12 
Land & Water 
May 1 6, 1918 
The Suez Canal: By Miller Dunning 
A Sketch 
WE entered at dusk. The night that 
followed was such as will sometimes 
open to us its arms and reveal the 
wonders and mysteries of its em- 
brace. On this occasion we seemed 
doomed to disappointment. Hope in us had been 
tempted to lift its eyes and peer for what might 
come — but no. 
Our ship moved slowly — verj', very slowly — as 
solid as some portion of the earth that, had been 
thrown high on cither side. Our .searchlight shone 
on the banks and lighted the course far ahead. 
Beside us was a native cutter anchored close 
ashore : then a canoe richng in the wash ; then, 
again, a great ocean-tramp looming alongside like 
some ugh' dream, waiting for us to pass. On 
passing, we find ourselves in the light glaring 
from the eyes of some insatiable eater of mud and 
sand — a dredge. 
And yet nothing speaks to us, neither the dark-' 
ness that lies on the desert beyond the canal, nor 
the shadows that lie about the strange native 
cutter as she looks up with her bare masts and 
bent poles, like some- venomous creature of the 
water. For some disconcerting reason, our fancies 
will not be moved. The things we see give no 
rein to our thoughts, neither mj'stery nor the 
great unfolding roads, to wonder. All the miracu- 
lous penetrations of the mind seem cloyed and 
. inert. Even the sky falls to this sorrowful keep- 
ing. Dame Philistina has won all things to her 
hands, and paints them to her senseless colour 
. . . that frowsy dame who long ago should have 
been consigned to the upper hells of charity, well, 
labelled as a warning to the upholders of her 
kind. 
The very night had become tainted with her 
breath . . . undefined monotonous clouds, thick 
veiling a discontented misshapen moon, pene- 
trating uncertain winds that leak to one's marrow. 
The night was urgent with her presence ; the air 
murky— the night air of Arabia. A bedrizzled 
star shone here and there. A dank and lifeless 
water lay on either side. About us there was not 
even a ghost of the fearful, the frightful, or the 
insane. Only the sightless passionless ill-nature 
of that nocuous dame who persists at times, in 
spite of Egypt and all her Pharoahs, in spite of 
Arabia and all that Arabia has seen and known. 
Wlien she persists so it is better to sleep ; to flee 
into the recumbent realms of slumber, and if noi 
to dream, then to forget — most entirely to forget, 
and in one momentless bound become submerged 
in oblivion. 
But sleep was not to hold us long. The night 
had not gone far when through this woof and weft 
of Sleep's toxic veil there came an overwhelming 
light — all white and infinitely cold. It poured in 
as through a rift in the darkness — all frozen and 
finely cruel. We were as in a world apart , immersed 
in the rays of a perished sun. The night in all 
truth had quickened — yes, and to a ghostly 
semblance. 
Out vessel was motionless. Each sound that 
came grew and arose as out of the depths of 
nothingness. We were moored — and all around 
us vastness — yastness of silence. We looked to 
the high receding banks on either side. We could 
trace the marks of human feet on the sand, and 
just beyond the zone of light we could see a man. 
The wind had tossed the sand from mound to 
mound. Here it was slipping and making easy 
race to the water. Then again there were breaks 
in the higher banks leading out into the desert. 
We could see plainly their uneven form, and 
behind that again the desert covered in the 
mantle of impenetrable light. 
Across the desert the wind blew cold, and hard 
as steel. The great monstrous light about us was 
vanishing. Something immense and dark was 
following behind — some great ocean mammoth, 
gliding silently through the night, making deep 
hidden sounds, scarcely heard, strange, and un- 
couth. We see figures, passing, her inner lights to 
and fro, but no voices, nothing human — only a 
great creature pursuing its own intent, blind and 
senseless, yet feeling its way by some deep mysteri- 
ous intuition. ,It is gone. There is a watch on 
the shores — a light foam passing along the side, 
a stray object floating in the current, and then 
again we are left in the night. 
It is such a night as knows no compassion, it 
is stealthy in its movement. It is as though 
death had come robed in frozen silence to the 
desert, to the realm of fierce heat and sun. She 
has come without warning to deal swiftly and 
without mercy. There are camps pitched on the 
sands and along the shore. Tawny human beings 
will shiver and crouch from this strange thing, 
the cold. Camels are resting at their open stalls. 
They will look up to an implacable sky, uneasy 
and impatient for the passing of a spiteful thing. 
The wind has come across the deserts of Egypt. 
It has unravelled its way through the solitary 
oasis — has penetrated the palace of the native 
prince and the huts of his slaves. The wind 
reaches us, where we are, enters into the nature of 
the night, and we know that it is flying to the 
hard hills of Arabia. There, perhaps, it will die. 
But we, we have been bitten. We would away, 
but cannot. 
We are held in fascination of a strange world 
and its night. Our ship has waited the passing of 
one great mammoth after another, each flooding 
us with its cold steely light, and then entering 
the darkness astern. 
