CHAPTER I

BY-WAYS ON SERVICE

BY-WAYS ON SERVICE

NOTES FROM

AN AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL

BY

HECTOR DINNING

LONDON

CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD.

1918

Printed in Great Britain

To

AUSTRALIA

NOTE BY THE AUTHOR

These sketches were not originally written for publication in the form

of a book; and there has been little opportunity of revising them with

that object. The idea of collection and publication came late, after

they (most of them) had appeared in the daily press or in some other

journal; and it came rather by suggestion from friends than on the

writer's initiative.

The collection is rough and inconsecutive. It does not attempt to give

a complete picture of what was to be seen by an Australian at any stage

after embarkation from Australia. It is a series of impressions gained

from an outlook necessarily limited. I wrote about the things that

impressed me most, chiefly for the reason that they impressed me; there

was also the motive of conveying to a small circle of friends some

notion of what I saw.

In the light of the offensive fighting of 1917 in Western Europe,

a great deal of this book will appear feeble, and even flippant.

Descriptions of Egyptian cities and of the Canal-Zone will seem a

kind of impertinence, in a book from the War-area, after tales of the

fighting in Picardy. But they are published with the belief that after

Peace has broken out some soldiers may find an interest in awakening

the memory of their first-love in the world outside Australia. For most

of them Egypt was that; and though in the desert they often declared

themselves "fed-up" with Egypt, it was a transient and liverish

judgment, and their relationship with this first-love was never stodgy.

For the East of the sort they stumbled across in Cairo and on the

Canal, Australians discovered in themselves a liveliness of interest

that was almost an affinity.

But no apology for reminiscences of Anzac is called for, let the

fighting at Pozieres be never so fierce. It is certain that Gallipoli

is overshadowed by the fierce intensity and ceaselessness of the

struggle in France. But it is only the intensity of the Turkish

fighting that is overshadowed. No intensity of the struggle on the

Somme will ever eclipse the intense pathos of that ill-starred

adventure on the ridges of Anzac.

These sketches were written hurriedly and in the midst of a good deal

of distraction. There has been no time to attend to considerations

of style or arrangement of the matter within the limits of single

articles. Often I was stuck for leisure, and sometimes for paper.

Most of the Anzac sketches were written in the dug-out at nights in

circumstances that would have contented transitorily the most Bohemian

scribbler. Those from Egypt were mostly scrawled in a desert camp. In

either case there was the Censor to reckon with. That is seized as

another excuse for inconsecutiveness.

My acknowledgments are due to Messrs. Cassell and Company for their

permission to include in this volume the sketch of Anzac which appeared

in the _Anzac-Book_.

HECTOR DINNING.

Somme,

_December, 1917_.

CONTENTS

BOOK I.--WAITING

SECTION A.--ON THE WAY

CHAPTER PAGE

I. TRANSPORT 1

II. UP THE CANAL 13

III. ABBASSIEH 24

SECTION B.--CAIRO

I. ON LEAVE IN CAIRO 33

II. THE MOOSKI 42

BOOK II.--GALLIPOLI

I. THE JOURNEY 55

II. GLIMPSES OF ANZAC.--I. 67

III. GLIMPSES OF ANZAC.--II. 82

IV. SIGNALS 92

V. THE DESPATCH-RIDERS 96

VI. THE BLIZZARD 98

VII. EVACUATION 103

BOOK III.--BACK TO EGYPT

I. LEMNOS 111

II. MAHSAMAH 118

III. CANAL-ZONE 127

IV. ALEXANDRIA THE THIRD TIME 138

V. THE LAST OF EGYPT 152

BOOK IV.--FRANCE

SECTION A.--A BASE

CHAPTER PAGE

I. ENTRÉE 163

II. BILLETED 169

III. THE SEINE AT ROUEN 175

IV. ROUEN _REVUE_ 180

V. LA BOUILLE 184

SECTION B.--PICARDY AND THE SOMME

I. BEHIND THE LINES.--I. 188

II. BEHIND THE LINES.--II. 196

III. C.C.S. 200

IV. THE FOUGHTEN-FIELD 213

V. AN ADVANCED RAILHEAD 219

VI. ARRAS AFTER THE PUSH 232

SECTION C.--FRENCH PROVINCIAL LIFE

I. A MORNING IN PICARDY 242

II. THÉRÈSE 251

III. LEAVES FROM A VILLAGE DIARY 260

IV. THE CAFÉ DU PROGRÈS 270

V. L'HÔTEL DES BONS ENFANTS 275

VI. PROVINCIAL SHOPS 278

BOOK I

WAITING

BY-WAYS ON SERVICE

SECTION A.--ON THE WAY

CHAPTER I

TRANSPORT

There is something high-sounding in the name Australian Imperial

Expeditionary Force. The expedition with which our troop-ship

cast loose justified, so far, our part in that name. The false

alarms relating to the date of embarkation, raised whilst we were

still in camp, had bred in us a kind of scepticism as to all such

pronouncements. When it was told that we would go aboard on Tuesday,

most of us emitted a sarcastic "te-hee!" And it was not until on Monday

morning our black kit-bags were piled meaningly on the parade ground

for transport that we began to rein-in our humour and visualise the

method of voyaging and believe there must have been some fragment of

truth in what we called the Tuesday fable. We believed it all when

the unit marched in column of route on Tuesday to the ship, and the

quartermaster brought up the odds and ends on a lorry in the rear. But

even so, we were prepared to lie a few hours, at least (and some said

a few days), before casting-off. Some of us had even devised visits to

and from the homes of our friends, in our mongrel-civilian fashion, to

sit once more--or twice--and say good-bye. Quite the majority of us saw

ourselves swaggering about the port, slaking thirst, and being pointed

at as "the Boys." By two o'clock the last baggage came over the side,

and we sat a moment to breathe. Some didn't wait to breathe. As soon as

they got well off the pier, the gangways were raised. By 2.20 we were

in motion. The hope of embarkation, deferred so long, was realised with

a suddenness that almost forbade the saying good-bye. Many a friend,

expecting the hand-clasp, watched the transport steam relentlessly

away; many a man, bracing himself to the final show of a light heart,

saw the gangway rudely raised as he innocently rested after the labour

of embarkation; and all his show of bravery ended in an unwonted

glistening of the eye and a silent turning away from those who would

have turned homewards from the shore, but could not. Many smothered

what they felt in the wild hilarity of jingoistic dialogue with the

shore and with civilian craft flitting about the transport. Two belated

members of the column tore along the pier towards the ship in motion,

embarked in a launch, and were received; and three months of irksome

sitting in a preparatory camp were well-nigh gone for nothing. Two

others, who had "gone up the street for an hour" to make merry finally

with their friends, were left lamenting.

It was a Leviathan we found ourselves upon; the largest boat--as they

say--that ever has come to us. And certainly she carries more men than

one ever expected to find afloat (in these waters) on one vessel--a

kind of city full. So huge is she that you wonder, in the half-logical

excitement of the first few hours, whether she will pitch on the open

sea. "Sweet delusion!" smiles the quizzical reader; "you'll soon see."

Well, we haven't seen. She has pitched hardly enough to upset the

gentlest sucking-dove. That, however, is, perhaps, not all by virtue of

our tonnage; so smooth a sea, and so consistently smooth, the tenderest

liver could hardly hope for. There have, perhaps, a dozen men been

ill; and what are they among so many? With a smooth start, such as we

are blest with, notoriously weak sailors may even hope to get through

without a spasm. At least there are those aboard amazed at their own

heartiness.

Is there any call to relate the daily routine on a troop-ship? Everyone

at home, you say, knows it; it's all there is in most letters from the

fleet. But all kind and patient readers of these notes may not have

friends in the fleet.

Well, then, _réveille_ blows providentially later than on shore--six

o'clock; providentially and paradoxically, for who wants "a little more

folding of the hands to sleep" at sea? Who, on land, does not, save the

few fanatical or deranged? As many as can find ground-room there, sleep

on deck, and have been peeping at the Day's-Eye for half an hour before

the strident note crashes along the decks. He is _blasé_ and weary

indeed who can lie insensible to the dawn here. There is one glory of

the hills at sunrise; the sea hath another glory. On land you see the

dawn in part, here the whole stately procession lies to your eye, and

you see all the detail of the lengthening march defined by the gently

heaving sea. He who sees it not has got well to the Devil! But whether

you are of the Devil or not, you obey the summons to get up, and cut

short your contemplation of the pageant. There is no before breakfast

duty, except for a casual swabbing-fatigue. The men mess at seven on

their troop-decks; the sergeants and officers at 8.30. Thereby hang two

digressions.

The troop-decks have been installed in the holds, or located where old

passenger cabins have been knocked out. Much refitting of a liner,

indeed, had been necessary to make of her a troop-ship. The troops

have been quartered thus: the sergeants mess and sleep in the old

dining-saloon; the officers' mess is the old music-room; both the

smoke-room and gymnasium have been transferred into hospitals. The

sergeants and the men sleep in hammocks slung above their mess-tables.

The officers sleep in such cabins as are left standing.

The other digression ought to show why the sergeants and officers

(apart from the distinctions which the superiority of those creatures

demands) mess an-hour-and-a-half later than the men. Each unit must

appoint, as ashore, an orderly-officer and orderly-sergeant for the

day, and part of their duty is to supervise the issue and distribution

of rations. Each sergeant is given, beside, the supervision of the

quarters of a section of the unit, and this includes overlooking the

complete setting-in-order after messing. Each unit in rotation supplies

a ship's orderly-officer and ship's troop-deck sergeant, whose duties

are general and at the dictation of the ship's commandant.

After breakfast we massage ourselves internally and open up our chests

with an hour's exercise, much as ashore; but we must drill in small

sections, for want of space. Most parades, apart from this last, which

is universal, are for lectures; in which the officers endeavour to

put the theoretical side--appropriately enough, for the practice must

precede the theory in any matter whatsoever, but especially in the

game of war. We were men before we became philosophers; we digested

our food before we thought of physiological research; and we can put a

bullet through a vulnerable part before we know much about the chemical

combustion preceding the discharge. Lectures are, naturally, more or

less directly on the topic of mechanical-transport, in some aspect of

it, but some are on topics of generally military importance.

Curious is the variety in the method of receiving lecture; the rank and

file do not readily adjust themselves to the academic outlook. "Another

b----y lecture, Bill!" "That's all right; 'e'll take a tumble----"

(_The Censor did not pass the rest of this conversation._) But these

are extreme comments, and rather a form of playfulness than serious

utterances. Of the rest, some sit it through in a bovine complacency,

some take the risks of dozing, some crack furtive jokes; most listen

attentively enough. There are many intelligent, well-trained men who

prick up their ears here and there and carry on a muffled discussion,

in a sort of unauthorised _semina_. There is, on an average, one hour's

lecture in the day.

