was wounded," he said ruefully as the iodine livened up. Trever came up full of congratulations and hungry for details. He showed the General a code wire from Welsh at Bombay announcing the despatch of two completed Hawks, accompanied by some of the mechanics he had been specially training. Also, best of all, the wire stated that the two pilots he sent with them had flown the machines after four hours' instruction; and though, of course, further practice would be required, they ought to be perfectly at home in them in a couple of days. if we're left in peace. Thank Heaven for the storms up north. I'm off for a bite of breakfast now, and, I suppose, a visit to the hospital en route. I'll give you a lesson in handling the 'Hawk' afterwards." He climbed out of the machine, and leaving Jenkins to run her in, walked over to the oar with Pat. "So the dream has come true after all, dear, hasn't it? Do you know, I was dreaming all the way back of what the future might hold now that we've found it, and what utter horrors it would have meant for the world if the others had found it first." "That means arrival tonight," said Billy. "Good old She slipped her arm in his Welsh. Tell Parker to have and looked at him tenderly. everything ready, and the "Trust you for dreaming, workshops should have them darling-always-always." in flying trim by the morning, GANPAT. A SECRET SURVEY. BY REAR-ADMIRAL BOYLE SOMERVILLE, C.M.G. BUSHIRE is a town situated at about eighty miles southward from the head of the Gulf, whose original raison d'être was, no doubt, its harbour. This reason still exists, but not for modern vessels, as it is far too shallow for anything except dhows. Regarded with the tourist's eye, it has all the appearance of a large and excellent bay of tranquil water; but when the navigator produces a chart, it is seen from the soundings that a steamer of ordinary draught would have to anchor between three and four miles from the town, and quite outside the protecting shores of the bay itself. The place was a fishing village for 1200 happy unregarded years, until 1750, when it was chosen by the Shah to be the Portsmouth of Persia. This pre-eminence persists; and when we arrived there in the Sphinx we found the entire Persian Navy anchored in its principal home port. This was H.I.P.M.S. Persepolis, a gunboat of the most extreme antiquity. We gazed on her with the respect due to age and infirmity, and then exchanged with her commanding officer the proper pompous naval visits, in the best modern style, "the usual compliments" being paid on either side, in superfine Dartmouth French and its Teheran equivalent. II. The land around the harbour is, for twenty miles, a low flat plain. At its confines, the great rampart of mountains suddenly springs up, on whose top is the real Persia, 3000 feet and more above the sea, stretching all the way to the Caspian. The hot little town of Bushire, tightly squeezed within its white wall at the tip of a point of land which projects into the bay, is surrounded on three sides by the water. All the foreign consulates, and even the house of the Persian Governor, are left panting outside the wall, on the scorching plain. In 1856 we had a little war with Persia, during which Bushire surrendered to our forces, and remained in our occupation for some months. Since then, we have retained not only a consulate at the town, but also a Political Resident, whose Residenoy is at Rishire, six miles away. The drive there, to report our proceedings to date, was an interesting experience. It was undertaken in a vehicle whose only living counterpart, probably, is to be found in Napoleon's carriage at Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. The ropes with which, like St Paul's ship, it was bound together, front to rear, fortunately held during the drive. As we hopped over the Alpine corrugations of the hard-baked grateful for anything as for the night spent under that great roof-as wide as it was hospitable. was A couple of days later we left, to resume my running survey of the Persian coast. For thirty miles to the southward of Bushire is a wide and featureless plain, whose every indentation and khor well known, and quite unnecessary to re-survey. From that point onward, the flat land bordering the sea is but a narrow strip-a mere footstep between the water and the great ranges of barren 5000-feet mountains, which stand behind it as a wall for 300 miles to the southward. Somewhere along this cramped seaboard there might track, Kemp and I had grave fears of being left behind on it, in the stuffy after-part of the chariot, when, as seemed inevitable, the narrow ourving isthmus which connected us with the front wheels, coachman's box, and horses, should at length yield to force majeure. We drove thus, in deep trepidation, past the British Consulate, the Turkish, and the Russian; then past the French and Datoh Consulates, amieably conjoined; past the Imamzada Mosque, conspicuous on its little hill, and came at last, with the two parts of our coach still wonderfully undivorced, to the British Residency. The country on each side of the road was already, by the end of May, a brown desert. The orops, green six weeks earlier, were all harvested, and nothing but very improbably-exist was now alive but a few late trees, blossoming in feverish haste before the rapidly advancing summer should overtake and shrivel them; casting the flowers and leaves of to-day, to-morrow into its oven. some unknown crack, or even some bay; and as the water was deep, the coast could be approached sufficiently closely to investigate it comfortably and with certainty. To the British eye, acousThe Residency is an immense tomed to a cool grey heaven building, all pillars and roof, and a green and fruitful earth, like a vast hay-barn. The the view of the naked ribs of rooms in it are merely spaces the brown mountains, roastsoreened off amidst the pillars ing under the furious furnace and made mosquito-proof. Its of the Persian sky, raised an coolness and amplitude were unceasing pity for those conabsolute heaven, by contrast demned to live in this Earthly with the oramped, sweat- Hell. There