Читать книгу By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal онлайн

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So you get your vehicle and a chattering guide....

On the way back to ship the Park and the Nouzha Gardens are a delicious sight after the aridity of the desert.... The gharry is dismissed on re-entering the Arab quarter; it would be a sad waste of opportunity to drive....

We climbed the gangway bearing much fruit and dirt, and very much late for dinner. And after mess the boat-deck and the pipes and our purchases in tobacco and our ventures in cigars—and the day all over again.

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ABBASSIEH

We left the ship's side in a barge that might have carried twice our number without crowding. Every man of us had chafed at the confinement of the voyage, but not one did not now regret the dissociation from our unit, with all the chances it carried of never rejoining, and even, possibly, of never getting to Europe at all. Private friendships do not fall within the consideration of motives in the issue of military orders. Men were calling a farewell from the deck with whom we would have given much to go through the campaign. There was nothing for it but to cultivate the philosophy of the grin and simulate an elation at being free, at last, from the prison-house, and chaff the others about the bitter English winter they were sailing into, and claim we had the best of it. But in our hearts we coveted their chances of moving into Europe first. No part in the Egyptian army of occupation, with the off-chance of a fitful brawl with the Turk, compensated for that.