r-NRLF ^ Ml* THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BT PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID THE LOG OF THE < NEREID.' Captain Weenie. THE LOG OF THE 'NEREID: BY THOMAS GIBSON BOWLES, R.N.R., \\ MASTER MARINER, AUTHOR OF "MARITIME WARFARE," "FLOTSAM AND JETSAM," &c. ILLUSTRATED BY LOCKHART J50GLE. " I waunt to go to sea, velly much." WEENIE SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., 4, STATIONERS' HALL COURT. LONDON, 1889. LONDON PRINTED BY ROBSON BIELBY HART, X8. TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. TO CAPTAIN WEENIE (AGED THREE), WHOSE SPLENDID IMPATIENCE OF DISCIPLINE, ENTIRE WANT OF CONSIDERATION FOR OTHERS, ABSOLUTE CONTEMPT FOR HER ELDERS, COMPLETE DEVOTION TO HER OWN INTERESTS, AND UTTER DISREGARD OF ALL CONSEQUENCES, EMBITTERED THE LIFE OF SMILER AND ENDEARED HER TO THE CREW OF THE "NEREID," THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY HER DOTING FATHER, THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. FITTING OUT I II. IN COMMISSION ... ... ... ... ... ... 7 III. DIEPPE AND PORTSMOUTH II IV. COWES 17 V. COASTWISE 25 VI. THE HUMOURS OF DARTMOUTH 3! VII. A START , 36 VIII. ACROSS THE BAY 43 IX. GIBRALTAR TO ALGIERS 50 X. THE PIRATE CITY ... ' ... 54 XI. BONA 6l XII. GALITA 65 XIII. THE HUMOURS OF MALTA 70 XIV. THE GREAT SYRTIS AND LIBYA ... 82 XV. THE HUMOURS OF ALEXANDRIA Q2 XVI. IN A HURRICANE ON A LEE SHORE 99 xvn. ST. JEAN D'ACRE 108 XVIII. MOUNT CARMEL 114 XIX. THE CASTLE OF THE PILGRIMS 121 XX. TYRE AND SIDON 128 XXI. DAMASCUS 134 XXII. MODERN ZION 147 XXIII. JOPPA 155 XXIV. OFF THE COAST OF SYRIA l62 XXV. THE HUMOURS OF CAIRO l68 XXVI. THE UPPER NILE 174 XXVII. MODERN THEBES l82 XXVIII. ASSIOUT ... ... ... ... ... ... ... l88 XXIX. THE PYRAMIDS 196 XXX. HEAD WINDS 2O3 XXXI. A CYCLONE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 212 XXXII. HOMEWARD BOUND 2l8 XXXIII. HOME WATERS 225 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Captain Weenie ... ... ... ... Frontispiece " Go Follard, Sir" 29 " Keep her away, Bill " 46 Nereids Ashore 64 The Skipper ... ... ... ... ... ... 86 A Mouthful of Prayers 94 Bill Knight and Weenie ... ... ... ... ... 107 The Nereid 128 The Shampooer ... 146 Quartermaster George 157 Sydney .. 173 Pharaoh for 7|d. 185 Quartermaster Geoffrey ... ... ... ... ... 206 PREFACE. T MPATIENT always of the Land, and always yearning for -*- blue water, I resolved, last year, to go once again down to the Sea. Wherefore I bought a vessel, shipped my four little ones on board of it, and set sail for the cruise herein described. Seafaring, in a sailing vessel, is so exacting an occupation and so grand a sport that our voyaging was very delightful to ourselves ; while the East in general, and the Holy Land and Egypt in particular, afford so great a contrast to western life as will, I trust, make the cruise of interest to the general reader. The heroine of this book is that delightful, spoilt, caressing, imperious, fascinating, engrossing little Tyrant whom her god- fathers and godmothers named Dorothy, but who, by her brothers and sister, has been surnamed Weenie. I, her fond Father, believe that there never was, and never will be, anything like her, a belief which is shared, I think, by all hands on board this vessel. Yacht Nereid. Cowes, 30th September, 1889. THE LOG OF THE 'NEREID.' i. FITTING OUT. "AH! I see you don't know much about ships." -LJL This was the remark made to me by a solid- looking gentleman of the ship-owning persuasion and of altogether a waterside cast of countenance, in contemptuous summing-up of myself and of a modest observation I had hazarded. The way of it was this. For the twentieth time I had run down by train to a seaport to look at a hundred-and- fifty ton schooner with a view to purchase. Like all the preceding nineteen that I had seen, and like nineteen hundred besides which had been introduced to me, but which I had not seen, she was described as quite the finest, stoutest, most faith- fully built vessel of her class, and the best sea-boat ever known. So I had come to see her, and, like a dentist looking out for soft places in remote corners, I had been prodding about her with a big clasp-knife. In my examination I was accompanied by her owner, and it was when I came to the mast-partners and found them yawning apart at the joints that I made my unfor- tunate observation. I said, as I shoved my knife in up to the handle, " There seems to have been a little ' play ' here." To which came that crushing answer " Ah ! I see you don't know much about ships." " No," I replied ; " I don't know much about them. But " on the whole, I think I know enough about this vessel to know The Log of the 'Nereid: " that she is not quite what I want." And so I went off, hoping that the vessel which was quite what I wanted might still turn up. Everybody I knew and many 1 didn't know had assured me that nothing was so easy just now as to buy a sailing yacht. There were forests of masts sticking up on the mud at Cowes, forests of them at Haslar Creek, forests at Wivenhoe ; and all of them to be had for the merest song. But, somehow, when I came to look at any one of them, I found that either she was what, with my little knowledge of ships, seemed a worn up and worthless box of matches, or else that the price asked was something like double what I could build her for new. It is right, indeed, to say that most of the yacht-owners and yacht agents who developed a desire to do such business with me as would result in my buying from them " the finest vessel of her " class afloat " (they were all this) seemed to take quite a different view from that entertained by myself as to what constitutes good quality in a vessel. They never dwelt greatly on the nautical outfit ; but they were remarkably strong on the upholstery. The weight and size of the anchors and whether there was one of them or more, or the number and size and length of the chain cables, seemed to trouble them not at all ; but they dwelt lovingly on chintz fittings or mahogany panels in the main cabin, and one gentleman who induced me to visit an 8o-ton schooner which only possessed sixty fathoms of chain cable and one bower anchor in the world, thought to make a certain customer of me by assuring me that she had been " upholstered throughout by Maple." The " ladies' cabin aft " was also a strong point with all of them ; and all of them sent me beautiful plans of their vessels with the very cushions of the sofas drawn thereon in fascinating relief. What delighted me most however were the " Inventories." These usually began with " one mainmast," and ended always with an afflicting Fitting Out. catalogue of rubbish, such as " one bottle cleaner, one piece of oilcloth, six skewers, one dust-pan, one sugar duster." The sugar duster was always forthcoming, the second anchor and cable by no means so invariably ; and although it happens that I care much less for ladies' cabins and sugar dusters than I do for other gear and appurtenances, I can only suppose that I am altogether differently constituted in this respect from all other men who go down to the sea in yachts. The schooners, the yawls, the ketches I looked at would have made a respectable fleet, but for the facts that one half of them would not have held together through a gale of wind and that the other half would have ruined the Government that bought them. I began at last to tire, as I had many a time tired before, of what seemed a hopeless quest, when I heard of a schooner which seemed to promise for the hundredth time just what I wanted. With a doubting and almost desperate mind, I started for one more inspection ; and this time the more I saw of her the better I liked her. I could indeed have improved her (I never yet saw the ship or the woman I couldn't have done that to), but at last I came to. the conclusion that she was "good " enough for the likes of we." This conclusion was not reached without much tribulation of spirit. I had her hauled up and all her ballast out. I crawled under her false keel, and clambered about her from her garboard-strake to her plank- sheer, looking for wrinkles and weeps in her copper, and finding none. I questioned the housing and hounding of her masts and the remote corners of her stanchions with my clasp-knife. I tested her timbers and her shelf with an auger. I explored her limber-channels and smelt down to her keelson. I overhauled her tanks, looked over her running gear, and noted what of it was perished and faded and long in the jaw; and finally I inspected her sails, ground tackle, and boats, with so satisfactory A 2 The Log of the 'Nereid.' a result that I informed her owner that I was thoroughly contented with the result of my inspe(5lion. " Well," said he, " it is very pleasing to me to hear you say so very especially pleasing, because I am well aware that " you know a good deal about ships." ON BOARD THE Nereid, OFF HYTHE, 2$th July, 1888. Smiler is one for whom I have that profound respecl: to which his birth, his fortune, and his rank in Society so thoroughly entitle him ; but when Smiler thinks fit to celebrate his and my first night on board our new ship which is indeed much more his than mine by waking up at intervals and howling over the memories of his estate in the country, then I begin to doubt the virtues of an hereditary aristocracy of birth and talent. Smiler may have come over with the Conqueror indeed, I don't see how otherwise he could have got here his lineage may be undoubted, and his image enshrined in the heart of every British subaltern ; his precocious talent for Rats is certainly undeniable, and he is more than suspected of having eaten a tame Rabbit ; but I would as soon sit on the cross- benches of the House of Lords and look at Lord Halsbury for the rest of my life as listen to Smiler's orations for another night. Smiler is therefore relegated to a packing-case, tem- porarily promoted to the brevet rank of kennel, and has been informed that, if he repeats his performance, he will be shown over the side without appeal. Since then he has been quiet, which proves that even a fox-terrier knows how much better off anybody is in a good, comfortable ship than he can possibly be in those lubberly contrivances ashore that go by the name of houses. * * * * # X # It is three weeks and three days since I started to fit out, Fitting Out. and thus became the sport of Dockyard Maties. There is, I understand, a special gridiron reserved for Maties in an appro- priate place below, and I will therefore draw a generous veil over their earthly misdoings ; but, really, if I were to see that Matey drowning who promised me my last coat of paint on Saturday, and never put it on till Tuesday I say that if I were to see that Matey drowning, and were to save his life, I should claim the Humane Society's medal for it. But here we are at last, clear of the Maties, moored off Hythe. The owners and officers of the vessel are four children, whereof the most important is " Weenie," aged a bare three, who has already taken possession of the forecastle, and is now dictating to the musical prodigy of the crew the tunes he is to play to her on the concertina. She is hopelessly spoilt already. This morning she had all hands aft, and after hoisting her flag and reading her commission, made us the usual speech in these words, ostensibly addressed to her Nurse : " I don't like you, Griffin. I don't like you because I hate " you. No ! No ! ! NO ! ! ! I'll be naughty all day. I'll say " can't, shan't, won't all day ; and I'll stand in the corner, and " I won't be good then." With this the crew were piped down, and I began to wonder whether, after all, I had not been rash to exchange all the comforts of a happy home for the hardships and dangers of a sailor's life. The first comfort one feels on board ship however is a great one. It is that one is at any rate properly clad for weather, and that this intolerable deluge of rain, variegated by wind, which has been the despair of the farmer and sailor, and the disgrace of the barometer during two whole months, does, at any rate, find one in sea-boots and a sou'-wester instead of The Log of the 'Nereid.' spats and an umbrella. The glass is down nearly another two- tenths ; but this spot is a thoroughly well-protected one, in which nobody could have the slightest excuse for coming to harm. I need not say that there is an R.Y.S. schooner ashore just above us. In Commission. II. IN COMMISSION. AT SEA, Wednesdiy, ist August, 1888. J " T F you please, Sir, this 'ere Duck fare to be my master," JL said a burly sailor, putting his perspiring face into the main cabin, and holding forth a large, half-plucked, ragged- looking duck in his hand " and I don't see how I'm to have " him ready for dinner." This is Bill, who is groom of the chambers, butler, footman, housemaid, cook, and steward in this establishment. Having failed yesterday morning to get any fresh meat at the village nearest to our out-of-the-way anchorage at Calshot, he had caught a duck at a farm and killed it. Not being accustomed to the ways of ducks, he had passed the whole of an improving morning in the endeavour to pull off all its feathers, all its down, and most of its skin ; and it was only when the hour of the children's dinner approached and imminent failure was before him, that he thus unburdened his soul. I don't know much about Ducks either ; no more does anybody else on board ; but at last Griffin, as amicus curia, volunteered the information that it ought to be SINGED. This was done, and so Bill weathered on the Duck at last ; but it was then too late to cook him, and the dinner had finally to be compounded of tinned mutton. It might be supposed from this that Bill is not much of a cook, and indeed that is what he modestly said of himself when I shipped him. Nevertheless, he is the most excellent of all 8 The Log of the l Nereid: kinds of cooks ; for what he does he does admirably, and what he does are all those common objects of cookery which are usually done abominably. He has no high flights of gastro- nomy, but in the lower work-a-day walks of cookery he is unmatched. He can bake a joint, boil an egg or a potato, and make porridge, tea, and coffee to perfection for he knows how to do that. Now, what a sailor knows he does know ; what he can do he does do which is indeed one main reason why I so much prefer sailors to landsmen so that Bill never fails with these common objects of the table, over which your best shore- going cooks do so constantly and so irritatingly fail. Hence that daily series of meals, consisting mainly of common objects, which is always doubtful and generally disappointing ashore, are here always satisfactory and pleasing. Even Captain Weenie admits that the " pollidge " is " velly good." Causa finita est Roma locuta est. # * * * # >JC Jj' When one is about to start to sea, this is the kind of con- versation that invariably takes place " What time did she swing to the ebb this morning, Ned ? " "About six o'clock, Sir." " Very well. Then we'll start. The wind has gone round " the right way, with the sun, this time, and the weather looks " finer. When did we fill up with water ? " " This day week, Sir." " Did you get those spare oars ? ' : " No. They weren't ready." " Then we must go without them. Did you try that " binnacle lamp, as I told you ? " " Yes, Sir. He seems to burn all right." " And how about the new riding light ? " " That leaks. There's one place where it isn't properly " soldered." " Ah, I suppose so. They never make anything properly In Commission. " now. Well, we must use the old one. Have you finished " the chafing pieces at the dead-eyes ? " " Yes, Sir ; but, if you please, we shall want more provisions " for the men. They couldn't get none last night. The " butcher was going to kill to-day." " Confound it ! That means losing me a couple of hours' " tide. Well, send a hand or two ashore, but as few as " possible, and let the others get ready and heave short mean- " time." " Very good, Sir." And away goes Ned to set things going. In about a couple of hours we were under weigh, the wind having meantime veered to right ahead. However, we worked out through the Spithead Forts before the eastern stream was done, and by five in the evening were in St. Helen's Roads. There it fell a flat calm, so I let go my anchor, and sent a boat ashore for another attempt on fresh meat, which this time suc- ceeded. At eight o'clock there came a little breeze from E.S.E., so I up anchor again and stood out not over well pleased, for it was already getting dark, and I should not get outside the track of the steamers along the English side by daylight. The wind too was light and baffling, and from time to time there came heavy squalls of rain with some thunder. As the night drew on, we ran across any amount of lights mostly those of steamers and some of them seemed to act so oddly (one showed me his red light on the same bearing for a good hour) that it was occasionally anxious work. To add to the trouble, the binnacle light went out in one of the squalls, and when, after trying everybody else in the watch, I went below and trimmed it myself, it twice blew out again as soon as it got on deck. By one in the morning, however, I reckoned that we were outside the steamer track, so turned in. This morning introduced a fine day the first I have seen for three months after another four hours' calm ; and, with a io The Log of the ' Nereid.' nice breeze from S.W., we cracked along prettily. Captain Weenie is a trifle ailing, but scrambles on deck to give orders between the squalls, and then won't be moved below, though at last she says, " If you'll give me my Bunny, I'll go inside." The rest of the passengers are more poorly ; and Bill, when he was told successively that no breakfast and then no dinner was wanted, declared sadly that it is all through not eating that people get worse at sea. At two we made the land, and I put the topsails on to her to catch the afternoon tide into Dieppe if she could. DIEPPE, 2nd August, 1888. As is only too usual when there are large ships off a port, we, being a relatively small ship, entirely failed to draw a pilot by our jack ; but the weather was fine, the wind, though scant, fair, and Dieppe Harbour no stranger to me. We sailed in, therefore, all by our little selves at five o'clock, as soon as the signals showed water enough for our draught is 1 1 ft. 6 and just managed to haul into the floating basin before the gates were closed. The shouting and chattering of the Frenchmen, the running about, and the fact that the Captain of the Port took off his cap to me from the pier when I asked him where I was to lie, and that I took off mine to him when thanking him, all seemed most new, marvellous, and amusing to the children. As for Bill, when he went ashore to get some milk, he came back saying " It's a job to make 'em understand here. They don't speak " the same language as we do, not by a long way." " Not by a long way " struck me as being good as though languages were a mere matter of length. Dieppe and Portsmouth. n III. DIEPPE AND PORTSMOUTH. IT has always been one of the weak traditions of French Governments to keep up armies of small officials and to require them to be paid small sums for useless services. Thus at a port like Dieppe there is a body of official " haleurs," poor wretches who hang on to a line to haul vessels up the harbour, which gives them perhaps a sou each and costs the vessel 45. Then there is the ship's Passport is. 8d., the Health or Quarantine dues 75., the boatmen who carry out a line for you during a quarter of the time you are going up the harbour and get towed alongside the other three-quarters they cost you IQS. After this come the capstan hands who open the basin gates 33. 4d., the Garde-feu 45. all useless but all privileged to levy upon a vessel of this size, various small charges amount- ing to something approaching ^"3. Of the charges the worst item seemed to me the charge for pilotage outwards of i6s. 6d. It is, of course, chiefly when entering a port that one wants a pilot. I had wanted one myself when coming in and had been unable to get one, so that I had to pilot myself in as best I could ; but when going out I didn't want one at all. I pointed this out, when for reply I was told that this was the reglement. " Why, then," said I, " the effect of your reglement is that I '* can't get a pilot when I want one, and that you force me to " take one when I don't want one." The polite Inspector of Pilots admitted that this was so ; but pointed out the great necessity and advantage of maintaining 12 The Log of the l Nereid.' an able and experienced body of men like the pilots to take charge of vessels that did want them ; that this could not be done without securing work for them by requiring outward- bound vessels to employ them ; and that, etifin, such was the reglement. He was very polite was this gentleman, and so, I hope, was I. " Well, Sir," said I, " if your reglement requires me to pay " nineteen francs eighty-five centimes for a pilot whom I do not " want, I will pay it ; but pray do me the favour not to send " him on board my vessel, for I regard him as an unnecessary " danger, and shall feel safer without him." This seemed greatly to surprise the polite gentleman, who, being an official, necessarily believed that a pilot was an absolute guaranty of safety to a vessel. But as a favour I was at last allowed to pay for the pilot without taking him, and not having him I naturally got out of the port quite safely. The English system of pilotage is no better than the French indeed, it is practically the same, and I am sorry to see that a Select Committee, which must have been entirely composed either of landsmen, officials, or pilots, recommends its continu- ance. Compulsory pilotage ought to be abolished, and the class or caste of Pilots ought to be abolished. There is no more reason in compulsory pilotage or in the restriction of pilotage to a limited number of men than there would be in Compulsory Medicine or a limitation on the number of Surgeons. Leave ships free to take a pilot or to go without, and leave every man who can pass, and has passed, the pilotage examination free to act as pilot, and all the abuses would cure themselves. When this is done, and then only, will there be a sufficient supply of pilots found where they are wanted in all weathers. But I don't suppose there are people enough in England who under- stand the sea ever to get pilotage put on the same ground as the other skilled trades of Medicine and Surgery. Dieppe and Portsmouth. 13 i Outside we found a light breeze from S.S.W. and a smooth sea. The binnacle lamp, having been mended in Dieppe, burnt beautifully; Smiler, for whom we have completed a palatial kennel painted bright green, seemed quite happy ; Weenie and all the other superior officers of the ship were comfortably asleep in their berths ; we were on the French or safer side as regards the wicked steamers ; and the vessel was sliding along comfortably, doing four knots. I turned in therefore ; but on waking in the morning, after the dead sleep that is only to be had at sea, I found that the wind had freshened, that the vessel had broken off a point, and that Beachy Head was visible some eighteen miles under our lee. As the day wore on, the wind and sea increased, and, being close-hauled, we felt it the more. Off the Owers a very nasty sea indeed got up as the weather- tide began to make, but the good ship behaved very prettily. Only once, and then through the fault of the steersman, who failed to ease her as she came to a big wave, did she put her nose into it, and then she shook the water off her decks like a Newfoundland dog. We had to give her a touch off for an hour to weather the Owers light, but after this she ran in fluking, with less sea every minute as we got under shelter of the Isle of Wight, and by two o'clock I had let go my anchor in Portsmouth Harbour, eighteen hours out of Dieppe. So far as I can judge, the craft is what, from her form, she ought to be, a fine sea-boat ; but I haven't seen enough of her at sea yet, and am like a man who has only been married a month and hasn't yet made his wife's acquaintance. # # # # # * # For many years I have carried about with me that noblest of prayers which Nelson wrote in his cabin as the Victory was sailing into action at Trafalgar. It reminds me how great and unselfish a man may be, how stupendously great and unselfish was this man, and how right and reasonable they were who hung upon him as he embarked that September morning from 14 The Log of the 'Nereid.' Southsea Beach, kissing the hem of his garments and weeping tears of affection and joy over England's darling hero. I commend it to all those who would know in what spirit their duty should be done and their country served, nor do I think that many who read it will fail to be moved as it moves me. I cannot forbear quoting here that prayer, in order that, in these trivial pages, there may be at least one thing worth serious reading. Here is shown indeed the Hero ; here, at that tremendous, that supreme moment, he poured forth all the grandeur of his noble soul. How petty, how miserable, how contemptible is the ordinary self-seeking, hard-hearted, unscru- pulous "great man" in comparison with this Man, shown here prostrate before his Creator ! No wonder his sailors loved him. Convinced of the justice of his cause, conscious of his own transcendent ability, confident in the courage of his men, he doubts not of the victory he implores. But he prays for his country, for Europe, nay for the Enemy, that mercy and pity may be shown to the vanquished. For himself he asks for nothing not even for protection to his life, only for the Divine blessing on his endeavours. Thus he commits himself to the Almighty. No words can do justice to that noble prayer. Read it and judge. " May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my " country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory ; and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it ! and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British fleet ! For myself individually, I commit my life to Him that made me ; and may His blessing alight on my endeavours for serving my country faithfully ! To Him I resign myself, and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen, Amen, Amen." And now I have once more made my pious pilgrimage to that glorious old Victory. Once again I have looked on the spot where that prayer was written, have stood by the spot where he fell, and have traced his descent into that Cockpit whence Dieppe and Portsmouth. 15 his great soul parted from the frail body to return to his Maker. To see this, to remember what it all means, and to remain unmoved is impossible, nor is it easy to refrain from tears from tears and prayer that England may again, in her hour of need, find another as noble and unselfish a son. If I were First Lord of the Admiralty, I would have the Victory all to myself for an hour or two every week to teach me what I ought to be. # # >;c * ^< * * " Weenie, you must not throw Smiler overboard." Weenie dropped the dog, whom she had somehow prised and purchased nearly up to the rail of the ship, and whose whining had attracted my attention, and looking up at me with her most disappointed air, said " Well, what am I to frow overboard then ? " This, being one of those questions which can only be answered by destroying the assumption on which it rests, I evaded by saying " Come below to the main cabin." " May I frow Smiler overboard when I do come to the main " camrnin ? " 11 No." " May I come down all by mysoup ? " *' Yes come along." And so, with this compromise, down we went, the little mite holding on and scrambling down the steep companion ladder with the great satisfaction she always shows when allowed to do " all by myself" anything which she only ought to do under supervision. There never was so despotic a Tyrant of three, or one so hopeless to argue with as this. At Dieppe she was taken ashore with a spade and a bucket, wherewith she collected pebbles on the beach. On her return it was observed that she had not her spade, whereupon she was asked " Where is your spade ? " 1 6 The Log of the 'Nereid.'' 11 1 fro wed it away." " Why did you throw it away ? " " Because I didn't want it." " But that's very naughty. You must not throw things " away. Don't do so any more, will you ? " " No, I won't." (Then, after a pause)" But when I don't " want them, I may frow them away, mayn't I ? " What are you to do with a captain like this ? It is the old grievance of the wrong person being put in authority over others. COWES, Tuesday, jth A^lgust. With the change of moon to-day we are fairly entitled to a change of weather for the better ; and it was indeed a pleasant morning when we stood out of Portsmouth, and quite a day for Solent yachting and lunching in the smoother waters wherewith Nature has provided us inside the Island to enable us to learn seamanship without hurting ourselves. The roads here seem full of yachts, and yet there are fewer than usual fewer even than there were last year. But the shore is as smart as ever, and eminently fitted to inculcate the virtue of modesty by making one feel, whenever one lands, how far inferior one is to the least of the crowd of eminent and distinguished personages who at this time illustrate and embellish the narrow streets and enliven the Marine Hotel. It is easy to see that one is at the chosen resort of the finished seaman for there is a steamer ashore off the landing- place and a yawl ashore on the Brambles. Cowes. 17 IV. COWES. COWES, i$th August. THIS place is deserted and melancholy. The Prince of Wales went away this morning, and the True British Tar, who only lives in the light of the Princely countenance, has packed up his duds and gone too. It is quite sad. I have not seen a vessel ashore for the last half-hour ; and there is a dearth of brass buttons and gold lace in the Cowes streets that would make a Civil Lord of the Admiralty weep. But the True British Tar has left his mark in Cowes Roads nevertheless. Though absent in the vessel, he is present in the moorings. We are told on Sundays that " the Sea is His and he made it " ; but this does not apply to that part of the sea known as Cowes Roads. That is the True British Tar's the Tar, that is, who owns a yacht and is ready, blow high blow low, to go to Ryde and back in her ; who knows every buoy from the Sturbridge to the Brambles ; who can work his vessel out of Cowes river astern of a tug ; and who, when all the resources of seamanship fail to achieve a passage back to his anchorage in time for dinner, will, with a still stout heart, let her drift and be calmed. This is the True British Tar, on whom, under Providence, the safety of this Kingdom does depend and he naturally feels that Cowes Roads are his, and that he made them. So he has taken possession of them by criss-crossing them with moorings. There are moorings everywhere ; some with buoys that watch and some with buoys that don't watch ; and one, above all, with a buoy half as big as the Isle of Wight, a huge, iron-bound i8 The Log of the l Nenid. J cask that would knock a hole into any small craft that ran on to it in a dark night. When, therefore, any other skipper, not being a True British Ta% wants to let go his anchor anywhere in Cowes Roads, or anywhere within a mile of them, he simply can't do it, because of the moorings laid down by the True British Tars, who have taken a claim to hold permanent possession of this public roadstead for their private convenience. Dodge about as he will, he will always find a new buoy bobbing up alongside, ahead, or astern of him, whenever he is about to let go. This strikes me as admirable ; all the more so because I am given to understand that there is a Harbour Master in Cowes. It is, I presume, his business to see that nobody is allowed to use the Roads except those who lay down iron-bound barrels. This state of things is so perfect that I have only two suggestions to make. One is that every True British Tar should be allowed to set up a post in Cowes High Street, to tie his horse to whenever he wishes to do so ; the other is that the R.Y.S. should be empowered to levy on every vessel that comes into Cowes Roads an entrance fee of ten guineas per registered ton. This would have the desired effect of making Cowes a tranquil Paradise for the True British Tar, and the other thing for everybody else, to the great increase of the town's prosperity and the encouragement of True Seamanship. Things are, I rejoice to say, so rapidly tending towards this consummation that the outsiders are decreasing in numbers year by year, and that the little town is no longer an abiding- place for any but those truest of True British Tars who never venture on the water under a male Royalty, a female American, and a champagne luncheon. 4 * * * # * # * When the Royal Yacht Squadron was called the Royal Yacht Club, it was a Squadron indeed, and the yachts com- posing it used to be taken a yearly cruise by the Commodore, who made them keep station, perform manoeuvres, and dine on Cowes. 19 board of his vessel as a Commodore should. Thus, in August, 1843, Commodore Lord Yarborough sailed from Cowes for Plymouth with a squadron of twenty-two vessels (one-half of them over one hundred tons, and all of them, except two, over fifty tons), everyone of which belonged to the Club. But now that that Club is called a Squadron, no such assemblage of vessels as could be called a Squadron is ever found flying its burgee unless it be in Cowes Roads nor would such an undertaking as a voyage to Plymouth in squadron ever be so much as dreamt of. But everything is something else in these days ; and, just as Butter is Margarine, so I suppose must a seafaring Squadron necessarily be no more than a shoregoing Club. It is a pity though. :!: * >;: * * * * One of the many things in this world with which I have no patience is this " Toleration " which I have long heard and still hear so belauded. Toleration can only spring from want of knowledge, or want of conviction ; it can only grow in haziness and uncertainty of mind. As to the thing we really know, and as to the thing we really believe, no one of us can admit of toleration. To us those things alone are true, and to be respected as truths, and no other, still less any contrary, things are even entertainable, much less entertainable on equal terms or tolerable. If one should come and tell me seriously that two and two make seventeen, I should not tolerate either his state- ment or himself; I should smile at the former, and dismiss the latter as a notorious ass. For this is a thing I know. Or, if another should come and tell me that the Sun would not rise to-morrow, I should again smile and dismiss. For, though this is a thing which neither I know nor anybody else, nor anybody can know till it happens, yet I am sufficiently well- founded upon all former revolutions of the Sun and Earth really to believe that the former must and will continue as usual to come again above the horizon. So here is a matter of knowledge, B 2 2O The Log -of the l Nereid. J and another matter of belief in which no toleration is possible. Nor is it ever one whit more possible in any case of real knowledge or of real belief. It is only when the knowledge or belief is not really entertained when it is kept between the door ajar, ready to be taken in or turned out ; when there is no conviction then alone can toleration and equal treatment of the contrary be possible. And it is because the major part of over-educated mankind have no firm convictions, but only loose opinions, that Toleration is belauded as a virtue, instead of being condemned as a confession of ignorance or miscreance. The attitude is this " We none of us really know anything, " and we none of us really believe anything ; hence what you " pretend to know and believe is just as good as what we " pretend to know and believe. Wherefore we will tolerate you : " let us all go to the Devil our own way." Of course, if you want to find out how not to go to the Devil at all, it would be a different matter. But then nobody cares about that. Alice and Jacky are two beauteous infants. Alice (whose godmother and namesake is a great London lady) has the most splendid conceivable flaxen hair, in which her bright little head is. set in a golden glory, and the most transparent light blue eyes ever seen out of a poet's dream. Jacky, though smaller and darker in complexion, is scarcely less beautiful and engaging in his dainty little red and blue gold-edged coat and breeches. Alice moves with a certain stately if stiff grace ; Jacky plays a pair of cymbals with an unmatched energy, and between them they have been the life and soul of the ship. Will it be believed that Smiler has carried away those two beautiful and helpless creatures to his kennel, and eaten the major part of them ? Two of Alice's legs and all the back of her head are gone. Jacky's cymbals are munched into meaning- less lumps of brass, and one of his arms has been wrenched from the socket ; nor would any trace of either of them be now Cowes. 21 left outside of Smiler, but for the courage of Weenie ; who, peering anxiously into Smiler's den, discovered the rape of the Dollies, and began with wails and shrieks to belabour Smiler with a handy marling-spike. Smiler has not spoken since ; but Weenie loves her dismembered Alice and Jacky better, and nurses them more tenderly, than before ; which shows that there is sometimes poetic justice even on earth. * # sjc #:;-.# -\; CALSHOT, i^th August, 1888. I often wonder why some of those ill-starred country gentle- men who are ruining themselves by trying to live in the houses they have had the misfortune to inherit from their forefathers, do not give up the attempt and try living in ships. I have always myself privately held that a house was a very poor, mean, and unsuccessful attempt to imitate a ship, so far as the attempt could be made under the unfavourable conditions existing ashore, and that the land was originally set up (probably by Noah, when he made that lubberly mistake of running his vessel ashore on a falling tide) as a desperate substitute for the water. I was long held in check however and forced to entertain those views in private and to keep them to myself, because all persons of weight and authority were agreed that land and houses represented the one stable and certain thing in the world so stable and immovable that a Banker ought to invest in nothing else. But where is their stability now ? They have gone the way of dicers' oaths and Gladstone principles, and those that trusted to them have gone like unto them. Since I first took, in my small amateur way, to the sea, rents have gone down 40 per cent., and the value of land 50 per cent. ; but the Sea is as valuable as ever for all purposes. I need adduce no further argument to prove its superiority over the land as a Banker's security ; and I only adduce this argument to prove my own superiority over those who, in apparent seriousness, long held the earth to be better than the waters 22 The Leg of the l Nenid.' that cover it. But to revert to my suggestion. Ashore the distressed gentleman has Rates to pay which Mr. Ritchie's Cockney County Ruination Bill will soon double afloat he has none. Ashore he has Taxes to pay afloat, none. Ashore he has Tithe to pay (that Tithe which professes to be one-tenth of the land's increase, but which is often in reality more than ten times its increase, having been increased a hundredfold by calculating it on an abstraction and taking no account of the reality) afloat there is none. Ashore he is tied to his house and must remain where it is, dine with his county neighbours as though he liked it, and endure the local sermon weekly as though he appreciated it afloat his house is tied to him, will go where he pleases, change neighbours for him as often as he likes, and protect him from sermons altogether. As to expense, it is usually supposed that living on board ship is a delight reserved, under the name of " yachting," only for the very wealthy. That is a delusion. No doubt if a ship is added as a luxury to a house ashore which is treated as a necessity, this is the case ; but that is a perverse method of dealing with things which only a long and hardened career of shoregoing can explain, and which nothing can justify. Treat your ship as the necessity and a house ashore as a luxury or rather give up all thoughts of the shore and make your ship your only home and then the c ise is very different. A not inconsiderable experience of living ashore in houses of various size, and afloat in vessels of various tonnage, enables me to affirm with the greatest confidence that the cost of living and cruising aboard a ship is in nowise greater than that of living in a house ashore of corresponding size and importance. I started with a lo-tonner which (though the companion was the only place in her where I could stand upright) fairly corresponded to a bachelor's bedroom ; and it was cheaper than the bedroom. I rose in time to a 6o-tonner, which fairly corresponded to a modest married home ; and found it quite as cheap as that home ; and, having now been driven up to the i5o-ton family Cowes. 23 schooner, I will undertake to say indeed I know that I could nowhere live in the same way and with the same accommodation and comforts more cheaply. Before I have done, I hope to give an exact account of my expenses, which will, I think, prove this to demonstration. But then we all live on board, and have for the time no other home that is the essential condition. Wherefore I say : if you want to economise, to escape Rates, Taxes, Tithes, Neighbours, and Parsons, sell all that you have and buy a ship. * * * * # * * " Ted, Ted, TED. My Golly-Golly's in the lawter." It is proper to explain that Captain Weenie, like other great personages, has her little peculiarities. Among these the principal is a touching devotion to a piece of old flannel, which she calls her Golly-Golly. This Golly-Golly is her Fetish. She rejoices with it in moments of joy, and it is her last unfailing resource and refuge in moments of grief and despair. She loves it and trusts it beyond anything in the wide world. She takes it to bye-bye with her, and falls asleep lovingly sucking it. If she wakes up in the night, she calls for it. If Fortune frowns upon her, or the injustice of mankind revolts her, it is to that she flies for the consolation which never fails to spring from the delight of sticking it, together with a thumb, into her mouth and sucking comfort from both. If she tumbles down over a ring-bolt on the deck and hurts her knees, or if Smiler in his affectionate jumps bites rather harder than is quite fair, she calls for her Golly-Golly. If Griffin refuses jam before bread-and-butter is finished ; if " Papaw " declines to let her play three-year-old variations on the pianoforte, or to have tea with the hands in the " fokes " ; if she is sea-sick and tired of life, or if in any other way she is driven to the limits of desperation and despair, it invariably culminates in, " I waunt my Golly-Golly" and, if the case is very desperate indeed, she adds, "My dirty Golly-Golly." For, 24 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 as one star differeth from another, so does one " Golly-Golly " from another ; and the most delightful and highly-prized of all the collection of old bits of flannel which form a necessary part of our sea-stores is the oldest and dirtiest bit. So potent a Fetish is this that the case has never yet been known in which it has failed to bring comfort and consolation under the very worst of circumstances. If she ever thinks as much of a husband, trusts him as much, and loves him as well as this, she will be the one wife of a thousand whom Solomon did not find. When, therefore, this cry of distress was heard from the deck, everybody started. First Lieutenant Sydney, who was wrestling with the collecl: for the day, tumbled up through one companion, Quartermasters George and Geoffrey flung down the beloved concertina and scrambled up through another, and I brought up the rear, just in time to see Ted, Weenie's first favourite and principal slave, shoving off in the dinghy in chase of the sacred Golly-Golly, which had fallen, or more likely been frowed overboard, and was taking the first of the ebb on a cruise to the Needles. Happily it was recovered, and we all breathed again, and thought upon how slight a chance the fate even of a Golly-Golly may hang. Coastwise. 25 V. COASTWISE. DARTMOUTH, 2oth 2 WHEN I die, " Coke and Water " will be found written on my heart. These are the two malignant devils that always either combine together or work separately to delay a vessel that has a fair wind and nothing else to stop her from proceeding to sea. And so it was that, last Wednesday, having carefully provided beforehand for these very necessaries to be sent aboard early, having fitted thumb-cleats to my cutter for the sheet of the sail, having generally got through other small jobs, and being provided with a fine strong easterly breeze, I had run ashore for the last supply of provisions and was going down to the boat, when Ned met me, saying, " Please, Sir, the Coke " has not come on board, and I am going for it." " Oh, Coke be condemned," said I. " I won't wait for it." And so off we all went, got our anchor and started with a flowing sheet. It was getting on for twelve o'clock by this time, and in an hour and a-half we were down at the Needles, when we found a heavyish swell rolling up from S.E. Having had my patent log cleaned up, I tried it again, but finding it hope- lessly wrong between the Needles and Anvil Point, I occupied an hour in measuring off on the deck an old-fashioned log-line, for which we had previously made a log-ship, and which simple-minded contrivance gave us a correct account of our- selves ; thereby showing the advantage of having the elementary old Tory contrivances to fall back upon when the complicated 26 The Log of the 'Nereid.' new Radical devices go out of gear. For nobody can repair them they are so very clever. And so we ran along keeping the wind just on our star- board quarter, rolling lengthily and easily before the swell that came up on the port quarter and doing a good eight knots under very moderate canvas. Here was a fine easterly wind for a run out across the Bay, and very much inclined did I feel within myself to hold on and take my departure then and there as soon as I got down to the Start. But the navigating officer proposes and the superior officers dispose ; and these latter were feeling desperately the effects of the long and heavy swell. First Lieutenant Sydney stood indeed well to her guns, and, at dinner, had four helpings of plum tart ; but Quarter- masters George and Geoffrey were low-spirited indeed ; and Captain Weenie was lying with her dirtiest Golly-Golly in her mouth, coiled up on the weather-side of the skylight in a big deck-coat, under which a trickle coming from a flop of water up through the weather scuppers would occasionally find its way. As the afternoon wore on, therefore, I thought it best to give them the night in, so when in sight of the Shambles, I let her come to, ran into Portland Roads, and there anchored at seven o'clock. Even there the vessel rolled considerably, but they all slept well through it ; and before they had time next morning to think upon sea-sickness the vessel was again under weigh, and soon after seven rounded the Bill of Portland with a continuance of a fine north-easterly breeze which made my wishes and thoughts fly towards Finisterre. But the officers again collapsed into melancholy, so I set my squaresail (which) like every new thing one does in a new ship, enabled me to discover a new job that required doing, the sheaves of the brace-blocks aft being found so broken up that the braces would not reeve through the sheave-hole) and ran a fine pace for the Mew-stone, which we rounded at one o'clock, and, carrying good way because of the flaws off the high land that always come with the wind thus, sailed prettily into Dartmouth Coastwise. 