HOMEWARD 237 



and oceanic areas would seem to suggest that the deep seas have 

 always differed from the land masses even though water may not 

 always have been contained in the former. 



Visits to Colombo, again to the beautiful Seychelles, to Aden 

 and Port Said and Cyprus brought the ship to the Aegean to carry 

 out some weeks' seismic work there. Athens was first visited and 

 then a number of the islands, including Lemnos, Skyros, Volos 

 and the Mount Athos Peninsula. This last was of fascinating at- 

 traction, for spread about the peninsula, in the most precarious 

 sites, sometimes over looo feet up on the sheer cliffs, are 20 

 monasteries. No form of female life is permitted anywhere on 

 the whole of Mount Athos, over 6000 feet high. Challengers 

 visited six of these monasteries, travelling up the steep, dusty 

 mountain tracks on sure-footed male donkeys. On reaching the 

 monastery all was kindness, and after a liqueur, turkish delight 

 or coffee, the tour of the building would begin. In these remote 

 locations beautiful domed chapels, painted with frescoes and hung 

 vv^ith ikons, had been built. In the altar shrine at Vatopede were 

 part of the sash worn by the Virgin Mary, a piece of the True 

 Cross and a finger of John the Baptist ; manuscripts there were 

 too, dating back nearly 2000 years, and examples of the earliest 

 painted works. 



Escaping prisoners had sheltered in some of these monasteries 

 during the War, and a letter of thanks from General Alexander, for 

 kindness shown to these people, was framed at Lavra Monastery. 



These delightful visits over, the parties from the ship would 

 come out into the full glare of the sun and mount their donkeys 

 for the return journey to the ship which they could see anchored 

 far, far below them, a mere white speck on the rumpled blue of 

 the sea. 



The end of the World Voyage was now very near, for there 

 were visits to be paid only to Malta and Gibraltar and then home 

 to Pompey. The ship had travelled 7^,000 miles on this voyage 

 when she passed the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic once 

 again, and headed westward. But the old ship had different ideas, 

 she wanted now to go straight home, with no further delay on 

 oceanographic observations which the insatiable scientists had 

 planned for her on this last leg. It was after she had found and 



