The Arabs were as good as gold in their coarse yellow and blue uniforms and they didn’t care a damn about anything. For officers they have toughs who drink hard and give a man cells if he so much as looks like grumbling. They wanted to go to Champagne to see what is happening there and are pretty sick to be heading for the desert to fight camels. But they, too, don’t care a damn about anything, and as long as they fight somebody the place doesn’t matter. The Touaregs will find their match! As a harbour, Cabes is not ideal and it was hot enough to make the very pebbles sweat. I wonder how the Arabs endure it with their clothing of wool and camel’s hair. But they claim that the thicker it is, the cooler. I preferred to take their word for it, and, as I was half-melted, found it simply overpowering to stay there four days waiting for orders. Not one of us set foot on land, not even Fourgues, who loves to stretch his legs wherever we go. The mere idea of moving about in that furnace made everyone prefer to remain half-naked on board. Finally we got an order to make for Brest. Fourgues thought it was a joke and that the telegram had been wrongly transmitted; but it was Brest all right. He thinks the owner is behind it all, trying to have the _Pamir_ sent from one weird place to another because that increases the money he draws. I believe he is right. So we were off for Brest and very glad to leave the Mediterranean in the hot season. Moreover, it was a long time since we had been home or read the papers: everybody thought perhaps we might stay awhile, with the chance of getting into touch with things again and of getting news. You can’t imagine how after a time it weighs on one not to know what’s going on. On the _Auvergne_ you get wireless messages from France and elsewhere and there are telegrams passing around all the time which explain things. But on the _Pamir_ we are as stupid as can be because the papers never say anything about Naval affairs anyway. Of course, there is the heading “Marine,” and then--a blank! So the people at home think we are doing nothing. As they are absolutely ignorant about the sea, it’s impossibly to make them understand how we work on boats like yours and the _Pamir_. The Navy is spoken of a little now, but the only time that we of the Mercantile Marine get into the news-sheets is when a cargo-boat runs aground or collides with another or founders. So the public imagines that merchant vessels pass their time in port or in adding to catastrophes; whereas they are at least as useful as the postmen, railwaymen, munition makers, and the like, of whom the papers and the Ministers are talking all the time. It’s just that those fellows are on the spot and can make themselves heard. As for us, they are dead sure they won’t see us arriving with our boats in the Place de la Concorde, so they suppress the things that concern us. Really, it’s not fair. But here I am, talking politics! I get that from Fourgues,