io SPORT AND TRAVEL 



would have been one degree more insupportable 

 than to stay on deck. So we gathered in a corner 

 where there seemed to be the greatest percentage 

 of air mixed with the least amount of coal-dust, 

 and told stories till dawn. The coolies sang some 

 weird rhythmic chant in time to their pace up and 

 down the gang-planks, never varying the words or 

 the tune, or ceasing for a second throughout the 

 night. What were the words? I knew no Arabic, 

 but indeed they sounded strangely like English: 

 they beat into my brain in persistent dull mono- 

 tony, over and over and over again: ' Tireless 

 Hell, Fireless Hell." Certainly they were appro- 

 priate to such a night. 



But day came at last, and with it the same cheery 

 cloudless sky that smiles on Egypt without a break 

 from April till November. One of the India's four 

 sister ships, the Persia, bound homeward with the 

 eastern mails, had come in during the night, and 

 before breakfast was over, the little Isis, in every 

 respect a perfect counterpart, on a diminutive 

 scale, of her larger sisters, steamed up from Brindisi, 

 and like a colt beside its mother snuggled up along- 

 side us. The English mails do not join the ships at 

 Marseilles ; they wait a day longer and then are hur- 

 ried across Europe on the Brindisi express, whence 

 they are embarked on the little Isis or Osiris and are 



