As at least fifteen of us are bound for Lourenço Marques, and as we have reason to fear a visit from some English cruiser not unaccustomed to such travellers, we have all adopted the most extraordinary callings. One of us is a commercial traveller in the wine or drug trade; another is a dealer in apparatus of various kinds. I also met a bird-seller, a manufacturer of blinds, and an agent for bitumens!
C---- and I are modest! We are in quest of purchasers for 'Calaya,' a febrifuge of extraordinary virtues, a specific for fever, dysentery, headache, toothache, etc.
The weather is superb; but our boat is slow, and we rarely make 300 miles in the twenty-four hours.
We reach Port Said on December 31. For New Year's Day we get up an entertainment with a lottery on board, and, thanks to Madame D----, it proves a great success.
The profits, amounting to nearly a thousand francs, were handed over to the Widows and Orphans' Fund of the Messageries Maritimes.
The prizes offered by the passengers were of the most curious description, and as we were bound for sunny climes, there were more than twenty umbrellas among them. Chance, with perhaps a little extraneous help, made a good many of these fall to the share of Colonel Gourko, who took the little joke in excellent part.
Breda undertakes the refreshment buffet, with the help of a charming young girl, and presides with great dignity.
After leaving Port Said the company is increased by the members of a Russian ambulance going to the Transvaal. They keep very much to themselves, and every evening they meet together on the lower deck to sing their vesper prayer. The sacred chant, in itself very imposing, takes on a solemn grandeur in the picturesque setting of the Red Sea.
At Aden we go on shore, and make an execrable lunch, washed down, however, by some excellent Chianti and Barolo; then we go to see the famous cisterns, in which there is hardly ever any water now.
We also pick up a new passenger, Captain B----, of the Royal Field Artillery, who also is for Durban on warfare bound. Our approaching hostility does not prevent us from being the best of friends throughout the passage. He wears the medal of the Soudan, too, which gives him a further title to our sympathies. He describes his very interesting campaigns in India and Egypt. He was present at Omdurman--'the great battle,' as he calls it.