"'Twas a lively brush, sir," said Ensign Liddon, reporting the affair to Rexdale; "but I think nothing will come of it. We must keep away, and keep our men away, from Russians just now, when their feeling against Americans is running pretty high." "Very true," said the lieutenant-commander, smiling. "I'm glad it was no worse. And Oto, Oshima, no more shore leave for you, while the _Neva_ is in port!" Liddon proved to be right in his conjecture. The police, arriving just too late to witness the affray, and seeing that trouble had arisen between sailors of different nationalities, hardly went through the form of pursuing the participants, and let the whole matter drop; such squabbles being common in every large seaport where war-ships lie in the stream and their crews have liberty ashore. The _Neva_ sailed for the Baltic two days later, and within a week Rexdale received orders from the Department to proceed eastward. Then came a succession of wonderfully beautiful days and nights on the blue Mediterranean, the _Osprey_ tossing the foam from her stem in showers of sparkling silver, and startling the flying fish that flashed from wave to wave, until the low, tawny shores of Africa came in sight. "To think that I'm actually gazing upon Egypt!" exclaimed Bob Starr, as he stood on the bridge one fair July morning. "Those are really the 'sands of the desert,' and that scraggy-looking feather-duster is a palm!" Small vessels with great ruddy lateen sails hovered about the war-ship as she advanced. A shark's black, sickle-like fin drifted carelessly astern while the fierce fish, all alert below the surface, watched for prey. Now Damietta was reached, and Port Said. The _Osprey_, awaiting her turn, meekly entered the Canal in the rear of a big Dutch merchant steamer. There was little for the officers or men to do, and they clustered at the rails, and on the quarter-deck, gazing out over the marshes and plains of Egypt--the crew blankly, for the most part; the more highly educated graduates of Annapolis with thoughts of the great, dim Past to which this storied land of the Pharaohs bore silent witness. Here Abraham wandered, from Ur of the Chaldees; across those sands marched the hordes of Rameses II., going up against the Syrians. Now and then the ship halted in basins cut for the purpose, like railroad sidings, to allow northbound vessels to pass. Nearly every ship was flying the Union Jack, for three-quarters of all the tonnage that passes through the Canal belongs to Great Britain. Next in order of frequency came the French, Dutch, and Germans. "Sure, it's hungry I am for the Stars and Stripes," said Pat, gazing gloomily at a broad German ensign at Ismalia, half-way across the Isthmus. "I'm tired o' jumpin' lions and two-headed aigles and rid crosses!" [Illustration: IN STRANGE WATERS]