THE VOYAGE--(_Continued_)
Among the passengers on board, there were several newly-married
couples, and their behaviour was sometimes rather interesting. Of all
places to spend a honeymoon, I can conceive none more discouraging
than the sea. We all know that some of the gilt must come off the
gingerbread sooner or later, but there are many ways of removing it,
and it is just as well to take care that the more solid material
beneath it is not injured during the process.
It would be interesting to a psychologist who was also a good sailor,
to study the appalling effects of sea-sickness upon the soul, no less
remarkable in the case of a subject who does not actually suffer, but
is merely compelled to witness the misery of others. Cervantes, we are
told, smiled away the chivalry of Spain. Fortunate for Spain that he
did so. Had he lived in an age when globe-trotting and going down to
the sea in ships was as fashionable as it is now, he would have been
spared the effort of smiling. All the finer feelings of human nature
are more or less in abeyance during the reign of sea-sickness, but when
it has passed off, they, most of them, readily reassert their sway.
Not so with the feeling which we term chivalry, now rapidly becoming
an obsolete word in these days of social progress. Its loss is the
less felt, since its place has been supplied by coxcombry, a feeling
more nearly allied to chivalry than might at first be imagined. Both
have a common end in view, which is to please. But there is this
distinction, that whereas chivalry arises from a man’s exalted ideas
of the intrinsic perfections of the opposite sex, coxcombry originates
in an exaggerated notion of the perfections of his own. Chivalry,
however, cannot exist without a profound and sincere respect for woman;
and when that is once destroyed, or even severely shaken, chivalry
receives its deathblow. Sea-sickness is, of all iconoclasts, the most
terrible, and before its fell advances chivalry withers more quickly
and more surely than ever it did before the smile of Cervantes, and
it withers to anything but the tune of a smile. If it were only for
this reason alone, life at sea would present matrimony under the most
unfavourable aspect it is possible to imagine. Can anything be more
terrible than to watch a countenance in which you take the deepest
interest, transfigured by sea-sickness into the ghastly semblance of
a frost-bitten turnip, and every atom of self-respect crushed by this
most levelling malady.
But there are other annoyances besides. Careful and comparative
observation leads me to believe that a woman whose digestive organs
have so far rallied from sea-sickness as to allow her to eat, but
whose appearance still forbids her to leave her cabin, is the
most transcendently selfish of all God’s creatures. Under such
circumstances I have seen offices of vicarious selfishness thrust
upon the unfortunate husband, which the veriest egotist would shrink
from negotiating for himself. He is expected to secure the undivided
attention of the doctor, the purser, all the stewardesses, and half of
the stewards, regardless of how many other passengers there may happen
to be in exactly the same, or in a worse, predicament than his wife.
He is further expected to ascertain from the captain (at intervals
varying from five to fifteen minutes, according to the severity of
the weather), the exact position of the ship, the amount of present
danger, the prospect of fine weather, and the precise moment when the
destination will be reached--distant, possibly, some two or three
thousand miles. Most likely he will be sent to ask the quartermaster to
prevent the crew from walking about overhead, and to induce the officer
of the watch to moderate the noise made by the creaking of the ship’s
timbers and the working of the donkey-engine. Occasionally I have seen
even severer tests applied to the devotion of man, but these have been
amongst people who have been some time married. One day the vessel
was rolling rather heavily, and though most of the passengers had got
their sea-legs, some few remained below. Among the latter was the wife
of a man whom I noticed staggering up the companion one morning, with
the watery eye and uncertain gait of one just recovering from violent
sickness. He reached the deck safely, however, and with a considerable
slue to port, brought himself up in a deck-chair. I saw him scatter a
glance round, possibly to discover the whereabouts of his better half.
Finding himself quite alone, his eye brightened, and he blew his nose
in that triumphant manner which a man never adopts except when he is
quite at ease. He even pulled out his cigar-case and looked at it,
but discretion overcame valour, and he put it back in his pocket, and
prepared for perfect repose. He was not destined to enjoy it long.
In a few minutes a whey-faced domestic appeared at the door of the
companion, shepherding two of the most disagreeable-looking children
I ever saw. They had faces like badly-baked buns, and were dressed as
outrageously as only the offspring of British parents of a certain
class ever are. Their legs and feet were like hockey-sticks, and looked
so utterly incapable of supporting the distended waistcoats above them,
that their prudent mother had attached a long red ribbon to each of
their arms, to act as a sort of reins. These were now entrusted to the
hands of paterfamilias, with instructions to drive his progeny up and
down the deck for exercise. Of course he did so, and very ridiculous he
looked; but there was a pathetic side to the picture as well. In his
eye there was a piteous glance of retrospection, which seemed to recall
the time when he could take his ease or his exercise, as the spirit
moved him, without being required to make a greater fool of himself
than Nature intended him to be.
