dulled to the virtues of Indian troops and Somauli
policemen. We can't get perspective, you see."

Blithelygo good-naturedly joined in the laugh that went round the table;
for nearly all there had personal experience of "uniformed savages."
As the ladies rose Miss Angel said naively to Blithelygo: "You ought to
spend a month in Aden, Mr. Blithelygo. Don't go by the next boat, then
you can study uniforms here."

We settled down to our cigars. Major Warham was an officer from Bombay.
He had lived in India for twenty years: long enough to be cynical of
justice at the Horse Guards or at the India Office: to become in fact
bitter against London, S.W., altogether. It was he that proposed a walk
through the town.

The city lay sleepy and listless beneath a proud and distant sky
of changeless blue. Idly sat the Arabs on the benches outside the
low-roofed coffee-houses; lazily worked the makers of ornaments in the
bazaars; yawningly pounded the tinkers; greedily ate the children; the
city was cloyed with ease. Warham, Blithelygo and myself sat in the
evening sun surrounded by gold-and-scarlet bedizened gentry of the
desert, and drank strong coffee and smoked until we too were satisfied,
if not surfeited; animals like the rest. Silence fell on us. This was a
new life to two of us; to Warham it was familiar, therefore comfortable
and soporific. I leaned back and languidly scanned the scene; eyes
halfshut, senses half-awake. An Arab sheikh passed swiftly with his
curtained harem; and then went filing by in orderly and bright array
a number of Mahommedans, the first of them bearing on a cushion of red
velvet, and covered with a cloth of scarlet and gold, a dead child to
burial. Down from the colossal tanks built in the mountain gorges
that were old when Mahomet was young, there came donkeys bearing great
leathern bottles such as the Israelites carried in their forty years'
sojourning. A long line of swaying camels passed dustily to the desert
that burns even into this city of Aden, built on a volcano; groups
of Somaulis, lithe and brawny, moved chattering here and there; and
a handful of wandering horsemen, with spears and snowy garments, were
being swallowed up in the mountain defiles.

The day had been long, the coffee and cigarettes had been heavy, and
we dozed away in the sensuous atmosphere. Then there came, as if in a
dream, a harsh and far-off murmur of voices. It grew from a murmur to a
sharp cry, and from a sharp cry to