Perhaps half the day is the men's own--clear. It is spent largely in

lounging and smoking, partly in sleeping, a little in reading. There

are well-worn magazines--such as Mr. Ruskin would disapprove--and

little else, except sixpenny editions of the limelight authors. But in

reading and such effeminate arts what good soldier will languish long?

There are sports, of a sort--very sporadic and very confined. They

commonly take the form of passing-the-ball and leap-frog.

The Censor has an _ipse dixit_ way, and is his own court of appeal.

These notes could otherwise be made a little less inconsecutive.

We steamed out of ---- a little after dawn in column of half sections,

artistically out of step and with the alignment nautically groggy. Our

ship took the head of one column; the flagship led the other. That

procession is a sight unique, which you are defied to parallel in the

annals of passenger shipping. The files come heaving along, like a

school of marine monsters disporting themselves....

(_Censor at work again._)

In preparation for the European winter in store for us, about which

so much has been written and spoken at home, and by which so much Red

Cross knitting and tea-drinking have been inspired--as a preparation

for this, the weather is becoming intolerably hot. As we approach the

line the best traditions of that vicinity are being maintained. We wake

in the morning with that sense of lassitude you read of as the regular

matutinal sensation of the Anglo-Indian in Calcutta. At six o'clock the

sun beats down--or beats along--with as much effect as he achieves high

in the heavens in the early Australian summer. No sluggard sleeping on

deck but would rather get up and under cover than remain stewing in

the oblique, biting rays. At the breakfast-mess, situated in as cool

and strategic a position as the brazen sergeants could get chosen, you

perspire as though violently exercising. In a few isolated cases this

is justified; but as the day wears on you perspire without provocation

of any sort. The men on their improvised troop-decks are in hell--and

use a language and attitude appropriate in the circumstances. Not

unnaturally, you see the most grotesque attires designed to make life

tolerable. To the devil with uniformity! Men must first live. The

general effect is motley. Leggings and breeches and regimental boots

are not to be seen--except on the unhappy sentry. A following wind

blows upon us, and just keeps our pace; there is not a breath; the sea

is unruffled; the men lie limp off parade (for parade persists); one

begins to recall an ancient mariner and the tricks the sultry main

played upon him. And discussions arise, as animated as the heat will

allow, as to whether you'd rather fight in the burning Sahara or the

frozen trenches of Northern Europe.

A change in the manner of life on a troop-ship has been effected

almost as complete as _Oliver Twist_ shows to have taken place in

the administration of public charity, or as Charles Reade shows in

the conduct of His Majesty's prisons. Trooping in the 'seventies and

'eighties resembled pretty closely transport on an old slaver--in

respect of rations, ventilation, dirt, and space for exercise. By

comparison this is luxurious. Perhaps the most notable difference

is that there is no beer. The traditional regimental issue of one

pint _per_ man _per diem_ (and three pints for sergeants) has been

abolished. It is chiefly in a kind of Hogarth theory that this is

deplorable; most of the romance of beer-drinking is confined to the art

of such delineators as Hogarth and Thackeray. But amongst a section

of the men the regret is genuine. Especially hard was a beerless

Christmas for many who had been accustomed to charge themselves up with

goodwill towards men at that season.

There is a dry canteen, the most violent beverage, obtainable at which

is Schweppes's Dry, and hot coffee. Besides, it drives an incessant

trade in tobacco, groceries, clothing, and chocolate. We are a people

whose god is their belly. During canteen hours an endless queue moves

up the promenade-deck to either window of the store, and men purchase,

at the most prodigal rate, creature comforts they would despise on

land. With many of them it is part of the day's routine.

The leisure and associations of Christmas Day here brought home to the

bosoms of most men, more clearly than anything had done previously,

what they had departed from. There was hilarity spontaneous; there was

some forced to exaggeration, probably with the motive of smothering

all the feelings raised by the associations of the festival. You may

see, in your "mind's eye, Horatio," the troop-decks festooned above the

mess-tables, and all beneath softened with coloured sheaths about the

electric bulbs. There is strange and wonderful masquerading amongst the

diners, and much song. A good deal of the singing is facetiously woven

about the defective theme of "No Beer."

But beside, the old home-songs were given, and here and there a

Christmas hymn. It was a strangely mingled scene, but not all

tomfooling--not by a great deal.

The Chaplain-Colonel celebrated Holy Communion in the officers' mess at

7 and 8 a.m., and afterwards at Divine-Service on deck addressed the

men. Chiefly he was concerned with an attempted reconciliation of the

War with the teaching of Christianity. The rest of the day went _ad

lib._

The night is the unsullied property of the men--in a manner of

speaking; but in a manner only. The same could not be said of the

officers, as a body. The officers, it is true, fare sumptuously every

night, and dress elaborately to dine. The ill-starred private, his

simple meal long since consumed, perambulates, and looks on at this

good feasting from the promenade deck. "Gawd! I'd like them blokes'

job. Givin' b----y orders all day, an' feedin' like that--dressin' up,

too! 'Struth! Nothin' better t' do!" Now, that is the everlasting cry

of the rank-and-file against those in authority. It's in the business

house, where the artificer glares after the managing director--"'Olds

all the brass, an' never done a day's work in 'is loife!" It's not so

common in military as in civil experience. But as the artisan overlooks

the brooding of the managing director in the night watches, whilst he

sleeps dreamless, filled with bread, so the private tends to forget

that when the Major's dinner is over and his cigar well through, he may

work like the deuce until midnight, and be up at _réveille_ with the

most private of them. The officers are a picturesque group of diners,

and they promenade impressively for an hour thereafter; but they have

their night cares, which persist long after the rank and file is well

hammocked and snoring.

But before any snoring is engaged in there is a couple of hours of

yarning and repartee and horse-play and mirth of all orders. The band

plays; the name of the band is legion aboard, and often several members

of the legion are in action simultaneously, blaring out their brazen

hearts in some imperial noise about (say) Britannia and the waves and

the way she rules them; and if you're one of the dozen ill, you cast up

a prayer that she will see fit, in her own time, to rule them rather

more straight.

Hardly a night but there is a concert, from which the downright

song--as such--is rigidly excluded, and nothing but burlesque will be

listened to.

As the sun sets, you may lie and wait the lift of the long southern

swell of the Indian Ocean. The sunsets are already coloured with the

rich ultra-tropical warmth that caught the imagination of so many who

looked on that "Sunset at Agra." "Yet but a little while," you say

fondly, "and we shall glide south of that fabled Indian land of spice";

and you shudder at the vileness of contending man. There is danger in

the distracting fascination of a voyage of discovery, embraced by this

transporting to the land of war. For the old soldier--of whom the fleet

carries more than a few--it is hardly possible to realise the utter

glow of the imagination in the tyro, seeing for the first time those

spaces of the earth he has visualised for twenty years. You, therefore,

like a good soldier, put on the breast-plate of common sense, and

look up on the fore-masthead at the tiny mouth of fire, delicately

gaping and closing, uttering the Morse lingo (St. Elmo's fire, caught

and harnessed to human uses, by some collective Prospero) and make an

attempt to construe in your clumsy, 'prentice way.

Almost you will always fall asleep at this, and lie there a couple of

hours. And when you wake you go on lying there; and it is of little

consequence whether you lie there all night, or not, in the delicate

tropic air. And often you do so, and dream of all things but war.

CHAPTER II

UP THE CANAL

We put into the outer harbour at Aden for some hours to wait for the

main fleet, from which we had been parted mysteriously off Colombo.

They came in the early morning, handed us a heavy home-mail, and by

sundown we were all in motion, steaming up into the heat of the Red

Sea. If this is the Red Sea in midwinter, the Lord deliver us from

its summer! The heat is beguiled by heavy betting as to the port

of disembarkation. But as we get up towards Suez the hand of the

war-lords begins to show itself in cryptic paragraphs of troop-ship

orders--and the like. Marseilles is our desired haven, and next to that

Southampton. But--

It sounds like stories from the land of spirits

If any man get that which he desires,

Or any merit that which he obtains.

Before lunch on the --th the African coast loomed up on the port-bow.

About mid-day we were steaming over the traditionally located

Israelitish crossing. Curious! the entirely unquestioning attitude of

the most blasphemous trooper afloat towards the literal authenticity of

Old Testament history. The Higher Criticism has, at any rate, no part

with the devil-may-care soldier full of strange oaths. Apparently to a

man the troops speak in quite an accepted fashion of the miraculous

Israelitish triumph over the Egyptian army: the inference from which

is, perhaps, that blasphemy is rather an habitual mannerism in such men

than anything deliberate. But after a month's living in their midst it

requires no such occasion as this discussion of Mosaic geography to

tell you that.

After lunch the Arabian coast also was to be seen. The contrast between

the coasts is memorable. It was a warm, grey day, and Arabia showed

more delicate than we had yet seen it. The immense mountains were

almost beyond sight. All the foreground was opalescent sand shot with

tiny cones and ridges of rock, themselves streaked with colour as

though sprinkled with the same sand. The effect of opalescence must be

purely atmospheric--but it is very beautiful.

But the African coast is rugged to the water's edge. The mountains

tower out of the sea; and the grey day, which drew out the iridescence

of Arabia, only blackened deeper the gigantic mountains of Africa. The

one is delicate pearl and amber, the other is ebony. Well justified

by sight and feeling were the judgments of books upon the perfumes

and delicate-bred steeds and philosophy of Arabia as over against the

grimness of "Darkest Africa."

All gazing was distracted by a death on board at sunset. The body

was buried under the moon at eight o'clock. Every soldier stands to

attention; the engines are stopped; in the sudden silence the solemn

service is read; the body is slid from the plank; the massed buglers

sound the Last Post.... The engines begin again to throb and grind, and

the routine, broken rudely but momentarily, resumes.

Next morning we wakened in the harbour of Suez. We lay here a day.

There appeared to have been some guerilla sniping from the banks of the

Canal. The troop-ship bridges were barricaded with sandbags, and all

ranks warned against exposing themselves unnecessarily. A shot in the

back out of the desert would be a more or less ignominious beginning,

and, as an ending, unutterable!

At ten in the morning we started into the Canal. Much valuable Egyptian

shore was missed by our being obliged to cross to starboard and salute

a French cruiser lying in the mouth. But before we had well passed

her the Arabian bank became thick with Ghurkas. War--or the rumour

of war--was brought home to our bosoms by their deep and elaborate

entrenchments, barbed-wire entanglements, and outworks. The Ghurkas

justify, seen in the flesh, all that has been said of their physique:

short, deep-chested fellows, with a grin that suggests war is their

sport indeed.

