22 TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 



It was just the same as any other sea, only nastier and 

 more bumpy. We imagined — Cecily and myself — 

 that the boat would do the trip in about sixteen hours. 

 She floundered during twenty-four, and I spent most 

 of the time on a deck-chair, " the world forgetting." 

 At intervals Somalis would come up from the depths 

 somewhere, cross their hands and pray. I joined 

 them every time in spirit. Cecily told me that the 

 little cabin was too smelly for words, but in an evil 

 minute I consented to be escorted thither for a meal. 



" She's not exactly a Cunarder," sang out the younger 

 officer, my kinsman, from the bottom of the com- 

 panion, "but anyway they've got us something to eat." 



They had. Half-a-dozen different smells pervaded 

 the horrid little cabin, green cabbage in the ascendant. 

 The place was full of our kit, which seemed to have 

 been fired in anyhow from the fo'castle end. With a 

 silly desire to suppress the evidence of my obvious dis- 

 comfort, I attacked an overloaded plate of underdone 

 mutton and cabbage. I tried to keep my eyes off it as 

 far as possible ; sometimes it seemed multiplied by 

 two, but the greasy gravy had a fatal fascination for 

 me, and at last proved my undoing. The elder warrior 

 supplied a so-called comfort, in the shape of a pre- 

 ventative against sea-sickness, concocted, he said, by 

 his mother, which accelerated matters ; and they all 

 kindly dragged me on deck again and left me to my- 

 self in my misery. All through the night I stayed on 

 my seat on deck, not daring to face the cabin and that 

 awful smell, which Cecily told me was bilge water. 

 It was intensely cold, but, fortunately, I had a lot of 



