The gunboat which had brought them all was anchored in this very spot. A Turkish guard had been waiting yonder on the quay, they had gone along the new road to Jerusalem in open carriages,--through the orange groves,--riding to make history. And now he was here once more. While he sat on this dingy steamer in this remote corner of the Mediterranean, it was no exaggeration to say that the whole world was in a state of cataclysm such as it had hardly, at least not often, known before. It was his business to watch events, to forecast whither they would lead. He was a Simon Magus of the modern world, with an electric wire and stylographic pen to prophesy with. He of all men could see and realise what was happening all over the globe. He was more alarmed than even the man in the street. This much was certain. And a day's easy ride away lay the little town which held the acre of rocky ground from which all these horrors, this imminent upheaval, had come. Again it seemed beyond the power of his brain to seize it all, to contain the vastness of his thoughts. These facts, which all the world knew, were almost too stupendous for belief. But when he dwelt upon the _personal_ aspect of them he was as a traveller whose way is irrevocably barred by sheer precipice. At the very first _he_ had been one mouthpiece of the news. For some hours the packet containing it had hung in the dressing-room of a London Turkish bath. His act had recoiled upon himself, for when Gortre found him in the chambers he was spiritually dying. Could this suspicion of Schuabe and Llwellyn possibly be true? It had seemed both plausible and probable in Sir Michael's study in London. But out here in the Jaffa roadstead, when he realised--or tried to realise--that on him might depend the salvation of the world.... He laughed aloud at that monstrous grandiloquent phrase. He was in the nineteenth century, not the tenth. He doubted more and more. Had it been any one else it might have been possible to believe. But he could not see himself in this stupendous _rôle_. The mental processes became insupportable; he dismissed thought with a great effort of will and got up from his seat. At least there was some _action_, something definite to do waiting for him. Speculation only blurred everything. He would be true to the trust his friends in England reposed in him and leave the rest to happen as it was fated. There was a relief in that attitude--the Arab attitude. _Kismet!_ Griggs, the fruit merchant, came up from the saloon wiping his lips. "Bit orf," he said, "waiting like this. But the sea will go down soon. Last spring I had to go on to Beyrout, the weather was that rough. Ever tried that Vin de Rishon le Zion? It's a treat. Made from Bordeaux vines transplanted to Palestine--you'll pass the fields on the way up--just had a half bottle. Hallo!--look, there's the boat at last--old Francis Karane's boat. Must go and look after my traps."