,=^Zi)^rti^ru^ c7L/.c^''^L/:>'/^J^y OC^^AAe leri^ . C^^t^r-j4^/u 4:J^ '^^i^ AMATEURS. 163 European ^' tops " garnished his knees, immaculate cords sat in folds around the cantle of his hunting saddle, and the lappels of his " cut-away " met through the instrumentality of a single button of sporting device. A silver-wired Malacca cane rested beneath his arm, the snake-like thong knowingly gathered up and twisted round his wrist. Altered as much in manner as in dress and equipment, the listless fatigue and essence of refinement were scattered by the air from the Hooghly. In morning garb, and bestriding a chesnut worth a thousand rupees, he was just casting up hastily the odds on " Plenipo," for he was a sterling business man. The staring lady stared from the back of a gulf- Arab; her complexion had been washed off, and the sun was up — a very prying fellow in Calcutta. Close by was a Brahmini cow, and a buffalo of domestic breed, and on the back of each a Calcutta crow was perched ; a quaint bird, keeping himself so spruce that no one could suspect him of bad habits — yet his brother was dropping down the river on the floating body of a Hindoo. This bird, you will observe, trims his feathers as feathers ought to be, which are glossy and thriving even upon gross feeding. A Calcutta crow has much wit in him, and can often raise a laugh in lookers-on. He breaks his fast at the " Kali ghaut," then hies to the back of a buffalo, and perching himself between the horns, he looks down towards the nose, as if inquiring for the bovine health; peers into one ear, then into another, as if expecting to find something there — which he often does. He then traverses the back-bone, as if on a metrical survey; and, ultimately, does not forget to examine minutely the way in which a buffalo's tail is set on. Then, rejoicing that all is as it should be. 164 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. he descends the caudine member, hand over hand, like a thorough-bred tar. There is something in the Calcutta crow beyond feathers ; I am quite convinced of that, after some experience and much observation of the bird. 165 CHAPTER XIV. TKICKS AND TIGEES. I WAS one morning in '^ General Orders " to proceed to the station of Dacca, to the eastward of the Ganges^ and only come-at-able by a fourteen days' solitude in the Sunderbunds. I had three days^ fever in every ten ; that is, fever every third day — a condition not likely to induce plethora except in respect to the spleen, which sometimes becomes so at the expense of the other organs. I had no sooner read this order, than I hastened off to bespeak the influence of a gentleman who had some- thing to say in this and similar arrangements. I had much ado in ferreting out his abode, and when it was pointed out to me I doubted my informant, for the gaunt building that had not seen whitewash for many years, and the Venetians of which had been as badly used in respect of green paint, ill accorded with my notions of a becoming residence. I reconnoitred, there- fore, before advancing into an unknown country. The " compound " or inclosure was grown up with strong grass, except a circular exercising path for horses, which 166 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. was well beaten down. I could have guessed the whole fabric was tenantless, but for the fact that eight or ten native grooms were about, and a very smart European in top-boots and waistcoat of red and white stripes, bore upon his face the words, ^' I am quite a gentleman here, and won't work." I ventured to ask this smart gentleman of no work if Mr. So-and-So lived in the neighbourhood. Without answering, he looked over his left shoulder towards the doorway; and taking this for an affirmative to my question I drew towards it, wondering that the unpainted Venetians were deficient in number, and that on entering the doorway I had entered a stable, with ten thorough-bred racers in as many stalls. A " bearer " or body-servant was squatted within it, nodding from want of occupation ; and, on touching his shoulder, he informed me that the gentleman I sought was " ooper," or above, and he forthwith rushed up a trap-stair in the corner of the stable. I followed him to the upper apartments, the air with every step becoming more ammoniacal, and at length I reached a large apartment in which beds, tables, chairs, book- shelves, and veterinary apparatus lay in admired confu- sion. From another apartment the gentleman I had come to see entered. He was a tall spare man of hard visage, with a few straggling white locks about the temples. Somewhat morose in manner, with a very grave countenance, he listened to my application ; he then knit his brows, and, as I thought, was preparing for a thorough onslaught on my feelings. At length he said, " Well, you do not look very robust, but I see no reason why you should not recover to the east- wardo" It would have been folly to say another word ; I bowed myself out, my heart overflowing with zeal for TRICKS AND TIGERS. 167 the service in general, and affection for the old gentle- man in particular. He was a perfect icicle ; but it was not all loss, for he cooled me down in a climate where ice sold for a shilling a pound in those days. With such a prospect, I thoug^ht it wise to settle a few trifling matters. The days had passed when the pagoda-tree bore for medical men blossoms which ripened into fruit : such buds matured slowly, and here and there a very rotten branch might be met with. A few stray berries had occasionally accumu- lated with me at the fag-ends of months. At first I thought little of them, they were so miserable, but insensibly they filled a bag or two, and ultimately became inconvenient in my own hands. I looked out for an investment. I well remember the circumstances connected with my first interview with Mr. Soaphimwell Planter, of Soaphimwell Planter and Co. He sat at a business table groaning under red-taped bundles. A lengthened residence in the climate of Calcutta had nearly equal- ised the white of his countenance and his jacket. The cuticle of the former never perspired — it had relin- quished that function years ago, and mosquitoes never hazarded footing upon it. Why it was so, I cannot say ; but as the apartment was in the heart of the business part of the city, and swarmed with them, the exception had its advantages no doubt ; for he was quite intact, whilst I kept patting my forehead and my hands ; somehow they never troubled Mr, Soaphimwell Planter. An expression of severity at times came over his counte- nance, and his eyes were peculiarly penetrating, but when he spoke, his voice did not correspond thereto, for it was mild and musical. I stated my business. " Mr. Walford, there never was a time in which greater caution was required in monetary transactions." 168 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. I bowed to Mr. Soaphlmwell Planter's superior judg- ment on these matters. "It is difficult to make money now-a-days, Mr. Walford : but great as that diflSculty is, it is nothing to the difficulty of keeping it. Mr. Flashington Fagge, of the firm, Mr. Walford." And a gentleman also universally white except the vest, which was of silk velvet of an elaborate pattern, and having too much of a fancy-ball effect for half an hour ante-meridian, entered, with much ease to himself and without any sense of intrusion ; for he was of the firm, and junior partner. The waistcoat did not make a great impression upon me. I knew that mercantile gen- tlemen and civilians had a weakness in the way of waist- coats, an honourable exception to which rule was Mr. Soaphimwell Planter, who adhered to longcloth ; it was a firmness on his part which increased my confidence; indeed, little as it was, it was money to the possessor. Time, I have ever considered as money to all who earn their own bread, so I continued my visit no longer than absolutely necessary to get his advice on the investment of a few thousands, not of pounds, but of rupees only. " Mr. Walford, the best thing going is the ^ Lion and the Unicorn Copper -into -Gold -metamorphosing Company and Transmogrifying Association : ' allow me to buy in for you, if I can get a chance of pur- chasing at one-thirty : only look at the names on the direction as a guarantee to the public ?' I bowed and left myself entirely in Mr. Soaphim- well Planter's hands, who most politely accompanied me two steps and a half towards the door, the mosqui- toes judiciously making way for him. A couple of days afterwards, Mr. Flashington Fagge did me the honour of calling at my quarters. He mounted a black frock besilked about the collars, an article of TRICKS AND TIGERS. 169 costume in high fashion, despite the thermometer; white pantaloons, white silk stockings, and pumps, cruelly circumscribed in toe accommodation. He was the ^' entertaining partner " of the firm, taking upon himself the hospitality department of the concern — a position bearing some analogy to a master of the cere- monies in a semi-private sense. I thought I had seen him before, and at last remembered him as the owner of the bright cab with the fifteen -mile -an -hour mare. Mr. Fagge staid a minute exactly, and as he left, he begged to assure me that there was always a cover placed for me at his table^at 7 p.m., whenever I was at the Presidency. A few evenings subsequently, I bethought me of Mr. Fagge^s invitation, and rather as a study of human nature than of gastronomy, I popped in just as the bright cab with the fifteen-mile-an-hour dark brown mare was being led from the door. " Ah, Walford ! very glad to see you. Having found your way here I hope you won't forget it. Allow me, Mr. Walford ! Colonel Crickett, Mr. Fitzflint of the Light Infantry, Buggins of the Cavalry, and Mr. Joce- lyn Scragge of the Civil Service : probably you know one or more of them already." I had seen the latter, but under trying circumstances; so I refrained from reminding him, which, had I been a friend, I certainly might have done. ^^ Oh ! by-the-by, Walford, Planter of ours made a good plant for you this morning. What do you think ? *^ Lions and Unicorns," one-twenty-five ; five under the figure he promised you ! isn't that doing business ?'' I thought so too, but somehow I did not feel quite so elated as perhaps I ought to have done. Never- theless, the claret was unexceptionable, and Crickett, I 170 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. Fitzflint, Buggins, and Scragge, did no small justice to it : they had gone through a seasoning process. I was certainly struck with the general turn-out of Mr. Flashington Fagge's dinner -table^ which groaned under a service of plate such as I have seldom seen, not even at the table of my noble friend Lord Patronage, with whom I have on more than one occasion dined. " I think you occupy quarters in my range," said Mr. Fitzflint of the Light Infantry. " Perhaps I do : I was not aware of it : I am in the South Barracks." " Grilling hot place, don't you think ? just a sheet of brown paper between it and a certain place a little hotter still." '^ Really I am no great judge, but after a small expe- rience in Burmah, and a trifle of transport work, I rather take to it. I'm not particular by any means." " Well ! I do nothing but steam and smoke. Pm a steamer in every respect ! I shall rouse you out to- morrow." Such was the style and tenor of Mr. Fitzflint's conver- sation, who sat next me, nor for that matter was it much inferior to that of Mr. Fagge^s other guests. Altogether, it could not be considered of the very highest order of intellectual recreation. I did not therefore take notes of it next day ; but the evening added to my list of personal friends, Mr. Fitzflint of the Light Infantry, on leave at the Presidency, and resident in the South Barracks. I called on Mr. Fitzflint the next day, and found him only three rooms off. He was lying upon his back smoking, and just as I entered, he called out : " Qui hie ? (who's there ?) Where is my tiger ?" TRICKS AND TIGERS. 171 After the usual salutations had been gone through, he called out again: ^^ Qui hie ? Where is my tiger ? " A small boy, of European extraction, was introduced by the '^ bearer " or body-servant in waiting, with the air that one would assume if producing a great rarity for inspection. " Excuse me, Mr. Walford, for transacting business before you ; but this is of some consequence : 1 am fit- ting up a tiger." " Pray go on ! I would not interrupt you on any account : I have a great opinion of tigers — what breed is yours of ? I take some interest in points of natural history, inclusive of tigers." " Well, my man, who is your father ?" (interrogating the small boy.) '' Got no father, sir ! " ^' You had one, I suppose : most people have," con- tinued Mr. Fitzflint. " Yes, sir : so mother says, sir. No. 98 of the 3rd Company, sir. Spike, sir, was his name. Mother mar- ried again, sir — that is, sir, three times, or maybe four since father died, sir; and I sometimes forget, sir, which of mother's husbands was my father, sir ; for mother, sir, was married twice before she married father, sir ! " " Well ! that's coming it rather strong in the matri- monial line. Has your mother any engagements in that way still to come off. Master Spike ?" *^ Yes, sir ; three deep, sir. Serjeant Gary, sir, and Lance-Gorporal O'Shaughnessy, sir, and the Fife- Major, sir !" " Eeep a good tally. Master Spike, or you may lose your reckoning ; but '' Spike " is a smart name, and may be worth four rupees a-month." I 2 172 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. ^^ So mother says, sir ; and that it's all the estate father left, sir ; and not to squander it, sir ; for it^s all I have to liv^ upon, sir." " Well, Spike, I engage you at four rupees." '' Thank you kindly, sir." {Exit Spike.) Mr. Fitzflint had some peculiarities, some of which were suited, and some not suited, to the light infantry. He was a more shrewd person than he at first seemed to be, and was up to innumerable small things quite unknown to common every-day men of his grade. These were suited to the light infantry ; but he was very indolent, and, as he himself said, was " a steamer ; and smoked and steamed all day." He consequently passed a large portion of his time upon his back, looking up towards the ceiling : these were not suited to the light infantry. " I say, Fitzflint," said a subaltern friend, suddenly breaking into the room, and quite at home in doing so, " would you have any objection to part w^ith that round shot at the foot of your stretcher ?" And whilst waiting for an answer, he commenced whistling the most monotonous combination of notes, which he called a tune. ^' Couldn't, couldn't, my dear fellow, upon any account ; that round shot saves me keeping a * bearer.' Perhaps you didn't know it; but just look here." And without moving from his favourite position, he slipped his right arm over the side of the bedstead, and touched the shot, as if accustomed to it; then swinging his shot-loaded hand several times to and fro, as if gathering impetus, he said : ^' When my bearer is out of the way, which he often is, and when any visitor like you comes in suddenly and forgets to shut the door after him, as you have just done, instead of uncivilly intimating the omission, I just do so " TRICKS AND TIGERS. 173 As the word ^^ so ^^ was uttered, and prolonged some- what emphatically, the shot left Mr. Fitzflint's right hand, and rolled on towards the door, which was ajar, and effectually closed it with something of a snap. ^^My dozen of claret is gone," said the intruder; " you are really a close-fisted fellow, Fitzflint." There was a tittering outside the door, as if persons were watching. '^ I'll come and help you to drink it," said Mr. Fitz- flint. '^ Don't forget to give us due notice, and I'll bring Mr. Walford along with me." The loser of the claret returned to his friends some- what crest-fallen, trying to take up his tune at the point at which he had left off, but rather in a lower key. '^ So you have been purchasing ^ Lions and Unicorns,^ Mr. Walford." '^ I believe that Mr. Soaphimwell Planter has been doing so for me." " I have just been selling. You know the old saying, * What's one man^s meat is another man's poison.'" "I have heard it before, I believe: how do you assign them in the present instance ?" " Every man knows his own affairs best, you know. How do you like Fagge? isn't he a trump? I am much indebted to Fagge — a capital hand at giving one a hint — a wrinkle — a " " Just so ; I can give you another proverb in lieu of your sato,^^ " What is it?" asked Mr. Fitzflint. '^ A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse." " Precisely so ; there cannot be a doubt of it." I did not prolong my visit to Mr. Fitzflint, who, although in general a very knowing fellow, had over- stepped the bounds of prudence on the present occa- 174 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. sion. I got into a palanquin, and hurried to the business part of Calcutta, and the public-room of the " Lions and Unicorns." Native clerks were in abun- dance and muslins. I looked out for a white face, and found one. " I wish to know what dividend was declared yester- day ? I am a shareholder." "Four and a half, sir." ^^ It was six and two- thirds last half year, I think. Perhaps you have made a mistake ?" '^ No mistake at all, sir. And if you knew what / know, you would be very glad to get that.'' '^ And pray what do you, a clerk, know, that I, a Bhareholder, have not a right to know ?" said I, raising my voice so as to be heard by the numerous individuals around. "Be pleased to speak a little lower, sir; these are business matters." '^ Sir ! the business matters are mine, and I have no secrets. Give my card to the manager, instantly !" ^^ The manager is engaged at a meeting of directors."^ . ^' So much the better. Put my card upon the directors' table : I will take no refusal.*" My voice was too loud to be agreeable, and promised to increase in power; and in a few minutes I was ushered into the directors' room, where some fifteen gentlemen, of great status, sat round a green-clothed table ; some of them looked aghast at my intrusion." " Gentlemen, your clerk tells me, that if I knew all that he knows, I should be well satisfied with a divi- dend of four and a half per cent, for last half year. I come to be informed what that clerk knows, which I, a shareholder, have no right to know." " Will you favour us with your name, sir ; and the amount of stock you represent ?" said the manager. TRICKS AND TIGERS. 175 " My name Is Walford ; I am a very late purchaser ; but one share is as good as a hundred in conferring a right to investigate." The manager busied himself in turning over the leaves of a book, after consulting which, he said : ^' Mr. Walford, your purchase is not completed ; the transference has not been effected ; until it is, we can answer no questions and submit to no intrusion." *^ Then I shall call to-morrow at noon, by which time that formality may be completed. Good morning, gentlemen.^^ On arriving at my quarters, I sat down to a directors' table of my own, and decided eventually that there was something wrong with the '' Lions and the Uni- corns." Another of mi/ directors got up and stated, that there was " something rotten in the state of Den- mark." A third director thought of, and proposed consulting, Fitzflint. A fourth got upon his legs, and said that was ^' all gammon." A fifth reminded me of Mr. Flashington Fagge's capacity for giving hints. A sixth at this did " Snooks," and ten-fingered from the tip of his nose; and thus valuable suggestions were hurried upon me, until a whole court of directors had spoken in turn and out of turn, but quite in a business-like way. I merely give the cream of their advice; their speeches were too lengthy to report here : but it was midnight before mi/ court of directors broke up, deciding on a preliminary interview with Mr. Soaphimwell Planter." Next morning, at the business hour of eleven, I once more took the road to the city; it was the hour at which I knew Mr. Soaphimwell Planter turned his desk-key. " Mr. Walford,^' said that gentleman, " two days ago I purchased into the ' Lions and Unicorns ^ on 176 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. your account, for one-twenty-five; and this morning I have received a letter from the secretary declining to make the transference, but assigning no reason for such unusual conduct. You must raise an action at common law for non-fulfilment of a bargain. I cannot tell you how annoyed I am about it." ^^ Would you favour me with a perusal of the letter, Mr. Soaphimwell Planter ?" ^^ With great pleasure, Mr. Walford ; it is your pro- perty^ in fact." I thanked Mr. Soaphimwell Planter, and glanced over the letter, the terms of which were as stated by that gentleman. '' Of course you will raise an action, Mr. Walford ?" '^ By no means, Mr. Soaphimwell Planter : I have really no such intention; and I beg you will not indulge in any regrets upon the subject. I shall take the liberty of retaining the secretary's letter, which you acknowledge to be my property, and you will oblige me by not purchasing into anything on my account." " Really, Mr. Walford, your conduct seems most unaccountable; but, to say nothing in respect to its bearing as regards myself, what will Mr. Fitzflint say ? the shares are his." '^ The secretary to the ^ Lions and Unicorns ' must explain the matter to Mr. Fitzflint. I hope it will be satisfactory, as it is to me. Good morning, Mr. Soap- himwell Planter." I had scarcely reached my own quarters, when the bearer in attendance announced the approach of a visitor; and Mr. Flashington Fagge entered rather unceremoniously, indeed hurriedly. '^ Dr. Walford, you will not, perhaps, be astonished, when I tell you that you are no gentleman." TRICKS AKD TIGERS. 