On the Egyptian side the Suez suburbs stretched away in a thin strip

of fertile country bearing crops and palm-groves and following the

rail to Cairo--easily visible, running neck-and-neck with a half-dozen

telegraph-lines. Later on, the line draws still nearer to the Canal,

making a halt at each of the Canal stations. The stations, with their

neat courtyards and neat French offices, and the neat and handsome

red-roofed villa, break the monotony of sand-ridge. And the monotony of

ejaculation from the deck is broken by a robust French voice shouting a

greeting through the megaphone from the station pontoon.

The Egyptian bank is still more strongly fortified; for in addition

to the entrenchments and entanglements of the other shore, the

place bristles with masked-batteries. The troops here were chiefly

Australian, with a sprinkling of Ghurka and of Sikh cavalry. Here

and there an Indian trooper would indicate by pantomime that firing

and bayoneting were in progress in the interior. But how much was

histrionic fervour and how much the truth remains to be known.

The Canal is embanked with limestone as far as the Bitter Lakes, and

at intervals thereafter. The Egyptian shore from the Lakes almost to

Ismailia is planted with a graceful grove of fir. The controllers

of the Canal evidently intend it shall be more than a commercial

channel--in some sense, a place to be seen. This is essentially French.

It was evident that trouble from the Turk was expected. The strongest

fortifications yet seen had been erected on the Arabian bank: much

artillery, thousands of men, searchlight, and frequent outpost. Our own

stern-chasers were unmasked and charged, ready in the event of game

showing. Almost every hour the troops were called to attention to pass

a British or French gunboat. All the warships had their guns run out

and their sandbags piled.

We steamed steadily to Port Said, at a pace which, if made habitual by

shipping here, would prove bad for the Canal shore and channel.

The towns of this route increase in size as we progress. Port Said

spreads herself out to prodigal limits.... On a nearer approach you

may see the wharves of the Arabian side lined with coal-tramps, backed

in like so many vans and disgorging into barges. There is the flash

of a grin, the white of an eye. The Port-side is the more interesting.

The finest buildings of the city would seem to be standing along the

water's edge. The business advertisements of the most cosmopolitan

city in the world are emphatically English; the signs for Kodak, and

Lipton's, and King George the Fourth Whisky, and the rest of them, look

familiarly out.

The touch of war is to be seen at any interval along the Canal; here

it is laid on with a trowel. Ghurkas are encamped in the suburb;

reclining at the foot of the Admiralty steps is a submarine rusted

and disfigured; ten minutes after, you pass the seaplane station; and

before the ship is at rest a hydroplane has buzzed over our masthead

and taken the water for a half-mile at the stern. Before dark three

monoplanes and a biplane have swept in out of the southern distance and

gone to roost after their scouting flight.

We were anchored within fifty yards of the heart of the city. One knew

not whether to be galled by the proximity of our prison-house to the

blandishments of such a city or grateful for a proximity which let us

see so much of it from deck. Seen through a glass, Arab, Frenchmen,

Italian, British, Yankee, Jap, and Jew justified the cosmopolitan

reputation of a city mid-set on the trade-route between the East and

West. The Canal here is gay as a Venetian highway and busy with flying

official cutters and pleasure craft and native boats. These last

swarmed to the side and drove a trade that was fierce; for the night

was coming, when no man could work at that. This was the degenerate

East indeed--not a cigar to be had, nothing to smoke but cheap and

foul Turkish and Egyptian cigarettes, fit food for eunuchs and such

effeminate rascals--for their vendors (for example) dressed in a most

ambiguous skirt: you never know whether, beneath skirt and turban, you

have a man or a woman!

The money-getters over the side included, here, a boat-load of

serenaders and one of jugglers. The first rung the changes on their

orchestra and their throats until we were as tired as they; and in

consequence their gorgeous parasol, gaping for coin in the hands of the

boy, gathered in some missiles whose purchasing power was not high. The

jugglers were more deserving.

The same unhallowed load of black bargees as at Aden came alongside to

coal and make night hideous. But they worked harder--time was short

and the boss used a rope's-end, and actually "laid out" more than one

who dared to stop for scraps thrown. They eked out their industry with

an alleged chant, echoed in derision by the troops all over the ship.

About midnight firing--or its equivalent--began to the south. At the

sound of guns the Mohammedan bargees forgot their labours and the

rope's-end--as did the boss, together with his authority--cast aside

their baskets, and incontinently fell on their faces in the coal-dust

and called in terror upon Allah.

Soon after dawn we stood out for Alexandria, and were there early the

following morning. The sun rising behind the city cast into flat black

Pompey's Pillar and the Port. It was hard to see, in the first blush,

in this city--when the sun had risen above it--a centre of action of

Pompey and of Alexander and of Cæsar. There is a curious blending of

age and of what is intensely modern; and so it is more easy to conceive

Sir Charles Beresford bombarding from the _Condor_, with Admiral

Seymour pounding from behind; or Napoleon storming the citadel. From

our anchorage it was with ease we saw the scene of bombardment and the

converging-point from which the Egyptians fled helter-skelter to the

hinterland.

* * * * *

Anchored in the harbour, we supposed by habit we should have to be

content with externals and with conjecture as to what was to be seen in

the midst of the city. But we loitered some days to disembark infantry,

and leave was granted freely. One would have easily given a month's pay

for a day ashore--apart from the month's pay he could spend there--had

that been necessary.

Your first business after leaving the gangway is to stave-off the

horde of beggars and gharry-drivers (an Australian cab-rank is put

to shame here) and choose one of the latter's vehicles approximately

respectable. It takes ten minutes' brisk driving to get you well out of

the labyrinth of wharves, docks, and dhows. You emerge by one of seven

dock-gates, vigilated by native police, into the Arab quarter, by which

alone approach to the city proper is possible. Cook's tourists drive

hurriedly through this region, and protect their eyes and noses with

the daily newspaper. The wise man knows that if he is to see Alexandria

he will dismiss the gharry and walk--and walk slowly--through the

native-quarter. In fact, he will care not a damn whether he ever gets

to imposing French and English residential quarters or not....

So, in your wonder at the utter strangeness of everything you overpay

the driver some five piastres and begin to thread your way over the

cobbles. All building is of stone, with a facing of cement, which once

was bright-coloured, but has faded into faint blues and browns and

greys; and if you look up and along the street of crumbling, flat-faced

upper storeys broken by tiny balconies, you feel intensely the gentle

irregularity and the mass of mellow colour. The one and the other is

never seen in Australia, with our new shining-painted angularities of

hardwood and bright nails and eaves and gables and sharp-sloping roofs.

A gentle irregularity, in a street where boards thrust out and planks

give way and vulgarly project themselves, where neither roofs nor

fronts are flat, is unknown in our country.

What Mr. Wells calls "the inundating flood of babies" ebbs and flows

in the streets. The Arab women, bare-legged, slovenly of gait, broad

of person, with swaying, unstable bust, move up and down or sit in the

doorways, or lounge and haggle over a purchase. Every hovel in the

bazaars, with its low door and dark recesses, sells or makes something,

and the Arab quarter is a succession of bazaars. The artificers squat

at their work in brass or clay or fabric or gold; the greybeards sit

at the doors with hubble-bubble and dream through the day in a state

of coma. Fruits and dates, sweets and pastry, and Eastern culinary

products that defy nomenclature by the Australian, are piled in an

Eastern profusion. Sweets and pastry abound in excess and are curiously

cheap. Toffee is sold from stands at every street-corner, and the

quantity you might carry off for sixpence would be embarrassing. Pastry

is made here of a flavour and lightness unexcelled by any English

housewife. Sit at an open restaurant, call for a light lunch, and you

will have a plate heaped with the most delicious meat and spice pastry

and sugared fruits, for something less than the price of a street-stall

pie in Australia, and with a glass of sherbet thrown in. The fineness

of the fabrics sold (amongst bales of Manchester rubbish) will draw

the better class of Egyptian woman into the bazaars of this east-end;

they are beautiful in rich black silk from head to toe, with a delicate

white yashmak; they have a regularity of feature and a complexion and

a beauty of eye and of gait to make you look again. Nothing is lost to

them by the setting through which they glide: the ragged bargainers,

the sluttishness of the women, the unmitigated dirt of earth and asses

and children and tethered goats, and water-carriers with their greasy

swine-skins filled and shining. They offer an analogy to the stately

mosque and minaret which lifts its graceful head above the squalid

erections of the poor. And as futilely might the stranger pry into

those features with his free curiosity as attempt an entrance to the

Mosque unattended.

Progress is slow towards the Square. Not the interest of the scene

alone invites you to linger: the whole atmosphere is one of lounge.

Everyone moves at a lounging pace; those not in motion lounge; there

are periodical cafés where the men lounge in the fumes of smoke and

native spirits by the half-day together. No one hurries. Business seems

rather a hobby and an incident than the earnest, insistent thing it is

in England. The advantage surely lies with the Arab; he finds time to

live and contemplate and get to know something of himself. God help the

American! Better, perhaps, to spend the evening of your life with your

chin on your knees and your hubble-bubble adjacent, looking out on the

life before you, and within upon your own, than boast yourself still

keen in the steel trade; that your features are "mobile and alert,"

though your head is grey, whereas your contemporaries are "failing." ...

At the end of a half-day you'll know your proximity to the

Centre by the uprising of "respectable" cafés and imposing

cigarette-manufactories and of hotels. And you come into the Square

overlooked by the noble statue of the noble Mahomet Aly--every ounce a

soldier.

Wide and well-built streets lead away into the regions of high-class

trade and residence. You had best take a gharry here. There are two

extreme classes amongst tourists--the thoroughgoing Cook's sight-seer

who works exclusively by the vehicle and the book, and the tourist who

steadily refuses to "do" the stock places. Each is at fault if he is

inflexible: the former in the Arab quarter, the latter when he emerges

from it. For in a city such as Alexandria the visitor who declines to

see the spots relict of the ancient history of this world is clearly

an obdurate fool with a strange topsy-turvey-dom of values. Let him

take a gharry and a book in his hand when the time is ripe; let him be

free with his piastres when Pompey's Pillar stands over the catacombs

of the city. The Forts of Cæsar and of Napoleon watch over the sea. He

may stand upon the ground where was the library of Alexandria and where

Euclid reasoned over his geometrical figures in the sand. Here Hypatia

suffered martyrdom and Cleopatra held her court and died in her palace.

On the northern horn of the harbour stood the great Beacon of Pharos,

one of the Seven Wonders.

So you get your vehicle and a chattering guide....

On the way back to ship the Park and the Nouzha Gardens are a delicious

sight after the aridity of the desert.... The gharry is dismissed on

re-entering the Arab quarter; it would be a sad waste of opportunity to

drive....

