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By Root 245 0

a smile to say the Head Steward had to enter “all unusual occurrences” into a logbook, so perhaps we would appear in the ship’s records. There had also been a series of “misplacements” on the ship. Croquet sets were missing, wallets had been lost during the storm. Our Captain appeared and told everyone that a gramophone belonging to a Miss Quinn-Cardiff had gone astray and could not be located, so any knowledge of its whereabouts would be appreciated. Cassius, who had recently been down in the hold to watch the engineers fix a section of bilge pipe, claimed the gramophone was being played there, loudly and constantly. The ship’s staff countered this trend of losses with an announcement that an earring had been found, somehow, in a lifeboat, and to please identify and claim it at the Purser’s Office. No mention was made of the Assistant Purser’s glass eye, though the intercom continued to obsessively list the few objects that had been recovered. “Found: One brooch. One lady’s brown felt hat. One journal belonging to Mr. Berridge with unusual pictures.”

The ship’s recovery from the storm and the better weather did mean one good thing. The prisoner was once again allowed his evening walk. We waited for him and eventually saw him standing there on the deck, shackled. He drew a huge breath—taking in all the energy that was in the night air around him—and then he released it, his face full of a sublime smile.

Our ship steamed towards Aden.

Landfall

ADEN WAS TO BE THE FIRST PORT OF CALL, and during the day before our arrival there was a flurry of letter writing. It was a tradition to have one’s mail stamped in Aden, where it could be sent back to Australia and Ceylon or onward to England. All of us were longing for the sight of land, and as morning broke we lined up along the bow to watch the ancient city approach, mirage-like out of the arc of dusty hills. Aden had been a great harbour as early as the seventh century B.C. and was mentioned in the Old Testament. It was where Cain and Abel were buried, Mr. Fonseka said, preparing us for the city he himself had never seen. It had cisterns built out of volcanic rock, a falcon market, an oasis quarter, an aquarium, a section of town given over to sail makers, and stores that contained merchandise from every corner of the globe. It would be our last footstep in the East. After Aden there would be just a half-day’s sailing before we entered the Red Sea.

The Oronsay cut its engines. We were not docked on the quay but in the outer harbour, at Steamer Point. If passengers wished to go ashore, they could be ferried into the city by barges, and these were already waiting beside our vessel. It was nine in the morning, and without the sea breezes that we were accustomed to, the air was heavy and hot.

That morning the Captain had announced the rules about entering the city. Passengers were allowed just six hours of shore leave. Children could go only if accompanied by “a responsible male adult.” And women were forbidden to go at all. There was the expected outrage at this, especially among Emily and a group of her friends by the pool who wished to disembark and take on the citizens with their beauty. And Miss Lasqueti was annoyed, for she wished to study the local falcons. She had hoped to bring a few of them blindfolded on the ship. Cassius, Ramadhin, and I were concerned mostly with finding someone who was not a responsible male, who could be easily distracted, to take us along. Mr. Fonseka, in spite of his curiosity, had no plans to leave the ship. Then we heard that Mr. Daniels was eager to visit the old oasis to study its vegetation, where, he said, every blade of grass was swollen with water, and thick as your finger. He was also interested in something called “khat” that he had been talking to the ayurvedic about. We offered to help him transport any plants back to the ship, and he agreed, and we went with him down the rope ladders into a barge as quickly as we could.

We were surrounded instantly by a new language. Mr. Daniels was busy negotiating a fee with a hackerey to