27 and let go our anchor in this hill-wrapped, tree-embowered harbour. I am very fond of Aldeburgh men. Brought up, as they are, in the smacks of the inhospitable East Coast, they are generally good seamen for small craft of fore and aft rig ; they are quiet, decent, sober and well-conducted, with an unwavering belief in the superior magnificence and delights of Aldeburgh over every other place in the world, and with the greatest and most laudable affection for their wives and families, and even for their cousins and aunts ; and in the course of a considerable experience, I have found but one sea-lawyer among them. Mainly for these reasons, though partly because I have known Aldeburgh and Aldeburgh men from my youth up, and have an unreasoning affection for both, I always ship an Aldeburgh crew, who are far preferable to any of the South Coast men usually found on board yachts. But their very virtues render them sometimes rather troublesome. Now, on board ship, if you only so much as think a thing aft, a bird in the air immediately carries it forward, and before that thing has properly taken shape in your own mind, you will find it being discussed in the forecastle in all its bearings. So it was that, when I felt so tempted by the easterly wind to run right away across the Bay without further waiting about the shores of England, the bird carried it forward. Horror and amazement seized upon half the crew. Tom and Jack and Bill all began to think mournfully on their wives, their sweethearts, and their grandmothers. They might at any moment, while under so desperate and bloody-minded a skipper as this, be parted for months from all that makes life worth having, be taken, not only to these here places in England, but also to them there places abroad, and be divorced for nobody knew how long from the splendours and amenities of that Heaven upon Earth, Aldeburgh. Flesh and blood couldn't 28 The Log of the 'Nereid: stand it. So one after another, they " wanted to speak to the " Governor," and one after another they explained that they couldn't possibly affront so fearful a prospect without once more looking upon Aldeburgh. At length a liberal and honourable compromise was effected. We signed articles for the cruise, and then I gave five of the hands a week's leave to go and embrace their relations and take a last fond look at the Aldeburgh watch-tower and beach-yawls. These five have now joyfully departed, and we are all happy again. Even I myself, though tied up to a buoy and without half my crew, am content ; for the wind has flown back again into the dirty old southern hank, and is now blowing from S.S.W. with another dose of rain ; so that I do not feel as though I were wasting any fair wind and fine weather. But, in the course of the proceedings, I have made the discovery that there are two kinds of week. There is the Working Week and the Leave Week. The Working Week extends from Monday morning to Saturday night, and contains six days and five nights. The Leave Week extends from Monday morning till Tuesday night, and contains nine days and eight nights. How the years and the months get on with such a mixed arrangement is, of course, their own look-out and that of the Astronomer Royal. * ;;: yf. * * # %. A long, low, black, mischievous-looking viper of a Torpedo- boat has come in for a few hours, and I have had a pleasant grimy half-hour on board of her. She is one of the first-class kind, and consequently of a far more serviceable character than the useless tin toys of the third-class ; and the Lieutenant who commands her believes in her most completely. He tells me he can run her at from twelve to fourteen knots in heavy weather against a head sea ; that the vibration is greatest when going half-speed, while at full speed it is barely perceptible ; that she is now, after having been hard at it during over a month, in better condition than ever she was ; and that he has Coastwise. 29 had nothing give out except the boiler tubes, which, being of iron, are easily affected by slight things, and, upon very slight provocation, will take to leaking. I also learn that, in the Service, it is considered that Yarrow's boilers are far better than Thorneycroft's, but that Thorney croft's engines are far better than Yarrow's ; and that a combination of Yarrow boiler with Thorneycroft engine would, for a Torpedo-boat, be per- fection. I never saw so uncomfortable a looking craft for her crew, nor one which it must be so impossible to keep clean, and what with Torpedo-tubes, conning-towers, and other fixtures about the deck, there is hardly room for- a foot anywhere ; so that it must be a service of difficulty to get about her on a dark night. But she is an ugly-looking customer, and her commander believes in her. Smiler,'go follard, sir go follard. I won t lave this nonsense.' 30 The Log of the 'Nereid.' It was Captain Weenie's voice (which, by the way, is tremendous), accompanied by much scratching and scraping, and an occasional plaintive whine from Smiler. Putting my head up out of the companion, I found Weenie engaged in solemnly dragging Smiler up and down the deck by one ear, while that unfortunate terrier was vainly endeavouring to escape her grip. " Why, what has poor Smiler done ? " said I. " He's velly naughty." " But what has he done ? " Weenie stopped for a moment in her career, still keeping hold of Smiler's ear, and reflected for a moment. Then, looking up at me out of her candid blue eyes, she replied, emphasizing her words by serious nods of her head " He said Pig and Beast." The Humours of Dartmouth. 31 VI. THE HUMOURS OF DARTMOUTH. DARTMOUTH, 29^ August, 1888. ARTMOUTH is a suburb of Dartmouth Regatta, and sister town to the Britannia. Dartmouth Regatta, as all geographers know, is the principal city of the three kingdoms, to which all reasonable persons not so destitute of proper intel- ligence as to live out of a yacht, make a yearly pilgrimage. Like Rome, it was not built in a day ; indeed, it takes four days to build, and it consists of a few barbers' poles stuck about the streets to show that we are en fete, and of a multitude of booths on the New Ground, wherein, as in a provincial Colonial Insti- tute, the higher aspirations of British and Colonial humanity are provided for in a mixed manner. There are rnerry-go- rounds, with afflicting steam-barrel organs, that grind one tune only during eighteen hours out of the twenty-four ; there are giants, dwarfs, skeleton men, headless women, and sheep with six legs ; there are fireworks ; there is an al fresco ball ; and this year there is to be a grand display of boxing, in furtherance of that national fisticuff revival which is to end in a fight for the championship in the Albert Hall. No wonder that statesmen, philosophers, and True British Tars flock to see so soul- inspiring a proof of the greatness of England, and the particular greatness of Dartmouth Regatta. The original Romulus of the city was, I believe, old Chalker, whilom postmaster. Chalker, after being for many years, as he said, " decimated by rheumatic " gout," is lost to us ; but local Caesars have succeeded him, 32 The Log of the 'Nereid. 9 and continue to keep Dartmouth Regatta the mistress of the yachting world. The Britannia is the famous old hulk where little boys are trained to become great Nelsons. A more charming, healthy, larky, well-mannered lot of little boys is to be found nowhere, nor boys better provided with instruction and sport. Their rowing and sailing boats, their steam-tender the Wave, their racquet and lawn-tennis courts, their bathing-place, and the Devonshire cream they have thrice a-week for tea, might move the envy of any boy at a shore-going public school ; and that these things do not spoil them is largely due, I imagine, to the fact that their studies are carried on, not under schoolmasters of the schoolmaster type, but under naval officers. In short the Britannia is (next of course to Dartmouth Regatta) one of the most satisfactory and encouraging sights in these islands. In aspect, Dartmouth is certainly a delightful spot, with its tall green-bosomed hills, its splendid secure harbour, and its quaint little streets. The tradesmen are not, as in many seaside places, determined to ruin their customers in ten days, and there is a general genial southern urbanity among all the broad- speaking men of the place. The women are usually tall and pretty, with the clearest complexion and the most limpid eyes. They are also very able-bodied and courageous. The young ladies row and sail and handle small craft altogether by them- selves, and many of them swim like otters. Only the other day, two very charming young ladies swam from above the Britannia down to the entrance of the harbour, being an hour in the water. In short, at Dartmouth, all the women are brave and all the men virtuous. The way of our little life on board, when in harbour, is this. At six o'clock in the morning we are all aroused from that deep black sleep which is only to be got on board ship, by the thumping and splashing overhead of bucketsful of water, and The Humours of Dartmouth. 33 the pattering of eight pair of naked feet over the operation of washing decks. This is a signal for me to turn out, tumble overboard, and have a bit of a swim ; but for the superior officers it is a signal to turn round for their second sleep. At about half-past seven, however, Captain Weenie's voice is generally heard, loudly singing her version of " Two " Lovely Black Eyes," picked up from Ted. This runs thus : " Stwolling happy Beffnal Gween, This gay child wiv gal between," and when sung, as Weenie sings it, with the power of a steam Syren, it is most effective as a dispeller of sleep and a prepara- tion for breakfast. Occasionally she varies this by another favourite ditty of hers, which runs " What are little gals made of ? Libbons and laces and sweet pletty faces, That's what little gals made of." But whatever the song, it generally has the effect of rousing all the superior officers to their eight o'clock breakfast, sometimes with, but occasionally without, the harbour luxury of milk. Then follow the officers' lessons, while Captain Weenie rampages about, makes secret excursions into the " fokes " to suborn Bill into giving her a surreptitious " bicky," torments Smiler about the deck, or (which is her great delight) steals a pencil wherewith to draw pre-Raphaelite " pickies," or (which is her greatest delight of all) abstracts a needle and sews away quietly and mischievously in a corner. After the one o'clock dinner comes a walk ashore, or a pull or sail in one of the boats, after which a period of idleness is devoted by the two boys to learning vulgar songs in the forecastle or to going aloft and playing about on the crosstrees, or shinning up the topmast. Tea is commonly an era of armed insurrection on the part of Weenie, who is but too often, at that time, deposed ! 34 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 from command by a coup d'etat, and sent to her Wailing-Place, the " Cry Corner," by the locker behind the door on the port side of the main cabin. Yesterday I came below at such a moment, and called for Weenie. After a period of silence, I heard from the Wailing-Place these words, slowly and solemnly pronounced " Don't speak to me. I'm being naughty." * * * * * * * Some old and valued friends of mine, called the Ancients, are the object of much scorn and obloquy for believing that the Sun is the chariot of a god drawn by godly horses. Kepler " discovered " that the planets moved round the sun in ellipses, and that each was presided over by a directing spirit. And then came the other great discoverers who make out that the planetary revolutions are governed, not by a spirit, but by " a law." Now what I want to know is this. W T hat con- ceivable difference does it make to me whether I am told to believe in a sun-god moving round the earth, in wandering spirits moving round the sun, or in a law which moves not at all ? I am no nearer to understanding the matter at last than I was at first, and the Astronomer-Royal himself is no nearer. Nay, as a matter of fact, and for dealing with such of my needs as are concerned with the matter, I understand it less, so that when I come to Nautical Astronomy I, in common with all men who want to make practical use of the thing, at once begin to deal with the sun as though he did move round the earth. * # # # * # * $oth August, 1888. All my hands (barring one whom I have replaced here) are back from the fascinations of Aldeburgh, and I am once more, like a repeating decimal, getting nearer at every step to being completely ready for sea, yet never quite arriving at it. For the excellent and faithful Griffin (influenced I suppose by that The Humours of Dartmouth. 35 restless spirit which makes even Aldeburgh men want to go home instead of contentedly pursuing a cruise) has announced that she too cannot tear herself away from Hammersmith for so long a period as this cruise may take, and that, in the polite language of the forecastle, she too feels it incumbent on her, and a duty to her family, to " sling her hook." Fortunately I have been able to replace her by Tom Cable's sister from the Heaven upon Earth, who is to arrive to-day, when I shall be another decimal nearer to readiness. When, after this, I have got a few navigating luxuries on board such as a station- pointer, an azimuth compass, and a patent sounding- machine and have filled up once again with water, coke, potatoes, and bread, I shall only want a fair wind. The proper seafaring view is always to start with the wind dead on end, because then any shift of wind makes it fairer ; but I want a fair wind all the time, and fine weather too. Wherefore, if the wind is not fair for one port, I go to another, and if the weather isn't fine, I make it so by running to port and tying myself up to a buoy. That is to say, when I can ; for part of the improving discipline of the sea is that you sometimes get caught, and can't do exactly what you would. c 2 36 The Leg of the 'Nereid.' VII. A START. AT SEA, ist September, 1888. ONE of the humours of Dartmouth Regatta was found this year in mooring an old clumbunghy which figured as a Committee-boat alongside of me, so that my chief prospect was the side of the said clumbunghy, while a flotilla of small boats, containing the local aristocracy, from the chief baker to the chief butcher, hung on to her and made access to my vessel a work of danger and difficulty. Another humour of the place, as I have found to my cost, consists in signing articles for a cruise, getting a suit of clothes made, and then refusing to join. The particular man I had engaged in an emergency to replace an Aldeburgh man, was a native of Dartmouth backed, not merely by one, but by several warm recommenda- tions. Yet the rascal, having put me, as I have said, to the expense of a suit of clothes, not only did not join, as he had engaged on Friday ; but, when I sent for him this morning, refused to join at all, on the ground, alleged by his wife, that he was " took bad." As I could not, of course, wait till he was took good again, I have had to start one hand short, with a stronger determination than before never to ship a regular yachtsman or anybody from a yachting port. -.;: * * * * '-' ist September, 9 p.m. The weather will certainly beat the prophets. Inside Dart- mouth all the signs pointed to a northerly wind. The barometer had risen slowly, and was high ; the thermometer had fallen A Start. 37 gradual!}', and was low ; the wind had gone round with the sun from S.W. through W., and was actually blowing from the north. It seemed therefore time for me to go, and accordingly I got a pluck out this morning at six. But the Dartmouth wind was a false one, and by the time I was well clear of the port, I found it no better than W. by S. to W.S.W., so that I could lie no better than S.S.W. But there was a fine breeze, and I stood on, in the expectation that it would draw more to the northward, till I found myself drawing in with the French coast to the eastward of Ushant. I have therefore gone about, and am now standing off to N.W., with a strong wind, a heavy sea, and the vessel going seven knots, comfort- ably enough, but plunging a good deal, and occasionally putting her nose into it. The effect of this upon the domestic arrangements has been disastrous. The children stand it marvellously well, and scramble or lie about the deck quite happily, being, apparently, hardly affected at all. But my women folk are lying limp, prostrate, and helpless in their berths. The result of this has been that I have had to put Captain Weenie to bed myself an operation which, I need hardly say, had to be done at the very time I was trying to pick out a good star for a twilight observa- tion. After a deadly struggle with Weenie's clothes, during which we occasionally went in a heap together down to leeward (to Weenie's great delight, who thought it part of the game), and the strangest discoveries as to which part of a baby's clothes come off first, and how you get any of them off at all, I have come to the conclusion that nursing and navigation should be kept separate. They are. both, no doubt, equally admirable and indispensable ; but when you want to get a meridian altitude of Aldebaran, it is awkward to have to leave your sextant and star to take care of each other in order to find out which end of a petticoat comes off first, and how on earth suspenders are cast adrift from stockings. Of course I had to 38 The Log of the 'Nereid: give up Aldebaran altogether not that it mattered much, for the sky was so thickly clouded that, as it turned out, I could not have shot him anyhow. Sunday, 2nd September. In Lat., by account, 48 52' o" N., Long. 4 49' o" W. The \\ind still disappoints my expectations by sticking to W.S.W. with a tendency to souther, and it is therefore dead on end, having, out of the thirty-two points of the compass open to it, chosen the very point to blow from to which I wish to steer. All night I was clawing to the westward in two-hour boards off this dangerous French coast, but by two o'clock this afternoon I had got no further than L'Abervrach, which we approached to within five miles of the outlying rocks of the He Vierge, and then stood off again. The weather now began to grow markedly worse, the sea to increase, and the sky to look very thick of rain and promising of fog. First I housed my foretopmast ; then, as things grew worse, I took in my maintopsail, which I had carried thus far, and housed my maintopmast. Next I hauled down a reef in my mainsail, and felt more like business. But wind and sea continued to increase, the thick rain that always hangs about this Ushant came down in an afflicting stream ; and at last, with night coming on, a contrary wind, and two expiring women folk aft, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing to be gained by jamming at it longer, and resolved to bear up for the Lizard. This I did, and turned in much disgusted ; but at eleven I was roused with the welcome news that the wind had veered to N.W. I therefore went about, and, for the first time, was able to lay my course. * # * * * * # I have long wondered what it can possibly be that makes people sea-sick on a ship while they are never land-sick in a house. I am inclined to set it down to that perverse, lubberly, A Start. 39 shore-going habit of mind which makes all landsmen do every- thing in the wrong way and at the wrong moment ; and feeling for them that natural compassion which every well-regulated mind must experience for those who have been deprived of the blessings of a seafaring education, I have, on various occasions, spent much time and reasoning in pointing out the mistake they made. I explain what indeed hardly seems to require explanation that a ship is the most uncomfortable of all places wherein to be sick, and the time when a gale of wind is blowing, a heavy sea running, and all the moveables cruising about the cabins, the most inconvenient moment for, strange to say, this is the moment they always choose to be sickest! I then, gently but firmly, point out to them that, if they want to be sick at all, the best place to indulge in that luxury is a house ashore, with everything comfortably still, and a dozen doctors handy to cure them of sickness by giving them fits, or if need be, to sign a death certificate. There seems to me to be absolutely no flaw whatever in the argument ; yet I have never found it bring conviction ; and in one instance it only produced from a sea- sick Colonel, not otherwise rude or illogical, a groaning request that I would " shut up and throw him overboard." * ****** Monday, $rd September, Lat. 48 48' 37" N., Long. 5 31' 8" W. This has been quite an encouraging day. My expected N.W. wind has been blowing steadily, though not strongly ; we have had a good sun, which has enabled me to get sights, no* only for latitude at midday, but also for longitude, and, in addition to that, for that best of all methods of getting your position at sea double altitudes, worked into Sumner lines or lines of bearing. On this I mean some day to write a short treatise in fourteen or fifteen volumes ; and improve both on Rosser's and Johnson's methods ; but, meantime, I am not quite so handy at it as at the older ways, for one never can quite 40 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 know all about everything and be able to do all things equally well without being a Member of Parliament. So I commend double altitudes to Sir William Thompson (by the way, I wish he could sell his compasses and sounding-machines a little cheaper), and resume my log. The weather has been fine, the wind strengthening and well on the quarter, all our kites flying again, and the vessel kept away S.W. for Finisterre, and gilling along six knots. The play of light and colour and shape in the clouds has been marvellous, the sea has taken the deep shining blue, freckled with white splashes of foam, that shows one is out of soundings, and makes one feel comfortable at being clear of the land, and things look quite promising. The women folk are, as I under- stand from Bill Knight, who has had to turn and act as lady's maid, a shade better, and begin to think it will be possible to survive after all. $rd September. Weenie's vocabulary of commination arranged for the use of brothers and sisters is, I fear, being greatly expanded and enlarged by sea air. "Pig" and "beast" were once her very highest flights. From that she has got to " you beastly girl," from that again to " you 'gusting little monkey," and to-day, Geoffrey having, in the course of a game of romps on the deck, greatly offended her, I suddenly heard her scream and shout at him, " You boss-eyed boy." She has learned these elegant additions all by herself; yet if I were to take herself and myself together, I don't suppose I could teach her the use of logarithms. * # * * * :;- * Tuesday, ^tk September, Lat. 47 5' 18" N., Long. 6 32' 45" W. Another day of light winds and fine weather, finer weather indeed than I have seen in England any time this summer. But A Start. 41 for the long, gentle, Atlantic swell coming from the westward, the splendid, ever changing, ever tender panorama of cloud and sky, and the blessed absence of letters, newspapers, and other worries, one might fancy oneself still in Dartmouth Harbour, so steady is the vessel, as she gradually slides through the water before a light westerly breeze to the S W. at from four to five knots. The women folk have, in this state of things, not only deter- mined to live on for the present, but have been bowsed up on deck by Bill, and have, this evening, made a first serious attempt at a regular meal. Meantime, the voice of Weenie has resounded through the ship every half-hour, crying " Knight, ** give me some bwead 'n butter," while she cruises about the decks, holding on by the boats, which she respectively names the "Gutter" and the "Pig," trolling snatches of her favourite vulgar songs. The very last one runs thus : " Now boys, I say, Keep ve gals away, And give vem lots of woom ; For when you are wed Vey will bang you on ve head Wiv ve bald-headed end of ve broom," which strikes me as being based on a quite profound knowledge of modern life. Meanwhile, we have been doing, I flatter myself, some beautiful things in navigation, and I have spent improving hours in knocking about logarithms, decimals, azimuths, chrono- meters, and observations, and getting them to fall into line. There is not much time to be dull at sea if you do anything approaching to your whole duty as a navigator ; and when, as in my case, you have to mind the baby besides, the time passes with unexampled rapidity. But I have had some adventitious assistance in keeping the superior officers quiet ; for yesterday we saw a Shark, and to-day we passed a shoal of Whales who were spouting splendidly and blowing clouds of spray all round 42 The Log of the 'Nereid.' us, while one actually showed us his own self, about as long as the ship, and set all the youngsters writing to their grandfather of the wonders of the deep. It is a tradition of Aldeburgh that the Isle of Wight was first discovered a tew years ago by an Aldeburgh man. It is needless to say that the inhabitants of the Island, having hitherto had no communication with the Heaven upon earth of the East Coast, were not civilised ; in facl they were scantily attired in their native ignorance, lived on roots and berries, and walked on their hands and feet. The Aldeburgh man, prompted by the humanity which has distinguished the East Coast from the days of St. Edmund, at once took them in hand, and began by explaining to them that the proper way to wa'k was on the feet alone. The Isle of Wight men were dumb-foundered at this, to them, entirely new revelation, and, with one accord, holding out their hands, said : " Well, then, what are these here for ? " Across the Bay. 43 w VIII. ACROSS THE BAY. AT SEA, Wednesday, $th Septembtr, 1888. Lat. 45 56- 60" N., Long. 7 21' W. E have been heaving about all day in a calm, rolling to the long western swell, monotonously thrashing our sails with the reef points, and making all those creaking, groaning, rumbling noises whereby a ship complains of want of wind. We have seen several grimy steamers, a tailor-bird, some stormy petrels, and two sharks, which have afforded a chance of keeping Weenie from attempts to fall overboard, by setting her to fish for them with a long piece of string, to which she has tied, by way of bait, her boatswain's whistle, that being the most desirable thing she knows of, and consequently, as she reasons, the most attractive thing to a shark. The sun has been scorching, the sky almost cloudless, and the sea an unruffled succession of long waves, and I have been improving the afternoon by teaching Ned how to work out the longitude by sun chronometer. Thursday, 6th September. Lat. 45 30' 39" N., Long. 7 44' 15" W. This morning the Bay was not only absolutely calm, but also, as I have never yet seen it (and I have crossed it a good few times), absolutely without any swell whatever, so that one might have been on the Thames. But this evening things are very different. As the day advanced, a light breeze sprang up from N.E., whereat I rejoiced, and set my squaresail. But the 44 The Log of the 'Nereid.' breeze has increased to a fresh wind, a heavy beam sea has run up in a few hours, and I hauled down my foresail and main- topsail, and thought I had better get in my mainsail and set the trysail. But, not liking to lose a good run, I left it standing with the squaresail, and the vessel tore through the water till I wondered if something wouldn't go. Something has gone, in the shape of the squaresail sheet (a stout and new bit of rope), so I have stowed that sail anyhow. The wind increases every moment, and either we shall make a fine run, or we are in for a job. Satuyday, 8th September. Lat. 41 22' 42" N., Long. 9 37' 15" W. We were in for a job. In facft, I have been too busy to write till now, and too anxious ; for I hate bad weather, and I never knew anybody but a poet or a landsmen who didn't. On Friday evening the wind went on strengthening till it blew half a gale, with a very heavy sea, and the vessel, with that tremendous main-boom eased off on her port quarter and weighing her down like a lever, rolled hugely as she flew over the waves and made hay of everything loose below. At mid- night I hauled down two reefs in that mainsail, cursed the boom, repented that I had not replaced it by the trysail, and ran on, being indeed desirous to cover the ground. Then I had to gybe over, which was not precisely a joke ; and at daybreak yesterday I did what I ought to have done twelve hours earlier stowed the mainsail and secured that infernal boom amid- ships, and set my nice snug, jib-headed trysail, together with single-reefed foresail and standing jib. The difference it made was marvellous, and, although the wind was still increasing, the ship now ran as easy as an old shoe. And she did run with a will too nine, ten, and at last thirteen and a-half knots by the patent log. In the afternoon it was blowing a whole gale Across the Bay. 45 from N.E., with a hard sky, a high and steady barometer, and a sea like a mountain. But it was a fair wind, and, having got that boom off her, she was snug enough, and I still stood on. The sea was enough to frighten you, and the big waves rolled after us, one of them occasionally looking close in over the quarter, while now and again we took in a little flop of green water over the rail which washed about one's legs till it ran off again through the scuppers. But there was nothing to hurt. Meantime things below were dismal enough. To keep the water from getting into the cabins, or a sea, if we should ship one, from smashing through the glass, I had had the canvas covers put on all the skylights, while the companion was closed over, so that the cabins were dark and miserable. The howling of the storm overhead, the groaning of the timbers, the creaking of bulkheads, the swish-swash of water on the deck, and every now and then a great bang from the side-blow of a wave, went on ceaselessly, and the only person who seemed at all to enjoy herself was Weenie. Finding it impossible for once to get attention from me, she annexed Bill Knight, and passed several hours sitting on his knee and sucking her Golly-Golly in the dark forecastle. Then she took him into the main-cabin, and made him play at building houses with dominoes on the cabin floor ; but finding this pall, she requisitioned the other three children, and at the worst of the breeze, just before we hove to, the four of them were filling the ship with screams of delight and shouts of laughter over a grand new game of skittles, with sofa cushions for balls and Weenie for a skittle. The way that child keeps her legs when everybody and everything else is being flung about is quite marvellous. It is needless to say that the villain Smiler, after being washed out of his kennel and howling disconsolately, found his way below as all dogs always do in bad weather and 46 The Log of the l Nereid: was discovered this morning coiled away asleep in one of the cabins. As dark approached, and no moon to look for, I began to ask myself how long I dare run on. The gale was still increasing, and I began to fear that, if I ran too long, I might not be able to heave her to. Running in heavy weather is very anxious work. The strain on everything is tremendous, and though you know every spar and every rope in the ship never so well, and have got them all perfectly good, you never know when the breaking-point of one of them will not be reached, while you do know that it is being approached every moment, and every moment expect something to go. I had already carried away two fore-runner hooks (which I replaced by shackles) and the boom guy, a piece of stout, wrought, flawless iron an inch in diameter being pulled asunder as though it had been a carrot ; and the prospect of carrying away something else in the dark was not pleasant. At six, therefore, I lowered my foresail (close-reefing it at the same time in case of wanting it again), took in my jib, set a double-reefed staysail, and, under that and the trysail, rounded her to on the starboard tack. She came to beautifully, without taking a cupful of water on board, and then lay like a duck, breasting the big billows and sliding down their long sides, while the wind howled through her. Then I felt comfortable, went below, had dinner, and soon turned in. At five this morning I found the weather had moderated somewhat, so I filled on her again, ran up my foresail and standing jib, and cracked along again, going twelve knots. The sea was still high and rather hollow, and once or twice one of them looked as if it must come aboard over the quarter. One flop indeed did catch us. I was standing by the com- panion, and saw it coming. I called to the helmsman to keep her away a bit, and sprang up for the runner, drawing my legs ' Keep her away, Bill.' Across the Bay. 47 up under me ; but the wave was too quick for me, and caught me nicely over head and shoulders, running down my neck and into my sea-boots down to my toes. As it washed about the decks, I heard John growling, " That serves a fellow right. " I've had my oilies on all night, and we never shipped no " water, and as soon as I takes 'em off I gets wet," wherewith he proceeded to shake himself and go on washing decks. As the day advanced, however, things got better and better, till I shook out my reefs, and this evening have got all my kites flying again including even the mainsail and am running before quite a light breeze and in smooth water. Sunday, gth September. Lat. 39 35' 28" N., Long. 9 54' o" W. A very severe thunderstorm passed right over us at six this morning, and since then we have had the most paltry, loitering weather fine enough indeed, but shocking for making a passage. Not having made either Ushant or Finisterre, or indeed any- thing at all, and being now a good berth off the Portuguese coast, I edged in a bit, expecting to make the Darlings light after dark ; and, sure enough, at seven o'clock I did so, bearing, as I anticipated, exactly east. I was thus confirmed as to the exactitude of my navigation since we left the Start, and was proportionately pleased with myself and, whatis more important, with my chronometer, and stood on for the Rock of Lisbon, which, however, we are not likely to see soon, for it has now fallen a flat calm. Wednesday, i2th September. OFF CAPE ST. VINCENT. The worst of these fine weather latitudes is that you can't get any wind in them, and we have been crawling along the last three days under a sweltering sun, doing sometimes a knot or two, but more often nothing at all, until I have begun to 48 The Log of the 'Nereid.' think we shall never get anywhere, and to be meditating putting the ship's company on an allowance of water. The only consolation besides the lovely weather is that there are no letters to answer and no daily newspapers to read, and consequently no such irritating discoveries to make as I constantly make in England, when, after studying a paper very attentively for a long time, I suddenly find out that it is last Wednesday's instead of this Wednesday's sheet. They are all so exactly like. We have been getting things up to air and dry in the sun, and Weenie is now parading the deck in a full-dress Naval Reserve uniform (the waist whereof just reaches her heels), surmounted by a cocked hat and epaulettes, and clamouring for what she calls " a Onion Jack " to complete the array. ?;: >(c :|: s)c :;c >(c :]< Saturday, i$th September. OFF TARIFA POINT, STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR. Calm has succeeded calm, and we have been drifting and flapping about in the most irritating way, having come three- quarters of the way in a week, and then taken another week to cover the remaining quarter. Nor do I believe we should ever have got anywhere but for a fortunate incident which occurred yesterday. A dolphin came up to mock at us, and played alongside, till at last we got up our " grains," or barbed fish-spear, speared him as he played about in his beautiful blue and yellow coat, ate him in the forecastle, and nailed his tail, after the traditions of the sea, on the jibboom end in guise of wings. Since then we have had a little more wind indeed, most of last night and all to-day we have been jamming up against a hard and strong Levanter, with a sea like a cliff, between Trafalgar on the European and Spartel on the African side, till at last we have fetched thus far, made Europa light, and have every prospect of getting into Gibraltar during the night. Across the Bay. 49 GIBRALTAR, Saturday, 22nd September. The aspect, the habits, and the customs of Gibraltar seem never to vary; and they are to-day the same as I remember them from my youth up the Rock being, in fact, a permanently established embodiment of the traditions of England's fighting days. The British subaltern, with his clean face and his bull- pup, his pony, his lawn-tennis, and his other activities, still possesses the streets ; the pretty little English ladies turn out in the cooler afternoon hours for their little ride ; and the lean, brown, wiry Spaniards troop in and out of the town daily to and from that abundant work which the Rock affords. The grand feature of the place, and the most delightful, is the Market, piled up with Pomegranates, Bananas, Brevas, Sweet Potatoes, Melons, and every kind of rich-coloured fruit and vegetable (at about one-tenth of English prices), and ^peopled with Moors, Jews, Maltese, Spaniards, and every other variety of native. The other feature of the place is the Time-Ball. The point about this is that it doesn't work. There is the Tower, and there is the Time-Ball, and the telegraph wire and all the apparatus but through some red-tape dispute, there is nobody to work it, and for something like a year it has remained idle and useless. To the great disgrace of England, the Rock lacks, without any excuse, this most necessary nautical institution especially necessary in a place situated as is Gibraltar. Ships of all kinds are daily arriving from the most distant parts all of them urgently needing the time for their chronometers, on which they depend for their longitude and on which the safety of the ship may hang yet this institution of the Time-Ball, fully established and ready as it is, remains a useless mockery. It is most discreditable to us, and is a matter which urgently requires to be set right. 50 The Log of the 'Nereid.' IX. GIBRALTAR TO ALGIERS. GIBRALTAR, Wednesday, 26th September, 1888. THE humours of Gibraltar consist just now in heat and smells, both of which are tremendous. With the easterly wind now prevailing, there is not a movement of air on the inhabited western side of the Rock, and the stifling heat is pervaded by odours that hang about it like a thick and nauseous pall. The only thing that is tolerable is the water, which is so warm and genial that it is a pleasure to swim about in it. But, having learnt that a shark was seen a week ago close to where we are lying, I have somewhat cooled on this, and my morning's plunge overboard is now reduced to a very summary dive in and out again. By a careful provision of those assassins known as Sanitary Authorities, the main sewer falls into the sea just by the end of the New Mole, inside which we are lying, together with the Grappler gunboat ; and we both have cause to know it. The Gvapplev has some ten men in hospital with fever, and I, who intended to sail three days ago, have had quite an outbreak of sickness among my crew. Four days ago two of them were taken with diarrhoea and vomiting, and the next morning burly, rosy Bill Knight informed me that he " felt like a corpse." I served out ounce doses of castor-oil all round, followed by chlorodyne, which produced an improve- ment ; but yesterday another hand was seized with a pain in his lungs, took to his hammock, and told me he " felt like a ball of " fire." His pulse was high, and he seemed so very ill indeed that I did not like to trust to my own medical skill, so I appealed to a doctor, who pronounced the man to be suffering Gibraltar to Algiers. 51 from inflammation of the lungs, and recommended me to send him ashore to the hospital. This I have done. But this leaves me two hands short, so I have been scouring Gibraltar to engage two new men. It seems that there are absolutely no seamen to be had here nothing but a few firemen and coal- trimmers, and most of them without discharges. I have, how- ever, shipped one of them who frankly avows that he ran from a steamer at a port forty miles distant, and walked the forty miles into Gibraltar. He is small and dirty, and looks like a sewer-rat in reduced circumstances ; but as it is the best we can do, we must try to feed and brush him up into some kind of looks and uses. * # # * * * * A smart little Austrian man-of-war has arrived here on her way home from a year's cruise ; and, as we have had some nautical business together over a question of buoys, we have naturally made friends with the immediate result that Captain Weenie has taken captive the whole of the Austrian officers and crew, who had in their long absence from home almost ceased to believe in the existence of babies, and who are con- sequently immeasurably delighted with her. She fell in love with the Captain at sight, and screamed till I let her go back to his ship with him alone, when the whole of his fine big Dalmatian crew fell down and adored her, and loaded her with simple kindly presents, in addition to which she was allowed to play with their two tame monkeys. I myself have dined on board with the officers, whom I found to be as nearly as possible like naval officers of all nations, who are all similar and all charming through having the nonsense knocked out of them, and good, serious, simple-minded notions put into them, by the great, loving mother, the Sea. They have shown me their collection of photographs, have told me of their wives and children and sisters, have urged me to let them tow me as far as Sicily, and have given me valuable hints as to Mediterranean D 2 52 The Log of the 'Nereid.' weather, while the Navigating Lieutenant has entered with me into the latest phases of the highest problems of navigation, and has left me with a high opinion of the training, in this respect, of Austrian officers. They are, indeed, altogether delightful, and we are sorry to lose them. * * * * # # s;c AT SEA, Thursday, 2jth September. Gibraltar in this autumn weather, and with a persistent Levanter blowing, is a place in which it seems impossible even to breathe ; and, having been up to hospital this morning, found my sick hand better, and left word for him to be sent after me, I came to the conclusion that it would be better to face a contrary wind, or even a calm, outside, than any more stifling under the Rock and so I got a pluck out at noon ; and found both the contrary wind and the calm. The former lashed us a couple of hours, the latter is still with us, and, lying as we are, utterly helpless, like a log on the water, in the very jaws of the Straits, we are certain to be worried by those dreadful steamers, who are here all clustered together on the same lines, and I am probably in for a whole night on deck. Still, we can breathe here, which is a comfort. * # * # * * >;- AT SEA, Friday, zSth September. Lat. 35 58' 58" N., Long. 4 35' 15. W. It has been an anxious night. As soon as the sun went down and there was darkness enough to see a light, there popped up lights all round us and every one of them -a steam- boat showing first her masthead light, then her green or her red, and ending by passing close at high speed. One after another, as the dark hours went on, we watched them come up with misgiving, and go clear with relief; but at last one came which really made me jump. She appeared from West, and as I watched her, and saw her white light rising brighter and Gibraltar to Algiers. 