At short and regular intervals, half-way up the miniature sandhills,
heavy piles or snubbing-posts had been planted. For these we at first
could guess no reason. Soon, however, we had to pass another ship; and
then we saw that one of us must tie up to avoid being drawn irresistibly
by suction into collision with the other. The craft sidled by, separated
by only a few feet, so that we could look across to each other's decks
and exchange greetings. As the day grew this interest grew likewise.
Dredgers in the canal; rusty tramps flying unfamiliar flags of strange
tiny countries; big freighters, often with Greek or Turkish characters
on their sterns; small dirty steamers of suspicious business; passenger
ships like our own, returning from the tropics, with white-clad, languid
figures reclining in canvas chairs; gunboats of this or that nation
bound on mysterious affairs; once a P. & O. converted into a troopship,
from whose every available porthole, hatch, deck, and shroud laughing,
brown, English faces shouted chaff at our German decks--all these
either tied up for us, or were tied up for by us. The only craft that
received no consideration on our part were the various picturesque Arab
dhows, with their single masts and the long yards slanting across them.
Since these were very small, our suction dragged at them cruelly. As a
usual thing four vociferous figures clung desperately to a rope passed
around one of the snubbing-posts ashore, while an old man shrieked
syllables at them from the dhow itself. As they never by any chance
thought of mooring her both stem and stern, the dhow generally changed
ends rapidly, shipping considerable water in the process. It must be
very trying to get so excited in a hot climate.

The high sandbanks of the early part of the day soon dropped lower to
afford us a wider view. In its broad, general features the country was,
quite simply, the desert of Arizona over again. There were the same
high, distant, and brittle-looking mountains, fragile and pearly; the