We climbed the gangway bearing much fruit and dirt, and very much

late for dinner. And after mess the boat-deck and the pipes and our

purchases in tobacco and our ventures in cigars--and the day all over

again.

CHAPTER III

ABBASSIEH

We left the ship's side in a barge that might have carried twice our

number without crowding. Every man of us had chafed at the confinement

of the voyage, but not one did not now regret the dissociation from our

unit, with all the chances it carried of never rejoining, and even,

possibly, of never getting to Europe at all. Private friendships do

not fall within the consideration of motives in the issue of military

orders. Men were calling a farewell from the deck with whom we would

have given much to go through the campaign. There was nothing for it

but to cultivate the philosophy of the grin and simulate an elation at

being free, at last, from the prison-house, and chaff the others about

the bitter English winter they were sailing into, and claim we had the

best of it. But in our hearts we coveted their chances of moving into

Europe first. No part in the Egyptian army of occupation, with the

off-chance of a fitful brawl with the Turk, compensated for that.

Baggage required but brief handling. We had little more than our rifles

and equipment and kit-bags. By sunset we were entrained, and flying

between the back-yards of Alexandria. A five hours' run was before us.

There was nothing to be seen except each other, and we had had enough

of that in the last five weeks. We cast about for something to eat

(the ship's cooks' fatigue had bagged a sack of cold fowl before making

their exit from the bowels of the transport), and composed ourselves to

sleep. The cessation of motion at Cairo, at 2 a.m., awakened us. Half

an hour afterwards we were at Abbassieh, tumbling out into the cold

and "falling-in." A guide was waiting. The baggage was piled on the

platform under a guard until the morning. A pair of blankets per man

was issued, and we marched through a mile of barracks to the camp. The

fuddled brains of those still half asleep had conceived a picture of

tents and the soft, warm sand and the immediate resumption of slumber.

This was ill-founded. We poked about for a place in which to sleep.

Ultimately we stumbled upon a line of blockhouses erected for messing,

wherein we crept, posted a couple of sentries, and disposed ourselves

about the tables. It was very cold; had we been less tired, we should

have been about before seven the next morning.

Abbassieh, except for its mosque, is nothing but a barrack-settlement.

Barracks almost encircle the camp. Indeed, it would appear that the

Regular Cairene troops are mostly quartered in this suburb. The eastern

and northern barracks are for the Egyptian Regulars; the Territorials

occupy those on the west. We see much of either. The Egyptians are

impressive--very lithe and strongly built, but not tall. Alertness is

the badge of all their tribe. The first impression they give is that

everything in their training is done "at the double." As you turn in

your bed at 5.30, you hear their _réveille_ trumpeted forth from the

whole barrack settlement; and that is significant. To a man, they bear

about the mouth those lines seen upon the face of the thoroughgoing

athlete. They love to fraternise with the Australians. The Turks they

hate with a perfect hatred; more than one has lost a brother "down the

Canal." If this is the type of man Kitchener had with his British, the

consistent victories of his Egyptian campaign are quite in the order of

nature. They show an individual strength, efficiency, and alertfulness

which probably is to be seen nowhere else--except, perhaps, among the

Ghurkas--in all the British forces now under arms. The best Australian

or Territorial unit will have its weeds and its blear-eyed and its

round-shouldered and its slouchers. Here you look for them in vain.

The Camp is busy enough at any time of the day, and the Army Service

Corps which supplies it is almost as busy as any unit on active

service. The difference is that it is not feverishly busy, and that

it has a convenient and resourceful base from which to work--the city

of Cairo, as well and variously stocked as the most fastidious army

could wish. And an army which is merely sitting in occupation is in

danger of growing fastidious--with shops of Parisian splendour and

Turkish baths and cafés of the standard of the _Francatelli_ within

two miles, and opportunity of generous leave. In the first half of

the day the camp supply depôt is animated with men of more than one

race and beasts of many breeds. Long trains of camels and donkeys

move in from the irrigation with their loads of green fodder and

vegetables, and the high and narrow Arab carts, decorated fore and

aft in quasi-hieroglyphic, bring in the chaff and grain. General

service waggons, manned by Australians, are there too. The unloading

and distribution is done chiefly by hired Arabs working under the

superintendence of our men. The din is terrific; no Arab can work

without much talk and shout. If he has no companion to be voluble

with, he talks with and at his beast. But here is a crowd of a

hundred of them, and it is with difficulty the superintendents make

themselves audible, much less intelligible. All the heavy fatigue

work is done by natives attached--splitting wood, digging drains and

soakage-pits, erection of out-houses, removal of refuse of all sorts.

Native labour is extremely cheap, and beside its official employment

the men use it for such purposes as private washing; a native takes

your week's soiled clothes and returns them next day, snow white, for

a couple of piastres. During certain hours the camp swarms with Arab

vendors of newspapers, fruit, sweets, cakes, post-cards, Arab-English

phrase-books, rifle-covers (invaluable, almost indispensable, here to

the right preservation of arms), clothing, tobacco and cigarettes. They

easily become a bane if encouraged in any degree. Native police patrol

the place day and night for the sole purpose of keeping them in check.

This is no easy matter. They are slippery as eels, cunning as foxes,

and impudent as they make 'em. They fight incessantly; bloody coxcombs

are to be seen daily, and the men rarely hesitate to fan an embryonic

fight into a serious combat as a relief from the lassitude of the

mid-day; for the noon is as hot as the night is cold. To incite is the

soldier's delight: "Go it, Snowball!"--"Well hit, Pompey!"--"Get after

him!" ... until a couple of native police break in and carry off the

combatants by the lug. Even then, they often break away and resume, or

clear off into the desert. And a policeman in thick blue serge, with

leggings and bayonet, is no match in a chase for a bare-footed Arab in

his cotton skirt.

The Arab is intelligent, and in many cases has picked up decent English

and speaks with fluency. Between the early parade and breakfast we

often engage them in talk, partly for amusement, partly to improve our

mongrel Arabic. They are good subjects for interrogation, with a nice

sense of humour--indulged often at your expense--and a knack of getting

behind the mind of the questioner. They excel, too, in the furnishing

of examples in illustration of answers to questions about custom and

usage in Egypt. The best conversationalists, by far, are the native

police sergeants, who are chosen a good deal for their intelligence

and mental alertfulness. Get a police sergeant into your tent after

tea, and you have a fruitful evening before you. He readily discusses

Mohammedanism, and Egyptian history and peoples, and local geography

and customs, and is as pleased to discuss as you to start him. The

intelligent Arab in British employ is a revelation in intellectual

freshness and open-mindedness. He never speaks in formula, and is

clearly astonished at the want of intellectual curiosity in many of his

interlocutors.

The men sleep in bell-tents--some in the sand; others, more flush of

piastres, on a species of matting supplied by the native weavers. Sand

may be warm and comfortable enough in itself, but it breeds vermin

prolifically, specialising in fleas. And at midnight you will see an

unhappy infested fellow squatting, roused from sleep because of their

importunity, conducting a search by candle-light, engaged in much the

same business as his Simian ancestors; the difference is that whereas

they were too strong-minded to be disturbed in their sleep by any such

trifle, his search is mostly nocturnal--though not exclusively so;

and, moreover, in place of their merely impatient gibbering, he speaks

with eloquence and consecutiveness, often in quite sustained periods,

logically constructed and glowing with purple patches.... The Medical

Officer has got a paragraph inserted in camp routine orders about a

bathing parade on Fridays, compelling a complete ablution. But what

avails cold water, once a week? Most men, however, have been known to

bathe more often.

The military Medical Officer in this country is as considerable a

personage as the medicine-man amongst the American Indians. In a land

where the rainfall is not worth mentioning, and the sun is hot, and the

natural drainage poor, and sanitation little considered by the natives,

he is a man whose word in camp is law. He speaks almost daily, through

camp orders or through pamphlets of his own compiling, imperative words

of warning, and in the daily camp inspection the Commandant is his

mere satellite. "Avoid," says he (in effect) in his fifth philippic

against dirt, "the incontinent consumption of fruit unpeeled and

raw or unwashed vegetables. Therefrom proceed dysentery, enteritis,

Mediterranean fever, parasitic diseases, and all manner of Egyptian

scourges. Would you fly the plagues of Egypt, abhor the Arab hawker

and the native beer-shop." Certain quarters are hygienically declared

"out of bounds." They include "all liquor-shops and cafés, except

those specified hereafter ..."; the village of Abbassieh; the village

adjoining the Tombs of the Caliphs (the most squalid in Cairo). It is

for other reasons than hygienic that the gardens of the Sultan's palace

at Koubbeh and the Egyptian State-railways are placed out of bounds too.

Men scarcely need go to Cairo for the satisfaction of their most

fastidious wants. The regimental institute receives camp-rent from

grocer, haberdasher, keeper of restaurants, vendor of rifle-covers,

barber, boot-repairer, tailor, and proprietor of the wet-canteen.

We get precious and intermittent mails from Australia. Their delivery

is somewhat irregular. That is no fault of our friends. What may be the

fault of our friends is an ultimate scarcity of letters. One has read

of the ecstasies of satisfied longing with which the exile in Labrador

reads his half-yearly home mail. If friends in Australia knew fully the

elation their gentle missives inspire here, they would write with what

might become for them a monotonous regularity. The man who gets a fair

budget on mail-day hankers after no leave that night.

Sabbath morning in the Egyptian desert breaks calm; there is no

before-breakfast parade. The sergeants set the example of lying a

little after waking, as at home. Through the tent door, as you lie,

you can see the sun rise over the undulating field of sand. The long

stone Arab prison, standing away towards the sun in sombre isolation,

is sharply defined against the ruddy east. The sand billows redden,

easily taking the glow of the dawn; and the hills of rock in the south,

which look down over Cairo, catch the level rays until their rich brown

burns. A fresh breeze from the heart of the desert, pure as the morning

wind of the ocean, rustles the fly and invites you out, until you can

lie no longer. Throwing on your great-coat, you saunter with a towel,

professedly making for the shower-baths, but careless of the time you

take to get there, so gentle is the morning and so mysteriously rich

the glory of Heliopolis, glittering like the morning star, and so

spacious the rosy heaven reflecting the sun-laved sand.

You dawdle over dressing in a way that is civilian. By the time these

unregimental preliminaries to breakfast are over, the mess is calling;

and thereafter is basking in the sun beneath the wall of the mess-hut

with the pipes gently steaming, reading over the morning war-news.