53 brighter, I noted that she did not change her bearing, so that it was clear she was coming directly for us. And so indeed she was. After a time we saw her red light ; but still she did not change her bearing, and through the calm still night we could hear the throb of her engines drawing nearer and louder. We were lying anyhow, with our head all round the compass, and she was coming up on our starboard beam. I showed a light from my stern ; but still she came on direct for us, and at last we could dimly see the great black mass of her hull within a couple of hundred yards. I called for a blue light and lit it, to wake up her look-out. It had that effect, for in a moment she showed us her green light, which showed that she had star- boarded her helm, and in another moment she had passed under our stern within a few yards of us. It was a near shave. Nor was this the end of our worries ; for at eleven o'clock a thick fog suddenly covered the sea, and then we only heard the steamers without seeing them, which was worse. Steam whistles seemed to fill the air, and a second steamer now shaved us, so close as to give us her swell, without sounding any whistle at all, though, judging by the rapidity with which we heard and then lost the throb of her screw, she was going eight or ten knots. The whole of the first and second watches were full of these trepidations, but just before daybreak the fog cleared off as suddenly as it had risen, and I turned in for a little rest. It has been a flat still calm all day, and we have not sailed a mile, though the easterly current which runs here has been setting us towards our port at the rate of about a mile an hour. The heat is very great indeed, not only as registered by the thermometer, which is close upon 80, but also because there is absolutely no " bite " or freshness in the air. The Log of the 'Nereid.' X. THE PIRATE CITY. Saturday, 2gtk September. Lat. 35 57' 8" N., Long. 4 10' o" W. A NOTHER day of flat calm and dead heat. Once or twice JLJL there has been a little draught from N.E., but, by the time we got steerage way on the vessel, it always dropped again and left us helpless. Happily we are a good piece off the land, being indeed about halfway between the Spanish coast and the African shore, and to-night we shall be less in the track of the steamboats. # * * # * :]: * Weenie, who trots about barefooted and tyrannical as ever, has hit upon a new method of circumventing her enemies. She has erected her Golly-Golly into a dramatic personage, whom she has taken under her protection, and whose desires she consults on every occasion. Thus she declares at intervals that Golly is hungry and wants a biscuit, that Golly wants to go on deck all by himself, and to do various other things, all of which are forbidden. This evening, when it came to the nightly difficulty of getting her to bed, Jane informed her that Golly wanted to go to sleep. Weenie was equal to the occasion. " Golly," she said, addressing the dirty old bit of flannel, " do you want to go to bye-bye ? " Then, answering in a remote, whispered high falsetto, she continued, " No ; I don't " want to go bye-bye." " There, Jane," said she ; " Golly doesn't want to go." The Pirate City. 55 And when she was nevertheless undressed and deposited in her berth, she continued, until she fell asleep, to protest, not on her own account, but on account of the evilly-intreated Golly. * # * -: * # * Sunday, yyth September. Lat. 36 14' 2" N., Long. 3 41' 45" W. The calm lasted till the end of the morning watch this morning three whole days since we left Gibraltar and in the night we had another thick fog, which, as before, sprang up suddenly, and as suddenly disappeared at daybreak, though happily without bringing this time any steamers near to us. Then a little air came from W., which has strengthened, till we are now, with all sail set, doing seven knots. " Bill, have you got any preserved fish on board ? " " Well, there's some tins in the locker marked ' Fins.' I " don't know what they are." These turned out to be " haricots verts fins " ; but I have been unable to convince Bill that they are a vegetable and not a fish. * * * # * * Monday, ist Ofiober. Lat. 36 24' 49" N., Long. o 23' 30" W. The westerly breeze has stood by us and improved, so that we have made a fair run of 160 miles, and are now going over nine knots, under mainsail, maintopsail, foresail, and square- sail. We have this evening made Cape Tenez, and if the breeze stands, shall be in Algiers to-morrow morning. * * * * * * * ALGIERS, Tuesday, 2nd Oftober. The good breeze has stood by us, the night was fine, clear, and starlight, and we ran past Shershel light, made Cape Caxine early this morning, and by ten o'clock were abreast of 56 The Log of the 'Nereid.' the Cape. The wind was fresh and reviving from S.W., but, on rounding the Cape and opening Algiers, there came all at once a wind from S. so hot that it felt like a blast from the mouth of a furnace. This was our first taste of that Algerian luxury, the scirroco or desert wind, and it was a scorcher. A scorcher indeed it still is, now that we are inside the mole and at anchor ; indeed, even the natives hold it to be of quite rare severity. We sailed into port a little before noon, just five days out from Gibraltar, whereof three were calm. On the other hand, I reckon that the current has done over 100 miles for us out of the 530. sfc >;c ;| -Jc # ;',c t'f ALGIERS, tfh Ofiober, 1888. In confirmation of what was considered my outrageous declaration to the French authorities at Dieppe, that a pilot is an extra danger on board a vessel, I must relate what hap- pened to me here. The port of Algiers is formed by two stone jetties, one running out about south and the other about north. I was bound in with the wind about S.W., and in order to have all that information as to where to anchor which a pilot is alone useful to give, I hoisted my Jack. This produced no effect till I was just at the entrance, when a boat came off and endowed me with a pilot. I ascertained from him that the place to anchor was just inside the south jetty, to the southward of the entrance and having learnt this, I ought to have thanked him and sent him away. But, instead of this, I allowed him to remain, and to do after the manner of pilots that is to say, to give directions as to the handling of a vessel of whose capa- bilities, powers, and weaknesses he knows nothing, and which he has seen for the first time. Whereupon this is what happened. Close to the south jetty there lay at anchor a little yawl, and a good berth from her, nearly in the same line, but The Pirate City. 57 farther to the northward, a French gunboat lay fast to a buoy. As I went in therefore, close-hauled, these two lay on my port or left hand, but the gunboat nearer ahead than the yawl ; and once inside the mole-heads, the simple manoeuvre I had to perform in order to come to my anchorage in a seamanlike manner was to stand over on the port tack far enough to west- ward, then to go about, to run down on the starboard tack short of the yawl, then to shoot up in the wind and let go my anchor. And had we had no pilot on board to interfere with us, I will undertake to say that we should have done this with the greatest precision. But when I proposed to go about, and had indeed already given the word to do so, the pilot declared that we were not far enough, and must stand on, upon the port tack, a little farther. Accordingly we filled on her again, and stood on till we were well across the gunboat. Here, said the pilot, was the time to go about, and we accordingly once more put the helm down. But the breeze fell light just then, the pilot's big boat was hanging off our weather beam holding us off the wind and the vessel hung in stays, settling down meanwhile on to the gunboat. That wouldn't do at all, and there was no time to wait and see whether she would end by being persuaded round by the flattening out of the head sails. Once again therefore we shoved our helm up. " Is there room," I asked of the pilot, " for us to wear round the yawl, between " her and the mole ? " He said there was ; wherefore, leaving the gunboat on our port hand, instead of our starboard hand, as had been the intention, and as was the proper way, we proceeded to wear the ship in lieu of tacking her. As we came up with the yawl, and began to open the space between her and the mole, I saw to my horror that there was not my ship's length between them. But it was then too late to do anything but try it. Ned was fortunately at the helm. " Ned," said I, " we're in a mess. We shall certainly go on to the mole, but " run it as fine as you can" and then began to wonder how 58 The Log of the 'Nereid.' much hammering she would stand on that jagged heap of stones, and how long it would take us to get a line away to a buoy I saw. We shaved the yawl's bowsprit by really only a few inches, the Nereid hung a moment, and when she came round, and I looked over the stern, I declare there was not a foot of water between her and the mole. But happily she touched nothing. And now, being once more clear, we paid no further attention whatever to the pilot, but did exactly what we should have done at first, and came up to our anchorage in as neat a fashion as could be desired. To add to my vexation at all this, I saw the whole of the officers of the French gunboat watching my proceedings with professional interest from their own deck. Later in the day I went on board that gunboat, and took an opportunity to refer to what had occurred, meaning to explain and to excuse the unhandiness of our conduct. " Oh, yes," replied the officer, " we saw your manoeuvre, and greatly admired it and the " cleverness with which you performed it." Hereupon I said no more. Moral : Beware of pilots. The Pirate City which seventy years ago levied contribu- tions on all the Powers of Europe ; which kept thousands of Christians in slavery and grew magnificent on the fruits of their labours ; whose pirate vessels captured ships as far away as in the chops of the English Channel, and even once carried away captive all the population of the Irish town of Baltimore the Pirate City has become Frenchified and almost Parisianised. It abounds in cafes, restaurants, and hotels, the red-legged Infantry of France tramp along its streets, and the French Douanier reigns upon its shore. Yet the remains of the Pirate nest are here in the Moorish quarter of the city ; a triangular patch of snow-white houses lying on the steep side of the hill ; a labyrinth of narrow, steep, cool lanes, peopled with splendid, The Pirate City. 59 turbaned Moors, veiled Eastern women, and picturesque Aladdins playing at every corner. The dignity and the amia- bility of these good people are equally remarkable. They sit placidly in the little holes in the wall that serve them for shops, stitching away at embroidery, cobbling at shoes, or presiding calmly over their little stock of fruits or other eatables and they seem always to have a kindly smile for the stranger. The insides of most of the houses, as we can see like the insides of in*: mosques are splendid with twisted pillars of Numidian marble, cool with the plash of fountains, and still so refreshing a contrast to the heat outside as to enable one to guess how delightful they must have been when their owners were still (thanks to the Christian slaves) men of wealth and leisure. One could pass days in these narrow lanes, so full of life and colour and interest are they. When we return to the French quarter it is very different. Every Frenchman here seems to wear in his aspect, and every one of them, if you speak with him, will express, a mild protest against being here at all here, so far from the beloved Boule- vards. " I do not belong," he seems to say, " to this hole, but " to Paris. I am not one of these, but one of the angels from " there above, here by an accident which will soon be over." In short, he is just like the Aldeburgh man whom an adverse Fortune has compelled to go to " them there places," and only lives on the hope of soon going out of them again. It is surprising how near an imitation of Paris has been achieved, for these banished angels, out of the Pirate City. The hotels are good and the cookery so excellent that I have but now discovered the fact that, since I left England, I have never done more than eat, and that only now have I begun to dine again. Whether, however, it is not far better merely to eat than it is to dine, is another question. I incline to think that it is ; but I don't mind dining occasionally ; and here you can do it well, while the wine of the country at lod. a bottle is, 60 The Log of the 'Nereid.' to my mind, far better as certainly it is far purer than all the so-called claret fabricated in the Medoc out of foreign vintages and chemicals. So good is this wine indeed that I have laid in a provision of it to last out the cruise. # # * * * * * One of the best places here is the Turkish bath a smaller Jermyn Street Hammam, evidently built in the days of Pirate magnificence, and enriched with fine marble pillars and floor. Hither I go every morning, and here, for the small sum of ten- pence (though as a foreign magnifico I always give twenty pence there seems to be no regular charge), I am bathed and shampooed in a manner so complete and so refreshing as those can have no idea of who only know Turkish baths and sham- pooing from English experience. English shampooers are like men who have learnt to play the fiddle without a master ; these shampooers are the inheritors of generations of traditions the finished musicians of the bath, who press and punch and stretch out of one's hot, tired frame the most refreshing harmony, so that one feels content with oneself and all mankind, and ready for anything. We have much to learn from the East. Dignity is one thing. Personal cleanliness is another. Bona. 6 1 XL BONA. OFF BONA, Sunday, jth Ofiober, 1888. YESTERDAY morning at eleven o'clock we sailed out of Algiers mole with a fine breeze from the westward, and here we are at eight o'clock this evening hove to, waiting for a pilot, a mile off Bona, 270 miles to the eastward of Algiers, and nearly halfway thence to Malta not a bad run for one day and nine hours. Most of the way we carried our big mainsail and maintopsail, under which, with the squaresail, she has been doing at times within a fraction of ten knots, with a heavy following sea running ; but this afternoon the wind so increased and the weather looked so threatening that at three o'clock I took the mainsail off her, snugged her down to squaresail and main trysail, and got my boats on deck. Then came squalls of rain the very first rain we have had, barring a thunderstorm off Lisbon, since we left England over a month ago and, as we drew in to the high land of Cape de Garde, strong puffs in the squalls. And now, as it is pitch dark, as we none of us were ever here before, and as we can't make out the entrance lights among all those before us, nor indeed make out anything concerning them except that they are not as described in the sailing directions, I am burning blue lights and showing a flare-up for a pilot. But none has come off so far, and as we have got bottom at six fathoms, I shall let go my anchor and wait till daylight. Monday, 8th October. Of course I had scarcely let go my anchor when a pilot 62 The Log of the l Nereid.' came off. I told him to come back at daybreak, which he did, and we are now inside the mole of this very fine harbour and very pretty little place. Bona itself is not interesting, being indeed exactly like any small French provincial town, and without any discoverable Arab quarter at all, though full of Arabs. The mountains, which quite remind one of Scotland, come steep down almost to the shore, and there seems to be a considerable trade ; but it is all far less interesting than Algiers. BONA, Tuesday^ gth October. I have often had occasion to deplore the careless manner in which land has been left lying about in the wrong places, and an instance of this is furnished by the Island of Galita, which, for some reason no doubt good, but altogether beyond my comprehension, has been stuck down twenty miles from the African coast, between that coast and Sardinia, and just where one has to turn the corner of Tunis at Cape Bon, in order to pass between Sicily and Pantellaria and to get to Malta. Now, from Bona the nearest way is to pass inside this Island of Galita ; but it is a nasty place, with all kinds of currents running in all kinds of directions round it and on to it ; and it has no light. Hence it is important to get a sight of the island by daylight ; and, as it lies six-and-sixty miles from Bona, the manifestly prudent course is to start from Bona at such a time as to give one the best chance of making it before dark or, in other words, to start hence with a fair wind at daybreak. That is, in fact, what I did this morning. There was still a heavy swell rolling in from the northward, which is held to be hereabouts a sure sign of northerly gales ; but the wind in the bay was S.W., and I imagined it would be, at the worst, N.W. outside, and therefore a fair wind for us. We got ready there- fore at five o'clock this morning, and it was a little after six when we sailed out of the mole-heads before the light S.W. breeze. The sky, however, looked very threatening to the Bona. 63 northward, and when we got to lose the shelter of Cape de Garde we came into a long, deep, heavy swell, which made us roll most disagreeably. As we proceeded, the swell got worse, the sky grew more threatening, and the evil aspect of the clouds spread towards the east. It seemed therefore likely that, although the wind was so far fair, we should very soon have not only bad weather but a contrary wind. My right- hand man and first-mate, Ned, had an evil opinion of it too ; so after holding on for the better part of two hours, with all the signs getting worse, I resolved to run back to Bona, which we accordingly did, though, having to beat back the whole way with the wind falling light, we only got to our anchorage again by noon. I was displeased to come back at all, and inclined to think I was wrong to have done so ; but we had hardly anchored before the wind came strong from N.E., which rejoices me, since it shows we have done the right thing, and that, if we had held on, we should only have been thrashing about outside and doing no good. Moreover, the swell has further increased, and is now running into the harbour itself so strongly, and we rolling to it so much, that, but for the look of the thing, we might as well be at sea. All which things make me feel that we were right to leave Galita alone for to-day. * * # * # # # Weenie is developing betimes that peculiarity of her sex which Bill Knight describes as " always a wanting something." Throughout the day, and betimes in the night too, the ship resounds with " I wish I can have a pensoole to wite wiv," or " I wish I can have a needle may I have a needle when I am "big? May I smoke cigawettes when I am big?" and so forth. To-day, impelled by envy of Sydney, who has had a loose tooth extracted, Weenie is crying, and refuses to be comforted. And the burden of her cry is " I wish I can have a " toof out." 64 The Log of the 'Nereid.' Weenie's walks ashore resemble a Royal progress. She is followed everywhere by admiring crowds of amiable Arabs who pat her and smile at her, and endeavour in every way to attract her attention, while, as she passes, the grave, turbaned merchant, seated at his shop door, breaks into a smile and nods his head laughingly at her, as though she had brought a ray of fresh sunshine and human affection into these narrow streets. It is quite refreshing to see. As for Weenie, she receives these attentions with a lofty disdain, and, though she has a sneaking desire to look at any negro we come across, she cannot be induced to approach any other being in a turban except side- ways and holding her head away. To-day a most amiable Moor ran off, and in a minute came back with a little nosegay, which he presented to her. She took it graciously, but refused to give the Moor her hand or to come near him, saying : " Take ve " man away. I don't like him." Galita. 65 A XII. GALITA. OFF CAPE ROSA, ALGERIA, Thursday, nth Ofiober. N improving illustration has occurred on board this vessel of Popular Government and Universal Suffrage corrected by the Tyranny of One Man. At noon to-day we sailed out of Bona with the wind at E.N.E. nearly dead on end in the expectation that, outside, we should find it northerly or even to the westward of north ; and a little lateen-sailed trading vessel, bound like ourselves to the eastward, did likewise some three hours before us. But, when we got outside, we found the wind hanging persistently at E.N.E. and freshening fast, while a heavy sea grew up and made us put our jibboom into it and pitch heavily. 1 housed my topmasts, took my boats in on deck, and clawed away to windward the best I could. Mean- time, we had overhauled the little trader, just in time to see him bear up and run back to shelter. After eight hours of this work, I had got some fifteen miles to windward. Things looked more threatening after dark ; the wind still freshened, the sea grew like a cliff, we were off a lee shore, and the women and children (always with the exception of Weenie) were in a state of prostrate misery. I felt inclined to hard up, yet did not quite like to do so ; and I resolved therefore to consult the nation, take a popular vote, and act accordingly. The popular vote was what it was certain to be, unanimous in favour of returning to Bona. I therefore once more bore up for that port, and the Nation, relieved of the terrible thumping and knocking about, turned round in its berths and went com- fortably to sleep. 66 The Log of the 'NereidS Now mark what had occurred. I, the One Man, had, according to all the most accepted rules of modern teaching, done my proper duty in consulting and submitting to the Popular Voice. It does so happen, indeed, that I am the only navigator on board this craft, and that the Popular Voice knows nothing whatever either of navigation or of seamanship. But it knows what it wants (vox populi vox Dei, and that, I understand, is final), which is to be relieved of this present discomfort and to get back to Bona. Accordingly, as related, I did hard up, and felt myself worthy, for once, to be a Popular Leader, which is to say, a Leader who leads the way he is shoved from behind. And now mark what occurred afterwards. The Nation was quietly asleep in its berths. In a couple of hours I had made Bona light once more, and was slashing along for it ten knots when the wind backed from E.N.E. to north. Now, the one thing I can never resist is a fair wind. The Nation was, as I have said, asleep. I therefore, the One Man Tyrant, have taken matters into my own hands, have gone about, and am standing again to the eastward. The truth is that, although it is, as I understand, a most necessary and proper thing to manage the simple affairs of State according to the wishes of those who know least about them, you cannot yet command a ship by Universal Suffrage or make a passage by Popular Vote. So, for the moment, I have contemned and deposed the Voice of the People and am following my own wicked One Man ways. OFF CAPE BON, Friday, I2th Oftober. The One Man Tyranny has, on this occasion, proved rather a success for, instead of being still anchored inside Bona mole, here we are off Cape Bon, two hundred miles from Bona, and half way to Malta. It has however been rather an anxious Galita. 67 night for me, for I have had to find my way in the dark on an unlit coast between those dreadful Sorelle Rocks and Galita Island, seventeen miles to the eastward of them, on one side, and the iron-bound African shore on the other. Even with a leading wind, this would require confidence in one's compass (which daily repeated azimuth observations have indeed given me) and careful watching of one's steersmen ; but I had not a leading wind, and had to claw to windward on a long leg and a short one ; so that it became a matter of nice calculation how far to stand over on each tack, so as to avoid the African coast on the one hand and these rocks and islands on the other. There is certainly no sport like yachting, for the appeal it makes every now and then to one's natural qualities and acquired capabilities to one's nerve as well as one's navi- gation, and to one's seamanship as much as to either. There is none in which one feels so much responsibility for here it is not a question, as in hunting, of a broken head or bones, but of the safety of the ship and all in it nor any that gives one so much anxiety, long continued, yet changing from hour to hour, and almost from moment to moment, in its aspect. But, on the other hand, there is none that can bring so delightful a feeling of triumph, relief, and satisfaction when once the difficulty has been overcome, the danger weathered, and the course once more lying clear before one with sea-room to turn round in. In this instance, my anxiety lasted from midnight, when I began my blind and dark turning to windward, up to a little past five this morning. Knowing only that there was the African coast a lee shore with a strong wind blowing and a high sea running on my starboard hand, and those rocks and islands far closer than any prudent navigator would have left them, on my port hand, I stood on, now peering into the dark- ness, thinking of all the fresh untoward incidents that might happen, and revolving how I should meet them, or watching E 2 68 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 the lightning that occasionally flashed to windward ; and now descending into the cabin to study the chart and settle my course, and the exact moment at which I should go about. All night this went on ; yet, as I judged, we kept well between the two dangers. And when, after what seemed an interminable interval between the first light in the sky and the actual break of day when day at length began to steal over the sky, the anxiety with which I looked for Galita was only matched by the delight with which I discovered it bearing (exactly as I calculated it should) N.E. by E., and showing me to be well clear of the Sorelle Rocks. No foxhunter, no shooter, can ever know delights like this, nor ever experience that exquisite mixture of confidence in one's self, one's ship, and one's luck that for the moment they produce nor, let me add, of thank- fulness to the sweet little Cherub that has sat up aloft through- out the moments of crisis. And so there we were. I went below and turned in, and by the time I had enjoyed a few hours' black oblivious sleep, we were cracking along the coast of Tunis, with a fresh wind from N.N.W. on our quarter, and going nine and a-half knots. This afternoon the wind has become stronger and puffy, and the sea has increased, so that I have begun again to think ill of my mainsail with that horrid long boom. I have therefore taken it in, secured it in the crutch, and set the trysail, under which, with the squaresail and foresail, we are going most comfortably. The barometer has taken a bit of a tumble down, and there is again much lightning on the horizon ; but the fall of the glass is only for rain, I expect, and, as for the lightning, we have had it nearly every night since we have been in the Mediterranean. MALTA, Saturday, i^th Oftoler. At midnight (having run 196 miles in the twenty-four hours) we made the light on Pantellaria island, and at daybreak this morning sighted Sicily on our port bow. I set my mainsail Galita. 69 once more, to save my light in to Malta if possible. The wind was now quite strong, and the sea heavy ; but I carried on to make Gozo, which nevertheless seemed to linger under the horizon in a most unaccountable and irritating manner. At half-past three however we sighted it from the masthead, and then we took down a couple of reefs in the mainsail. Then I stowed my foresail, which, as we were now running dart before the wind, was occasionally knocking about with great jerks, while it took, of course, some of the wind out of the squaresail. So we ran on, passed Gozo, made St. Elmo light soon after seven this evening, and at a quarter to nine rounded it, and picking up a pilot from a boat at the entrance, sailed into this magnificent harbour of Valletta, after not at all a bad little run of 400 miles, in two hours under two days since we lost sight of Bona. Inside, under the high land, the wind fell away, and we were nearly two hours getting up to our anchorage at French Creek, where we found the British fleet at anchor. And now for a real good sleep. 70 The Log of the 'Nereid.' XIII. THE HUMOURS OF MALTA. VALLETTA HARBOUR, MALTA, i8th October, 1888. I NOW begin to understand why it is that prayers are offered up in our churches every Sunday for all that travel by land or by water. It is because of Malta. The population of this island consists of 157,000 souls ; and, to my certain knowledge, 156,000 of them live by fleecing those that travel by sea, while the remaining thousand are engaged ashore in the same vast conspiracy to extract from the seafarer not merely the last farthing out of his pocket, but the last shirt from off his back. I say 156,000 in order to be well within the mark, and only to speak of those I have seen with my own eyes ; but there are certainly not fewer than this, and they are all round the ship at this present moment. They began to arrive about us as soon as we had rounded the Castle of St. Elmo, and they have gone on arriving ever since, until one begins to wish that, instead of being tied up between a wall and an anchor in Valletta, one had run the vessel ashore, as St. Paul did his among the barbarous people in the bay where he was wrecked. Nobody knows the various forms or the incredible persis- tencies that importunity can take until he has been at Malta. At twelve o'clock on the night of our arrival I was called up to interview a local dignitary known as Bubbly Joe, who desired to place himself, his boat, and the island of Malta generally at my service for the sum of four shillings a-day. I retained Joe as standing counsel and boatman on these terms, and he has disposed his eighteen stone gracefully about the ship from The Humours of Malta. 71 cockcrow till sundown ever since. Then arrived the great army of Touts and Pedlers. Boys who would dive to the bottom of the harbour after a penny thrown ovei board, and bring it up between their toes ; vendors of birds, anxious to sell bird, cage and all, for six shillings, but only too ready to take three ; shipping agents offering wines and spirits in bond ; cigar merchants having the finest brands from that Havannah which is more correctly spelt Hamburg ; merchants of Maltese lace and silver filigree ; mild Hindoos with boat-loads of Oriental stuffs, carpets, and carvings ; dozens of examples of each kind lie all day round the ship, watching an opportunity to slip on board and cover the deck with their wares ; this is what one lias to endure the blessed day long. They all of them have reams of certificates from Captains of yachts and men-of- war, and they wait so patiently hour after hour, and are so long-suffering when one has turned over all their stock and bought nothing, that one ends by feeling quite pitifully towards them and buying five-shillings' worth of something to get rid of their patient faces. Some of them indeed most of them are most beautifully and correctly got up, and all of them seem prepared to pass the rest of their lives alongside this vessel. Yesterday I was going ashore, admiring once more this splendid harbour with its deep, tideless water and beetling heights, and its incessant traffic of myriad boats darting about like so many water-flies, when I was aware that in one of these boats a beautiful gentleman was saluting me with that ease and grace which only come of high breeding, and apparently wishing to speak with me. He was so handsome and so fault- lessly attired that I took him at the first glance for Captain Brabazon ; but on looking closer I saw that his face was unknown to me, and concluded that he must be the Governor, who had kindly come off to ask me to dinner. When we had approached each other, however, he explained that he was the eminent local tobacconist, that he had left his card on board, 72 The Log of the 'Nereid.' and that his great desire was that I should inspect his varied stock of the choicest brands, with which he could supply me at prices not to be approached by any other house in the island. A boat piled up with carpets and stuffs surmounted by two lean, fragile, chocolate-coloured Hindoos comes alongside. In a weak moment I give them permission to show me some carpets. Within three minutes they have covered the deck with carpets, silks, cottons, silver bowls, trays and teapots till you can't see a plank from the mainmast to the taffrail. For an hour the Hindoo spreads out one thing over another, while Weenie flings herself down in the middle of them and sucks her Golly-Golly in despair of comprehending what it all means. Meantime, another Hindoo in another alongside boat is follow- ing the proceedings with a jealous and jaundiced smile, and declaring that " I much cheaper, sar " ; and when at length I ask the price of a Persian carpet, and Hindoo No. i whispers " Very antique, sar three pounds and six shillings," Hindoo No. 2 pops his head over the rail with a derisive smile, and says " I sell him you, sar, same carpet two pounds five." During all this, Bubbly Joe or as Weenie calls him " Buffly " Blue " looks on with undisguised contempt, and occasionally remarks, " That a swindler, sar what you call a Jew. He ask " one pound, you give him five shillings." For Joe's view is that he alone is the person to be employed to make purchases, and he never allows anybody in the ship to buy as much as a pound of potatoes without his assistance and protection. Indeed, the noticeable feature about the Maltese is the extremely evil opinion all the inhabitants of the island seem to have of each other, and the way in which, from the members of the Council down to the bumboat men and beggars, they denounce each other as rascals and thieves. This is, I presume, the Maltese form of competition. * * * * * * * " Jane, give me a needle ; I want to sew." This was The Humours of Malta. 73 Weenie's imperious demand roared down the companion, as I was writing in the main cabin. " No," replied Jane, " you can't have a needle, Weenie ; " you're not big enough." " Well, when I am big enough may I have one ? " " Yes, when you're big enough." The next moment the sunny little head was pushed through the open skylight over my head. " My Papaw, will you give me a needle, please ? " " Certainly not," I replied shortly, being absorbed in my letters. " Well, I shall ask Ted," I heard her say to herself as she withdrew her head and went forward after which I forgot all about it. Half an hour later, when I went on deck, I found her sitting down in a state of great contentment, in possession of an enormous sail needle, wherewith she was industriously sewing together the two sides of Ned's cap. She looked up and said " When I am big enough may I smoke cigawettes ? " " No, it is only men who smoke cigarettes." " Well, when I am a man may I smoke cigawettes ? " ;;: * * * * * * A little later we went ashore for a walk. After a short twenty yards in the sun, Weenie said, "My Papaw, I wish you " can cawy me." " Oh, no, Weenie, you are much too big to be carried." " Then, now I'm biq may I have a needle ? " # * :;- * * # * MALTA, 2oth October, 1888. Smiler and Weenie, feeling themselves to be the two oppressed nationalities on board the vessel, have become fast friends, and they pass hours together on deck as a mutual improvement society ; not much to Smiler's pleasure, I fear, for 74 The Log of the 'Nereid: he gets dragged about by the collar in the intervals of caresses ; but greatly to Weenie's delight, who is charmed to have found one creature in the ship who does not give himself absurd airs of superior bigness and wisdom, and whom she can order about and tyrannise over generally. Weenie is teaching Smiler to speak an idea entirely of her own, which she means to keep to herself. It is therefore only when Smiler and she are alone that the lessons are given ; and if anyone goes up on deck, she at once stops short in them. Sometimes, however, I hear them through the skylight, and one I heard this morning went thus, Weenie speaking in her own voice and giving Smiler's replies in a high treble, to mark the difference between biped and quadruped " Smiler, you are a velly bad dog." " No I'm not, Weenie." " Velly bad. I told you not to lick my face." " No you didn't, Weenie." " Yes I did. Don't contradict" * * * * * * * MALTA, 22nd October. It is only the other day that England started Germany as a Naval Power by giving her the old Thetis frigate ; and now there is quite a German Navy, not yet indeed of first-class importance, but large enough to show the German flag all over the world as occasion requires. A squadron of four frigates has just arrived here. The)'- are rigged ships, and, to a seaman's eye, neither their rigging nor their handling nor the making-up of their sails on the yards is at all perfect ; but they are very creditable nevertheless, and their crews are the biggest and squarest-cut men ever seen afloat. They do not at all look like sailors, and are, indeed, as I am told, mostly landsmen from the interior who are being made into sailors ; but they are kept marvellously clean and well - dressed (apparently by Army tailors), and when ashore present a stolid and respectable The Humours of Malta. 75 appearance, very much in contrast with the finished rollicking swagger which the British tar puts on when he sets his foot on the land. Their officers are as big as the men, and they have overrun all our ironclads here, peering into every corner, asking innumerable questions, drinking out all the stock of beer, and going back to write interminable reports. The yarn here is that every officer who doesn't write a report of ten pages on each English ship he visits has his grog stopped. Their Admiral himself is a most amiable man, and, like most of his officers, speaks English excellently well. They all admire our Fleet greatly, and are evidently, in their careful way, bent on the task of making one equal to it, if not better. But it will be many a long year nay, many a long generation before either Germans, or French, or any other nation will make the men to handle ironclads together. It is marvellous to see this Mediter- ranean Fleet of ours, under the very able command of the Duke of Edinburgh, got under weigh, handled in close order, with the ironclads no more than two cables (400 yards) apart, and to reflect upon the care and the nerve it requires to stand on the bridge of one of them and to keep station under penalty of sinking or being sunk at any failure. We have any amount of officers who do this ; no other country has any ; and herein lies one point of immeasurable superiority in which it will take long to approach us. Let who will have a good ship and a bad crew ; give me a bad ship and a good crew which is pretty well what our Navy has. # * * * : ; : * # /Whether to go round Cape Matapan, through the isle- studded Archipelago to Athens and Constantinople, and thence to Alexandria ; or to go first to Alexandria and thence up to the Archipelago ; or go to Alexandria and not to the Archi- pelago at all that is the question which now exercises me. If it were any other time of year, or if I had a screw, or no children on board, it need not be a question at all ; but as 76 The Log of the 'Ne*eid.' things are, it is one of doubtful decision, and I have been endeavouring to get the best opinions to guide me. As for the sailing Directions, they are valuable enough no doubt (though, by the way, they require re-writing, re-editing, and putting into the plain English tongue), but they are always dismal reading, and, if one paid much attention to them, one would never go anywhere. They nowhere suggest anything but foul winds, bad weather, disaster, and shipwreck, and it makes one groan to read them ; groan and wonder how on earth one has come so far through all these unavoidable dangers. Then there is the local trader who knows these seas and has long sailed in them. There are many such here. His view is that there is only one thing to do, which is to take him as a pilot, to pay him a large salary, to provide him with a separate cabin or ship, in which to live and take his meals, and then to think no more about it. Then there is Ned. He " knows them Arches of Pelago " pretty well ; was once knocking about among them in a merchant brig for three weeks trying to get to Constantinople. His idea is that you may have a fair wind or a foul, that there is wild weather there at times, and at other times very fine weather, and that the only way is to go and look at it. Then there is the naval officer's view who is well acquainted with these places ; who starts by saying that he wouldn't be cruising about in this craft for a thousand a-day paid in advance, and who holds that it would be prudent to avoid " the Arches " altogether. And lastly there is my own view, which is that you must be somewhere, and that, being there, you must go somewhere ; and that I'll make up my mind later, but that I don't care if I stay all the winter in so pleasant a place as Malta. ##:;:**** This is Weenie's description of an officer of the famous Black Watch in his undress uniform, of dark tartan trews, The Humours of Malta. 77 jacket, and cap, who had hospitably entertained us at the Atiberge de Baviere, and had loaded her with sweets. " I wish I can have some of those sweets." " What sweets ? " " Why those sweets he gave me that nice black soldier " with the gold in the middle." MALTA, 27^ October, 1888. Malta is the Paradise of Small Incomes. For all the little luxuries of life it is perhaps the cheapest place in Europe. You can drive any distance in a cab for 6d., or take it for an hour for is. 6d. ; a boat to a vessel in the harbour costs you 2d. ; beef is 6|d. a pound ; four mutton cutlets cost 6d. ; grapes are 3d. a pound ; and washing is. 8d. a dozen. Then there is perpetual lawn-tennis, constant balls and parties, and a good Italian opera, a stall of which is to be had for is. 3d. There are simple sailor officers and beautiful soldier officers, all unmarried and marriageable. I wonder all the hardly-entreated mothers of Great Britain don't come out here every winter with all their daughters. But there are always at least four prices in Malta for every- thing. There is the price to the natives, who know all about it which is the price ; there is the price to any kind of foreigner in general ; there is the price to the English ; and there is the price to the yachtsman ; each of these prices rising above the other in a geometrical proportion. There is a still further price the price that Lady Brassey paid but this is now only a fondly and sadly remembered tradition, appealed to by the vendor as a proof of his moderation, and the fact that there were once good old times even in Malta. I asked a Maltese gentleman, who had been for a short time in our dear foggy old island, what he thought of England on the whole. " England, " sar," says he, " great country, sar yes ! England grand " country. You go into shop ask how much that ? He say 78 The Log of the 'Nereid.' " 35. 6d. Yes. Maltee gentleman come. How much ? 35. 6d. " Yes. Greek, Italian, Jew come. Yes. How much ? 35. 6d. " 35. 6d. to English, French, Greek, Jew. All same everybody. " Yes. England great country, sar." * * # * * * * Malta is also the Paradise of Small Politicians. If a man has failed as a ship-tout or bumboatman, he gets three or four other men who have failed as cabdrivers, mudlarks, or fried-fish vendors round him, and begins to clamour. Now, clamour, as everybody knows, is politics ; and half-a-dozen men who go on clamouring are a Political Party ; and when they have all clamoured for a fortnight, the man who originally got them together is a great political leader. As to what the clamour is all about, that doesn't matter an atom. It may be about roads, or water, or cholera, or the wild excesses of a licentious soldiery (a quieter creature, by the way, than the Tommy Atkins and the Jack Tar of to-day cannot be found outside Ebenezer Chapel), or the status of the local nobility, or anything you please. There is the Party, the Leader, and the Question, or questions. Confidential despatches get written home. A letter appears in one of the London daily newspapers. Somebody asks a question in the House of Commons. The Colonial Secretary feels that he is in the presence of a Crisis. Something must be done. Half-a-dozen 5 notes judiciously, or even injudiciously, distributed would settle the whole matter. But the English having ceased to be a practical people, this method is rejected as soon as it presents itself. What then is to be done? Why a "Constitution" of course. That has been the remedy for everything since the time of the Abbe Sieves. So a Constitution is beautifully worked out in the back parlours of the Colonial Office and there you are. Everybody is delighted. There are elections and debates, and the astonished people of the country who never heard of all this are called upon to " vote," and they do the best they can towards it. Then there The Humours of Malta. 79 are debates and orations, and everybody starts a newspaper. The bumboatman, not having been elected, denounces the ship- tout as a den of thieves. Both of them (each with his news- paper) lead the Generals and the Admirals and the Governor and the Club the life of an early Christian. In short, the Constitution is a grand success. The only drawback to it is that the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor, being practical men, go on doing things while the constitutional assemblies, papers, and politicians are talking about them. But this will be mended in time. * * * * * * * The beautiful part of all our recent political evolutions is that we once practical English are adopting and applying what I am pleased to call the Latin Idea of things the symmetrical, unbending, undeviating Notion applied by force to the unsym- metrical, twisting, turning, changing conditions of actual Life just as this same Latin Idea is recognised as a failure by all the Latin nations themselves. And in no place has the trial of the Latin Idea been so complete, or its failure so marked, as in Malta. The story is written in the seven rectangular streets of this steep Valletta rock, all accurately laid down on a plan or Constitution half of them resulting in the nearest approach possible to the perpendicular, and all of them killing to any vertebrate animal condemned to use them. Had the place been laid out by Anglo-Saxons, it would have had winding roads of easy ascent ; but this the Latin Idea forbade. Every building and splendid buildings there are here bears the same stamp as the street-plan, each one being, above all, symmetrical. And in the system of governance the same notion was carried out under the most favourable conditions by a succession of the best and ablest men Europe could pro- duce ; Grand Masters endowed with wisdom and amply supplied with money, who had for subjects a submissive population, and were never troubled with popular views on any subject 80 The Log of the 'Nereid.' whatever. Honoured, admired, and envied, they worked out the Latin Idea in their secure island for nigh on three hundred years ; and at the end of it, had become so hollow a failure as to give up themselves, their order, and their fastness to the bragging demand of a Corsican bandit. Then came the days of sailor Ball and King Tom, surnamed Maitland, and for eighty years Malta has been governed unsymmetrically, but practically, by men who have improved water supplies, extirpated nuisances, and generally circumvented things, without any idea of plan, but always with a keen eye on the thing itself, so that the life of every Maltese is now better worth living than ever : .t was. And this is the moment we choose to revert to the Latin Idea, to recur to symmetry exaggerated into the Rights of Man, and to re-incarnate Grand Master Hompesch so far as Letters Patent can do it ! * * # * * :;: The Maltese are said to have sprung from a Carthaginian colony. But this colony was overrun by the Arabs, and the Maltese to this day is rather Arab than anything else. His language is very Arabic ; his numerals are exactly Arabic, and his ways are more those of Africa than those of Europe. He is not at all a bad fellow ; he is frugal, hard-working, saving, and by no means unamiable. In fact, my experience leads me easily to conclude that the Maltese are not half as black as they paint themselves. * * * * # * * 28th October. The two only uses of a port are these. It is a place to run for in heavy weather, if it is to leeward of you which it generally isn't and it is a place to get jobs done. When you have got your jobs done, however, the old impatience of the land which possesses everybody who lives on shipboard again seizes you, and you want to get to sea again. Now, we have had all our jobs done a week past. We have had our bottom The Humours of Malta. 81 scrubbed by divers ; we have given the ship a lick of paint and varnish (which she wanted after being three months in com- mission), have set up our rigging, rated the chronometer anew, and bought some odds and ends of blocks and rope ; in addition to which I have indulged myself with a Thomson's compass and a lot of new charts. There is therefore no reason, in the nature of things, for staying here any longer. Weenie says every morning, " I wish I can go to sea," and has now arrived at the conclusion that she shall go " all by myself," while I too have been ready to start any time this last week. But the wind has gone round to the east, is blowing fresh from thence, and seems to be nailed there, for the barometer has gone and is going steadily up, having risen nearly seven-tenths of an inch in the last nine days. So I am hanging on for a shift of wind, expecting it every morning, and every morning failing to find it. Certainly everybody is so kind in Malta that it is some con- solation to be hung up here. But nothing can fully compensate for a foul wind when one wants to go to sea. The Log of the 'Nereid: XIV. THE GREAT SYRTIS AND LIBYA. AT SEA, 2gth Ofiober, 1888. " T SEND my wife to the church to pray for you, sar." JL This was Bubbly Joe's last piece of attention at Malta, and it shows the excellent uses a wife may occasionally be put to. Not that I wish to scoff at it either, for I am a zealot for all religions, and I hold that man to be either knave or fool who despises religious observances. Certainly the prayers of this Roman Catholic old woman if she is. old, as to which I have no information will do us no harm, and I am not ashamed to say that I derive pleasure from the knowledge that they are rising for us to that Throne where, maybe, they will fall as powerfully as those of the most orthodox Protestant Bishop. Nor do I wonder at the pious custom which in Roman Catholic countries erects a crucifix at the entrance to every port, before which the mariner uncovers himself and murmurs a prayer as he commits himself once more to the deep. For, as Bill Wigg (once my cabin-boy, and now, I believe, second mate in a trader) used to say, " The sea's a rumbustical place " ; and, even with the best found vessel, the best crew, and the best weather, one always feels a little trepidation, or at the least a little excitement, when one leaves harbour to sail into the unknown, changing seas. In this instance we have a long pull before us of nearly goo miles to Alexandria ; and the weather outside has been heavy, for several steamers have come into Malta with their cargoes shifted, and the Benbow one of the latest and best things in British ironclads which arrived a few days after us, had tons The Great Syrtis and Libya. 83 of water over her decks, and two feet deep of it below, no doubt in the same breeze which accompanied us into port. I may perhaps be allowed to remark here that we had not a drop of water below, though our cabin skylights were open the whole time. So here we are at sea again, to Weenie's great satisfaction. All the sailing directions and all the locally-experienced ship- masters say that, in going from Malta to Alexandria, you should keep to the northern side, so as to pass close to Candia and to make the island of Gavdo, or, as the Maltese call it, Gozzo di Candia, and then bear away thence for Alexandria. But, on the other hand, the direct route across the Great Gulf Syrtis, holding near to the African shore, offers advantages in fine weather, for at Ras Sem on the west coast of the Great Gulf Syrtis, and the northern point of Libya, the wind, when northerly, usually splits, and tends towards N.E. on the western side of the cape, and to N.W. on its eastern side. We shall see as we get on which of the two routes it seems best for us to take, according to wind and weather, always remembering not to get near the land. Meantime, on getting outside Valletta Harbour, which we did at a little before eleven this morning, we found the wind E. by N., or pretty well contrary, with a bit of a jump of a sea, which, being close-hauled on the port tack, we felt rather, with disastrous results to the women-folk, and an envious imitation of them by Weenie, who, supposing it to be the fashionable thing to do, declared loudly, and without the slightest foundation for it, that she was " velly sea-sick." To this she added, after a moment, " When I'm velly sea-sick, may I have a poached " egg in bed ? " At sunset the wind hauled to N.E., and we are now able to lay up to E. by S. three-quarters S., with a fresh breeze, and a fine starlight night. F 2 84 The Log of the 'Nereid.' AT SEA, Tuesday, ^oth Ofiober. Lat. 35 24' 34" W., Long. 17 o' o" E. All night and all to-day I kept the vessel heading for Crete according to the canons. But this meant keeping her close- hauled, and, of course, making less way and with more jump than if I had kept her away a couple of points direct for Alexandria. The wind still hung at N.E. a nice breeze with little sea. I reflected that, if sailing vessels thought it necessary to go out of their way to make Crete, it was probably because they didn't dare to trust their chronometers and their longitude, which in my case I held I could trust ; and so, at four this afternoon, I threw the canons overboard and kept away the two points. But there was a somewhat threatening appearance of the sky to windward, so, although the barometer remained high and steady (it gives little or no warning of gales from N. or E. hereabouts), I took in my maintopsail, hauled down a reef in my mainsail, and got all my boats on deck, so as to be ready for eventualities before dark. There is no moon till the end of the middle watch, she being now in her last quarter ; but the stars are very large and bright, and give a great deal of light, while the nights are quite clear, which is the greatest of comforts. Wednesday, %ist Ofiober. Lat. 34 16' n" N., Long. 20 39' o" E. The night was fine, the good breeze stood by us; we did occasionally as much as 9^ knots, and up to noon to-day had made a good run of 193 miles in the twenty-four hours, so that we are now drawing up to the meridian of Ras Sem, the cape that divides the wind ; and, accordingly, the wind has hauled from N.E, to N.N.E., there is a nice breeze, the sea is perfectly smooth, and the weather quite perfect, like the picked days of an English June, when it is a delight to be in the open air and a comfort to walk bare-footed. The Great Syrtis and Libya. 