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pictures in "Stories From the Bible" that one read so long ago. We drove until long past twilight through these familiar and ancient scenes. Then, at dark, cut across the desert again, and after two hours of exceedingly rough road, with sand in one's eyes, but the desert stars overhead, came to Ismailiah, one the Canal, where we stopped for a bit of refreshment. 

The road from Ismailiah on is good, an asphalt drive beside the Canal, where we saw the big steamers coming through, each one with a blinding headlight, that illumines not only the Canal but a hundred yards of desert each side. At nine o'clock we passed Kantara, where the night train for Jerusalem stood, lighted, and ready for [[strikethrough]] his [[/strikethrough]] its run. Shortly afterward we passed the Silverash. We blew our horn, turned on the lights in the car, and waved, but hardly expected that anyone on board would notice us. The Captain misses little however, and gave us one short toot of recognition. 

Into Port Said about ten, and a first stop at Simon Artz, which has grown from the little Oriental store that Bill remembered, in to a big, modern Department store. We each wanted a felt hat to land in, and made our selections quickly. Then Abdul Abdallah took us to a not very choice Greek restaurant, where we had food and drinks to kill the time until we could get aboard the Silverash. 

About one'clock we actually came up the steep and tilted gangway. The Captain's room was full of police, and the two ringleaders of the "mutiny." There had been trouble among the crew ever since Port Sudan. The Captain put one of the men in shackles, whereupon the whole crew refused to work. He was determined to get rid of two of them to-night, but the police said they had no authority to take sailors off the ship. So they were put in the ship's brig, and will be attended to to-morrow. 

September 6 - 

We went ashore about eight o'clock, called on the Consul, found a small bird store where we bought six lizards, and rambled about the streets, being amused by the fortune-tellers, shoe-shiners, coffee-purveyors, sellers of pears, and the general air of the town. We smoked Amabr cigarettes and bought lotus perfume in one little shop, and Bill fell for a Rolex watch at Simon Artz, principally I think because a running watch was kept in an aquarium of goldfish. 

When we came back to the office to see about getting a launch for the Silverash, Captain Rowe was there, and simply furious because he had been able to do so little about his mutineers. The British Consul had told him he should be more discreet, and that his (the Consul's) job was to protect the Chinese working under the British flag rather than to jail them. The Captain finally went to the police himself and said he wanted them to go out and get the two sailors and put them in jail - which was eventually done. 

Bill and I had a set-to with the ship's chandler, who charged us too much for exchange, after putting an awful price on food anyway, and sold us rotten bananas, dead quail when we had ordered live ones, and left us with tears, insisting we had gypped him after all the hard work had had done on our behalf.