Round the Wonderful World

The moon is covered with clouds to-night, which is a pity, but the brilliant reflectors the ship carries in her bows throw the light well ahead on to both banks.

Hullo! We're coming to something; there is another ship tied up waiting for us to pass. No, it is true I can't make her out, but I can see her searchlights, so I guess she is behind them. Very slowly we crawl on, making hardly a ripple; we are going dead slow now, scarcely moving, in fact. That light from the other ship is blinding; just where it strikes the water there are any number of little fish wriggling and squirming in an ecstasy of painful delight. The water is alive with them, churning and threshing over one another like a pot full of eels. Bright lights attract fish and it is a very old dodge, known all over the world, to hold a flare over the water and then spear or net the fish who are attracted by it. Fish must have something akin to moths in their nature, as many of them simply cannot resist a light.

Now we are alongside; the other ship's light is out of our eyes and our own falls full upon her. What a spectacle! She looks like a phantom ship carrying a cargo of ghosts! She is transformed by our lights into blue fire! Every plank and rope stands out brilliantly in the ghastly light. Her decks are crowded by a mass of turbaned and fez-covered men, mostly in light garments, and they, their faces and their clothing, are all blue-white. They stand silently, packed side by side like sardines; it doesn't look as if they would have room to lie, or even to sit down. As we glide slowly past a strange odour floats over from them enveloping us – an odour made up of spices and camels and tired unwashed humanity; there is a hint of coffee in it and a touch of wood-smoke – it suggests Eastern bazaars and the desert.

Then our light slips off them and we see the ship as she really is under the faintly diffused light of the clouded moon. She is a dirty commonplace hulk, packed with men in soiled clothes, no longer the radiant white ship of our vision.

"Taking pilgrims back from Mecca," says one of the passengers who is leaning over the rail near us smoking. "They pack them like cattle usually. On some of these vessels their fare doesn't include any accommodation or food; they have to bargain with the captain for a bit of deck to lie down on, and the highest bidder secures the best place!"

Mecca, which lies many miles inland from the port of Jiddah, half-way down the Red Sea, is the birthplace of Mohammed, and the sacred city of the Mohammedans; when they kneel at their devotions it is with their faces turned towards Mecca. Those who have managed to pilgrimage there even once in their lives are looked upon as superior beings.

The siding we have just passed is one of the largest in the canal, and three ships can lie up there together if necessary. It is here that the Syrian caravans cross over into Africa.

Next morning we are up on deck in good time, as we want to see all we can of the canal. We are by this time out in the wide water of the Bitter Lake, where we can go at a good speed, then the canal itself begins again and we pass one of the little station-houses where the signalmen live; it looks as if it was built out of a child's bricks, and stands on the arid banks with only a few scanty palms near. It must be a dreary sort of life for ever signalling to ships which are going onward to all countries of the world, while you yourself remain pinned down in the same few square yards of land.

This narrow waterway that passes down between Asia on the one side and Africa on the other is stimulating to the imagination.

We catch a glimpse of Suez afar off and run by a tree-shadowed road that leads to a peninsula, where are the P. & O. offices and a row of houses inhabited by the men whose work in life it is to look after the canal. Notice that buoy on the port side of the ship, it is about as far from the bank as a man could throw a cricket-ball, yet through that strip of water, which marks the deepest channel, every ship has to pass either on entering or leaving the canal. Think of it! Between five thousand and six thousand ships steam through in a year, they are of all sizes, of many nations, carrying many kinds of cargo. There are the mail ships and passenger ships of the European countries, there are pilgrim ships from Russia and Turkey, there are transports carrying our own khaki-clad soldiers; you can always recognise one of these transports, for she is painted white and carries a large white number on a black square at the stem and stern. Then there are merchant ships innumerable; it is true that the heavily laden Australian ships go home round the Cape, as the distance (from Sydney) is much the same, but those stored with teak wood from Burma, with tea, cotton, spices, and silk from China, Ceylon, and India come through here. If a boy were to sit on the verandah of one of those houses and hear the names, destinations, and freight of all the vessels he saw, he could learn the geography and commerce of half the world with hardly an effort!

That range of mountains across there, which look strangely like ruined forts and castles, forms part of the great peninsula of Sinai where the Law was given to Moses, and though it is in Asia it now belongs to Egypt. It looks as if you could hit it with a stone, so wonderfully do distant objects stand out in this clear atmosphere, but it is seven or eight miles away. That dark clump midway between it and the sea marks the place called Moses' Well.

We are in the Gulf of Suez now, and it must have been somewhere about here that the Israelites crossed over with the host of Pharaoh pursuing them.

