4 ENGLAND TO EAST AFRICA 



and it is agreeable enough, only a week after leaving 

 a cold November fog in London, to lie in a deck- 

 chair and watch the camels shuffling along the 

 grilling banks of the Suez Canal, and the pelicans 

 soaring: hiorh over Lake Timsah. The Red Sea 

 was kinder than it often is, and Aden was reached 

 without any more exciting adventure than the 

 slaughter by a ' sporting ' German of an unfortunate 

 owl that perched one day upon the rigging. The 

 bird fell overboard and was lost, but that did not 

 seem to affect the spirits of the ' sportsman,' who 

 was warmly congratulated by his friends on his 

 good shooting. 



From Aden, where the customary traffic in 

 ostrich feathers and leopards' skins afforded us a 

 few hours' diversion, the voyage down the east 

 coast of Africa was dull in the extreme. Of ships 

 we saw none at all, except the remains of a big 

 French liner that had run ashore a few months 

 previously near Cape Guardafui, and the few 

 glimpses we got of the coast were of a bare and 

 forbidding land. Our rather stiff and brass-bound 

 fellow-passengers, most of them German officers 

 going out to their East African colony, came undone 

 in a quite unexpected way when we crossed the 

 Line. For most of them it was their first voyage, 

 and they submitted, with true discipline, to be ducked 

 and soaped and shaved in quite the old-fashioned 

 manner. It should be mentioned, however, that 

 they washed away the taste of the soap in copious 



