The pitch bubbling in the seams under a Mediterranean sun; the queer
iridescent shapes of glowing, greenish phosphorus in the nighttime
sea; the butter melting into yellow oil on the plate on the saloon
table; the sickly smell of steam and grease and oil from the engine-
room; the machine gun fixed at the stern with its waterproof hood; the
increasing brilliance of the stars, and the rapid descent of evening
upon the splendid colour-prism of a Mediterranean sunset--these, and
thousands of other intimate commonplaces, are inlaid for ever in my
mind.

We went about in our shirts and drill "slacks," and the scorching
boards of the deck blistered our naked feet. In a few days we became
sun-tanned. Each one of us had a sunburnt V-shaped triangle on the
chest where we left our shirts open.

The voyage was uneventful. The food was poor. There was very little
fresh water to drink. It was July. The heat was fatiguing, and the
sun-glare blinding.

The coast of Algeria on our right looked bare and terribly forsaken.
It had an awfulness about it--a mystery look; it looked like a "juju"
country, with its sandy spit running like a narrow ribbon to the blue
sea, and its hazy, craggy mountains quivering in the noonday heat.

Hawk and I were in the habit of coming up from our bunks in the
evening. We used to lean over the handrail and watch the wonder of a
Mediterranean sunset transform in schemes of peacock-blue and beetle-
green, down and down, through emerald, pale gold and lemon yellow, and
so to the horizon of the inland sea, in bands of deep chrome and