177 "Oh, indeed! perhaps not; are you one^Mr. Fagge?" ^' Certainly, sir !" ^^ There being no resemblance between us in any respect, of course I can have no pretension to the title." ^' Sir, Mr. Fitzflint will put a bullet through you ; he is the crack shot of the army !" " That would be exceedingly kind and attentive of Mr. Fitzflint; but it requires two, or no duello, and in sooth I have no vocation that way. Indeed, I have a dislike to it upon a principle, a vulgar principle, it may be, but a failing of mine; I call it an innocent Jailing/'' There happened to be some loose articles about, for my servants had been packing; and, among others, were stray instruments that were being oiled. I took up a pair of long forceps, partly to look at them and partly instinctively. "Dr. Walford! you are afraid of Fitzflint. You are — a — coward, if — you " As he uttered these words, half hesitatingly, and which I was partly prepared for, I dexterously placed the open forceps on his nose, and secured the grip. I had complete command over him. He roared out for mercy, for the attempt at rescue with his hands was followed by a pinch — such a pinch ! I began to entertain fears that the nasal member might not hold out against the pressure of circumstances. There were noises at the door. I led him to it and into the pas- sage, where oflicers' domestics were waiting in numbers. When I had got him to the head of the staircase, which was in six-step squares, I said : " Now, sir ! retract the word ^ coward,^ or I shall wrench your nose off!" "I do— I do retract ! I do, Dr. Walford ! I do— do —do " I 3 178 LEAVES TURNED DOWJ^. I then bestowed a parting gratuity, which, consi- dering everything, was perhaps a superfluous indul- gence on my part. He took the first six steps in consequence '^ at a single mouthful." " Mr. Fitzflint will shoot you for this, and I will be his second,*" screamed Mr. Flashington Fagge. His hands, as he continued downwards, were individually engaged in very dissimilar quarters. I turned towards my apartments rather flushed; the exercise was, if anything, heating. I ordered my bearers to cease further arrangements for my departure, for something told me that I had done for myself that which the old gentleman of the stable had refused to do, namely, cancelled my appointment And thinking that this late occurrence might render it advisable to have any little trifles concluded, I sat down to my desk and wrote until midnight, with the energy of a penny-a-liner; for with such a character as had been given to Mr. Fitzflint, I thought he might, perhaps, take a potshot at me through the key-hole. & 179 CHAPTER XV. THE MANILLA HAT. On the following day it was intimated to me that Mr. Fagge had commenced law proceedings against me for assault, which it was by no means difficult to prove; and he succeeded in proving it over and over again by the testimony of innumerable native witnesses. Had these not been sufficient, his nose might have helped him out, affording as it did a proof impression of the fray, in mezzotinto, fitting a certain pair of forceps with a nicety that delighted the legal men on both sides. It was wonderful how much they made out of that. I employed excellent counsel, who all thought they could bring me through as long as the coin, which had given cause for these difficulties, lasted, at which epoch their opinion oscillated, and ultimately became hopeless as to success. I invested every farthing in law, a very safe investment, and I had no difficulty about the dirty dross thereafter. Then came Courts of Enquiry, during which the ^' Lions and Unicorns," '^ Soaphimwell Planter* and Co.," Flashington Fagge, Esquire, and Lieutenant Fitzflint, performed parts of 180 LEAVES TURNED BOWK. some mercantile interest. The latter took to his in- vestment again, locked up his pistols, and retired from the service with some signs of precipitancy ; and in virtue of the assault upon Mr. Flashington Fagge's nasal organ, poor Wilmington Walford was also suspended from rank, pay, and allowances, for the space of tw^o years."^ I have had an utter dislike to that prominent, useful, and highly ornamental feature ever since, and rightly look upon the invasion of it as a most extrava- gant recreation, and not to be indulged in on any account. The funds saved from the maws of the "Lions and Unicorns," were all assimilated in the stomachs of the lawyers ; there was a large balance against me which I could not pay, and I had to part with every valuable to satisfy their hunger. The law has rarely fine feelings on these matters : my chip of it was coarse in the grain, — mill-grit. I might have had sympathy from various quarters, but mine was not the heart to revive under that which bears the vesicating memory of dependence. I buried my wrong, and burrowed obscurely, throwing myself in no friends' way. I contented myself with a memorial to the Honour- able the Court of Directors, and forwarded it to the secretary to the Supreme Government of India, setting forth therein my case, simply and truthfully. It was a long time before I even knew that it had reached the eye of " His Excellency the Governor General of India." Returning homewards one morning, about three months after these occurrences, from my usual (now pedestrian) matutinal exercise, I overtook a rawboned * The serious results here alluded to, it is scarcely necessary to say, are fictitious, and assumed as a means of introducing some passages in the autobiography of another. THE MANILLA HAT. 181 gentleman, bedight in habiliments of very plain cut, and capped in a hat of Manilla grass, which, sombrero- like, flapped in his face. I conjectured that I had fallen in with the skipper of a China trader, or a branch pilot off duty, for this is a favorite wear with seafaring gentlemen in tropical climates. As I was about to pass this pedestrian, my attention was arrested by finding myself an object of curiosity to him, and in turn my interest was roused by the gentleman's features being not altogether strange to me. Where I had seen him I could not tell. In stature, perhaps six feet, his figure was rendered repulsively gaunt by the loose and shaky manner in which both upper and lower limbs were set on. His bilious complexion bespoke him undermined in health by a tropical sojourn, as indeed his hollow cheeks abundantly confirmed; yet physical ailment had failed in subduing the searching faculty of his keen grey eye, formed for distinguishing at a glance the character of those it rested on. As I was about to pass on without further notice, the pedestrian touched his hat and smilingly said: ^' Good morning. Dr. Walford ; you are known to me: I have seen you before, but it is scarcely necessary to remind you where, or how I come now to intrude upon you." " Sir, you have the advantage of me in memory. I presume our meeting was not in my present lodgings." " You are right in that point, but with your per- mission, I will join you in the remaining portion of your morning exercise T I bowed, but perhaps with some little confusion, at the awkward position in which I found myself; the bilious gentleman caught up my pace with as much precision as if he had been '^ No. 98 of the 3rd Com- pany." I was quite unable to guess the cause of 182 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. interest which could lead him to recognize me, and I could not recall our former meeting. " Dr. Walford, excuse me for not introducing my- self ; names are of little consequence, professions are of greater import. I am in virtue of the latter a politician on rather a large scale, by study a philosopher, by intention a philanthropist." " The letter P is a great favourite with you, sir : you employ it in a rare sense in this country," I replied, rather drily. ^' It is much needed, I fear me ; but what points, in your opinion, call for the exercise of either in this Eastern Empire. I like to listen to unbiassed opinions ?" " Sir, the present is a crisis in the history of this mighty empire. He at the helm of state is working hard — may it be for the weal of the land. But the opinions of men are divided : if you are a politician, you can, mayhap, read them ; if you are a philosopher, you will not divulge them to me ; if you are a philan- thropist, you will act as an honest man in the two former callings." ^^Dr. Walford ! you are both cautious and caustic." "I have lately been at a school in which I have learnt both." " Ah, yes ; true. I think I know where you have graduated, but excuse me for intruding on you. I like a straightforward answer, even if but a cold response. I have been somewhat accustomed to mealy-mouthing, and have not found it to be always good advice ; but you asserted a truth when you said a crisis is at hand." ^' Men revile measures because they are personal sufferers ; others would applaud the very same moves upon the chess-board of nations.^' " True, Dr. Walford ; true ! and the man who com- THE MANILLA HAT. 183 mands to-day before one party, may play a different piece to-morrow, when the bystanders are changed." " The press is scurrilous, and pampered by parties ; and lives by vituperating measures of improvement." " Dr. Walford, go on: we agree in some points. The native communities, what think you of them ?^' " That Hindoo, Moslem, and Eurasian are as yet too sparingly informed on these subjects, to hazard their opinions as the thoughts of their several classes. The last is the fittest to judge impartially." "They have the heaviest stake indeed, at issue. Have you any idea what they think of the reduction in the army's strength ?" '' That the measure is fraught with ultimate, if not with immediate danger, to the British rule in the East." ^^ And what may be Dr. Walford^s idea upon that point?" " Excuse me, sir, but I have formed none, at least none that would be of any service to you, who doubtless have studied the subject." " I should like to have it, nevertheless V^ " Nay, to be plain, you have an advantage in knowing me, whilst you are not known to me in turn ; 'tis scarcely prudent to bandy opinions with those we know not." " We might happen to be agreed in these. Dr. Walford!" exclaimed my companion, biting his lip impatiently, as if unaccustomed to be thwarted. In an instant he was himself again. " You are right. Dr. Walford. I was to blame ; I approve your caution. Believe me there was no snare laid for you ; perhaps I may have the luck to meet with you another morning." He called to a set of palanquin bearers at a corner, who rushed to be hired, and they quickly bore the 184 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. owner of the Manilla hat out of sisrht. I strusrcrled to recall our former meeting, but fruitlessly. In a few months I gradually found the accompani- ments of poverty telling on my spirits and appearance. My little purse, the saved from the wreck, became daily more attenuated — it was not the season for surgeon-bearing ships, or I might have hoped for one of these vacancies. I could think of no other mode of employment, and it would have gladdened me to get it. I had to wait, however, for there were none to be had. At length my landlord looked very coldly upon me; instinct told him that my means were dying out ; but he, poor fellow, had little of his own. He was an ob- scure Eurasian ; I learnt something of this class from him. I paid him to my last coin; there was just one over, and having parted with all my moveables to obtain that, I had only myself to transport elsewhere. I went. 185 CHAPTER XVI. PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. Behold me then, badly off, turned adrift in the wide world, and seemingly at the mercy of chance, an ever indifferent and trustless guide. But He who watcheth the falling sparrow, could never think of forgetting me. The money in my pocket would not jingle, for only one rupee remained; and it requires two coins of what- ever value, to make even the smallest noise. It was a hot, muggy, and stifling night, in which even Calcutta vegetation is ranker than usual, growing by inches: in which the rice, if minutely watched, may be seen to grow, as if possessing a consciousness that the rivers are rising, and vegetative speed is in requisition to save the precious ear; in which the air loses its oxygen; in which there is no breathing; in which the sky is covered with a huge awning of night, to ward off rain that otherwise would fall in sheets. As I entered the ^^ bazaar," leading to the vortex of the "Black town," Hindoos grinned at me — -your Hindoo is a great despiser of poverty in a white man. White habiliments all mud-bedraggled, and hanging in damp folds, are 186 LEAVES TUEXED DOWN. not convenient for walking exercise in " the rains/' so I scarcely wondered at the sneers of the Hindoo. I almost felt inclined^ in joke (a queer moment for joking no doubt) to try Brahminical nature, by soliciting alms from the fat merchant over the way: not with the view of accepting it, but of trying his heart strings; and years afterwards, I regretted that 1 had not, when I Baved the life of an only son of a Hindoo worth many annual thousands, and had several daily journeys of five miles, to see my little patient, who wore a neck- lace of emeralds and rubies. The grateful father sent a fee, watered by the tears of joy that he had shed; a pot of raspberry jam! I should have preferred the jam-pot without the tears, and therefore returned it to gladden the Hindoo's sight, with five rupees found to him again. A party of European seamen, intoxicated and noisy, and careless, as they always are when let loose in a seaport, staggered out of a punch-house or drinking- shop, clearing the thoroughfare of all natives ; who, with a caution the result of experience, fled before them into open doorways. They took me for a de- serting cuddy servant, and one of them placing his hand within his breast-pocket, produced a handful of coarse Chinsurah cheroots, and forced them upon me. He would take no refusal, and insisted upon knowing what ship I belonged to. I answered the " Vicissitude," and he followed his shipmates, apparently well pleased with the name. As soon as he had gone, I entered the punch-house. Two steps, and descending these, led me into a low, damp apartment, lighted in the further and darker end by a couple of " chirags,^' or earthen- ware lamps, stuck in niches in the wall. The superin- tendant or proprietor of this low establishment was reckoning up his profits on the late customers; he was PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 187 intent thereon, for half looking up, he resumed his calculation. I waited patiently; it was of no moment attending to me: a white man who used his own limbs for purposes of locomotion, was undeserving of it. A Mussalchie or link-boy, in dirtiest Mussulman garb, lingered beside the proprietor, as if in waiting upon him. At length the European concluded his reckoning, and probably to an unusual degree of satisfaction; for on looking up, he demanded my business in a civil tone. I had almost forgot civility of tone; it sounded strangely now; men can accustom themselves to any- thino*. o I wanted lodging for the night, and told him so enquiringly, and as I did so, I placed my only rupee upon the table. To my great wonder, he returned me half of it ; and looking at me somewhat curiously, he directed the Mussalchie to conduct me to an apart- ment. Drunken sailors were wont to lodge there for the night. My request put no one about; what did for them, might do for me; I was hourly becoming less squeamish upon such points. The proprietor seemed defective in his knowledge of Asiatic tongues. I argued from this, that he had not resided for any length of time in Calcutta. New comers are more open in heart ; they become hardened as they mix with Asiatics; but for this, I might not have lodged there. The link-boy led me into an apartment, some steps lower than the last, and in virtue of this descent, damper. The steam of Calcutta trickled down the walls, which were picked out with irregular masses of mildew; and groves of little fungi vegetated and absolutely throve in green and yellow, with very little light to feed upon, and this in a chme where sunshine abounds more than in most places. Placing the bamboo stand, on which the earthen- 188 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. lamp rested^ beside the wreck of a charpoy or cord- laced bedstead of the meanest construction, and with all the supporters or legs twisted at variance with the perpendicular^ the link-boy left me to my thoughts; having, however, added more mustard oil to the earthen lamp — let it burn! I lighted one of the sea- man's cheroots, and threw myself down to court slumber in tobacco smoke; but I was too miserable to do it early. I smoked on; one led to another; I was still awake; but the narcotizing weed still lasted, and the mustard oil had not gone out. The tilchitta or cockroach, with its brown glazed wings and long feelers, crept over me as swiftly as a sunbeam through a chink, now and then becoming suddenly entrapped in the lengthy mazes of my neglected hair ; or, whizzing from the dark end of the apartment, attracted by the light upon my white clothing, he struck me with a click like the snapping of a little gun-lock. The night advanced, and the bazaar becoming gradually deserted, quiet resumed the place of murmur; the rat of the drains left its noisome quarters, and entered the dwellings of men — an expedition contraband in day- light. He came with companions, and visited me in this cellared room; whisked up and down the supporters of the charpoy, and to and fro upon the floor; pursued his companions with strange excited eyes, which now and then alighted on me, sharp as the edge of fractured diamonds. One, more sprightly even than the rest, ventured to creep up the damp leg of my pantaloons. Until now, I looked on, peering as curiously at them as they at me; but I shook off this inquisitive fellow with a shudder. They absolutely became familiar ; they were jolly rats — at least they looked uncommonly happy, and I was very miserable. But I cared not for rats; I had spent nights with them in bungalows, that PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 189 otherwise appeared comfortable. I knew what the rats of a transport were, on occasions when fresh water was hoarded; and when they rambled about the live- long night in search of it; rushing up the hatchways to the steerage-deck, thence to the gun-deck, and up the poop ladders; bent on a visit to the hencoops. We were friends therefore, and recognised each other, for we were much more on an equality than hitherto we had been; the liberty taken with my trousers-leg shewed how this equality had been productive of fraternity. I drew in tobacco-smoke lavishly; it had lost its narcotizing power; it fell far short of that^ but it soothed me somewhat; at that time I was a great smoker. At length I fell into a murky slumber, but roused for an instant by the dying stump charring my lip as it dropped from it. The tenor of my sleeping moments was as difficult to support as my waking reality; but I must have slept — I had afterwards good reason to know that I did. My dreams were blent with loud talkings, bringing stifled replies; they failed to rouse me, for nature was exhausted, and even drew repose from such a couch as mine. But these noises ceased somewhat, and then I slept more deeply; they recurred however from time to time, and at length I was sensible that others besides myself were in the apartment. A glance satisfied me that the landlord of the punch-house had introduced a friend. "Is he the man we want, Backwater?" and the speaker turned towards the landlord, shewing me the person of a European of immense stature, with blue grizzly beard and whiskers, on a ruddy countenance, but expressive of ferocity. He was habited partly like a seaman, but here and there some portion of his 190 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. dress bespoke a more lengthened residence on shore than men of his class usually indulge in when regularly sea-going. The contour of the man and his " getting up" bespoke a lawless character: his portrait was a good advertisement. I only wondered that he held no weapon of greater danger than an earthen chirag, such as that which had lighted me to my slumber, and then gone out. Irritable in nerve from these trials, I marked over strongly the question put to Backwater : the English prints were just then filled with murders, done for the gain which the dead body of a human being would bring. A medical college I knew had been established in Cal-. cutta, and the possibility of murder supplying their tables of science, made me feel faint. I feigned sleep, but a bright glare and a sense of heat close to my face, tried me, for it was close, very close, and I believe singed my hair, for the odour of such a process spread abroad. ^' Come along, Walter ! I fear he will not suit you,'' said the landlord of the punch- house, as they turned to leave. Wearied nature demanded sleep, and now it came irresistibly, and the sun had been many hours in the sky before I awoke. Shaking off the inclination for a further indulgence, I passed into the anterior apart- ment, about to seek the ghaut of some tank, where I might bathe, and thus recruit myself Backwater was there already, and to my surprise, requested me to lodge with him so long as it might be agreeable. He spoke with hesitation, which did not escape me, and he looked me in the face, as if to ask a question which he was fearful of putting. Again I turned towards the street, and as my foot was on threshold, he said : PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 191 " Mr. Walford! do you remember me? I was steward on board the ' Bamboozlebury ; ' " and he tendered me the coin I had given him on the previous night. I soon recalled him to my memory. He had been much struck during his visit of the previous night on recognizing me, for he had not learnt of my misfor- tunes. I had been affable to him in the " Bamboozle- bury," and it had not been thrown away. He seemed desirous of being serviceable to me in my present con- dition, in which he unreservedly expressed his astonish- ment to find me : I passed out, telling him I should return. A handful of dates purchased at a bazaar stand, where flies and hornets held a revelry, formed a morning meal, the more convenient as it could be discussed while walking. I sought the river side, far above the foreign shipping, where native sea-going craft are moored in the " nuUas " or lesser tributaries. A plunge into one of these refreshed me wondrously, and having resumed my habiliments of long- cloth, stained by the mud of the previous evening's walk, I sat down upon a wooden jetty projecting into the Hooghly. A prospect of starvation was not far distant; this is an alternative which few men can submit to be- comingly. I am no philosopher on an empty stomach; it goes against my notion of things. Calcutta is well worth seeing by moonlight. It was my favourite time for threading its mazes; I would take a twig to keep off sneaking jackals and mangey pariah dogs, just about the hour when syces, or horse- keepers, have drawn their charpoys"^ out into the open air. The streets of Calcutta are then a great bed- chamber, and groups of *^cahars" or palanquin bearers, are squatted beside their ever-hireable conveyances, all clamorous over the earnings of the day, except him * Bedsteads. 