But our rest was over. On 12th May, 1917, we regretfully bade good-bye to Cape Town and travelled by train overland through the bleak Karroo Veldt, and on to Durban, to embark again there for East Africa on 19th May. Durban had for some days been the gathering-point for this movement, and many troops were congregated here when we arrived. Five ships, loaded with troops and stores, made up the convoy which sailed from Durban for East Africa, a considerable reinforcement that promised an immediate recommencement of offensive operations now that the rainy season was over. Then, too, on the _Caronia_, which was one of the ships of the convoy, were General Van Deventer and General Beves, and their staffs, hastening back to take again the field. This great liner, the _Caronia_, was on her way to India with troops, and was only to touch in on the East African coast, but serious combustion set in in her coal bunkers and threatened to delay her voyage, and therefore, on nearing our destination, those of us going to East Africa transferred to naval craft at sea, and thenceforward proceeded to port. On the morning of 29th May, I and a few comrades, who had been travelling overnight on an auxiliary cruiser, found ourselves on deck, and the ship standing off the low white sand shore of Lindi Bay, a mile or more from land. Thus we had again come in sight of East Africa—again we looked on the silent land that lay before us, darkened with that unforgettable growth of bush thicket that reached to the very borders of the sea. We viewed the shore with mixed feelings: adventure still held an attraction to us, but the country had, in its latent possibilities, the power to appal the searchings of imagination, and it was with feelings more sober than otherwise that we contemplated the land before us. For there lay the bush-land, as it had always lain before us, an over-dark picture which no man could surely read, though he knew, since he had seen it in another light, and had looked at it closely, that behind the foreground in view there was concealed the vague lines of startling drama. [Sidenote: LINDI] Meantime a small steam tug had put out of Lindi, and when this drew alongside we boarded her, and, bidding cheery good-bye to the officers of the cruiser, who had been brief but the best of comrades, the little tug “jug-jugged” earnestly in for shore. Approaching shore we again transferred—this time to a row-boat, which in turn grounded on the shallow beach before the town; and we finally landed dry-shod on the backs of the native crew, who waded ashore.