85 As to this same Ras Sem, the Admiralty sailing directories say " the Bedouins are treacherous and thievish, and it is " necessary to go on shore armed, and, if possible, in force." And this of Libya, of Cyrenaica, of the seat of the great cities of Cyrene, Appolonia, and Berenice ! This of the site of the most splendid monuments of Paganism and Christianity, of the Garden of the Hesperides, the waters of Lethe, of the birth- place of saints and philosophers ! What a fall is here, that a nineteenth century pilot should have to write up over Cyrene, " Beware of pickpockets ! " In my opinion, it all comes of the country having no harbours. It has had everything else that wisdom, art, and culture can give ; it still has all that Nature can bestow. But without harbours there is no salvation, and from Bona to Alexandria, for a long 1200 miles, there is no such thing as a harbour on the coast. Of course the country has gone to ruin. # # * # * # # John Griffiths, having been all over the world, and seen everything in it, resolved to g've up the sea and to do what every wise man would if he only could establish himself in that heaven upon earth, Aldeburgh. He did so, therefore, and, for a time, led a happy, retired, shore-going existence as a house-painter. He proposed to go on doing this for ever after ; but there was one thing he had not taken into account, which was the size of the heaven upon earth. Before long he had painted all the houses in Aldeburgh. Then John had to go to sea again ; and so it happens that he is this very cruise " along " with we." * * * * * # * AT SBA, ist November. Lat. 33 i/ 35" N. f Long. 23 27' o" E. The finest of weather, a nice breeze from the right quarter, a smooth sea, and a run of 184 miles in the twenty-four hours, have brought us so far with prosperity on our journey. Yet it 86 The Log of the 'Nereid' must not be supposed that there is nothing to do. Let me here set down what I have done to-day. At six I turned out for a bath, a cup of coffee, and a look at the weather ; at seven I got out my azimuth mirror, took the bearing of the sun before he got too high, and checked it by the invaluable Burdwood's azimuth tables to see if the compass was free from error, which it proved to be. The Great Syrtis and Libya. 87 At a quarter-past nine, I took an altitude of the sun, from which I proceeded to work out my longitude, and also a Sumner line, or line of bearing a matter which occupied altogether perhaps three-quarters of an hour. Then I had my breakfast. Then, at twenty minutes to eleven, out sextant again for another altitude, wherewith I worked out my latitude by ex-meridian methods. Scarce was this done, when it was time to get ready for the meridian observation at noon (the best and most trustworthy of all this kind of work), and then to work up the " Day's '* Work " by dead reckoning, to calculate the latitude from the meridian altitude, and to make up my Log-Book to noon. Then a quarter of an hour after one, I took another shot at the sun, worked out another ex-meridian altitude for latitude and longitude, and got another Sumner line, to which I brought down that already obtained in the morning. In addition to this there is the Log-Book entry every two hours of the course and distance run, and throughout the whole four-and-twenty hours the general unremitting watch to keep over everything, from the look of the sky and the movements of the barometer, to the seizings of the topping- lifts ; so that, as will be seen, I have not much idle time on hand when at sea. In the afternoons indeed there comes a little leisure, though I often indeed generally take another observation for longitude between three and four. But in general one is more or less on the go all day long when out of sight of land and dependent on the sextant and the chrono- meter for a knowledge of one's position. No doubt the numerous observations I have described, with the long and exacting calculations some of them require, are a heavy allowance, and more than most navigators trouble them- selves withal. But it must be remembered that they are all no more than approximations to a certain knowledge of the 88 The Log of the 'Nereid: ship's position. They are all liable to errors of various kinds, some of which it is practically impossible to guard against ; but one of them helps to correct, or to confirm, the other ; and each successive one renders the approximation to certainty the greater. Yet, when all is done, it is only an approximation to certainty, and not certainty itself. That you can only feel when you get hold of a bit of land that you know for a given point. Short of this, you must never feel quite certain about your ship's position at sea. If you do, you will probably end by losing her. And so I think no pains too great and no time too long when spent over getting even a slightly greater approxi- mation to the certainty that I never reach. During all these proceedings the children hold their accus- tomed round of breakfast, dinner, tea, and worry, and make the ship gay with their laughter. This afternoon Weenie set up a circus in the cutter (a reminiscence of a performance in Malta), and pressed Smiler into the service as the learned donkey. I think it only due to that deserving quadruped to say that he is much improved by sea-life, and that he fully justifies the reason for which his name was first given to him, by actually smiling and showing his teeth with the most comic grin, when he is politely spoken to. It is a fact however that he smiles most readily at the dinner-hour. AT SEA, Friday, 2nd November, 1888. Lat. 32 46' 40" N., Long. 25 40' o" E. The wind has come quite according to the prophets more westerly since we passed the meridian of Ras Sem, and it is now N.N.W. ; so that we have once again set our squaresail, and are running under that, the foresail, mainsail, and main- topsail ; yet not so fast, for the wind is lighter. The days, and the nights too, have so far exactly resembled each other, and all have been of the finest conceivable the days warm and sunny, yet not sultry ; the nights bright, clear, and starlit. The Great Syrtis and Libya. bg This afternoon a poor little birdie lodged on our rigging. He was a kind of small finch, who had adventured or got blown out to sea, and most forlorn and dead-beat he looked. He perched for several hours on various parts of the ship, occasionally taking a fly round to look, I suppose, for the land, and coming back when he failed to find it. We set food for him in the boat, but he was too shy to go to it, and after dark he disappeared, probably to resume his flight and to perish in the waters. We often have birds come to us thus when- out of sight of land, hawks being the most frequent visitors, and it is pitiable to see them and to be able to do nothing for them. There is one comfort in navigating in these latitudes in the winter, which is that we get nearly two hours' more daylight than we should in England, and that it is daylight, with sun and a clear sky. Nobody but a seaman thoroughly knows what a blessing the daylight is, or feels thoroughly the disadvantage and danger of having to work in the dark. AT SEA, Saturday, -$rd November. Lat. 32 ii' 51" N., Long. 27 43' 30" E. We have seen only three or four steamers since we left Malta, and not a single sailing vessel of any kind. What a country ! Yet this placid sea, steady wind, and weather so invariable that one day can hardly be distinguished from another, would be particularly suited to sailing vessels, if only there were a few harbours about. We are now nearing our port, but the wind has become light, and we shall not make so good a passage as seemed likely the first two days ; so that we are crawling along at between four and five knots only, and getting slower as we go. The weather however is ideal, clear, warm (thermometer 70), and sunny, with a nice little breeze and a sea like a lake good enough for the worst ship and worst crew that ever floated. go The Log of the 'Nereid.' Weenie considers crying to be a very serious part of the business of life which must not be interfered with. This afternoon she was howling dismally for no reason but rage, because she was not allowed to steer the vessel when, thinking to comfort her, I said, " Why, what's the matter, '" Weenie ? " " Don't speak to me, I'm crying." Then, after some more howls, and in an injured tone of voice, " Don't you see that I'm " crying ? " Sunday, tfh November. OFF ALEXANDRIA. At noon to-day after we had been six days out of sight of land I told Ned, my first mate, that he had better look out to make the land right ahead between half-past one and two this afternoon. At exactly a quarter to two, I heard the cry from the mast-head of " Land, ho! " and sure enough, in less than an hour after, we could see Alexandria Lighthouse right ahead from the deck. Forgive, reader, a chuckle of pride over the accuracy of my navigation, and share with me the sweet pleasure there lies in achieving this very exact result of a long series of calculations extending over six long days and nights, and in arriving at last at a certainty. The land being very flat here, you are on it almost as soon as you make it, and it was only a little after four when we took on board a grave Arab pilot to show us the way through the reefs. He said " Where you from ? " " Malta." ** Ah good. How many days ? " " Six." "Ah very good; steamer take four and five. Have you " the Milord on board ? " " Yes ; / am the Milord." The Great Syrtis and Libya. gi " Ah good." This word " Milord," by the way, is the one always used for what reason I know not to describe the owner of a yacht throughout the Mediterranean, and indeed so far up as Lisbon. So I have been a Milord in every port I have touched since leaving England. 92 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 XV. THE HUMOURS OF ALEXANDRIA. ALEXANDRIA, 8tk November, 1888. "AND pray, Sir, who may Mr. Cook be ? " JL~\ He was a fine imposing personage who had announced that he was " the representative of Mr. Cook, and wished to see "me"; but when I asked this simple question, I thought he would have disappeared through the cabin- floor. He gave me to understand that Mr. Cook was a very great undertaker, who took charge of all the travelling and other operations in Egypt and Palestine; who was indeed the only person competent to take charge of any operations whatever, whether military, naval, or touristic ; that he had always on hand an ample supply of competent and courteous dragomans, generals, admirals, navi- gating officers, and boatmen ; and that he was prepared to take entire charge of me, my vessel, my family, and my future in Egypt, in the Holy Land, in this world and in the next, at a contract price per day. He was ready, as I gathered, to provide me with everything tents, horses, cooks, navigation, local information, and political, religious, and moral opinions. It was tempting certainly, especially when it was explained to me that Cook had a practical monopoly of all the good tents, horses, dragomen, generals, Finance Ministers, Khedives, and Nile boats required for the proper visiting or government of Eastern countries. But, on the whole, I thought I would go on messing about in my own way ; so I thanked the imposing personage for thinking of me and taking so much account of my personal comfort, and had him shown over the side into his imperial boat. Then I went and got a dragoman of my own, The Humours of Alexandria. 93 and, though with fear and trembling at the mistakes that I, being Cookless, must necessarily make, even went so far as to have three-halfpenny worth of donkey ride through the town. Of course I have lost an immense chance, but I must do the best I can. My first dragoman was, I am bound to confess, not a success. He was beautifully attired, indeed, in pale green vest, trousers of most orthodox bagginess, and a fez ; but the prices he made me pay for things were beyond the dreams of avarice. His name according to Weenie's version thereof was " Damn-a- " Damn," and I am bound to say that he deserved it. At the end of my first day here, I settled up his account, and told him he was an expensive luxury, only suitable to Dukes and Americans. The next morning, as I was pushing off from the shore, he came running down, and again proffered his services. " No, thank you," I replied ; " you have charged me double for " everything, and I don't like you, and don't want to see you " again." After this I got another a very grave and decent Mussulman, who at once brought my expenditure to its proper bearing, and whose only defect if it be one is that he is const antly borrowing five minutes for a mouthful of prayers, I like a man who prays ; but when he has to pray five times a-day, and when, being in a hurry, and having gone into a house, you find your dragoman when you come down, knocking his forehead on the ground in the passage, one-third through a long prayer, you feel inclined to hurry him up and to say, laborare est orare. But Mohammed is a good man and a conscientious, in bargains as in prayers, and we all like him. * * * * # * * Alexandria is a place which Alexander, could he see it now, would utterly refuse to take for the same that he built in the form of a Macedonian mantle, and that Ptolemy pro- vided in the Pharos with one of the Seven Wonders of the World, with that grand dedication " to the Saviour Gods 94 The Log of the 'Nereid.' A Mouthful cf Pnyer;. " for the use of those who travel by sea." The Pharos is gone, the magnificent city, through which passed all the tra de The Humours of Alexandria. 95 of India and Arabia, is gone, the schools of philosophy, the four thousand palaces, the monuments of Greek and Egyptian learning, and the famous Library to which we owe the Septuagint all are gone, and on their ruins is set up the most pitiful assemblage of hovels and pretentious vulgar French houses that ever issued from the head and hands of a motley no-nation crew of Levantines. The city has now no character at all. It is neither eastern nor western, but a mass of Oriental and Occidental rubbish, painful and puzzling, without a rule or a principle to be discovered anywhere. Yet the climate covers everything with a kind of splendour. The sun that gives to Egypt five crops a-year shines with unvary- ing brightness and warmth, the air is so balmy and delicious that the people one finds sleeping at every street corner in the open air might do it from choice as readily as for cheapness, and there is a rare certainty about everything dependent on the weather, which could only be possible in a country where the rainy days rarely exceed ten a-year. Splendid fruits, which make the market glow with rich colour, vegetables, even of the rarest kind, all the year round, chickens, eggs, mutton and beef in abundance at the lowest price think of all this, and of the five crops a-year, and you may well wonder why Egypt is not the best and most happy country in the world for the people who inhabit it. That it is quite the contrary is unhappily the fadl. The Egyptian people the Fellaheen are always nearer to starvation than any other in the world ; and this after fifty years of European interventions of every kind, culminating now in the well-intentioned, but nevertheless deadly, English occupation. But every one of these interventions the English with the rest has made the Fellah's life worse worth living ; for every one of them has brought a new army of alien officials, for whom exorbitant salaries and allowances are wrested from the starving, miserable Fellaheen. It is very pitiful to see even to see so small a portion of it as can be discovered on so little as a week's acquaintance but the signs 96 The Log of the 'Nereid.' are, unhappily, quite unmistakable. Starvation and Repletion never lived so near together as here. The city once contained, as is recorded, 4000 baths of that Turkish, or rather Roman, kind which alone deserves to be called a bath. It would now be difficult to find ten, for, although the charge to the Fellah does not amount to more than a halfpenny, he cannot afford now even the halfpenny for this coveted luxury, and performs his ablutions, instead, in the neighbouring branch of the Nile. Moreover, many of the magnificent old baths have been swept away by the Levantine land speculators to make room for the French, Italian, or Greek cafes and superincumbent houses that make the place like a hideous Parisian nightmare. Yet there is one excellent bath the Hammam-el-Metwali, so named after a famous old sheikh who gave the money to build it. And here, by the way, is a kind of good work which I hope some of our own wealthy philanthropists will soon learn to do, and remember when they are making their wills to leave money for building a fine, large Turkish bath in London or in some of the manufacturing towns for the poor, that these also may, as in the East, be able to wash and be clean for a penny. So to the Hammam-el-Metwali I often take my way in the early morning. It is an old bath, and its marble floors and basins, though kept very clean, are stained with age ; but the essential part of the bath the shampooing is as admirable as it is complete, being an affair, not of a grudging ten or twenty minutes dismissed by the shampooer at railway speed, but of an hour at least, lingered over in many crackings of the bones and stretchings of the muscles, and continued into the cooling- room, wlrre one sits swathed, not in a couple of thick towels as in England, but in six or eight or ten thin ones, each of exquisite texture and design. The differences between the imitation Hammam of England and the true Hammam of the East strike one at every turn, and the time must surely come when the The Humours of Alexandria. 97 English will have sense enough to send to the East to learn the true and better ways. We are so spoilt and so well treated wherever we go by the officers of Queen's ships that we ought to be most grateful to them. But I fear I make them an ill return ; for, wherever I go, I soon become a bye-word among Her Majesty's ships as the man who is always " coming to ask " conundrums " of the navigating officer. The fact is that " the New Navigation," with its values of " C " and its " Q. M.'s " (neither C nor Q nor M being anywhere described or explained), is so full of subject for question, and, I must add, the professors of the New Navigation are so little explicit, and sometimes so obscure for want of grammar, that, when I try these new things, I am constantly getting brought up and then I go for the first navigating officer in the next port. But I am also a worry to the merchant service, for I hunt out any skipper accustomed to trade to the next place I am going to, and proceed to ply him with questions about winds and weather, and anchorages and holding-ground. These skippers are very good to me, and there is one of them here, to whom I have gone for information as to the coast of Syria, who has entirely recast my ideas as to that coast these ideas having been derived from the Admiralty sailing directions. I know nothing more pleasing or encouraging to one's national pride than to talk to one of these English skippers in foreign parts they are so good at their trade, such practical, under- standing men such real good men. As to their crews, the same cannot always be said when the crew is English ; but these skippers, being practical men, have for the most part given up the turbulent, drunken, untrustworthy creature who now too often represents the English merchant sailor ; and in the case of my friend here, he is the only Englishman on his vessel, the rest all being Maltese, Greeks, Italians, Arabs, or Scandi- g-3 The Log of the 'Nereid: navians, who, he says, are all excellent men and never give him any trouble. It is wretched to discover thus that the British merchant sailor has rendered it impossible to employ him. On the other hand, there is no kind of man at all who is better or better behaved in these days than the British sailor of the Navy. There is the Phaeton here, for instance. Her Captain and officers are charming as all naval officers seem to be and her crew are such a picture of smartness and neat- ness and orderly conduct that it is a pleasure to see them ashore. Some of them even attend a French class ashore ! Whence, now, comes this difference ? ALEXANDRIA, gth November. I had intended to sail yesterday afternoon for the coast of Syria. I had filled up with water and coke and live fowls, had my main-trysail ready set (for there was a strong wind, though a fair one), and was holding on to the buoy only by a slip-rope, waiting for the tug I had ordered to tow me out, when the master of the tug came alongside in a boat and said " Tug no come to-day, Sar ? " " Tug not come. Why not ? " " Plenty sea outside. Tug go outside he go down." This is the kind of thing that is always happening in these countries. But there was no help for it, for, as the wind was, I could not fetch out of the inner harbour ; moreover, I always incline to accept an event of this kind as an indication that I am not to go to sea. So I shackled on to the buoy again, and made myself comfortable on board. The only person who objected was Weenie, who set up a roar when she learnt that we were not going to sea. I think we were not far wrong to hold on, for this morning it is blowing a gale, and the sea is breaking heavily over the breakwater inside which we lie. In a Hurricane on a Lee Shore. 99 XVI. IN A HURRICANE ON A LEE SHORE. BAY OF ACRE, SYRIA. Wednesday, itfh November, 1888. WE have passed through a most anxious and trying experi- ence, and have been for a time in some danger ; but, thanks to that Higher Protection which we are too apt to call Good Fortune, to a good ship, a good crew, and, I think I may say, to good management, we have passed safely through it. On Saturday last, the loth of November, we sailed out of Alexandria harbour, having failed to get to sea on the preceding Thursday in consequence of the master of the steam-tug which was to tow us out being afraid to venture outside. Fortunate it was, as it turned out, that we did fail ; for had we sailed on the Thursday, we should probably have been caught even closer in to the land than we were by the worst of the furious gale through which we have passed. On Saturday, however, at two in the afternoon, we sailed out of the harbour with a light wind from N.E. which enabled us to dispense with a tug. Out- side the reefs which shelter Alexandria from seaward, we encountered an extraordinarily heavy swell running from the north-westward ; but this did not greatly disturb me, for I attributed it to the gale from N.W. which had been blowing while we lay in the harbour, and by no means supposed that it was the forerunner, as in fact it was, of a far worse gale to come. The wind now began to veer to the eastward, and soon rose to a strong breeze from S.E., and later on from south. G 2 ioo The Log of the 'Nereid.' The heavy swell continued after dark, but the wind, though strong was fair, and by two o'clock on Sunday morning we had made and passed the light at the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. As the sun got up, however, the appearance of the weather became worse. The barometer fell one-tenth in the six hours between midnight and sunrise, there was a deal of lightning in the sky, and the wind had increased with the daylight. Therefore I got all my three boats in on deck, stowed the mainsail and lashed the boom securely down in the crutch, set my main- trysail, and hauled down a reef in the foresail. Then I felt ready for heavy weather. And now all kinds of queer indications, besides the ordinary signs of the sky and the barometer, came to us, as though to show that something serious was at hand. Great multitudes of flying fish rose in almost continuous flights from the water all about us, flew perhaps twice the ship's length away from her, and then darted back into the waves, gleaming like shafts of polished silver in the sun. One of them indeed flew on board, and was immediately secured by John to dry as a trophy for the boys. Then at dusk came great flights of rooks, which passed over us, heading south, and one of these perched up aloft on our fore peak-halyards, and there went to sleep, rolling with the ship, but never loosing his hold till he was cast adrift in the middle of the night when we had to lower the foresail altogether. Finally, a poor woe-begone duck came swimming under our lee and endeavouring to get on board. Many times he tried and failed, drifting away each time to leeward ; but at last he succeeded, and, having reached the deck, was, by my orders, accommodated with a lodging and some food in the hen-coop with our live chickens. But the poor duck and the chickens too all perished in the next twenty-four hours, having indeed had all the life washed out of them, and no wonder. With portents in sea and sky, and the barometer still falling (it had now gone down to 29*60), we entered on those night- In a Hurricane on a Let Shore. 101 hours of darkness which to the mariner are the most anxious of all. By ten o'clock at night (this was on the Sunday) the wind had veered to S.YV. having thus gone half round the compass and was blowing three-parts of a gale. There had been nothing, so far, to hurt, and we had kept our course to the eastward, heading for Jaffa, the ancient Joppa, which lies right down in the bight formed by the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean. But now there came a succession of heavy squalls, each one more sudden and fierce than its predecessor ; and I began to consider the situation. The sky had been all day so overcast with cloud, and the sea had been running so high, that I had been unable to get any satisfactory observation. In order to get any at all I had to have myself jammed up against the boom by a sturdy sailor, to watch the sun when for a moment he came out, and then to make a shot at the horizon between the big waves. But the sextant soon got covered with spray, and it was absolutely impossible under these circum- stances to do more than approximate with it to the measurement of the desired angle. I would have given a good deal just then for just thirty seconds of the comparatively high and steady platform of a thousand-ton ship but as it was I could make very little of it. I was therefore in uncertainty as to my position in all the greater uncertainty because in this part of the Mediterranean the currents are altogether variable, the only thing known of them being that they sometimes run from one to two knots one way, and sometimes from one to two another way but which way exactly under which circumstances, nobody has yet ascertained. I reckoned, how- ever, that I must be within some fifty miles of the coast of Syria, while I knew I was in this same bight already mentioned. This being quite close enough to be to any land and indeed a good deal closer than enough with the gale there was now blowing I resolved to lay the vessel to, wait for daylight, and then see what I would do. Accord- 102 The Log of the 'Nereid? ingly by midnight we had lowered our foresail and reefed our standing jib and staysail, and under these two and the main-trysail were hove-to on the starboard tack the vessel coming to the wind, as she did in the Bay of Biscay, without shipping so much as a cupful of water. By this time it looked about as bad as could be ; but it soon got worse. No words can describe the fury of the squalls which came down on us with wind, rain, and hail all in them. Faster and faster they came one after the other all through the night, until at last they seemed to touch each other, and one to follow the other without the slightest interval at all. They were simply terrible. It was no longer a gale it was a hurricane ; and, as I dived below and studied my charts, I calculated with increasing anxiety the distance we were, the distance we might be, the distance we possibly could be, from that terrible shelterless Syrian coast, the drift we were making, the probable set of the current, and the number of hours it would take us to drive ashore. By this time I had taken in the standing jib and we were hove-to under reefed staysail and main-trysail alone, the ship behaving gallantly, rising slowly to the crest of the big seas and sliding sheer and sudden down the other other side of them like a duck, only occasionally taking over a shower of heavy spray which would swish about the decks till it found its way out through the scuppers, and even more occasionally shipping a lump of green water over her lee rail as the furious squalls pressed her suddenly down to leeward. Long and earnestly did I wish for the break of day ; but it was hardly day that broke that Monday morning. The sky was dreadful to look at dark, leaden, wild with swirls of cloud, and laden with still an unbroken succession of those terrible black squall-clouds, each one with wind enough as it seemed to blow the vessel out of the water. As for the sea, it was enough to frighten you, so high and heavy In a Hurricane on a Lee Shore. 103 was it, and so broken by the squalls which seemed to shear the tops of the waves clear off, and sent them driving in one permanent cloud of fine blinding spray along the surface of the water. What troubled me most was the land how near exactly I knew not, but certainly too near if this was to last much longer. It was too thick to see this fearful land any distance off, and the land itself was, I knew, too low hereabouts to be seen far even had it been clear. At midday we wore the ship and brought her to on the port tack, heading about N.W., but coming to and falling off within a range of three or four points. At two o'clock I was standing aft dismally considering all these things and regretting that I had not taken in my jibboom before the weather had got thus bad, when with a longer and steeper dive down the side of a wave like a mountain, she put her nose into the sea and crack went the jibboom, broken short off at the gammoning-iron. The staj^s and ropes held it, and there it was hanging under our bow in the sea. The danger, of course, was that it might knock a hole in her bows, and it was necessary to secure it and get it inboard, a work of no little difficulty and not without danger. But my Aldeburgh lads proved themselves good men. With Ned at their head, they laid forward, and in an hour we had cleared the wreck, and got the broken spar nicely lashed down to the ring-bolts on deck. I was not sorry. It was only a spar after all, and better where it now was than sticking out ahead in a sea like this. As the day wore on there came no improvement. Rather it got worse than better ; and, although in the evening the barometer had risen half-a-tenth, and at ten at night had climbed up another half-tenth, it only seemed to blow the more furiously and the sea to rise more terribly. This had begun on Sunday night. All that night it had continued. It had got worse on Monday. It had lasted 104 The Log of the 'Nereid.' throughout Monday, and through Monday night; and on Tuesday though the barometer was still on the rise there continued the same unbroken succession of unintermitted squalls. Once, indeed, just about midday on Tuesday, there came a bit of a lull, which lasted a quarter of an hour ; but it was the only one we had. As the daylight began to draw to a close on that Tuesday, my anxiety was great ; and, having had only some ten-minute snatches of sleep since we left Alexandria, I began to feel rather worn, as did also, I have no doubt, my good crew, though they showed no signs of it, but went about their work as quietly and regularly as ever. We had now been hove-to for the best part of two days and two nights ; we were driving towards the land, of that I felt certain, and there was probably with this wind a strongish current setting us in the same direction. Suddenly, as I dismally scanned sea and sky this was a little after three o'clock on the Tuesday afternoon I saw a break coming in the clouds. In an instant I had dived below for my sextant, and a few minutes later I had got such an observation as it was possible to obtain under the circumstances. Again I dived below and rapidly worked out the longitude. It gave me longitude 34 31' 15" E. I knew very well what that meant, even before I had marked off the line of longitude on the chart. If it were anything like correct, we were not above eight miles from the land, with this hurricane blowing dead on to it without a point to spare on either side ! It was a trying moment. I jumped on deck again. " John," said I, " look well to leeward and see if you can see the land." " No, Sir, can't see nothing at all." " Jump into the rigging and see if you can see anything." John went half-way up the main-rigging, glanced, as he went, to leeward, and sang out : " There's the land high and bold, broad on the lee bow." I confess my heart rather sank within me ; for to sail the In a Hurricane on a Lee Shore. 105 vessel in this hurricane and with this sea so as to claw at all to windward with her seemed more than one could expect of her. But there was no help for it. Sail her we must, or drive ashore, when we should certainly be lost with all hands. I roused out First Mate Ned, called the watch, who, as they came up, passed the word to each other " the land" knowing very well what that meant and they all set to work with a will. In a short time we had the fore-trysail (a nice jib-headed little sail) on her and kept her away. I had not thought she would do so well as she did. She behaved admirably, and with this hurricane of a wind blowing from W. by N. and this terrible sea running I found she would lay up well to N. by W. and make good a course of about north. Now, as the coast line runs N. by E., this course would, if we could hold on to it, draw us, very slowly indeed, but still would gradually draw us, off the land. The only point for anxiety now was therefore whether all the gear would stand good. It is at such moments as this that one feels the priceless value of good workmanship, for the safety of the ship might now depend on so slight a thing as the soundness of a clinch-hook or of a strand of rope. Happily, we have always been very jealous about our gear, and we were rewarded for our care ; for everything stood well. Now, as we were plunging along, I again considered the situation. If my calculations were correct and I had little doubt of them now we should soon make Mount Carmel light, which is visible thirty miles in clear weather, and which we should probably see within fifteen or twenty miles at most on a night like this. At half-past six we made that light, and then, after hesitating between remaining at sea and gaining a better offing, or running in the dark into Acre Bay, I decided to do the latter. The south side of the bay is protected by the headland of Mount Carmel from all winds to the southward of W. by N. ; but it is an open bay, fully exposed to any winds to the N. of that. Here, however, came io6 The Log of the 'Nereid.' in again the advantage of previous care and foresight. When at Alexandria I had in vain sought to buy plans of the various places on the Syrian coast ; and, having failed to get any, I had borrowed the plans of H.M.S. Phaeton, and had spent the best part of a day in tracing them myself. The plan of Acre Bay thus obtained was now invaluable. With its aid we stood in, giving the Carmel Reef a wide berth, till we made Acre light, and then boldly steered south for Haifa light before we could see it. Soon, however, we did see it, and at half-past eleven last night we let go our anchor within a mile of the town. As compared with the outside, it was quiet itself; yet there was a tremendous swell coming in, and we rolled hugely at our anchor. But she rode lightly withal, and feeling relieved and comfortable at last, I turned in for the first proper sleep I had had since leaving Alexandria. This morning the wind moderated somewhat ; but it was apparently impossible to communicate with the shore, on which the sea was breaking heavily against the white base of Haifa town. I hoisted my ensign all the same, to let them know that I wished to communicate, and at eleven o'clock was pleased to see a boat coming off manned by half-a-dozen half-naked Arabs. They brought a note from the English Vice-Consul, asking if I wanted any assistance. With the small amount of Arabic at my command, supplemented by pantomime, I asked the boatmen if they could take me ashore. They made me understand that it was dangerous, but they would try ; so, watching my chance, I stepped into their boat, and, after a narrow shave of broaching to and capsizing in the breakers, was shouldered and landed, wet but safely. I find that the oldest inhabitant of Haifa famous as the coast is for heavy weather has never known such a storm as this of the last three days, so that it would seem as if all the bad weather of a quarter of a century had been saved up for us. And it also seems as if, having ridden safely through last In a Hurricane on a Lee Shore. 107 night, we might lie here any time in security. The wind has now moderated to a common gale ; but I dare not run the risk of landing the children yet. The children have been neither sick nor sorry through all this trying time. They have been a little quiet all except Weenie, who has never varied either in her uproar or her appetite and eaten a little less, but that is all ; and that might well be due to their being kept below, with the skylight covers on, and all the hatches closed. HAIFA, Thursday, i$th November. Weenie has landed in state, accompanied by her retinue of brothers and sister, the weather has turned fine, I have got a new jibboom under way, and we are all delighted with Haifa. Among its other advantages, it only has a mail once a fortnight, and as that goes to-night, I close my letter. loS The Log of the 'Nereid.' XVII. ST. JEAN D'ACRE. HAIFA, Saturday, ijth November, 1888. I RODE yesterday round the Bay from this little town at its southern end to Acre at its northern end a weary and desolate ten miles of flat, sandy beach which bore melancholy witness to the fury of the storm we had weathered. Close to Haifa, and little over a mile from where the Nereid was lying at anchor, were the wrecks of two native schooners which had blown ashore in the gale, and when we got to Acre we found the remains of a third that had shared the same fate from which we had been so happily preserved. Indeed the whole shore was more or less covered with the sand-buried ribs of wrecked ships, most of them native craft, ill-fitted to weather a storm, and ill-provided with anchors and cables. Yet among them were the remains of two large French vessels, presumably better found, while the day is still remembered when the English man-of-war Zebra was wrecked hard by the same spot. The Bay, therefore, is not by any means a safe place unless you are properly found and handled but then no more is Piccadilly. The shore was covered with beautiful ruddy sea-weed, and occasionally we came across a shell of the Murex, that fish from which the famous Tyrian purple once was, and still may be, extracted. We forded the brook Kishon, on the banks of which Elijah slew the eight hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, passing over the bar at its entrance, where the water scarce came over our horses' knees. Still following the circular sweep of the bay, we came in time to another famous river, the Belus, where, St. Jean D'Acre. icg according to a very credible tradition, glass was first made by the Phoenicians ; and were now drawing near to Acre itself, which, with its white houses and minarets, quite glittered in the bright sun. We had met some solitary wayfarers, two or three long strings of the sedate, silent-footed camels which furnish the only transport of the country, and a small party of Bedouins, dark-faced, wild and dirty, and looking still darker for the flat black head-dress hanging down to their shoulders, who were moving their camel-hair tents to a new encampment. Just short of Acre, we came upon one of those loathsome sights which occasionally remind one that one is in the East. A dead horse lay on the beach, and a couple of dogs were tearing the yet remaining flesh from his bones, while a dozen other dogs lay about on the sand sleeping after having gorged themselves with the same horrible meal. We rode into the sea to pass to windward of a sight which almost turned my European stomach, and almost immediately came upon what appears to be the afternoon or Hyde Park walk along the shore, of the rank and position of Acre, consisting of Turkish soldier- officers in uniform and a few wealthy landed proprietors and money- lenders. They didn't mind the dead horse. Close to the town lay, half out of the water, the fragments of the wreck of a native schooner, about which clambered and swam and dived half-a-dozen Arabs, intent on saving from it what there still was to save. The crew, by the way, had all managed to get ashore with their lives. Half in the water lay one of the vessel's masts. It was, indeed, to see this that I had partly come to Acre, for I thought I might be able to cut a new jibboom for the Nereid out of it. The first hint of an idea that I might buy something excited the whole population. They all surrounded me, assuring me that this mast was " Toyeb " good, that it was " Ketir toyeb"very good, and orated all together at me with an eloquence which, with the exception of those two words, was wholly thrown away. I had no The Log of the 'Nereid.' with me one John, a famous pilot dragoman of Haifa, a marvel- lous old man of over seventy, who seems to be able to do anything and everything either ashore or afloat, and who is about the only inhabitant of Haifa capable of speaking any English. John and I measured the spar with a length of spun- yarn we had brought with us for the purpose. " Very good spar," said John ; " he make fine jibboom. You buy him. The man he want forty francs for him. We take him Haifa cut him down all right." The spar was evidently nearly a new one, and looked good ; but I had it turned over, and, on the under side, found a series of huge yawning cracks or shakes in it, each some eight feet long, six inches deep, and nearly an inch wide. " John," said I, " that won't do. It is a bad spar. Look at those cracks." " Never mindno matter. Very good spar, Sar." For ten minutes did we develop our difference of opinion on this subject, I declaring that the spar was not good enough for me and that I would rather go on without a jibboom at all than have any but a good one ; John maintaining that it was a good spar and admirably fitted for my purpose. At last I said, " It's " no use talking, I won't have it." John got on his horse again, and as we made off said, " You " quite right, Sar. That damned bad spar." # * # x * * * ;!- Another seafaring job I also wished to do in Acre, which was to see if there was room and water for my vessel inside the old Phoenician or Roman port, where, if there was room, she would lie quite quietly instead of rolling her masts out as she was doing in the open bay over at Haifa. Taking boat, therefore, I pro- ceeded to take soundings in this old port. It was a striking scene that lay before me as we pulled out and brought the boat's head round. In front, on the edge of the land lay Acre, the huge masses of its fortifications tumbled anyhow one on top of the St. Jean D 'Acre. in . other as though Titanic masonry had been hurled there by an earthquake, with rent chasms of yawning pits on every side of them. A crowd of white-clad, fez-capped, bare-legged Syrian boatmen gathered on the small stone landing-place ; and in the harbour in which we were lay three small native schooners. The little port itself, from which many a Phoenician and Roman expedition had issued perhaps that very Phoenician expe- dition which first discovered the sand-bank in the North Seas subsequently known as England is small and confined, an irregular square not more than 200 yards across. The mole that protects it has been half washed away for the Turk not only will not repair anything himself, but will not let anyone else repair it and the two forts which once protected the entrance are now but a mass of shapeless ruins. Between and near the forts I found, on sounding roughly with a stone, a depth of about 1 5ft., and inside not more than I2ft. ; and it was, as always it is in these ancient ports, a matter of wonder how those ancient fleets, which went so far and did so much, could have found room here. As for Acre itself, its aspect is altogether ruinous and no wonder, for there is probably no spot on earth which has stood so many sieges, and been reddened with the life-blood of so many men. Assyrians, Saracens, Crusaders, Egyptians, French, and English have all added in their turn to the slain whose bones lie here. Acre has been the key to Syria, and the outer door to Egypt, from the time that Richard the Lion-hearted besieged it for two years with a loss of 300,000 men (300,000 men ! think of that, and remember that among them were six Archbishops and twelve Bishops) to the time when Sydney Smith beat back Napoleon from its walls with the aid of captured French cannon. It was on the other side of the bay, at Carmel monastery, that, as there is too much reason to believe, Napoleon caused his own wounded to be poisoned by his own surgeons before abandoning them in his hurried H2 The Log of the l Nereid. 1 retreat back to Egypt. Nigh to here it was that Saladin and Richard fought so desperately for the possession of the one well that still exists close outside the walls. Never was such a shambles as this spot has been, never a place so desperately fought over ; and now I believe I could take it with the Nereid's crew, armed with their boat-stretchers, so defenceless is it. Yet it may not improbably once more become the scene of battle, for the various " Powers," with France and Russia at the head of them, are simmering things carefully up throughout Syria, and the boiling over may come any day. On the whole, though Acre is so interesting, and so picturesque, with its streets thronged with camels, donkeys, Bedouins, and a motley riff-raff of Turkish soldiery, it is such a ruined mass, so crowded, so dirty, and so despairing, that my thoughts turned agreeably to my comfortable home lying over there on the other side of the Bay under Mount Carmel ; and I was by no means sorry to pass again under the one gate by which it communicates with the outer country. * * # '.< '{ S| * On our way back we saw the way in which the Syrian fisher- man fishes. He has a funnel-shaped net, some ten or twelve feet in circumference at its mouth, made of very fine twine, and tapering to a point. The mouth of the net is fitted with a row of leaden sinkers extending all round it. Taking it, carefully gathered up in his hand, the fisherman wades into the water up to his waist, looking for the fish, which her c are usually grey mullet of perhaps six inches long. When he see them in the shallow water, which he appears to do from ten to twenty yards off, he warily and slowly approaches them and suddenly, with a dexterous sweep of the arm, casts the net. It falls into the water extinguisher-fashion, and as it falls, the lead draws the mouth rapidly to the bottom, leaving the fish, if the cast has succeeded, prisoners inside. I saw one man take half-a-dozen fine mullet in this way at a single cast, and it made me com- St. Jean D'Acre. 113 prehend the better many expressions such as " casting the net " widely " which one hears daily without appreciating them. My horse being a wretched concatenation of skin and bones without spirit or stamina, and the Arab saddle on which I rode being constructed apparently on the principles of the billiard- table, I was pretty well tired at the end of my day's hot ride ; besides which I felt sore in all kinds of unaccustomed places not usually affected by riding. If this is Equitation, give me Navigation. H4 The Log of the 'Nereid: XVIII. MOUNT CARMEL. MONASTERY OF MOUNT CARMEL. Wednesday, 2ist November, 1888. MOUNT CARMEL the sacred mountain is not, as many probably suppose, a single hill ; it is a high- land tradl of country some twelve miles long, and at one part equally broad, which runs from Haifa southwards along the Palestine shore of the Mediterranean. No region in the world is so famous and so venerated. Moslem and Christian alike regard it as holy ground. Its craggy peaks, wooded dells, and cfreen hillsides have been for three thousand years the refuge for the solitary and the outcast, for whom Nature herself seems to have provided shelter in the unnumbered grottoes which honeycomb the western side of the mountain, and which have gained for it the name of " the hill of a thousand caves." Here Pythagoras retired to philosophise. Hither Elisha fled and well he might when he had caused a she-bear to eat two- and-forty children of Bethel merely because they had called him " bald-head." Here it was that Elijah convened to sacrifice the eight hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and of the grove ; here that he derided their false gods, invoked the fire from Heaven to consume his own sacrifice, and then took the prophets of Baal down to the Brook Kishon and slew them. A thousand years ago, the solitary anchorites spread about the mountain came somewhat together, organised themselves into a community, and first became known as Carmelites, the Mount Carmel. 115 famous bare-footed order of White Friars who have held the mountain ever since, and whose Monastery still crowns its northern height. Yet it has been in its day, perhaps, more thickly peopled than any similar spot of earth of the same extent. On the two narrow, flat spaces of cultivable land that spread to the sea from the foot of the mountain, and within a mile or two of each other, there were once two magnificent and opulent cities, the importance of which is attested by the richly carved marble and porphyry columns, and the fragments of glass, pottery, and pavement, that still lie there. They were before even the Romans, and have so disappeared that even Tradition, that ready and obsequious liar, fails to determine which of the two was the ancient Sycaminum. Indeed, there is hardly a square foot of the mountain but yields remains of solid architecture, and of vast structures ample to show that it was once thickly peopled. Now the wild boar, the jackal, and the hyena roam over it, unmolested and unseen, except when they make predatory incursions into the Monastery gardens. Looking along the coast to the southwards, I see the splendid ruins of Athlit, once a magnificient Roman city, and subsequently, under the name of Castellum Peregrinorum, the last stronghold of the Crusaders in Palestine. A little to the north lie Tyre Tyre, " the destroyed in the midst of the sea," of which it is written, " never shalt thou be any more " and Sidon ; and there, close at hand, with the Monastery chapel built over it, is the cave where tradition declares Elijah to have been comforted by the bursting from the rock of a miraculous spring of water, a tradition easily to be believed, for to this day, after rains, water trickles into the cavern, and has to be drained off through the floor. A wonderful place with a wonderful history and wonderful traditions is this Mount Carmel ; and, being upon it, we insensibly fall under the charm of site and history and traditions, and feel that it is good for us to be here. That something which, for so many centuries, has drawn men's n6 The Log of the l Nereid. 