as we are almost amidship and near the engine, it must have been considerable.
… The Red Sea does not grow in my affections; as we go south there is too much of the sensation of being slowly stewed. At Babel Mandeb I believe the temperature of the sea rises to 100° F.
The islands we pass on the shore to the east, distant about fifteen miles as I write, are interesting enough. I suppose the inhabitants are somewhat irresponsible, and were we to land there in the boats unarmed, might find us full occupation for the rest of our lives as slaves in the interior. There was a ship wrecked on this coast some years ago, and her boat's crew landed, and were either killed or are up country slaving. R. tells me the wife of one of them lives beside his people in Fife, which makes us feel almost in touch with the sandy shore. What an anomaly—a modern steamship packed with western civilisation reeling off twenty knots an hour—past a desert land of lawless nomadic Arab tribes.
As we get south nearer Aden the sand spits tail out south and slope off inland like wide glaciers, through which appear dark coloured rocky islets.
… We had rather bad luck yesterday and to-day; the iron wind catcher put out at our port to make a draught caught a sea, and threw it all over our cabin. G.'s maid had just opened my overland trunk to give the contents an airing, and now my collars are pulp and rose pink from the lining of the collar box, so I must call on the barber who runs a shop on board. We had the carpet taken up and our clothes hung up to dry, but they won't, for the air is so hot and damp—with the least exertion you steam! Imagine the joy of having to dress for dinner in such cramped space and heat—you drop a stud and a year of your life in finding it! I think most people realise that their feelings under these circumstances cannot be exactly described in decorous language, so they set their teeth in grim silence; and after all there is something laughable about all the trouble—we needn't go in for white shirts and black coats and trousers in the tropics unless we like. Everyone feels them horribly uncomfortable and unsuitable, but no one dares to be so utterly radical as come to dinner in anything else. If a flannel shirt and shorts were the fashion, if only for the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, how many valued lives would be prolonged. The penance in India is not so bad; there your Boy hunts your stud whilst you sit and cool.
A number of passengers sleep on deck now; I suppose three and four in a cabin is intolerable. They have their mattresses brought up on deck by their cabin steward, and he chalks their number on the deck at their feet; you can thus sleep in a strong wet draught under the officers' deck. There is a great deal of pleasure in sleeping in the open, but you should have nothing but stars overhead and a shelter to windward, if it is only a swelling in the ground or a sod or two. The ladies have a part of the deck reserved, and the floor of the music room round the well that opens into the dining-saloon below. Their part of the deck is defended at night by a zereba of deck chairs, piled three or four feet high; it suggests privacy!
We had our port open last night again—my fault—and just as G. came to my end of the cabin to tell me the waves were getting near the port, in one came! So we spent the small hot hours rearranging things, shut the port and slept the sleep of the weary, and awakened more dead than alive from too little air and too much water.
Yesterday the ship went on fire. It started on the woodwork of the companion way, where there was a place for stationery; there was a mighty mess of water and smell of smoke and a panel or two burned, and no great damage done, as far as I can hear. I am surprised we don't go on fire every day with so many smokers chucking cigarette ends overboard. The wind-catchers sticking out of the ports of course catch these, and they blow into the berths. Yesterday, however, to prevent this, two or three buckets with sand in them were put down on deck in which cigarette ends are to be buried and pipes knocked out, so there's a chance for us all yet!
This morning I made a water-colour for my engineer friend, as a return for the wine vase he gave me. I thought he'd like a sketch of a Highland burn in spate—thought it would be cooling. How it came about I cannot explain, but I did him a recollection of a burn within five to seven miles, by sea, of his birthplace in Jura! I'd put him down as coming from the Clyde.
The biggest event for me in this day's reckoning was the discovery that the distinguished judge I observed contemplating the blue waves for some minutes, was an artist before he took to Law! You might have knocked me down with a feather—five years in Lauren's studio in Paris, and three pictures on the line the year he was called to the bar and two of them sold! We had a great talk about art and all the rest of it. He and Jacomb Hood and others were fellow students, and he and Jacomb Hood and this writer, and various artists and newspaper men are to meet at his board in Calcutta and have a right good Bohemian evening as in days of yore.
Is it not curiously sanguine this belief, to which I've seen quite old men clinging—that you can repeat a good time. It is possible we will have a good evening, and talk lots of shop, for we all know far more about it now, than we did then; but it was what we did not know, that gave the charm to student days.
We talk art and technique pretty hard, but I can't quite get over the shock—an artist—become a judge—A Quartier Latin Art Student—a Judge of the High Court—with a fixed income, and on his way to Calcutta, perhaps to hang folk!
We had sports to-day and a sing-song in the evening. The sports were very amusing; the bolster fight on a spar doesn't sound interesting, but it was; it got quite exciting towards the end as the wiry cavalry colonel, hero of many a stricken field, knocked out all comers, young or old. Egg and spoon races and threading needles were a little stupid, but what tableaux the groups of fair women made, with the bright dresses and complexions, and the jolly brown young men, all in the soft light that was filtering through the awning and blazing up from under its edge from the sea.
Sunday—at Aden—loafed all morning—vowed I'd not paint—bustle and movement too great—painted hard in afternoon—horribly difficult—too many people—ladies skirt in palette—man's hoof in water tin—chucked it.
Aden, and Fan-sellers
This is verbatim from my log and expresses a very little of one's feelings; everyone is so jolly and polite too, you just have to stop, or go on and show temper. Two or three of the passengers tried to paint effects, each formed a centre of a group of people, who looked over their shoulders, the onlookers one after another remarking with ingratiating smiles, "You don't mind my looking, do you?" Why on earth do people look over the shoulders of persons painting, when they would never dream of looking over the shoulder of any one writing? Notwithstanding the crowd and polite requests to be "allowed to look," and the untenable effort required to give soft answers, I did manage to make a sketch or two at Aden—one of stony hills and government houses in the background, and in the front green water and the vendors of fans and beads, and curious brown, naked, active fellows in sharp stemmed light coloured boats, which they could row! Some of them had turbans, pink or lemon yellow, or white skull caps, and there were also Egyptian officials and soldiers in white uniform and red turbash, in white launches that raced about through the green water, cutting a great dash of white with their bows; there was colour enough, and movement and sun galore.
I suppose these "ragged rocks and flinty spires" are the rocks that inspired the Pipe-Major with the cheery farewell to "The Barren Rocks of Aden"—here they are the rocks you see from Aden—everyone knows the tune.
7th October.—The lady artist and I compared sketches. We both worship Whistler, and various writers we agree about, but I fear we are only in sympathy so far. I gathered from her to-night that I ought to study native character in India, for our countrymen in India had no picturesqueness, no art about them, and to associate with them one had better be at home. I felt saddened and went on deck and saw the people she called "Anglo-Indians" (more than two-thirds Scots, Irish, Cornish, and Welsh, with