I» 
LAND & WATER 
August 9, 1917 
which were already in the water, one of them in splinters. 
You might imagine that this was the end of the story. Not 
at all. After stopping the main engines and easing the 
safety \al\es, the engineers, shepherded by Mr. Gowrie, 
trooped up on deck, and slid down into the boats. It may be 
conceded that the Chief had abundant material in this adven- 
ture on which to e.xercise his sardonic humour as they pushed 
off and began rowing for the North .African coast. But it 
never caused him to deviate in the slightest from his con- 
ception of what ought to be done. The enemy, having 
finally managed, after using enough ammunition to demolish 
a large town, to sink the Malvolio, a very ordinary unarmed 
tramp streamer, disappeared on the horizon, for this was before 
he thought of the delightful sport of practising on lifeboats. 
The three boats of the Malvolio, two lifeboats and a cutter, 
put up their sails, and, favoured by fair weather, made the 
desolate coast of Morocco early next morning. Four of the 
crew, including the second officer, had been killed. Several 
were badly hurt and useless in a boat. Both the friendly 
fishermen and the bloodthirsty tribesmen of fiction were 
absent from the picture, and the old man, anxious to got 
himself and the ship's papers back to London as soon as possible, 
decided to make for Europe in the boats. Fortunately for 
them they were no saoner under weigh than a Spanish coasting- 
steamer overhauled them and took them into Almeria, 
an iron-ore port midway between Gibraltar and Cartagena. 
Here, to their intense astonishment and disgust, they were 
" interned until the end of the war." 
Even this is not the end of the story. The first steamer 
that arrived to load iron ore was British. What passed 
between the commander and the bedraggled, unshaven crowd 
from the Malvolio is not known ; but when the British ship, 
loaded to her marks with iron ore, left Almeria, the Malvolio 
crowd were aboard of her, in defiance of ail the printed 
regulations on the back of the ship's articles. 
They landed at Cardiff, and Pa Gowrie, after a hurried visit 
to his startled family at Penarth, where he lives, went on with 
the others to London, where they presented themselves 
before the owners, who, very glad to see them, promised 
them billets as soon as they could get another ship. 
So tliat even this is not the end of the story really, for the 
Corlegiano, a nice new tramp, with a useful twelve-pounder 
gun astern, passed through Port Said the last time I was 
there, and the commodore was chief. 
Beyond Bagdad 
By L. Harrison 
F 
I LEASE arrange to proceed immediately to 
'Samarra . . ." And this order came before 
I had had anything Hke time to assimilate Bagdad. 
— Tlie Staff still cherishes the fond delusion that 
I came out here to interest myself in the little dust-up 
with Abdul. It is as well to allow them to assume the 
purity of my patriotism, and to conceal the fact that an 
mveterate curiosity was the true mainspring. But it is 
rather above the odds to have to tackle another hundred 
miles or more, seeing that I already suffer from acute mental 
and visual dyspepsia. " Please arrange ! " So easy to 
write, in the grateful cool of a spacious office. (We do 
ourselves rather well in Mesopotamia now, some of us.) 
But for file poor beggar who has to tear round in a grilling 
sun, chasing distracted people, all short of transport and 
temper, and all equally engaged in the pleasant task of 
" please arranging," these polite words arc but a prelude to 
perfcrvid profanity. 
. However, fortune sometimes smiles. A timely glimpse 
of a ho.spital ship banking in on the other side of the river ; 
and all things were made easy. The boat was stopping to 
take on ice for the front— yes, this ts still that same starved 
and neglected Mesopotaniian Expeditionary Force — almost 
at my door, mooring to the same dust-stopi that surrounded 
and enclosed me. I could board in the evening, and move 
off the following morning fpr Sindiyah. 
And so past the gardens north of Bagdad, which had 
been my morning walk for a week back, pleasant places with 
mulberries in full fruit, and pink and white oleanders glowing 
out from tlie groves of orange and palm, to Moazzam, a 
moderate sized town four miles away. There was the 
inevitable mosque, with its blue-tiled dome and single 
minaret ; and houses along the river front, fromthc barred 
windows of wluch the ladies of many harems made merry 
remarks to us. We replied, but as neither understood the 
other, no great progress was made. Had we met the same 
ladies in the street, they would have drawn their garments 
ostentatiously 'Over tlieir faces, and filed past us in silence 
with deniure and downcast eyes. 