The news is cried about the camp on Sunday more clamorously than on

any other day: Friday is the Mohammedan Sabbath. Sunday brings forth

special editions of the dailies, and all the weeklies beside. The

soldier is the slave of habit, and the Sunday morning is instinctively

unsullied. Even horse-play is more or less disused. The men are content

to bask and smoke.

At 9.15 the "Fall-in" sounds for parade for Divine service. Columns

from all quarters converge quietly on a point where the Chaplain's

desk and tiny organ rest in the sand. By 9.30 the units have massed

in a square surrounding them and are standing silently at ease. The

Chaplain-Colonel whirrs up in his car. He salutes the Commandant and

announces the Psalm. Thousands of throats burst into harmonious praise,

and the voice of the little organ, its leading chord once given, is

lost in the lusty concert. The lesson is read; the solemn prayers for

men on the Field of Battle are offered: no less solemn is the petition

for Homes left behind; the full-throated responses are offered. The

Commandant resumes momentary authority. He commands them to sit down;

they are in number about five thousand. The Chaplain bares his head,

steps upon his dais, and reclining upon the sands of Egypt the men

listen to the Gospel, much as the Israelites may have heard the Word of

God from the bearded patriarch--even upon these very sands.

At no stage in the worship of the God of Battles is the authority of

military rank suppressed. The parade which is assembled to worship

Him that maketh wars to cease is never permitted to be unmindful of

a Major. One despises proverbial philosophy in general, but herein

the reader may see, if he will, a kind of comment on the truism that

Heaven helps those that help themselves. Colonels and Majors are part

of the means whereby we hope to win. The persistence of military rank

throughout Divine worship is the implicit registering of a pledge to do

our part. There is nothing in us of the unthinking optimist who says it

will all come out well and that we cannot choose but win....

As the Chaplain offers prayer a regiment of Egyptian Lancers gallops

past with polished accoutrements and glittering lance-heads for a

field-day in the desert. Bowed heads are raised, and suppressed

comments of admiration go round, and the parson says _Amen_ alone.

SECTION B.--CAIRO

CHAPTER I

ON LEAVE IN CAIRO

It is not so long ago as to render it untrue now that Dean Stanley

said, looking down from the Citadel: "Cairo is not the ghost of the

dead Egyptian Empire, nor anything like it."

The interval elapsed since that reflection was uttered has, indeed,

only deepened its truth. Cairo is becoming more modern every season.

The "booming" of Cairo as a winter resort for Europeans was begun at

the opening of the Canal by the Khedive Ismail. His ambition was the

transforming of Cairo into a kind of Paris of Africa. The effort has

not died with him. It has persisted with the official-set and their

visitors. The result now is that in half an hour's ride you may pass

from those monuments of antiquity, the Sphinx and the Pyramid of

Cheops, in a modern tram-car, along a route which is neither ancient

nor modern, into a city which blends in a most amazing fashion Europe

of to-day with Egypt of a very long time past. There are wheels within

wheels: at the foot of the Great Pyramid are crowded shanties and

taverns such as you might enter in a poorer Melbourne Street or on a

new-found gold-field; and the intensity of the contradiction in Cairo

itself baffles description.

Cairo has been so accurately portrayed in every aspect with the pen

that it seems presumptuous to attempt to reproduce even impressions,

much less relate facts. One prefers, of course, if he does attempt to

do either, to give impressions rather than facts. Any guide-book will

give you facts. And the reader who demands a sort of Foster-Frazer

tabulation of facts is analogous to those unhappy readers of romance

who rank incident above characterisation.

What one feels he must say, chiefly, is that it is the living rather

than the dead in Cairo that attract most strongly. You go to the Museum

or stand beside the sarcophagus of the King's Chamber in the Great

Pyramid once, and again; not because it is conventionally fitting, but

because that conventional appropriateness rests upon a broad and deep

psychology: these places have their hold upon you. But incomparably

stronger is that which draws you times without number to the bazaars.

"Fool!" says Teufelsdröckh. "Why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy

antiquarian fervour, to gaze on the stone Pyramids of Geeza, or the

clay ones of Sacchara? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and

inert, looking over the desert, foolishly enough, for the last three

thousand years...."

A half-day in the bazaars I would not exchange for a whole wilderness

of Sphinxes. You may go twice and thrice before the Sphinx, but there

comes a time when there is no place for you but the ebb and flow of the

human tide in the narrow streets; when you spend all your leave there,

and are content to commend the venerable dead and their mausolea to the

Keeper of Personality for ever.

I dare not enter on the multiplicity of the charm of the bazaars: more

accurately, I cannot. The dazzling incongruity of vendors and of wares

under the over-meeting structures multiplies multiplicity. They move

and cry up and down classified bazaars. A vociferous Arab hawks a cow

for sale through the boot-bazaar; the delicious Arabian perfumes of

the picturesque scent bazaar are fouled by a crier of insanitary food;

Jews, French, Italians, Tunisians, Greeks, and Spaniards jostle each

other through the alleys of the tent bazaar, braziers' bazaar, bazaar

of the weavers, book bazaar--bazaar of any commodity or industry you

care to name; and the proprietors and artificers squat on their tiny

floors, maybe four feet square. In the busy forenoon, looking up the

Mooski, it is as though the wizard had been there: almost you look

for the djin to materialise. Rich colour is splashed over the stalls

and the throng; there is music in the jingle of wares and the hum of

voices; and the sober and graceful mosque, its rich colour gently

mellowed by centuries of exposure, lifts a minaret above the animation.

If this is the complexity of the broad view, what contrasts are thrust

at you from the detail of men and things, as you saunter through!

Here in the Mooski is the micro-Cairo--Cairo bodied forth in little,

except for the intruding official set and the unrestrained quarter of

the brothels. But less truthfully might you set out to picture the real

Cairo with the former than without the latter. Any account which passes

without note the incessant trade--in the high-noon as under the garish

night-lights--driven by the women of Cairo will altogether misrepresent

the city. It is with a hideous propriety that she should stand

partly on the site of Old Babylon. She is a city which, in perhaps

her most representative quarter, lives in and for lasciviousness. The

details of that trade in its thoroughgoing haunts are no more to be

described than looked upon. There is no shame; sexual transactions are

conducted as openly and on as regular and well-established a footing

of bargaining and market values as the sale of food and drink. Meat

and drink, indeed, they must furnish to much of the population, and

its alimentary properties are to be seen at every corner and in every

gutter in hideousness of feature and disease unutterable. Not Paris,

nor Constantinople, approaches in shamelessness the conduct of venereal

industry in Cairo. All the pollution of the East would seem to drain

into their foul pool. That which is nameless is not viewless. I speak

that I do know and testify that I have seen. The phrase, the act, every

imagination of the heart of man (and of woman), is impregnated with the

filth of hell.

The official set you will see disporting itself on the piazza at

Shepheard's or the Continental every afternoon. The official set

is also the fashionable set, and it or its sojourning friends--or

both--make up the monied set. I had no opportunity of going to a

race-meeting at Gezireh; but it should come near to holding its own in

"tone" with the great race-day at Caulfield.

Shepheard's is an habitual rendezvous of British officers at any time.

The officers of the permanent army at Cairo assemble there, and the

general orders are posted in the entrance-hall as regularly as at

the Kasr-el-Nil Barracks. It is at Shepheard's that officers most do

congregate. According to a sort of tacit agreement--extended later

into an inescapable routine order--none lower in rank than a Subaltern

enters there.

Otherwise, everywhere is the soldier; there is nothing he does not

see. Everything is so utterly new that a day in Cairo is a continual

voyage of discovery; and if he does no more than perambulate without

an objective, it is doubtful if he has not the best of it. Fools and

blind there are who look on everything from a gharry, fast-trotting.

God help them! How can such a visitor hope to know the full charm

of manner and voice and attire of the vendor of sherbet or sweet

Nile-water if he move behind a pair of fast-trotting greys? How may

he hope to know the inner beauties of a thoroughgoing bargaining-bout

between two Arabs, when he catches only a fragment of dialogue and

gesture in whisking past? What does he know of the beggars at the city

gate in the old wall?--except how to evade them. Little he sees of the

delicate tracery of the mosque; no time to wander over ancient Arab

houses with their deserted harems, floor and walls in choice mosaic,

rich stained windows, with all the symbolism of the manner of living

disposed about the apartment. It is denied to him to poke about the

native bakeries, to converse with salesmen, to look in on the Schools

chanting _Al Koran_, to watch the manual weavers, tent-makers, and

artificers of garments and ornaments. One cannot too much insist that

it is a sad waste of opportunity to go otherwise than slowly and afoot,

and innocent of "programmes," "schemes," _agenda_--even of set routes.

The alleged romance of Cairo is alleged only. Cairo is intensely

matter-of-fact. In Carlyle's study of Mahomet you read: "This night

the watchman on the streets of Cairo, when he cries 'Who goes?' will

hear from the passenger, along with his answer, 'There is no God but

_God_.'--'_Allah akbar, Islam_,' sounds through the souls, and whole

daily existence, of these dusky millions."

This is romance read into Cairo by Carlyle. The watchman gets far

other rejoinders to his cry this night--answers the more hideous for

Carlyle's other-worldly supposition. Romance is gone out of Cairo,

except in a distorted mental construction of the city. Cairo is not

romantic; it is picturesque, and picturesque beyond description.

Alfresco cafés are ubiquitous. Their frequency and pleasantness suggest

that the heat of Australia would justify their establishment there in

very large numbers. Chairs and tables extend on to the footpaths. The

people of all nations lounge there in their fez caps, drinking much,

talking more, gambling most of all. Young men from the University

abound; much resemble, in their speech and manner, the young men of

any other University. They deal in witty criticism of the passengers,

but show a readiness in repartee with them of which only an Arab

undergraduate is capable.

The gambling of the cafés is merely symbolic of the spirit of gambling

which pervades the city. It is incipient in the Arab salesman's love

of bargaining for its own sake. The commercial dealings of Egypt,

wholesale and retail alike, are said to want fixity in a marked degree.

Downright British merchants go so far as to call it by harder names

than the "spirit of gambling." The guides are willing to bet you

anything on the smallest provocation. Lottery tickets are hawked about

the streets like sweetmeats; there are stalls which sell nothing but

lottery tickets, and thrive upon the sale.

You will see much, sitting in these cafés at your ease. Absinthe and

coffee are the drinks. Coffee prevails, served black in tiny china

cups, with a glass of cold water. It is a delicious beverage: the

coffee fiend is not uncommon. Cigarettes are the habitual smoke in the

streets. At the cafés you call for a hubble-bubble. They stand by the

score in long racks. The more genteel (and hygienic) customers carry

their own mouth-pieces, but it is not reckoned a sporting practice.