1 footsteps hither seems as strong as ever ; for not only do pilgrims eome by the hundred, and even by the thousand, to tax the liberal hospitality of the Carmelite monks, but others who never come near the Monastery seem irresistibly drawn to the sacred mountain. At its base, next to Haifa, is a flourishing German colony of the " Temple " sect, who seem to be a kind of Christian free-thinkers, or free-thinking Christians, with the very lightest code of religious ceremonial ; while it has become the chosen refuge of the brilliant diplomatist, the spoilt favourite of Society, the strange mystic, the gifted, able, talented, charming Laurence Oliphant. Here he has built two houses, one down in Haifa by the sea, and one eight or ten miles away up in a Druze village of the mountain ; and it was here that he came upon and wrote down for the world that marvellous and hardly to be understood system of religious belief to which I am tempted to give the name of Oliphantiasis. Certainly there is something inexpressibly soothing in this atmosphere, and something withal that moves the thoughts up to those higher problems whereof the various solutions have so vexed and so comforted mankind. It is fitted to be the birth- place of new religions. He who has thought at all of these problems, and has come upon what seems to him a new light, or any new method of bringing down to finite comprehension the infinite verities of the Universe, could scarce refrain here from the attempt to put his light into a lantern, his method into words, his words into a book. No man, I think, could feel aught of the prophet in him, and here keep silent. I, who feel none of it, can however do so. There is an old Latin proverb wherein lies much wisdom. It runs thus Dodlus est, doceat nos. San&us est, oret pro nobis. Prudens est, gubernet nos. For the man who knows himself to be learned, and whose Mount Carmel. 117 business is therefore to teach ; for the man who holds himself to be holy, and whose business it therefore is to pray for his fellow- men this is the place. But for the man who thinks himself to be prudent, and whose business it therefore is to govern, it is no place at all, except as a resting-spot between two periods of the life of action such a man should lead. As a resting-spot it is as complete as it is admirable; and the good and cheerful monks who have made the mountain almost their own shall for ever have the best of my good-will and good wishes, not for their conversion to Protestantism, but for the continuance of their good, placid life, and their free and generous hospi- tality. $ r # # * * The Monastery of St. Elijah on Mount Carmel is a large and solid stone building which crowns the height and looks over the sea. It has been again and again razed to the ground, but has always been rebuilt sooner or later. This is the sixth building there has been here, and it is at present inhabited by twenty Friars, at whose head, as Superior, is Father Felix, a Maltese, and therefore a fellow-countrymen of ours, and a most excellent, genial, and amiable man. The monks keep open house, receive any travellers that present themselves, and make no charge whatever for their hospitality. Those, however, who can afford to do so should feel it desirable on their departure to make a modest offering to the funds of the Monastery which have been drawn upon for the royal entertainment provided for them ; yet I understand that in the majority of cases this feeling is not acted upon. Anything more clean and refreshing than the vaulted stone rooms, looking on to the sea, and furnished with snowy mosquito-net covered beds, in which the traveller is installed, cannot be imagined, nor anything better than the honest fare set before him. There is surely no place where so great a feeling of rest and comfort comes over the wayfarer as here. n8 The Log of the 'Nereid.' Hard by the Monastery is Mount Carmel lighthouse, a fine light visible thirty miles off, but, as I found when struggling with the breeze outside, not faithful to its duty, which is to flash once every two minutes. Instead of that, I found it flashed once in every minute and a-quarter, which is a serious difference, breeding uncertainty in the mind of the mariner precisely then when he has most need of certainty and the best right to expect it. On my arrival therefore, and for the sake of other mariners, I represented this, and begged that it might be set right. Yesterday, however, I inspected the light- house, and carefully timed the light from inside the lantern, when I found that, although it was supposed to have been set correct, it still flashed, not once in two minutes, but once in one minute and fifty seconds still ten seconds wrong. On asking how it was timed, I soon discovered the reason. The lightkeeper is provided, not with any clock, but with two sand- glasses, each of which is suppose to run out in twelve minutes that is to say, during six flashes of the light. But, as a matter of fact, one of the glasses ran out in eleven minutes and twenty-six seconds, the other in twelve minutes and twelve seconds, so that there is a difference between the two of forty-six seconds, or of the better part of one minute ! No wonder the light works ill. I have however made a formal report and representation to Father Felix, who has undertaken to forward it to the company which works the lighthouse under his superintendence. * # # * # * # Weenie when she first came here was taken with the rest of us into Elijah's cave in the chapel. In this cave there is fitted up an altar, and Weenie, being left alone for a moment, seized the bell from it, and danced about the chapel ringing it violently. On being told she must not do this, she retorted with one of her usual questions " Well, what am I to ring " then ? " Mount Carmel. 119 But she has now become the spoilt pet of the Monastery, and the good Friars bring her pet birds, pet goats, and pet cats to her heart's content. She runs about the mountain all day, occasionally taking a donkey-ride down to Haifa and back, and she has not yet intimated her usual wish to " go to sea." Hence I infer that what she calls her " cabin," and the entertainment in general, is to her taste. 3(C ^C 5jC 2|C *\Z 5JC ',* Yesterday there arrived a party of victims to that peculiarly grinding form of Eastern Slavery which is called Cook. Two excellent and amiable gentlemen were the sufferers. They had delivered themselves over to Cook at the rate of 2 per head per diem, and for that consideration are being haled about the Holy Land with a splendidly attired dragoman, tents, and retainers, making, for these two, a party altogether of seven men and twelve horses and mules, besides themselves. The establishment was imposing, and they declared that the luxury was great, and the cooking especially good ; but they were mapped out and tied down to an hour, and so were unable to stop except for the regulated one night, even at this charming spot ; and as they were driven off punctual to the minute, I envied them not their dragoman and their splendour, but rather felt profoundly sorry for them. " Why not," I said to one of these excellent gentlemen, " why not give up one or two of this long list of places that " you are to go to, and stay a day or two in this delightful " spot ? " " We should like to do so very much," he replied ; " but " we have to catch the steamer from Jaffa on such a date " and then we must go to Nazareth to get our washing." * * * # # * * I grieve to say that our friend and companion, Smiler, is no more. He committed suicide by misadventure yesterday. Having been tied up in the dinghy, which was hanging in the I2O The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 davits, he jumped over the dinghy's side, hanged himself by the cord, and was only discovered when life had gone. Poor Smiler ! We miss him greatly, for he was full of life and gaiety, and it is sad to think of his untimely end. Henceforth we are eighteen souls all told, instead of being, as I always held when Smiler was with us, eighteen and a-half. He was so intelligent poor Doggie that he must, I think, have had at least half a soul. I hope it may be some comfort to his relations to know that he is buried in the Holy Land. The Castle of the Pilgrims. 121 XIX. j THE CASTLE OF THE PILGRIMS. MONASTERY OF MOUNT CARMEL. THURSDAY, 22nd November, 1888. A LTHOUGH the Holy Land is said to be now perfectly safe for travellers, it is impossible to avoid noticing that the inhabitants themselves do not hold it to be so. In the towns and on the roads most frequented by tourists people seem to go about with a feeling of security ; but away from the towns and in the remoter districts, such as this, everybody one meets, except the fellahin, is armed to the teeth. There being no carriageable roads in the country (except between Beyrout and Damascus, and Jaffa and Jerusalem, and a dreadful track along the coast on which the Jewish and German colonists painfully drag a few still more dreadful springless carts), there remains only the saddle-horse as a means of travel. And, as soon as one gets outside the towns, every horseman one meets is seen to be provided, either with a rirle slung round his back, or with a revolver buckled to his waist. This is perhaps especially the case on the track hence along the coast and through the plain of Sharon towards Jaffa, which is away from the beaten track of the tourists, and which, besides being much infested. by lawless Bedouin, is endowed with some villages whereof the inhabitants have a most evil repute. One of these lies five miles hence. It is named El Tireh, and its people are so famed for deeds of robbery and violence, that whenever a burglary is committed or a wayfarer attacked in Haifa, they send at once to Tireh to find the robber. They are 122 The Log of the 'Nereid.' professional thieves and highwaymen, and they are neither ashamed of it nor do they make any secret of it. Last year the Carmelite Friars, needing some labourers, sent to El Tireh to try to hire some. The Tireh men said, "We are very sorry ; " we should be very glad to come ; but just now we have not " time, for the olives are getting ripe, and we must go and steal " them." This village I had to pass and repass on a ride to-day to the ruins of Athlit stupendous remains some twelve miles down the coast, which are plainly visible from the Monastery, and which had excited my interest. I usually much objedl to carrying firearms, being too doubtful of my own temper, and afraid I might use them too soon, and perhaps kill a man without its being absolutely necessary ; wherefore, although I have been in some awkward places, and have gone through a campaign, the only unarmed man among hundreds of thousands, I have always confined my defensive weapons to a hunting- whip. To-day, however, I was assured that it was quite necessary to be provided with an armoury of some sort ; and so it was that, at eight o'clock this morning, I found myself riding down the slopes of Mount Carmel with a loaded revolver on my thigh. There was not the slightest occasion, I think, for this revolver. Nothing could exceed the civility of the few parties we met of Bedouin and Tireh men, and when we got to Athlit, the head-man of the little village turned out, lit a fire and made coffee for us as a matter of course and as though he had been my personal servant for years. When we got down to the level of the seashore, hard by the site of the Phoenician- Byzantine-Roman Sycaminum, we found ourselves skirting the base of Mount Carmel on a very decent track, made indeed by Nature, and to which man has con- tributed nothing, but fairly level and smooth. Occasionally The Castle of the Pilgrims. 123 we passed or overtook long strings of grave, silent camels, marching with noiseless footfall under heavy loads of sesame or millet seed, and accompanied by black-faced, Kefiah- covered Bedouin on horses or donkeys, who gave us a grave Eastern salutation as we passed. For the most part, however, the road was quite solitary, and it seemed an interminable two hours and a-half that passed before we reached the cutting through the rock that bars the entrance to Athlit. This rock extends along the coast at a few hundred yards from the sandy shore, and at Athlit a road was cut through it to afford entrance to the city. It is a narrow road with a wall of living rock on either side, and under foot ; and in the roadway there are still to be seen the ruts worn into the solid rock a foot and more deep in places of the Phoenician, Greek, and Roman chariots which once passed here. Once inside, I found myself in the presence of a truly majestic ruin. At a distance of some 200 yards from the flat beach of golden sand, there rose sheer out of the sea a mass of titanic fragments, built on what was probably once a rocky island, though it is now, and has been for ages, united to the shore by a swampy neck of land. These fragments are what remains of the once splendid Athlit, and of the almost equally splendid Casttllum Peregrinorum or Castle of the Pilgrims which the Crusaders built upon its ruins. It requires no historian and no books to tell us what kind of place this was, nor indeed does any book or historian tell us much, except that it was as well it might be the last stronghold the Crusaders held in Palestine. But the story is written in the worn rock and in these silent, massy fragments which have so long defied Time. To the right as we came into the island or promontory, picking our way among fallen heaps of stone and marble, there rose an immense fragment. From Mount Carmel, whence one looks at it end-on, it appears as a high tower ; but from here it is seen to be a portion of a tremendous wall, built up of squared stones, 124 The Log of the l Nereid. 1 each one of which would almost serve for a house, and towering high to the sky. It is immense in every way, in structure, in thickness, and in height. Yet on coming to the sea-face, it discovers itself to be the end wall only of what must have been a great church, whereof there still remain two pointed arches with three carved corbels, and the spring of other arches the rest having all fallen in among the common ruins. This church, as I surmise, must have been built by the Crusaders against the titanic wall which they found there, and which was much older than themselves. Below it are remains of huge cellars, partly hewn out of the rock, and further investigation showed that the whole area of Athlit is honeycombed with these immense caves, many of which are still intact, uninjured by Time, and are used by the peasant Arab to store his little stock of charcoal, chopped straw, or grain. Down to the sea are spread fragments of the same massive and immense buildings. What is indeed most surprising here is that the buildings were evidently so large, while the space on which they stood is so small ; and the explana- tion no doubt is that, like Gibraltar, Athlit was always rather a fortress with a garrison than a . town with inhabitants. Its history is lost ; its name is well-nigh forgotten ; yet there it stands desolate and tremendous on the seashore, one of the most impressive ruins that ever appealed to the imagination to fill it again with the men and the life that once informed them. Here indeed this would be no light task. A fastness set, like Athlit, impregnably in the sea, cannot have escaped the attention of any of the successive occupiers and conquerors of the Holy Land. In all likelihood therefore these ruins date from the earliest dawn of the land's history, and, as elsewhere in Palestine, have seen the splendours of many succeeding civilisations each built up on the ruins of .that which went before. The original Phoenicians ; the Philistines who came from Egypt, and gave to the land its name of Palestine ; the Israelites ; the Assyrians ; the Greeks ; the Ptolemies ; the The Castle of the Pilgrims. 125 Romans ; the Arabs, and the Crusaders all these, unless I am mistaken, have occupied and built upon Athlit and now at last it is crowned by the rough stone cabins of a few wild Arabs, who number, all told, not more than twenty souls. As we spread our carpet on a platform over the sea for the midday repast, the sheik of the village came up with offers of service. He was talkative enough, deplored the miserable situation of himself and his fellow- villagers, and declared that he wished it would please God that the English should come here, a wish which greatly flattered my national pride, until my companion John, proceeding with his translation, added, " English he give him plenty money." That these poor people are very miserable, very mercilessly taxed, the victims of very bad government, and rendered all but incapable, even in this splendid climate and with this fertile soil, of keeping body and soul together that is certain. But I thought of Egypt, and did not feel so sure as the sheik that the advent of England would put an end to his troubles. I further learnt that Athlit itself, together with a large tract of surrounding country, had quite recently been sold by the Turkish Government to the Wali of Damascus for 1600, and that the owner gets in revenue from the villagers something like an average of 108 a-year, which represents nearly seven per cent, for his money, and shows that landed property in Palestine is far more profit- able than in England. The revenue is, of course, levied not as in England, in money, but in kind. The landowner furnishes to the peasant all that he requires to till the ground, including tools, a rude plough, and seed, and in return for the labour, leaves to the peasant one-fifth of the crop, which would suffice him well were it not for the tax-gatherer, who levies not merely the legal tax, but much more. Yet the luckless Turkish Government itself gets much less ; for while the 126 The Log of the 'Nereid.' poor, who cannot pay bakshish, are over-assessed and over-taxed, the rich, who can pay it, are under-assessed and under-taxed. Thus everybody is defrauded all round, while the tax-gatherer, the soldier, and the Govern- ment officials in general justify the cheating system of bakshish by pointing to the undoubted fact that they never get paid any salaries themselves. No system could be devised more injurious for everybody concerned ; yet the Turkish Govern- ment which knows all this, will have it so and no otherwise, for it stands there trembling between the " Powers " not knowing which will spoil it next, and fearing lest any improvement in Palestine should render that the next spoil. Thus an English- man wished to buy this very Athlit, and would have made its inhabitants prosperous, or at any rate contented ; but every kind of difficulty was raised, and I am assured that it was in order to prevent its purchase by the Englishman that it was sold to the Wali. There are still visible here on the south side of the promon- tory, the remains of the ancient port, which, as usual, seems to have been a very small one, some 150 yards across, and with little water. On the beach there stuck up mournfully, half buried in the sand, the ribs of a native coasting- vessel, wrecked here a year ago. In facft the whole coast seems strewn with wrecks, and it appears that the great gale of Sunday week, which we weathered so successfully, has added many to the tale. There are, I am told, three vessels wrecked at Jaffa, and one on the coast between, while there are probably others besides further to the northward. As I was sitting musing among the ruins, I saw a strange appearance out at sea, which at first I took for the smoke of a steamer. It soon showed itself however to be a waterspout, that which I had taken for a steamer's smoke being its base, from which there wound up to the sky a black pipe, sharp and distinct as though it were made of iron, and somewhat in the The Castle of the Pilgrims. 127 form of the letter S. These waterspouts are frequent on the coast. By this time the major part of the male inhabitants of the village were around us each man coming up silently, making the dignified Eastern salutation of carrying the hand to the forehead, lips, and heart, and sitting down at a distance till we had round us a circle of half-a-dozen, to whom we distributed coffee. They were very poor that was clear very uneducated in any book-lore, and according to Western ideas, half savages ; but there was nothing ungainly about them. Their bearing was dignified, their manners stately, and their speech grave and modest, yet without a tinge of that shyness which marks the Western peasant, and which makes one feel even with one's own countrymen as though one were in presence of a stranger, of a foreigner, and almost of an enemy. At the end of a couple of hours these good people brought our horses, held our stirrups, and gravely bade us " Ma " Salaameh " " go in peace." 128 The Log of the 'Nereid: xx. TYRE AND SIDON. OFF TYRE, SATURDAY, 2^th November, 1888. I LEARN this morning from the Captain of a French steamer, just arrived from Alexandria, that there also was felt the great gale which we experienced on the Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday after leaving that port. It seems to have been as bad there as it was with us on this coast, and was so severe that even that smart and powerful vessel, Her Majesty's ship Phaeton, which was to have gone to sea on the Monday, could not venture out, and had to postpone her departure till the Wednesday. I remember hearing that some of the Phaeton's men said to some of mine referring, if you please, to this frigate that " they should like to go home in something bigger " than that " ; and I cannot forget the friendly warnings given to me by her very amiable and charming officers as to going to the coast of Syria at all especially without steam nor the pictures they drew and showed me of the terrible experiences we should have even in landing at Syrian ports. On learning, therefore, that the Phaeton was kept in port by the very gale that we weathered with an iron-bound coast under our lee, I feel concerned ; and I propose, on my return to Alexandria, to offer her a tow out in case she is ordered to sea in difficult weather ; besides which I shall be ready to take on board, for greater security, any or all of her officers, chronometers, uniforms, sherry, or other valuables which it is important to have in a safe vessel, able to encounter gales. I cannot, I think, do more than this for them ; but I shall do it as a duty Tyre and Sidon. 129 as well as a pleasure, for one ought always to render to a Queen's ship any assistance one can, and I should not like after all their kindness to me to think of the Phaetons foundering in a breeze while the Nereids were making fine weather of it. Even as it is, I fear they must have been in great discomfort, if not in danger, in Alexandria harbour during the gale, while we were comfortably hove-to outside. But it is astonishing w*icit risks men will run as a matter of duty, and it is, as everybody knows, a common thing to find men imperilling their lives on the deep in a thousand-ton steamer while others, more cautious or more fortunate, are securely traversing the seas in an eighty-ton sailing schooner. N.B. This is a joke. * * * * * * # In Haifa we have fitted a new jibboom which we made out of the mizenmast of one of the country vessels wrecked in the gale ; have bought some oranges at a shilling a hundred, some chickens at sixpence each, and some eggs at fourpence a dozen ; and have filled up with water and a new cat from Acre to replace the lamented Smiler. All this done, we got our anchor and sailed out of the Bay to-day, at half-past two, with a nice breeze from S.E. This lasted us till we were abreast of St. Jean d'Acre, when it suddenly shifted to N. by E. and blew fresh. After dark however it grew lighter, and soon after the moon rose, at ten o'clock, the wind came, as it almost always does in commonly fair weather at night, off the land from E., so that we again lay up to our course for Beyrout. We are now off Tyre (called by the modern Canaanites Sur whence comes the name of Syria), and us the wind is fair and the weather, so far, fine, there is time to think of the wonderful town and its wonderful history, and to refresh oneself with the only book that is really worth taking about in the East the Bible. The magnificence of this city must have been as great as its name has always been famous and that long before 130 The Log of the 'Nereid.' Hiram, King of Tyre, shipped to Joppa the cedar-wood where- with Solomon built the Temple. There are remains of every age and every race still only partially explored and each successive discovery that chance brings about adds to our idea of its splendour and its wealth, only to make the contrast of its present abasement the greater. Yet nothing can add to the completeness with which Isaiah and Ezekiel described its splendour and predicted its abasement. The " strong city of " Tyre " allotted to the tribe of Asher, the shrine of Baal, of Zeus, and of Astarte, whose King said, " I am a god; I sit in " the seat of God, in the midst of the seas," the " crowning city " whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the "honourable of the earth," has suffered most literally the fate prophesied by the inspired writers. " I will make thee like the ''top of a rock; thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; " thou shalt be built no more." ..." How art thou " destroyed that wast inhabited of seafaring men, the renowned " city which wast strong in the sea, she and her inhabitants " which cause their terror to be on all that haunt it." . . . " I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more. . . . " Thy riches and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners and " thy pilots, thy calkers and the occupiers of thy merchandise, " and all thy men of war that are in thee, shall fall into the "midst of the seas . . . and all that handle the oar, the " mariners and all the pilots of the sea shall come down from " their ships . . . shall weep for thee with bitterness of " heart and bitter wailing . . . and lament over thee, " saying, What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the " midst of the sea ? " * # * * & * # OFF SIDON, Sunday, 2$th November, 1888. I have been struggling all night with John, a web-footed old man who acts as a pilot, and whom I have carried off from Haifa to talk Arabic for me, and to tell me the signs of the Tyre and Sidon. 131 weather as far as Beyrout. John knows the coast very well indeed ; but that is all he knows. He has no notion at all of charts, and compasses, and bearings. His great effort therefore is to get us on top of the land, while my determination is to keep off the land as much as I can, especially in the dark. As it is, I feel that we are too near, for it has been calm all night and the greater part of to-day, and we have been hanging about Sidon all the time without making any progress. John declares that, if I would stand in to within three-quarters of a mile of the shore, which is steep-to, I should find a breeze there, or, as he puts it, " he catch him one wind " ; but I reply that I would rather be longer on the passage than be in there wherefore John is hurt and depressed. He seems, indeed, to have a great knowledge of the weather on this coast, and predicts the changes in the wind, which here is always changing when it is not blowing a gale, to the ver}^ hour. Thus last night, when we were heaving about in a calm, he assured me that, when the moon rose at eleven o'clock, the wind would come from the S.E. It did so, and I have since found him equally correct. If he knew a little more about the sea, even though he knew a little less about the land and the weather, John would be a first- rate pilot. * . # * * # * * OFF BEYROUT, Monday, 26th November, 1888. Another night of calms which seemed interminable, varied only by winds of the lightest and most variable kind, has kept us hanging about between Sidon and Beyrout, with John wild to get nearer the land, and I determined to get farther from it, and only sorry to be as near as I was. This morning, however, a heavy black cloud to the S.W., together with thunder and remarkably vivid forked lightning, announced a change. Accordingly, soon after sunrise the first of what seems to promise to be more bad weather came down on us from that old dirty south-western quarter. It only hurried us, however, 2 I 132 The Log of the l 'Nereid. 1 round Beyrout cape, and up to the anchorage opposite the town, where we brought up at half-past nine this morning, having been the better part of two days on the seventy mile journey from Haifa. This is not a harbour at all, but only an anchorage in a bay entirely open from west round to north ; and, as a heavy swell is coming in, we are rolling tremendously at our anchor, though without any strain on the cable. The getting into and out of a boat is consequently a matter of some little difficulty, as one has to watch the roll of the ship and the rise of the boat, and to seize the exact moment when ship and boat meet. The landing is also far from admirable, and involves the same nice timeing, for the swell rolls right in to the landing place. The native boatmen, however, manage their craft very skilfully, and there is no actual danger about the matter. To add to the discomfort of it all, it has to-day, for the first time since we left England, close on three months ago, set in raining with a will, and, under the circumstances, the streets of Beyrout are one mass of mud, variegated, as usual, by touts of every kind, who, scenting from afar the lunatic Englishman laden with gold, press upon one in a crowd, offering their services and presenting their cards and certificates of good conduct and character. This afternoon I called on the Turkish Governor, for whom I had a letter of introduction. The dirty, ragged, slovenly guard of Turkish soldiers, who look so disgraceful in time of peace, and fight so inimitably in time of war, turned out and presented arms as I drove into the Serail or Government House, and I was immediately ushered into the presence of AH Pasha, a dignified yet most amiable gentleman, speaking French with equal fluency and correctness a great comfort in a country where nobody seems to speak any language whatever in a comprehensible fashion. The Pasha was most obliging, and after a long and improving talk on politics, begged me to Tyre and Sidon. 133 name a day when he might return my visit on board the yacht. As I went down the open staircase leading to the courtyard, I was aware of a great commotion. This was caused by the guard, who had been lounging and smoking about, bolting for their weapons. They got at them barely in time to present arms again to me as I drove out, and to make me begin to feel quite like a personage. Beyrout is a horrible, half-Europeanised Arab town, without, so far as I can see, a point of interest about it. It is, in fact, a smaller, dirtier, worse Alexandria. 134 The Log of the 'Nereid.' XXI. DAMASCUS. DAMASCUS, Saturday, ist December, 1888. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better " than all the waters of Israel ? " asked Naaman the leper of Elisha the prophet. As Elisha is not recorded to have made any answer, it is to be presumed that he did not feel able to contest the point ; and at this distance of time one cannot but feel inclined to agree with Naaman. This Damascus, set 2000 feet above the level of the sea, inside the Lebanon range, and on one of the southern spurs of that parallel range known as the Anti-Lebanon, is a highland city in a highland region, whereas the rest of the Holy Land to the southward is all lowland, so low indeed that, as everybody knows, the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, instead of being above, are 1200 feet below the ordinary sea-level. The rule which is found true in all countries, which is as true in England as in France, in Spain, and in Italy, that the highest ground and the hardest climate produce the best men, is true here also. The men who cluster about the heights of the Lebanon, as a race, are as superior in hardihood, in endurance, and in all manly qualities, to those who are aggregated together down in the plains and valleys of Galilee and Judaea, as Scotsmen and Northumbrians are superior to Hampshire men, Bretons and Bearnais to the inhabitants of the Landes, Basques to Andalusians, and Piedmontese to Neapolitans. The Damascenes are a splendid race, proud and haughty, yet amiable, cheerful, and well-mannered ; and Damascus, lying where it does, has always been, what it still is, the key to the Lebanon, which is the citadel of Syria, and the Damascus. 135 spot which Nature has pointed out as the most important in all this country. Hence it was a shrewd, political, and strategical move on the part of the French, who still always look forward to the day when they will reign in Syria a day yet far distant though to make the splendid road which crosses the seventy miles of Lebanon passes that lie between Damascus and Beyrout, for with that road and a fleet, Damascus is now always accessible to an army, whereas before it was practically inaccessible. But it is not a French Army that will next use the road. In spite, however, of its elevated position and its relatively severe winter climate, Damascus is not merely the most impor- tant, but also the most beautiful and fertile city in Syria ; and this is due to that Abana and that Pharpar which Naaman so prized. The waters of these two rivers have surrounded it with splendid trees and beautiful gardens, and have given it the finest fruits in the world, while only a mile or two from the river banks, the Lebanon mountains rise in a tawny, stony, barren desert where nothing will grow, not even a Scotch thistle. No wonder, therefore, that Naaman prized these two precious rivers ; and no wonder either that Damascus has always been held to be an earthly paradise given to the true believer as a foretaste of that which awaits him hereafter. Good as the French road is, and admirably kept up as it is, the journey from Beyrout hither in the cramped diligence is one dreadful nightmare which lasts a good fourteen hours. As the road at some points passes over elevations of 5000 feet, which at this time of year are covered with patches of snow and ice, and enveloped in a permanent and impenetrable Scotch mist, the journey is a very cold and comfortless one, and it is a great relief to end it, and to find in the Hotel Victoria (which for some inscrutable reason is not mentioned by the guide-book) an inn which for comfort and cleanliness is not to be matched in Asia or bettered in Europe. * * * * * * The Log of the 'Nereid.' Having been promoted to a milord on entering the Mediter- ranean, I have now become an Excellency. I had committed the blunder of providing myself with the best letters of intro- duction. Then I committed the further blunder of delivering them. The result is that my life is a burden to me. I am piloted about by a splendid tall Moslem, whom even my slight knowledge of Arabic enables me to pronounce the most sympathetic of men, but who is so gorgeously caparisoned that I am ashamed to disgrace his magnificent presence by my modest company. This is Achmed, the Cavass, and his func- tion is to whack horses and donkeys, and occasionally riders too, over the head and shoulders to keep them out of the way of My Excellency. In addition to this the Governor of the town a very amiable and charming Pasha he was, and as full of humour as of politics sent for the Chief of the Police, and ordered him to give me one of his men to accompany My Excellency whenever My Excellency went out for a walk. For this attention I returned grateful thanks, but subsequently I privately communicated to the Chief of the Police my desire to be let off the honour. What is worse, however, is that, being lodged in an hotel immediately opposite the Serail, I can't go out for a moment without the guard turning out and presenting arms to me. How they all know me again I can't imagine ; but they do ; and when I am dodging in the slippery mud between a camel and a donkey to avoid being run over, 1 am suddenly reminded by a loud " Salaam Tutt " and the clang of arms that I have become an Excellency, and must behave as such by making a military salute which was never included in my education. And the worst of it is that they won't let you off. I had quite a difficulty on my arrival when, on being required to furnish my "titles," I declared that I had none; and it was with a sorrowful incredulity, not untinged with suspicion, that they received my assurance that I was not a General, nor a Colonel, nor even a Captain. As to the Excel- Damascus. \ 37 lency, in spite of all my protests that I am by no means excellent, that sticks ij me, except in the case of an hotel guide who has so far compromised the matter as to come down to " M. le Baron," but declines to go further on any con- sideration. :;: # # * * # sj' Nothing can exceed the civility and the attention one gets, or the amiable smiles one meets everywhere from this so-called " fanatical population of Damascus," among whom it is still by some Europeans considered dangerous to venture at all. From the Wali and the Mushir down to the muleteers and the street sweepers, they all seem to vie with each other in kindly civilities. Yesterday I was admiring the marvellous way in which one of the street cooks compounded out of a dozen dif- ferent materials one of those dishes based upon beans for which Damascus is famous. A smiling crowd gathered to look at me looking at the dexterous cook ; and when the dish was ready all the crowd joined with the man for whom it had been pre- pared in begging me to taste it all of them being delighted that it pleased me, which it did much, for in truth it was delicious, though it only cost one penny. Again, to-day I bought a donkey bridle splendidly ornamented with shells. But I could not exactly make out (for it was different from our English bridles) how it ought to be fitted to the donkey. The saddler called to a man riding past, stopped him, and, as a matter of course, stripped off that donkey's bridle and tried mine on him, while the rider stood smiling by, only too glad, apparently, to have had the opportunity of doing a little service to a stranger. Then, this afternoon, the Cavass called me from my room to see a horse in the street. " I " know you love horses," he explained, " and this is a very " good mare I saw passing. Will you try it ? Go for a ride " as long as you like." The owner of the mare, which seemed a very fine and fiery animal, agreed in begging me to take it 138 The Log of the 'Nereid.' when I liked, for as long as I pleased. Accordingly I did go for a short turn; which, with the easy paces due to the long pasterns of the mare and the extreme lightness of her mouth, proved a very pleasant one. The owner was delighted that I was pleased, and, only too glad to have had the opportunity of serving me, caracolled off in circles with a parting salutation. I could tell fifty incidents of like kind, each one of which has made me feel only too painfully how different things would be with a stranger in England. As for me, I never was so petted in my life as I now am by these " bloodthirsty and savage fanatics." The weather in Damascus is cold, and one would hardly be sorry to have a fire, besides which the last two mornings have brought us a thick London fog not indeed of the yellow variety, but white which hides the sun altogether, or only shows him as a pale white moonlike orb, and covers the whole town with a damp and gloomy pall. But this fog clears off about midday, and then everything becomes bright again. Last evening, having escaped from my Cavass, I went for a stroll outside the town by the banks of the Abana among the trees. What struck me most was the very remarkable gre'n sunset. It was not merely that the western sky had a light tinge of green, such as one sometimes sees for a few minutes at the end of a fine summer day in our English latitudes, but that it was a vivid, brilliant emerald-green, deepest at the horizon, but extending thence nearly half way to the zenith, where the sky again became blue. Damascus has some famous tombs. There is, in the Grand Mosque, which was in the third century a Christian church, the tomb of St. John the Baptist, who is as much honoured by Mahometans as by Christians indeed, the Damascenes to this Damascus. 139 day swear by " the head of Yahya." Then, also in the Mosque, there are tombs containing the heads of two Moslem saints. Finally, near the end of " the Street called Straight " there is the Tomb of St. George, that patron saint of Merry England of whom Gibbon maliciously avers that he was a Cappadocian pig-driver who made a large fortune by contracting for the supply of the Roman armies with meat. The Great Mosque itself is a vast and splendid edifice, with an equally vast and splendid court where the faithful perform their ablutions before prayers. The pillars that support the roof are of every size, kind, and order, having been collected throughout Syria from older buildings. The walls still show in parts the splendid Byzantine mosaics which enriched them while they still formed part of a Christian church, but for the most part they are covered with whitewash. The vast floor is covered with carpets, some of them old and fine, but most of them new and common. We were, as usual, followed into the Mosque by a curious crowd, but this was soon dispersed by the guardians, who took thick sticks and belaboured them all round. It was strange, and to me rather shocking, to witness such a scene in a place held so sacred ; but the guardians seemed to enjoy thrashing out the population, for, when I begged them to desist, they only shook their heads with a smile as who should say, " It is all " very well, but you don't know how to treat these people ; this " is quite the right way " wherewith they rushed again at the little crowd of men and boys, beating them like carpets till they fled shrieking. Then these same guardians presented us each with a paper of sugared almonds, and smilingly continued their escort. Of the three minarets of the Mosque, one is the Madimt Isa, or Minaret of Jesus, so-called from the Moslem tradition that Our Saviour will take his seat on the summit thereof at the Day of Judgment. We ascended another of the three, whence 140 The Log of the 'Nereid.' is obtained a splendid view of the green-girdled city, hemmed in by the rugged red rocks of the barren Lebanon. Nothing can exceed the filth of the streets of Damascus, or be deeper than their mud after rain, unless it be the cleanliness of the insides of the houses. Those of the richer men are marvels of splendour in colour and carving, and the admirable habit of taking off the shoes at the threshold of each room preserves in them a quite unsullied cleanliness. One old Moslem gentleman gave us a revelation of his social life when, sitting on his divan, sipping his coffee, and smoking his fragrant Lebanon tobacco, I asked him if he intended to send to Beyrout a young man who squatted humbly in the lower corner of the room, and whom I took for his son. " Alas ! " he said, " I have " no children. It is a great misfortune indeed ; but my wife " has given me none, and I love her too much to take another "wife." Another rich man, whose house we came to at sunset, we found entertaining half-a-dozen of his relations at dinner. He begged us to join the feast, and accordingly we sat down round a huge tinned copper dish, some eight feet in diameter, whereon was piled a great heap of rice, enlivened with mutton and pistachio nuts, while around were basins of pickles and of yaourta. kind of sour clotted cream wherewith to sharpen the taste of the dish. The modern luxury of spoons being here provided, one took a spoonful of the common dish, dipped it into one's private basin of pickles or yaourt, and then swallowed it. It was very good, and it was followed by a sweet concoction of rice and milk, and then, of course, by coffee. The rooms, the beautiful carvings, and the carpets of this house were even more splendid and warm in tone than those of the other, and the scrupulous cleanliness everywhere was equally remarkable. Damascus. 141 DAMASCUS, Monday, yd December, 1888. I have met here an Arab gentleman of ancient lineage and good position, who is a landed proprietor near Baalbec. He is well-read, speaks French excellently, is thoroughly well- informed in Eastern politics, and is, altogether, to use our homely and expressive phrase, " as clever as he can stick." In fact he may possibly be a little too clever. At any rate he is clever enough to make it a pleasure to talk with him, the more so that he is the very type of cultivated young Syria. Although an Arab of ancient lineage, he is a Roman Catholic by pro- fessed faith. Therewith he is also a free-thinker, believing in nothing, but ready to support the Pope through thick and thin as a political and personal speculation. But in addition to that he is a poet not that he writes at all, but that all his thoughts are coloured by the poetry of his race. From such a man there is much to be learnt of the seething mass of astute intrigue, deception, assassination, and facile rebellion which is always working from Constantinople to Aden and the Ganges, and which here represents politics much of which the English Foreign Office knows nothing, and in which the English tax- payer could hardly be made to believe although he sees its fruits at Khartoum, and Suakim, and at many other places without in the least comprehending them. That which I learnt from this typical nineteenth-century Syrian I am not about to divulge ; but I cannot refrain from noting one thing he said. We were talking of the Syrian fellahin, the peasants of the country, whose lot is so hard and whose position is so miserable. I happened to speak of them as Arabs, when my friend's mobile features took an expression of scorn and disgust. " Arabs ! " said he, " those people ! They are not Arabs at " all." " Well, at any rate, they are a patient and an ancient " race." 142 The Log of the 'Nereid.' He smiled contemptuously. " They an ancient race ! " said he, " not at all. They are nothing. They are mere sons of Crusaders." The scorn with which he said this was immense ; and it led me to reflect upon the mushroom growth of our own admirable English aristocracy, with whom to be a son of a Crusader is to have a most rare and enviable lineage. It recalled tome the story, which I can perfectly believe, of an Arab chieftain who condemned the Jews because they were merely descended from Abraham, of whom the chieftain said that " he was not at all " a Sheikh of good family." These are trifles perhaps in an age which either has no grandfathers, or only has them to despise them ; but they show not only how ancient this land and this race are, but also how ancient they believe themselves to be. The mixture of pride and poverty ; of dirt and dignity ; of savagery and fine breed- ing ; of public filth and personal cleanliness ; of squalor in the street and splendour in the house ; of highway robbery and inviolable hospitality the mixture, in short, of all those contra- dictions which make the East at once so lamentable and so admirable, could probably only have been found among a people at once very proud and very ancient too proud to be practical and too ancient to be ill-mannered. * # * * # # * I declare that the one only fanatic I have met in this " fanatical and bloodthirsty population of Damascus " (see Blue-books and guide-books passim) is a Protestant missionary. He had explained to me that he had left England, and was now living at Jaffa in order to convert the Mahometans of this country to Protestantism ; when I asked whether he did not think he might thus do them, in case of success, more harm than good, he was surprised that I did not understand the degradation that the Mahometan religion had brought with it. I asked him where the degradation lay ; and he replied that it Damascus. 