A Dweller in Mesopotamia | Page 6

waterways in and around Basra. The main thoroughfares run at right angles to the river, but there are numerous narrow branches communicating from one to the other, in some places forming a network of little channels. Some of these were beautiful beyond description. The tide is felt in all these waters, and sometimes, during a spring tide, the effect of some of these date palm plantations, with the ground just covered, is strange. Hundreds of palms seem to be growing up out of a lake, and the glades reflected in the still water is dream-like and enchanting, recalling Tennyson's nocturne--
"Until another night in night I enter'd, from the clearer light, Imbower'd vaults of piller'd palm."
The pirates were quite jolly fellows who pointed out various things to me as being worthy of interest. By this time the natives have got up, in a most superficial way, the things which they think will interest the Englishman. Every group of palm trees more than twenty in number is pointed out as the Garden of Eden, every bump of ground more than six feet high is the mount on which the Ark rested, and every building more than fifty years old is the one undoubted and authentic residence of Sinbad the Sailor. An old house in Mesopotamia in which Sinbad the Sailor had not lived would be equivalent to one of England's ancient country mansions in which Queen Elizabeth had never slept. The fact that Sinbad the Sailor is a literary creation doesn't discourage the Arabs in the least.
During this voyage of mine by bellam through the multitudinous creeks of Basra a remarkable thing happened. Under the circumstances it was a providential happening. I ran into Brown.
[Illustration: ".... THE SOLEMN PALMS WERE RANGED ABOVE, UNWOO'D OF SUMMER WIND"--Recollections of the Arabian Nights]
Now I do not expect the readers of some previous notes of my sketching escapades[1] to believe this. It is almost too wonderful that a chronicler of travels in desperate need of some comic relief to save his book from dulness would be so lucky as to pick up such excellent copy as Brown, without previous intrigue. Nevertheless I do solemnly state that I had not the slightest idea where Brown was doing his bit in the war. I had last heard of him in France in the Naval Division. That we should both have travelled half across the world to meet with a crash in a backwater at Basra was one of the strangest freaks of fortune I have come across.
My two pirates were poling along quite merrily when we took a right angle turn in fine style. It is evident that the low foliage had hidden the side channel into which we shot, and they had not seen what became evident too late, a motor-boat at right angles across the creek, apparently stuck fast.
I had just time to observe two naval officers and the native coxswain struggling with poles to turn the boat round, or free it from its unserviceable position with regard to the bank when the prow of my bellam took a flying leap over the motor-boat, precipitating my two boatmen into the water, and sending me by means of a somersault into the launch. Somewhat stunned I lay gazing up at a piece of blue sky in which I could discern the green leaves of palm trees.
When in the midst of this blue dome above I beheld Brown perched on the top of a palm tree exhibiting with a look of blank astonishment on his face, waving an arm as if in a kind of bewildered greeting, I gave up the struggle for existence and became resigned to my fate. Without doubt Brown, whom I had last heard of in France, had been killed and was now doing his best to welcome me into a happier and better world.
It would be quite like Brown to try and outdo the ordinarily accepted symbolism of bearing a palm branch by attempting to wave a whole palm tree, for this he seemed most undoubtedly to be doing, embracing its trunk and swaying from side to side.
Subsequently, when things had sorted themselves out in my mind, and when I found I was still in the land of the living I realized that he was attempting to descend to earth. He was no less astonished than I.
After baling out the bellam and restoring order in the launch we found that the casualties were nil, and proceeded to compare notes. Brown, it appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the Dalhousie stationed at Basra. His occupation, when I came across him in this unexpected way, was that of a leader of