You cannot sit five minutes before the vendors beset you with edibles,

curios, prawns, oranges, sheep's trotters, cakes, and post-cards. The

boys who would polish your boots are the most noisome. The military

camps in the dusty desert have created an industry amongst them. A

dozen will follow you a mile through the streets. If you stop, your leg

is pulled in all directions, and nothing but the half-playful exercise

of your cane upon the sea of ragged backs saves you from falling in.

The streets swarm with guides, who apparently believe either that you

are inevitably bound for the Pyramids or incapable of walking through

the bazaars unpiloted. And a guide would spoil any bazaar, though at

the Pyramids he may be useful. If you suggest you are your own guide,

the dog suggests an assistant. They are subtle and hard to be rid of,

and frequently abusive when you are frank. The hawkers and solicitors

of the streets of Cairo have acquired English oaths, parrot-wise. The

smallest boy has got this parasitic obscenity with a facility that

beats any Australian newsboy in a canter.

There is a frequent electric tramway service in Cairo. It is very

convenient and very dirty, and moderately slow, and most informally

conducted. The spirit of bargaining has infected even the collector

of fares. Journeying is informal in other ways; only in theory is

it forbidden (in French, Arabic, Greek, and English) to ride on the

footboard. You ride where you can. Many soldiers you will see squatting

on the roofs. And if the regulations about riding on footboards were

enforced the hawkers of meats and drinks and curios would not plague

you with their constant solicitation. The boot-boys carry on their

trade furtively between the seats: often they ride a mile, working

hard at a half-dozen boots. The conductor objects only to the extent

of a facetious cuff, which he is the last to expect to take effect.

Both motorman and conductor raise the voice in song: an incongruous

practice to the earnest-working Briton. But the Cairene Arab who takes

life seriously is far to seek. There is nothing here of the struggling

earnestness of spirit of the old Bedouin Arabs to whom Mahomet

preached. The Cairene is a carnal creature, flippant and voluptuous,

with more than a touch of the Parisian. You'll find him asleep at

his shop-door at ten in the morning, and gambling earlier still.

Well-defined articulation is unknown amongst the Arabs here, except in

anger and in fight. They do not open their teeth either to speak or to

sing. The sense of effort is everywhere wanting--in their slouching

gait, their intonation; their very writing drags and trails itself

along. But what are you due to expect in a country where the heat

blisters most of the year; where change of temperature and of physical

outlook are foreign--a country of perennially wrinkled skins, where

a rousing thunder-storm is unknown, and where the physical outlook

varies only between the limits of sand and rock? The call for comment

would arise if physical inertia were other than the rule. And of the

Anglo-Egyptian, what may you expect?...

One has not seen Cairo unless he has wandered both by day and by night.

So, he knows at least two different worlds. To analyse the contrast

would take long. It is hard to know which part of a day charms you the

most. The afternoon is not as the morning; the night is far removed

from either. Go deeper, and you may get more subtle divisions of

twelve hours' wandering than these; with accuracy of discrimination

you may even raise seven Dantean circles in your day's progress. The

safe course, then, is to "make a day of it." Tramp it, after an early

breakfast, over the desert to the car, and plod back past the guard

after midnight. You'll turn in exhausted, but the richer in your

experience (at the expense of a few piastres) by far more than any gold

can buy.

CHAPTER II

THE MOOSKI

The camp at Tel-el-Kebir is a good camp, as camp sites go. None the

less exhilarating for that is the prospect of leave in Cairo. After

retiring, you spend most of the night before you go in planning the

most judicious economy of the few hours you will have in the great

city. And so you wake up short of sleep--for the train leaves soon

after sunrise--and curse yourself for an incontinent fool, no better

than some mercurial youngster who cannot sleep for thinking of the

party on the next day.

But the journey revives you. How deliciously it revives you!--and how

generously! as you skim across that green delta, sleeping under the

dew, with the mist-wreaths winding about the quiet palm-fronds. The

sweet-water canal runs silently beside you all the way between its

clover-grown tow-paths, without a ripple. The buffalo stand motionless

in the lush berseem. The Egyptian State railways are the smoothest in

the world. Two hours' swift gliding through these early-morning haunts

of quietness retrieves your loss of sleep, and would reinforce you for

a day in any city.

As you approach Cairo you find the delta has wakened. The mists have

departed, disclosing the acres of colour in the blossom of the crops.

The road beside the Canal is peopled. The fellaheen and his family

are moving along to work on donkey and buffalo and camel. The women in

their black robes and yashmaks are moving to the dipping-places in the

Canal, pitcher on head, walking with a grace and erectness that does

you good to look on. Some are already drawing, knee-deep in the cool

water; or emerging, and showing to the world, below the freely raised

robe, that of whose outline they have no call to be ashamed. Some of

the labourers are already at work, hoeing in squads under an overseer

or guiding the primitive Vergilian plough behind its yoke of oxen.

The blindfold yak has started his weary, interminable round at the

water-wheel. The camels are looping along with their burdens of fruit

and berseem, and the tiny donkeys amble under their disproportionate

loads, sweeping the ground; they are hardly to be seen; in the distance

they show merely a jogging hillock of green. By nine o'clock, as you

race through the outskirts of Cairo, you see an occasional waiting man

asleep full-stretch on the sod; the hour is early for sleeping. On the

suburban roads are moving towards the centre venerable sheikhs, squat

on the haunches of their well-groomed donkeys; merchants lying back

in their elaborate gharries; gabbling peasants driving their little

company of beasts; English and French officials, carefully dressed,

smoking the morning cigarette.

Shortly the Pyramids emerge on the eastern sky-line, and over the

thickening house-tops rises the splendid relief of the Makattam Hills,

with the stately citadel perched on the fringe, looking down on the

City under its soaring minarets.

You had formed plans for the economy of the day; they are all

dissipated when you step from the train and realise yourself within

a mile of the bazaars. Their call is irresistible. The Pyramids, the

mosques, the museum--all can wait, to be visited if there is time for

it. You enter a gharry and alight at the mouth of the Mooski. It is

palpably a mouth to that seething network, as plainly defined (as you

gaze up Mooski Street from the Square) as the entrance to an industrial

exhibition.

There is a crowd of men in the early stages of Mooski Street, whose

business, day and night, is to conduct. They lurk privily for the

innocent, like the wicked men in the Book of Psalms. The guides have

come so much into disrepute that they mostly hasten to tell you they

are not guides. "What are you, then?"--"I am student, sair"; or "I am

agent, sair"; or "I am your friend; I do not wish for money." You'll

meet such self-abnegation nowhere on earth as in the Mooski. Those

who do own to being guides will never name a price. "How much do you

want?"--"I leave that to you, sair. If you are pleased, you give me

what you think." ... This is all very subtle: the man who is agent

will get his commission and tender for baksheesh for having put you

in the way of purchase (whereas he is in league with the rogue who

fleeces you in the sale). The student shows no sort of ideal scholastic

contempt for lucre; it's of degrees of gullibility that he's chiefly

a student--and an astute one, gathering where he has not strawed. The

man who is your friend and wouldn't think of money turns out a mere

liar, downright--who does care, greatly. These are the subtlest ways

of approaching you and broaching the subject of a tour. The rascal may

simply fall into step and ask the time of day and proceed to talk

of the weather--merely glad of your company--and abruptly close the

half-mile walk with a demand for cash, like any guide requisitioned. In

short, it's to be doubted whether in any city men live on their wits

more artfully and unscrupulously than in the Cairene bazaars.

As a practice, it's wise to decline all offers to accompany--as a

practice; but first time through it's wise to accept. No one can hope

to unravel the tangle of the Mooski geography unaided or by chance.

The labyrinth of overshadowed alleys is as confusing as the network of

saps near the firing-line. Take a guide at your first going. If he does

no more than show "the bright points" in an experience of the bazaars,

he has earned his exorbitant fee. After that, refuse him, which you

will never do without harsh discourtesy. A mere "No, thank you," is as

nothing. "Yallah minhenna"--or its equivalent--uttered in your most

quarrelsome manner, is the least of which he will begin to take notice.

The best beginning is through the narrow doorway off Mooski Street

into the spice bazaar. Of so unpretentious a doorway you never would

suspect the purpose without a guide, and that's the first argument

for tolerating him. Can such a needle's-eye lead to anything worth

entering? You arrive in an area where the air is voluptuous with the

scent of all the spices of the East--something more delicious than even

the scent bazaar, and less enervating. All the purchasers are women,

moving round behind their yashmaks. They boil and beat the spices to

grow fat, and to be fat is a national feminine aspiration. The boys

are pounding the wares in large stone mortars, crushing out the

sweetness, which pervades like an incense.

Appropriately enough, it is but a step into the scent bazaar proper,

and many of the purchasers there are (inappropriately) men. That the

men should wear and hanker after perfumes to this degree is one phase

of Egyptian degeneracy. The vendors squat in their narrow cubicles

lined with shelf upon shelf of gaily-coloured phials. They invite you

to sit down. Coffee is called for, and whilst that is preparing you

must taste the sweets of their wares on your tunic-sleeve. Bottle by

bottle comes down; he shakes them and rubs the stopper across your

forearm: attar of roses, jasmine, violet, orange-blossom, banana, and

the rest of them, until you are fairly stupid with the medley of sweet

fumes. You saunter off rubbing your sleeve upon your breeches, and

wondering what your comrades in arms will say if they catch you wearing

the odours of the lord of the harem. You have a tiny flask of attar of

roses upon you to send home to its appropriate wearer.

You move on to the tarbush bazaar; Tunis bazaar, where the fine

Tunisian scarves of the guides are sold; slipper bazaar, showing piles

of the red canoe-shoe of the Soudanese hotel-waiter, and of the yellow

heelless slipper of the lounging Egyptian; blue bazaar, where the women

buy their dress-stuffs--their gaudy prints and silks, all the rough

material for their garments. No Australian flapper can hold a candle

to them in their excited keenness of selection; and there is the added

excitement of bargaining. The feminine vanities of adornment are deep

and confirmed in Cairo. To see the Cairene aristocrats purchasing

dress-material, go to Stein's or Roberts's, Hughes's or Philips's or

Senouadi's, or to any of the other big houses, in the middle afternoon.

It's there, and not at any vulgar promenading (for they all drive),

that you see the fine women of Cairo. Mostly French they are, and

beautiful indeed, dressed as aptly and with as much artistry as in

Alexandria; and that is saying the last word. There you will see a

galaxy of beauty--not in any facetious or popular sense, but actually.

It's a privilege to stand an hour in any such house and watch the

procession: a privilege that does you good. The Frenchwomen of Cairo

perform very naturally and capably the duty of matching their beauty.

They have an unerring æsthetic sense, and evidently realise well enough

that to dress well and harmoniously is a form of art almost as pure as

the painting of pictures.

