You people here in England don't know what a river is; the Thames and
Severn are only ditches, while the Humber is precious little better than
a creek of the sea. Just think of such rivers as the Amazon, and the
Plate, and the Mississippi, where you can sail up miles, and miles, and
miles, and on the two first can't make out the shore on either side;
while after a flood down comes little islands covered with trees washed
out of the banks, some with pretty little snakes on 'em twenty feet
long, p'raps, while on every flat bit of shore you see the alligators
a-lying by wholesale. Then there's them big African rivers with the
alligator's first cousins--crockydiles, you know, same as there is up in
that big river in Indy--the Ganges, as I've sailed up right through the
Sunderbunds, covered in some places with jungle, where the great striped
tigers lie, and as one o' my poor mates used to say, it's dangerous to
be safe.
I've been up to Calcutta, I have, after sailing right across the roaring
main to Adelaide, and dropping our cargo. My; how hot it is going up
that river, a regular hot stifly sort of heat, as seems to get hold of
you and say, "Hold hard, my boy, you can't work here!" and we never used
to do any more than we could help. Sailing up, day after day, we got
anchored at last up at the grand place, and I don't know which you takes
most notice of, the grandness or the misery, for there's a wonderful
sight of both.
"What's that?" I says to Bob Davies, as we was a-leaning over the side,
looking at the native boats floating here and there, and seeing how the
great muddy stream flowed swiftly down.
"That?" says Bob. "Ah, you'll see lots of that sort of thing about.
That's a corpus, that is, and that's how they buries 'em here. Waits
till a poor fellow's werry sick, and then takes and puts him at low tide
on the bottom of the steps of the landing-places,--ghauts they calls
'em, and then, if he's got strength enough in him, he crawls away, but
if he ain't, why the tide carries him off, and then he goes washing up
and down the river till Dicky Todd lays hold on him, and pulls him under
for his next meal."
"Who's Dicky Todd?" I says.
"Why," says Bob, a-chuckling, "there he goes, that's him," and then he
stood a-pinting out into the stream where there was what seemed to me to
be a bit of rough bark of a tree floating slowly down towards the sea.
"Why, that's a tree, I says, ain't it?"
"Ho! ho! ho! what ignorance," says Bob, "that's a crorkodile, or a
haligator, if you likes to call it so. Dicky Todd, that is, as don't
like his meals fresh, but keeps his game till it gets high, and then
enjoys himself with a feast."
'Nough to make one shudder that was, but it was true enough, for, before
the body I had seen floating down had gone much further, there was a bit
of a swirl in the water, and both crocodile and body disappeared, while
my face felt as if it was turning white, and I knew I felt sick.
We chaps didn't work very hard though, for there were plenty of black
fellows there, ready to do anything for you, and lots of 'em were
employed lading the ship, while we were busy touching her up, bending on
new sheets, here and there mending sails, painting and scraping, and
making right a spar or two that had sprung, for you know there's always
something amiss after a long voyage, and it's no short distance from
Liverpool to Port Adelaide, and then up to Calcutta. Rum chaps some of
those blacks was, not werry decent in their ideas of dress, and all
seeming to suffer from a famine in stockings. Precious particular too
about what they call their caste, which you know is a complaint as
exists in the old country too. Why, in our old village it was werry
bad, and was like this you know: the squire's people wouldn't mix with
the doctor's, and the doctor's wouldn't visit the maltster's, and the
maltster's didn't know the people at the shop, who didn't call on the
clerk's wife, who said her gal shouldn't go to tea at Brown's, who said
Smith's folks was low; and so on. That's caste--that is, and they has
it werry bad out in Indy. Mussulmans some on 'em, and Brahmins, and all
sorts, and lots on 'em you'll meet with a bit o' paint on their
forehead, to show what caste they belong to, I s'pose, while they're as
proud as Lucifer.