192 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. whose turn It is to smoke the hookah of a simple cocoa- nut shell, the joint-stock property of that humble com- pany. Something crossed my path, and I threw my stick; It was a good shot, and tumbled over a huge bandicoot rat, an old fellow with a pig-hlde and a few bristles at Intervals upon him ; the drains of the city were swarming with his fellows. I passed through Tank Square, and close by a gay ediOce; In days when British enterprise was early In the Enst, the noted ^^ black hole " of Calcutta stood there. I turned to the left by Government House, then to the right agaln^ and was straightway on the river's edge, by Baboo's Ghaut. I counted a tier of frigate-built Indiamen, In one great chain of links, down, doAvn, down to Garden Beach, their taunt royals far into the sky. Cheerful lights were twinkling through open ports. Just oppo- site, a great ship floated deep In the water, with straight lines and frigate run, her streak of copper no larger than a crown's breadth above the surface. Her sails were bent, and tucked up In neat bundles on the yards, just where they crossed the masts. A " dip/' slight indeed, by the head, detracted a little from her beauty, and told that she was riding ^'hove short with ten fathoms," and ready for sea. A still finer specimen of naval architecture rode ahead of her, with half her cargo on board ; she had fifty fathoms of chain to give her grace In floating, and a broad foot of copper glis- tened along her ample sides. I turned up the river side. A French tar was singing a stave of Beranger, as cheerily as If on a quai of Havre or Bordeaux. On, on, and a wilderness of shipping occupied the river; by degrees the class of vessels dwindling to the native dhonie^ the lowest speci- men of a sea-going craft. On the land side, handsome buildings at length gave place to paltry flat- roofed PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 193 streets, intermixed with others of wattlework and thatch. We must persevere, however, a little further, for the contrast will repay us, nor mind the increasing smoke, which by-the-by savours strongly of cooking^ such as a white man's nasal membrane fails to appre- ciate. Nations differ in cookery more than in politics. Come, we won^t turn back. We will do our best to keep down our rising gorge, for it were a pity to return without taking a peep into the gaunt building at the water's edge. It has a doorway without a door to- wards the land, and is entirely open on its river aspect; there is no roof upon it, and smoke and oily odour load the air around with animal principle, empyreu- matised from its reeking bosom. That building is the ^^Kali ghaut," where the dead of a great city are converted into ashes. I entered the enclosure. It felt greasy under foot — the shoe-leather revolted at it. A bright fire was heaped up in one corner, and three Hindoos were urging it to burn. A heap of wood newly lit, and from dampness giving out nothing but smoke, was in another corner ; a few dying embers which had already done their work, occupied a third space. The inner walls were clad mourningly in a garb of oily soot. The attendant natives laughed and talked ; one would have thought that no one could have laughed there. The flame cast over these men an unnatural glare of a fiend- like character. The bright fire fell a little, as if its greatest strength had been spent, and the head of a man issued from a bright cavern, hissing, and blister- ing, and dripping. Anon, the charred wood crumbled a little more, and I almost thought the dead turned writhingly. A band of vultures stalked along imj)a- tiently on the wall above, at an hour when day birds ought to roost, but the feathered race are accustomed K 194 LEAVES TUENED DOWN. to late dinner hours at the "Kali ghaut.'^ With a clucking, chuckling noise, these birds looked wistfully on, with feathers staring and unpruned. One foul bird pounced into the corner where the dying embers were, and poked his beak into the orbits of a skull, with an air quite epicurean ; another followed this daring fellow, and purloined a rib ; but it was too hot, for he dropped it again. He succeeded better in ano- ther attempt, and hied with it to the wall top, where he might enjoy It with a prospect. These birds will be late in roosting — their carnival will last till day-break, at the first indication of which they will give it up to the Calcutta crow, a bird that can polish a bone skil- fully. Lank and sneaking dogs hang about, and all but the crow has a look of degradation. Attributes like these might well render burning the dead unpopular. I returned homeward by the same road ; I feared the wilderness of the native portion of Calcutta ; there was no knowing what might be met with there. Few Europeans know anything of the native portion of great Indian cities, although they may live for months and years in their vicinity. I was, however, in circum- stances which led me to know Calcutta. I have taken more than one stroll on a moonlit eve ; I shall bestir myself now upon a darksome, after the sun has gone down beyond Chinsurah. I marked the huge bat as he fled from the west, and the noisy rook as he sought it. The chirrup of the grasshopper and the tiny bell of the beetle arose from the soft turf of the esplanade as I crossed, removed from " the Mall," which I had no vocation for. I wandered into the labyrinth of streets between Chowrlnghee and "Circular Road." Insensibly, I became so bewildered in the mazes of the locality, that I knew not how to turn. An open doorway of some place, better lighted up than others. PAINS AND PUNCH- HOUSES, 195 attracted my attention at this critical moment. I soon saw heads of people, and heard the voice of a speaker addressing them; and a question or two to those near the doorway gave me the information that a " padre-sahib," or missionary, was offering to the benighted Hindoo " glad tidings." I pressed my way through the crowd. With the exception of the bench nearest to the missionary, upon which I seated myself, the others were well occupied. The air of the apartment was heavy with odours ; and before an audience oily and steamy, a pale, silvery- haired old man preached with great meekness and true anxiety for the weal of those he addressed. The mis- sionary had become old in such works ; but he raised his voice at times, as if with youthful strength given him specially. Those who listened to him were nume- rous, and unexceptionably youthful ; and any Christian joining the assembly, as I did, might have thought the conversion of the Hindoo close at hand. Nevertheless, I soon learnt that the object of the listeners was to controvert the old man's sayings : the aged father who brought these messages was opposed by a subtle Hindoo boy, come of a disputative race, whose coolness and clearness in grasping an argument was exceed- ingly remarkable. With unblushing countenance and stringent logic, the boy-disputant urged forward points which he called proofs of falsity, the power of which showed great talent ; and ever and anon the cunningly-devised query came up to his lips, and he seized, with the acumen of a lawyer, the fitting time in which it might tell most. I pitied the poor old missionary : with the keenest sense of the importance of the task imposed upon him, and with considerable command of the Bengalee lan- k2 196 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. guage, in which he disputed, he observed the cause he pleaded to suffer among that crowd; and under-tones complimented the Hindoo on his victory. But although the audience was Hindoo, contemners of the Christian creedj the most perfect order was preserved, and decency of behaviour and coolness of temper characterized the meeting ; but an opportunity was that night afforded me of witnessing how a Moslem congregation would have treated the preacher. Whilst the old man fervently and lavishly '' threw pearls before swine," two young Moslems entered. They appeared to be link-boys or mussalchies, and had dirty, tawdry, tinsel-wrought skull-caps on their heads; and their long black locks hung wild upon their shoulders. They omitted not to leave off their cheroot smoking, and seated themselves familiarly enough on the same bench I occupied, and puffed away vigor- ously. All hearers of that word were, however, equal. I readily awarded it to the quiet Hindoo, who, although a disputer, was a becoming listener ; but I could not do so to the smoking Moslem. The missionary, not heeding, said blandly : " For Zion's sake may we not hold our peace ; for Jerusalem's sake may we not be silent, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth." The unworthy followers of an impostor laughed derisively ; and one standing up said, in good English : ^' Come, old fellow ! have done with that, and give us your stave about the Trinity !" The missionary's face underwent a variety of painful expressions, which told how the sarcasm cut. I took the Moslem's arm, and led him out ; his friend followed without any trouble. They turned their backs frown- ingly on the best of bread, and departed, grasping each PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 197 other's waists lovingly. Who can measure the feelings of the man whose life had been an exile in order to teach such as these? Vexatious tears sought the furrows on his cheek, which seemed at that moment as if they had been made by them. The missionary bowed in acknowledgment, and continued. Hindostan is, I fear, but a barren field of missions. Whilst New Zealand has, in ten short years, been Christianized^ the harvest of twice that time in India might be counted in grains. Years afterwards, and under better circumstances, I made the acquaintance of the missionary. I reminded him of the circum- stance: he had not forgotten it. It had dwelt upon his memory as it did upon mine : but it was only one of many such mortifications he had met with. The Hindoo's is ^ stubborn heart : he will be the very last of all brought within the fold. 198 CHAPTEE XVIL MORE PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSESw Backwater was a Londoner; a little, active, pale- faced man, with very fair hair and eyes like a weazel, and had set up in his present mode of life about a year previously. I returned to his hospitality, and found him doing no small business In pandering to the appe- tites of European seamen. I asked him about the man whom he had addressed as '^ Walter," and who called occasionally; but he winced when I spoke of him. The very sinister expression of the latter did not wear off on further acquaintance ; nor could I divest myself of the idea that his visit bore some relation to myself. But for the kindness of Backwater, who never would permit me to help him, my suspicions of this man would have caused me to seek shelter otherwise. Re- garding him. Backwater gave no information; but It appeared that he also dreaded him ; but he would come at times, and converse for hours in whispers. From stray whispers, I learnt that " Walter " had been a good deal on the African coast ; that America and the West Indies were known well to him ; and that much MORE PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 199 of his life had been passed at sea. Nor would I, after this, have called him a seaman : he by no means asso- ciated with any of that class who frequented the punch-house. Whilst compelled to take shelter in this man's house, I often thought over how to obtain a better way of earning my bread. The only way which presented any likelihood of success was, that of becoming surgeon to a trader. Until I had recruited my warbrobe, however, I kept the books for Backwater. I had many visits to the Hooghly, seeking for cap- tains of second-class traders, few of whom carried a surgeon on their ship's books. On these expeditions I hired the common dingy or wherry of the Hooghly. On one of many unsuccessful trips, a bank of clouds, that had arisen from the north-west, burst sud- denly upon us. We sped before it; the river was strong, and we feared coming on some vessePs mooring chains, for then we should have tipped over ; and then — ay, what then ? We made many such misses ; and sheets of foam covered the Hooghly. We were soon far down, and found it safer to creep towards the further shore. At length we pulled into a nullah or tributary, overshaded by clumps of cocoa-nut palms. It was a lonely place, and made more apparently so by the dismantled hulk of a "dhonie," or a native coasting brig, which was drawn up within it. There were no other craft of any kind to enliven the nullah. Desirous of waiting until the wind went down, I stepped on board the ^'dhonie;^' and the boatmen pulled to the other side of the nullah, to enjoy their hookahs after their exertions. The '^ dhonie " looked as if it had been laid up for several rainy seasons ; it was sadly in want of a coating of coal-tar. 1 paced the deck of the dhonie for awhile, as if I were the 200 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. captain; but I had no great wish to command such a craft. I saw the boatmen squatted on the further side, in a circle, passing their hookah round; and, knowing that the longer time I gave them the better pleased they would be, I continued my pro- menade. A deserted vessel is the most melancholy of ruins. At times, however, I thought I heard noises within decks; and when this idea had struck me several times, I stepped towards the after-hatch and tried to lift it. It yielded to my hand, and I entered the dhonie, descending with my face to the ladder ; and found myself upon the second deck, I looked into the gloom, not expecting to see anything ; but I was startled to observe a light through a broken chink in a bulk-head, situate, as I thought, very near amid- ship. As I advanced towards it, something must have been disturbed, for a noise, approaching to hissing, reached my ear for a moment. It conveyed an impres- sion far from agreeable : it must have been a snake — snakes like such places. I placed my eye to the chink in the bulk-head, and saw, but not very clearly, into the lighted portion of the vessel. A brass lamp, on a high stand of the same metal, enabled me to do this. A Brahmin, of the Gossain or Yogi caste, perfectly nude, and whose skin and tangled air were whitened with ashes, was engaged in reading a lengthy scroll or manuscript. At his side, and half coiled round him, was a well-lizard some three feet long, a reptile of drowsy habits, found in holes scooped out in the sides of wells which have become dry : they are found in Upper India: this must have been imported. The Gossain and the lizard were equally noiseless. An ape of large size, a bluish, grizzled fellow, such as are sometimes seen in battalions in the lower ranges of the mountains, sat upright, and with his arms folded. MORE i»AINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 201 as if waiting to know his master's pleasure. Whilst contemplating this extraordinary scene, I became sen- sible of a feeling of languor which stole over me, now and then approaching to nausea, and not altogether free from drowsiness and headache. The idea that the snake had bitten me passed momentarily through my mind. At this instant I must have leant heavily against this portion of the bulk-head. It was a door, and burst open ; and I introduced myself most unex- pectedly to the Gossain. He looked up from his reading, otherwise he moved not ; but the ape flew to the door and closed it, turning the key of a padlock most dexterously. I continued to feel my senses becoming gradually impaired ; they were some of the symptoms of poisoning by snake -poison. I w^as not sensible of having been bitten, nevertheless the idea pressed somewhat upon me. Circumstances had, how- ever, combined to render me more reconciled than I might otherwise have been; but I was much struck with the indifference manifested by the Hindoo to my intrusion on his retirement. I think he did so for effect. It might have been ; who knows ? As my eye became accustomed to the apartment within the dhonie, I saw things more clearly. At length the grim faquir, lavish in ashes, but deficient in sackcloth, left off his study ; took a pair of clumsy round glass spectacles of native workmanship from the bridge of his nose, on which they had been taking an airing, and apparently laid himself out for domestic recreation. He addressed the ape, who turned his head on one side, as if bent on learning his master's wish. '^ Hunnumanjee ! bring out the ^gooru,'* and let him have his supper." * The sexton. k3 202 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. The ape, thus spoken to, addressed himself unhesi- tatingly to his duty; he understood it better than some servants do. He took from the beam above a short batten of bamboo and repaired to a corner of the cabin, which I was not long in discovering that something owning life occupied. Whoever or whatever it was, the ape was trying to rouse him ; and at length dragged him along the deck and within the scope of my vision. Whilst this was going on, the Gossain produced a strangely-shaped vessel, in which he busied himself mixing some articles of an edible quality. I could not make out of what these consisted, but I was soon aware that the dish was the calvarium or skull-cap of a human being. As he mixed these dainties, he kept an eye on Hunnymaun, who was bringing the gooru to his senses. Dragging would not do; the animal on whom the Gossain had quaintly bestowed the name which he expressed by the word " gooru," was of a very lethar- gic disposition. When attacked by the ape he only made a snap, and went to sleep again. He was now enjoying his nap quite close to me, and I found him to be an animal of the sloth species — a burrowing gentle- man who had a taste for grave-yards, and whose carni- vorous propensities were subject to suspicion ; but he was a sloth, and his conscience was clear of cannibalism. The ape returned to his task, and kicked and cuffed, and dragged the gooru, on w^hose hide blows produced a most leaden sound, which bespoke a natural but strange insensibility to external objects. " The gooru is too many for you, Hunnumanjee," exclaimed the Gossain with a laugh. The ape seemed to understand the sarcasm implied, and, bestriding the gooru, he commenced operations anew by seizing the leathery flap of the animal's ear, and shewing his establishment of teeth, as if to exhibit MORE PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 203 their eflSciency. Previous to the experiment, he bestowed such a bite upon it as to extort a whole series of snaps from the jaws of the now partially excited animal. The gooru began to shew some vitality, and the ape, determined to keep up the advantage, repeated the operation several times, evading the snaps made at him with wonderful dexterity. '^ Take the bamboo to him, Hunnumanjee ! he will soon become very humble." The ape knew his master's word perfectly, and instantly applied the bamboo to the head, shoulders, and hinder quarters of the gooru, which carried him at a slapping pace round the deck,> snapping at every turn, the blows of the ape varying this sharp noise with a dull " thudding " sound. The Gossain laughed until the tears ran down his ash-begrimed countenance ; it was a hideous party. Hunnymaun's pluck was fairly up, and he determined to master the gooru. Even the sleepy lizard at the Gossain^s side took an interest in the affair ; for he turned himself more than once and rubbed his tail upon his master^ s elbow. At length the lethargic gooru, having passed from a state of inaction into a state of excitement, appeared to be fairly exhausted by the contest, after which the ape brought him submissively to the feet of the Gossain. A bite upon the ear caused him to snap, whereupon the faquir, taking advantage of the animal's jaws being open, poked a bit of the viands into them. This was repeated at intervals of a few minutes, whereupon the Gossain exclaimed — "Where is the ^samp,' Hunnumanjee?" The ape, which apparently was so trained as to answer all domestic purposes save that of speaking, took from a crevice a primitive flageolet made of a bamboo stuck into a small cocoa-nut shell, and applying 204 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. it to his lips, made a humming see-saw sort of din, no bad imitation of that produced by the Hindu snake- charmers, and after a minute or two a hooded snake, or cobra di capello, squeezed himself through a small opening in the bulk-head by which I had entered, and shuffling along the deck danced round the ^^gooru," as if to entertain him between each mouthful. The ape and the snake were perfect at their duties, the gooru was only in training. The prompt appearance of the snake did not tend much to dissipate the sense of nausea and prostration which I felt during this scene increasing upon me ; a feeling which, however, exerted some influence over that scene, in so far that it prevented me from expressing by words or actions the astonishment that I was full of. The Gossain and his trained friends, from such various classes of animal nature, seemed equally indifferent to me. Neverthe- less I knew I was a prisoner — there could be no doubt on that head. When the Gossain had stuffed a sufficient quantity of food into his protege the gooru, the latter went to sleep upon the spot, with a boa-constrictor sort of temperament, which by no means elevated him in my estimation as a tasteful object on which to lavish edu- cational hours and minutes. The ape dragged him, in a perfect state of somnolence, to one side, giving him a lunge, and a kick, and a bite in the ear, the latter this time having no effect. It was a parting gift — it was a legacy quite lost upon the gooru, in which hunger alone developed any activity, and that only when the hunger happened to be excessive, or combined with the condiment of a thrashing. At this juncture I must have sunk into a complete state of insensibility, for I remember nothing that followed. I, however, passed the night there, and had MORE PAINS AND PUNCH-HOUSES. 