Passing by the rugged Socotra, we soon sighted the mountainous southern coast of Arabia, and by midday on January 20 we were focussing our binoculars on the picturesque gate of the Indian Ocean, Aden. Curious it is how Britain has secured all the great strategical points of the world--Gibraltar, Suez, Aden, Singapore, Thursday Island, the Cape of Good Hope, and the rest. And one has only to see Aden, with its rocky peaks piercing the skyline, to realize how strong it is, and how futile would be any effort to capture it. For all the defences of Aden seem to be hewn out of solid granite. No sooner had we got anchored in the harbour than the _Suevic_ was surrounded by swarms of boats, in which were crowded Asiatics of all descriptions yelling like demons in wild anxiety to sell their wares. Then the colliers came alongside and proceeded to coal. Scores of thin, undersized, but wiry Arabs did the work, and as they loaded the bunkers they kept up a perpetual yelling and singing, and the weird cacophony lasted all through the night. Aden is a curious mixture of the Orient and the Occident. In the streets silent Arabs stalk along with camels, and Europeans buzz around in automobiles. One section of the port belongs to the Asiatics; the other is all Western. Arab dhows float across the harbour and steam tugs scurry hither and yon. One section of the town has thatched roofs; the other is all galvanized iron. And one of the natives sang us "Songs of Araby." They yelled harshly for baksheesh all the while. Clad in their own coloured loin cloths, or in discarded khaki tunics from the Force, they were a motley tatterdemalion crowd. Here East and West met--but did not mingle. We had had no word of news for weeks. So we eagerly searched for the newspapers, and demanded news of the outer world. The war was still on. The Allies were more than holding their own. Here was news indeed!--news such as _The Transport Trumpeter_ (published aboard the _Suevic_) had never heard of. Yet we loved that little paper of ours on the transport--"a little thing, but our own." If it lacked news it did not lack reporters whose imagination made up for the deficiency. We were all reporters for _The Transport Trumpeter_. Even I. And I am wondering to this day about a certain curious coincidence connected with one of my painstaking efforts. I wrote on December 28, 1914, a skit on Lissauer's "Hymn of Hate," and Arthur Adam's reply to it--"My Friend, Remember." A month later I got the Sydney _Bulletin_, and there I saw almost exactly the same article with the same excerpts from each poem. They were probably written on the same day, a thousand miles or so apart. You who delve into the mysterious, will you explain? * * * * * Egypt! What memories! What life here! What a quest we have set out upon! What Alexanders are we!