Eight days after leaving Aden we got to Galle, and a greater contrast
than the two places it would be difficult to find. At Aden, all the
inhabitants who can afford the luxury drive out daily a distance of
four miles to refresh their weary eyes with the sight of the Botanical
Gardens, which consist of six weak-looking trees and twelve blades of
grass in a flower-pot. But at Galle the sight is over-powered by the
extraordinary luxuriance of the vegetation, and the variety of shades
of green displayed among the trees and bushes. Round the edges, of
course, there is a decided preponderance of cocoa-nut trees, but a
little distance from the shore the crowded way in which all sorts of
trees and creepers are arranged is quite bewildering. There is a sort
of show place, called Wak-Walleh, a few miles from Galle, to which
everyone rushes directly they land, to get a view of the island. It is
needless to say that there is a public-house and a tea-garden there;
and as you approach it, the “spoor” of the British tourist, in the
shape of orange-peel and beer-bottles, is very strongly marked. The
view is glorious. A broad valley of green paddy-fields, fringed on
each side with densely-wooded hills, lies stretched out below. It is
mapped out almost into islands, so winding is the course of the river
which runs through it, its waters shining like silver in the sunlight.
In the distance rises the bold outline of Adam’s Peak, supported by
numerous other mountains of lesser pretensions. In the foreground are
several marble tables with iron legs, chairs to match, and a party
of tourists. Partly disguised by pith helmets and white trousers,
nevertheless these last remind one forcibly of Greenwich Fair. They
are shouting--positively shouting--and laughing in that aggressive way
that only a Briton out for a holiday is master of. Several of them are
drinking beer and throwing sticks at cocoa-nuts; and one or two, more
utterly degraded than the rest, pick up little pieces of stone to carry
away as relics of Wak-Walleh. The native jewellers do a very healthy
trade in counterfeit stones, manufactured at Birmingham expressly for
exportation to Ceylon. Sapphires are the favourite importations offered
to the verdant traveller. I saw one man beautifully let in. He was
offered a sapphire about the size of a small tea-cup, of a brilliant
hue that would have shamed the waters of the Mediterranean. Two hundred
pounds was the price demanded for this startling gem. The traveller
to whom it was offered had heard something of the dishonest practices
of the jewellers of Galle, and was anxious to display his capacity
for dealing. He winked at an admiring crowd of fellow-passengers,
and offered the man three pounds. Much to his disgust, the native
instantly closed with his offer, and, securing the coins, left the
ship with all possible speed. Of course the sapphire was glass, and,
with the setting, might have been worth half-a-crown. There are some
real sapphires but no very good ones to be had, as all that are worth
anything go direct to the London market.
Five days after leaving Galle we got to Singapore, and had to wait
there a week, which was a nuisance, as there is only one hotel in
the place fit to live in, and even that one is certainly one of the
vilest in the world. The food is simply filthy, and not much of it,
the attendance wretched, and the manager gratuitously insulting to
everyone. While I was there he was knocked down and shut up in his own
coal-cellar by a resident in the town, to whom he had been impertinent,
to the intense delight of everyone else in the place.
Singapore itself is a lovely place, with rather a disagreeable
climate. The thermometer never varies above a few degrees, and stands
at about 85° day and night, all the year round. The wealthier class
of inhabitants live in bungalows scattered about over the ridges in
the neighbourhood of the town, most of them surrounded by beautiful
gardens. They all seem utterly depressed by the enervating climate, and
do not aspire to any higher interest in life than a generous rivalry
in the concoction of marvellous curries. An old resident of Singapore
takes as much interest and pride in his curries as an Englishman does
in his racehorses or his hunters, and he always speaks of a rival
connoisseur with deep feeling and respect. Both men and women look very
faded and washed-out, and the only colour in their faces is yellow from
a prolonged course of curry. I used to walk all round the place for
miles every day, in the heat of the day, and never felt anything but
better for it. Nothing will induce Indians to expose themselves to the
sun, for fear of sunstroke, and nothing makes them so angry as to be
told that if they drank less, led a more healthy life, and took more
exercise, they would be able to stand the sun with impunity. And yet
it is the case. Of course, a man who lies on his back drinking brandy
and beer half the day, sleeps the other half, and sits up most of the
night, cannot safely expose himself to the full power of an Indian sun
without risk. There is something peculiarly treacherous in the sun all
over India and the East Indies, but the medical profession know that
nine-tenths of the cases of sunstroke that occur are the result of
drink.