143 lay especially in the treatment of women. Now, I have always held that the one point in which Islam is manifestly superior as a practical religion, to be, not merely mouthed but practised, lies precisely in this, that it keeps woman in her proper place, which is at home among her children and her family, and that it prevents her from interfering in the general business of the world, for which she has been rendered incom- petent by Nature herself, and to which she can only bring confusion. My missionary he was a good soul, and an ex- cellent creature although he was a missionary was deeply shocked to hear me develop these views ; and still more shocked when I ventured to hint that it was nigh to imperti- nence to come into people's countries merely in order to tell them that their faith was the religion of the damned. He evidently thought me a child of the devil ; and he has not appeared at table since. I am sorry for this, for I had some hopes of converting him to a more charitable view of other people's religions. We rode out of the town yesterday to see some Jereed play. On a level space a couple of miles beyond the walls we found two parties of horsemen, ranged in a line facing each other, at a distance of some three hundred yards. Every horseman had his jereed or mimic spear, a mere long stick pointed at the end. Suddenly one horseman dashed out at the opposite line, threw his spear at one of the enemy, wheeled his horse, and bolted for his own side. He was instantly pursued by one of the enemy who threw a spear at him and hit him in the small of the back from a distance of perhaps twenty yards. This enemy was in turn pursued by one of the first side, and so on till all had been engaged, when they began over again. It was a pretty little image of a skirmish, and I commend the Jereed to our Polo Players. It is quite as amusing as Polo, demands 144 The Log of the 'Nereid.' equally good horsemanship, and affords at least an equally good chance of breaking a collar-bone or laming a horse. Some of the horses were very fine-looking animals, but most of them very indifferent, and in point of speed they were all disappointing, being, so far as my judgment of pace goes, extraordinarily slow at their very best. In fact, throughout Syria and all the East, what strikes one about the horses is that they are a race of animals that have been entirely neglected for centuries. They are narrow-chested, straight-shouldered, stumbling creatures, bred anyhow, and fed nohow. They walk fairly well, and are wonderfully good over steep and rough ground, having been forced to learn (what our English horses never know) how to bend their hocks and to come down an almost perpendicular hill by sitting on it. But they can't trot a yard, and their gallop is a series of jumps which cover no ground at all. I speak here only of the ordinary every-day horse of the towns, which is not to be compared with his English brother of the same order. Among the Bedouin of the desert, however and especially among the Anazeh tribe there are no doubt very fine animals to be found. Before the Jereed-play ended, we were privileged to see the mimic warfare degenerate into a real row, which greatly amused me. It was between two Christians, who love each other here even worse than they do in Europe. After a long and heated discussion, one of them called the other Kelb, or " dog," whereupon that other proceeded to beat him about the ribs with a stick. Then they both dismounted and beat each other. Then all their friends joined in, and when we left there was a very pretty scrimmage going on. But as they didn't seem to hurt each other, it was only interesting as a specimen of manners. One of the amusements of Damascus is to spend a few hours in the bazaars or the Khans of the merchants, bargaining for carpets, stuffs, and other Eastern products. The charm of this chaffering grows on one, and after a time one quite takes Damascus. 145 a pleasure in it. There is always a crowd of spectators who seem as much interested as the principals, and as stuff after stuff, or carpet after carpet, is unfolded, they make edifying remarks on each. It takes at least an hour to buy the simplest thing, and then another half-hour to pay for it, so confused are the monetary arrangements here, and so difficult is it to find the exact change in coinage, whereof one para (which is the twentieth part of a penny) is always a principal feature. One fact which I acquired thus is that fine Eastern carpets cost at Damascus as nearly as possible one-fourth of their price in England, and one-third of their price in Malta. In the silk stuffs for which Damascus once was as famous as it was for sword-blades, there has been a great decline of excellence. Indeed the silk stuffs here although some of them are of very original and beautiful patterns are most poor and unsatisfactory. As to the famous " Damascus " blade," there is no longer any such thing made here, the Tartars having, in one of their raids long ago, deported all the local armourers to Samarcand. The splendid carvings for which the town was once well known, and with which many of the houses are still enriched, are also no longer pro- duced here. In fact the artistic and manufacturing energy of Damascus seems to have largely died out. And, worst of all, what still remains is much poisoned by the European aniline dyes which have come into use, so that the carpets and stuffs of modern make are as bad and as perishable as the worst occidental manufactures, while the older specimens, instead of fading, only mellow and enrich their tones with time. * # # * # * * In one thing Damascus is still supreme and that is in the Hammam. The " Hammam of the Tiles " and the " Hammam " of the Tailors " are very fine and very richly decorated buildings ; and the shampooing as here practised is a highly- finished art, the result of many centuries of traditions. It is a 146 The Log of the 'Nereid.' very cheap luxury too. For a bath for three of us, including a tip to the shampooers, a narghileh of the best Tombak tobacco, a glass of delicious lemonade, cooled with Lebanon snow, a cup of coffee, and, not twenty minutes, but a good hour's shampooing, [after which one was robed, not in two The Shampooer. or three, but nearer a dozen silk-embroidered towels for all this I paid this morning a medjidie, equal to about 35. gd. English money, or at the rate of is. 3d. a head. But this is the extravagant price which only an Excellency pays, as being due to his position. An ordinary bather would pay for the luxuries no more than two piastres, or five pence. I hope that, in time, we shall become as civilised in London as they are in Damascus. Modern Zion. 147 XXII. M O DE RN ZION. JERUSALEM, Thursday, 6th December, 1888. JAFFA (or Joppa) is the place where Andromeda is reported to have been chained to the rock to be devoured by the Monster, and only a few years ago the ring in the rock was still shown to which she was fastened. The story was thus proved to be true ; and I don't wonder at it, for Jaffa is still so horrible a spot that I can conceive anybody who ever lived there being capable of anything. There is what amounts to no more than a boat-shelter formed by a reef of rocks that runs off at an angle to the coast-line. It is never fine weather there ; and when the weather is a little worse than usual, landing, which is always difficult and dangerous, becomes impossible. To bring a sailing vessel to such a deadly spot seems to me imprudent; so, as I wished for several reasons to visit Jerusalem, I left the Nereid, with a good anchor down, in St. George's Bay at Beyrout, went to Jaffa by steamer, and thence drove on here along what is called a road. The landing at Jaffa, and the journey thither, which, although the distance is but thirty-six miles, lasted eleven hours, were too horrible for words, and naturally made me reflect on the folly of those who, instead of sticking to the ship, go travelling by steamer and on wheels. Nor was there much comfort on arriving, for Jerusalem is not brilliant in hotel accommodation, while in appearance it is a miserable village which would be horrible of aspect were it not for the bright sky, and the sun, and the traditions that surround it. JERUSALEM, Saturday, 8tk December. The Jews have set up a claim to have Jerusalem regarded as their own peculiar city, from which they have indeed been K 2 148 The Log of the l Nereid: ousted, but which is especially their own. The world which calls itself Christian and civilised, having had its attention drawn to Jerusalem almost exclusively by the Sacred Book which records only the Jewish history of the city, has acquiesced in this claim. But it is nevertheless an unfounded one. The Jews did not create Jerusalem, and in the whole of its history of 3000 years they have not possessed it for 500. During these thirty centuries only five have seen a Jewish ruler seated on Mount Zion for their return, permitted by Cyrus, merely left them as protected tenants at will, imperfectly secured in their tenancy by their protectors. So far as the claim of possession goes, the claim of the Persians, of the Romans, and of the Greeks is as good as that of the Jews; and the claim of the Ottoman Turks is better than that of either. For it is men of Turkish and not of Jewish race who have ruled in Jerusalem for the past twelve centuries ; who have survived as rulers even the tremendous efforts of all Christendom made in the Crusades ; and who are still here as rulers. Jerusalem, in short, is no more the property ol the Jews than France is of the English. The Jews once ruled in Jerusalem as the English once did in France ; both were foreign invaders, conquerors, and settlers ; both were, after a considerable period, expelled ; and neither have any claim, legal or moral, on the country they once had, but subsequently failed to keep. All this occurred forcibly to me this afternoon when I visited that tremendous relic, that mass of titanic masonry, reputed to be one of the walls of the Temple, which is known as the Jews' Wailing-Place. Here the Jews come from all parts of the world to mourn the defeated splendour of their race. It is a touching sight to see them with their faces turned to the wall, weeping and wailing and chanting the litany which recalls the majesty that is defeated, the great men that lie dead, and the walls that are overthrown. At each line the response Modern Zion. 149 is, " We sit in solitude and mourn " ; yet I cannot but fancy that it must be most earnest at the line, " For the precious " stones that are burned we sit in solitude and mourn." Certainly if any Jews come from the neighbourhood of Hatton Garden, they would hardly fail, at the mention of these precious stones, to reflect that they cost a deal of money, or to mourn with the greater emphasis over them. But, in truth, I don't see what the Jews have got to wail about. If they have been expelled from Jerusalem, they are the rulers of London, Paris, and Berlin. If they are no longer the governors of Palestine, they are the tyrants of Europe, and I cannot believe that they really hold themselves to be worse off for the change. Nor shall I believe it till I see the great house of Rothschild abandon London in order to set up as bankers in Jerusalem ; Baron de Hirsch leave Paris in order to make a railway from Jerusalem to Jericho, with a free refresh- ment bar at the place where the man fell among thieves ; and all the Jewish controllers of the European Press, from Mr. Levy Lawson downwards, cease printing startling intelligence in the west, and take to achieving the largest circulation in the world in Hebrew near the Gate of Damascus. But I think they would rather agree with me in my conclusion that, on the whole, the chosen people have, at this day, really not much to wail about, and that, even in the matter of precious stones, they could give any other race seven pounds of Cape diamonds and a beating. * * * >< # * * Apart from this Wailing- Place, there is absolutely nothing in the modern aspects of Jerusalem to excite any sympathy for the Jew. On the contrary, all that one sees of him produces loathing and contempt. His filth, his effeminacy, his degra- dation are here more wholly complete and more apparent than anywhere in the world, and while thus on the point of exciting pity, the sentiment is changed to loathing by the ungenerous 150 The Log of the 'Nereid.' cunning that gleams in his eye. There is, I suppose, no human animal more utterly devoid of all dignity and nobility, none that bears an aspect at once so abject and so dangerous as the lower class of Russian Jews who have recently overrun the Holy City. Their pale, womanly faces, rendered loath- some by a long, greasy curled lock in front of each ear ; their narrow shoulders, bent carriage, filthy gaberdines, and furtive glances, mark in every point a race that has been oppressed for centuries, and that has so deserved oppression as to make it hard not to oppress it. These poor wretches are those who have been expelled from Russia by that delightful Government which Mr. Robert Lowe (before he became a Lord and learnt occasionally to hold his tongue) called the " Father of the " fatherless, and the defender of the oppressed." Knouted, imprisoned, and murdered, and the remnant thrust across the Russian frontier, the poor creatures have come in hundreds to Jerusalem, only to find themselves worse off than ever. And the joke of it is that the very Russian Government which created their misery and ordained their banishment is now daily using them as a convenient pretext for fastening grievances on the Turkish authorities. Holy Russia first expels her Jews and then protects them. It is ingenious and characteristic. # * * X< # -I" # If the Jews do not appear to advantage in Jerusalem, neither do the Christians. Palestine is the rendezvous of all the Christian sects, and the Holy City with its Holy Places is the point to which they all . converge with the greatest perse- verance, and where their deadly hatred of each other is most apparent. They each have a share in the Holy Places that is to say, in those places held to be holy because they are identified with some notable event in Christian history which the Turkish Government has allowed them to divide between them. Each sect magnifies the holiness of its own particular Modern Zion. 151 Holy Places, and decries those of all other sects. Thus the Latin Church attaches much importance to the fourteen " stations of " the Cross " extending along the Via Dolorosa, through which Our Saviour carried his cross to Golgotha. They have accord- ingly marked each station by a stone in the wall with an inscription thereon. The Greeks, however, think nothing of these stations, and, having become the owners of the house on which the ninth station is marked, they have proceeded at once joyfully and triumphantly to efface the Latin inscription. The Latins however have got even with them in another place. The Greeks have made a saint of Longinus, the Roman soldier who is reputed to have pierced Our Saviour's side and then to have repented and become a Christian ; and they have set up a chapel to him. But the Latins declare him to have been no saint at all, assert that he was never heard of till the fifth century, and, when they have their processions, they con- temptuously pass the Chapel of St. Longinus without even paying him the compliment of stopping before it as they do before all places of reputed sanctity. The struggle over these Holy Places is very bitter. There are even opposition Holy Places. Thus the Latins possess what they hold to be the Garden of Gethsemane, which they have fenced and planted, and the very olive stones whereof they sell at a great price to the faithful to make rosaries withal. But the Greeks have set up another Garden of Gethsemane of their own hard by ; and Latins and Greeks each denounce the garden of the others as a swindle and an imposture. As to the more important Holy Places, which are agreed upon as genuine by all the seels such as the place of the Holy Sepulchre these are occupied in common. In the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre itself, for instance a narrow place in which there is barely room for three people to stand there burn forty-three silver lamps. Of these, thirteen belong to the Latins, thirteen to the Greeks, thirteen to the Armenians, 152 The Log of the 'Nereid.' and four to the Coptic Christians. Even here the sects would fight but for the Turkish authorities indeed they do fight ; and the most edifying of all the sights that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has to afford is that of the stolid armed Turkish guard, seated smoking inside the porch to prevent the Christians from cutting each other's throats over their differences. These quarrels are not occasional ; they are perpetual, and take place over the most ridiculous trifles, so that the Turkish Government (now represented by Reouf Pasha, the most popular Governor Jerusalem has had for many years) is daily driven to its wits' end to understand and to compose the most childish disputes. One of these squabbles has recently raged with great virulence. At Bethlehem, over the spot reputed to be the birthplace of Our Saviour, there stands a church. Formerly it belonged to the Greek Christians alone, but some years ago the Armenians and Latins were admitted to a joint proprietorship, which they still enjoy. Now, in this church there is a place covered by a straw mat, and over this straw mat a terrible battle has been waged. The Latins, so far as I can gather, complain that in some way their right of way is interfered with by the mat to an extent which on inquiry proved to be eighteen inches. The Armenians declare that they will rather perish than move the mat or have it touched. Both parties here appealed to the Pasha. The Pasha's common sense suggestion, that eighteen inches shall be cut off the mat, has been treated with derision by both sides ; and the dispute seems likely to continue for ever, and to add to the stock of grievances which one seel is here always storing up against the other.- Meantime, the Turkish soldiers have to be posted in the church with fixed bayonets to keep the peace between the Christians. * # # * -\- * The most remarkable feature about all this is that the Modtrn Zion. 15 5 disputes are waged ov- r precedency in, or possession of, Holy Places, all of which are of doubtful authenticity, while some of them are undoubtedly spurious. The Holy Sepulchre itself is, as recent researches made by pious men have shown, in all probability not that tomb outside the city " wherein was never " man yet laid," which it professes to be. The late General Gordon, who lived here long in order to investigate these very matters, was convinced that the real Golgotha and the real Sepulchre lie outside the present wall, near to Damascus Gate. And, to crown all, it is most doubtful whether the spot now covered over with the split marble slab, which all pilgrims devoutly kiss, contains any hewn sepulchre at all. The same doubt covers almost every one of the Holy Places. But it is of no consequence at all. The melancholy truth is that all these Holy Places are a matter of commerce. Each one of them is an annuity to the sect to which it belongs, besides bringing to it an increase of importance and dignity. Therefore Holy Places are multiplied, and will continue to be multiplied, so long as the faithful continue their respect for and their offerings to them. The Protestants are, I am glad to say, the least quarrelsome among the Christian sects represented here. That is partly perhaps because they are the least numerous, but largely because they have no special Holy Places of their own, and no pilgrims. They are troublesome, however, in another way. A number of well-meaning, foolish people subscribe money in England for Missions. The Missionaries excellent men in some ways, but bigoted and foolish being thus provided with considerable funds, feel that they must do, or try to do, some- thing for the money. So they try to make converts from among the Jews and Mahometans to Protestantism. They never succeed. They have been over thirty years at work here, and they cost, as I am credibly informed, not less than ^"14,000 a-year. I will undertake to say that in return for the ^"400,000 154 The Log of the 'Nereid.' thus sunk they cannot show five grown-up bond fide honest converts. They may think this sufficient ; but ^"80,000 per convert seems to me to be dear. They do indeed get hold occasionally of a child and train it up to call itself Protestant ; and they are so very zealous and endowed with so little discretion and good manners as to thrust themselves and their dogmas upon the Mussulman population in a pushing, persistent way that is always impertinent, and often insolent. One of these days, I fear, some Moslem will resent their pushing intrusions as any one of us would resent the intrusion into our house in England of a Moslem who had come from Syria to convert us to Islam. Then there will be a " question " and troubles of all kinds. I declare that an Englishman can do nothing more mischievous to humanity, and to his own country in particular, than to subscribe money to a Missionary Society. There is, indeed, one undoubtedly authentic Holy Place in Jerusalem. It is the " Es-Sakhra," that stone which has been held sacred from time immemorial, the rock on which was written the great and unspeakable name of God, on which Melchizedek and Abraham sacrificed, and which is revered as much by Moslem as by Jew and Christian. This is on the Haram esh Sherif, a large open plateau, which contains the Mosque of Omar and the Dome of the Rock. It also does undoubtedly include the spot on which Solomon's Temple stood ; but as to which part of the plateau that Temple occupied no two autho- rities are agreed. The Mosque is a splendid structure, as simple in design as it is rich in ornamentation, and the tremendous substructures in the rock beneath the plateau show beyond a doubt tlrat here were once grand and vast buildings. Altogether, Jerusalem is a melancholy monument of the departed greatness, not only of the Jewish, but also of the Christian faith. Joppa. 155 XXIII. JOPPA. JAFFA, Wednesday, i2th December, 1888. THE more one looks at this Jaffa, once called Joppa, the more one wonders how Solomon could have managed to land here the timber which Kiram, King of Tyre, sent to him for the building of the Temple. A worse place, or f a more dangerous, for any operations connected with the sea, it would be hard to find. The town is built on the open coast, facing westward, and the only protection to be found here from winds and waves is a small area of perhaps fifty yards wide and twice as long, imperfectly protected by a reef of rocks which runs out at an acute angle to the coast-line, from the southern end of the town. The reef is in many places below the level of the sea, and the waves break over it along its whole length with frightful fury, when there is anything like bad weather, which here, as in England, almost always comes from the south-west. No vessel of any size could use this shelter, and accordingly the steamers, and other craft of any draught of water, have to anchor outside the reef, exposed to the whole force of the sea which the westerly breezes raise. To and from the vessels thus anchored there ply large native boats, each manned by a dozen or fourteen men, who chant a wailing kind of song all the time they are at work, but especially at the most dangerous moments, to keep their courage up. I have been watching them to-day going out to a large Russian steamer, and it was a good opportunity for doing so for the wind was on shore, and the whole reef was one mass of breakers as well as a considerable space of sea outside it. Six out of 156 The Log of the 'Nereid: the seven boats that went off rowed round the northern end of the reef. The seventh made for a narrow pass in the reef in which it seemed impossible for anything to live. They waited patiently for a smooth, and when the coxswain saw it coming he gave the word, and they pulled like madmen through the broken water, scarcely shipping a bucketful. It was very well done. Another boat, although it took the less dangerous course round the end of the reef, was less fortunate. Twice a big wave broke clean over it, and each time I expected to see it buried. It held on however, and, once outside the broken water, was, of course, safe enough. The putting on board and taking off of passengers in the case of a large vessel rolling heavily, and the boats alongside rising and falling out of time with her, is a matter of some difficulty and some danger. But the boatmen are evidently used to helpless folk of the passenger kind, who know not their right hand from their left ; and they simply take bodily hold of the individual to be embarked or landed, and hand him from one to the other up or down the side, like a portmanteau. One of the boats capsized the day I landed ; but this does not often happen, for they are clever at it, having to deal with much bad weather. Just now it is blowing and raining heavily, and the place looks like Orfordness on a bad December day. * * # * * * * Conversion to Christianity must be ranked in Palestine as one of the liberal professions, and among the most highly paid of them too ; for the competition between the Christian seels is so great, and they so outbid each other, that converts are the only products of the country that have maintained anything like remunerative prices. There is a Jew at Damascus (per- sonally known to my informant, who is a reputable European gentleman) who has been ^con verted and reconverted from one faith to another no fewer than six times ; and it is believed that he is only waiting for a slight rise in the market to 'vert a Quartermaster George, 158 The Log of the ' Nereid. ' seventh time. I presume he figures in the Missionary reports as six converts. But the Missionary Society reports are as incomplete and as unsatisfying as Joint-Stock Company reports. I have before me a leaflet of the Church Missionary Society, entitled " Summary of the Work of the Palestine " Mission." It consists solely of a list of the " stations " of the Society in Palestine, and of the persons employed therein. It tells me what are the workers, but not at all what is the work done. It says not a word about the money expended over the work. It leaves me therefore entirely in the dark as to whether the work is being done well or ill, or whether it is being done at all, and equally in the dark as to whether that which is done, if anything, costs much or little. I find, from this document, that there are in Palestine nine European Missionaries, of whom four are, as I should judge from their names, Germans (the Germans are an industrious folk, not above earning an honest livelihood), while there are six " Native Clergymen," and fifty-eight " Native Christian Lay Teachers." Then I learn that there are forty-five schools, and 385 " Communi- " cants," besides 1558 " Native Christian Adherents." How many of the 385 " Communicants " are Native Converts, and how many are European Missionaries and other Europeans who need no conversion, I am unable to divine, and the report does not tell me. Neither does it tell me what is meant by " Native Adherents." How much their adherence amounts to we are left to guess. It is clear, however, that it does not amount to making them Communicants ; for there are 1558 Adherents, while the Communicants only number 385 all told. I think I can say, however, that the Adherents are, in the main, those for whom the Society provides a free education without requiring them to change their religion. This free education is one of the forms of the competition of the Christian seels, who vie with each other in the capture for their schools, of Syrian children, to whom they impart many languages, and Joppa. 159 a certain smattering of other knowledge just enough, in short, to enable the scholar to become a guide or dragoman, and thus to swell the great army of touts, cheats, and liars who render travelling in the country so expensive and doubtful a luxury. But these things will go on till occidental people know more of the East than they can learn from Missionary reports. Those who live here smile when Missionaries are mentioned, for they know well how infrucluous, and even injurious, are their efforts. But those who have never seen Syria cannot suspect it. There are a number of rich persons in England who, having more money than they apply to their own wants, wish to " do good " with it. But they are too indolent, or too incapable, to seek and to discover for themselves some way in which the good might be done. Were it not so, they might without great difficulty find some poor relation, or at any rate some poor neighbour, whom a little of their money would save from despair, and might make a man of him. But, being indolent, they subscribe or bequeath in their wills a lump sum to a Missionary Society. These are the people who provide the money. There are a number of other people, sleek, pious persons, who live on that money. These do, I verily believe, strive, in their sleek, pious way, to get value for the money of which they have been made trustees ; but being foolish persons they altogether fail in their effort. =;: #-;<#** ',- The British Consul in out-of-the-way ports has rare oppor- tunities of studying the ways of the British sailor, and often a deal of trouble in composing the differences between him and his skipper. Not long ago a Consul in thjse ports, while sitting in his office, was visited by a sailor-lad, who had come ashore from a English sailing ship, and who, without further preface, said " Be you the Counsel ? " 160 The Log of the 'Nereid.' " Yes, my lad, I am. What do you want ? " " I don't get half enough to eat." This, if true, was a serious matter. Th^ Consul therefore had up the Captain and three of the hands of the vessel. The Captain declared that his orders were that the men should be well fed, and the three hands, on being questioned, all said that they had plenty of food, that it was of good quality, and that the boy who complained had the same as themselves. The Consul therefore pointed out to the boy that, since he had the same as the men, and since they were all satisfied, his complaint must be groundless, and would be dismissed, and that he must return to his duty. The boy looked at him for a moment, and then said " A pretty nice blooming beggar you are for a Counsel, not " to know that a growing boy eats twice as much as a man." To those who know the British sailor, I need hardly say that " beggar " was not literally the word he used. * * * * # # * The British Vice-Consul in remote places, especially when, as is sometimes the case, he is an unpaid officer relying on fees and chance receipts for his remuneration, is often a man of nondescript calling, of mixed nationality, and of queer speech, his English being, in fact, picked up from merchant Captains, and embellished by the expletives of the forecastle. Thus in a port, which I need not name, I asked the Vice- Consul whether I should do well to employ a certain man who was anxious to attach himself to me during my stay. The Vice-Consul replied " He is what you call von useful man. He speak Anglish. " But he is an old Beggar." I was startled at this information ; but, on further inquiry, I found that it only meant that the man would probably charge me double the price he actually paid for anything. I then inquired as to the terms on which the inhabitants of Joppa. 1 6 the place lived with each other. He replied that now they were peaceful enough, but that some years ago there was a " bloody row." It quite refreshed me to hear such vigorous English, and I should be glad to see the Foreign Office take lessons from some of its Vice-Consuls in the diction of some of its despatches It would have a strengthening effect on the Powers of Europe to be introduced to the full resources of our Saxon vernacular, instead of being always smoothed down with interminable concatenations of anglicised Latin. # # * sje :',: * * Weenie's delight in the riding of donkeys is only equalled by her conversations with the Arab donkey-drivers, and the vigour of her proceedings towards them, which are quite of the lordly English fashion. Yesterday she was riding a large white donkey with a disposition to kick, and was, as usual, being held on by the amiable, smiling Arab in charge of her. Hearing a commotion, I turned round, and saw her belabouring him over the head and shoulders with a stick because he would not give her the reins " all to myself," while he was laughingly taking his beating. I expect Weenie will be a masterly young person when she grows up. 1 62 The Log of the 'Nereid: XXIV. OFF THE COAST OF SYRIA. AT SEA, Thursday, 2oth December, 1888. " "\ T 7 ELL, if this here's what they calls the Holy Land, V V " give me Orfordness." This was John's commentary on things in general, but more especially on the weather at Beyrout. And it was a natural one, for during the past three weeks there had been an almost unbroken succession of gales of wind, accompanied by torrents of rain. The worst of it all came last Saturday (the I5th December), when between midnight and two in the morning (this is apparently always the worst time on this coast) it blew with terrible fury to the N.W. dead on the shore. The vessel was lying in St. George's Bay, which, although quite open to the N.W., is held to be a fairly safe anchorage with good ground tackle ; for the holding ground is good, and there is a rebound of the sea from the shore which eases the strain on the cable. There were eight or ten other vessels brought up in the Bay during this breeze. They all of them drove, though none of them went ashore, several carried away their jibbooms, and one had his bows stove in by the sea. The Nereid, how- ever, which had two anchors down, and both cables veered out to the full, rode it out half a mile from the shore without budging an inch, and took no damage whatever. During this breeze we were comfortably enough lodged at an hotel in the town, under circumstances which more than once prompted regrets for our floating home. Indeed, the weather was not fit to be ashore in. Beyrout, moreover, is an Off the Coast of Syria. 163 especially bad place for bad weather. It does not possess a' fireplace in the whole town, it is so dirty that walking is impossible, and so dull that there is nothing either to do or to see. So there we were, imprisoned in our cold, sunless, damp, draughty quarters till it should moderate sufficiently to let us get aboard again ; while to add to the melancholy of the scene, the landing-place below us was strewn with the wreckage of a score of boats and lighters blown ashore by the gale, Yesterday morning, however, things looked like mending. The barometer had gone up, the wind had gone down, and had shifted to N., and by one o'clock we managed (though not without some difficulty from the sea which was breaking in at the landing-place) to get on board again. We were all glad to meet once more especially Weenie, who embraced all the men with enthusiasm. The pleasure was great, of being once more at home. Nobody knows how comfortable a good ship is till they have left it for a time. The sweetness, the cleanliness and freshness, the very smell of the clean sheets and towels, were delicious, and we all settled down again with content. Weenie was soon describing to an admiring circle in the forecastle how she beat the donkey-man on the Mount of Olives " wiv a velly fick stick " because he pulled the donkey's ears ; and how the donkey-man laughed at her instead of crying, as by all the rules of government and human nature he should have done. * ',' * * * >!c % My one object was to get clear of this dreadful Syrian coast, and by two o'clock we were standing out with Beyrout cape well on our port beam, and a nice little breeze from the north- ward on our starboard quarter. The wind fell light, however, at sunset, and though this morning I have taken in the trysail under which we came out, and have set mainsail and maintop- sail, we are this afternoon not above fifty miles from the land only just far enough, indeed, to make one begin to feel safe. L 2 164 The Log of the 'Nereid.' Mount Hermon and the rest of the Lebanon to the northward are plain in sight, all of them covered with snow ; but now we are clear of them the air is quite warm and pleasant, and we have begun to see the sun again. One of the last people I saw at Beyrout was the Captain of the Austrian Lloyd's steamer in which we came from Jaffa. He has been many years on the Syrian coast, and knows it well ; and he was most dismal as to our prospects. " Don't think," said he, " of going to Alexandria in that little sailing-vessel of " yours. Don't think of it. Leave her here for the winter. " Go to Alexandria by steamer ; and then, in March or April, " or better still May, let her join you. But don't think of * going in her now unless you want to be wrecked on the coast." Such is the demoralising effect of steam that I found myself quite unable to convince him that we should be much safer in a gale of wind in my vessel than in his, and I left him shaking his head at my foolhardiness. AT SEA, Friday, list December. Lat. 32 58' 54" N., Long. 32 35' 45" E. Another day and night of light winds, varying between S.E. and S.W., have brought us a hundred miles on our course, with a very sensible and very grateful improvement in the weather. We had a fine moon all night, and to-day (the shortest day of the year) the sun rose at six, shone all day in a perfectly cloudless sky, and did not set till half-past five, giving us a good twelve hours of daylight, which is half as much again as we should get in England. The air is warm and grateful (temperature 66), the sea perfectly smooth, the barometer high and steady, and there seems every prospect of our reaching Alexandria in good time to cook our Christmas pudding. Off the Coast of Syria. 165 AT SEA, Saturday, 2211! December. Lat. 32 44' 57" N., Long. 31 40' 15" E. Calms and light winds from the S.E. have helped us but little on our way. The weather however continues very fine so much too fine, indeed, that there is not wind enough. ALEXANDRIA, Sunday, 2yd December. We made the Rosetta light at four this morning, and by eleven were within five miles of Alexandria lighthouse. Here I hoisted my Jack for a pilot to take me in through the narrow and curly channels of the reefs that lie outside the port. We soon saw a pilot-boat standing towards us but almost imme- diately afterwards a large steamer appeared on the horizon to the westward, and the pilot-boat at once bore up and ran down to her, leaving me to shift for myself. The reason of this move of his was, probably, the same that prompts similar conduct of which I have been more than once the victim off English ports that the steamer, being much larger than my vessel, would give more pilotage-money. ForUmately I had on board a plan of the Harbour and its approaches, so I stood boldly on, and, conning the ship myself, with Ned at the helm, took her in through the narrow Corvette Pass, not entirely without jumps, for we could see the rocky bottom on either side at the narrowest part, but without any mistake or mishap. Now mark the joke. After I had passed through the reefs, and was actually inside the breakwater itself, a pilot-boat came alongside, and sang out for me to heave him a line. " What for, my friend ? " said I. " Pilot, to take you in, sar," said he. This was pretty cool ; but I checked the nautical commi- nation which rose to my lips, and replied amiably " Thank you. I should have been very glad to have you 166 The Log of the 'Nereid.' 11 outside ; but you didn't come then, and now I am inside I " don't want you." " I pilot, sar," said he, and proceeded to make a grab at my main-chains with his boat-hook. " Sheer off," said I. " If you come here, I'll pilot you over- " board." The rascal smiled and went off, leaving me to revolve once more my old quarrel with pilots and their ways, and to wonder once more how long a system will be endured which, in England as in Egypt, prevents vessels from getting pilots when they are wanted, and imposes them when they are not wanted. By one o'clock we were once more comfortably tied up to a buoy in the inner harbour. ALEXANDRIA, 6th January, 1889. Equitation and Navigation are fast friends, but no relations. The real Seaman admires the real Horseman with great admiration, though he always has a secret conviction that, in the fitting out of a horse, there is a strange and unaccountable scantiness of good timber, and he notices with regret that there is an equally lamentable want of rigging to hold on by. But he admires the Horseman, and would fain be like unto him. When a naval officer goes ashore he gets himself up to resemble a Newmarket trainer starting to exercise a string of horses as nearly as the latest Sailing Directions enable him to do it ; and, though he sometimes will show three buttons or five, instead of the sacred four, at the knees of his breeches, he usually comes so near his object that, what with horse-shoe pins, tweed coats, leggings, and breeches, he looks like a prosperous cattle drover in clothes that he has not worn for a year. He then proceeds to get across a horse, and his adventure thereon, his Polo, his Paper-Chases, and the rest of his acts, are they not written in the log-books of the Ward-Room ? Off the Coast of Syria. 167 So, too, the Blue-Jacket. As his officer gets across a horse, he gets across a donkey, and in this country of Egypt there are splendid diversions thus produced. This is the account given by Tom Cable and Bill Self of a voyage they thus took in Alexandria" We had a job in getting of 'em under weigh, but " when we had made a start they went pretty. We was going " a matter of twelve knots, with the donkey-boy prodding 'em " under the counter with a sharp stick, when I sees a apple- " stall in the fair- way right ahead. My donkey wouldn't " answer the helm, so I sings out to the apple-man to veer " cable and give her a sheer. But he was a lubberly chap, and " stood staring, so I runs slap into him amidships and upsets " his apples, and werry near gets unshipped myself. I never " stopped to see him repair damages. ' Come along, Bill,' " says I. But when I looks back I see Bill was in distress. " His saddle had got slewed round, and he was across the " donkey, holding on to the starboard shrouds. But these here " shrouds hadn't been properly set up, and what with Bill's " weight and the saddle, he carries 'em away, the saddle goes " over the side, and Bill he comes to the ground broadside " on." :;c # # * * * * Weenie is beginning to develop the most inordinate ambi- tions, and to practise an unblushing flattery towards obtaining her ends which is truly feminine. After being allowed, to her great delight, to take a small part in washing decks this morn- ing, she came to me and proceeded, as her way is when she feels very affectionate, to rub her sweet little pink and white face against mine like a kitten, stroking me the while with her fat, little, dimpled hand, and saying, "My Papaw, I do love my " Papaw." Then, after a palpably insufficient pause, she added " My Papaw. When I am big, may I have a squee-gee all " to my soup " 168 The Log of the 'Nereid.' XXV. THE HUMOURS OF CAIRO. CAIRO, 1 6th January, 1889. WE have had a thorough overhaul of the ship, as is our wont whenever we get into a good quiet place to stay for a time, have rousted everything out of every cabin, every cupboard, and every locker down to the ballast, and have cleaned all out as sailors only know how to clean. I have replaced an old bolt or two by a new one, have rove some new haulyards, braces, and falls, and have scrubbed, painted, and varnished till the vessel looks so smart and beautiful that I could sit and smile at her for a week. Having done this, I have given myself leave to go up country and see the ways of the natives. :;: :',: >;- * * ;|c ^ The chief personage in Cairo is Cook. Next to him, longo intervalto, is Lord Dunmore, who, being established here with his charming family, has organised sport in general (with a dash of music and a flavour of Egyptology thrown in) as he alone could do it, so that Cairo has become a place where not merely the lawn-tennis player, but the poloist, the pigeon- shooter, the handicapper, and the gentleman-jockey can live and thrive. Then comes Luigi, that most amiable, careful, and obliging of creatures, who, instead of being President of the Council, presides over the arrangements at Shepheard's Hotel, and treats every visitor as if he were the one reigning Prince in the world for whom the hotel is maintained. After these I The Humours of Cairo. 169 should be inclined, since the last Suakim affair, to place the Sirdar, Sir Francis Grenfell, and then it would only remain to fill up with Sir Evelyn Baring, Sir Edgar Vincent, the Khedive, and the rest of the Royal Family. For indeed these Englishmen here are a Royal Family ; and they bear themselves as such. Like the Assyrians, they are ' clothed with blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable " young men, horsemen riding upon horses," and, considering all things, it is marvellous how well they do their work, and how hard they try to understand it and the country. That they have fully succeeded it would be too much to say ; but they have done much, for they won't take bribes themselves nor let others take them if they find it out which is quite a new thing to Egyptian experience. I don't think it does the desirable young men uiuch good themselves to be here. They are apt to eat their heads off, or to begin to believe in French cooks. But they all mean well, and they are very beautiful to look at. Their breeches, their boots, their spurs, their flannels, the fresh cleanliness of their faces, and their activities with the racquet, the bat, the polo ball, and the fowling-piece, are all marvellous. They are a very admirable standing pattern of our Northern energies which the Egyptian must admire but can never emulate, they don't cost him more than half-a-million pounds a-year all told, and when they have learnt to know as much about Egypt as they do about cricket they will be worth double the money. Meantime, they are fulfilling the prophecies ; for their riding upon horses has already resulted as Jeremiah long ago said it would, and " Pharaoh, King cf Egypt, is but " a noise." These Egyptians are certainly the mildest, gentlest, humblest race in the world so mild and gentle that they have no fibre in them at all. They cringe and cower all their lives through, and their understanding, like themselves, is so timid that they 1 70 The Log of the 'N""eid.' never come to comprehend the simplest things, but remain children to the end of their days. Spare the rod and spoil the child is as true of them as of any other children. Everybody who has ever had to do with them has known this so well that the chief emblem every Egyptian god and every Egyptian king holds in his hand is A SCOURGE. Five thousand years ago, therefore, it was recognised that this people could be ruled by the Whip and by that alone ; and every sculpture and hieroglyph in the land testifies thus to the fo.ly of those who would rule here without the Whip as we English are vainly trying to do. In such a people, tears lie very handy to the surface, and seem to come at will. A week or two ago, when I was in the Custom House at Alexandria, I saw a big, broad-shouldered, well-dressed, and well-to-do Egyptian weeping so that his tears rained upon the floor. On inquiring the cause, I found that it >vas because he was required to pay two piastres or five pence duty on some small merchandise he had landed from a steamer, and because the Chief Inspector (a sturdy Englishman) would not let him off the five pence. At last the Inspector lost patience, and said shortly, " Take that crying man away ; " whereupon he was hustled out of the place, making puddles on the ground as he went. Truly Ezekiel's prophecy of Egypt and the Egyptians is fulfilled : " They shall be there a base kingdom. It shall be the " basest of kingdoms." Cairo has a double aspect and a double life. It is a large Arab village of great age, peopled with patient, smiling, bakshish-craving, humble Fellahin, clad in skull caps and long blue bedgowns ; furnished with narrow streets, dark bazaars, big donkeys, and itinerant vendors of eatables and drinkables ; and ornamented with splendid decayed mosques and rare The Humours of Cairo. 171 remnants of that Arab architecture which, of all architectures, is the most original and graceful. It is also a modern upstart European town, defaced by pretentious villas, big buildings, wide streets, monster hotels, and French cooks, which for a good fifty years has tried to believe that it is an Oriental Paris, and which has only succeeded so far as to engraft Parisian vices on Oriental failings, and to squander the hard- won earnings of the blue bedgowns on French dancers and Levantine swindlers. Having failed to become a little Paris, it is now trying to become a little London, and it presents the strangest and most completely unique muddle of Pashas, Boulevardiers, Mashers, Consuls, and Tourists ever seen out of a galanty show. Cairo is neither Oriental like Damascus, nor Occidental like London ; it is a plaster-of-Paris Pyramid, resting on the Fellahin, and veneered with French and English scagliola. On the top of this Pyramid sits Sir Evelyn Baring, taking sights down the side with the most improved optical instru- ments in the most exact and conscientious manner, and working out with the angles he obtains beautiful theories as to the Pyramid itself. Of the secret passages inside, its King's chambers, Queen's chambers, and concealed wells, he knows nothing ; he can only guess at them from his angles and his calculations. Meantime, he is surrounded by Consuls, Khedives, Bondholders, and other Bedouin, who tell him their own tales and their own traditions of passages and chambers, with a single eye to bakshish for themselves. It would be better for him and for us that he were safely down out of that. Weenie has taken complete possession of Shepheard's Hotel, and on that famous terrace in front of it which for the last fifty years has been, and still is, the gathering-place 172 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 of all the most eminent soldiers, statesmen, contractors, Members of Parliament, dragomans, and other dis- tinguished adventurers, she drags about her toys with uproarious peals of laughter and keeps the place in a noise the like of which has not been heard since Cheops was building his pyramid. She has already established herself as the chartered libertine of Cairo. The waiters make her little presents, which she receives with a lofty condescension, and when she is in the Bazaar her great delight is to take a stick and chase the natives about. To see the way in which one Egyptian presses upon her the loan of a long stick wherewith to beat other Egyptians, and then to mark the vigour with which she uses it on the blue bed-gowned Fellaheen, and the way in which they all bolt from her like so many rabbits, is, I am sorry to say, very amusing to me for it is, indeed, a short epitome of Egyptian history. Her vocabulary is growing out in strange ways, so that her accounts to her governess of what we have been doing are a study of English in its natural and artless development. Her history yesterday ran thus " Well, Mittelle, and so then we've " been sawing horses and one of them had a tail so long. " Well then I losted my whip. You'll buy me a new whip, " won't you, and then I will whack 'em when I go to the 'Zar. " Oh ! won't I whack 'em hard. Well then we were velly " miserable. It was pitch cold, you know. And so we came " home, and please may I have a chocolate." To-day it was " Well, so then we droved to the Pilamids. " And when I didn't go up the Pilamids I didn't cry at all. I " was such a good girl. Well then we droved home. And Lady " Sites wanted me to have some cake. But I wouldn't have " any wasn't I good ? " " Oh, Weenie ! " says Sydney, " why, Mittelle, Geoffrey " said she mustn't have any cake, and then she lay down on The Humours of Cairo. 