doing 14 knots and in two or three days should reach our
journey's end. The day is beautiful and the Mediterranean its deepest
blue.

I have been having a talk with the captain of the "Ausonia". He has
only 64 tons of water on board, while he should have had ten times
that amount. There are no pipes laid to the docks and the whole of the
shipping has to depend on six water lighters which carry 60 tons each.
At present these are totally unable to supply the huge number of
transports in Alexandria. The half of these are flying two flags
beside each other to denote a shortage of water. In both the ground is
red, the upper with red diagonal stripes while the lower has a yellow
cross.

I find the cooking on the Cunard line very superior to what it was on
the Red Star. Here it is as good as in a first-class hotel.

_April 9th._--At 10 a.m. we were opposite rocky land to port. Some say
this is the island of Rhodes, others Abydos, but not having a map of
the southern part of the Archipelago I am unable to give an opinion.
About 11.30 we had land to starboard which a naval man assured me "was
Rhodes right enough". He pointed to a camel-backed hill and said, "If
there is a lighthouse opposite the middle of that, then I have no
doubt about it". It was there sure enough when examined through a
field glass.

A short time after leaving Alexandria I found by the compass we were
steering 20 deg. to 25 deg. W. of N. while all this forenoon we have gone due
N. I have been out on the deck watching an engineer unit preparing
posts for barbed wire. At present they have poles 12 feet long; both
ends are being pointed and a pencil mark is drawn round the middle of
the pole. They can thus quickly make two pointed posts by means of a
saw, but they expect to find the long poles useful before that
happens. They will lash their shovels and other tools to these, and
two men can carry them on their shoulders.

After lunch I had a conversation with my new friend, the captain of
the "Ausonia". He tells me the island on our port side was neither
Rhodes nor Abydos. The most interesting piece of news I got out of him
was that our destination was Lemnos, but that he expected that it was
merely as a rendezvous for the whole force, and was only 48 miles from
Sedd-el-Bahr, on the south point of Gallipoli. His view is that we
will land a short way north of that. He is against its being so far
north as the Gulf of Saros and the narrow neck of land the