205 been indebted to the Gossain for my lodgings ; but on awaking, I found myself stretched out at full length on a log of wood, one of many drawn up on the river bank just under the bastions of Fort William. How I came there I could not tell ; but I supposed that with the turn of the tide, and before daybreak, the Gossain and his friend, Hunnymaun, had ferried me across. The morning gun sent its early warning almost over my head : had it been through it, it had in that case effectually cured a most overpowering headache, the fag-end of that which had conquered me in the Gossain's dwelling. Strange as this adventure of the previous evening had been, I felt no great inclination to relate it to Backwater on my return to the punch- house. 206 CHAPTER XVIIT. LA PELU8ILLA. I WAS not long In discovering that an air of mystery pervaded Backwater and his doings. His connection with Walter Horrebon favoured this suspicion. But the punch-house keeper gave me gratuitous shelter, and always treated me with consideration. I hoped some day to be in a condition to repay him. I went and came without question, became quite cheerful and communicative with the rats at night, and by mutual consent we took fewer liberties with each other than we at first did. I hinted to Backwater that I suspected he had a secret, but I did so delicately, with a view to advise him for his good. There must have been a good heart within him — no one could tell that better than I could. My hint brought the colour to his face, already bloodless in general from the climate of Calcutta. I noticed an Inclination to confide ; at length he said : " Walter Horrebon Is a fearful man, Mr. Walford, I sometimes wish to speak of him to you. Will you excuse me, Mr. Walford, for lighting a cheroot whilst LA PELUSILLA. 207 you are smoking ? it looks rather equalizing in me ; but is not meant to express that.'^ '^ Backwater, you have over and over again proved yourself incapable of any such advantage. Circum- stances alter men's position sadly : you have endea- voured as much as lay in your power to make me insensible of such humiliation. Come, my friend, I may return you a service such as that you have so feelingly and nobly conferred upon me." It was past midnight ; the visitors had departed, and we sought the housetop, aud stretched ourselves upon it, for no rain had fallen that day. Backwater com- menced his disclosure by some comments on religious subjects, and I wondered why he, the keeper of a drinking establishment, could be so interested in them. He evidently considered business and religion as dis- tinct, no way involving each other. He intimated that he was a methodist, and readily confessed that he pos- sessed a secret that weighed heavily on his mind, and by means no agreed with Methodism. He then drew out my opinions ; and although no Methodism pervaded them, he was not dissatisfied. At length he said — " Mr. Walford ! I shall not be punctiliously squeam- ish ; but you are, I may say, under an obligation to me." " Under an obligation that it will take much to repay ; pray go on." " Then kneel down ; and upon this volume, and with your right hand held up, promise to advise me, and not betray me." It was a small pocket Bible he had brought w4th him, and evidently with premeditation. I took the oath without hesitation. I had a debt to pay to Backwater, and I thought I saw my way towards its liquidation. " Let us go towards the river," said Backwater. The stars told us it was past midnight, and the moon 208 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. was rising, and already gave sufficient light to render the surrounding scene indistinctly visible. We reached the Hooghly just where a jetty juts into it, and opposite the Mint. Backwater passed along it, and looked out impatiently. There was a large vessel in the centre of the stream. Some little sign of duty being conducted on board of her came across the water, which ran down with great velocity. They were ^'heaving short," but her ground-tackle was of hemp, and made little noise. The huge vessel dropped slowly down ; and after Back- water had ascertained that she did so, he stood upon the furthest beam of the jetty, and taking a bundle of papers, to which some heavy keys were attached, he swung the cord that tied them several times round his head. The momentum with which this was done carried the mass some fifty feet into the Hooghly. "Let all that belongs to Walter Horrebon perish by the same element as himself. He is dead, Mr. Walford ; that terrible man is dead. He was my foster-brother, son of my father's patron. This very evening he conveyed a cargo of living men on board of yonder ship, which drops down past us — they are kid- napped for the Mauritius plantations. From this jetty on which I now stand, I watched him leave that ship and meet his death. The dingee in which he was, took the tide-gage of that schooner just abeam of us; and in so doing touched her ground-chain. A yell of human beings passed over the water ; I saw the coun- tenance of Walter Horrebon, my foster-brother, above the swell of the Hooghly ; and the shriek for mercy of one who had never shown it to his fellow-men arose from the eddies. Cry after cry came fainter and fainter as he dropped fast with the ebbing waters of the Hooghly — and an inward voice whispered that Walter Horrebon had gone to his account. LA PELUSILLA. 209 " It was a fearful position, Mr. Walford ; to be daily the confidant of a man steeped in crime. He at times confessed to deeds which made me almost suspect him of anything ; nevertheless, I felt that we were bound together by a tie which many deem stronger than absolute brotherhood — the gentleman's son and the labourer's were hushed to sleep on the same lap, and drained the same nourishment from her I wish I could now call mother. We parted, at length; he grew to manhood amid vice, squandered his patri- mony, and became a wanderer : he had proved himself a reprobate in every way. An accidental circumstance led to our recognition : I found him as a foremast-man in my last ship ; since then he has been my evil genius. May he find mercy ! " It appeared that Horrebon was a famous kidnapper, who had driven a flourishing trade for a couple of years by catering for the Mauritius planters ; for this was the era of the Slave Emancipation. The system of dealing in " coolies " was profitably conducted for two or three years, under some of the horrors of the African Coast trade. That which for a time was ille- gally carried on, and by persons of the lowest grade, ultimately became a traffic recognised by law, and was superintended by officials with responsibility. Backwater and I turned homewards, but we took the open road by the ghauts, or landing-places — the moon now gave fuller light. As we gained Chaud- paul ghaut we lingered for a moment A boat was rapidly pulling from a very beautiful vessel of small tonnage, moored some fifty yards off. That boat was pulled too firmly not to betray a hurried errand. Six lascars, or native seamen, urged it on, and it soon bumped slightly against the ghaut ; but very slightly, for the man at the bow oar fended her off with a boat- 210 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. hook. The steersman leaped out : he was an officer of a ship of a special class and of a special trading. He enquired hurriedly where he could find a medical man. I put myself at his disposal ; time was an object, and without further parley we pulled towards the brigantine. In the centre of a beautiful stern cabin, which, at will, and by means of sliding doors, formed either one or two apartments, a fine young man lay, stretched upon a couch, covered with smooth but cool Manilla matting. A glance at his features assured me that cholera had seized another victim. The form which but two hours before had been that of Antinous, was now shrunk and clammy, and his eyes looked sinking in his head. His voice was husky, and his tongue cold and pale ; yet he cried out for water, to quench his inward heat — the cry was but a whisper. 1 had heard many such — it was nothing new to me. I had tried all things in this disease, and felt much inclined to leave him to himself, for I had no superior authorities now hanging over me. With an eye, however, to appearances, I sought the little medicine- chest belonging to the ship, and cast it over the stoppers. Many of the bottles were empty: I was not much disappointed. I hovered over them with much indecision; the lookers-on had evidently very little faith in me. At length I fixed upon a bottle on which was marked '^ Camphorated Tincture of Opium," and once more was at my patient^s couch. I asked the steward for some loaf-sugar, and putting ten drops upon a little bit I placed it on the patient's tongue. In ten minutes I repeated it. Before I had continued to repeat this for an hour, an improvement had manifested itself; the patient's voice was returning. He felt it, for he thanked me. I felt surprised myself; LA PEJLUSILLA. 211 if it was the effects of the tincture it was a chance shot; I had given the same before in cases which turned out fatal. But I never left the patient until daybreak brought the morning-gun; and finding him improving I was contented, and did nothing else. In these latitudes dawn is quickly followed by sun- rise. My patient was becoming drowsy, and I sought the bracing air of that hour upon deck. I had been so much on salt water that I always felt at home upon a quarter-deck. The beauty of the vessel surprised me ; a smart little Frenchman lay within a biscuit's throw, but, compared with that I was on board of, the Frenchman looked like a canal barge. Backwater requested to be put ashore, and I accompanied him to the ghaut, in order to view the vessel from the water ; it did not occupy ten minutes, and I previously assured myself that my patient slept calmly. We pulled under her stern : upon it, in small letters of bronze metal, and consequently indistinct, were the words " La Pelusilla." To please me the men pulled ahead; the current surged a foot\s length up her cutwater, and then glistened on her copper as the rising sun's rays lit upon them. She lay like a black streak in the water : no ports glared along her sides. She was fully freighted, yet half a foot of copper was seen. No outward ornament looked bright about her. A fairy figure-head — a sylph-like female figure — per- fectly white, and sharply moulded, dipped a little to the tide. Her stern was a little bevelled off at the quarter galleries, showing more distinctly the breadth of beam, which was very unusual. Carved flowers, convolvuli and wild poppies, also moulded in bronze metal, and here and there showing open work, at once attracted the attention of one not altoorether unaccustomed to look on such things. I was again upon the deck of 212 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. this beautiful craft ; it was flush from stem to stern, and unbroken almost, but by the companion, the capstan, and the combings of the hatchways. Her length and breadth had registered at Lloyd's some three hundred tons ; she was now fully freighted with a hundred, but it was a golden cargo — packed in small space, and well cared for. It was opium. Her rig was that of a brigantine : masts of red pine of enor- mous girth ; and her yards threw into the shade the spars of bulky ships aroiind. The yellow fir planks of her decks were scarcely more than three inches broad, and a delicate thread-like seam alone showed the joining. The heads of the copper nails had been driven home, and a little diamond of ebony had been sunk into the wood, making for these nail heads little tombstones. No brasswork flashed about the capstan or rudder- headj binnacle or steering-wheel, but the mahogany of which these were made was picked out with ebony and bird's-eye maple. Six well-proportioned twelve- pounder guns, of bronze metal, and fitted with elevating screws of most approved construction, three on either side, were lashed fore and aft, so as to make room, and not give occasion to the ports being opened — they were in- tended for use, not for show. The standing and running rigging were all fitted with great nicety, and the sails clewed down as tightly and in as small bulk as the canvas of a royal cruiser. I stepped below, my patient slept like a child. 1 gazed upon him with much interest; the expression told me that the disease had passed away. He was a slender youth of twenty years, with a Grecian style of feature. His nose was even with his forehead, his short upper lip was curled up, as if to show its returning red ; a LA PELUSILLA. 213 profusion of dark wavy hair, almost approaching to feminine, ran wild npon his temples. A coloured attendant, of Indo-Portuguese extraction, a boy of sixteen, stood over him, and drove off the mosquitoes with a " chowrie " of the tail of the mountain-cow of the Himalayas. Even this youth was worth obser- vation, for a shawl of some little value was twisted round his head for a turban. The vessel and all her appointments appeared to be a marvel. That half of the stern in which my patient lay was fitted with a couch, usually running fore and aft by the starboard quarter, but now drawn out into the centre, and the only bulky object. Telescopes, rifles, and nautical instrument cases formed not un- becoming ornaments on the bulkheads ; two unusually ample stern windows gave abundance of light and air, each of which was filled by a single sheet of plate-glass. The fellow cabin on the larboard side, evidently in the possession of the same party, was fitted up with great elegance ; the panellings of pure white (like the last, but, being less occupied, rather more easily seen) were carved sharply into delicate masses of creeping flowers; they were done in box- wood, the amateur work of my patient, as I afterwards found out. A rosewood cottage piano rested against the forward bulkhead, and little bookcases, of similar pattern, filled up the spaces between and on either side of the stern windows. The deck of both cabins was covered with cool Bengal matting, of the finest texture. As I sat absorbed in wonder, the cabin -door was gently put aside — the ship's bell had struck eight bells a minute previously. A Portuguese steward requested my presence at the breakfast-table in the public cabin. Passing between two small private state-rooms on either 214 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. side, I reached the public cabin, which ran athwartships. A stream of fresh air rushed into it from a windsail, lowered through the centre portion of a skylight, which also ran athwartships. Within the shelter of this sky- light, and on either side of the windsail, were two marine barometers, by celebrated makers. The mizen- mast passed down towards the kelson a couple of feet or so abaft the table ; well polished carbines, cutlasses, and pistols surrounded it — not a bad armament for a crew of thirty men. Such was " La Pelusilla," or ^Hhe Gossamer," the most perfectly equipped craft I have ever seen. Two, fine, frank, powerful young men, the first and second oflScers, did the honors of the table, and seemed much rejoiced at the escape of the commander. Ready for sea, they had delayed a day in consequence of his sudden illness. I stated my readiness to spend the day on board the brigantine, until I was more assured of my patient's safety. He was no ordinary man ; that I could not doubt. A long, calm, life-inspiring slumber had stolen over "La Pelusilla^s" commander, from which he awoke towards sunset with a good voice, and a pulse quite restored. I was sitting by his couch, and a stray volume of " Vittoria Colonna " served to occupy me. I put aside the volume. " Doctor, I fear I was fast drifting on a lee-shore, when you came to my assistance. I knew I w^as drag- ging my anchor, but you box-hauled me off in gallant style, and I think we have weathered the point, however threatening." Smiling at the nautical language in which he truth- fully and characteristically expressed a knowledge of the condition he had been in, I begged to assure him he w^as once more '' safe at his moorings." LA PELUSILLA. 215 " But, Doctor, I must be at sea in forty-eight hours, and to insure that must cast off with the last of the ebb, and get below Coolie Bazaar. The first of the morning's ebb will take us down to Diamond Harbour. Doctor, I must be at must be at sea in forty-eight hours, or I lose the Lintin market by delay." I shook my head doubting] y, for I feared a relapse or an attack of fever from excessive reaction, a com- mon occurrence. But a thought struck me : I must have put on air of reflection. ^^ What would you have, Doctor ? ^ La Pelusilla ' is too expensive a mistress to keep at her moorings longer than is absolutely necessary, to say nothing of the mar- ket. What would you, I say again, good Doctor ? " " I would go to sea with you, if it be agreeable to you." At first a waggish expression of incredulity lighted up his* countenance, but observing gravity on mine, he said : "You shall go to sea with me. There is more here than my thoughtlessness can compass in a moment : you shall go with me, nor shall you have cause to com- plain of any want of comfort or hospitality under the planking of the ^little Spider-web.'" Leaning over the couch, he pressed a button-headed piston-rod fitted into the bulk-head. A little hammer struck instantly upon a concave semi-sphere of bell- metal, which rang clearly, but only once. The noise elicited was strange ; without disturbing others, it was a perfect summons. The shawl-turbaned attendant opened the cabin door. " Give my compliments to Mr. Petley, and ask him to step down." Mr. Petley, the chief mate, was soon before us. " Has the pilot come on board ? ^^ 216 LEAVES TURNED DOWN". ^^ And has gone away again : he thought we should be delayed a tide or two/^ responded the mate. '' Let him be sent for. We shall drop down to Gar- den Reach with the last of the ebb ; and, Mr Petley, I wish the small cabin on the larboard side cleared out. Order the steward to have a cot swung : the Doctor here is going to take a cruise with us. We shall be glad of his company, and, Mr. Petley, you must make him comfortable." Mr. Petley touched his hat quite in a polished man- ner : the salute might have passed muster in Belgravia or Park Lane. I took immediate opportunity of making my position known to my patient. He saw through it in a moment, for my court-martial had been animad- verted on in the public prints. He shook my hand warmly, and said : " Doctor Walford ! a boat's crew will put you on shore in a few minutes, and as we shall unmoor as soon as the Government pilot comes on board, make good use of your time : get your traps in hand and join us again by midnight. We shall bring -up at Garden Reach ; you shall sail with me as my friend, and the longer the better I shall like it." Again the little hammer struck piercingly upon the semi-globe, and the turban forthwith half filled up the doorway. " My compliment? to Mr. Petley, and I shall feel obliged if he will have a boat's crew piped away. Dr. Walford is going ashore." In five minutes more I was on the ghaut. Night was just closing in. 217 CHAPTER XIX. TO-HI-VO ! On repairing to the punch-house. Backwater seemed much gratified at the opportunity which had cast up of my gaining professional employment, for I intended acting as a non-paid surgeon to the opium trader. He had quite recovered his spirits, and was moving about briskly : a load had been taken off his mind by the fate of Horrebon. A very short time was sufficient for my arrangements. I bade Backwater adieu, and a couple of "coolies" soon conveyed a teak- wood chest, I could now call mine, to the ghaut again. The '^ dingee wal- las " there, waiting for fares, made a rush at me : two of them succeeded in bearing me in triumph to their shallop, whilst two others succeeded equally well with my chest, the only drawback being, that we were in ditterent '^ dingees." The latter, however, gave in to the former, and we pushed into the stream to gain the middle water ; the flood had set-in alongshore. We dropped slowly down with the last of the ebb, and passing the villas of Garden Reach soon descried the taunt tracery of the opium-trader. She had been L 218 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. moulded and copper-bolted in the far-famed building yards of Baltimore, and she did no discredit to her transatlantic origin. She had been captured full of slaves in the Mozambique, after a bloody fight. The serang or native boatswain hailed us from the larboard cathead as we dropped alongside. The second officer examined us from the quarter. Duly ascertaining that my patient was once more sleeping calmly, I sought my little cabin. A swinging cot of snow-white canvass, covered with cool Manilla matting, was already slung, and without undressing I threw myself upon it, and slept instantly. Morpheus was somewhat in my debt ; he paid it off that night with scrupulous exactness. But I was too much excited in nerve to be deeply overpowered by the drowsy god, and a noise such as is very casual on board of any vessel awoke me. The moon was just rising: the foliage of the trees on either side caught its light, but the river was still in darkness. A grating noise again took place ; it was immediately under the scuttle of my cabin, but the scuttle was too small to admit my head. By a little coaxing, however, I succeeded in this : a small "^ dingee " was alongside : one native, of short stature, was busily engaged in handing small square packages into the scuttle of the cabin next to mine — it was Mr. Petley^s. Another native sat at the steering-oar. This last was counting money, for now and then he clinked a coin against his teeth to try its quality. At length this was over, the dingee dropped silently astern, and just then the moon- beam reached the water for the first time, and, as the dingee passed within its influence, I recognised the Gossain steering, and the ape Hunnymaun tugging manfully at the oars. I remembered my drowsiness in the dhonie : it was a store of smuggled opium. Whilst in the river the opium-trader w^as in charge YO-HI-VO! 219 of the Government pilot ; all hands busy with the ebb tides and drowsy with the flood. The commander kept his cabin at my request ; the pilot alone was responsible for the ship and her cargo. We made good use of the ebb next morning. As we passed the James and Mary sand, the upper spars of a ship appeared above the water. A large vessel on our starboard was passing over the tail of the bank within a biscuit^s throw of us : her ports were all shut in, and the leadsman in the chains was plying his line earnestly. " How that ship stirs up the mud !" muttered our pilot : '^ she has six inches less water than she draws, and takes it out in mud." From the pilot I learnt something more of ^^La Pelusilla " and her interesting commander. He had gone through a midshipman's career in a frigate, and afterwards in an African cruiser on the coast. On passing as a mate he was appointed to the Cape sta- tion. Whilst cruising in the Mozambique Channel, one morning, soon after dawn, but with a calm sea and a buttermilky haze over it, the young mate was the first to descry " La Pelusilla " broad upon their beam. In a few minutes the boats were in pursuit, the com- mand of the expedition having been kindly conferred on the youthful mate : success would insure him his epaulettes, and they had been slow in coming, consider- ing that he was the son of a British admiral. But they were hotly received : the young mate in scaling the slaver's side got knocked on the head, and when he came to himself he found that his boat had drawn off, and dead and wounded men were in her bottom. No promotion could follow this, so he went at her again, and took the brigantine, but with heavy loss. A prize crew was put on board, and under command of our hero she was sent to Simon's Bay. The admiral, anxious to L 2 220 LEAVES TUENED DOWN. give promotion, sent him on to St. Helena, there to land the slaves, and with orders to proceed to England with his prize : rather an unusual course. On presenting himself at the Admiralty, he was very politely received. The First Lord, who had never been at sea otherwise than in the capacity of a passen- ger, thought that taking slaves was great-babies' play, and merited no promotion. He was quite sure he could take a few every morning if he were on the coast, and, but for the point of etiquette, he would not mind trying it. The disappointed officer retired, knowing well there was no promotion this bout. He meditated on the cause of this. His old father the Admiral had either got into the '' black book," or the ^* Lords" were displeased at having the slaver thrown upon their hands. But rather unadvisedly, on the following day, he tendered his resignation of the Royal service, which was accepted as a favour. It happened, however, that the decease of a near relative had made our hero undisputed master of ten thousand pounds, a piece of good luck he only became acquainted with on his arrival. At a loss how to employ himself or his money, he chanced to cast his eye over the advertisements in the " Times," and therein the Lords of the Admiralty had notified the sale, by public auction, of the Spanish slaving prize " La Pelusilla." The youthful seaman knew her qualities, that her beam and keel would make her register too much at Lloyd's for any merchant's specu- lation, and her former repute would make her unpopular as a yacht; he argued, therefore, that she would go for a small figure in arithmetic. For the bidding of a thousand pounds, the youth became master of her. He had formed his plan of procedure, and most of his friends thought he was a madman. Friends are some- YO-HI-YO ! 221 times apt to think so. He was somewhat lavish in his ornamental work ; the bronze mouldings and guns walked off with a little cash no doubt, for the romance of salt-water hung heavy on our hero. But his plans had been laid to invest his capital in the opium-trade, which at that time was a gold mine. He ran her out to Calcutta in eighty days, discharged her European crew of twenty men, and shipped forty picked lascars, bought his own opium at the Government sales, and sold it to Chinese for ingots of silver, paid down upon the capstan-head. Always first in the market, for his craft beat every other, and he cared nothing for spars, he had already made three trips, each averaging two months, and cleared, after all expenses paid, a thousand pounds a trip. These were dashing exploits for a youth: the Admiralty would have done well to have given him his promotion. The second day's ebb brought us to Kedgeree, and the third, to the outer light beyond the Gaspar sands. A pilot-brig hove-to, and the pilot duly placed the brigantine under the command of her youthful owner, who now, for the first time, appeared on deck. Any weakness of character which Captain Sydney might possess, was shown in an attachment to personal effect. A blue silk jacket with velvet cuffs and collar thrown back, was carelessly becoming; little buttons chained together in twos, and of unalloyed gold, dangled at equal distances. A little straw hat such as a sailor boy might wear, half covered curly jet locks ; and sundry other points showed attention to such details. As the pilot and his servant went over the side, the former with a bank check in his pocket, the crew of the Government brig gave three cheers, ^^La Pelusilla's" yards were filled, and with as much wind as was pleasant for an overmasted craft, we soon increased our distance ; Captain Sydney was in buoyant spirits. 222 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. " Isn't she a lovely little lady ?" said he, as he went below to examine his chart once more. In a few minutes, a hand ran rapidly over the keys of a piano, and a manly voice, well managed, followed the accom- paniment. Once more on the true wave, My gallant craft speeds cheerily. And deep through the blue wave, A watery moon wades wearily ; My spars are tracing out the sky. The weather shrouds are straining tightly. But more ! ay, more ! there is an eye That for my coming sparkles brightly. Once more on the true wave, I hear the boatswain's whistle calling. And far o'er the blue wave, The shadows of the night are falling. The flashing foam is hurrying by, The snowy canvas gleaming sprightly. But more ! ay, more 1 there is an eye That for my coming sparkles brightly. Once more on the true wave. To beating hearts we fast are gliding, And far o'er the blue wave. The stormy peterel is riding ; My masts are bending now on high. My keel divides each billow lightly, But more ! ay, more ! there is an eye That for my coming sparkles brightly. I listened to the lyric with considerable interest: the merit lay in the music, and in the careless rapid style in which the trifle was thrown oiF at such a time. Another moment, and the seaman was on deck again. 223 CHAPTER XX. THE CRUISE. We hugged the Coromandel coast ratlier closely, working it up in a fish bony style, until, getting into the latitude of Cape Comorin, we laid our course towards the Straits of Malacca. We overhauled many a smart craft. " La Pelusilla's" spars were lithe and strong as bamboos still growing in the jungle clump. On a fine day dawn, we found ourselves becahned near the small islands of Pudo Rondo and Pudo Brasso ; Acheen Head, the northern point of Sumatra, rising bluff upon our starboard tack. Patches of water were visible in several directions, which seemed agitated, as if a wind blew specially for them, and not for us ; but the agitation was the result of currents or tides — it had a strange effect. Now and then we drifted into one of these ripples, and looked at least to be doing great things; it was all sham, we were doing nothing. On the calm spaces, we looked as lazy as we were ; the water was alive with sea-snakes. We wished for wind were it only to get clear of them, for they occasionally tried to board us by the soil-pipes. But it is not always calm, even on the coast of 224 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. Sumatra. A breeze sprang up, and the ^^ little Spider's Web/' as the skipper was often pleased to call her, closed with the Malacca passage rapidly ; we kept our course and with a point to spare upon the compass card. A merchantman of heavy tonnage was some three half leagues ahead of us. She held her course, and that was all : the brigantine lay a point closer than she did. In a very few minutes we were sensible of speedily over- hauling the merchantman, who ran his colours up, and the ^' Union Jack" blew out from his peak. Another and another piece of bunting followed, which asked us in semaphoric parlance : — " What ship's that ?" " Bend on the Spanish bunting, Mr, Petley; we have some of the Don in us no doubt !" As the Spanish flag unfolded itself, the youthful skipper kept his glass upon the trader, and a smile passed over his countenance. The rub-a-dub of a brass drum reached us distinctly — it had only a mile of water to pass over. " We have too much of the piratical cut in our jib to be very pleasant to that half-manned lumbering ship. She is beating to quarters: send half the watch below, and let the other half lie down in the weather scuppers." '' Ay, ay, sir ! " ^ " And, Mr. Leitch ! oblige me by heaving the log:" it was hove accordingly. " Nine, all but, sir," responded the second mate, as the serang or native boatswain spun the dripping line upon the reel. ^^ I must have the nine complete, Mr. Leitch : take an extra pull on your lee braces." In five minutes more, the log was hove again, and Mr. Leitch reported that ^^ nine was on the line." On THE CRUISE. 225 board the merchantman, consternation prevailed. They had got a small fire-engine upon deck, and were soaking their canvas up to the royals. " With the 'kittle Thistledown" under us, we might do a very good business in the piratical line. Dr. Walford ! We have but bad reputation with those on board that clumsy ship, and I fear we shall interfere with the nerves of the ladies, and the digestion of the gentlemen. Spread out a yellow bunting, and see if you can lay your hands on a black piece, and send aft the sailmaker.^^ A temporary '^deatVs head and cross-bones" was soon made up, and in a minute it replaced the colours of the Spaniard. A terrible hurry-skurry pervaded the decks of the merchantman ; rusty carronades were hastily run out, and the brass drum nearly split itself with drumming. Red articles of clothing showed the presence of military passengers. Three or four cracked instruments struck up '^ Rule Britannia," but the attempt proved a failure — the players showed a par- tiality towards quavers. " Send the steward aft, Mr. Leitch !" The steward was a Portuguese of colour, and touched his hat to the quarter-deck. " Gomez ! have as good a dinner on the table for a dozen as you possibly can at four bells, and put a dozen of champagne into the weather-chains to get the air about it. I think, Mr. Leitch, we shall lose the breeze soon, and the tide will fail us at least an hour before that time." We had got to windward of the merchantman ; and were right abeam of her when she suddenly went about on the larboard tack, just as a fighting ship would do to rake another. She passed quite close, and the mouths of her carronades looked pointed in all directions ; the L 3 226 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. ominous flag was struck, and the light-hearted skipper, standing on the taffrail, put his trumpet to his mouth. ^^ We have struck to your gallantry. Captain Rope- yarn. Come on board with your friends, at four bells, and take possession of your prize ; we shall bring up when the tide fails us." That evening was a merry one on board the brigan- tine. Captain Ropey arn readily forgave the joke that had been put upon him on the '^ high seas,'' and brought a round dozen of passengers to fight the dozen of champagne. The champagne suflfered first, the pas- sengers suffered afterwards ; female fingers now struck the piano in the little drawing-room cabin. The bri- gantine lay as if in a duck-pond. Captain Ropeyarn was roasted a little, but he bore it well under occa- sional buttering. " Half a minute more and I should have raked you with a whole broadside,^' laughingly exclaimed Captain Ropeyarn. And we had no reason to doubt his intention, for old Ropeyarn had been a midshipman in Dance's fleet, when the gallant Commodore led his lumbering tea-laden Indiamen into action, and pitted himself against an admiral of France, not leaving a single ship to the disappointed Linois : Ropey arn's reputation was therefore dear to him. •^You might have cut some of the threads of the " Spider's web'^ had you done so ; we shall be more careful of you for the future." It was midnight before Captain Sydney's charmed but astonished guests were pulling towards the merchant- man, and most of them were deeply slumbering, when, with the turning tide at dawn, the vessel got under weigh. By noon the royals of the merchantman had faded far astern. THE CRUISE. 227 We beat up the China seas beautifully. " La Pelu- silla" passed everything that could sail. As we ran between the rocky headlands, known as the jaws of the "Tiger's mouth," Captain Sydney swept the basin within it with his telescope. The usual smile upon his countenance was succeeded by an air of disap- pointment. " The frigate must have started on a cruise — eheu ! eheu !" The opium trade, in which "La Pelusilla" was taking such a successful part, had gained its culmi- nating point as a mercantile speculation. A great Government, presided over by European heads, encou- raged the growth of a poison, and monopolized the growing of it. A semi-barbarian Government, alive to the degradation overtaking its people, tried to bring an antidote with one hand, and a counter-antidote with the other. The great men of China were ordered to suppress it, but at the same time most of these great men used opium. The difficulties arising from such a condition of matters were just then only be- ginning to be felt ; it was the hey-day of opium. To bring such an enterprise to a happy termination required capital, energy, and daring;— a swift boat, and a man who could handle her ; and who expended his upper spars freely in the monsoons ; who could take a hurricane calmly, and had no great regard for the stomach of a Chinaman. '^ La Pelusilla" anchored at Lintin, the usual road- stead for opium-traders, the Chinese right of search not as yet extending up to this limit. To a certain point dealing in the drug was smuggling ; a hair's breadth beyond it and the purchaser came boldly on board, knowing that the mandarin above him smokes opium, and cannot live without it, and that mandarin 228 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. well knowing that he can prove the use of the drug through every grade upwards to the Emperor, " brother to the sun and moon," who, probably, is particularly partial to it. " La Pelusilla's" hatchway was opened ; the smug- gling boat was already alongside. The smuggler-in- chief, after some exertion, rather detracting from his dignity, reached the quarter-deck in a blue satin pea- coat or polka, ornamented on the reverse with the sprawling resemblance of a dragon, or a great sea serpent; and with a tremendous longitude of tail, the glory of a Chinaman, who cannot be convinced that it is a most dangerous appendage, for nothing is easier than to capsize a Celestial through its instrumentality. Bargaining for opium is easy traffic, the drug being as intrinsic in value as gold or silver. Bars of silver termed ^^sycee," were handed upon deck, and sub- mitted to the scale with equal minuteness as the drug. Sycee is, however, an awkward coin, occasionally requiring adjustment by the hammer and the chisel ; but it is a pleasant thing to weigh them, if they are your own. It has a curious effect to see gold and silver piled up in squares, no more thought of than if they were pig iron, or rails for a branch of the " Glenmutchkin" line. These lascars might crib a bar, and it would never be missed. Let one try it, and see how soon ^' John Chinaman" will be upon his trail. If you want change he will chop you off a corner from an ingot with chisel and mallet, a wonderfully close approach to the required weight. '^ Walford," whispered Captain Sydney, " we are doing a snug piece of business this trip. We have the first of the market; the " little Thistledown" will be ready for sea again before a single clipper shows her THE CRXTISE. 229 royals off the " Tiger's mouth." These Celestials have among them tailors of wonderful capacity in their special department of art ; make good use of your time and set up a new wardrobe, and order it down to the ship's account. The hint was well-timed, for I stood somewhat in need of it. There was nothing to make a sensible man squeamish upon that point. Captain Sydney took much interest in such a matter, and had he got his own way entirely would have overdone the thing up to a point of complete oppression. But it would be tedious to dwell upon this. The Buckmasters of China are clever fellows, at least in the copying department, if not in the inventive. If a patch is upon the elbow or knee of an old pattern, a patch uncommonly like it must neces- sarily go upon the new, maugre strict orders to the contrary. The country through which the Canton river flows is not badly delineated upon a certain pattern of table ware in vogue at English tables where the families dine at two o'clock. I admit that in the latter the perspec- tive is somewhat trying, and the shade of blue occa- sionally too profound for the climate of that individual locality. The fault of these representations is, they are too true; the Chinese artist insists upon your seeing everything, and seeing it well ; the subject in the back- ground must be brought for especial inspection ; in a marine view they will draw every rope in a ship a league off, because they know that the rope is there, although invisible to him who sees the hull. It is on the same principle as the patch upon the elbow. The ten-storied towers could not be better limned, nor the broken-backed bridges represented more engineeringly than many a man in England finds them on his dinner plate. We have all our knowledge of China from this 230 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. same dinner-plate system of instruction, and after all it is only the infant-school system adapted retrogressively to adults. Some English ships of large tonnage, the rotting limbs of the East India Company's mercantile marine, were drowsily moored at Whampoa, and leave to parties of the seamen was occasionally given. These were, by Chinese proclamation, ordered to confine their trip to the river's bank, and the immediate neighbour- hood of the foreign factories outside the city. Jack would, however, now and then take a peep within the city walls, especially if backed by a few comrades and a certain modicum of rum. I had sallied out on such an expedition of dis- covery. Captain Sydney being engaged at the fac- tory, I thought that, unnoticed, I might take a peep within the city. Just as I entered, a party of seaman were retreating upon the factories, which they con- sidered an intrenched camp ; they were beset by five hundred Chinamen, all bamboo armed. The tars, five in number, bravely kept their faces to the foe, making, as they did so, a laughing job of it, occasionally flooring an over-bold Chinaman, irrespective of his relationship to the '^ sun and moon." Anon, a Celestial having exposed his tail, a seaman would request his nearest messmate to " belay that," and '^run it out," and away spun the owner with most undignified speed. From this incident, and strictly in conformity with the laws of induction, I inferred that five English tars are almost a match for five hundred cousins of the ^' sun and moon" in various degrees removed. Not deeming it absolutely necessary for the honour of old Albion to take part in the quarrel before me, and not unmindful of the fact that a share of bambooing might be awarded me out of consideration to my THE CRUISE. 