I have twice visited Patras and was pleased when I
heard its awkward little name creep into the news bulletins. The first time I lay awake all night being devoured by vermin ; the second time I was ship-wrecked. On rounding Cape Araxos the steamer in which I was travelling in the company of several hundred British citizens failed to get round. We stuck there on a sandbank throughout the whole of a beautiful spring day and the whole of a warm spring night. I was on my way, under the aegis of the Hellenic Travellers,
from Olympia to Delphi ; it was the happiest Kraft dutch Freude cruise in which one could indulge. And then upon the sands of Elis we were wrecked. It is, I am assured, customary on such occasions to ease the head of the ship by shifting cargo from prow to stern ; yet the only cargo which our ship carried was a cargo of Hellenic Travellers. We were thus informed through loud-speakers that it was necessary for all passengers to gather in the rear of the vessel, where they would receive further instructions. The elderly intellectuals, the spinsters, the dons, the clergymen, the schoolmasters and the schoolboys abandoned their deck-chairs and gathered together in a solid British mass. The sea was so calm, the sun so warm, the coast so near, that anxiety was not apparent. " I shall say ' One, two, Three, Go! ' " bellowed the captain through the microphone, " and when I reach the world ` Go! ' all passengers will please jump." There were a few titters and an anxious pause. And then, at the word " Go! " the Hellenic Travellers bent their young or elderly knees and jumped in unison. Four times did we repeat this Basuto war dance, but the vessel remained unmoved upon the sands of Elis. And in the end the captain was obliged to summon salvage tugs from the Piraeus and Palermo and eventually we were tugged to Patras. Achaean divers descended to examine the keel of our vessel,
and on we went next day to Delphi. * *
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