But we were in the Mooski, where the art is not so purely practised.

The Egyptian women do not dress beautifully nor harmoniously. They

dress with extreme ugliness; their colours outrage the sense at

every turn. Only the extreme beauty of their features and clarity of

complexion save them from repulsiveness. The glaring fabrics of the

blue bazaar express well the Egyptian feminine taste in colour.

The book bazaar leads up towards the Mosque al Azhar. The books are

all hand-made. Here is the paradise of the librarian who wails for

the elimination of machine-made rubbish of the modern Press. At any

such work the Egyptian mechanic excels in patience and thoroughness.

Making books by hand is, in fact, an ideal form of labour for him, as

is hand-weaving, which still prevails, and the designing and chiselling

of the silver and brass work. _Al Koran_ is here in all stages of

production; and with propriety there is a lecture-hall in the midst

of the book bazaar, which is, so to speak, "within" the Al Azhar

University close by. A lecture is being delivered. The speaker squats

on a tall stool and delivers himself with vigour to the audience seated

on the mat-strewn floor. Well dressed and well featured they are,

jotting notes rather more industriously than in most Colonial halls of

learning, or listening with an intensity that is almost pained.

The Moslem University in the Mosque al Azhar has a fine old front

designed with a grace and finished in a mellowness of colour that any

Oxonian College might respect. You show a proper respect--whether you

will or no--by donning the capacious slippers over your boots, as in

visiting any other mosque, and enter the outer court, filled with the

junior students. The hum and clatter rises to a mild roar. All are

seated in circular groups, usually about a loud and gesticulating

teacher; and where there is no teacher the students are swaying gently

in a rhythmic accompaniment to the drone with which _Al Koran_ is being

got by heart. There is no concerted recitation or repetition: every

man for himself. That, perhaps, helps to visualise the swaying mass of

students and to conceive the babel of sound. There is no roof above

that tarbushed throng. This is the preparatory school. The University

proper, beyond the partition, containing the adult students, alone

is roofed. Here they are all conning in the winter sunshine. Little

attention is given to visitors; most students are droning with closed

eyes, presumably to avert distraction. Few are aware of your presence.

That consciousness is betrayed chiefly by a furtively whispered

"Baksheesh!"--the national watchword of Egypt--uttered with a strange

incongruity in a temple of learning--a temple literally.

Beyond, in the adult schools, you will hear no mention of baksheesh,

except from the high-priest of the Temple, the sheikh of the

University, who demands it with dignity, as due in the nature of a

temple-offering, but appropriated (you know) by himself and for his

own purposes. Any knowledge of a British University renders this place

interesting indeed by sheer virtue of comparison. The Koran is the

only textbook--of literature, of history, of ethics, and philosophy in

general: a wonderful book, indeed, and a reverend. What English book

will submit successfully to such a test?...

Here is the same droning by heart and the same rhythmic, absorbed

accompaniment, but in a less degree. The lecturer is more frequent

and more animated in gesture and more loud and dogmatic in utterance.

Declamation of the most vigorous kind is the method with him, and rapt

attention with the undergraduates. The lecturers are invariably past

middle age, and with flowing beards, and as venerable in feature as

the Jerusalem doctors. The groups of students are small--as a rule,

four or five. Yet the teachers speak as loud as to an audience of two

hundred. The method here is that of the University _semina_: that is to

say, small, and seemingly select, groups of students; frequent, almost

incessant, interrogation by the student; and discussion that is very

free and well sustained. The class-rooms, defined by low partitions, go

by race, each with its national lecturers.

Within the building are the tombs of former sheikhs, enclosed and

looked upon with reverence. These approximate to tablets to pious

founders. The sheikh will tell you that, as he puts it, the Sultan

pays for the education of all students: he is their patron. That is

to say, in plain English, the University is State-controlled and

State-supported. Moreover, the students sleep there. You may see their

bedding piled on rafters. It is laid in the floor of the lecture-room

at night.

When you have delivered over baksheesh to the sheikh and to the

conductor and to the attendants who remove your slippers at exit, you

move down to the brass and silver bazaar. Here is some of the most

characteristic work you'll see in Egypt. Every vessel, every bowl

and tray and pot, is Egyptian in shape or chiselled design, or both.

As soon as you enter you are offered tea, and the bargaining begins,

although _Prix Fixé_ is the ubiquitous sign. It is in the fixed-price

shops that the best bargains are struck, which is at one with the

prevailing Egyptian disregard for truth. The best brass bazaars have

their own workshops attached. Labour is obviously cheap--cheap in any

case, but especially cheap when you consider that at least half the

workers in brass and silver are the merest boys. Whatever may be the

Egyptian judgment in colour, the Egyptian instinct for form is sound;

for these boys of eight and ten execute elaborate and responsible work

in design. They are entrusted with "big jobs," and they do them well.

There is almost no sketching-out of the design for chisel work; the

youngster takes his tool and eats-out the design without preliminaries.

And much of it makes exacting demands upon the sense of symmetry. This

is one of the most striking evidences of the popular artistic sense.

The national handwriting is full of grace; the national music is of

highly developed rhythm; and the national feeling for form and symmetry

is unimpeachable.

You need more self-control in these enchanting places than the

confirmed drinker in the neighbourhood of a _pub_. Unless you restrain

yourself with an iron self-discipline, you'll exhaust all your

_feloose_. The event rarely shows you to emerge with more than your

railway-fare back to camp. But under your arm are treasures that are

priceless--except in the eyes of the salesman. You trek to the post

office and send off to Australia wares that are a joy for ever. And

there you find on the same errand officers and privates and Sisters.

There is a satisfied air about them, as of a good deed done and money

well spent, as who should say: "I may squander time, and sometimes I

squander money and energy in this Land; but in this box is that which

will endure when peace has descended, and purses are tattered, and

Egypt is a memory at the Antipodes."

BOOK II

GALLIPOLI

CHAPTER I

THE JOURNEY

We were given twelve hours to collect bag and baggage and clear out

from Abbassieh. It was a night of alarms and excursions. In the midst

of it all came a home-mail. That was one of many occasions on which

one in His Majesty's service is forced to postpone the luxury of

perusal. Sometimes a mail will come in and be distributed just before

the "Fall-in" is blown. This means carrying about the budget unopened

and burning a hole in the pocket for a half-day--and more. In this

case the mail was read in the train next morning. We were out of camp

at sunrise, with the waggons ahead. By eight o'clock we had taken

leave of this fair-foul, repulsive yet fascinating city, and were

sweeping across the waving rice-fields of the delta towards the city of

Alexandria.

We arrived about mid-day. The urgency of the summons had justified

the inference that we should embark directly. Not so. We entered what

was technically known as a rest camp at Gabbari. Rest camps had been

established at various points about the city to accommodate temporarily

the British and French expeditions then arriving daily _en route_ to

the Dardanelles. The time was not yet ripe for a landing. Here was the

opportunity to stretch the legs--of both men and horses, and of the

mules from Spain.

At no stage even of the classical occupation of Egypt--or

thereafter--could the inner harbour of Alexandria have given more

vividly the impression of the imminence of war. It was crammed with

transports, ranged in long lines, with here and there a battle-cruiser

between. As many as could come alongside the Quay at one time were

busily disembarking troops (mostly French), which streamed down the

gangways in their picturesque uniforms and moved off in column through

the city to the camps on the outskirts. The moral effect of such

processions upon the Egyptians could hardly be over-estimated. Long

queues of Arab scows ranged along the railway wharf, taking ammunition

and moving off to the troopships. Day and night the harbour was dotted

with launches tearing from transport to transport bearing officers of

the General Staff. As for the city--the streets, the restaurants, the

theatres and music-halls, fairly teemed with soldiers; and civilian

traffic constantly gave way before the gharries of officers--and of men.

Many French were in our camp. There was something admirable in them,

hard to define. There was a sober, almost pathetic, restraint amongst

them--beside the Australians, which was as much as to suggest that what

they had seen and known through their proximity to the War in Europe

had had its effect. It could hardly be temperamental in the vivacious

French. They were not maudlin; and on rare occasions, infected by the

effervescing spirits of the Australians, would come into the mess-hut

at night and dance or chant the _Marseillaise_ in unison with the

melody of a French accordion. But in general they seemed too much

impressed with the nature and the possibilities of their mission for

jollification. They showed a simple and honest affection amongst

themselves. The Australians may--and do--have it, but it is concealed

under their knack of mutual banter and of argument. The French love

each other and do not shame to show it. Riding in the car a man would

fling his arm about his friend; in the streets they would link arms to

stroll. Very pathetic and very sincere and affectionate are the French

fighters.

The evenings off duty were precious and well earned and well spent.

Little can be seen of the city at night, except its people. The best

way of seeing them as they are is to take two boon companions from the

camp, ride to town, and instal yourselves in an Egyptian café for the

night, containing none but Egyptians, except yourselves; invite three

neighbours to join you in coffee and a hubble-bubble. They'll talk

English and are glad of your company. At the cost of a few piastres (a

pipe costs one, and lasts two hours, and a cup of coffee a half) you

have their conversation and the finest of smokes and cup after cup of

the best Mocha. This is no mean entertainment.

This kind of thing developed into a nocturnal habit, until the Italian

opera-season opened at the Alhambra. We sat with the gods for five

piastres ("a bob"). The gods were worth that in themselves to sit

amongst. The gallery is always interesting, even in Australia; but

where the gods are French, Russian, Italian, English, Jewish, Greek,

and Egyptian, the intervals become almost as interesting as the acts,

and there is little temptation to saunter out between them....

But all theatres and all cafés were for us cut short abruptly by the

order to embark.

The refugee camp at Alexandria made its contribution. One had been

galled daily by the sight of strong men trapesing to and from the city

or lounging in the quarters provided by a benevolent Government. This

resentment was in a sense illogical: they had their wives and their

babies, and were no more due to fight than many strong Britishers

bound to remain at home. But the notion of refugee-men constantly got

dissociated from that of their dependents. It was chiefly the thought

of virile idleness under Government almsgiving that troubled you.

Eventually it troubled them too; for they enlisted almost in a body and

went to Cairo for training. The Government undertook to look after the

women.

We found them fellow-passengers on our trooper. They were mostly young,

all from Jaffa, in Palestine. Seemingly they marry young and are

fathers at twenty. They brought three hundred mules with them, and were

called the Zion Mule Transport Company. It is a curious name. They were

there to carry water and food to the firing-line.

