We passed Aden yesterday and stopped for a few hours to coal.  That was the limit.  The sun beating down on the deck, the absence of the slightest breeze, coal-dust sifting into everything—­ouf!  Aden’s barren rocks reminded me rather of the Skye Coolin.  I wonder if they are climbable.  I haven’t troubled you much, have I, with accounts of the entertainments on board? but I think I must tell you about a whistling competition we had the other day.  You must know that we had each a partner, and the women sat at one end of the deck and the men stood at the other and were told the tune they had to whistle, when they rushed to us and each whistled his tune to his partner, who had to write the name on a piece of paper and hand it back, and the man who got back to the umpire first won—­at least his partner did.  Do you understand?  Well, as you know, I haven’t much ear for music, and I hoped I would get an easy tune; but when my partner, a long, thin, earnest man, with a stutter, burst on me and whistled wildly in my face, I had the hopeless feeling that I had never heard the tune before.  In his earnestness he came nearer and nearer, his contortions every moment becoming more extraordinary, his whistling more piercing; and I, by this time convulsed by awful, helpless laughter, could only shrink farther back in my seat and gasp feebly, “Please don’t.”

Mrs. Crawley was not much better.  In my own misery I was aware of her voice saying politely, “I have no idea what the tune is, but you whistle beautifully—­quite like a gramophone.”

When my disgusted and exhausted partner ceased trying to emulate a steam-engine and began to look human again, I timidly inquired what he had been whistling.  “The tune,” he replied very stiffly, “was ’Rule, Britannia!’”

“Dear me,” I replied meekly, “I thought at least it was something from Die Meistersinger;” but he deigned no reply and walked away, evidently hating me quite bitterly.  I shan’t play that game again, and I can’t believe the silly man really whistled “Rule, Britannia,” for it is a simple tune and one with which I am entirely at home, whereas—­but no matter!

G. won by guessing “Annie Laurie.”  She is splendid at all games, and did I tell you how well she sings?  In the cabin, when we are alone, she sings to me snatches of all sorts of songs, grave and gay, but she won’t sing in the saloon, where every other woman on board with the smallest pretensions to a voice carols nightly.  She is a most attractive person this G., with quaint little whimsical ways that make her very lovable.  We are together every minute of the day, and yet we never tire of one another’s company.  I rather think I do most of the talking.  If it is true that to be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue, then, indeed, is my state pitiable, for talk I must, and G. is a delightful person to talk to.  She listens to my tales of Peter and the others, and asks for more, and shouts with laughter