Opj)osite Moazz"^m, standing some way back from the 
river, is Kaziinam, a great place of pilgrimage, graced as it is 
by one of the four great shrines of Islam. This mosque, with 
Its two central domes, four graceful minarets (all these 
covered with gold-leaf, and gleaming in the sun), and a 
clock tower, IS a most striking sight as one turns a bend of 
the river eight miles below Bagdad. But here, passing 
within a mile of it, the fringe of palms cuts it off from view 
and we catch only aggravating glimpses. 
Another ten miles of gardens, and we break out into the 
open, with irrigated grain fields, and squeaking, groaning 
water-hoists working at full pressure. The n?ore lordly 
tillers of the soil have pumps worked by oil-engines, but 
most people still use the hoist. It is a primitive, but quite 
ingenious affair. Two date-palm trunks are set obliquely 
into the bank so as to project over the water, with cross- 
pieces at the top and at the bank level, upon which 
wooden rollers, like big cotton-reels, revolve. A big leather 
bag, with a spout like a tea-pot's, is lowered into the river by 
two ropes, one attached to the bag itself, and passing over 
■ the upper roller, the other to the end of the spout, and pa.ss- 
ing over the lower roller. The two ropes are fastened to 
the heavy collar of a pony or cow, which runs down an inclined 
plane into a pit, lifting the bag. As the bag is hoisted 
to the top of the gallows, the spout is pulled out over the 
entrance to the water channel, and the contents pour down 
to run out into the fields. Some of the hoists are multiple 
alfairs, with three or four ponies working in a single pit. 
A great deal of the grain, wheat and barley, stands ready 
lor harvesting, a short-strawed crop, but heavy in the ear ; 
and at one point we see the elaborate tents of a Bagdad 
merchant who has come up to contract for standing corn. At 
a later date he will unload on the British Army at a handsome 
profit. No wonder the Bagdadis welcome us with open arms ! 
From Yahudiyah to Kasirin, at both of which points we 
have small posts, there is a ten mile stretch of gardens, and the 
little Gurkha is having the time of his life on milk and eggs, 
dates and oranges, bought, after much enjoyable chaf? and 
chaffering, from Arab women and girls. Shrewd and enter- 
prising are these local producers. They reckon more glibly 
m annas and pice after a few days than I mvself after a full 
year. They pick up the essential Urdu, and the girls go 
round the camps with their copjier vessels balanced upon their 
heads, calling Acchcha Doinih (good milk), Acchcha Dondh 
(good milk), Acchcha Dadin (good curds.) Milk and curds 
the Indian understands, and he spends his money freely. 
We should be free from scurvy this summer. 
We reach the clearing hospital at Sindivah at nightfall 
and hnd old friends, with whom, only a few weeks since, 
we had had some happy partridge shooting away down 
Aziziyeh. Fortune still favours me, for I find that a con- 
voy of motor launches is going on up to Barurah in the 
morning. I get all the gossip. The ration-sheep, a great 
lat-tailed beast the size of a bullock, which is the hospital 
ma,scot. IS. going strong; McGuffin, most intelligent of pi- 
dogs, who has remained behind at Aziziyeh, has grown 
to the size of a Great Dane ; Lot's Wife, who was sitting on 
eggs under the O.C.'s table, has a sturdy family of nine 
clucks, and the cow and calf, which were added to strength 
after being deserted by their frightened Arab owners, were 
all Ilk and acchcha "—a hospital catchword. 
r.'^^^^'^u^'^^'^'^^^^' '" ^^^ morning, I went on by launch. A 
little above Sindiyah the chai-acter of the river changes. 
It IS no longer bounded by two fairly high banks, but has a 
vertical scarp alternately Upon one side or the other, according 
COCCLES 
WIHD- SCREENS 
* WINDOWS 
^^^- ^' 
THE ONUY ^ 
SAFETY CLASS 