231 colour, I stepped aside into a dealer's in ivory work, for I had a commission from Captain Sydney to make pur- chases on his account. So, after an hour's work there, I contrived to invest a moderate five hundred dollars in fans and snuff-boxes, but particularly in an article of great beauty but wonderful little use, wherein sundry hollow spheres, gradually diminishing in size, are contained one within another. This ingenious toy has not been successfully imitated in Europe. One wonders how they could be got out, but more still how they ever got in. I have over and over again looked at it earnestly, but never got nearer a solution by one jot. 232 CHAPTER XXL THE PHRAOS. "La Pelusilla's ^' anchor had only been down a week, when the order was given to weigh it again. Winged like an albatross, she bowled before a favour- able breeze; scarcely starting a tack or a sheet, until we weathered the capes, and stood into the roadstead of Singapore. We then hauled by the wind, and beat up towards the anchorage. As we did so, the skipper's countenance suddenly brightened; it had been dull before. The pilot was on board, and Captain Sydney had leisure. The telescope seldom left his eye ; it was directed long and earnestly to a fifty-gun ship; and satisfied of her identity, he left the deck, and soon reappeared in fresh costume, fit for a ball-room. On making the last board, he again took command. " Are all hands at their stations, Mr.'Petley ?" " Ay, ay. Sir ! " " Have all ready to let go ! " Just as we got abreast of the frigate he called out, " Let go everything ! " In an instant the square sails were flapping on the THE PHRAOS. 233 caps, and men were hurrying aloft to furl them; the fore and aft sails were in the brails; and, the anchor running out the chain like lightning, the brigantine^s head turned to the tide, in a moment as motionless as her gigantic neighbour. " Not badly done, Mr. Petley! we have still a little of the service about us; pipe away a gig's crew. Come, Dr. Walford, the frigate is an old friend of mine ; let us go on board, and enquire what news are on the gun-room table." We were soon in the stern sheets of the gig, eight stout lascars impelling us. The skipper held the rudder-lines, and a couple of minutes brought us under the double-galleried stern of the frigate. The lower stern ports were open, and the notes of a piano- accompaniment to the words, " But more ! ay more ! there is an eye That for thy coming sparkles brightly," reached us distinctly. My eye sought the countenance of our steersman. There was a slight blush upon it, but he swept us suddenly under the frigate's counter, and in a few seconds we saluted "Her Majesty's quarter- deck." The oiScers of the gun-room were enjoying a chat over a glass of wine; and several of them recognised Captain Sydney with brotherly good feeling, as old messmates are wont to do on such occasions. One of them had been a midshipman in the boats which took ^'La Pelusilla." He had upon his shoulder the epaulette that he in command had vainly fought for. After half an hour's conversation, the gun-room steward was requested by Captain Sydney, to convey his compliments to the commodore and ladies, and to request permission to pay his respects to them. The permission came duly, and Captain Sydney took im- 234 LEAYES TURISTED DOWN. mediate advantage of it. Captain Sydney, the com- modore and the ladies, were by no means strangers to each other; and a smile passed round the gun-room table, as Captain Sydney left his seat vacant. The officer with the very new epaulette sighed distinctly, and then looked as ferocious as a hyaena; which having been observed by those around, a rather smart burst of merriment followed; and the young lieutenant looked very pea-greenish, a sentimentalism somewhat allow- able within ^' soundings." In half an hour or so. Captain Sydney once more occupied his chair at the gun-room table. ^^ You have a pretty boat under you when you pace that brigantine's quarter-deck, Sydney! I think I would barter my chance of being posted, to have such a command." '' The ' Spider^s Web ' is a fleet craft," responded the commander of the opium-trader, in a fit of abstraction: '*but I hear the clank of her chain already, and TU wager Mr. Petley has her topsails loose." "Ay, Sydney! ladies' chains are imperative bonds, whatever their topsails may be." But Captain Sydney had lost all heart for bantering, and in a very few minutes we were in the gig, and pulling once more under the frigate's counter; a female figure sat at a lower stern port, but the cabin was not lighted; as we passed under it, and just cleared the enormous rudder, she leant half over it, and said in a low tone: " God speed you, Sidney !" ^^ And you, sweet Edith !" In a few minutes more, we were ascending the side of the opium-trader. The sun had set, and the short period of twilight of that latitude was just suflScient to enable us to get under weigh. The brigantine's top- THE PHRAOS. 235 sails were already set; a few more turns of the capstan, and the anchor was run up to her bows and " catted," and under this easy canvas, the light-heeled craft was running before a gentle evening breeze. The creeks and islands so frequent in the coast of the Malacca peninsula have from the earliest periods of our acquaintance with them, been haunted by the most cruel and daring freebooters on the water, that any country has ever produced. The princes of the country are well known to participate in the profits of these desperadoes; in lieu of which bribery an in- demnification is granted them. These piratical bands pursue their calling in boats of great length, adapted for speed, and specially built for coasting in shallow water. Carrying many men, and propelled with equal facility by oar or sail, these phraos^ as they are called, issue suddenly from their lurking-places; and not easily seen at night, strike at the becalmed and anchored ship, as the spider clutches his prey; often with such stealth, that they have frequently been known to gain the decks, and massacre the watch, ere those below had time to render assistance. Hundreds of mis- sing vessels have found their fate in this way, in the Malacca seas; for in calms, which are frequent, vessels passing through the straits, must "tide it," bringing up with the change. On the second evening after leaving Singapore, " La Pelusilla" brought up with the ebb. A clump of small islands were on our quarter, some two miles off, seeming at that distance to be dense masses of foliage; they looked larger than they really were, from a slight haze which spread over the water as the sun went down. " This is not the very best neighbourhood, Mr. Petley, and the ^ Spider's Web ' has a side easily 236 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. mounted: rig out the nettings, and have the guns shotted, and a few boarding-pikes ready at hand!'' A sledge hammer was placed close to the chain shackle, that the bolt might be driven out at a moment's notice; the six bronze guns were loaded, three with shot, and the remaining with ^^grape" and '^canister;" and a boarding-netting along the hammock-lines pro- jected rather outwards, the entire length of the brigantine, starboard and larboard. The crew were piped to supper ; and the watch set, which in a trader at anchor in the Indian seas, means, that the watch are stretched out on deck, ready to start up if summoned to duty. Captain Sydney and Mr. Petley paced the deck, and shewed no symptoms of retiring for the night; but both frequently swept the horizon with their night-glasses. '' Let no bells be struck when the watch is relieved, Mr. Petley; we must keep quiet to-night; these lascars are of no use at boarding-pike and pistol." The officers of the opium-trader alone kept the watch that night; and several hours passed over undisturbed. At midnight, a single sigh of wind passed over "La Pelusilla's" deck; none other followed it; but for an instant it swept the haziness aside, and permitted each anxious watcher to dip into the obscurity of calm and mist. The effect was momentary, and all was haze again. ^' There are whales near us," exclaimed Mr. Leitch, the second mate. " I saw several black backs above the water." " If you have observed anything, you have seen Malay phraos. I have met with whales of all kinds, from the bottle-nose to the pure sperm, and I know that they must blow; and the ^blow' of a fish that can be seen at nio-ht, would reach our ears at a mile's THE PIIRAOS. 237 distance, in such a calm as this. They are Malay phraos, and are collecting around us; and arranging their plan of attack. Have you got a spring on your cable, Mr. Petley?" ^^ We have. Captain Sydney." " Then rouse the serang, and let him muster his men. We shall need them to haul upon the spring; and not a whisper among them, Mr. Petley, — our lives are on it." ^^Ay, ay, Sir!" These precautions had been well thought of; without them "La Pelusilla's" career had ended as it began, in bloodshed. The lascars were roused and made aware of their danger. Familiar with the stories of rapine among the Malay buccaneers, they needed no assurance that stern action was called for. But Captain Sydney had no inclination to trust to them, and he knew that when hand to hand with the Malay, the lascar was little better than a coward. All that he expected from the native portion of his crew was seamanship, the fighting part he assigned to the four white men of whom he was the chief. The "serang" or native boatswain stood at the chain- shackle, hammer in hand, and ready to drive out the bolt if necessity occurred for suddenly slipping anchor; the Europeans mustered by the guns; and the lascars held on by the spring-hawser. The sus- pense continued for a further space, when another gust of wind, more prolonged that the last, whistled through the cordage of the brigantine. The vapour on the water passed to leeward, and several long, low, and dark objects, were made out by the glasses a hundred fathoms or so upon our starboard quarter. They were attached to each other, and the formost appeared to be anchored. All doubt was now at an end : we were the 238 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. object of piratical attack. They had evidently lost the trader's position in the haze, and were waiting leisurely for it to take off, for an immediate movement took place. ^^ They are rowing in a line stern to us/' whispered Mr. Petley. '^ Let the men run-in the hawser, Mr. Petley." Away went the men willingly for a few steps, but they were soon brought up ; not an inch more of the spring could be got in. Captain Sydney looked over the side. " The tide is too strong ; we shall never get her broadside to bear, and without wind there is no use in slipping. The brigantine must be taken ; but let us give them a dear bargain;" and Captain Sydney, step- ping lightly to the taifrail, raised a rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. The steersman of the leading ^^phrao"gave a shriek, and instantly fell overboard with a plunge which dis- tinctly reached us. A few more shots from our small arms told well, but the "phraos"were seven in number and crowded with men. They pulled steadily towards us, stern-on, but the tide was strong and they had some difficulty in stemming it. They had made a mistake in getting to leeward of us, whilst in the haze. The conductors of the "phraos" shewed skill in their manner of approach, and how to avoid a merchant ship^s guns. No words can describe the feelings of those on board the opium-trader, whose beautiful arma- ment was rendered useless by circumstances. Destiny seemed hanging a gloomy mantle over us, and most of us felt a cold sweat break out upon our brows: the creese of the Malay in prospect is an excellent diapho- retic. If any member of the profession will try it, I feel assured he will not be disappointed. A few minutes sufficed for all this; yet, fleeting THE PHRAOS. 239 as they were, and with the experience of fifty years, they were the most lingering I ever passed through; most of us lived years in that short space. The lascars had sought shelter below. The nearest "phrao'^ was within twenty fathoms of us, and gaining ground, for the tide was nearly expended. Again the captain looked over the side. ^' Eun that spanker up," he exclaimed. All lending a willing hand, we ran it up a few yards; the skipper ran to the compass, and, instantaneously as it were, the phraos, which had been in our wake, were seen broad upon our beam ; a sudden breath of wind had swung the brigantine round. ^^ Now, Mr. Petley, it is our turn. Our bronze ladies have an opportunity of speaking out : but we can only work one at a time. Let us first speak with a round shot." Mr. Petley, who had been a master's mate at Nava- rino, spun round the elevating screw, and glanced his eye along the gun — then pulled the trigger. — ^The shot fulfilled its mission, — Crash ! crash ! crash ! was heard as it passed through the three phraos in advance — there was a melee of confusion in the attempts to save two hundred swimmers. The second gun sent a charge of grape rattling among them, and then arose to the thick sombre sky the shrieks of wounded and drowning, which were now with the turning tide borne past us in struggling groups. " Maro ! strike ! " shouted Captain Sydney to the serang, who, of the Asiatics, had alone kept the deck, and two blows of the hammer sent the shackle bolt jerking out of its socket, and the chain ran through the hawsehole. The brigantine, freed, dropped slowly with the tide ; from her decks we could see nothing but water, half-stifled cries at intervals fitfully fol- lowing us. 240 CHAPTER XXII. HURRICANES AND HEARTACHES. "These are uncertain seas, Walford," exclaimed Captain Sydney; "let a man be in the chains, and let him tell us what water we have to swim in." The lead was kept at work till daybreak, when sail was crammed on the brigantine, and we worked through the passage without any further annoyance. A fair wind up the Bay of Bengal set us speedily northwards. At length we took a pilot at the outer light, and in another twenty -four hours we brought -up at Kedgeree, Saugor Island lying over against us, low, flat, and feathery; the barrier towards the sea of that leafy wilderness, the Sunderbunds, or tide-visited islands, where only at a point or two human beings dare to tarry. These are now becoming known through the agency of steam; for slow sailing craft cannot prudently trust themselves in that malignant laby- rinth. The upper division, less of a wilderness than the seaward section, is inhabited by a scanty and squalid population, remarkably short - lived ; a characteristic increasing the nearer we approach to the sea, until the HURRICANES AND HEARTACHES. 241 last Iiovel of the Soondri cutter, surrounded by a small rice patch, tells him, passing hurriedly, that beyond this point none dare to settle. In the dry seasons, steamers make regular trips between Calcutta and the north- west, and weave many miles, up to several hundreds, of this watery network; entering by Channel Creek, and passing inside of Saugor Island. Every half-hour of the voyage a view of the sea may be obtained. Even a steamer threads these intricacies for two days and a half without a single human habitation being visible. There is not a spot for any to rest upon, for the tide flows over alluvial islands, and close jungle grows from brackish water. Occasionally, above the general mass a tree of immense size towers like a monarch ; or, lightning - stricken from its exposed situation, and dead probably for many seasons, he stretches out his mottled, bark-denuded limbs like a great lord of the wilderness : livid disease revels there under a beautiful disguise. From the Hooghly to where the Hurrungutta issues from the Ganges above Culna, fifty-two rivers are pad- dled over, the most remarkable of of which is a snaky stream, so narrow that in threading its windings the stern-post touches one bank whilst the stem is hugging that opposite ; a river euphoniously called the Koorn- kalikal. "Walford," said the Captain, ^^the barometer is falling, and I may be twenty-four hours here before a tug is available ; you must be ship's husband, and go up with the steamer of yonder vessel. I would go myself, but the weather looks threatening ; pipe away a boat's crew." Getting my China trunk hastily over the side, I was soon on the deck of a steamer-tug, which had a fifteen- hundred-ton ship bobbing at its tail. By evening we M 242 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. reached Diamond Harbour, and the barometer still falling, the steamer, casting off in expectation that a coming gale would prevent any progress next day, carried on past the James and Mary sand, and on to Calcutta, which we reached next morning : the wind had increased to a hurricane. As soon as the business hour arrived I hastened to the ship's agents, the customs department, and the "Bank- shall," and delivered Captain Sydney's papers. From thence I hurried once more to the ghaut, but no steamers were going down the river, and not a beauliau's crew would venture. I had nothing, therefore, but to ride out the gale on dry land. The barometer fell further. "Captains of ships and pilots congregated at the " Bankshall," and the semaphore station ; and the coming tide was not stayed at its wonted level, but crept up the tide-scales to an unusual point, and then spread far and wide over great provinces. The Indian Ocean had made an onslaught on them. Night was again closing in ; the semaphores in consequence ceased working ; what were the rising waters and the tearing typhoon doing during that darkness ? Having secured an apartment in a lodging-house, I bent my steps towards Backwater. I found him busy and apparently thriving. His countenance expressed extreme satisfaction, for he had been aware of the bri- gantine being reported in the river; but did not expect such an immediate advent on my part. '^ Dr. Walford, I have news for you," ^^Ah! letters, I suppose. Backwater?" for I had directed the post-office so to leave them. He went to his desk, and took out a Calcutta news- paper, and, after picking out a special column that he already seemed familiar with, he read from the Govern- ment orders of the day : HURRICANES AND HEARTACHES. 243 ^* The Governor-General of India publishes the fol- lowing extract from a letter (No. so-and-so) by the Honourable the Court of Directors : — " ^ We have to request that you will please to order that Assistant-Surgeon Wilmington Walford, M.D., suspended, be remanded to his duty in the Medical Department.'" " You do not appear elated. Dr. Walford/ said Backwater, disappointed at my apathy. ^^Stop, Backwater! to-morrow perhaps I shall be: but there is something weighs heavy on my breast this evening. Listen to the gale ! there are brave hearts in danger. To-morrow, Backwater, I may be elated." Backwater stood awed — the spirit of the winds was abroad, a maniac, destroying all it encountered. An- other tide, and the sea came in still stronger ; ships struck their topmasts, and had all their anchors down. And hours and hours of a fearful night passed, and? when day dawned, crowds were at the semaphore* which now spoke freely of the desolation towards the seaboard. " What of the old ' York' ?" said an anxious face. "The old ^York' has just passed, on the top of a mighty surf, the lighthouse of Kedgeree, which two days since stood upon dry ground, nor has stopped until carried three miles inland, among what had been rice-fields." '' Thank God, the ' York' is safe r "What of the ^ Amherst'?^' "She is dragging her anchors, and firing minute- guns." " Any word of the ' Sultan' ?" " It has been a fearful night on board the ^ Sultan.' m2 244 LEAVES TURNED DOWIir. The ^ Sultan's' hearts are all at rest. She went down at her chains before the great crash — she was too deep in the water." ^^ Is aught known of ^ La Pelusilla ?'^' " All is water where she floated yesterday. There- is nothing known of ^La Pelusilla.^" I turned from the semaphore station sick at heart ; I was the only survivor of "La Pelusilla's'^ crew! Days passed over, but the sea never gave up her dead; — the ocean, which had burst the landward barriers, then retired, leaving miles of blackish residuum, that killed vegetation and gave out a pestilent air; and the fever of the swamp, in a concentrated form, took many away whom the flood had spared. The tiger crept awed into the wood-cutter's hut, offering no violence, but asking protection — the visitation had even tamed him. Many a weeper would not be comforted that day. Previous to reporting myself^ I sought an interview with the military secretary; and, on sending in my card, was admitted at once. "Dr. Walford, I congratulate you," said the old Colonel. ^' I assure you no man can rejoice more than I do at your restoration. Your memorial has been gra- ciously considered by the Honourable Court; there is to be a levee at Government House on muster-day, and you will allow me to present you? Indeed, I know^ that his Lordship took some interest in your case. You will breakfast with me on that day, and then to business." I duly acknowledged the secretary's attention, and, careful of his time, I then reported myself at the usual quarters. The next general orders by the Commander- in-Chief reposted me to my old troop, now far in the north-west ; and within half-an-hour from the time of HURRICANES AND HEARTACHES. 