HAD] ANO 



tese whom I had taken on at Bizerta 

 on the recommendation that he 

 knew Arabic and had been a fireman 

 on board an English steamer. He 

 only joined me just as I was starting 

 on the march with my two ponies. 

 I presently found that his Arabic 

 was merely the Maltese dialect of it, 

 and his English was limited entirely 

 to such words as he had been accus- 

 tomed to hear in his capacity as 

 stoker ; he had a very fairly com- 

 plete vocabulary of oaths, and a few 

 such phrases as " Stoke up," " Bank 

 the fires," " Go ahead," " Stop her," 

 and so on. It is true he had one 

 extraneous English sentence, "She 

 walks in the street," but this he used 

 more as a form of salutation than 

 anything else. 



168 



