Part 11 (1/2)
There is nothing for it but to go to the driver's help, so I leave you to rea.s.sure the ladies and get up to my waist almost at once as we pull the horse's head above water, while the sand slips away beneath our feet. The poor beast, after desperate kickings, gets on to his legs again, but no effort of ours can move the carriage, which seems to be sinking deeper and deeper. With the struggles of the horses the harness has all come to bits again, and the poor, mild, dismayed creatures turn round, quite free from their trappings, and look at the vehicle as much as to say, ”What a shabby trick you have served us!”
The driver brings the horses alongside, and the bundle of scented wrappings, which is the more important lady, is lifted on the back of one. The man himself gets up behind her to hold her on, and when she feels his wet embrace she raises a perfect storm of shrieks as if she were being carried away by a robber. He takes not the slightest notice, but solemnly sets his horse's head to the sh.o.r.e, and they splash away.
By yourself you have managed to land on to the back of the next horse, and before you have time to turn round or do anything to help with the other lady, the horse kicks up its heels, sending you shooting on to its neck, and whinnying wildly scrambles off after its comrade. The Turkish lady's companion makes no fuss at all about coming with me. She slips on to the remaining horse as if she were used to riding all her life, and, sitting astride like a man, holds him in until I mount behind. It is lucky indeed this animal has no spirit left, or she and I would have been stranded!
At this rate we shall soon reach Haifa.
When we do get there what a chattering and what excitement!
Unfortunately, as we can't speak the native tongue, we miss most of it, but the excited gestures and loud voices show that we are heroes indeed.
Next morning I find myself none the worse for my wetting, and before we leave we have the satisfaction of seeing all the bundles and packages belonging to the ladies safely recovered. But we gather that the waggonette remains immovable. We can see it, far off, partly surrounded by the swirling water like a little black island. The united strength of a dozen men and six horses have been unable to pull it on to firm ground. There it will stay till it rots, in the midst of the stranded s.h.i.+ps, and the little soft-footed shadowy jackals will dance around it and tell one another strange tales of that wonderful night when the air was shaken by piercing screams, and strange heavy animals galloped across the sands, making them shake and quiver, and yet, after it all, there was nothing left for them to eat!
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE s.h.i.+PS SEEM TO BE GLIDING ALONG THE TOP OF A SANDBANK.]
CHAPTER XIII
THE GATEWAY OF THE EAST
The anchor is up and we are in a stately s.h.i.+p moving on slowly into the Suez Ca.n.a.l. When we arrived at Port Said--how many weeks ago was it? It seems to me like a year--we were on the _Orontes_, of the Orient Line, and we steamed into the harbour past a long breakwater like a thin arm; standing upon it is a statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who made the Suez Ca.n.a.l. That meant nothing to you then, for the ca.n.a.l was merely a name and not of any special interest, but now that we are actually pa.s.sing into it it is different.
Just here, you remember, we are at the place where three continents meet, Europe being represented by the Mediterranean Sea. The other two, Asia and Africa, are joined by a strip of land called the Isthmus of Suez, about a hundred miles across. For ages men had it in their minds to cut through this strip so that their s.h.i.+ps could sail straight from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea on the other side of the Isthmus.
But it wasn't quite so easy to do as it sounds, for the land was mostly desert sand, and if you have ever tried to dig out a trench on the seash.o.r.e and then let water into it, you will know very well what happens. The sides slip down, and in a few minutes your trench is level up to the top and is a trench no more!
The ancient Egyptians frequently marched across the Isthmus with their armies and advanced into Palestine and made war on the wild tribes there. They built also a strong wall across the Isthmus to prevent the inhabitants of Palestine from retaliating, just as the Romans built a wall across Northumbria to hold back the Picts and Scots.
It was not until comparatively recent days, that is to say, in the time of your grandfather, that the attempt to cut a ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus was successful, and the man who did it was Ferdinand de Lesseps, whose statue stands on the breakwater. He was a Frenchman, but he wished to get other nations to help in the great work, as France could not raise all the money alone; unfortunately Great Britain would have nothing to do with the idea, though luckily afterwards, when the ca.n.a.l had been built, the Government managed to buy a large number of the shares in it from the Egyptian Government. It took ten years to make the ca.n.a.l, but it was done at last after the expenditure of quant.i.ties of money and the loss of many lives, and even up to the opening day there were many who scoffed and said it could never be made useful; yet now that bronze statue stands solemnly watching, day by day, the great s.h.i.+ps of many nations crawling slowly into the narrow opening at the northern end.
Not only had the ca.n.a.l to be made but it has to be kept in working order, for the sand silts back into the channel, and so numbers of dredgers are constantly at work sc.r.a.ping out the bottom so as to keep it deep enough for s.h.i.+ps of large size.