seemed to be box cabins of a ship,-even quite -even quite a large number of of a ship expressly designed such unfortunates. Everyfor hot weather, such as the Sphinx. It takes a sailor really to appreciate the "blessings of the land," for the enjoyment of which he prays daily; and seldom have I been so truly where along the dismal coastline, village succeeded village, tiny, ancient, fringed with date-palms, and surmounted, usually, by towers of strength against the enemy, whether sea-pirate or robber of the mountains. Desert lay be- The date-palms, the only livtween each place of settled abode; desert mountains, of drear and monstrous outline, lay behind them; the green desert of the sea mourned in front of them, whitening as it broke over nameless rock and shoal. The most ambitious Power could not but pause before committing its fortunes and its children to the arms of this Moloch land, to wither miserably in the brazen heat of its arid wastes. Our first stopping - place, ninety miles southward from Bushire, was named Ras-alMutaf. There is here a flat point of land, with its end ourving round in a long sandy shoal, between which and the shore there is a space of moderately protected water. Here we anchored, with the double intention of making such survey as should show whether this uninviting anchorage, with its neighbouring village, could ever be sophistioated into a naval and commercial port; and also to clear up several doubts that existed as to its geographical position, as to the correctness of the charted soundings, and as to other reported details concerning it. Our intentions were frustrated. The long-pending Shamál came down on us, in a burst, out of the blazing north-west. A hurricane of flame, almost, is this terrible wind. As it strikes you, you seem to be passing the door of an open furnace: you gasp with heat and astonishment. It sweeps along the shore in a deep brown cloud of flying dust and grit. ing things that rejoice before it, bend, tossing their tough green fronds and load of ripening fruit. The sky and the land disappear in a hot murk; mankind, too, disappears into dug-outs in the ground, shaded by boughs, while it passes over. There is nothing hid from the heat thereof. Between the gusts you may still see the slow camels, sloping southward along the coast road, burdened, strung out, sterns to the wind, disdainful even of the Shamál, without haste, without rest. Surveying work becomes impossible. There is no sun or star visible by which to find latitude and longitude. No feature remains, whether of mountain summit or of coastal rock, that is not either blurred, or else quite invisible in the brown haze; and the fierce wind raises so big a sea, with white-crested waves, that boat-work and sounding are out of the question. For three detestable days and nights the Shamál blew fiercely, and still we watched and waited. At last, on the fourth day, it moderated sufficiently for us to decide that the place was useless as a harbour, both from its depths and from the fact that there was no protection from the wind. June had opened upon us when we continued the "running survey" to the southward. It is not possible to describe the method by which such a survey is made, without becoming either unintelligible or else desperately boring. The underlying principle is a simple one-the results produced are a mere pioneering sketch; but, for all that, in practice, it is certainly the most difficult method that exists for the charting of a ceast; and it needs long experience to produce good results. When one has five or six assistants, all experts, as in a regularly commissioned surveying vessel, it is, even then, work requiring the closest care and application, and is a most exhausting performance for everybody concerned. A single day of it reduces body, brains, and eyes to the merest pulp. At a distance of seventeen years, it still requires no reminder from my journal of that running survey of the Persian coast to bring back to me the aching memory of the task. Instead of six skilled assistants, I had bat two-the captain of the Sphinx and the navigating officer-neither of whom, naturally, had ever undertaken anything of the sort before. Fortunately, both of them turned out to be most helpful, not to say devoted. Without them, in fact, the work would have been impossible, and I should have collapsed, blinded by that blinding light, cooked in that terrifio heat, while, day after day, as we steamed past it, the austere khaki coast unfolded itself ahead endlessly, and disappeared astern. Behind us stormed the Shamál, now settled down into its usual "seventy days" of summer life, when it blows continuously, often blotting out, in a sudden whirl of dust, the "prominent object" on the coast-line, on a bearing of which I was depending to fix that part of the shore, and rendering my work of no avail. It was a most exasperating survey, but it had to be done. There was no other methed by which doubt might be set at rest regarding the possible existence of an uncharted bay or harbour along the ecast. For oneself, seeing might be believing; but, in order to persuade a doubting Admiralty who had not seen, it was necessary to produce on paper, not merely a written report stating that there was no such harbour, but also an actual plotted survey of the coast, together with the angles and observations on which it was based, to show that the truth was in you! Little-already known-harbours and tiny notches we passed, and in some we anchored and took soundings, while Kemp went ashore to pay a polite visit to the local Sheikh, as "eye-wash " against our real activities. It was one of his duties to pay such visits from time to time; and the Sheikhs, no doubt, thought this was merely one of these occasions. All of these places proved to be entirely unsuitable, either for naval purposes or for commerce. Many of them were exposed to the blistering Shamál, which, though worst in the summer, blows at intervals through nine months of the year, while others were open to the S.E. gales of the winter, or to both winds. Apart from disabilities of this nature, there was everywhere |