We are getting up better speed, and it is not long before we have reached the end of the gulf and pass out into the wide waters of the Red Sea.

There were two delusions I cherished for many a year about this sea. I always imagined it a long, narrow strip, like a river, in which you could see from bank to bank as you sailed along; and secondly, I thought there must be some red colouring on the banks or in the water to account for the strange name. As a matter of fact, the sea is over one thousand miles long and varies from twenty to one hundred and eighty miles in breadth. Being on it in a ship is like being out in the open ocean, for one can see no shore. The name "Red" Sea has never been satisfactorily explained, but some people suggest that it may have arisen from the spawn or eggs of fish which float on the surface in quantities at certain times of the year and are of a reddish tinge, others say it is from the coral which grows so well here, and others think it may have something to do with the rocks of red porphyry on the Egyptian side of the Arabian Gulf.

For the first time since we left England we begin now, as we go southward, to feel uncomfortably hot. It was never too hot in Egypt, for there was always a fresh wind. Here at first we have a following wind which makes it seem dead calm; there is a kind of clammy dampness in the air which makes it impossible to do anything requiring energy. The deck games of "bull" and quoits and even cricket, which have been carried on in such a lively way lately, fall off; no one cares to do anything.

Even the children cease from troubling. There are quite a number of them on board, for this is an Australian ship; if she were going to India there would be no small children. Here I counted fifteen at the table downstairs where they have their meals. You, of course, are treated as a grown-up person, and quite right too, as you are on the eve of a public school. I wonder how you will settle down at Harrow next winter after all this change! There is only one other boy of about the same age. I saw you talking to him this morning; what do you make of him?

A "rotter"? Yes, I thought so too. He seems to consider that the greatest fun on board is to rumple up the stewards' hair or to knock off their caps, and as they can't retaliate it is poor sport. He never plays games either, which is odd considering he is an Australian.

Oh, I hoped that child had sunk into a sweet slumber! He is a nuisance; he can't be more than four, but he never seems to rest day or night, and he spends the laziest hour of the afternoon dragging a squeaking cart up and down the wooden deck, to the annoyance of everyone except the fond mother, who encourages it as a sign of genius! Odd one never can travel without at least one child of that sort on board. There's a nice alcove aft behind the smoking-room where we may find refuge.

Yes, I grant the little girls are just as bad as the boys; there is that pert spoilt little miss who rushes after the steward when he carries round the hors d'œuvre before dinner and clamours for them.

"They're not for children," he told her.

"But mother doesn't forbid me to have them," she retorted, standing on one leg with her finger in her mouth.

If she refrained from doing only what her mother did forbid her she would have a fairly easy time I think.

It is too stifling to sleep in the cabin, so we will try the deck to-night. It is rather pleasant stepping out on to the warm dry boards when the lights are out. The awning shuts us in overhead, but at the side we can see the smooth water lying white in the moonlight. Here is our place, with our mattresses laid out neatly side by side and the number of our cabin scrawled in white chalk on the wooden boards beside them. There is a story of a certain ape who got loose on board ship and paid a visit to the deck when all the men were asleep! A funny sight it must have been as he landed on the top of one after the other!

In spite of the calmness of the night it is always more or less noisy on a ship: there is the flap of an awning, the crack of a rope, the creaking of the plates, and the frilling away of the water past the ship's side. I lie awake a long time, turning uneasily and feeling the taste of the salt on my lips. At last, low down between the rails, away on the horizon, I see the well-known constellation, the Southern Cross. You have often heard of it I expect. It is one of the most famous groups of stars in the southern hemisphere and as much beloved by southerners as the Great Bear is by us. As the Great Bear sinks night by night lower in the north so the Southern Cross rises into sight. It is not a very brilliant or even cross, but rather straggly, and the stars are not very large, but it means much – hot skies, blue-black and brilliantly star-spangled, lines of white surf breaking on silvery sand beneath palm trees, fire-flies and scented air – I am growing drowsy at last – sleep is coming… I must show you the cross another night.

Hullo! it's morning! A Lascar is standing by grinning, with a bucket of water and a deck-swab; they want to begin holystoning down the decks. How sleepy I am! And as for you, the night steward, who is still on duty, lifts you in his arms and carries you into your bunk, where you'll find yourself when you do wake. It's only five – time for some more hours yet. Sleeping on deck is rather an overrated amusement I think!

Before getting out of the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean we have to pass through the Straits of Babel-Mandeb, which means the Gate of Affliction or Tears, because of the numerous wrecks there have been here. Then we stop at Aden, where the passengers going on to India change to another P. & O. steamer, the Salsette, which is waiting for them. The Medina goes across to Ceylon and then south to Australia, but the ship following her next week goes straight to India.

