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The same unhallowed load of black bargees as at Aden came alongside to coal and make night hideous. But they worked harder—time was short and the boss used a rope's-end, and actually "laid out" more than one who dared to stop for scraps thrown. They eked out their industry with an alleged chant, echoed in derision by the troops all over the ship. About midnight firing—or its equivalent—began to the south. At the sound of guns the Mohammedan bargees forgot their labours and the rope's-end—as did the boss, together with his authority—cast aside their baskets, and incontinently fell on their faces in the coal-dust and called in terror upon Allah.

Soon after dawn we stood out for Alexandria, and were there early the following morning. The sun rising behind the city cast into flat black Pompey's Pillar and the Port. It was hard to see, in the first blush, in this city—when the sun had risen above it—a centre of action of Pompey and of Alexander and of Cæsar. There is a curious blending of age and of what is intensely modern; and so it is more easy to conceive Sir Charles Beresford bombarding from the Condor, with Admiral Seymour pounding from behind; or Napoleon storming the citadel. From our anchorage it was with ease we saw the scene of bombardment and the converging-point from which the Egyptians fled helter-skelter to the hinterland.