He didn’t understand that so I tried him in French, whereupon he clapped his hands twice, and from an engine room among the outbuildings came running an Arab mechanic in blue jeans. He spoke a sort of hybrid Levantine French and conveyed our invitation of the Sultan to the eunuch who bowed and spoke again. The desire to laugh was appalling. It appeared that the Sultan was absent in Alexandria and only the Sultana and the ladies were here and it was quite forbidden that we should approach nearer the palace. Reluctantly, therefore, we saluted, which drew many salaams and bowings in reply, and rode away, followed by that unforgettable little man’s squeaks. The other incident covered a period of a week or so. It was a question of spies. The village of Mamoura consisted of a railway terminus and hotel round which sprawled a dark and smelly conglomeration of hovels out of which sprouted the inevitable minaret. The hotel was run by people who purported to be French but who were of doubtful origin, ranging from half-caste Arab to Turk by way of Greek and Armenian Jew. But they provided dinner and cooling drinks and it was pleasant to sit under the awninged verandah and listen to the frogs and the sea or to play their ramshackle piano and dance with the French residents of Alexandria who came out for week-ends to bathe. At night we used to mount donkeys about as big as large beetles and have races across the sands back to camp, from which one could see the lights of the hotel. Indeed we thought we saw what they didn’t intend us to see, for there were unmistakable Morse flashings out at sea from that cool verandah. We took it with grim seriousness and lay for hours on our stomachs with field glasses glued to our eyes. I posted my signalling corporal in a drinking house next door to the hotel, gave him late leave and paid his beer so that he might watch with pencil and notebook. But always he reported in the morning that he’d seen nothing. The climax came when one night an orderly burst into the hut which the Vet. and I shared and said, “Mr. ---- wants you to come over at once, sir. He’s taken down half a message from the signalling at the hotel.” I leapt into gum boots, snatched my glasses and ran across to the sand mound from where we had watched. The other subaltern was there in a great state of excitement. “Look at it,” he said. “Morsing like mad.” I looked,--and looked again. There was a good breeze blowing and the flag on the verandah was exactly like the shutter of a signalling lamp! 6 Having sat there all those months, the order to move, when it did finally come, was of the most urgent nature. It was received one afternoon at tea time and the next morning before dawn we were marching down the canal road. Just before the end we had done a little training, more to get the horses in draught than anything else. With that and the horse shows it wasn’t at all a bad turnout.