erous hummocks and
limestone peaks were the invisible pillars of an enormous crypt. And
since across the floor of this crypt many other vessels were speeding
without lights, it was not wonderful that for once our good fortune
failed us. For we had had good fortune. Aeroplanes had bombed, and
missed us by yards. Zeppelins had come down in flaming ruin before our
astonished eyes. Islands had loomed under the very fore-foot of our ship
in a fog, and we had gone astern in time. But this time it was our turn.
We were, in the succinct phraseology of the sea, in collision.

The story of that night will no doubt be told in its proper place and
time. Suffice it that for some weeks we were laid aside, and local
Levantine talent invoked to make good the disaster. And in spite of the
clangour of rivetters, the unceasing cries of fezzed and turbaned
mechanics, and the heavy blows of sweating carpenters, caulkers and
blacksmiths, _Aliens_ grew. There was a blessed interval, between five
o'clock, when my day's work ended, and the late cabin-dinner at
six-thirty, when the setting sun shone into my room and illumined my
study-table--a board laid across an open drawer. And _Aliens_ grew. For
some time, while the smashed bulwarks and distorted frames of the
upper-works were being hacked away outside my window, the uproar was
unendurable, and I would go ashore, note-book in pocket, to find a
refuge where I could write. I would walk through the city and sit in her
gardens; and the story grew. I found obscure _cafes_ where I could sit
with coffee and _narghileh_, and watch the Arabic letter-writers worming
the thoughts from their inarticulate clients, and _Aliens_ grew. And
later, near the Greek Patriarchate, I found that which to me is home--a
secondhand book-store. For I mark my passage about this very wonderful
world by old book-stores. London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Genoa,
Venice, New York, Ancona, Rouen, Tunis, Savannah, Kobe and New Orleans
have in my memory their old book-stores, where I could browse in peace.
And here in Alexandria I found one that might have been lifted out of
Royal Street or Lafayette Square. A ramshackle wooden building, bleached
and blistered by many a dust-storm and torrid sun, its cracked and
distorted window-panes were curtained with decayed illustrated papers in
many tongues, discoloured Greek and Italian penny-dreadfuls, and a few
shelves of cheap curios. Over the door a long shingle displayed on one