We bade good-bye to Egypt that morning, and to Gaddis--whose name and memory will always mean Egypt to me--and were off for Alexandria, where the ship was waiting. That long-ago dream of a visit to Damascus and Jerusalem, and of a camp on the Nile had been realized. Now it was over. We were ready to go home--at least some of us were. There would be a stop at Naples, with Pompeii and Rome for those who cared for it, but even these great places would be tame after Egypt. They must be approached from another direction for that eager interest which properly belongs to an expedition of this kind. A number of our ship-dwellers had an eager interest--a large and growing interest--but it was for home, an interest that was multiplied each day by the square of the distance travelled. [Illustration: SET OUT ON THE LONG, STEADY, ATLANTIC SWING] Not many of us were left when we had made our last touch on the Riviera, rounded the Rock, and set out on the long, steady, Atlantic swing. The Reprobates had gone _viâ_ Monte Carlo to Paris. Others had drifted up through Europe to sail from Cherbourg. The Diplomat was still with us; also Fosdick of Ohio, and Laura, age fourteen, but only a score or two of the original muster could gather at the long table in the dining-room on the last night out of port, for a final look at one another, and to exchange the greetings and god-speeds for which there would be little time during the bustle of arrival. It was hardly an occasion; just a pleasant little meeting that even with jollification was not without sadness. One of the ship's poets offered some verses of good-bye, of which I recall these lines: "To-night, we are here who have stayed by the ship; To-morrow, the harbor and anchor and slip-- The word of command for the gang-plank to fall-- The word that shall suddenly scatter us all-- Then all the King's horses and all the King's men Could never collect us together again." * * * * * That was a good while ago, nearly a year now, and already it seems as far back in the past as the days of Rameses; for, as I have said somewhere before, we have but a meagre conception of time. Indeed, I suspect there is no such thing as time. How can there be when one period is as long as another compared with eternity?