[Illustration: Monitor "Moth" at Basra.]

[Illustration]




SINBAD THE SOLDIER

After a few days among the waterways of Mesopotamia one can get hardened
against surprises. The most amazing and outrageous types of craft soon
meet the eye as commonplaces of river life. Things that would make a
Thames waterman sign the pledge proceed up and down without arousing any
comment. Noah's ark, with its full complement, could ply for hire
between Basra and Baghdad, and the lion's roaring would be accepted as
the necessary accompaniment of a somewhat old type of machinery
resuscitated for the war.

I have seen boats jostling each other cheek by jowl that might have been
taking part in a pageant entitled "Ships in All the Ages." There were
Thornycroft motor-boats and Sennacharib goufas, mahailas and Thames
steamboats, an oil-fuel gunboat and a stern paddler that could have come
out of a woodcut of the first steamboat on the Clyde--and all these in
the same reach. I travelled in this last extraordinary vessel for a
short time. She was in charge of a sergeant of the Inland Water
Transport, with an Indian pilot and miscellaneous crew, and my
adventurous cruise called to mind both the travels of Ulysses and the
Hunting of the Snark.