e
repose, after the glittering, howling day.

[Illustration: A Cafe, Port Said]

Looking back over these notes, and the Orient and Pacific Guide Book,
and the Acts of the Apostles, I observe that I have made no note about
Corsica and Sardinia, Lipari Islands, and Stromboli, or of the Straits
of Messina and Etna--have barely mentioned Crete! In the Lipari Islands
we saw lights ashore, and down the Straits of Messina; and Stromboli we
discovered easily enough by the glow of hot red up in the sky, and a
sloping line of red that went glittering downwards. It was too dark to
distinguish anything more.

We saw Crete, enough to swear by, the white top of Mount Ida, and
realized where Fair Haven and Phenice and Clauda must lie, and that we
were actually in the seas where the Apostle Paul was caught in the
Euroclydon. By the way what is a Euroclydon; is it a Levanter?

Was there ever a voyage so vividly described, in more concentrated and
pithy words? In eight verses you have a complete dramatic account of a
tragedy at sea, from a passenger's point of view. It would be curious
and interesting to learn what the owner thought, and said, when the
prisoner suggested that he, and his sailing master, and the Centurion,
were all wrong in a question of navigation; and how it came about that
shortly after this difference of opinion the prisoner was master of the
commissariat, and how, after heavy weather and fasting fourteen days on
a rocky coast, 276 souls were saved on bits of wreckage without the loss
of one life! The Board of Trade and Life Saving Societies might enquire
into this, and report.

CHAPTER VI

[Illustration]

The Canal.--If I had not seen Mr Talbot Kelly's book on Egypt I could
hardly have believed it possible that the delicate schemes of colour we
see in the desert as we pass through the canal could be painted and
reproduced in colour in a book. He has got the very bloom of the desert,
and the beauty of Egypt without its ugliness; the heat and sparkle and
brightness in his pictures are so vivid one can almost breathe the
exhilarating desert air--and smell the Bazaars! But Egypt is ugly a
pin's prick beneath its beauty. It is so old and covered with bones and
decayed ideas. The Nile is associated with Moses, and it is long it is
true, but it is also very narrow and shallow, and its banks are
monotonous to a degree; a mile or so of green crop on either side, then
stones, sand, bits of crockery, human bone