So pass the word around;
Australia wants another batch
Of bushmen to astound
Poor old Kaiser Bill of Germany!"

CHAPTER II
WE SAIL AWAY

"Who's the Jonah?" That was mild.

"Curse our luck!" That was moderate.

But when Trooper Newman said, "To hell with the ship!" most of us felt that he showed a proper appreciation of the position.

For days and days we had ploughed our way across the Indian Ocean, and, as the long leagues in front joined their comrades behind, we felt that we were getting farther and farther from sunny New South Wales. But we were steering straight for Ceylon, and looking forward with keen anticipation to a few days of the picturesque Orient. Some of the impressionable young subalterns were singing "Cingalee, Cingalee, I have lost my heart to a Cingalee." All of us for the last day or two had been taking station on the forecastle-head, shading our eyes and gazing into the misty horizon for the first glimpse of the enchanted isle.

But alas for hopes unfulfilled! Ceylon's spicy breezes, after all, were not to fan our fevered brows, neither were Cingalese to minister to our need with "tea in the morning, tea in the evening, tea in the afternoon." Early in the morning of January 12 we got word that a special squadron of three ships was to be detached from the main fleet, and with Colonel Ryrie in command, steam straight to Aden. So we stood on deck and swore unrestrainedly.

However, there was still corn in Egypt, and we would be the first to get there. Besides, there was quite a chance that there was something doing—a Dervish expedition or an Arab raid might be on, and we would have the laugh at the other chaps if we could have first smack at the unspeakable Turk. So by the time the bugle sounded for the usual inspection, we were all in high good humour again. The three liners swung out from the convoy and, cheering a farewell, were soon steaming westward. One after another the transports dipped down under the horizon, and soon a few grey smudges on the rim of the ocean were all that remained to remind us of the fleet.

We had seen no land since leaving Australia. It seemed such a long time. So when, a couple of days later, somebody shouted "Land-ho," we rushed to the nearest post of advantage. Far away to eastward, like a green pimple on the blue face of the waters, was a tiny little island. In an hour we were abreast of it—Minikoi, surely one of the islands of the blessed; how green it looked after the everlasting blue of the Indian Ocean; from end to end it was covered with cocoa-nut palm. A long line of snow-white surf beat upon the sandy shore. Gleaming in the tropical sun was the lighthouse—a silent sentinel. And in the offing were a score of picturesque canoes, and dhows, with brown hempen sails, managed by gaudily-dressed islanders, who seemed rather annoyed that the transports did not stop and purchase their fruit-offerings.

Passing by the rugged Socotra, we soon sighted the mountainous southern coast of Arabia, and by midday on January 20 we were focussing our binoculars on the picturesque gate of the Indian Ocean, Aden. Curious it is how Britain has secured all the great strategical points of the world—Gibraltar, Suez, Aden, Singapore, Thursday Island, the Cape of Good Hope, and the rest. And one has only to see Aden, with its rocky peaks piercing the skyline, to realize how strong it is, and how futile would be any effort to capture it. For all the defences of Aden seem to be hewn out of solid granite.

No sooner had we got anchored in the harbour than the Suevic was surrounded by swarms of boats, in which were crowded Asiatics of all descriptions yelling like demons in wild anxiety to sell their wares. Then the colliers came alongside and proceeded to coal. Scores of thin, undersized, but wiry Arabs did the work, and as they loaded the bunkers they kept up a perpetual yelling and singing, and the weird cacophony lasted all through the night.

Aden is a curious mixture of the Orient and the Occident. In the streets silent Arabs stalk along with camels, and Europeans buzz around in automobiles. One section of the port belongs to the Asiatics; the other is all Western. Arab dhows float across the harbour and steam tugs scurry hither and yon. One section of the town has thatched roofs; the other is all galvanized iron. And one of the natives sang us "Songs of Araby." They yelled harshly for baksheesh all the while. Clad in their own coloured loin cloths, or in discarded khaki tunics from the Force, they were a motley tatterdemalion crowd. Here East and West met—but did not mingle.

We had had no word of news for weeks. So we eagerly searched for the newspapers, and demanded news of the outer world. The war was still on. The Allies were more than holding their own. Here was news indeed!—news such as The Transport Trumpeter (published aboard the Suevic) had never heard of. Yet we loved that little paper of ours on the transport—"a little thing, but our own." If it lacked news it did not lack reporters whose imagination made up for the deficiency. We were all reporters for The Transport Trumpeter. Even I. And I am wondering to this day about a certain curious coincidence connected with one of my painstaking efforts. I wrote on December 28, 1914, a skit on Lissauer's "Hymn of Hate," and Arthur Adam's reply to it—"My Friend, Remember." A month later I got the Sydney Bulletin, and there I saw almost exactly the same article with the same excerpts from each poem. They were probably written on the same day, a thousand miles or so apart. You who delve into the mysterious, will you explain?

Egypt! What memories! What life here! What a quest we have set out upon! What Alexanders are we!

I feel the blood coursing through my veins as I have never felt it before. I live in the present, but the past stands up before me. Dead kings and emperors pass in endless succession. Libyans and Ethiopians pass by, Assyrians and Macedonians, Babylonians and Persians, Romans, Arabs, Turks and Mamelukes—and French and British. Great names are sprinkled over the pages of Egypt, from Menes, the first king, and Rameses the Second, down to the present day. Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great, Constantine, Saladin and Napoleon, Mohammed Ali and Kitchener have all left their mark on the Nile Delta. What history! and here are we—soldiers of King George V, from Australia—treading this historic ground, making new history. Nebuchadnezzar knew us not. Constantine never dreamed—and they used to dream dreams in those days—that from a land he knew not of would one day come armed men marching on the wonderful city he built.

Nor did I, nor did any of us, know it—well, not yet.

I know what it means to see the blush clouds beating the night shades back in the van of a golden morning, but there is a quality of richness about the sunrises of Egypt that Australia lacks. Egypt has the glint of gold, the cloud ridges of rosy red, the blaze of amethyst and opal. So also has the Australian sky. But Australia has no pyramids. The first beams of the sun in this land tip the cones of the age-old