ver the rail watching them, and the
various reflected lights in the water, and the very clear, unwavering
stars. Then, the coaling finished, and the portholes once more opened,
we turned in.

IV.

SUEZ.

Some time during the night we must have started, but so gently had we
slid along it fractional speed that until I raised my head and looked
out I had not realized the fact. I saw a high sandbank. This glided
monotonously by until I grew tired of looking at it and got up.

After breakfast, however, I found that the sandbank had various
attractions all of its own. Three camels laden with stone and in convoy
of white-clad figures shuffled down the slope at a picturesque angle.
Two cowled women in black, veiled to the eyes in gauze heavily sewn with
sequins, barefooted, with massive silver anklets, watched us pass. Hindu
workmen in turban and loin-cloth furnished a picturesque note, but did
not seem to be injuring themselves by over-exertion. Naked small boys
raced us for a short distance. The banks glided by very slowly and very
evenly, the wash sucked after us like water in a slough after a duck
boat, and the sky above the yellow sand looked extremely blue.

At short and regular intervals, half-way up the miniature sandhills,
heavy piles or snubbing-posts had been planted. For these we at first
could guess no reason. Soon, however, we had to pass another ship; and
then we saw that one of us must tie up to avoid being drawn irresistibly
by suction into collision with the other. The craft sidled by, separated
by only a few feet, so that we could look across to each other's decks
and exchange greetings. As the day grew this interest grew likewise.
Dredgers in the canal; rusty tramps flying unfamiliar flags of strange
tiny countries; big freighters, often with Greek or Turkish characters
on their sterns; small dirty steamers of suspicious business; passenger
ships like our own, returning from the tropics, with white-clad, languid
figures reclining in canvas chairs; gunboats of this or that nation
bound on mysterious affairs; once a P. & O. converted into a troopship,
from whose every available porthole, hatch, deck, and shroud laughing,
brown, English faces shouted chaff at our German decks--all these
either tied up for us, or were tied up for by us. The only craft that
received no consideration on our part were the various picturesque Arab
dhows, with their single masts and the long yards slanting across them.