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The Third Son of a Duke

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We pass through Naples, go to visit a museum where Margaret, one of the group, manages to take our protagonist aside for a conversation, the passengers see Mt Vesuvius spewing a little smoke and ash as they enter the harbour, see a few warships, then move on to Toulon, where there are warships.

There’s a dance, and it seems everyone is accomplished to a degree, that old 18th-century notions that women can play the piano, dance at balls, and sit around doing needlepoint hang in the air as pre-requisites for a good wife.

Until the modern dances come out and change the atmosphere.  Am I trying too hard to transition the world into a different one, from old ideas to a new world?

There is a war hanging over everything as it is early 1914, and signs of it are everywhere.

Port Said, the entrance to the Suez Canal, and the start of the hot weather.  Going ashore is for getting hot-weather clothes.  Until they leave Colombo in Ceylon, it’s going to be hot and steamy, where staying in cabins overnight is going to be difficult, and passengers find their way to the decks to spend the night in the cool air.

It’s slow going down the Canal until they get to Suez to take on a pilot to navigate the Red Sea.  A few days before passing through the Gulf of Aden, this time not stopping in Aden for coal and onwards to Colombo.

I will throw in a dining engagement with the captain in first class, just to have some fun with the people out protagonist would usually be travelling with, but hates to be associated with. 

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2110 words, for a total of 17490 words.