A BUSHMAN AFLOAT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8468, 19 June 1907, Page 7

A BUSHMAN AFLOAT.

By ALBERT DORRINGTON. (Author of "Along the Castlereagh," "Children of the Gully," etc.) (Published by special arrangement —Copyright reserved.) NO. 13. April 18: Entered the Gulf of Aden, to-day. Hell's Gate is promised to-morrow early, and beer remains about the usual price. It was expected that drinks would go up when the fiery winds from Africa and Arabia began to wake up the ship's thirst. Wo have never experienced a truly Arabian thirst. The last Australian who suffered from pure Arabian dryness was found hanging by the heels outside a mosque in Shurem. April 19: Entered the Red Sea 'this morning. Although the water is not so red as the hair of the girl sitting opposite me, the sky has a brassy glare that reminds one of the drought - stricken West. Several j .-- people have been trying to locate the spot where Moses led the Israelites across. One disrespectful person*from North Queensland stated that the Israelites must have used flying machines. He proved afterwards for fully an hour that Pharaoh used flying machines when building the Pyramids. Kites made from whalebone had been discovered in the dead cities around Memphis, he said, a fact which more than suggested that Moses utilised aerial navigation in transporting his people from Egypt into the Promised Land. Off Aden we passed quite close to a bull-headed transport, crowded with soldiers' wives bound for India to join their husbands. Tommy's wife, with few exceptions, is a rough and tumble person, capable of upholding her hubsand's dignity when it comes to a bit of backyard fighting or fisticuffs. Barrack life is conducive to a sabre-edged vocabulary that startles the untrained ear and surprises the untravelled Australian. No bush woman could look so hard-jawed and sun-raddled as these barrack-women. They sprawled about the transport's decks, half-dressed, heavy-eyed and sullen. One big raw-boned woman leaned over the rail elaborately, and bawled out as we passed. "'Ello, Horsetralia! D'e want eny 'ouse an' parlourmaids on your island?" "Ya'as," drawled a Southerner at my elbow; "but we prefer 'em combed and dressed, though." "Yah!" screamed back the soldier's wife. "Yer shut out the seven 'atters 'cause they was Hinglishmen." "Six, ma'am, six," answered the Australian wearily. "For God's sake, ma'am, stick to facts." We were not sorry when the sweating t.ransport passed from sight. Islands*and capes are beginning to roll up. We almost forgot to record the passing of Cape Guardefui, the limit of the old French Soudan. Situated on the head of the Gulf of Aden, it thrusts its sand-blighted foot across the sky-line. A pair of binoculars revealed a long-haired goat refreshing itself with juices of the desert herb. Most of the mad Mullah's forces congregated thereabouts until Kitchener presented them with some Birmingham-made ammunition at jQmdurman. A lot of English papers Ag/ated the iron-jawed Herbert for up the Mahdi's tomb and dispersing the pilgrim traffic. If the Arab was dispersed off the face ot the earth Africa at least would bear a sweeter and freer atmosphere. The temperature of the Red Sea has not reached the nineties, but the heat is of the steam-boiler variety, and folds up fat and lean people alike. A visit to the third-class cabins at midnight reveals a rather Dantesque state of affairs. The Sack of Rome is a mere side-picture compared with some of the stark motionless groups one has to step across when exploring the middle regions of the ship. Children by the dozen, naked as leaves, sprawl one across another; several crones huddle together on the steps leading to the icehouses ; there are scores of younger women gasping in their bunks, glassy-eyed, perspiring and ill-tem-pared. In the matter of combating heat woman is a fatalist. She firmly believes that death'will come to her if she makes a movement in the direction of fresh air. The children count for nothing. They squall and cry, and the hot, nerve-racked mother pushes them away. Also she objects violently when a strange hand attempts to lead them into cleaner air. These observations were made In the Red Sea, but we have been told that woman is much better-bal-anced when she is fighting her way through icebergs and other minor difficulties. Judging by the tone of most AngloIndians aboard, it would seem that numbers of white people are flying from our Empire in the East. The plague is over the land, and the aver- {.[; ■ Englishman doesn't care to throw in his marble with the hordes of natives who perish daily by the roadside. A well-placed Indian Civil servant told me yesterday that there is practically no tally kept of the hundreds who die in desert places far removed from the track of the district inspector. And nobody cares. Said the well-placed Civil servant to me: "I had a gocd bungalow in the district; it was scrupulously clean, and itiy staff of servants excellent. We fancied ourselves immune from the scourge that was desolating the villages around us, until one morning a rat came and died in our bath-room. A few hours later our kitchen coolie collapsed on the back verandah. Then came the panic. Our servants fled, leaving us alone with our children. Wo were 150 miles from a railway * station, and two of my little ones died before we reached the train. No more India. It is the land of heat and death, the graveyard of the white man's children." Also numbers of Indian Civil servants—white onesswear that the Government is sweating the service and lowering the Englishman's caste. These Civil servants are the same all the world over. (To be Continued.)