Scarlet-orange;
Beetle-green,
Flashing like a magic screen.
Silken garment,
'Broidered hood;
Richly woven gown;
Flashing like a pantomime,
In and out Aladdin's town.
Fretted lattice;
Dancing girl;
Drooping lash and ebon curl.
Silver tassel;
Scented room;
Almond “glad”-eye-look.
Queersome figures prowling round,
From some kiddies' picture-book.
Graeco-Serbian Frontier,
J. H., October 1915.
The coal-yards and dingy quays looked gray and chill. Here were
gray-painted Government sheds, with white numbers on the sliding doors,
dull gray trucks, and dirty sidings.
A couple of Egyptian native police in khaki drill, brown belts,
side-arms, red fezes, and carrying canes, both smoking cigarettes,
swaggered up and down in front of an arc-light.
There were dump-yards and gray tin offices, rusty cranes, and a gray
floating quay. Gangs of Egyptian beggars in ragged clothes and a flock
of little brown children continually dodged the native police as we
sailed slowly through the docks. They were the only touch of colour in a
muddle of Government buildings, stores, and transport ships.
We were all crowding to the handrail looking overboard. The Egyptian
sunset had just vanished and the deep blue of an Eastern night held the
docks in a haze of gloom.
The pipe band of the Inniskillings was playing “The Wearin' o' the
Green” in that mournful, gurgling chant which we came to know so well.
One of the little Egyptian beggar-girls was dancing to it on the
floating quay down below us by the flicker of the arc-lamp. She was a
tiny mite, with a shock of black hair and brown face and arms. She wore
a pink dress with some brass buttons hung round her neck. She danced
with all the supple gracefulness of the out-door tribes of the desert,
never out of step, always true and rhythmic in every motion of arms and
body.
When the pipes on board trailed away with a hiss of wind and a choking,
gurgling noise into silence the little dancing girl began to sing in
a deep, musical voice--the voice of one who has lived out-of-doors in
tents--
“Itta long way--Tipple-airy!
--Long way to go!
--Long way--Tipple-airy!
Sweetie girl I know!...”
She sang in broken English, and danced to the tune, which she knew
perfectly.
The khaki crowd aboard whistled and cheered and laughed. Some one threw
a penny. The whole gang of beggars scrambled after it, and there ensued
a scrimmage with much shouting and swearing in Arabic.
We could see the city lit up beyond the dull gray docks.
Next morning we went for a route march through Alexandria. We
marched through the dockyards. Gangs of native workmen in native
costume-coloured robes and bare feet, turbans and red fezes--were
working on the transports, unloading box after box of bully-beef and
biscuit and piling them in huge “dumps” on the quays. Rusty chains
clanked, steam cranes rattled and puffed out whiffs of white steam.
But they did not hustle or hurry. They worked under the direction of
English sergeants and officers, loading and unloading.
At last we got outside the zone of awful ugliness which follows the
British wherever they go. The docks were left behind and the change was
sudden and startling.
It was like putting down a novel by Arnold Bennett and taking up the
Koran.
I did not trouble to keep in step or “cover off.” My eyes were trying
to take in the splendid Eastern scenes. Here were figures which had come
right out of the Arabian Nights.
Was that not Haroun Al Raschid, Commander of the Faithful, disguised
as a water-carrier, with a goatskin bottle slung over his shoulder, and
great yellow baggy trousers and a striped cummerbund?
Here were veiled women and old men squatting under their open bazaar
fronts, with coloured mats and blinds strung across the narrow streets.
Fruit sellers surrounded by melons, and beans, tomatoes and figs and
dates--a jumble of colour, orange, scarlet, green, and gold. Pitchers
and jars and woven carpets; queer Eastern scents; shuttered windows and
flat roofs, mules and here and there a loaded camel, two Jews in black
robes, a band of wild-looking desert wanderers in white with hoods and
veils.
Egyptian women carrying little brown babies; who would believe there
could be such figures, such colour and picturesque compositions?
It was a short march, but we saw much.
So this was the land of Egypt. It was good. What a pity we could see so
little of it...
There were very smartly dressed French women with faces powdered and
painted and scented. Old men with hollow eyes and yellow parchment
skins all creased and wrinkled squatted on the cobble-stones, smoking
hubble-bubbles and long ivory-stemmed pipes.
Arab boys selling oranges ran about the streets. The heat was
stifling--the shadows purple-black, the sunlight glared golden-white on
the buildings and towers and minarets.
Here were curio-shops with queer oriental carvings and alabaster
figures.
It was like a chapter of my _Thousand-and-One Nights_ come true, and I
remembered the gray barracks at Limerick and the incessant drill.
At last we marched back through the docks and aboard the Canada. Next
morning we were sailing far away upon a blue sea. Just a glimpse of
the city of wonderful colour and we were once more creeping closer and
closer to the mystery of our unknown venture.
Many of us would never pass that way again--and each one wondered
sometimes if he would be claimed by that Mechanical Death which none of
us fully realised.
Only a few short hours--a day or two longer--and we should be plunged
into battle. A bullet for one, shrapnel for another, dysentery for a
third, a bayonet or death from weakness and starvation.
The great game of luck was gathering faster and faster. We loafed about
on deck and wondered where we were going and what it would be like...
our minds were thinking of the immediate future. Each one tried to make
out he didn't care, but each one was thinking upon the same subject--his
luck, fate, kismet. How many would return to old England--should I be
one; or would the Eastern sunshine blaze down upon my decomposing body
on some barren sandy shore?
We passed many of the Greek Islands--some came up pink and mauve out
of the sea, others were green with vineyards; once or twice a little
triangular-sailed boat bobbed along the coast.
The uncertainty was a strain, and we felt utterly cut off, until at
last we sighted a sandy streak, and later a line of volcanic-looking
peaks--the Isle of Lemnos.