlet-orange;
Beetle-green,
Flashing like a magic screen.
Silken garment,
'Broidered hood;
Richly woven gown;
Flashing like a pantomime,
In and out Aladdin's town.

Fretted lattice;
Dancing girl;
Drooping lash and ebon curl.