One old chap used to come to work and bring his gang with him to go on
with the lading, and one day when he came some of our fellows began to
chaff him, for he'd got his head shaved, and what for do you think, but
because he was in mourning, and had put away his wife? Not as that
seemed to me anything to go in mourning for, since some of our chaps
would have been a wonderful deal better without their wives as they left
behind in Liverpool. But this chap had divorced his wife because she
had let the child die, so he said, and there was the poor woman in
double trouble.
"S'pose she couldn't help the little 'un going," says Bob to him.
"Ah! yes, Sahib," says this old chap, Jamsy Jam, as he called himself,
"oh yes, Sahib, she let child die--mosh trouble." But I'm blest if I
don't think it was him wanted to get rid of his wife, and so made this
an excuse.
Bob Davis and me one day stood looking over the side o' the ship, same
as we often did, and he says to me, he says:--
"Last time as I was here, we was lying a hundred yards further up the
stream, and one day when I was in the bows, I could see something
hitched on to the chain as moored us to the buoy, and if it wasn't one
of them poor fellows as had come down with the stream from perhaps
hundreds of miles up the country, and there wasn't one of our chaps as
would get him off, so it came to my share to do it, and I undertook it
out of a bit of bounce because the others wouldn't, for I felt proper
scared and frightened over it. They often gets hitched in the mooring
chains of ships, and p'raps we shall come in for one before we goes."
About an hour after I goes and looks down at the chain, when if I didn't
turn all shivering, for there was something dusky hitched on sure
enough, and I ran and called Bob Davis up to have a look, and see if it
wasn't what he'd been a talking about.
"So it is," he says; and he went and told the captain and mate, and they
came and had a look, when the dinghy was ordered down, and Bob and me in
her, to set the body free.
Now I didn't like the job a bit, and I pulled a long face at Bob, just
same time as he was pulling a long face at me; but our captain was a man
who would stand no nonsense, so we were soon down in the boat, and I put
her along the side, while Bob got hold of the boat-hook, and reached out
at the body.
But it warn't a body of a poor black at all, but a god as was dressed
up, and had been sent sailing down from one of their grand feasts
somewhere up the river, one of those set-outs where there's so much
dancing and beating of tom-toms and singing in their benighted,
un-Christian-like, dreary fashion, all Ea-la-ba-sha-la-ma-ca-la-fa; for
it sounds like nothing else to a sailor chap as don't understand
Hindostanee.
Well, we brings this great idol on board, and the captain has it dried
and stood on deck; but I'm blest if the black chaps didn't all turn
huffy about it, and kicked up a shine, and then took and went off,
leaving all their work. They came back, though, next morning reg'lar as
could be, and I says to Bob Davis, "Bob," I says, "that's just for all
the world like coves at home: cuts off in a passion, and then comes back
when they're cool again."
"Ah," says Bob, with a bit of a chuckle; "p'raps it is, but not quite;
for they was afraid to work with one o' their gods a-looking at 'em."
"Then what made 'em come back now?" I say.
"Because he's gone again bobbing about among the Dicky Todds and
corpuses; and it's my belief," he says, "that our watch didn't keep much
of a look-out, or they'd have seen some of the swarthy beggars come
aboard and heave it overboard, for it's gone sure enough."
Gone it was, and no mistake; and I suppose Bob must have been right;
and, though the cap went on a good 'un about losing his curiosity, it
warn't no good at all.
"Some of you knows something of it," says the cap to old Jam, as we
called him for short.
"Captain Sahib no got god of his own at home that he want black
fellow's," says old Jam very grandly, but making a great salaam a'most
down to the deck.
But the cap only grumbled out something, and went off, for he didn't
want to offend the men.
One day we had a sad upset--one as gave our chaps the horrors, and made
them restless to get out of the place, and worse, for after that the men
were always looking out for the crocodiles, and bodies, and things that
came down the great stream, while now everything they saw floating, if
it was only a lump of rotten rushes or a bit of tree-trunk, got to be
called something horrid. Then the chaps got tired of its being so hot,
and discontented at having not enough to do, I s'pose, for a ship's crew
never seems so happy as when the men are full swing an' at the work.
