WRECK OF THE ALMA. 199 



This voyage in a frail open boat was a bold enterprise, 

 but our only hope depended on it. And in reality it 

 succeeded, thanks to a splendid telescope, which I had 

 had made for my journey by Steinheil in Munich. 



For when the English man-of-war, which had left 

 Aden a few days after us to visit the intermediate 

 stations, and take off our engineers, had passed in 

 the early morning the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb , our 

 engineer Dr. Esselbach was standing on deck, searching 

 with my telescope the vast unbroken expanse. He 

 descried a white point, which he took to be the 

 sail of a European boat, as the natives only use 

 brown sails. He called the attention of the ship's 

 officers, and lastly of the captain himself, to it, 

 who with my telescope convinced himself of the 

 correctness of the observation, and at once directed 

 his course to the white point. To the great surprise 

 of everybody this soon developed into the boat of the 

 passenger steamer well known to the seamen, and al- 

 ready in the far distance Mr. Newall was recognised 

 by his striking long white beard. 



Meanwhile the life on the coral rock had rolled 

 on as might have been expected. From 9 o'clock in 

 the morning to 4 o'clock in the afternoon we were 

 obliged to lie quietly under the roofs of our tents, to 

 enable us the better to resist the glare of the sun and 

 not to excite too great a craving for drink. Then 



O O 



the cooking began, and we dined as well as we could, 

 each of us getting on the first days a . small bottle of 

 pale ale, as the water was reserved for the women and 