Their wives and mothers incontinently came to the wharf to see them

leave. Poor fellows! Poor women! They wailed as the women of Israel

wail in Scripture, as only Israelitish women _can_ wail. The Egyptian

police kept them back with a simulated harshness, and supported them

from falling. Many were physically helpless. Their men broke into a

melancholy chant as we moved off, and sustained it, as the ship passed

out over the laughing water, until we reached the outer-harbour. They

got frolicsome soon, and forgot their women's weeping. We stood

steadily out into the rich blue Mediterranean. The Zionites fell to

the care of their beasts. By the time the level western rays burned on

the blue we had the geography of the ship, and had ceased speculation

as to the geography of our destination--except in its detail. We knew

we should run up through the Sporades: it was enough for us that we

were about to enter the Eastern theatre of war. That was an absorbing

prospect. To enter the field of this War at any point was a prospect

to set you aglow. But the East had become the cynosure of all eyes. No

one thought much about the sporadic duelling in the frozen West. The

world's interest in the game was centred about the Black Sea entrance.

It was the Sick Man of Europe in his stronghold that should be watched:

is he to persist in his noisome existence, or is the community of

Europe to be cleansed of him for ever?

But before reaching the zone in which an attempt was being made to

decide that we were to thread a course through the magical Archipelago.

All the next day we looked out on the beauty of the water, unbroken

to the horizon. The men of Zion did their work and we took charge of

their fatigues. They cleaned the ship, fed and watered their mules,

and resumed their military training on the boat-deck. The initiative

of the Australian soldier is amazing. Abstractly it is so; but put

him beside a mob from Jaffa (or, better, put him over them) and he is

a masterful fellow. The Jews leap to his command. Our fellows found

a zest in providing that not one unit in the mass should by strategy

succeed in loafing. Diamond cut diamond in every corner of the holds

and the alley-ways. The language of the Australian soldier in repose

is vigorous; put him in charge of fatigue and his lips are touched as

with a live-coal--but from elsewhere than off the altar. He is commonly

charged with poverty in his range of oaths. Never believe it. The boss

and his fatigue were mutually unintelligible--verbally, that is. But

actually, there was no shadow of misunderstanding. Oaths aptly ripped

out are universally intelligible, and oaths here were supplemented with

gesture. There was no injustice done. The Australian is no bully.

The Jerusalem brigade, though young men, were adults, but adults

strangely childish in their play and conversation. It was with the

eagerness of a child rather than with the earnestness of a man that

they attacked their drill. They knew nothing of military discipline,

even less of military drill. Their sergeant-major made one son of

Israel a prisoner for insubordination. He blubbered like a child. Great

tears coursed down as he was led oft to the "clink." The door closed

after him protesting and entreating. This is at one with the abandoned

wailing of their women.

Drill must be difficult for them. The instruction was administered

in English; The men, who speak nothing but an admixture of Russian,

Hebrew, German, and Arabic, understood not a word of command or

explanation. They learned by association purely. They made feverish

and exaggerated efforts, and really did well. But of the stability and

deliberative coolness of a learning-man they had not a trace. This

childish method of attack never will make fighters. But they are not to

fight. They are to draw food and water. As a matter of form they are

issued with rifles--Mausers taken from the Turks on the Canal.

At evening of the second day out we got abreast of Rhodes, with

Karpathos on the port-bow. Rhodes stood afar off: would we had

come nearer! The long darkening streak of Karpathos was our real

introduction to the Archipelago. All night we ploughed through the maze

of islands. "Not bad for the old man," said the second-mate next day;

"he's never been here before, and kept going through a muddy night."

The night had been starless. And when morning broke we lay off Chios,

with a horrible tempest brewing in the north.

A storm was gathering up in the black bosom of Chios. Here were no

smiling wine-clad slopes, no fair Horatian landscape. All that seemed

somehow past. A battle-cruiser lay half a mile ahead. She had been

expecting us, together with two other transports and a hospital-ship in

our wake. A black and snaky destroyer bore down from far ahead, belched

past us, turned in her own length abreast of the transports, flashed

a Morse message to the cruiser across the darkening water, and we

gathered round her. She called up each in turn by semaphore: "Destroyer

will escort you westward"; and left us.

The journey began again. There was not a breath of wind; no beam

of sunlight. The water was sullen. The islands were black masses,

ill-defined and forbidding. This introduction to the theatre of war was

apt. We were bearing up into the heart of the Sporades in an atmosphere

surcharged and menacing. No storm came. It was the worse for that. Gone

were the golden "isles that crown the Ægean deep" beloved of Byron.

Long strata of smoke from the ships of war lay low over the water,

transecting their shapes.

After lunch the sun shone out. In the middle afternoon we came west

of Skyros, and left our transports there. They were French: Skyros

is the French base. At the end of the lovely island we turned east

and set our course for Lemnos. It was ten before the lights of Lemnos

twinkled through the blackness. At 10.30 we dropped anchor in the

outer harbour of Mudros Bay. The light on the northern horn turned and

flashed--turned and flashed upon us. Inside the boom a cruiser played

her searchlight, sweeping the zone of entrance. A French submarine

stole under our bows and cried "All's well," and we turned in to sleep.

We were up before the dawn to verify the conjectures as to land and

water hazarded in the darkness and the cruiser's pencil of light.

At sunrise we moved in through the boom. Here were the signs of war

indeed: a hundred and fifty transports lying at their moorings; a dozen

cruisers before; the tents of the Allies clothing the green slopes.

* * * * *

Lemnos is beautiful. The harbour is long and winds amongst the

uplands. We were anchored beside an islet, flecked with the colour of

wild-flowers blooming as prodigally as the Greeks said they did when

they sailed these seas. The slopes about the shore were clothed with

crops and vines. Behind were grey hills of granite.

In Mudros we lay a week, waiting, waiting. Let the spot be lovely as

you will, waiting is not good with the sound of the guns coming down on

the wind day and night. Our fifth morning on Lemnos was the Sabbath.

We woke to the soft boom of naval guns. Lemnos is a goodish sail from

the straits. The "boom, boom," was a low, soft growl, felt rather than

heard. The day before, at sundown, the first trooper of the fleet had

gone out, with band playing, to the cheering of the cruisers. The

Army and Navy have always in this campaign, shown themselves happily

complementary. A seaplane escorted them out aloft, two cruisers below.

Great was the rejoicing at the beginning of the exodus.

Next morning we left the mules of Zion and transferred to a store-ship.

She lay two days. We solaced ourselves with bathing in the clear bay

from the ship's side, and basking nude, with our pipes, afterwards in

the pleasant heat of the spring sun; with visits to the shore, where we

wandered into the Greek Church, in size and magnificence of decoration

out of all consonance with its neighbouring villages, and where the

wine of Lemnos might be drunk for a penny a glass; with bargaining at

the boats that drew alongside from the shore, as at Aden, filled with

nuts, figs, dates, Egyptian delight--all the old stock, except Greeks,

who manned them here. The dwellers on Lemnos are all Greeks.... Would

we never move?

On the seventh day at noon the naval cutter ran alongside. In half an

hour we were moving through the boom. As soon as we had cleared the

south-east corner of the island, Imbros stood out to port, and Tenedos,

our destination, lay dead ahead, under the mountains of Turkey in

Asia. A fresh breeze blew out of the Dardanelles, thunder-laden with

the roar of the guns, and every heave of our bow brought it down more

clear. Before sundown we were abreast of Tenedos and had sighted the

aeroplane station and had seen five of the great amphibious planes come

to earth. As we swung round to a view of the straits' mouth, every

eye was strained for the visible signs of what we had been hearing so

long. The straits lay murky under the smoke of three days' firing. The

first flash was sighted--with what a quickening of the pulse! In three

minutes we had the lay of the discharges and the bursts. An attempt was

made to muster a fall-in aft for the first issue of tobacco ration. Not

a man moved! The attempt was postponed until we should have seen enough

of these epoch-making flashes. "We can get tobacco at home--without

paying for it; you don't see cruisers spitting shrapnel every day at

Port Philip!" At length two ranks got formed-up--one for cigarettes

(appropriately, the rear), the front rank for those who smoked pipes.

Oh, degenerates!--the rear was half as long again! Two ounces of

medium-Capstan per man--in tins; four packets of cigarettes: that was

our momentous first issue.

The bombardment went on, ten miles off. No one wanted tea. At 7.30 the

Major half-ordered a concert aft. Everyone went. It was really a good

concert, almost free of martial songs. But here and there you'd find a

man sneak off to the bows to watch the line of spurting flame in the

north; and many an auditor, looking absently at the singer, knew as

little of the theme as of the havoc those shells were working in the

night.

We lay three days at Tenedos: so near and yet so far from the forts of

the Dardanelles. We could see two in ruins on the toe of Gallipoli, and

one tottering down the heights of the Asiatic shore at the entrance to

the straits. But the straits ran at a right-angle with the shore under

which we lay. We could see the bombarding fleet lying off the mouth. We

could see them fire, but no result. What more tantalising?

We lay alongside Headquarters ship, loaded with the Directing Staff.

H.Q. moved up and down, at safe distances, between us and the

firing-line. We were one of an enormously large waiting fleet of

transports and storeships. The impression of war was vivid: here was

this waiting fleet, and tearing up and down the coast were destroyers

and cruisers without number, and aloft, the whirring seaplanes.

Our moving-in orders came at three on an afternoon. This was the

heart-shaking move; for we were to sail up, beyond the mouth, to an

anchorage off the Anzac position. We were to see in detail everything

that we had, for the last three days, seen as an indistinct whole.

We were to pass immediately behind the firing-line, to test the

speculations we had been making day and night upon what was in

progress, upon the geography of the fighting zone, upon the operations

within the mouth. Every yard was a step farther in our voyage of

discovery.

The demolitions became plain. The ports on the water's edge had toppled

over "in a confused welter of ruin." Such wall as still stood gaped

with ghastly vents. These had been the first to come under fire, and

the cruisers had done their work with a thoroughness that agreed well

with the traditional deliberation of the British Navy. And thorough

work was in progress.

Far up the straits' entrance lay the black lines of gunboats. We moved

up the coast past an ill-starred village: the guns were at her from

the open sea. By sundown we had passed from this scene of action to

another, at ---- Beach, where the Australians had landed. The heights

above ---- Beach were the scene of an engagement far more fierce than

any we had seen below. The Turks were strongly posted in the shrubs of

the Crest. Our batteries were hardly advanced beyond the beach, and

were getting it hot. Night was coming on. A biting wind was blowing off

the land, bringing down a bitter rain from the hills of the interior.

It was almost too cold to stand in our bows and watch: what for those

poor devils juggling shell at the batteries and falling under the rain

of fire? After dark there was an hour's lull. At nine o'clock began a

two hours' engagement hot enough to make any fighter on shore oblivious

of the temperature. Towards midnight the firing ceased and the rain and

the wind abated.