245 reading it, an army tailor came to remind me that I needed his assistance. What an eye these men give to external want. They say there is more science in tape than most men are aware of, for they seem to keep a look-out on most men's wardrobes. Of all formal nuisances a levee is the greatest bore. On muster-day I was at the breakfast-board of the old Colonel, which groaned under tropical and European luxuries. There was a great waste of good meat thereat; but it was the custom, and could not be dispensed with. The ColonePs hookah kept bubbling jocosely at his left side, and his " kidmutgar," or butler, took care that no insect invaded his master's shining €calp. The Colonel was comfort, as it is within the tropics, personified; but it could not be expected to last for ever; and the Colonel at last laid aside his hookah, and took to his cocked-hat. As we hurried up the ample steps at the viceregal palace, gay costumes flashed around, and the magni- ficence of natives of rank contrasted well with scarlet and gold of every device. The last presented, were backing out in the usual awkward way. I never could get over the idea, that at levees little traps were laid at regular intervals for spurs and highheeled boots to trip upon, a special order from the august individual receiving; and that he doubtless took great delight in the numerous false steps made on these occasions. As the Colonel approached to present me, the thoughts of how I should get back again completely occupied my advancing moments ; and I was close to the Governor- General of India ere my mind reverted to the present. " My Lord ! allow me to present Dr. Walford to your Excellency ?" ^^I think I have seen Dr. Walford before. I am glad to see him on this occasion." 246 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. I bowed with some confusion; the owner of the Manilla hat, whom I had not been able to recall to memory, was addressing me. I shall not forget his countenance ; I should know that again, I think, what- ever I might do with the hat. 247 CHAPTER XXIII. MOGUL MORSELS. I COULD not have thought it possible that such a restoration to position and comfort^ almost unlooked-for and most auspicious, could fail to bring along with it great joy, but yet it failed. There was a load upon my spirits, that shut out joy, and would not be shaken of£ " La Pelusilla's^' timbers lay scattered on the ocean, and her gallant commander had found his last home among its "coral caves and cells." All now known of her was, that she floated there no longer : she never cast up, and until the mighty sea gives up the dead it has taken, we shall know no more ! By this time steam communication had made some progress upon Eastern waters, and I availed myself of such a mode of transit to Allahabad, some four weeks steam journey, intending thereafter to set up a marching establishment, and thus join my troop. It would be tedious to drag the reader over ground we have already travelled in each other^s company, nor is 248 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. the novelty of a steam conveyance such as to render a repetition more inviting. Suffice it to say, that I arrived at the mouth of the Jumna in due time; at which place, finding the heat too intense for marching, I determined to pursue my way by '' dak" or palan- quin ; the more so, since I had heard of the troop being ordered from Meerut to Delhi on sudden and urgent duty. Three or four days of close and constant carrying took me to Allighur, and two more enabled me to reach Delhi, where I found the troop encamped near the Cashmere gate, in company with a corps of light cavalry. They had been suddenly ordered over to strengthen the regular garrison during the trial and subsequent execution of a Moslem noble yclept Shumshudeen Khan, against whom the charge of vicariously murdering the assistant- resident, Mr. Fraser, had been brought. A commission was just sitting to investigate the circumstances. It was a very tedious business, and the quirks of the law were strangely shewn, and wondrously added to by a mixture of Moslem statutes. But who w^as the Nawab Shumshudeen Khan ? He was a Moslem of rank, and a great landholder ; a young man, too, who had a great ambition to get more land. The assistant-resident had drawn upon himself the ill- will of this haughty Moslem. Accounts differ as to the real cause of this ; some say that the Nawab charged Mr. Fraser with an unjust division of property; others, that features of a more romantic cast were scattered over the tale. Be that as it might, the Moslem said to himself, "The white man must die !" To this consum- mation he bent himself, putting the deed into another's hands, that of a sowar or native trooper in his service, for all natives of rank entertain such men. I was riding in company with a friend from our camp towards MOGUL MORSELS, 249 the cantonments of the Delhi Brigade, taking a round- about and western approach towards it, winding amid earthy ravines, and ultimately creeping up the oblique face of a rocky ridge ; just before it does so, the road turns off at an angle to the left. Some babul trees margined the road ; at this moment my horse started at a crouching figure, miserable, and apparently gone there to die. ^^ That figure haunts this spot," said my friend. *^ It was from these trees the trooper fired the shot that brought poor Frazer down ; and the parent of the murderer * sits derna,'* or has gone to die there. Like her of oldj she is weeping for her son, and refusing to be comforted. Her son committed the deed ^ all in the way of business;' he was employed, and had great difficulty in seeing the criminality of it. By ^ sitting derna ' the old lady hopes to bring down curses on those who hanged her son, in her opinion so unjustly, for doing his duty by his master's orders." The old woman lay like a heap, almost inanimate, and refused all food from the day her son suffered ; a few days more and her pilgrimage was at end. I became familiar with that clump of babul trees, from the frequent occasion I had to pass them ; recollection of the old woman haunted them still. The very unusual circumstance of a man of high rank being indicted as a felon, produced unwonted commotion in the Moslem population of the great city of Delhi, the classic home of the Moguls, those men held as semi-fabulous in many English nurseries. The trial of Shumshudeen Khan at length followed several weeks of preparatory investigation, and occupied some * A native of Hindostan, when unable to obtain redress for injuries real or supposed, will sit down by a man's gate, and starve himself to death. m3 250 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. twelve or fourteen days, during which time an immense mass of evidence was gone into. To have seen him in the dock, though seated in consideration of his rank, with harnessed elephants and mounted retainers wait- ing in the courtyard, for news to carry to his friends, was not to forget the scene, rapidly as it passed by. His lip was constantly turned up, to tell how little care weighed upon him, and for many days his hopes flagged not. He could not realize the possibility of his life, the life of a noble, being required of him, or the daring which would take it from the heart of the Moguls. Shumshudeen was a youth of only twenty-two, of good features, but sinister expression, acquired by dis- sipation akin to Moslem tastes ; and it was said that a more than Moslem cunning formed the leading trait in his character. Day after day he sat, unmoved amid the crowd ; his turban of kincob harboured in its folds gems of great value ; and as the natives around looked at these, they doubted if the possessor of them w^as likely to be hanged. The Nawab winced only at being deprived of his hookah ; the want of it he felt to be a greater degradation than his appearance at the bar, which latter he cared little about. At length, after many days, the trial reached its culminating point ; evidence closed step by step round the unhappy Nawab, and enfolded him in a web, so curiously netted by the perseverance of the commission, that no doubt of a verdict remained. The Nawab was desired to stand, and the judge summed up: the jury retired but a short space, and returned with a true bill. Even when the judge put on the sable cap, the prisoner faltered not. He left the dock firmly convinced that a man who is doomed to be drowned, is quite safe from hanging. I shall not describe the last scene of Shumshudeen's life : it is but a vulgar case of hanging by the neck MOGUL MORSELS. 251 after all, worthy no more of note than the last hours of a Burke or of a Manning. As the day approached, he lost gradually his sense of safety, and at last he pu^ off his lip of defiance, and gave himself up to his fate. Shumshudeen gave life for life. It was on the evening of the day he suiFered, about sunset, when a native of rank pulled up within the camp, and enquired for the tent of the '^ Doctor Sahib." He was courteously supplied with a chair, and he soon gave me to under- stand that a lady of the unfortunate Nawab^s zenana was in great distress, and he feared, danger ; that the native hakeem who had seen her, was much alarmed, and that great anxiety was in consequence felt. He begged me to accompany him to the place where the lady was : I complied. We entered the city by the Cashmere gate, always held by a British guard, under an officer, and wended our way by a dusty road, crossing the canal, and ultimately passing under the chief gate and magnificent red granite wall, which encloses the palace of the Em- peror of Delhi, the only representative of the Moguls. As we reached the middle of the wall, and looking to the right hand, the " Chandne Chowk,'^ or " silver market place," the Regent Street of the Mogul city, opened out at a right angle. Here a still imposing street of a mile in length, runs through the city, and terminates at the Ajmere gate. The remains of a small canal, which formerly ran down the centre of this thorough- fare, are still very plain, and probably repairable. At this hour, the favourite street was quite gay. The Feramorzes of the present day may be seen at sundown, lounging about in couples, Pylades and Orestes fashion, with bespangled skull-caps on their heads, beneath which an impenetrable mass of greasy half-curled hair, w^hich would be a boon to a young artist, runs wild upon their shoulders. Pylades and Orestes are inseparable. 252 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. and parade much as European birds of the same feather do, peering in at every lattice, and up at every balcony, where a half- veiled female face appears or may be. A boastful " chabook sowar," or horse-breaker, was curveting a half-subdued Guzerattee horse, just where this street opens out over against the palace, gaining notice from many a passer-by. He cut out the figure 8 in the dusty space, most circumscribingly ; sprung succes- sively three times forward, upon half the establishment of legs a horse was intended to do his work with, and gained great admiration from the crowd, for a feat which had cruelty in it, and strained a fine animal. These trifles we soon left behind, and continued our dusty path through a range of " bells of arms," occupied by a British native corps of sappers and miners. Mosques with gilded domes and minarets glistened in this loca- lity, but there was no time to look at them. We arrived at length at a district known as "Derriow- gunge.'^ Within a wall, upon a rising ground, and just overhanging the Jumna, was the building we sought, and the residence of the late Nawab. It was a spacious one-storied residence, verandahed and pillared, but having a " tykonnah," or lower story, cut out of the solid rock, on the river aspect, to retire to in the hot season. 1 was soon put into the hands of the female atten- dants, who conducted me to an inner court, led to by angular passages, devoid of windows, so common in the dwellings of Moslem lords, who allow their ladies but a scanty supply of fresh air. It is no usual occur- rence that will make a Moslem lady submit to be visited by an English physician. I therefore, expected a case of great necessity, and found consternation upon all the attendants. The patient was a lady of twenty years, just such another as Lalla Eookh might have MOGUL MORSELS. 253 been. She had frightened all around her out of their propriety, by putting on convulsions; and whilst I examined her symptoms, I thought it was no great wonder. I made them take her out upon the platform towards the river, and give her fresh air. It was the best medicine possible, for this was a case of hysteria. They asked me if she would live till morning : I said she would, and took my leave again. To this moment, I know not the position of that lady in reference to the Nawab, nor was it becoming in me to ask. As I came out of the gateway of the residence, a string of camels starting on a night's journey, with canvas tents laden, w^as passing ; and the pattering bullock " garry," or carriage of a city dealer, with tinkling bells and gaudy trappings, on bullocks of miniature size, hurried on, as if glad to get past the locality. The mansion I had just left soon became empty : no one w^ould buy it. When resident more per- manently at Delhi, at a subsequent period, I took many a peep at it. It has now a shattered gate, and a ragged wall, and toppling pillars, and the space around grows strange uncouth plants, little known in other places, and that seem to have taken a liking to a spot which the native, of whatever caste, carefully avoids. When passing, the bullock- driver curses his slow team, looks over his shoulder with a scared look, and twists the poor animals' tails until they crack. No Asiatic dares to look within that inclosure. From time to time, I paid it a visit ; my groom besought me to pardon him for staying outside ; and he wondered much at my curious taste, which he no doubt considered morbid. Few of those who visit Delhi are particularly zealous in ferreting out the musty historical chapters, in which the chivalry of the Moguls is recorded ; Timour, Baber, Humaiyoon, Akbar, Jehangheer, Shah Jehan, and 254 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. Aurungzebe ; and still greater mystery hangs over the rubbish heaps and crumbling brick and mortar of Indraputj the ancient Delhi, the site of which is some twelve miles off. But there is a garden, now neglected, called ^^ Shalimar," where a " Light of the Harem '^ held certain fancy-balls. Dried-up tanks, and minia* ture canals, and fountains equally thirsty, flanked by cypresses and clumps of distracted flowering shrubs, are still there. If any water is in the tanks, it has a green scum upon it, and no ever-playing water-jet sparkles to keep it fresh ; but should a stray lotus blow, or a ragged convolvulus creep with many-hued blossoms, it is all you may have for your trouble, except a malignant fever, known as '' the pukka fever of the Shalimar." As I have said, the Cashmere gate through which the road leading to the cantonment passes, is always held by a British picquet. The sward outside and to the left of it is fresh in the memory of many an old Indian ; the little nook at the immediate angle has been the most useful piece of ground that I know for its size, and unbuilt upon. Groups of recreant camels in " taut" overcoats, surrounded by small square boxes, constructed of singularly substantial wood, frequently occupy it. Try to lift one of these ! whew — w — w ! shot, and shell, and grape, and canister, and hundreds of rounds of ball-ammunition, pack up in a small bulk, although not feather-weight. To day that grassy spot may be so occupied, to-morrow it may afford camping ground to a treasure-party, called upon to study patience in tents, in the month of May, and imbibe the reflected heat from the city walls. The treasure party having broken ground, a far different group succeeds ; tents low in altitude, of the " shouldaree^' build, alternately striped with red, and blue, and white; with zenana MOGUL MORSELS. 255 "konnats/' or walls, screening mysterious occnpants. Cat-hammed ponies, and baggage bullocks, and camels, and indolent attendants, and matchlock- men, give im- portance to the travelling Rajah of the Gwalior country. Here he is, a Mahratta chief, on a noble dark brown Dukkanee horse ; a warrior too he is, with a gold-inlaid greave upon his arm, and a tulwar or sword, the blade of which is worth a hundred guineas, and the jewelled hilt it is difficult to value. He is a short, thickset, bull-necked, snub-nosed, short-limbed man ; speak to him, and you will find him a perfect gentleman, yet he recks little of a basketful of heads as a present, if Gwalior reports are no scandal ; the bull of the arena this time, and no disparagement to the caterwauling cockpit of Lucknow. The Mahratta chief is followed at speed by two fiddlehead nags of low breeding, whose greasy riders bear long unw^ieldy lances, useless for offence or defence. The Rajah vacates this noted camping-ground, leaving a scanty footing for the Light Cavalry corps that has come over from Meerut, three marches in one, to quell an imaginary rising of the Moguls; all, from the colonel to the trumpeter, looking disappointed to find throats whole, which had been duly settled as submitted to the Mogul knife twenty-four hours before. These are episodes of the Cashmere gate ; the subaltern who commands the gateway for a week, might gain mate- rials for a novel by watching it from the guard-room verandah, would he but cast ofiF his ennui ; to him the camp below, the gate, the walls, the collector's house, the Jumna Musjid, its domes and minarets, do little to lessen the misery of his durance. He lights his che- root, and squints into the gardens marching with the inner gate. Delhi was the summer residence of the Mogul kings. 256 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. and is still the home of their representative ; but he only sways the sceptre within the palace- walls. These walls are worthy remnants of the Moguls ; of gigantic proportions and hewn of enormous blocks of red granite. The ornamental devices are strictly Mahomedan, nor is it a palace they enclose, but a miniature city. The dwelling of the king forms but a mere speck within them, and the mean hut of thatchwork, the stable shed, and the beggar's stall of a few leaves, are blent with build- ings to raise which great sums have been lavished. The descendants of the great Timour Shah have become very numerous and very poor. " Who are you, so ignorant of manners as to enter a gentleman^s verandah with your shoes on ?" The offender stepped back a pace ; his carelessly twisted turban of cotton cloth reeked with grease and perspiration. His surcoat was equally filthy, his under garments the same ; but drawing himself up, only half rebuked, and not devoid of dignity, and slapping his palm against his breast, he said : ^' Sahib ! I am a Shazada, and the lineal descendant of Timour Beg." The man w^as selling ducks, yet his was a "true bill." He was a Shazada, but only in a collateral way; and duck merchants equally illustrious are frequently met with at Delhi. It was the festival of the Buckri-Eed. From a little turret, of perhaps the most magnificent mosque in the world, the Jumna Musjid, I looked down upon a tide of human heads flowing towards it. The niches, and minaretSj and enormous flights of steps, w^ere clad with spectators. Many a point of great interest was visible. Far to the south-east a glistening column arose from amidst ruins; it was fresh and bright, surrounded by the debris of old Indraput; this was the Minar or column MOGUL MORSELS. 257 of Kuttub. Great tombs of elaborate workmanship, but all Moslem, dotted the plains for fifteen miles. Close under me, were the red granite walls of the Mogul kings ; but a hundred years had gone since the son of the shepherd of Khorassan, the modern Nero of the East, had sat upon them and turned a deaf ear to the nation's wail, and laughed at the blazing city ; the ruthless Nadir. Desultory shots from all sorts of artillery, beating of tomtoms, and jingling sounds from bell-adorned ele- phants, proclaimed the advent of the ^' Padsha," the Great Mogul, who descended from his elephant, crossed the quadrangle, and entered the sanctuary of themoolwas or priestSj beneath the domes of the mosque. The hum of the moolwas increased into a swell, as the crowd in holiday garb, and with great decorum, rapidly filled the quadrangle. Higher and higher still the moolwas' voices called, and the sea of turbans was bent forward as if a single head ; again and again undulating ; thousands bending the knee and head in unison. A goat was now sacrificed : in days when rupees were of less account, a camel usually was the ofiering. Come with me, reader, some twelve miles eastward from this festival, to the ruined heaps of Indraput: There are too many objects of interest : we shall only examine the column of Kuttub, and the arcade of curious squared and blackened pillars close by. Indra- put was one of the greatest of those old cities of Hindostan, of which the names and debris are almost all we have remaining. Gour, Mandoo, Sirhind, are shades of great cities. Miles of brick heaps, crum- bling arches, riven turrets, cunningly carved columns, tell plainly were they once flourished; they have not been blotted out like Nineveh and Babylon; their sites are not quite so desolate as these latter, and 258 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. certainly far more beautiful. The Minar or column of Kuttub, is a gigantic pillar of red granite, in shape rather approaching to the sugar-loaf, but more slender. It is divided into compartments or stories, each singu- larly rich in individual device ; verses from the Koran in relief are beautifully carved from the hard surface. These stories, which amount to five, diminish in dia- meter and height as they proceed upwards. The niches in the staircase have become favourite haunts for bats, and owls, and other night-birds. From the top of the Kuttub Minar, the plain for many miles around seems dotted with ruins in all stages of decay. The date of this column is not so very distant, its builder, Kuttub, being of the Mogul dynasty ; but close by is a magni- ficent arcade of pillars, so quaintly carved, and so removed from everything around it in point of charac- ter, that the contrast quickly draws the visitor's attention. This arcade is very ancient : it is not known who built it; it is probably Hindoo, but beyond this history sayeth not. The whole space for miles around is a chronicle, stereotyped in granite tombs, yet deficient of a key to it. The Moguls vied with the Kings of Golconda in this point ; the history of their times was written in tombs. 