Well, it so happened that in two places the cap had had little swing
stages slung over the side for the men who were touching up the ship's
ribs with a new streak of paint; and there the chaps were dabbing away
very coolly as to the way they worked, but very hotly as to the weather,
for the sun comes down there a scorcher when there's no breeze on. I
was very busy myself trying to find a cool place somewhere; and not
getting it, when the man over the bulwarks gives a hail, and I goes to
see what he wanted, which it was more paint, because he didn't want to
come up the side, and get it himself. So I takes the pot from him, and
gets it half filled with colour, and goes back to the side all on the
dawdle-and-crawl system just like the other chaps on deck.
"Now then," I says, "lay hold;" but my gentleman didn't move, for there
he was, squatted down and smoking his pipe; when, finding it comforting,
he wouldn't move.
"I say," he says, looking up, "just see if them lashings is all right;
for, if I was to go down here, it's my idee as I shouldn't come up again
for the crockydiles, and I don't kear about giving up the number of my
mess jest yet; so look out."
"Well, lay hold of this pot," says I, reaching down to him as far as I
could.
"Wait a minute," he says, when he began to groan himself up, and next
moment he would have reached what I was holding to him, when I heard
something give, a sort of crack; then there was a shriek and a loud
splash, and I saw the poor fellow's horror-stricken face for an instant
as he disappeared beneath the water.
"Man overboard!" I shouted, dropping the paint, and running to the rope
which held the dinghy; when sliding down I was in her in a moment, and
shoving along towards where the poor chap went down. First I looked one
way, then another, and kept paddling about expecting that I should see
his head come up, while now at the sides half the crew were looking
over, for they had forgotten all about feeling tired or lazy in their
anxiety to be of use.
"There, look out," cried Bob Davis; "he'll come up there where that eddy
is, and then I watched there and leaned over the sides ready to catch
hold of the poor chap when he came up."
"Let her float down with the stream," shouted the captain, excitedly;
"he must come to the top directly," and so I let her float down;
kneeling there as I did, ready to snatch at anything which appeared.
The river was running down muddy and strong, so that you could see
nothing but the swirling about of the current, as it came rushing round
by the ships and boats moored there, and I began to think that the poor
fellow would soon be sucked under one of the big hulls, when it seemed
to me that there was more swirling and rushing about of the water than
usual, for my little boat began to rock a little and some bubbles of air
came rising up and floating atop of the water.
Here he is now, I thinks, getting hold of the boat-hook, and holding it
just a little in the water, when all at once I turned quite sick and
queer, for there was a great patchy stream of blood came up, and floated
on the surface, slowly spreading out, and floating down the stream, when
in a sort of mad fit I made a thrust down as far as I could reach with
the hook to bring something up, and sure enough I caught against
something, but the next moment there was a snatch and a jerk, and I had
to let go of the hook, to save being pulled overboard, when I clung
shuddering to the thwarts, and saw the long shaft disappear under water.
The chaps on board our ship roused me up, or I think I should have
turned quite dizzy, and rolled out of the boat; but now I jumped up, and
setting an oar out of the stern, paddled a little further down, trying
hard to make myself believe that the poor chap would come up again. But
no, nothing more was seen of him but the bubbles on the top of the
water, and that horrid red patch which came directly after.
I paddled here and paddled there, trembling all over the whole time, but
it was of no use, and at last when I was some distance off, and they
began shouting for me, I put out both sculls, and rowed back, when mine
wasn't the only pale, sickly looking face aboard, for there were the men
talking in whispers, and the other chap that had been painting came off
of his stage, while if the captain had persisted in trying to get that
bit of painting finished, I believe the men would have all mutinied and
left the ship. But he didn't, for though he couldn't have liked to see
the ship half done, he said nothing about it, for there was no one to
blame, since that poor lost man rigged up his own stage; and all the
rest of the time as we stopped there in the Hooghly--Ugly as we calls
it--the cap and the mate used to spend hours every day practising rifle
shooting at the crocodiles, as must have been the end of my poor
ship-mate.