Note 44 — Chapter IX

Judge Amos, now Judicial Adviser in Cairo, endorses the substantial truth of the report which circulated about his chess-playing at this time. A tall man with a folding pocket-chessboard and a coloured silk handkerchief containing an incomplete set of chessmen might have been observed at almost any hour of the day or night prowling the deck with a preoccupied air and seeking to lure any one into playing with him. Those who knew the moves promptly beat him; those who did not know the moves had them lucidly explained—and then beat him as promptly. He had, I believe, exhausted the 6,000 Canadian troops, the ship's company and the other members of the mission before approaching that corner of the smoking-room in which, according to the story, I was sitting with an expression of imbecility calculated to suggest that I could not play chess and would not learn. He persevered with his explanation and after five minutes challenged me to a game. I hate to record that he did not win it.