It is lucky for Britain that she owns Aden, for it is the doorway at the south end of the Red Sea, as the canal is the doorway at the north end. Of course it is more important to us that the route to the East should be kept clear than it is to any nation, because in case of difficulties in India we should have to send troops there at once. It is more by good luck than good management that just these little corners of the world, that mean so much, should happen to fall into our possession – Gibraltar, for instance, the gateway of the Mediterranean. And though the British Government refused to have any hand in the making of the Suez Canal, yet afterwards, because the Khedive of Egypt was hard up and willing to sell his shares, we bought at a reasonable rate and have much influence in the management of the canal.

Standing beside us, watching the passengers for India climb down the gangway, is a fresh-looking, pink-faced young man of about one-and-twenty. He has a simple look, and you would think he was too young and innocent to go round the world by himself.

"I'm right down glad I'm not going to 'do' India," he remarks. "I'm sick of travelling; I'm just longing to get back."

"To Australia?"

"Yes; I'm a sheep-farmer there. I've worked four years without a break, so I took a holiday in Europe."

Anything less like one's idea of a sheep-farmer it would be hard to find! I always pictured them stern bearded men, with brick-red faces and sinewy limbs. This lad doesn't look as if he had ever been in a strong sun, and his slender loose-jointed legs and arms do not give the impression of an open-air life spent mostly in the saddle.

"You have a sheep-farm? Hard life, isn't it?"

"Best life in the world," he answers with enthusiasm. "Always on horseback, miles of open country, not shut in by beastly houses."

"But there's a lack of water, isn't there?"

"You can always sink a well, that's what they do now. It costs a good deal, but you can get water almost anywhere within reason."

"Are you far out?"

"No, only about three hundred and forty miles from the town where my mother lives. I go down to see her at week-ends; we're lucky in being close to a station, only a fifteen-mile ride."

Three hundred and forty miles! About the distance from London to Berwick! Good place for week-ends, especially with a fifteen-mile ride at one end! I suppose our ideas get small from living in a little country. Pity we can't visit Australia, but we can't manage it this time. That great island-continent and its sister, New Zealand, are well worth seeing. Except for the Canadians there are no people nearer akin to us than the Australasians. The world-famous harbour of Sydney, the great hills clothed in eucalyptus, hiding in their depths vast caverns of stalactites, the wide open ranges stretching for leagues inland, all these things are attractive. In New Zealand, too, we should find tree-ferns of gigantic size, lovely scenery, and spouting geysers; it is an England set in a very different climate from ours! Then we might pass on to those strange South Seas, gemmed by coral islands, and to the latitudes where the mighty albatross swings overhead like an aeroplane, only, unlike an aeroplane, he glides in a never-ending plane without apparent effort or even one flap of his huge twelve-foot wings.

Alas, we can't see everything this trip!

CHAPTER XIV

THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN

Now we are right out in the Indian Ocean, and it is a bright day with a certain freshness in the air, instead of that horrible muggy heat that made us feel so languid when we were in the Red Sea. Look over the ship's side and watch the rainbow in the spray; that is one of the prettiest things to see on board. As the vessel cuts through the water she raises a frill of foam on either side – what the sailors call "a bone in her mouth." The frill, rising to a continuous wave along the side, catches the sunlight and a perpetual rainbow dances in it, changing always but remaining ever. Whew! What a rush! Flying fish. Look at them! These are the first we have seen so near; when they spring out of the water like that and skim along in the air they are not doing it for fun, but to escape a bitter enemy in the water, the bonito, a ferocious large fish who preys upon them; he is their chief foe, but there are many others also. They curve up all together like a glittering bow and slither down again. In dropping back into the sea they make a kind of pattering noise, though, of course, we are too far to hear it, and the fishermen in the small islands near India make use of this in trying to catch the bonito. They go out in boats specially built for the purpose, with a kind of platform overhanging the stern; here they sit and make a splashing with their paddles, at the same time using some little fish, which they catch and breed in tanks, for bait. The noise attracts the large fish, who think there is a shoal of the small fry about, and they jump at the bait and are caught. The catch is often very good, and the boats come back to the huts laden with the ogre fish, destined to be eaten in their turn!

Have you ever thought what it must be like right down there in the deeps below the green water? We can't see because of the light striking the surface, but if we had a water-glass we could. This is a wooden funnel like that made of paper by village shopkeepers to roll up soft sugar in. At the broad end is a piece of strong glass, which is thrust under the water, and by peering through the small end it is possible to make out what is happening below if it is not too deep; anyway, we are too high up out of the water to use one here even if we had it, but in a boat near the coral reefs and islands there are wonderful things to be seen by the help of one of these glasses.

