Page:When It Was Dark.djvu/344

324 The time of waiting gave Spence an opportunity for collecting and ordering his thoughts, for summing up the situation and trying to get at the very heart of its meaning.

The messagery steamer was the only one in the roads. Two coasting craft with rags of light brown sails were beating over the swell into the Mediterranean.

The sky was cloudy, the air still and warm. Only the sea was turbulent and uneasy, the steamer rolled with a sickening, regular movement, and the anchor chains beat and rattled with the precision of a pendulum. Spence sat on the india-rubber treads of the steps leading up to the bridge, with an arm crooked round a white-painted stanchion supporting the hand-rail. A few yards away two lascars were working a chain and pulley, drawing up zinc boxes of ashes from the stoke-hold and tipping them into the sea. As the clinkers fell into the water a little cloud of steam rose from them.

There were but few passengers on the ship, which wore a somewhat neglected, "off-duty" aspect. No longer were the cabins filled with drilled bands of tourists with their loud-voiced lecturing cleric in charge. Not now was there the accustomed rush to the main deck, the pious ejaculations at the first sight of Palestine, the electric knocking at the hearts even of the least devout. Nobody came to Jerusalem now from England. From Beyrout to Jaffa the maritime plain was silent and deserted, and no tourists plucked the roses of Sharon any more.

A German commercial traveller, with cases of cutlery, from Essen, was arguing with the little Greek steward about his wine bill; a professional photographer from Alexandria, travelling with his cameras for a New York firm of art publishers; two Turkish officers smoking cigarettes; a Russian gentleman with two young sons;