ill be seen that
he was not indisposed to keep his part when necessity demanded. 'The
steamer _Levant_ was ordered to sail at midnight on the day it arrived
at Jaffa, and there was a vast crowd and great confusion at the
embarkation. All the villainy of the Arab watermen was in active
operation. With the assistance of Dr Kiat's Italian servant, an
arrangement had been made that I and my friend were to be taken out to
the steamer for a stipulated sum; but while all the boats of the
natives were going off; ours was still detained at the pier under a
variety of flimsy pretences. Then a proposal was made to carry the
luggage back to the shore, and to take away the boat somewhere else, a
promise being given by the Arabs that they would return with it in
plenty of time to take us on board before midnight. By this time, I
was too old a traveller amid ruffians of this sort to permit so simple
a fraud to be perpetrated. The crew insisted on taking hold of the
oars, and my friend and I persisted in preventing them. We soon saw
that nothing but determined courage would carry the day. I therefore
did not hesitate to grasp the skipper firmly by the throat till I
almost choked him, threatening to toss him headlong into the sea. We
also threatened loudly to go back to the English consul, and to have
them punished for their conduct. Awed a little, and seeing that we
were not to be so easily done as they expected, notwithstanding that
we had been so simple as to pay our fare before we started, they did
at last push off the boat; but it was only after a fashion of their
own. Every forty yards their oars struck work, and they demanded more
money. The sea was rough even beyond the breakers, and the gravestone
which I had seen in the garden at Jaffa was enough to convince me,
that the guiding of a boat by savages in the dark, through the neck of
such a harbour, with whirling currents and terrifying waves, was a
matter of considerable danger. There was no remedy for it, but
continuing to set the crew at defiance, knowing that they could not
upset the boat without endangering their own lives as well as ours.
They wetted us, however, purposely, with the spray, and did their best
to frighten us, by rocking the boat like a cradle. First one piaster
(about twopence-halfpenny) was given to the skipper, then the boat was
advanced about a hundred yards, when the oars were laid down once
more. Another row was the consequence, at the end of which anoth