After baling out the bellam and restoring order in the launch we found
that the casualties were nil, and proceeded to compare notes. Brown, it
appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and
France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of
Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the _Dalhousie_ stationed at
Basra. His occupation, when I came across him in this unexpected way,
was that of a leader of an expedition in a motor-boat with two R.N.
victims to find a new route to somewhere or other which could not
possibly be approached by water.

His enthusiasm had been so infectious that he had persuaded these
gallant and guileless officers to go with him, and was, at the moment of
my arrival, attempting to get a better geographical idea of the
surrounding country by climbing a palm tree and shouting directions to
the unfortunate occupants of the boat below, who were hopelessly stuck.
The sudden impact of the bellam, uncomfortable as it was for all
concerned, succeeded where they had failed, in getting them off the mud.

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF SINBAD THE SAILOR, BASRA]

An old-world touch is given to the waters of Basra by the high-sterned
dhows anchored in the river. Above Ashar Creek the scenery of the banks
with its wharves and big steamers is not particularly characteristic of
the East. Some of it might be by the Thames at Tilbury Docks. But by
Khora Creek and in the lower reaches of the river at Basra, these
old-world ships, with their quaint lines and steep, naked masts, are
more in keeping with our recollections of Sinbad the Sailor, or perhaps
of the days of the Merchant Venturers of our own Elizabethan days.

It is to be supposed that the type of ship that has survived in the East