The only residents I ever saw, either in India, Ceylon, or Singapore,
who enjoyed perfect health, and had not the slightest fear of
exposing themselves to the sun, were invariably men who led most
temperate lives, and who were out of doors all day long. In the bush
of Australia, where men work all day long under a vertical sun, with
little covering on their heads, sunstroke is absolutely unknown. But in
the towns, where they drink all day, and take no exercise, it is not an
uncommon thing at all for a man to be knocked over by the sun just in
crossing the street.
A week’s loafing around Singapore produced a wild longing to leave it,
but I must say I was not exhilarated by the sight of the boat that
was to carry me to Australia. She was called the _Somerset_, and was
the property of the Eastern and Australian Company, and was about as
depressing an old tub as I ever travelled in. In the best of weather
she was not good for more than eight knots, and if it came on to blow
ahead she went astern. The captain was in every respect worthy of the
ship he commanded. He spent most of his time sulking in his cabin,
and the remainder in entertaining the passengers with most gloomy
forebodings. Three days after leaving Singapore the weather got very
squally, and the rain came down in such torrents that, when standing
on the bridge, it was sometimes impossible to see the foremast. After
dark it grew worse, and the captain, who had been blowing an infernal
fog-whistle at intervals of five minutes all through the day, informed
the passengers that he had no idea where he was, but about three in the
morning he ought to go through a winding passage two miles long and
three-quarters of a mile wide, between two sunken reefs. After which,
he turned the fog-whistle permanently on, and retired into his cabin.
Anything like the horrors of that voyage I never remember. The smell
of bilge-water and cockroaches in the saloon was so overpowering that
it was almost impossible to stay down long enough to swallow a meal.
There were 320 Chinese emigrants forward, who not only smelt horribly
themselves, but spent their whole time in cooking nauseous oily messes,
the stench from which was wafted aft in a continuous stream from one
day’s end to another. For days at a time there was not a breath of air,
and the heat was so intense that the pitch used to melt and bubble up
in the seams of the deck. I used to lie on deck all day and smoke,
with a saucer of chloride of lime under my nose as a disinfectant. It
was beginning to make the whole crowd of us quite ill. The captain,
the officers, and, I believe every one in the ship except myself, took
to being sick as violently as if they had never been to sea before.
Fortunately, when we got to the Arafura Sea we dropped in for a gale
of wind. This, as Robinson Crusoe observed, was an amusement the other
way. It delayed us three days, but I have not a doubt it saved some of
our lives. In the middle of the night, when the gale was at its height,
the boiler of the old _Somerset_ burst. The manhole plate flew clean
off, and every particle of steam, of course, escaped. It took seventeen
hours to repair it, during which time we lay like a log in the trough
of the sea, with the waves breaking over us fore and aft. It cleaned us
a little, though, which was very healthy.
Two nights afterwards we ran down a native boat, and drowned everyone
in it. How many men there were in her I do not know, but we never
picked up one. The next day we lost a man overboard ourselves. He was
on the jibboom, where he had no business to have been sent, as there
was a heavy sea on at the time. The old _Somerset_ put her nose right
into a wave, and, of course, the man was washed away. In spite of the
sea that was running, he swam like a duck for about twenty minutes,
during which time the captain was busily engaged in turning his old
craft round to pick him up. I believe naval authorities are divided
as to the advisability of going astern or turning the ship round to
pick up a man overboard; but in the case of the _Somerset_ I should
certainly have preferred the former process, as she had at all times a
natural inclination to go astern instead of ahead. However, the captain
turned round, and I thought we should have got the poor fellow on
board again all right. He was swimming beautifully, keeping his head
and shoulders right out of the water, when suddenly he threw up his
arms, rose half out of the water, and then sank like a stone. I expect
a shark must have got him, as one had been prowling after us for some
time. This incident brought the captain’s ill-humour to a climax, and
next day, when he found me throwing little pieces of stick over the
side to see which way the vessel was going, he became quite uncivil.