"Well, perhaps you will see better to-morrow," she rejoined, with
indolent irony.

"If I do, I'll acknowledge it," he added. Then Hungerford smiled at me
inscrutably. We two held a strange secret.




CHAPTER VIII

A BRIDGE OF PERIL

No more delightful experience may be had than to wake up in the harbour
of Aden some fine morning--it is always fine there--and get the first
impression of that mighty fortress, with its thousand iron eyes, in
strong repose by the Arabian Sea. Overhead was the cloudless sun, and
everywhere the tremulous glare of a sandy shore and the creamy wash of
the sea, like fusing opals. A tiny Mohammedan mosque stood gracefully
where the ocean almost washed its steps, and the Resident's house, far up
the hard hillside, looked down upon the harbour from a green coolness.
The place had a massive, war-like character. Here was a battery with
earthworks; there, a fort; beyond, a signal-staff. Hospitals, hotels,
and stores were incidents in the picture. Beyond the mountain-wall and
lofty Jebel Shamsan, rising in fine pink and bronze, and at the end of a
high-walled path between the great hills, lay the town of Aden proper.
Above the town again were the mighty Tanks, formed out of clefts in the
mountains, and built in the times when the Phoenicians made Aden a great
mart, the richest spot in all Arabia.