This book continues Monfreid's Red Sea adventures when he returns to the region after a brief period fighting in Europe. He's apparently been declared unfit for military service because of a lung problem: it's interesting that he's still able to do some terrifying long-distance swims despite this (and the malaria and Spanish 'flu that strike him down at various points in this book...).

He describes continuing his business of transporting French arms and other unspecified contraband across the Red Sea (he always denied being involved in slaving, but he seems suspiciously well-informed about the mechanics of the trade in "luxury" slaves — eunuchs and young girls — that continued well into the thirties).

We're also told about his project to build a bigger ship, including a catastrophic trip to Ethiopia to buy timber, during which he comes close to death from 'flu and one of his men is mistaken for a horse-thief and killed by a poisoned arrow. The new ship is not a success, but Monfried (literally) picks up the pieces and starts again.

However, the biggest story in this book is really the one about Monfried being caught up in the war, which — from his perspective — was essentially a conflict between Britain and France to determine who would control the oil-fields after the collapse of Ottoman power. He is arrested by the British on two occasions, both times getting away by a mixture of guile, luck, and the faithful assistance of his crew-members. When he's confined on a British warship for a few days he confesses how much more he likes the British, as individuals, than the French authorities, despite his strong resentment for the results of Britain's devious colonial policy, which hurts the local people as much as it does France. He reserves particular contempt for T E Lawrence, whom he accuses of genocide by the "classic" British method of giving guns to both sides in a regional conflict and standing back to let them wipe each other out. Still, his time in the wardroom of the destroyer must have been quite amusing to watch, given that only one of the British officers could speak French and none of them Arabic, and Monfried of course was a true Frenchman of his time without a word of English... ( )