8 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



and again the monotony of the rolling desert 

 remains unbroken, save for here or there a knot of 

 white-robed Arabs or a distant camel caravan. 



The India dropped anchor at Port Said at five 

 o'clock on the fifth evening from Marseilles. I do 

 not know whether the captain was merely a wag, or 

 whether he had ulterior motives in keeping the pas- 

 sengers on board during the stifling sixteen hours 

 of our stay, but certainly he so frightened the 

 greater number by his assurances of the likelihood 

 of catching cholera ashore, and his graphic descrip- 

 tion of the horrid fumigating process through 

 which they would have to pass before returning to 

 the ship, an ordeal in which each person would 

 be confined separately for ten minutes in a carbolic- 

 acid steam bath, his clothes meanwhile undergoing 

 a different method of disinfection elsewhere, 

 that less than a dozen adventurous spirits took their 

 lives in their hands and went ashore. Was it the 

 prospect of acquiring a permanent and ineradicable 

 perfume of carbolic acid, I wonder, or merely the 

 risk of an untimely death, that most influenced so 

 large a percentage of my fellow passengers? Per- 

 sonally, it occurred to me that, were there any real 

 danger, the captain would have commanded, not 

 advised; and anyway, not even death by cholera 

 could have outweighed the awfulness of the stifling, 



