74 CHALLENGER 



which have the habit of bursting and casting their contents upon 

 the waters as the sailor, who may have had just one too many, 

 gropes his way from the liberty boat on to the gangway ; and the 

 female orchestras beating out the popular dance tunes of the day 

 which are a feature of naval night life at Gibraltar. Then on to 

 Malta's Grand Harbour where Challenger was dwarfed by the grey 

 giants of the Mediterranean Fleet as she came in to berth below 

 the golden-yellow bastions of Fort St. Angelo ; the steep climb 

 through the narrow, stepped streets which were thronged in those 

 days not only with people but with goats, to Strada Streta where 

 a sailor could lose himself in any one of the hundred bars which 

 existed only for his particular entertainment, the very names in- 

 viting his patronage — the Light Cruisers Bar, the Dreadnought, 

 the Royal Marine. On across the sunlight waters of the Mediter- 

 ranean until the High Light at Port Said was sighted above the 

 low landscape of yellow and white blocks of flats along the sea- 

 front; in past the long breakwater which is yearly being thrust 

 further and further to seaward in an endless struggle to arrest 

 the drift of the sediments carried eastward from the Nile Delta, 

 and which constantly threaten to close the entrance to the Suez 

 Canal; past the fishermen's boats moored to the quayside, their 

 nets hanging to dry on the tall iron railings of the port area 

 whence carries to the passing ship the overwhelming smell of 

 fish. 



After a night at Port Said Challenger moved into the canal with 

 a French pilot on the bridge. All that sunlit day she sailed steadily 

 southward, the pilot yarning with the Captain, giving him the 

 latest news of the canal, the changes in administration, the 

 difficulties of a recent passage with an unwieldy ship, life in Egypt 

 since the 1936 Treaty and above all now, in 1938, the threat of 

 war and its effect upon the vital link of the Suez Canal. Quietly 

 the orders were passed to the helmsman as each change of course 

 carried the ship south past Ismailia, that oasis with the green 

 lawns of the French Club running down to the canal bank like 

 sward beside an English river ; past the neat yellow signal stations 

 surrounded by their green belts of trees, where numbered boards, 

 cones and flags hoisted on the masts gave the pilot news of other 

 shipping moving in the canal; past Deversoir station into the 

 Bitter Lakes, their glassy surfaces stretching away to meet the 



