October 4, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
15 
Port Said and a Tale of the Sea 
By William McFee 
Port Said, July, U)i7. 
OF couise ! Just as my letter to you, complaining by 
tile way of your silence, reached the bottom of the 
letter box in the Custom House Shed, your letter to 
me is delivered ! However, 1 am so glad the mails 
come and go. Erratically, but they come and go. You 
know, of course, that we arc not supposed to take our letters 
ashore ? We are not. 
Going ashore here, by the way, is quite a purgatory. First, 
you must have a boat, and endure the basilisk glare of a 
boatman whose legal fare is fourpence but whose first demand 
is for four shillings. He comes down to si.xpence. by the way. 
You are then assaulted by various licensed brigands called 
guides, who foist themselves upon yoii on the quay and who, 
unless forcibly restrained, will conduct you all over the town 
at a break-neck speed, ordering all manner of (Oriental goods 
which you don't want, and ending up by showing you a license 
from the Egyptian (Government empowering them to charge 
you forty piastres an hour. Having whirled your umbrella 
round and round to rid yourself of these ambulatory pests, 
you arc directed by an incredibly tall ])oliceman in' black 
ijoots, white uniform and scarlet fez, to enter the passport 
office. 
The passport you must have already secured' from the purser 
signed by the commander of your vessel. This is inspected, 
and held to the light and smelt by a gentleman of the country, 
who asks you various questions as to your identity. Finally 
he stamps it and permits you to pass. That is the first stage. 
You emerge into a long yard, with the Customs baggage- 
shed on your left and verandahed offices screened by a superb 
scarlet-flowered mimosa-tree on the right. Anotlier police- 
man bars the way except into the shed where, if you have 
baggage, you must open it and declare all dutiable goods. 
You have only your umbrella and a wrist-bag, so you advance 
to a table at the far end where a British soldier in khaki 
sits. in judgment upon you. You must show your pass again. 
You must give up your letters to be posted. 
You are asked by an Egyptian assistant, if you have any 
weapons or firearms concealed about your person. If you 
reply, as I did once, " Yes. I have a twelve-inch gun in my 
pocket," you will Ix; regarded severely by the soldier, whose 
brain has become nearly unhinged with poring over Arabic 
without a Master in fifteen lessons. However you pass the 
examination with credit and are permitted to emerge from the 
shed into the street. You are free ! You can go wherever 
you please. Alas, after all this fuss, there's nowhere to go ! 
Moreover since it is July, you will find the sun very warm. 
You seek the shady side of Main Street. Here are the stores 
where you can buy, at enormously enhanced prices, anything 
from American tooth-paste and chewing-gum to Japanese 
silks and tea-sets. They are called Oriental stores, but the only 
Oriental thing about them is the salesman's habit of sitting 
at the door-way. But if you do not wisfi to spend money. 
Port Said, as 1 have said beforp. has no use for you. There are 
no sights save the beach. So you wander on, turning a corner 
and threading vour way amongst the tables of the cafes until 
you reach the Eastern Exchange Hotel, popularly known as 
the Eastern, a vast structure of steel. and glass arcading over 
the street. 
The Eastern is the great clearing house of the gossip of East 
and West. Here congregate the merchant ofticcrs from I,ondon 
and the Orient. Here the waiters in white l'2gy])tiaii 
costume with scarlet fez and sash serve drinks to men who have 
come from the ends of the ocean-highways. Here the skipper 
from Singapore meets an old shipmate from New Orleans or 
Buenos Aires and exchanges grievances and home news. 
An interesting place this arcade of the Eastern, with its 
white figures forever gliding to and fro with tray^ of drinks, 
its huge bower of palms and shrubs and creepers in enormous 
tubs, and its plaintive orchestra somewhere lound the corner. 
Most interesting of all I think at night, when all the lights 
of the town are darkened down and one sits as in a dusky 
aisle of some artificial forest and looks out into the imjx'ne- 
trable gloom of the street. Extraordinary how the same groups 
congregate at the little tables night after night, month after 
month. A year and a half ago I can recall the same face>. 
The mortality is not very high among officers at a base. 
It was hen , tbo — and this is what I wanted to tell you — 
that I heard a tale, a badly-told laconic tale of the sea. I 
had met a shipmate, just in from Marseilles, and we sat 
talking for a long time. In fact 1 ought to have been in bed, 
for I was going on watch at two. Suddenly he sucked at his 
cigar and took it from his lips, leaning forward over the 
tabic : 
" Did you hear about the Abracadabra ? •" 
I nodded. " Submarine got between her and the setting 
sun and nearly knocked her to pieces with shell-fire before 
they could make out where the shots were coming from. 