173 " the stairs and cried, and screamed, and kicked because she " didn't have it, and the people couldn't pass, and she pushed " one lady away." It appeared, in fact, that Weenie had made a desperate scene over this very cake, so that her historical accuracy Sj dnej. seems, like that of other historians, to be occasionally open to question. 174 The Log of the 'Nereid.' XXVI. THE UPPER NILE. ON BOARD THE POST BOAT. LUXOR, Friday, 2$th January, 1889. EVERYBODY who comes to Egypt desires to travel over that marvellous seven hundred miles of the Nile that lie between the Mediterranean and the First Cataract for nobody can come so near to the earliest and grandest monuments of the human intellect that there are found without wishing to see them. Cairo, the Pyramids, the great temples and tombs of Thebes, of Karnak, and of Philae vestiges of a civilisation which was already so perfected six thousand years ago as to produce these grand works, remain still to shame us, and to make us modest ; and were it only for this, one must long to look upon them. This is now comparatively a simple and easy journey, very different from what it used to be when the only method of travelling was by sailing Dahabiah that flat-bottomed, top- heavy Nile boat, with its huge lateen sail, which took a good two months at least to go from Cairo to the First Cataract and back. There was and is much to be said for this way of travelling, for it gives time for reflection on the marvels one witnesses ; but it is now scarcely existent, and only survives in rare cases. There are still however not a few wealthy persons who hire a Dahabiah, and therewith a steamer to tow it up, a method whereby the voyage may be made luxuriously in a month or five weeks, for a sum varying from ^300 to /"goo, The Upper Nile. 175 according, not to the comfort and goodness of the tug and the Dahabiahj but to the agent employed to hire them. A third method is to go by steamer the whole way from Cairo to the First Cataract and back, a trip for which the modest Cook will charge you ^"50, and which will occupy three weeks. The fourth method, which I have chosen as most suitable to my time and purse, is to travel the 250 miles from Cairo to Assiout by rail, and thence take the Government Post Boat to the First Cataract, 330 miles distant, and back a trip which costs about 22, and lasts about a fortnight. Thus it is that, after a long and dreary ten hours' journey by rail from Cairo, I found myself last Tuesday night on board the singular craft known as the Post Boat, which is a flat-bottomed steamer, drawing only some three feet of water, driven by a large stern-wheel, and built up over all with a two-storied Jeck-hou c e. The boiler is on the main-deck, which is, besides, crowded with a motley assemblage of Egyptians, Arabs, and Nubians of every degree, who have brought their own food and their own carpets, and make themselves comfortable as best they can. On the upper storey of the deck-house are a few cabins for first-class passengers, whereof there are eleven the other ten being all Italians on tour, who have conferred on me the inestimable benefit of bringing with them some excellent vino di Chianti, which they have very politely invited me to share, and thus have saved me from having to drink Nile water, which is muddy and uninviting, or the wine of the steamer, which is less inviting still. What a journey is like in one of Cook's steamers I do not know, having carefully avoided that method of being handled as a human package. I am forced to admit, however, that the Post Boat is only just endurable, and that it is only made so by the civilities of my excellent Italians, who, with that simplicity which is as marked on one side of the Italian character as astuteness is 176 The Log of the 'Nereid: on the other, have made it their business to treat me like a spoilt child whom it is their mission to take care of, to pet, and to wonder at. They urge me to put on an extra coat lest I should catch cold, and to stand in the shade lest I should get a sun- stroke, repeat my sayings as though they were marvellous, tell me stories to amuse me, and play all day long at my being Weenie, in a way equally pleasing and diverting. As for the voyage, it is dismal beyond expression. The melancholy succession of mile after mile of flat mud-banks, rarely broken by so much as a tree, still more rarely by a village, and never by single houses, is quite depressing, and offers no inducement to linger, while the crowds of half or wholly naked urchins who at each stopping-place howl for bakshish make one wonder what kind of people it can be that has succeeded those who built the Pyramids, and what kind of system it can have been that has thus degraded the inhabitants of the richest soil on earth. The few men one sees on the bank are almost invariably employed in raising water for irrigation with the shadoof that simple lever, weighted with stone or a lump of mud, which has been in use for the same purpose these six thousand years. They seem to get darker in hue, and more sparing of clothes as one gets farther up the river, and here- abouts they are of a deep copper colour, wearing when at work only the most fragmentary of loin-cloths. The women who are seen by the river side are either washing clothes or filling huge water-jars, which they bear away poised on their heads with the easy, upright carriage of the body which seems common to all Egyptians of all ages. The ladies wear more than the gentle- men, but, when they are at all short of costume, they wear most of it in what we should consider the wrong place ; and the difficulty a peasant girl feels when she has only one garment available, and is unexpectedly met by a man, is solved in a way which seems to be quite satisfactory to her, by putting the whole of it about her head that being, as was explained to a The Upper Nile. 177 native friend of mine, the only personally recognisable portion of the human frame. ***'#* ;;c * I had written thus far when we suddenly went ashore, hard all, for the twentieth time. It is all soft mud, however, here- abouts, so there is no harm done ; but it is rather trying to find oneself navigating a ridiculous river that hasn't three feet of water in it. However I am not responsible, so they may run ashore as often as they like. ASSOUAN, Saturday, 26th January. Cold as it was yesterday, it is piping hot here to-day, as indeed it may well be, for we are close under the tropic. Moreover, in the reach above Luxor, the river improves in appearance, so that, in places, it is almost equal for looks to the Thames at Greenhithe. As for the sky, it is marvellous for its bare cloudlessness and for its colouring, which is brilliant in blues, greys, deep rose, and pink, each colour melting into another with the most delicate conceivable gradation of tints. Nobody, however, need go to the Nile for colour, much less for scenery. The interest lies in the feeling one has that, as one goes up this ancient stream, one is going back to the beginning of the ages. The tremendous antiquity of the country makes our modern " Ancient History " into a mere baby, and it is impressed upon one in every line of the mar- vellous sculptures on the temples that lie so close. In these temples we have the proof positive that the Egyptians who built them were already masters far more perfect than we, or our schoolmasters the Greeks and Romans, have invented. They would join together two stones having an area of thirty- five square feet so that there was not above one five-hundreth of an inch between any part of them, and could fill even this five-hundredth of an inch with mortar. They built Pyramids which dwarf our greatest efforts. In the arts we bear no 178 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 comparison with them, and no sculptor of Europe not even Michael Angelo has ever approached either for beauty or for majestic dignity that marvellous face of Rameses III. on which I have just looked at Luxor. They could not only make glass, but could stain the same piece of glass a dozen different colours which we cannot. They made paper and wove fabrics never since excelled. The forms of their beautiful vases were copied by Greeks and Etruscans till we have become persuaded that they were of Greek or Etruscan design. Their music was rich, their literature by turns most interesting, most amusing, and most heroic and it has outlived every other literature in the world, for it is carved in the rocks. To this degree they must have arrived long before they built these temples, carved these statues, inscribed these hieroglyphs, and drew these never-ending pictures of their own human daily life and occupations which we now admire and wonder at. Thus capable and thus highly- civilised were they therefore six thousand years ago. But then their laws were contained in no more than eight volumes, they allowed no lawyers to fatten in their Courts, they had no nonsense of popular education, and we learn that, in their system " no tradesman was permitted to meddle in political " affairs." The result was that their political system was so stable as to last for four thousand years, while we improved peoples of Europe have not yet been found capable of inventing one that would last four hundred. Standing here among the awful and eloquent ruins of their knowledge, their ideas, and their country, and learning from them even what may be more summarily learnt, one can but wonder at the retrogression of the world, and wonder most of all that we English should be here to teach that right way of living which these stones teach so much more completely. But a little time back, as history marks time here a mere The Upper Nile. 179 1500 and 2000 years ago there were Greeks and Romans, who have left monuments hard by in the isle of Philae which would teach us modesty were we still capable of learning it. For the Temple of Philae, begun by Greek conquerors, and finished by Roman conquerors of the Egyptians, is a Temple of Isis, a temple erected by Greeks and Romans, not to their own gods, but to the gods of the Egyptians. It bears on its outside the figure of the Greek Ptolemy placed under the protection of and sacrificing to Isis, and to that Osiris who was said to have lived on earth, to have been put to death by the principle of evil, and to have risen again to become the judge of the dead. The inside of the temple is filled with the figures and hiero- glyphs of the Egyptian religion, showing that both Greeks and Romans not only tolerated, but took part in the rites of Ammon, of Pthah, of Isis, and of Osiris, the gods of Egypt. Surely this was modesty, and most assuredly it was political wisdom. If it is sought to draw a practical lesson for modern uses from these splendid vestiges of old-world Philosophy, of that scientific Toryism which in Egypt was reduced to a complete system I would merely remark that the only Egyptian god yet remaining among the degraded race whom we now call the Egyptian people, is the Stick, and that unless we are tolerant and modest enough to sacrifice some of our prejudices to this god, we shall never so much as begin to do any good here. The Egyptian still respects and fears that, and that alone. He even loves it. It is a point of honour with him not to pay his taxes, to respect his superiors, or be just with his equals, until he has undergone a certain amount of Stick. If you refuse this to him ; and, above all, if you substitute for it other methods of persuasion of occidental character, you fail with him. He does but laugh at you the more, respect you the less, and hate you with a greater hatred. Yet, although we have M 2 i8o The Log of the 'Nereid.' the teaching of sixty centuries before us, so conceited are we that we think to rule the Fellah as we rule the Lancashire Lad, and are scandalised at the mere idea of so far respecting the Fellah's prejudices as to set up even the smallest temple to that ancient divinity whom he has so long worshipped the great god Courbash. But then, you see, we are a practical people. # # * # * * * I will tell you a true tale. It happened just below this town not many months ago. The land is there largely tilled on both banks of the Nile by slaves. But the British Ensign flies here now, and wherever that flies, slavery, as we know, dies. Now, the engineer of one of the steamboats told all this to a slave, and explained to him that he had only to go on board that steamer in order to fly away and be a free man for ever. The slave listened, approved, and bolted on board the steamer. But now mark what happened. As the steamer, ensign and all, was going down the river with the slave on the deck, the slave's master came down to the bank. He cried bitterly. He called to the slave " O, Hamid," said he, " how can you run " away from me ? Do you not know that I shall be ruined ? " Who is to plant the dhoom for me ? Who is to work the " shadoof? O, Hamid, do not, do not leave me." With this he wept still more bitterly. The free man under the British ensign heard. He hesitated for a moment and then he jumped over- board, and swam back to the bank, to his master, and to slavery. The moral whereof is that there must certainly be more or less in this slavery than all we think we know of it in that Hamid, who certainly knew more of it than we do, preferred it, on the whole, to the British ensign. * * # * * * * What impresses me most about the First Cataract of the Nile is that I found there a number of European ladies and gentlemen, beautifully dressed in light clothing, with pith The Upper Nile. 181 helmets and sun-umbrellas. There were also a number of dark youths, dressed in one piece of string tied round their waists who jumped from the rock into the foaming rapids, and swam down them, at what seemed the imminent risk of their lives. The tourists appeared to admire it. What the piece of string was for I don't know. The last I heard of the Cataract was one universal roar of " give it Bakshish." # * # # # # * The English occupation of Egypt is, at present, not ex- tensive. There is not a single English soldier this side of Cairo, the last three men went down to that city a fortnight ago, and the southern frontier at Wady Haifa is guarded by the Egyptian army alone. But the occupation has introduced various elements of our advanced civilisation among the fellahin, one being the spirit whiskey, and the other the ornamental use of the word " bloody," which they have learned to apply with as great a liberality and as little an appropriateness as Tommy Atkins himself. It must be quite refreshing to a devoutly disposed tradesman's wife, who has been Cooked from Norwood to the Nile, to see things of which she has no understanding, to be adjured by the improved donkey-boy of Assouan to "take my bloody donkey, Mum ; you take him for two bloody " piastres." 182 The Log of the 'Nereid: XXVII. MODERN THEBES. LUXOR, UPPER EGYPT, Tuesday, $th February, 1889. 'TT^HEBES, the famous city which was five thousand years JL ago the capital of Egypt ; which was the seat of power of Sethi and Rameses, Osirtasen, Amunoph, Thotmes, which gave gods, religions, and philosophers to the world before Abraham was thought of, which instructed Greece and pre- vailed in Rome ; Thebes, whose Kings carried their conquering arms from the Black Sea to the Equator, from Persia to Morocco Thebes is now a suburb of the Arab mud-village of Luxor, whose King is Cook, and whose Ministers are donkey- boys, dragomen, and hotel-keepers. # * * # # * * Luxor lies nearly six hundred miles up the Nile from Alexandria. A mile from it is Karnak, where still stand the ruins of that famous temple whose massy columns remain as witnesses to the grandiose ideas of the men who built it, and whose delicate bas-reliefs of Khem and Isis tell us whence the god Pan and the goddess Venus were borrowed, and testify to the perfection in art which had been reached thirty centuries ago. Among the mud-huts of Luxor the half-buried temple of Rameses, with its marvellous statue of that King, is another wonder ; still more wonderful is the sandy, dusty plain on the other side of the river, where the vocal Memnon still stands, and whereon Thebes once stood ; and most wonderful of all is the range beyond of bare, tawny yellow hills where the Theban Modern Thebes. 183 Kings dug their secret tombs deep into the rock. Marvellous indeed are these tombs. They are lofty passages hewn for a distance of sometimes as much as 900 feet into the solid rock, passages not only most exactly finished, but covered from the entrance to the end with a wreath of sculptured and painted bas-reliefs and hieroglyphs which for variety of subject, play of fancy, vividness, and finish are beyond imagination. The figures of Theban gods and goddesses, the strange, intermin- able coiled serpents, the scenes of Theban daily life, the exact representations of Theban dress, furniture, and implements warlike and peaceful, are all preserved save where the tourist or the antiquary has defaced or stolen them with their sharpest outline and most vivid colouring uninjured ; for to these tombs neither of the two great destroyers, Rain and Frost, ever comes. Then there is the description of each picture in the adjoining hieroglyphs, so that every tomb is a book in many volumes with a profusely illustrated text, and a text which (thanks to that Rosetta stone which the French found, which the English captured, and which the Frenchman Champollion deciphered) can be read by the expert as readily as English. Wandering as I have done, day after day, among these wonderful tombs, one is vexed to think that even the most liberal education does not include instruction in hiero- glyphics ; and one leaves them, always unsatisfied, with the feeling that one does not know enough to deserve to see them, and that one must come again when one knows more, and can understand better. Meantime, one goes back to the Nile bank wearied in eye, in understanding, and in body, with the long two hours' ride under the burning sun, afflicted with the stark bareness of the tawny rocks, overborne with their lifelessness and silence, so well suited to the quiet of an eternal tomb, and wishing to be alone, even as these men whose sepulchres are here wished to 1 84 The Log of the 'Nereid.' be alone. Hard by the river bank stand the two gigantic seated colossi, one of which was that vocal Memnon who daily saluted the rising sun, towards which he looks, with musical greeting. But his music was that of destruction. Broken at the waist, and the upper and nobler part of him thrown to the ground, he still uttered to the favoured few those sounds which Emperors longed to hear. Restored however rudely and feebly enough by a Roman Caesar, Memnon has since been mute for ever, and there only remain the inscriptions on his base to record the joy of those that heard his voice. # # # # * # ;[: All this while, however, Modern Thebes is with us. As you land on the western bank of the Nile, you are overwhelmed by a surging mob of Arab donkey-boys and donkeys. "Take this " one, sar this good donkey, Thotmes this good one," they yell, and hustle you like a London crowd, till, out of patience, you either begin to lay about you with a stick, or, in despair, mount the nearest donkey or perhaps do both. It does not matter which donkey you take. They are all bad, miserable, starved little wretches, who stumble and blunder on with you, urged by the fiend in the rear who prods them with a stick having a pointed nail in the end thereof, causing them to slew their hind-quarters round, and to hobble forward like a billiard- ball with side on it, until you violently wrench the stick away from the donkey-boy, and threaten to break his head with it if he comes near. The donkey-boy smiles and shows his white teeth (these people always smile, and most freely when most beaten), and thenceforth keeps at a respectful distance, until your attention has again wandered, when he secretly and silently steals up, twists the donkey's tail, and is off before you can catch him a crack on his own wicked and perverse head. Scarcely has one left the river when a crowd of other dirty, half-naked rascals surround one to sell antikas or relics, real or Pharaoh for j\d. Modern Thebes. 185 false, of the days of Theban glory. They never leave you from the moment you set foot on the shore till the moment you embark again, and they produce from their bags the most varied and horrible assortment of articles of all kinds and prices. " This " very good scarab, sar how much you give ? " " Go away " emshi ruh." " This mummy hand, sar, two shillings." " Go " away, I tell you. I don't want the beastly thing moosh lazim." " Very fine mummy hawk, this good, how much ? " " Will you " go away ? " " Yes, this very fine old mummy head three " shilling take him." It is impossible to describe the irrita- tion produced by an unbroken stream of this worry lasting for five or six hours without intermission, or sufficiently to praise the temper and patience which alone prevent one from killing on the spot the persistent villains its authors. These people, but especially all those of them who have to do with tourists, are the most aggravating creatures conceivable, and, hard as it seems to one to believe it in England, it is the most difficult thing in the world, when one is in Egypt, to avoid beating them. In my case, I was yesterday unfortunately accompanied by two young rascals Quartermaster George and his friend Mark who were as much delighted with the antika-mongers as I was disgusted with them ; and, to my horror, I found at the end of the day, that they had clubbed their pocket-money together and had bought a mummy-head for three piastres (or seven- pence halfpenny), and sought to make me share their joy by thrusting the horrible black skull close under my nose. That it will one day find its way into the soup, unless it soon gets thrown overboard, I feel little doubt. These two boys have become quite public characters in Luxor. The Arabs call them " the two English baby-boys," and they have already distinguished themselves by winning two 186 The Log of the donkey-races in the local Gymkhana meeting, Mark having carried off the race with saddles, and George the bare- backed race. The young villains organise gruesome conspiracies with their mummy-heads, hands, and hawks, of which they have formed a collection, and are fast friends ; but two days ago they fell out, and proceeded to settle their differences by having a fight according to the rules of the British Prize-Ring, in the ruins of Karnak a battle which much astonished the donkey- boys. Having shaken hands, however, at the end of their little mill, they are now faster friends than ever, and they are at present, I understand, organising together a deep-laid plot to get hold of an entire mummy and to take it to England for the benefit of their friends and the greater glory of what they call their museum. Egypt has become of late quite a little England, and like England has its nominal and its real rulers inverted in a manner which will puzzle the future historian. The nominal ruler is Tewfik ; but Tewfik takes his orders from Baring ; and Baring, I suspect, has to take his orders from Cook. The latter Sovereign becomes more and more potent as we get farther up the Nile, and here at Luxor, where a special hotel has arisen under the light of his countenance, he figures quite as a modern Ammon-Ra. It seems likely too that his might and majesty will increase ; for the Egyptian Government having organised a most useful service of postal steamers from Assiout to Wady Haifa, which compete with the Cook steamers, is now said to be about to withdraw from the competition, and to make an arrangement with Mr. Cook which will leave his steamers to carry the post, and to take sole possession of this part of the river. His steamers -are certainly good ; but whether it is wise to stop the Government boats, and thus to establish what will amount to a Cook Modern Thebes. 187 monopoly, is a matter which should be further considered before the step is finally taken. * * * * * * * If Egypt has become a little England, Cairo has become a little London, and Luxor is its little Brighton, which is full all the winter through, of notable and interesting people, as well as invalids and tourists all of whom amuse themselves, not unsuccessfully, between ancient ruins and such modern social life as can be organised in hotels, whereof there are two. The Luxor Hotel, which is the rendezvous of the Cook tourists, is very decent ; while the Karnak Hotel is most comfortable, and its people exceptionally obliging. Strangely enough, it is not mentioned in any guide-book that I have seen. i S3 The Log of the 'Nereid: XXVIII. ASSI O UT. ASSIOUT, Saturday, gth February, 1889. ASSIOUT is the most considerable town of Upper Egypt. The interest of this fact lay for me in the certainty that it would therefore possess a Turkish Bath, and that on reaching the place I could there wash myself clean of the dust of Upper Egypt and get shampooed out of the fatigue of doing nothing on board a steamer. So indeed it has proved. The Bath itself is a fine building, embellished with some handsome columns, and although, as usual, the walls and roof are dirty, and the general appearance that of dilapidation, the marble floor which is the important part is clean enough. As usual also, the hot rooms arc very much less hot than \ye keep them in England, and very much more damp and steamy, and consequently more genial and less biting than ours, besides which they have a pleasant odour from the burning of incense, which it is sur- prising we should not have adopted in England. But the principal difference between the English and Eastern bath lies in the shampooing, which at Assiout approaches perfection. The better and longer part of this is done, not before, but after the bath, when one is lying swathed in half-a- dozen thin, silk-embroidered towels, looking up at the sky through the open top of the hall, and feeling clean and grateful. Then there comes to you the principal artist. He proceeds to knead you, to stretch your muscles, to crack your joints, to stimulate )'our nerves, and generally to break and pull you to pieces. With cunning hand he works slowly up and down you. Assiout. 189 He gathers up your stomach in a knot, and wrings it like an old cloth. He tracks the nerves and muscles of your calves, and worries them till you can hardly bear it. He bears with all his weight gently but firmly on your chest. He follows the line of muscle on each side of your spine with dreadful knucklings. He twists your arm round the wrong way, lays it on his knee, and kneads it persuasively. He gets a firm hold of your upper man and wrenches it violently round at the hips. He gets your two hands behind your head and goes nigh to break you in two. He does it again. He cracks the joints of every finger and every toe, first separately, and then together. Having frightened you out of your life every other minute, and made you wonder whether any of you will remain, he again glides down to your feet. Sitting down, he takes each foot separately upon his lap, first rasps the sole with pumicestone, and then proceeds to shampoo it with his hand. This operation lasts nigh on to half an hour, and is inexpressibly soothing and pleasant. It seems to smoothen down all the nerves and the muscles that have been so tried, and to bring the whole system into a balance of new harmony and repose. Now lie still for a space ; and when you dress and go forth you feel so cool, so clean, so light, so vigorous, so jaunty, that it seems as though a stream of new life had been run through your frame. This is what the shampooer has done for you. I am sorry to say I have no belief whatever in Medicine. I have, however, a limited belief in Surgery, and I have a very generous belief in shampooing when it is scientifically applied. Dr. Kellgren is the only man I know of who applies it scienti- fically in London, and he, I understand, has worked out his system on a very complete substructure of physiological learning ; but here and indeed throughout the East the best kind of professed shampooers also work scientifically, their knowledge being derived from the experience and the traditions i go The Log of the 'Nereid.' of ages. It is remarkable enough, too, that their shampooing most closely resembles in many respects that of Dr. Kellgren, so that he and they seem to have reached the same end by widely different roads. Let me give an instance of Eastern shampooing. One day last week, the boy George (aged eleven), having engaged with the Arab donkey-boys in a game of jereed in the Karnak Temple of Thebes, came down over one of the rough stones of the temple and sprained his ankle. The boy was in great pain and, though not, I think, wanting in pluck, could scarcely keep the tears from his eyes. A kindly English doctor who was there advised that the foot should be kept quite quiet, to which George was only too ready to agree, being unable, he said, to put it on the ground. But, remem- bering the principles of Kellgren, I told him, on the contrary, to walk about on it, which he did, with much but with gradually decreasing difficulty, for perhaps five minutes, after which I let him mount his donkey to return to Luxor, a mile and a-half distant. Then I inquired of the donkey-boys whether there was a native shampooer at Luxor. " Yes, " there was named Girges (Arab for George), very good " hakim." I therefore sent for Girges, who proved to be a most gentle, dignified old man, and handed the boy over to him. Girges took his foot now a good deal swollen pressed and rubbed it along with his hand, most especially there where most pain was, and finally mixed up some cheese with a raw egg, and lightly bandaged it on. The next morning he attended again and repeated the operation ; and then walked up with George himself, to me, who happened to be half a mile away, to tell me that it was " all finish." And so it was. George could use his foot as well as ever, and has continued to do so ever since. The fee I gave to Girges for his attendance was two shillings, and he was most grateful for it. He was a charming old man. He had certainly Assiout. 19 1 never seen a dead body cut up or walked a hospital ; but he had learnt from his fathers a knowledge of the living frame and of the way to handle it in certain cases, which the College of Surgeons might do well to consider, and to acquire if it can. * * :;c :;: :I: * # No doubt the climate here up the Nile is very fine and \ery dry, and it is extremely sweet to hear of our friends and fellow-countrymen struggling with fog, snow, and ice in England, while we are endeavouring, with indifferent success, to keep ourselves cool in a temperature of 84 in the shade. But even the Nile has its drawbacks. Dust is the chief of them. It gets into everything, including one's eyes, hair, and teeth, and after a day's ride among the tombs nothing but a good soap all over will render one fit for dinner. The sun also is rather an affliction, and reminds one painfully that the British hat was made neither for rain nor shine, while the perpetual dryness of the air hardens and chaps the skin like an English east wind. The bats who inhabit the dark tombs, and who whizz out over one's head in hundreds as one advances, and then whizz back again these are another worry. The greatest worry of all however are the Arabs, who, between donkeys, " antikas," and guidance, will never let you alone for one moment. Not alone in the towns, but in the most remote and quiet spots of that flat and dusty billiard-table which is here called the country, to which you have painfully walked in order to enjoy the luxury of being alone for half an hour, you suddenly become aware that a silent, smiling, bare- footed Arab has risen up out of the ground and has attached himself to you. You gently remonstrate with him, and assure him that you do not want him ; but nothing (except a beating) will induce him to quit you, and at the end of your walk he craves the invariable bakshish for having thus worried you, and very likely bursts into tears if you refuse him. They are all IQ2 The Log of the 'Nereid.' tall, straight, powerful, fine-looking men, these Arabs, but the biggest of them will run if you shake a stick at him. An extraordinary proportion of them are one-eyed, and I should say that to find five eyes among four men is as much as can be expected. The women are as straight and well set-up as the men. They are rarely pretty to look at, and their habit of tattooing the chin with blue marks does not add to their charm ; yet some of the young girls are quite beautiful, and, thanks to the habit of carrying heavy water-jars on their heads, they all move with the freedom and grace of a goddess. # * * -f X sie # The further one gropes one's way through the glimmerings of light afforded by the temples and the tombs of Egypt, and the more insight one gets into the religious beliefs of the Egyptians, the greater and higher is the conception one must form of them. They were pagans indeed, but not idolaters. They recognised what all those who think always have recognised, that the creation and maintenance of the Universe and its Almighty Creator and Maintainer are a great Mystery not to be fathomed. Job said, " Canst thou by searching find " out God ; canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? " So also said the Egyptian priests. To them the Almighty was inconceivable and incomprehensible, His name unpronounce- able, His form unembodiable. His attributes and His acts could indeed be known always to all men ; Himself never to any. The operation of the Almighty mind might be represented by Ammon ; the creative act by which the Universe had been called into being by Pthah ; the priceless daily gift of the sun by Ra ; the agency of Beauty by Isis ; of Good by Osiris ; of active benevolence by Horus ; of Evil by Typhon ; and of the recording human mind by Thoth, the god of wisdom and letters ; and these accordingly were represented, with other attributes, agencies, acts, emanations from the Deity, wherever a temple was built. To those of the common people indeed Assiout. 193 who in Egypt as elsewhere never understand anything these very probably seemed each to represent a god in himself. They spoke the name of Ammon, of Isis, of Osiris, and thought they had named God that they had conceived the inconceivable, pronounced the unpronounceable, embodied the unembodiable. The common people of all grades of society were then, as now, content with this. The wise men knew better. That dread secret which was concealed from the vulgar, and which the High Priest and the King alone knew fully, was that this was not all ; that the whole truth was still a mystery ; and that at the end of the long and populous avenue of divine acts and attributes to which the people devoutly and rightly bowed down, there was a closed door, a final impene- trable Mystery before which the wisest and greatest must bow in awe and wonder. Their wise men were not infidels or atheists ; they were far too wise for that. It was not that they believed less than the multitude, but that they believed more for they understood more. That is what the sculptures, the inscriptions of the temples teach us ; what is taught by the very form of the temples them- selves, with their vast outer court for the many, their small interior court for the chosen few, their smaller third court for the very few initiated, and their sanctuary for the priest and King alone. All this is seen most admirably at the complete temples (complete even to the roof and the pavement) at Denderah and Edfoo, which the imagination can still fill with the rich processions that once moved through their courts. >K 5 >tc ' -',' >|c :|c See, too, how modest they were. Though they cultivated every art and every science, this bred no self-sufficiency in them. It never caused them to believe that they were alone admirable, and their present mortal life alone desirable. On the contrary, everything testifies to the mean opinion they held of this world, and the high estimate they formed of the next. 1 94 The Log of the 'Nereid.' Their temples were grand and lasting indeed, for they were the homes of their gods and the expression of their own higher nature. But their own homes were poor and temporary ; in their tombs alone did they approach the grandeur and perma- nence of the temple. For they held their houses to be but an inn where for a time they would sojourn ; but their tombs they looked upon as their long home where they would remain for ages. Their houses therefore they built on the sand, their tombs in the rock ; and so it is that while Egypt is still full of thousands of known tombs, and of thousands of others not yet opened, not a vestige of a single Egyptian house remains. Then too they were practical, as these very tombs show. The dead mummy was put away in a concealed pit ; but the important, effectual part of the tomb was that hall of ancestral worship which is found in all of them, and in which the living kin of the dead man came together to do honour to those who had gone before, to excite themselves by example to virtuous life, and to execute family discipline. Thus, as in China, the moral code was enforced by the Family under the sanction of the Ancestor, and there remained but little for the public magistrate to do. * ****** We have learnt much from Egypt. All our astronomy, all our mathematics reach us from this land, together with much of the art inherited from Greeks and Romans who learnt it on the Nile. Besides this we owe to Egypt the doctrine of a future life, of the Trinity, our Septuagint version of the Old Testament, and all our copies of the New Testament. We English owe to it our patron Saint the Arian St. George, Bishop of Alexandria ; Christianity in general owes to it the separation of clergy from laity, the tonsure of priests, and the very form of the Pope's tiara, which is no other than that of the crown of Upper Egypt as it may be seen to this day in Egyptian temples ; the whole of our chronology is based upon Assiout. 195 that Julian period which began 4713 B.C. on the ist January at noon at the meridian of Alexandria ; and there is scarce a dogma engrafted on Christianity, from the Athanasian creed downwards, which had not its origin on the banks of the Nile. All the greater pity does it seem, that we have failed to be impressed from the Egyptian example, with the value and power of that ancestral worship which here was practised. All the greater pity that, instead of attending together at stated periods the tombs of those dear ones who have gone before us, in order to examine ourselves in their presence, and to animate ourselves by their example, we should merely put them away wholesale in a cemetery, and neither go any more near them nor think any more about them. N 2 196 The Log of the 'Nereid: XXIX. THE PYRAMIDS. ALEXANDRIA, Saturday, i6th February, 1889. NOBODY ever truly knows the delight of being on board ship, unless they have been driven for a time to litter down in houses and on steamers, as has recently been my fate. To be surrounded by houses, noises, dirt, and silly people, to stifle in a noisome, dusty atmosphere, and to waste the hours in twaddle, is poor work at any time ; but one feels especially how poor it is when, after gandering about ashore for a space, one comes back to the vessel. As you sniff the fresh breeze, you feel that you can once more breathe again. As you look at the transparent dome of sky about you, you feel that you can expand again. As you tread the sweet, speckless white deck, you feel that you are clean again. As you look seaward, you feel that you are again free and independent. A delightful exultation takes you, and you are truly thankful. # # # -\< # * # When I see the kind of stuff they sell you here, at high prices, under the assumed names of varnish, paint, oil, and canvas, I almost cease to wonder at the bombardment of Alexandria. It is all of the very worst quality yet invented, and the varnish especially has produced such horrid results on my beautiful teak skylight and companions, that I could drink the blood of a ship-chandler out of the skull of a paint- dealer. The smartening up and making good our worn gear is now, however, pretty well complete. We have rove new staysail halyards, new fore-braces to the squaresail yard, a new martingale-stay tackle, and new falls for the cutter, have put a The Pyramids. 197 cloth or two into some of our sails, have made new sail-covers, and have scrubbed the vessel's bottom as far as we could get at it without docking her. Besides this, we have strengthened a weak place discovered in the rudder-head, and given a lick of paint all round. So that we give quite an air of smartness and respectability to our tender, the Phaeton, which lies just ahead of us, towering above us in a way that makes us look extremely small. These things being done, it is about time to go to sea again ; but a perverse combination of circumstances still keeps me here, chafing indeed, yet not altogether discontented, for the English Phaetons and the American Quinebaugs are as amiable as only men of warsmen can be, and each day produces some new and unavoidable engagement to prevent us from sailing. * * * * * * * Monday, iSth February. It is surprising how hard it can blow here occasionally. To-day we have had a whole gale from the S.W., which has knocked up such a sea that even here in the inner harbour all work of loading and unloading from lighters is suspended. To add to the festivity of the scene, a big Egyptian steamer has been trying to pull my vessel in two. Our chain-cable is shackled on to a buoy (to which the stern of the Phaeton is also fast with a steel hawser), while our stern is made fast to a second buoy. Now, this afternoon, at the height of the breeze, the big Egyptian steamer, which was fast a good piece astern of me, to a third buoy, began to drag that third buoy to leeward. Being thus in imminent danger of settling down on the quay and knocking herself into scrap iron, she ran away a hawser to the second buoy to which my stern was fast. Then she began to drag that, and with it my vessel. Thus the big steamer was holding on to me while I was holding on to the first buoy. The stern of the Phaeton was also holding on to that same buoy ; so that, in fact, we were all three holding on to it. It was pull 198 The Leg of the 'Nereid.' devil, pull baker, a game which I watched for some time, not without anxiety, until I came to the conclusion that, so far as the baker was concerned, it was an entirely overrated amuse- ment. At last I said, " If that steamer wants the buoy, she had " better have it and take it ashore with her," and I slacked away my stern hawser. Then the steamer had to do what she ought to have done at first, and let go an anchor, which appeared to bring her up almost within touching distance of the quay. To-night the gale has moderated, and at daylight we shall all get right again I suppose. But I have got an anchor all ready to let go in case of accidents. ****** * # Most things and places in this world cause one no great surprise when one comes to them for the first time. One always seems somehow to feel that one has seen that thing and been to that place before, and that one knows all about it already. Of certain places and things, however, this is not true. Constanti- nople and Venice, for instance, come upon one as quite new and unimagined places. So the Pyramids. They have been pictured and described to wearisomeness. We have all, as we think, a very exact and sufficient notion of these very simple structures. Yet, when for the first time I approached them, I felt that here was something altogether beyond any previous knowledge or imagining of mine. No description indeed could convey an idea of the simple, the massive, the almost awful grandeur of the Great Pyramid ; for one cannot render an account of it to one's self. One can only stand there under the yellow mass and feel the impression grow upon one that here is something of human work more stupendous than ever was made or could ever be described. For five thousand years it has stood there, defying the destructive power of Time, and of Man, more cruel than Time, a tremendous mystery which, even now, has not betrayed its secret to the world. Its mere mass, which, after being robbed of stone to build cities withal, is still practically undiminished, the mere The Pyramids. 199 strength which has given to it so unexampled a duration these alone make pigmies of modern men. We civilised heirs of all the ages can never hope to leave a record like this of what we believe to be our greatness. Pass such a sponge of time over England as has been passed over Egypt and there would remain nothing. Our buildings, run up in six weeks to last six years, would have all tumbled into heaps, our iron bridges and rail- ways, our locomotives and steamboats and electric systems, would have all corroded clean away, leaving not a vestige to show aught of them or their meaning. A few shapeless mounds here and there, and perhaps still one or two monoliths at Stone- henge, would alone survive ; and, unless our paper and ink are a great deal better than I take them to be, there would not either be any written record left of the people who now think so much too much of themselves and their achievements to have any opinion of the Pyramids. Yet, even then, these Pyramids would still remain evidence past doubting that here, too, in Egypt were once men capable of conceiving the most grandiose ideas and of recording them thus imperishably. Then, to add to our wonder, there is the marvellous per- fection of the workmanship. There are the huge casing-stones, weighing 16 tons, and having an area of 35 square feet, and yet brought so closely into contact as one five hundredth of an inch, with cement between this inconceivably narrow joint. There is above all the extraordinary accuracy of the orientation and of the methods whereby it was secured. Few people are fully aware of the great difficulty there is in ascertaining accurately the precise North, so as to lay down a true north and south line. It can only be ascertained by the stars, and there is unquestionable evidence, in the passages of the Pyramid, that it was to the stars that its builders appealed for help. The low, narrow entrance passage is not horizontal, but slopes downwards, making an angle with the horizon of 26 26' 42". Now this is exactly the angle at which the Pole-star of those 2oo The Log of the 'Nereid.' days (a Draconis) was visible at its lower culmination, and there can be no doubt that this long, narrow passage was built like a stone telescope, to lay down, as it did, that true north and south line on which the orientation of the Pyramid was worked. So exact was the orientation thus obtained, that the side of the Pyramid is only 3' 43" to the west of the true north and south line. And even this most slight difference is not an error ; for it is known now that, since the time of the building, the true north itself has shifted to just about this extent ; so that the Pyramid has outlived the North Pole itself. Whatever else they may have been, the Pyramids are the most tremendous Puzzle the world has ever seen. And, like all perfect puzzles, they exercise a strange fascination over one ; for they seem to offer unmistakably plain clues to their purpose, which, when followed up, seem to be negatived by other clues that point equally plainly to another purpose. I have been more than once to them. I have been up to the top of the Great Pyramid, and inside it. I have read long and afflicting books about it, have pondered its plan, its passages, and its measurements, and have felt how hard it is to tear one's self away from it and its problem. Again and again I have been on the point of returning to it (indeed it is but a pleasant shady ten-mile ride from Cairo), and I declare that I have not dared to do so, lest I myself should plunge into the Puzzle, should propound a new theory of my own, write a work on it in twenty volumes, and be elected a member of the Athenaeum Club. In face of such a prospect as this, I felt bound to pause, and I have at last torn myself away from the fascinating problem, only to find that it recurs again to me in quiet moments. What, indeed, is this Pyramid ? Professor Piazzi Smyth declares that it is the embodiment of a direct revelation from the Almighty ; that its place and parts and proportions are so exactly fitted to record for ever certain truths that it can be no less than this, since such a record was beyond the power of the The Pyramids. 