If you dropped a stone overboard here it would sink and sink gradually for about two miles, until it found a resting-place on a slimy bottom of ooze in a strange dark place. You have a pretty good idea of what a mile is from running in the school races; in imagination set it up on end, and add another to it, and then think of that stone sinking that distance into the grey water! Down there it must be quite dark, for the mass of water above cuts off the sunlight like a black curtain. There are many beasts living there, nevertheless; lobsters and other shell-fish as well as fish, and in a great many cases those that have been examined are found to have no eyes; it is probable that they have lost their eyesight in the course of many generations, because it would be no help to them in getting a living in those black depths. The subject is not fully understood yet, because some deep-sea fishes have exceptionally good sight, but these may possibly live higher up in the water, where there is a certain amount of glare, and then their eyes would become sharpened by necessity.

The bed of the ocean is not a level plain; if you could see it emptied of all water, you would discover that the land slopes down, sometimes gradually and sometimes with terrific precipices from the shores, and that at the mouths of great rivers there are great banks of mud brought down by the current and piled up, making a fat living for innumerable sea-creatures. But at the very bottom, in this carpet of slime, there are no weeds, or as we might call them sea-vegetables, for they cannot live altogether without light, so the creatures which have their home in what to us would seem this cheerless, miserable retreat, must live on one another. They are differently built from surface fish, because they have always resting upon them the weight of an enormous pile of water. Picture a pyramid of water two miles high resting on anybody. It would crush him to atoms; but the fish and crustacea down there are used to it, and fitted by nature to support it, and so, if they are brought up to the surface by any means, they burst! In deep-sea trawling it is quite a common occurrence to see fishes literally burst open, with their eyes protruding from the sockets, and this annoys the fishermen, because they are of no use for the market in that condition. It is difficult to imagine creatures unable to live without a great weight resting on them, but as a matter of fact it is the same thing with us in a less degree. There is a column of air some miles high resting on every one of us, and if we could imagine ourselves lifted out of it into space, our heads would throb, and our eyes would burst out, and we should be as helpless as a deep-sea fish brought up to the surface.

As for light, they have strange methods down there in the black depths. A great many of the deep-sea inhabitants carry their own lights, for they are more or less luminous, shining by internal light as glow-worms and fire-flies do. One extraordinary fish has a row of shiny spots stretching from his head to his tail, and when he is swimming about he must look like a liner with a lighted row of ship's ports stretching along his side. Even lobsters and crabs shine luminously, and what use it is to them when they are frequently blind it is hard to conjecture; it must have something to do with catching prey, who are perhaps not blind and may be attracted by the lights. There is at least one fish who hangs out what is like a red lantern, only it is the tip of his fin, and by this means he draws to himself small creatures who swim right into his capacious mouth; thus his dinner comes to him without his having to search for it!

I want to go to the bows, for it never seems to me I am in a ship until I can get to a place where there is nothing to shut one in. These modern liners are horribly shut in, one might as well be in a drawing-room most of the time. Here we are at last, and it is good to draw a deep breath, feeling the huge dome of the sky above and the wide rim of the horizon around with nothing to cut them off. Look down where the ship cleaves the sea with her bows cleanly and beautifully like a living thing. Hullo! there is a dolphin! We are in luck! Can you see him dancing round us and plunging in under water and coming up again, much as a dog does on land when he goes out for a walk with his master? There is another, and another! What they call a shoal. They go fast enough; I expect we are making about fifteen or sixteen knots, or miles, an hour, which is good going, and yet these little chaps swim round and round, cutting across ahead of us, diving under us and coming up again all the time; to them it is mere child's play, and they really are playing; they are full of fun, and there is no earthly reason why they should behave like that except for amusement!

There goes the bugle for lunch.

Seems early, you say? As if we had only just finished breakfast? Yes. Look at your watch. It is hopelessly wrong, of course; so is mine and everyone else's. We are going just about due east now, so we are meeting the sun half-way, so to speak. That is what makes the time different. You know that when the sun is at the highest point overhead at any place then it is midday, and as the earth spins round from west to east a constant succession of places come beneath him in turn, each getting their midday a little later than the one before. In the British Isles there is really very little difference between the hours when the eastern and western coasts meet the sun. Take Yarmouth, say, and Land's End; there is perhaps something like half an hour between them, but as it would be awkward for railway work and business if every place had a little different time, so, for convenience' sake, one "standard" time is adopted in England, Scotland, and now even in some of the nearest continental countries; this is the hour when the sun is highest above Greenwich, where is our greatest observatory. And this is called midday, even though as a matter of fact the real midday at different places may be earlier or later.