II. 



THE FAREWELL. 



WE boarded ship, filled with a great, and 

 what seemed to us, an unappeasable curi- 

 osity as to what we were going to see. It was not 

 a very big ship, in spite of the grandiloquent de- 

 scriptions in the advertisements, or the lithograph 

 wherein she cut grandly and evenly through huge 

 waves to the manifest discomfiture of infinitesimal 

 sailing craft bobbing alongside. She was manned 

 entirely by Germans. The room stewards waited 

 at table, cleaned the public saloons, kept the 

 library, rustled the baggage, and played in the 

 band. That is why we took our music between 

 meals. Our staterooms were very tiny indeed. 

 Each was provided with an electric fan ; a totally 

 inadequate and rather aggravating electric fan 

 once we had entered the Red Sea. Just at this 

 moment we paid it little attention, for we were still 

 in full enjoyment of sunny France, where, in our 