Skipper got the D.S.O." 
He shook his head. " Not that. I mean later." 
1 shook my head in turn. " W hat happened later ? " 
Well, he told me as I said, in an imperfect laconic fashion, 
for he is not an artist in words. One or two phrases he 
struck out, however, which I shall use as occasion ser\'es. I 
like them. You sec, he was there. 
an « 4= * « 
The Abracadabra escaped on that lust occasion with the 
loss of a dozen killed ancl as many wounded. It was a grim 
commentary on that little affair that they used a bucket-full, 
which is two and a half gallons, of friar's balsam, in two 
hours. But they gained on the submarine, and her commander 
received the D.S.O. \\ hile she was refitting my friend joined 
her as Second, and away they went to sea again. Ordinary 
trade to South America, for she was not a transport. Nor did 
the incident come under the head of war-news at all save that 
the ships were without lights. It was winter time, in the 
Atlantic, but not so far from land, and a fine but dark and 
moonless night. Just before daylight the Abracadabra, out- 
ward bound in ballast, was struck' forward of the funnel by 
another vessel, loaded, on another course. Who was to blame, 
or how, I don't pretend to know. The point is that the 
Abracadabra was badly stove in at the bridge and began to 
make water. My friend, who was on watch, was joined by 
the Chief and Thii>il down below. The telegraph, which had 
been whirled to full astern at the moment of impact and back 
to stop, was now pointing irresolutely to Stand By. Good 
enough, as they say in the West country; they were standing- 
And now comes the astounding part of the tale. As my 
friend told me this part of it, the high lights of the arcade 
peering out of th^ir green-painted pcvroleum-tin hoods showed 
me his face drawn into an expression of extraordinary anxiety. 
The waiters were piling chairs and only a few groups remained- 
dotted about the grim corridor. A carriage with one twitikling 
lamp drove softly by, a cigar glowing just behind the driver. 
My friend leaned forward and thrust his harsh Celtic features 
towards mine. His eyes stared. I suppose I stared back at 
him, for what he said made one anxious. Anxious, not about 
oneself, but about one's beliefs, one's tacit acceptances, one's 
faith in the integrity, the ultimate integrity, of humanity. 
For those three men stood by for the better part of an 
hour. The stokehold was empty, the steam was dropping, and 
there was considerable water in the bilges, but they stood by 
watching the si)eaking-tube and the blind white face of the 
telegraph pointing irresolutely to Stand-By. And presently 
the strain ofjwaiting grew oppressive, so that the chief, looking 
up towards the skylight said to my friend, " Mister, go up and 
sec what's doing. It must be daylight now."^' And up he 
went, and came out on deck and found himself face to face 
with a problem of some complexity. For the deck of the ship 
was deserted, and far across the dark sparkle of the sea he saw 
the boats crawling towards a smear of smoke on the sky-line. 
F'or a moment he was so dazed that he stood staring like 
a man half-stunned by a blow on the head. And then a 
species of sickness attacked him, a sickness which in my opinion 
was only partiidly physical, for as he put it, for a minute 
" he had no heart." And mind you, it wasn't danger that made 
him give way for a second to despair. It was something 
Ijehind all that. It was as though a brutal foot had kicked 
'away all the under-pinning- of his faith in man and sent it 
crashing about his ears. It was incredible. Yet the tackle 
swinging idly from the davits, the empty cliocks, the silence, 
were incontrovertible. For a moment, I say, he was as though 
he had been sand-bagged. .'\nd then, with a hoarse impreca- 
tion he flew to the top of the engine-room ladder, where the 
other two, listening apprehensively to certain mysterious 
noises in an otherwise silent ship, saw him waving his arms 
like a madman and crying out in a strained inarticulate 
wail, to come up, to come up quick . . . quick . . . 
never mind anything . ,. . come on. 
Of course they came, four or five steps at a time. They 
found my friend on deck, the palms of his hands and his breast 
pressed against the bulwarks looking at those distant boats as 
though he wanted to remember the picture through all 
eternity. He certainly won't forget it while he is alive. As 
for the others, they were so faint with the revelation that 
they had to sit down and close their eyes. Good God ! You 
know, I gather tjiat for a moment their feeling was this. 
