Chapter V

The Cyclone

We enjoyed our voyage exceedingly.  In Egypt, a land I was glad to revisit, we only stopped a week while the Star of the South, which we rejoined at Suez, coaled and went through the Canal.  This, however, gave us time to spend a few days in Cairo, visit the Pyramids and Sakkara which Bastin and Bickley had never seen before, and inspect the great Museum.  The journey up the Nile was postponed until our return.  It was a pleasant break and gave Bickley, a most omnivorous reader who was well acquainted with Egyptian history and theology, the opportunity of trying to prove to Bastin that Christianity was a mere development of the ancient Egyptian faith.  The arguments that ensued may be imagined.  It never seemed to occur to either of them that all faiths may be and indeed probably are progressive; in short, different rays of light thrown from the various facets of the same crystal, as in turn these are shone upon by the sun of Truth.

Our passage down the Red Sea was cool and agreeable.  Thence we shaped our course for Ceylon.  Here again we stopped a little while to run up to Kandy and to visit the ruined city of Anarajapura with its great Buddhist topes that once again gave rise to religious argument between my two friends.  Leaving Ceylon we struck across the Indian Ocean for Perth in Western Australia.

It was a long voyage, since to save our coal we made most of it under canvas.  However, we were not dull as Captain Astley was a good companion, and even out of the melancholy Dane, Jacobsen, we had entertainment.  He insisted on holding seances in the cabin, at which the usual phenomena occurred.  The table twisted about, voices were heard and Jacobsen’s accordion wailed out tunes above our heads.  These happenings drove Bickley to a kind of madness, for here were events which he could not explain.  He was convinced that someone was playing tricks upon him, and devised the most elaborate snares to detect the rogue, entirely without result.

First he accused Jacobsen, who was very indignant, and then me, who laughed.  In the end Jacobsen and I left the “circle” and the cabin, which was locked behind us; only Bastin and Bickley remaining there in the dark.  Presently we heard sounds of altercation, and Bickley emerged looking very red in the face, followed by Bastin, who was saying: 

“Can I help it if something pulled your nose and snatched off your eyeglasses, which anyhow are quite useless to you when there is no light?  Again, is it possible for me, sitting on the other side of that table, to have placed the concertina on your head and made it play the National Anthem, a thing that I have not the slightest idea how to do?”

“Please do not try to explain,” snapped Bickley.  “I am perfectly aware that you deceived me somehow, which no doubt you think a good joke.”

“My dear fellow,” I interrupted, “is it possible to imagine old Basil deceiving anyone?”