"Rather!" I assented, drawing my coat collar over my ears. "But it's too chilly to stay here, so I think I'll turn in." "Stay another ten minutes," he continued, pulling out his watch and peering at it by the glow of his cheroot, "and you'll see something that will well repay the trouble of waiting in the cold." "Now," he added, after a few minutes' interval, "look over there"; and, following the direction of his outstretched arm, I saw nothing but the dim outlines of a break in the sand-hills that fringed the Canal. Even as I looked, a dazzling red disc appeared to leap above the horizon, and in a moment the desert was flooded with a ruddy light. The moon had risen with all the splendour that is only met with in the rarefied atmosphere of tropic and sub-tropic climes. In another quarter of an hour it was well above the horizon, bathing the surrounding country in a mellow light and casting long shadows of our spars athwart the opposite bank of the placid Canal. "Splendid!" I exclaimed. "Yes," assented my uncle, "and sunrise will be quite as rapid. Now go below and have a good night's rest, and I'm certain you won't turn out till we are nearly clear of this glorified ditch." Uncle Herbert was right, for I did not awake till nearly noon, to find the cabin sweltering in the midday heat and the "Fortuna" passing through the last of the Bitter Lakes, Ismaïlia having been left astern two hours after daybreak. A short stay at Suez, and the "Fortuna" cleared the southern entrance to the Canal, the town and the basins of Port Ibrahim being lost to view at a distance of three miles. Before midnight we had emerged from the Gulf of Suez, catching but a short glimpse of the famous Mount Sinai against the western sky. "You see that mountain just this side of it?" asked my uncle. "That's Jebel Katherina, more than a thousand feet higher and two miles to the west'ard of Sinai--yet almost every passenger on the Oriental liners firmly believes that he has seen the actual mountain mentioned in the Bible; but, as a matter of fact, this is the only position from which we can see it. In less than two minutes Sinai will be hidden by the other mountain. See, they are even now getting into line." Next day we were in the centre of the Red Sea, keeping to the steamer routes to avoid possible encounters with Arab pirates, for, notwithstanding the complete occupation of Egypt and the Soudan, armed dhows still lurked in the little known harbours of the Arabian coast, and did not hesitate to attack and plunder any small craft likely to offer little or no resistance. As a necessary precaution, and also for the purpose of exercising the crew in the use of small arms, the rifles were issued out, and seven rounds of ammunition were expended per man, the "Fortuna" being hove-to at a distance of six hundred yards from a floating barrel bearing a large red flag, while the officers observed and directed the firing through their field-glasses.