At first the depth of the main channel was twenty-six feet, but now it has been deepened to twenty-nine feet; but even that seems less than we should expect.
At one time the storms of January and February used to drive quant.i.ties of sand from the Mediterranean into the mouth of the ca.n.a.l, and even now, though the breakwater has been lengthened to prevent it, there is always difficulty. Steamers are only allowed to go through slowly, otherwise the suction or pull of the water they disturb would tear down the banks and soon make the ca.n.a.l useless. You have no idea what a wave a big s.h.i.+p can raise in going through that narrow trough; even at a moderate pace it would be sufficient to tear another s.h.i.+p from her moorings by the bank, and then there might be a collision and disastrous results. s.h.i.+ps have to pay a heavy toll for the privilege of using the short cut, but the toll is needed to meet the working expenses and to pay the interest on the money spent in the construction.
The s.h.i.+p we are in is considerably larger than the _Orontes_; she is the _Medina_, belonging to the P. & O. Company, and was chosen to take the King and Queen to India in 1911. She is not very cheerful looking outside, being painted buff, with black funnels, but she is a comfortable boat, and we are lucky in having a large cabin on the upper deck, so that we can have our port-hole open whatever the weather may be.
The sun is setting in a flame of salmon and scarlet as we pa.s.s the ca.n.a.l offices and turn into the narrow channel. There are sidings dug out about every five or six miles, for as only one big s.h.i.+p can go through at a time, if she meets another, one of them must stop and tie up. There are telegraph stations at every siding, and every s.h.i.+p entering the ca.n.a.l is controlled all the way by an elaborate system of signals which tells the pilot exactly what he is to do, whether he must ”shunt into a siding,” to use railway language, or if he may go right ahead.
Directly we are in the ca.n.a.l we see over the banks on both sides; on the west is a wide sheet of water lit up to smoky-red by the reflection of the sinking sun. Flocks of storks and pelicans and other birds cover it at certain times of the year to fish in the shallow salt waters, for this is a salt lake, a sort of overflow from the sea. One day it will be drained and then crops can grow upon it. The ca.n.a.l is cut through it and hemmed in by an embankment; farther on it runs through the desert and then goes through another lake. For the greater part of the way a railway line runs beside it, pa.s.sing through Ismailia, the junction for Cairo, and going on to Suez, and from some parts of this line you can see a strange spectacle, for, as no water is visible, the s.h.i.+ps appear to be gliding along the top of a sandbank; there is apparently just a huge modern steamer lost among the sandhills and making the best of her way back to the sea!
The pilot who is on board now takes us to Ismailia, half-way down, and then another replaces him as far as Suez, where the ca.n.a.l ends. Every s.h.i.+p over one hundred tons is compelled to carry a pilot, who is responsible for her while she is in the difficult channel. And, indeed, a pilot is necessary, for the ca.n.a.l is not by any means a straight, deep trench; there are curves where it is a delicate job to manoeuvre a s.h.i.+p of any length, and in places in the deeper lakes the course is only marked by buoys. It needs a man who spends his whole time at the work and gives all his attention to it. The danger at the curves is lest the propeller at the stern should come in contact with the banks, so the s.h.i.+p has to be manoeuvred most slowly and carefully round them. Only at one place in the whole length of the ca.n.a.l was no digging out necessary. This is in the great Bitter Lake, where for eight miles the water is deep enough for the s.h.i.+ps to pa.s.s safely.
There is not much to see at first; the banks are lined by scrubby bushes, and on them, in a sandy open patch, we see a man falling and bowing at his evening devotions; a few camels pa.s.s along the raised bank, looking like gigantic spiders against the illuminated sky, and there comes faintly to us the distant bark of a jackal.
When we come on deck again after dinner we find the air quite mild; we are only going at the rate of six miles an hour, which is the speed-limit.
Somewhere across the desert where we are pa.s.sing to-night have pa.s.sed also the feet of many mighty ones of history. Abraham crossed it with Sarah, his beautiful wife, Joseph was carried down a captive over the caravan track of that day. Later on his brothers twice journeyed, driven by famine, and lastly came old Jacob also. Many times, as we know, did the armies of the Pharaohs start out in all the panoply of war and return victorious bringing captives in chains. Across the wilderness somewhere Moses led forth the children of Israel, and, most wonderful remembrance of all, Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, brought down to Egypt his wife and her infant son to escape the wrath and jealousy of Herod. Hardly any strip of land we could name has so many a.s.sociations interesting to all the world.
Why do you start and catch hold of my arm to draw my attention? That is only a Lascar, one of the sailors, a picturesque fellow, isn't he?