201 uninspired human mind even to conceive, much less to make. In this he is to a certain extent right, for every great idea is a divine revelation, and every great work is divinely inspired. Let us therefore not mock at the Professor. Then come the common persons of the guide-book persuasion, who pooh-pooh all these imaginings, and tell us that the Pyramid was merely a tomb and nothing more and who are most demonstrably wrong. As to what it was, and why it was necessary to secure so perfect an orientation of its sides, the answer suggested by Mr. Proctor, the astronomer, is, I think, the most sufficient and of most reasonable entertainment. It is that the Pyramid, during the life of Cheops, its builder, termlaated in a small platform, from the centre whereof the ascending passage looked due south, while the entrance passage lower down looked due north ; and that it was thus a huge transit instrument or astronomical observatory. He suggests too that this square platform was used as a table, on which the horoscope of Cheops was drawn, and that, at his death, he was buried in the centre, and all the passages closed up, which certainly was done with granite plugs which are a puzzle in themselves. Thus he builds up a very pretty and complete theory, which would explain the Pyramid as being at once the Observatory, the Fate, the Life, and the Tomb of Cheops. As to this, and as " to the value of n " (or the squaring of the circle), which is undoubtedly indicated by the proportion of the Pyramid's height to its circumference, I could say something but that way new theories and madness lie. Weenie is beginning to feel that she is grown up, and that, while she is quite ready to be gracious and kindly to everybody, she must, on occasion, keep people at their proper distance. Occasionally she shows this in a lofty and uncompromising way, and with a frankness which could not have been bettered 202 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 by the late lamented Lady Egerton of Tatton, and which can hardly be approached by the modern generation of great ladies. She is devoted, for instance, to the officers of the Phaeton. Whether the general weakness of her sex for fine feathers is appealed to by the beautiful brass buttons and gold lace of the naval uniform, or whether her special weakness for cakes and biscuits and general spoiling finds a greater indulgence there than elsewhere, certain it is that she delights in going on board the Phaeton, and that all the officers of the vessel are special favourites with her. Every Sunday the hoisting of the Church pennant on the Phaeton is a signal to which we never fail to respond by attending Divine Service ; after which Weenie first descends to the lower deck, where I usually find her the centre of adoring crowds of blue-jackets, who could eat her alive, so devoted are they to her ; and then reascends to the ward-room, to have her jumper filled with toothsome delicacies by the officers, to whom she is therefore particularly gracious. Now, a few days ago she was making one of her royal progresses through the streets of Alexandria, escorting her nurse and her brother, when they all met one of Weenie's most particularly favourite officers, upon whom she usually lavishes all her affection and her sweetest smiles. But upon this occasion she took no notice whatever of him. " Well, Weenie," said he, " won't you give me a kiss ? " Weenie still took no notice, but gazed long and earnestly in the direction of an Arab donkey-boy. " Weenie," urged he, " don't you know me ? " Weenie now for the first time looked up, and, with the greatest calmness and dignity, replied " No. I don't know you ashore. I only know you on Sundays." Head Winds. 203 XXX. HEAD WINDS. AT SEA, OFF ALEXANDRIA, Wednesday, ijth February, 1889. T) ROPERLY speaking, and according to all sound seafaring JL principles, I ought to have sailed last Saturday ; for I was ready in all that concerns the ship, and a good hard blow was just over, giving a probability of the spell of fine weather that usually succeeds a gale. But the English of Alexandria, who seem to spend the whole of their time in what are called gaieties, amiably conspired to keep me with them, and I have stayed on these four days for balls ashore and afloat, which have no conceivable connection with the proper duties of a skipper. This was weak of me, for it was against my better seafaring judgment, and I usually find that, when one thus acts, one regrets it. As it is, I regret it, for I have wasted four days of fine weather and fair winds, and shall now probably get my deserts in their contraries. However, it was with a feeling of relief that, at ten this morning, I unshackled from the buoy and towed out of the harbour and through the reefs. The men were as pleased as myself to get away, and sang out cheerily at the halyards as they set the sails ; for we are now homeward bound, and all the exquisite joys of that Heaven upon earth, Aldeburgh, lie ahead of us. Outside we found a light air from the south-west, which has just sufficed to carry us twenty miles from the land, and then has fallen away to a calm. We have a long pull of 2O4 The Log of the 'Nereid.' 850 miles to Malta before us, and this does not look promising for a beginning. What adds another irritation to the prospect is that the Arab ship-chandler, who was told to bring off a dozen live fowls, brought them off dead and plucked, so that we have not this time any live stock on board, and that we shall therefore, when our fresh meat and vegetables are run out, be reduced to that abomination of desolation, tinned provisions, than which there is nothing to my mind more horrible. Thursday, 28th February. In Lat. 32 26' 15" N., Long. 28 o' o" E. We had a little breeze from S.W. during the night, with which we did seven knots. This morning it freshened, while the barometer had fallen two tenths ; so, soon after daybreak, I hauled down a reef in the mainsail and the foresail and carried on, laying up to my course with the wind a point free. This afternoon, however, it fell calm again and left us lolloping about in the swell ; and this evening the wind has sprung up again from N.W., which is altogether the wrong quarter for us, while the sky is overcast and unwholesome looking. * * * * * * * Excited no doubt by that imaginative spirit which produced the " Thousand and One Nights," and which seems to pervade the very air of the East, Weenie has lately taken, in moments of quiet and inoccupation, to telling us romantic stories which she invents as she goes on. Her novels are very original, but, as is usual with modern novelists, there is a certain sameness about their incidents ; her own experience, the fund on which her imagination draws, being again like that of other modern novelists somewhat limited and somewhat devoid of the marvellous. But her titles are good enough for a shilling dreadful. It usually goes in this way Head Winds. 205 " Well, now I'll tell you a story." " Go on then." " Geoffrey, don't talk. Don't you hear that I'm telling a " story ? " " What's the story to be about ? " " About the Green Scarf and the Yellow Monkey." " Why, you told us that yesterday." " Well, then " (here comes a pause for reflection) " I'll tell " you about the Camel and the Washerwoman " (another pause). " Well, once there was a Camel, and he was a velly " naughty Camel. And so he met a Washerwoman and he " was, oh ! so naughty, and he wouldn't let her wash him. " And so she said, 'you must, and if you don't I'll give you " to the Sergeant.' " " What Sergeant ? " " Why the black Sergeant of Marines on the Phaeton. " You aye a goose. Well, then he was velly naughty again, " and he wouldn't say his prayers. So what do you think ? " " I don't know." " Well " (lowering her voice and with great solemnity), " he " was put in the Cry Corner. Well, then there came an Alab " man " "What's an Alab man ? " " Why one of these niggers. And the Alab man took a " gun and shooted him dead. And when he was deaded, then " the Washerwoman cried. And and then she was put in the " Cry Corner. Well, then she said she'd be good, so she came " out of the Cry Corner. And then the Alab man took another " gun and shooted he no he shooted she. And that's all." " But what became of the Camel ?" " Well, he fell overboard and was drownded." " And what became of the Washerwoman ? " " Well, she was drownded too." Qttarterm ister Geoffrey Head V/inds. 207 Friday, ist March. In Lat. 32 52' 48" N., Long. 27 26' 30" E. We carried a little draft of air all night, and this morning there is a nice breeze ; but it hangs to W.N.W., which is as dead on end as it can stick, and the vessel is laying up no better than N. by W. We are thus getting edged away to the northward at nearly a right angle to our proper course, and instead of heading for Malta, are heading for the eastern end of Crete. However, I don't mind this so much, for I believe I have a better chance of picking up a wind out of the eastern hank under Crete than I should have on the African coast. The wind has freshened this afternoon, so that at four o'clock I deemed it prudent to double reef mainsail and foresail. This was not absolutely necessary, but I always like to be a little beforehand in the way of shortening sail, especially when night is drawing on, for nothing is more disagreeable than to have to turn out the watch in the night and haul down reefs in a hurry in the dark. Under this reduced canvas we are going five knots, which, if we can keep it up and run into a fair wind with it, will do well enough. Saturday, 2nd March. Lat. 34 38' 53" N., Long. 26 47' 45" E. Soon after noon to-day we made the fine high land of the island of Crete, bearing N.W., having got from five to seven knots out of the vessel, though not very comfortably, being close-hauled and jamming against a head sea. The wind, after veering to N.W., has backed again to W.S.W., and all this afternoon we have been clawing to windward, tack and tack, under the Cretan land, standing in with the hope of the wind drawing off shore, as it ought to do, only to have to go about again as we approached the land. The sky is now entirely overcast with a huge mass of fleecy cloud piled up on the Cretan mountains, and it is quite Channel weather, while the barometer 208 The Log of the 'Nereid: is steadily on the downward move. It looks fairly fine how- ever, for the clouds are not hard, and have but little way on them. Sunday, yd March. Lat. 340 29' 38" N., Long. 25 40' o" E. Four hours of calm during the night have been succeeded by light and variable winds, which, after trifling about the better part of the day between N.N.W. and W., have again settled down in the contrary quarter of W.N.W. It really begins to look as if we were to have a dead thrash all the way to Malta, and I begin to regret that I did not do as I thought at one time of doing, and run round the northern side of Crete where I fancy I should very likely have got a fair wind instead of holding on under its southern coast. We have been m aking sail and taking in sail all day long. At eight this morning there came down on us a squall of wind and rain, and, as one never knows what is in these Mediter- ranean squalls, when I saw it coming I called the watch below, stowed my mainsail, and set my trysail. Two hours later it fell calm. Then a nice little breeze arose, so, after the men had got their dinners, I set the mainsail again. In another hour however another squall and this time a much heavier one and more sudden fell upon us, in which the wind suddenly flew four points, from S.W. to W. There was no help for it but again to call the watch and set all hands to close reef mainsail and foresail and stow the jib, and to haul the stay- sail sheet a-weather, a job we had not quite completed when the squall was on us with great fury, cutting away the whole top of the water into a shower of white spray, which spread out to leeward like a sheet. It did not give above twenty minutes' notice, and in ten minutes after it had struck us was past and over ; but if we had not been the best part of ready for it, it would have blown the sails out of the bolt ropes. Head Winds. 209 This afternoon the wind has freshened considerably, and there is a good deal of threat in the sky, while the sunset is very sickly. There is a nasty heavy cross sea running too, and the wind still dead ahead. I have therefore decided to heave to for the night, and the ship is now lying in comparative quiet under her close-reefed mainsail and foresail, standing jib, and staysail. She lies to like a duck, coming up to the wind and falling off, and never shipping a cupful of water. So there we are for the night, fairly comfortable ; but I am getting a little tired of these head winds. * * * * $ * The much-vaunted waters of the Nile, which the Pharaohs held to be the best in the world, are, I fear, degenerated in these days into a mere medium for introducing poison into the interiors of those who drink them. This is especially true at Alexandria, where enteric fever is always present, and I have had, much to my regret, to leave a good man there in hospital suffering from typhoid, and to give him his discharge. This morning William Green is unable fo do duty, and complains that he is " bad in his inside," and that his head is " like a ball " of fire " ; but I cannot discover anything abnormal in his pulse, so I have served him out a full dose of castor oil, and told him to keep in his hammock. Thus my starboard-watch is reduced by two hands, which is exactly half its strength, and therefore I have lent it Gus, who has exchanged the round jacket of the steward for the frock of the seaman. Weenie came and gazed at him to-day as he was taking his trick at the helm, and said " You do look funny in a jumper, little sonny." * < * * * * $ , * " Now, Jenny, come and sit in the cutter, and I'll teach you " your letters." This was Weenie's apostrophe to her nurse, when, after trotting about the deck bareheaded and barefooted all day, she 2io The Log of the l Nereid.' 1 began to find herself short of mischief. Jenny accordingly seated herself in the cutter with Weenie alongside and the book between them, and the lesson continued thus " Well, you see, D belongs to L." " No, that's not right. You should say A, B, C.' " Yes, it is right. And this is O." " Yes, that's O. And what's this ? " "That's snake." " No, that's S." " And this this is Kaitch." " There's no such thing as Kaitch. That's N." " Well, / call it Kaitch." S: * -}' * # * * Monday, ^th March. Lat. 34 41' i" N., Long. 25 16' 30" E. Here we are still jamming away to windward, with the wind dead ahead as ever it can stick, five days out, and not yet half way along the south side of Crete. Hour after hour I pace the deck, and try to fancy I can see the clouds rising up on the northern or eastern horizon ; and at the end of each twenty-four hours find myself a mere beggarly thirty miles further to the westward. It is enough to spoil one's temper, which is not improved by finding the helmsman letting the foresail shake. " Keep her away, can't you ? Don't you see you're all in " the wind for'ard. Keep her a good clean full, and let us get " something out of her." " The wind keep a fannying about, Sir." " Then watch it, and don't let her lose her way. Well, now " you're all off the wind. Full and by full and by." Wherewith I descend to my cabin to solace myself with the heartrending accounts given by the sailing Directions of the awful things that happen with wind and weather in and about these parts. Head Winds. 211 After improving my spirits by this, I go on deck again, only to find the breeze in thesame old quarter, and the vessel now closing the land, with the wind falling light. Nothing frightens me like land, and I decide to get her head pointing the other way. " Let her come round, Ned." " Aye, aye, Sir ! " says Ned. " Ready about. Sail her " round easy, Bill. Don't jam your helm down all at once. " Lee, ho ! " The vessel comes up to the wind and hangs there. " She's wonderful light-headed. Haul the staysail " sheet a- weather, or she'll payoff again. Now she's got stern- " way. Shift your helm over the other way. That's you. " There she goes. Hold on there for'ard a minute. Now let " draw the staysail." And so off we go, jamming away on the other tack to sea- ward, and down I go to solace myself with a cup of tea, in which a slice of lemon replaces milk, and a scrap of buttered toast, in which you could smell the (tinned) butter from here to Norway. This evening it has fallen calm, and we are heaving about in a heavy swell. Ridiculous weather this. One minute you are in a flat calm, and slatting your sails to pieces, and the next minute you are in a squall, with wind enough to blow you out of the water. Bill says he " never knowed no good to come of " these here calms," and I entirely agree with him. O 2 212 The Log of the 'Nereid' XXXI. A CYCLONE. ON BOARD THE Nereid. Tuesday, ^th March, 1889. OFF CRETE, Lat. 34 20' 21" N., Long. 24 36' 30" E. ALL last night it was calm, and this morning we were still looking at Crete, having in these three days only got half the length of the island. I began to think that we should never shake it off, and to wish I had, as I had at one time thought of doing, gone round the northern side, which has in Suda Bay a port where we could have renewed our fresh provisions, whereas on this side there is no port at all. After heaving about all night however in a gentle swell, daybreak this morning brought us a little air from S.E.,so that soon after seven o'clock we set the squaresail, shook out all our reefs, ran up the main-topsail, and began to lay our course, which revived all our spirits. The wind slowly freshened, and we gradually got to be doing seven knots, so that at half-past four this afternoon we were abreast of the little outlying island of Gavdo, St. Paul's Clauda, where he and his shipmates, as he tells us, got caught in the " tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," and where they " had " much work to come by the boat " which they had apparently been towing astern in that unseamanlike fashion which marks most of the nautical proceedings recorded in the Old and New Testaments. I begin to think that we, too, are within hail of this same tempestuous wind called Euroclydon, which I have no doubt was of that cyclonic or circular character that distinguishes all A Cyclone. 213 violent atmospheric disturbances ; for during the day the barometer has fallen from 30-19 to 29-94, a drop of two-tenths and a-half, while the wind has backed from S.E., which it was at seven this morning, to E.S.E. at ten o'clock, and then, at eight this evening, to E. But if this is the beginning of a Cyclone, we are on the left-hand side of its path (which is usually from S.E. to N.W. in these latitudes), and as the wind whirls round the area of the Cyclone against the sun, or against watch-hands, we shall, so long as we can keep on this left side, have it backing as it has been doing from S.E. through N.E. to N. Thus it will be a fair wind for us, of which we can make use until it gets too much to carry on with ; and thus we are shown to be right in going back to Malta by this northern route. For if we were over on the African side (assuming this to be a cyclone), we should have been on the right side of the storm's track, and should have had the wind veering from S.E. or S. through S.W. and W. to N.W., which would not have suited us. This afternoon, on my faithful friend the barometer falling, and the sky assuming a threatening appearance, I took in my mainsail, made it up, and lashed it down securely in the crutch, lowered my squaresail, set my trysail, and made all snug for eventualities ; but the wind is still strengthening to the east- ward, and even under this reduced canvas is hustling the old ship along seven knots. We have now sunk Clauda, and the sky looks very wild, with shreds of hard cloud drifting up from the horizon. Wednesday, 6th March. Lat. 34 44' 8" N., Long. 21 41' o" E. We have made a nice little run of 140 miles in the twenty- four hours, but things are looking wilder and wilder. This morning at nine the barometer had fallen to 2978, a tumble of over four-tenths of an inch in the twenty-four hours, the sky is very thick, covered with black threatening clouds, and seems to 214 The Log of the 'Nereid.' be lowered down on the very top of us till one would think it rested on the truck of the mast. At seven this morning a heavy squall struck us, but we were a little beforehand with it, and it found us under a close-reefed foresail and the trysail, and did no harm. But wind and sea continue to increase, so at half- past nine we tied up a reef in the trysail, took in the second and set the storm-jib, and close-reefed the staysail. Now the wind veered soon after midnight from E. to N.N.E., and at eight o'clock this morning had got round to N. This, with the barometer and the sky showing as they do, convinces me that this is a Cyclone we are in, a very prettily defined one too, and therefore very interesting ; and I believe that what I ought to have done, in order to make the best use of it, was as soon as I had got clear of Crete and had room, to haul up to the northward and eastward, so as still to keep on the left-hand side of the Cyclone's track. This, indeed, I had to consider in the night, when the wind began veering from N.N.E. to N. I could not however bring myself to put the ship's nose away from her port when she was heading straight for it, and so I held on my course of W.N.W. This afternoon has shown that I was wrong, and that I ought to have had more confidence in the Law of Storms ; for, soon after four o'clock, the wind had gone round to N.W., which showed that I was crossing the track of the Cyclone from its left side to its right ; and now I cannot lay up any better than a course of W.S.W. I think, indeed, that we have not been very far from the dangerous centre of the Cyclone, for at three o'clock the wind suddenly fell to an ominous calm, while the sea remained very heavy. The barometer, however, had risen at this time half a-tenth, and we did not, when the short quarter of an hour's calm was over, get the wind from exactly the contrary quarter, so that we were not at the centre, though I fancy we must have been near it. The calm was ended by a sudden and violent A Cyclone. 215 squall, followed by several others at short intervals, and it was during these that the wind flew into the N.W. It blew furiously too, but the old ship was now stripped for the fight and did not mind. Thursday, jth March. Lat. 34 16' n" N., Long. 20 30' o" E. Things got bad last night. At eight o'clock, when a very heavy squall indeed came down on us, we close-reefed the try- sail and staysail, lowered the foresail altogether, half-horsed the staysail, and hove the vessel to. As things did not mend after the squall, I left her hove-to all the night, during which a succession of the fiercest squalls have come down upon us. Bad as this breeze is, however, it is nothing like so bad as that one which we had on the coast of Syria in November, for in this present instance there is always some interval between the squalls, whereas in the November breeze all the squalls seemed to be lashed together. I reckon too that, so far, the force of the wind has not gone, in the worst squalls, beyond ten of the Beaufort notation, or what is called a whole gale, while on the coast of Syria, I should say it outpassed eleven, or a " Storm," and approached twelve, or a Hurricane. This breeze, however, is quite bad enough for me, and has kept me worrying about all night. The vessel is behaving very well, and, in spite of the heavy sea, we have not taken a drop of water on deck beyond mere spray. She is, in fa(5l, a remark- ably dry boat, which is a great comfort. During the night, in the intervals of going on deck and trying to discover signs of a break in the weather, I have been amusing myself drawing diagrams of the Cyclone and following its course. It is really a very pretty specimen of its kind, and very completely marked, so that one would like to get it well into one's head for guidance on future occasions. I expedl our excellent friends of the Phaeton will be able to give us some interesting informa- 2i6 The Log of the 'Nereid. 1 tion about it too, for they were to leave Alexandria for Crete on Tuesday, and must have encountered this same Cyclone. This morning at nine things looked a trifle more moderate, so we let draw the staysail and filled on her. The wind, how- ever, is veering from N.W. to VV.N.W. , and we are making no better than a W.S.W. course, and not doing much at that, for the sea is now very heavy, and we still have occasional fierce squalls swooping down upon us and blowing for a time as though the whole air were solid. Friday, 8th March. Lat. 33 57' 21" N., Long. 19 58' o" E. We got further driven off our course in the night to S.W. by W., and are getting jammed down again over towards the coast of Africa. The gale continued much the same, and we had, indeed, at one o'clock this morning, a fiercer squall than any previously encountered, and another, nearly as bad, at day- break this morning. But the weather to-day is distinctly finer, and I reckon that we are getting now to the outer edge of the Cyclone, and that, during the three days we have been in it, we have sailed nearly half round it, leaving its centre on our port hand, but going not far from it. I am now trying to get back to the northward, and, the wind being W.N.W., am standing N. on the port tack, close-hauled under small canvas, having merely added the outer jib to my fighting trim. Saturday, qth March. Lat. 34 41' i" N., Long. 19 n' 45" E. We have now shaken off the Cyclone and the wind has gone into the S.W., while the barometer has risen well and is as high as 30.24. W T e have therefore once more set our main- sail and are gilling along from four to seven knots, looking up well again for our port. But we are already ten days out and still A Cyclone. 217 a long way off. It is depressing, and Weenie is the only person on board who remains completely lively. She shouts and rampages about all day, nor does the worst weather seem to have the slightest effect upon her. Sunday, loth March. Lat 35 15' 47" N., Long. 17 29' 45" E. A moderate breeze and fine weather have brought us a bit further on our voyage ; but now it looks as if it were going to be too fine, for the barometer is high and rising, this afternoon the wind has fallen light again, and this evening there is a very heavy dew. Monday, nth March. Lat. 35 12' 27" N., Long. i6 Q 53' 45" E. A flat calm all night, without even so much as a swell to let us know that we are at sea, has kept us back, and we have only a miserable twenty-four miles to log for the day's run. Towards noon, however, a little wind sprang up from S.E., which is carrying us along a bit. MALTA, Tuesday, i2th March. All last night and this morning the breeze stood by us, and soon after midday we made Malta through a thick haze. There had been a strong wind up to this time, but now it fell calm in that unaccountable Mediterranean fashion which is so irritating, and left us knocking about and nearly wrenching the top of the mainmast off in the huge rolls as the mainsail banged in thunderous claps down to leeward. We lowered this, however, and set the trysail once more, and by two o'clock a gentle air arose from E.S.E., before which we sailed into Valletta at five this afternoon, and brought up in our old berth in French Creek, not at all sorry to be quiet again after this worrying thirteen days' voyage the same voyage which, when bound the other way, we did in less than six days. 2i8 The Log of the 'Nereid: XXXII. HOMEWARD BOUND. ON BOARD THE Nereid, MALTA, ijth March, 1889. NINE months of stricfl inattention to all business not con- cerning the weightier matters of navigation and seaman- ship, have ended in an accumulation of affairs which require my presence at home ; wherefore I am compelled, to my infinite regret, to hurry back to England, to abandon the ship, and to leave her to come home alone, in charge of First Mate Ned, endowed with my blessing, and with what is now a very handy knack of working out latitude, longitude, azimuths, and navi- gating problems in general. Sorry am I too to leave my Aldeburgh lads, who during these nine months have shown themselves to be thorough seamen and good men, and who have never given me a moment's trouble or worry. When I had them into the main- cabin this morning to bid them good-bye, as well as to give them my parting injunctions, and saw how stout and strong they looked, and how they filled the cabin with their burly frames, I felt proud of them and sorrier still to part from them. The children are in greater horror even than myself of quitting the good ship, and Weenie has just appealed to me in her most winning way, rubbing her golden head up and down my arm, to "let her stay with Bill Knight all by herself" but the hour has struck and we must go. Homeward Bound. 219 ON BOARD THE P. AND O. STEAMER Cartlage, OFF MALTA, ijth March. It was sad enough to pull away from the good ship not indeed for the last time, for I trust we shall before long resume our life on board, but for what seems a long time and Weenie howled bitterly in the stern-sheets, sang out her good-byes between her tears, and then refused altogether to be comforted. We are now however all installed on board this huge 5000 ton steamer, on our way home in the teeth of a strong N.W. wind, and at this moment are passing close to the ill-fated Sultan, whose upper works show out of the water, with her masts and rigging all standing, and little to mark, except to a seaman's eye, that she is not afloat. It is not easy to feel quite safe in a steamboat with other people in command, after having been accustomed so long to the security of a good sailing vessel, and one's own navigation ; but, of course, one must occasionally run risks. The unaccus- tomed motion of the steamer too the throb of the screw, the quaking of the cabin floors, which seem to rise up at one in cadence, the absence in the vessel of all " give " either to wind or waves, and the peculiar sensation of being driven through the sea instead of riding over it all combine to make one feel most uncomfortable and most inclined to be very ill indeed. But we shall soon get used to it, no doubt. GIBRALTAR, Thursday, 2ist March. We had quite a gale of wind yesterday, blowing dead ahead, and, as the vessel was driven through it, she pitched a good deal, long as she is, and was washed fore and aft with showers 220 The Log of the 'Nereid.' of spray, besides which she took one little lollop of green sea over her bows. But here we are at Gibraltar in four days from Malta, which, I am bound to say, is less than I could have done it in. PLYMOUTH, Monday, 2$th March. When I awoke this morning and went on deck to find the vessel lying inside Plymouth Breakwater, a grey sky overhead, a fine, wholesome fog lying over all the land, and a sharpened westerly wind blowing, my heart leapt within me for delight. This is the kind of weather that makes men and women and horses worth something, and it is delicious to be in it once again, and out of those monotonous blue skies and bright suns that are the ruin of all who live under them. I never can understand those who refuse to see how completely the excellence of our English climate is proved by what it produces. This fine, hardy, unmatched breed of men, these beautiful women with their unapproached complexions, these horses, oxen, sheep, trees, fruits, and vegetables (the only vegetables that have any taste in them), and butter, are all the product of climate ; and yet those who possess them still go about saying that the climate that produces them is bad ! They don't deserve to live in it. LONDON, Tuesday, 2.6th March. ' I declare that I have had nothing to eat for the last eight months, and that only now have I begun again to have any- thing. My first British mutton chop was so delicious that I could have fallen down and said prayers to it ; and as for butter I could bathe in it. These southern countries in which we have been wandering have no butter at all, and we have conse- quently had none for all these months, except the stuff we could carry in tins. There is no place like England, no climate like the English climate, and nothing to eat outside the British Islands. No Homeward Bound. 221 wonder then that people are so thankful to get back here. As for me, I am so delighted to be home again that I could hug the railway porters. As my winter's cruise is now practically over, I proceed to redeem the promise I made at starting, to set down the expense of the cruise, which will, I think, be found to bear out my opinion that there is no method of living, in equal comfort and with corresponding luxuries and necessaries, which is not at least equal in cost to living on board ship. I know of a certainty that I could not have lived as well anywhere in a house, for the same expenditure, and it is to be remembered that we have not only lived but have also travelled, for the sums here set down, over several thousand of miles, and seen some of the most interesting and famous places on the earth. We were eighteen souls all told on board the vessel, whereof four were small children, two represented a governess and a nurse, and the remaining twelve (in which I include myself) were the crew. Of these latter twelve however, three were " idlers " that is to say, they worked mainly below and kept no watches ; but they, like the rest, were all sailor-men for I would not have any other kind of man on board a ship of mine and, when occasion required, were turned up with the other hands to make or shorten sail upon emergencies. I have said that I count myself as one of the crew ; and this is, of course, to be remembered in considering the expenditure ; for, had I had an ordinary yachting " captain," that expendi- ture would have been considerably higher in the item of wages. Now, I bought the ship on the 28th June, 1888, and from that date to the 24th July, 1888, when we all joined her, she was undergoing the process of " fitting out." Starting, there- fore, as we did, on the 24th July, and leaving the ship on the 1 7th March following, we were living on board altogether for 222 The Log of the l Nereid.' only a few days short of eight months. During that period the following was the expenditure : Wages of crew, 24th July, 1888, to 23rd s. d. March, 1889 469 n 7 Ship's charges (as pilotage, towage, and port charges) 29 7 o Ship's gear (such as new rope, blocks, canvas, &c., and repairs) 199 n i Provisions for cabin 187 2 i Total current expenditure during eight months 885 n 9 But to this must be added : Cost of fitting out the vessel (including the wages of crew for four weeks, new gear, paint, and shipwright's charges) 258 n 3 Depreciation in the value of the vessel during eight months, say (liberally) ... 300 o o ^1,444 3 o I should add, first, that there is still on board the vessel a considerable store of provisions, such as groceries, candles, oil, tinned provisions, biscuits, and so forth, to the value, I should say roughly, of ^"40, which, strictly speaking, should be deducted from the expenditure. I should also add, in case the absence of any item of charge for insurance should be noticed, that I am not in the habit of insuring my vessel when I go for a cruise. My reasons for this are, first, that the rates charged by insurers on yachts are ridiculously high. They may not however be unreasonable, lor I am only too well aware that, being handled and cared for as they are, yachts are particularly liable to accident, and that they therefore have a bad name among the insurers. But there are yachts and yachts, and skippers and skippers. I myself am not a little pleased to say that, during the whole of these eight months, during a cruise extending from Southampton Homeward Bound. 223 across the Bay of Biscay, right up the Mediterranean, in and out of many of the ports of that sea, and on the dangerous coasts of Syria and of Egypt, I have not broken an egg or carried away a ropeyarn barring only that jibboom which I snapped off in the breeze off Joppa, and which I replaced on the spot for two-and-thirty shillings. That two-and-thirty shillings is the whole extent of the damages I have sustained in the cruise the rest has been mere fair ordinary wear and tear. But insurers will not, or at any rate they do not, distinguish between one yacht or another, or one skipper and another. Had I therefore insured my vessel, say, for ^"2000, I found that I should have had to pay something like i per cent, per month premium. This would have cost me 160 for the eight months, a charge which I considered exorbitant, and would therefore not entertain a course in which my experience has borne me out, since I should have paid that 160 absolutely for nothing. Moreover, I do not see the use of insuring when I am on board with my family. For if the vessel, under these circum- stances, were lost with all hands, the 2000 would be of no use to any of us. If, on the other hand, the vessel were lost and we were saved, I should be so glad to have escaped with our lives, that I should not**care about the ^"2000. And if (as happened) the vessel was neither lost nor damaged, I do not see the advantage of paying to an insurer 160 which I would rather spend on grog and carpets. Were the insurance rate one-fourth of that proposed to me, the case would be different ; but so long as it remains what it is, so long shall I leave the insurers to insure the ill-found, ill-cared- for, ill-commanded yachts, and be content to have mine well- found, well-cared-for, well-commanded (i.e., by myself), and uninsured. I only make this explanation because many yachtsmen have insurance on the brain, and take more care of their premiums 224 The Log of the 'Nereid.' than they do of their gear. I always say give me a bad ship and a good crew ; to which I now add; give me a good ship, well-found and well-manned, and never mind insurance. Thus, then, as will be seen, I myself, my four children, the governess, and the nurse, have lived with every comfort, travelled with every luxury attainable out of England, and been treated everywhere with the greatest attention and con- sideration, for an expenditure rather under than over ^"1444 for eight months, which is at the rate of iSo per month. I do not believe that an existence in any way corresponding with ours for comfort and amenities could anywhere be organised ashore at that rate. It may be worth while to mention, for the purpose of com- parison, that our voyaye home from Malta in the P. and O. steamer cost ^"54 and lasted under eight days, which is at the rate of 216 a month, although there was here one child less, Quartermaster George having been left behind in Egypt to join another party. Had he been with us, the cost would have been 61 ios., or at the rate of ^"246 per month, which may there- fore be taken as the fair cost of a month's living and travelling on a good line of passenger steamers, as compared with 180 on board one's own yacht. Home Waters. 225 XXXIII. HOME WATERS. ON BOARD THE Nereid. COWES, 8th June, 1889. THE ship, which was so signally fortunate when we were aboard, seems to have had ill-luck ever since we left her, and to have got out of her troubles only with considerable difficulty and damage. While still in London, I received the following letter from First Mate Ned : " GOLETTA, TUNIS, Saturday, March 30^, 1889. " We left Malta at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, igth of March. " All went well till Sunday night, 24th March, when about " sixty miles S.W. of Sardinia came on a gale from North. " We hove to on starboard tack under main-trysail and reefed " staysail. Gale continued to increase. " At 3 p.m. on Monday, 25th March, reefed main-trysail " and close-reefed staysail. Violent gale from N.N.W. with '* heavy sea. " Tuesday, 26th March. Gale increased. At 6 a.m. shipped " heavy sea on starboard side, shifted ballast and smashed gig, " and carried away bulwark on port side. At 8 a.m. weather " moderated a little, and wind veered to N.W. Wore ship, " heading N.N.E. on port tack. At 8.30 a.m. set reefed fore- " trysail to see if she would tend the sea better. At 4 p.m. " hauled down fore-trysail. Blowing a hurricane. Very heavy " sea. At 8 p.m. carried jibboom away. Weather moderating " a little. Set fore-trysail. " Wednesday, 27th March. Gale increasing again. " Double-reefed main-trysail. An awful sea. At 8 a.m. " shipped a heavy sea, smashing dinghy and main companion. " Put small bags of oil over bows to prevent sea from breaking " so much. Blowing heavy. " At 10 a.m. unbent boom foresail, and with three reefs in " it we made a sea anchor and put it over. With that and the ' sea anchor she lay better, till at 7 p.m. our warps broke, and 226 The Log of the 'Nereid: 41 we lost everything attached. Still blowing furious. Lay to " under double-reefed main-trysail, reefed fore-trysail, and " storm jib. " Thursday, 28th March. Still blowing a gale. Resolved " to run for Tunis. So at 7 a.m. hard up ard ran under reefed " trysail and small squaresail. Got observation at noon. " Altered course to S.S.W. for Bona. Made Galita Island at " 3 p.m., bearing S. Gale increasing. Could not fetch Bona, " so kept her away for Tunis. Blowing a gale from W.N.W., " with squalls of rain. Made Cani Rock Light at 10.30 p.m., " bearing S. by E. Wind veered to N.E., and fell light. " Friday, 29th March. At 3.30 a.m. made Cape Carthage " Light, bearing S.S.W. Hauled up for it. Anchored off " Goletta at 10.30 a.m. Blowing strong from N.W., squally. " Our tanks are damaged through shifting ballast ; but, " thank God, we had our breakers all full, and nobody is hurt. "I never remember being in such a gale before. The sea " was awful, breaking heavy in all directions. I think we must " have been in the centre of a complete hurricane. We never " made any water, only what ran out of the tanks. I shall " proceed to Bona as soon as possible and get damage repaired, " and proceed on. In the heaviest weather we was in Lat. " about 38 N., Long. 7 30' E." It is easy enough to be wise after the event ; but, though Ned, I am sure, handled the vessel well, there are two or three things in respect of which, had I been there, I think I should have acted differently. I certainly should not have done the oil-trick, nor do I think I should have tried the sea-anchor and sacrificed my foresail over it. Then, when the gale came on on the 24th March from N., I bearing in mind the theory of storms should have been inclined to heave to, not on the star- board tack, as Ned did, but on the port tack, to begin with, so as to try to keep on the left side of the storm's track, and thus to hold on to the side of a fair wind for my course to the west- ward. Finally, when, on the 28th March, the damage done and the risk of running short of water made it necessary to bear up for a port, I should have resolved to run, not for Tunis, but for Bona ; and I think that if, instead of running to the S.E. from seven in the morning till noon, and then altering course to Home Waters. 227 S.S.W., the latter course had been steered from the first, the vessel would certainly have fetched into Bona, when she would have been 160 miles further to windward, as much further on her journey westward, and able to repair damages, instead of getting driven down into the bight of the Gulf of Tunis, as she was, and then, after being jammed up there, losing time for thirteen days, having to go to Bona after all. But it was a question of judgment, and possibly if I had been actually on board, I might have done otherwise than I imagine yet I think not. When the vessel, after being beaten back under Cape Carthage three times, finally got out on the loth April, she still encountered strong westerly winds, had to bear up again for Bizerta Roads to ride out a gale, and only reached Bona on the 1 6th April. Here she repaired damages, and left on the 25th April. But again she was driven back by these never- ending westerly winds, and it was not till the 28th April that she at last got clear away. Contrary winds still accompanied her till her arrival, without further mishap, at Gibraltar on the 1 2th May, to find there vessels sixty days out from Crete, and nigh upon a hundred sail waiting, wind-bound under the Rock, for a chance to get through the Straits. Here she got a new jibboom, and on the i8th May started again, the crew glad enough to be out of the Mediterranean, which has had, I suppose, during this winter, as long a continuance of bad weather and westerly winds as ever was known there. Without a foresail, with her bottom covered with weed and barnacles, and with allowances to be made as well for navigation as for her half crippled condition, she could not be expected to make a fast passage home. She made the English land, however, in fifteen days, at daybreak on the 2nd June, and the following day arrived at Cowes. We are now all aboard again, and glad enough to be able to breathe air once more after our course of London smoke. A 228 The Log of the 'Nereid.' good scrub and a partial refit are necessary after the cruise, and the work is now proceeding. COWES, 2 ^th August, 1889. Emperors, Princes, Highnesses, Viceroys, and Ambassadors have been lately assembled here in such imposing array to review the British Fleet, and have spoken in public so appre- ciatively thereof, that it is only charitable to believe that some of them have been honest enough in private to point out what they know to be the facl that all these splendid ironclads, with their unmatched speed, heavy guns, and admirable crews, are of no more use or consequence than so many men in armour. If, indeed, England should ever so far recover her senses as to shake her ships and sailors loose from the Declara- tion of Paris ; if ever she resumes her right to capture enemies' goods under whatever flag they may be found, even though it be a neutral flag ; if ever she thus again resumes the power to paralyse her enemies' trade, then indeed her Fleet will be useful ; then there will again be, as now there cannot be, some- thing to fight over at sea, and some use for fighting ships ; and then again the mastery of the seas will be found to mean the control of the land. Till then it is only pitiful to see these noble vessels multiplied and added to under conditions which must prevent them from counting for anything in war. But all those who call themselves statesmen are too busy in squabbling over the personal interests of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Glad- stone, and of the commercial concerns called Parties, to care for these things. # # # # * # * As for me, being fortunately an unregarded person, I sailed away, betook myself to the quiet little French port of St. Malo, and lay there under the walls of that little thirteenth century town till the masquerading was over. Then we ran across to the English coast again, and have since been hanging about these parts till now, when the time Home Waters. 229 is at hand for our seafaring to come to a close. It is always sad to leave a ship for a house, but it is particularly sad to quit this good ship which has so long been our home, and to exchange for shore-going servants of the lacquey flavour these excellent Aldeburgh sailor-men who have been our companions. We have had our little differences; yet they have been but little and few, so little that I think we shall all be glad to meet again. Weenie, indeed, is as loth as she was at Malta to part with the sailors who have so petted and spoiled her. She is at this moment especially anxious to go " home to Aldeburgh " with Bill Knight, and has explained to me that I can come too if I like, but that, anyhow, she wants to go with him. Weenie has developed amazingly in the course of this cruise. She has ceased to be a baby, and has become, as she explains, a " little girl." She is indeed one-third older than when we started ; for then she was barely three, and now she is over four. She has acquired resources of language of a surprising extent ; she has such an eye for a ship that she can pick out the " Nertid " from a hundred other vessels ; she has, within the last two months, taught herself her letters in spite of us all ; she has successfully insisted on " going overboard to " swim " (with a line fast to her) ; she has solemnly announced her opinion that George is the " idiotest " and Geoffrey the " foolest " boy that ever was. Sweet Weenie ! She is still the delight and the tyrant of the ship ; more original, more caressing, more exacting, more irresistible than ever ; yet quite a different Weenie from that with which we started. Nevertheless, in one thing she is the same, and it is with the same pleasure that I still see her come to me, and look up to me out of her limpid blue eyes, feel her rub her face against mine, and smooth me down with her soft little dimpled hands, and hear her once more say " My Papa. " When are we going to sea ? 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