ater, so that we have to clutch at
handrails and hold on to keep our footing on the slippery deck, which is
cumbered up with bags and bundles and people and crates in a most
confusing way.

[Illustration: JAFFA.]

All around the ship are big clumsy-looking boats filled with swarthy
shouting men wearing turbans and immense baggy blue trousers with enough
stuff in them to clothe a whole family! Except that they are not armed
we might imagine we were held up by pirates! In front of us, a little
distance off, are cruel jagged rocks over which the waves pour and dash,
spouting up in cascades as they come slap on the hard surfaces.

One of the boats is close to the ship and the men in her are hanging on
by a rope which they gather up or let out as they rise and fall at the
bottom of the long slippery gangway, much worse than that we climbed at
Toulon. The men in our ship are pitching in bags and bundles very
cleverly as the boat comes up, and among the things we see our own brown
bags. Very soon we shall be pitched in too! How will you like that?

Near us is a very fat Turkish lady, who is so rolled up in clothes, head
and all, that it is quite possible she might be mistaken for a
feather-bed. Two sailors get hold of her and carry her down the
gangway, depositing her neatly in the boat as it swings near.

Before you have quite realised what has happened a muscular man has
caught you up like a sack of potatoes. You are run down the gangway with
his hand on your arm like a vice, the boat comes up, and just at exactly
the right second, when it balances on the crest of the wave, your captor
lets you go and you land on the seat gently and sink away again with the
boat. I follow, but am not so lucky, for the next wave catches the boat
awry and sluices me from neck to heel! However, I have a stout coat on
and do not mind. Then, in the heavily laden boat, with the Turkish lady
and the bags and the bundles, we start for the distant shore.

This is the principal landing-place for Palestine! Babies and bishops,
pilgrims and pigs, pianos and potatoes have all to be pitched into
boats!

Our excitement is not over yet, for as we near the rocks it looks as if
we must be smashed by the heavy waves. The roar of the surf is so great
that we cannot hear each other speak, and the rain and foam bespatter
our faces. We blink and hang on to each other, see-sawing up and down,
and wondering every second if we shall be feeling colder yet when