darkness where the sky-line of the palm belt by the waterside was just
visible. It is strange to reflect that all this scene of careless
activity is dependent on those two pipes, each about 14 inches in
diameter, connecting it with a point 150 miles away.

I came again in the morning to look at the works. They did not appear
half so mysterious as when seen in the dark. The Tower of London had
shrunk into quite a small buttressed building of brick and
Nebuchadnezzar's Fiery Furnace dwindled considerably in size. The Medes
and Persians, on the other hand, looked wilder and more "operatic" than
at night. I think as a matter of fact they were Kurds.

It is a very simple style of get-up to imitate. For purposes of private
theatricals I will tell you how to do it, in case you should find the
stage direction, "_Alarums and excursions. Enter the Medes and
Persians._"

Take a very tattered, colourless, and ill-fitting dressing gown, without
a girdle and flopping about untidily. Wear long black curly hair to
shoulder. Put plenty of grease on. Then knock handle off a
round-bottomed saucepan, very sooty, and place on your head. Dirty your
face and you might walk about Abadan without attracting notice.

I daresay if I knew something technical about the refining of oil I
should not find these works so fascinating. There is always a glamour
about a thing only half understood. Probably the retorts and boilers and
all the apparatus here are of the very latest pattern, yet so strangely
unlike modern machinery do they seem that I find myself wondering if I
have gone back into some previous age and unearthed strange things of
prehistoric antiquity. These solemn-looking turbaned Indians might be