259 CHAPTEE XXIV. MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSS-TROOPEKS. Another cold season found the troop at Agra, a week's journey from the ruins of Indraput. Agra is worthy of pen and pencil: it would give scope to bushels of bristles, and no end of goose-quills. Put an artist on a turret springing from the Jumna, and tell him to paint old Akberabad. No rude imagination or coarse digits could give the white marble tracery of the Taj, the tomb of Nourmahal, which, with bald- headed domes of white, are trying to the eye. Here are other chapters of Mogul times: a stern mode of printing. It is rumoured, that among the ruins so lavishly margining both banks of the Jumna, untold treasures lie hid, believed by the natives to be guarded by genii; and that ghouls, those classic revellers in Moslem graveyards, prowl nightly in their sacrile- gious calling. If ruined towers, with crumbling foun- dations, and tombs in odd corners, with odd devices, and fragments of arched halls and glittering tile-clad domes of gaudy colours, and pearly mosques and stately minarets, can realize such monstrosities, there 260 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. are few places more likely to harbour them than the current-worn towers which jut into the Jumna. When the sun is glaring overhead it is not the hour to make Agra a landscape. It is between dawn and sunrise, that beautiful and quickly-passing half-hour, that the stranger's boat should drop down the ruin- haunted river, when the haze of a delicate lilac is the ground, and the edifices are indistinct masses of purple. Then the Taj Mahal is not too bright ; and whilst the misty half-hour lingers, it were not wise to break the spell by too near an approach. Take the gleaming day, however, for details, the niceties of mosaics and arabesques, and marble slabs cut out as finely to the general eye as the ivory fans of '^ John Chinaman." Hundreds of yards of walled surface are inlaid with jaspers, agates, and chrysoprases. The Taj fails from over-perfection : like a toy upon an overgrown scale, and sadly exposed for want of a glass-case, it carries with it an aura of the Burlington Arcade, when viewed closely and in a bright light. But once within the lofty archway, and under the sonorous dome, the im- pression is dispelled. An octagon marble screen, each facet cut out like the gossamer web of a lace-maker, and differing in device, encloses the Mogul king and Nourmahal. A whisper of wonder is multiplied a hundred -fold, and mounts, still audible, up into the dome, scarcely ever fading into chaos. As I turned to leave this enormous chamber, I confess to some delusion of the senses, in which certain improvements on ^^ Lalla Eookh " bore some trifling share, when my very pleasant reverie was broken in upon by the approach of an European, whom I knew to be a stranger from certain traits connected with the manner in which his native cicerone addressed him. He was a philanthropist, a member of the British MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSS-TROOPERS. 261 Parliament, who had come all the way from England to rake up the grievances of all the Moguls. Some- how the philanthropist totally dispelled my poetical delusion ; and owing him a debt of gratitude for this, I take this opportunity of clearing it off. But Agra has a little gem that I cannot pass over : the "Moti Musjid," or pearly mosque, a fairy struc- ture got up by Aladdin's breath, a temple of enchant- ment. This delicate toy is placed within the fort, a rude but secure casket for it. The Taj and the Moti Musjid are kept in perfect repair ; the others are in ruins — most of them nameless. The mildew, and the creeping plant, and the season's rains have claimed the names along with the brick and mortar — remnants like those of the Zigris and Abencerrages who rallied round Boabdil in the davs of the Alhambra. "Bissun Doss! born in Dera-Gazi-Khan upon the Indus, and at present Postmaster -General to His Highness the Nawab of Bahawulpore, in his village of Kassimka, on the eastern bank of the Sutlej, favour me, I beg of thee, with a brace of camels and a guide. I am most ready to pay for them in promissory notes, and shall be deeply indebted to thee into the bargain," '' Husoor ! not a camel remains to the village of Kassimka. The " Coompanee Bahadoor ^^ has taken the last leg of them; nor is Kassimka better off for horse-flesh. Those thieves of Sikhs, from the other side, have not left a mane or a tail to us more than they have done to thee, O Khodawund ! May the shadows of these Sikhs never increase by the length of a mos- quito, but may the memory of their parents be blotted out ! And in truth, Khodawund, you have many days' journey before you; and two days further on, the o-round is under water." 262 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. " So much more do I need the beasts of burden, Sir Moonshee! for these Lahore bearers have taken their leave of me, and are at this moment, I doubt not, at the Punjaubee village of Site-Meroke, and busy at their hookahs, — bad luck to them !" ^^Khodawund! no wonder: these ^akalies' are dread- ful fellows, and the sight of them was quite enough to make any bearers take to their heels. And didn't they just ease your highness of a few rupees and other trifles of value?" " Very true, friend Bissun ! but I mean to report that matter to my esteemed friend the ^' Lion of Lahore," who has a queer way with him in respect to such little matters. And I must get you to send a * chit ' to the * sahib ' at Bahawulpore. It will be your own fault. Sir Moonshee, if I cannot report favourably of your hospitality to a British officer in difficulties, if not in absolute distress." '^ Husoor ! your slave is at your service entirely, and without any reserve; but what can he do? Camels don^t grow like ^ kirbee ' stalks, nor is horse-flesh reared from Hindostanee grunters." '^ Just so, Bissun Doss ! then favour me with your ^ sea-i-kulrrij''^ and a scrap of paper. These rogues have taken everything but palanquin and pistols. I shall drop a line or two to Bahawulpore, and ask for a ^ Kajdaree purwannah.'f I won't say more than I can possibly help about you. You will tie the ^ chit '{ outside the post-bag ?" Such was my request at Kassimka, a town of Baha- wulpore, and to the Dak Moonshee of that place, a Hindoo by descent, but born upon the Indus ; and at which, to me, celebrated place I had arrived ^ sans * Pen and ink ; literally " reed and blacking." t Passport under the rajah's signature. :|: Letter. MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSS-TROOPERS. 263 everything' but clothing. My kit had captivated a body of Runjeet Singh's " akalies/' who had captured it in turn, having got information of my route and laid in wait for me on the Bahawulpore side of the river. Their wild and fanatical threatenings put the bearers to instant flight, and they forgot to return. By sheer accident my pistols were in a drawer, unwontedly placed like a sword-case at the head of the palanquin ; not expecting anything in that locality, they, and a trifle or two of no value, escaped. I only wondered that they did not take my head off: Away they scoured as wildly as they came. I laid myself down again in the palanquin, and expected the return of the bearers; the bearers knew better, and forgot to return. After several hours of suspense, and fearful of delay being dangerous, I left the palanquin for any one who could carry it, and jogged on towards Kassimka. For- tunately, the " akalies " left my travelling-map also in the drawer. That was rather a depressing march of thirteen miles ; but the road was plain though rutty, and I reached the Dak Moonshee's ^^ compound" so fatigued, that, stretching myself upon the sand, I was almost instantly asleep. Bissun Doss, seeing a European in difficulties, and under such strange circumstances, had great expec- tation of some windfall : he determined to keep me in difficulties. Thus it was that we came to the knotty point involved in the foregoing dialogue. I lay all day stretched out upon a rude pallet in the garden; but rain coming on, I removed under a shed ; and after writing a note to one Peer Ibrahim Khan, whom I understood was a British agent at Bahawulpore, I had to pass the time as best I might, Bissun Doss pro- curing me some cakes of barley flour and a vegetable curry. The difficulty in Bissun Doss's mind was the 264 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. want of coin. If I had had that I mio-ht have gained his heart ; but the ^^ akalies " had taken every stiver, and I had nothing but I. O. U. to pay. my way in, a cur- rency which Bissun Doss did not understand. Begin- ning, however, to think that he might possibly incur the displeasure of his master if he refused all aid, he gradually showed symptoms of relenting, for I had seen the letter despatched to Peer Ibrahim. " Moonshee Sahib," said I, " I hope you will prove mistaken in this account of the poverty of Kassimka : I shall certainly start at sundown." The Moonshee salaamed courteously. He was thaw- ing ; generosity is capable of being frozen in that warm climate as in any other. ^' Will the Husoor give me a purwannah to claim his abandoned palkee, as a reward, if he can procure the means of travel ?" " Certainly, friend Bissun ; the palkee is at your service." And I wrote him an authority to claim it. I must have left it for any one to take who chose; indeed, I had quite forgotten it. I now felt confident of being able to make one march at least. Towards sunset my travelling cortege arrived. A sowar, of a most riifrafF cut, on a bony, lank horse, of as vile breed and temper as could be seen; the four-legged brute squinted, which gave him a most sinister expression. His rider led another for my use, smaller in size and not much superior. My guide and escort was a very rough cavalier, in very dirty garments : an old rusty breast-plate and back-piece formed his defensive armour ; a spear, and a tulwar or sabre, his offensive. A badly folded turban hung carelessly from his head; his limbs were quite bare, and his toes stuck through one of his shoes when in the stirrups, which supporters were of MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSS-TROOPERS. 265 brass, and like great shovels. But he was past the prime of life, and conveyed to my mind no great sen- sation of security arising from his presence ; he was a sort of Asiatic " Christie of the Clinthill," a regular mosstrooper of the Sutlej, and far from honest in the ^' cut of his jib," as seamen say when they spy a pirate. Not deeming it, however, good policy to turn up my nose at this convoy, I expressed great admiration at his cavalier-like appearance, and the form and condition of his animals. '' Friend Sowargee !" said 1, as we took to the road much like him of La Mancha on one of his celebrated adventures, ^^pray thee, what name might thy father have bestowed on thee ?" ^^ Runjeet, Khodawund ! at your service." " Then, friend Runjeet ! be pleased to keep a very little in advance and to one side. The night is some- what hazy at times in this jungle, I should think. You may not be easily kept in sight, and our ears may scarcely do duty for our eyes : and, friend Eunjeet ! again, who may that rough matted-haired fellow be just ahead of us ? " ^' Khodawund ! he is come to guide us through the jungle: I cannot say that I can depend upon my own knowledge of the road." '' So ho ! then he is getting on too fast ; just sing out to him." The Sowar called to the guide, who slackened his speed, and I fell once more into conversation with Run- jeet, whom I began to think a good companion and a very quaint fellow. On looking up, the guide had disappeared : I had omitted to keep watch on him, and he had dashed into the jungle, and was no doubt in full tilt on his return to Kassimka. N 266 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. ^^ Harramzadah ! " * muttered the Sowar ; " we must do without hhn." "Your friend is not much to be trusted, I fear, Eunjeet/' " May the grave of his father be defiled !" replied the horseman. We were well into the jungle and the road only a footpath; and it occurred to me how lost I should be if the Sowar should follow the example just set him. " Eunjeet ! it is said that this country, and especially this bit of junglcj bear no very good name : I see you are well provided against contingencies in your own line, but I have a couple of out-speaking gentlemen here that had better be looked to." I measured both barrels with the ramrods and placed fresh caps upon the nipples ; then tried the hammers, which tinkled quite musically. I know no greater feeling of security than is conveyed by an euphonious gun or pistol -lock when the trigger is under your own control and only to be used in self-defence. Thinking, however, that claptraps may occasionally do something towards preserving human life, and that a possibility existed of a fresh charge being prudent, thereby ren- dering it necessary to get rid of that in use, which had been too long in the barrel, and I drew Runjeet's atten- tion just at the moment to a superannuated earthen water jar, deserted by some traveller. '' Sowargee ! that gurrah is much the size of a man's head : what chance would the runaway guide have had, had I known his intention T I took far from a studied aim, indeed it was little removed from blazing away with one's eyes shut : but the bullet pierced the earthen gurrah with a sharp, ringing, echoing noise. * Scoundrel. MUSTY BKICKS AND MOSS-TROOPERS. 267 " Sabash ! Khodawund ! Sabash ! " exclaimed the Sowar. " Wahj wah ! that is nothing at all for me/' said I, as I proceeded to load the weapon afresh. Fearful of losing the credit that the chance shot had gained me, I fired the other pistol in the air and re-charged it. These little manoeuvres were very innocent, and not at all devoid of their proper and legitimate uses : I would recommend them to men with greater pretensions and love for bloodshed. They procured for me much respect in the eyes of E-unjeet, the mosstrooper of the Sutlej. '^ Have you always been a Sowar, friend Eunjeet ? I think I can recognise in you an early acquaintance with war, when your blood was red, and your arm and leg more stalwart than they now are." '' Hah, Sahib ! your slave has seen blood drawn." '^ Nay ; for that matter the sight of blood does little for a man. I have had some experience in the drawing of it, few men more so : the difference consists in its being done in anger or in cold blood — I am entirely on the cold-blooded principle." ^^ Sutch-bat ! just so, Khodawund ! I could have told that from the off-hand way in which you broke the gurrah — I would not that my head had been there." Kunjeet did not exactly apprehend my meaning, but it by no means signified — perhaps it was better that he did not. " And where may you have served, friend Runjeet ? on the hot-blooded or high-pressure principle ? There are men who have a very high respect for any cavalier who may have done so, and gained renown therein." " Khodawund ! old age is creeping over your slave : I am now a Sowar, I carry messages, act as guard or police, and now and then I do a little fighting, just in N 2 268 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. a small way, by way of keeping my hand in. But, Husoor, I was once leader of a Ressalah of horse, and more than that, Khodawund, I had the honour to be present at and take a part in the last Goorumata* of the Khalsa." '^ Sabash, Sowargee ! said I, bowing respectfully ; I have heard of these Goorumata of the Maharajah of Lahore ; they are now out of date, but I feel much honoured in having for an escort one who has borne a part in one of those noted assemblies of the Khalsa. I must trouble you, before we part, for an account of that episode in your life, friend Eunjeet ! " This conversation had been in snatches, and time had worn on : it might be midnight and rather darkish. The road seemed to be no road in particular, but was free of the jungle. Just at this moment a whistle, sharp and significant, came from our left-hand, but quite close : the whistle could not have been twenty yards off. " Harramzadah ! " vociferated the Sowar, and draw- ing his tulwar, he charged manfully into the darkness. I could see nothing, so I stood still ; to have done any- thing else would have been folly. After a few minutes' suspense, the Sowar rejoined me, muttering various epithets against the mysterious whistler, of far too flowery a character to be introduced to English readers ; for in conformity with Asiatic taste, they involved the reputation of all the females connected with the unknown family. But friend Runjeet was quite sure, that had he onljf got a glimpse of him, he would have stopped his whistling in future. * The Goorumata was an assembly of chieftains convened at times by Eunjeet Singh, but only on occasions of emergency. These conventions bore a semi-military, semi-religious character. The last Goorumata was held somewhere about 1818, and is described by Elphinstone. MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSSTROOPERS. 269 "But IS whistling a crime deserving of death Sowargee ?" I asked. "When out of place and out of time, it becomes signijicant^ Khodawund : and an honest whistler stays to reap tlie praise, nor bolts when challenged : had he not done so, he would now be repenting it." ^' What a desire to draw blood some men have ! " *^ True, Khodawund ! every man to his trade ; but I thought your lordship confessed to a little yourself." " True again, friend Runjeet ; I had forgotten that circumstance : I must make the amende.'' I was so fatigued from the high-peaked native saddle, that 1 now took to walking. A man is well off Avhen he finds his own legs better journeying than a horse'^s. On arriving at the village of Chekoke, close to the Sutlej, I stretched myself under a tree, put the hard saddle for a pillow, and was asleep in a second and a half. It was about two in the morning. I dreamt: it was of England and its cold climate, and rainy blasts, and Welch blan- kets — a queer dream in that climate, but duly inter- preted when I awoke, for it had rained upon me six hours, and a pool of water was soaking well into my back; dreamy sensations of raw climates were thus reflected on my sensorium. I got up and shook myself, and in a little time the sun broke through the clouds piercingly, and with the strength of an auger, and it bored through my skull-cap at intervals that day. It is strange that clouds increase the sun's power ; they act like a lens and concentrate the sun'^srays; but it is stranger still that one's head should be always in the focus. Passing villagers stopped to look at me, and almost collected into a crowd. '^ Friend Runjeet," I said to the Sowar, who had been in the village getting his meal, and had now 270 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. returned, " canst thou not forage to the extent of a barley-meal cake and a couple of eggs, for breakfast?" " Hah ! sahib ! I shall do my best." " And hark ye, Sowarjee ! get me a runner, who will undertake to carry a letter to the Feringee Chownee, at Ferozepoor. I will give him a chit, that will be as good as ten rupees in silver, when he delivers it." The sowar kindled a fire, and in a very short time produced a cake of barley flour. I dressed the eggs myself upon the embers, and made a fair meal under the circumstances ; the runner was soon got, and with a short spear, ornamented with little bells, in his hand, he awaited my letter. It was by no means the best specimen of correspondence; a few pencil lines on a wretched scrap of paper, to a friend at Ferozepoor, begging him to send out a brace of camels to meet me : I was afraid of a fever or some other ailment overtaking me. The runner shook his spear, the bells chimed a mimic peal, and he took to the road. At sundown, after another frugal meal, the sowar and I were on the march again. '^ Friend Runjeet ! do you know aught of the country on the western bank ?" " Hah, Khodawund! from Lahore to Peshawur; your slave served for a time under the foreign governor of the latter place. " A choice service that, my friend ; it is said that he has a strong box of goodly size, and keeps in rare order the hot-headed Peshawur men." " Sutch-bat, sahib ! it is so : the Peshawurees are far from being babies, and they often have a morning lesson on the walls and gates of Peshawur. Many a head dries upon the latter : were there no such wall- flowers, there would be no respect for government." " The governor's life is held on rather a precarious MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSS-TROOPERS. 271 tenor tliey say ; Monsieur Avitabile can have no com- mon nerves, Sowarjee ! " "It isn't everything that shakes them, Khodawund!* "I have heard it said that noses, and ears, and tongues, are sometimes seen upon Peshawur's gates ; do they grow there ?" "Sahib! they rarely thrive in that locality. The Peshawur men think little of a nose lost, if it is neatly done. There is even a fashion upon that point, as far west as Peshawur ; it is wonderful how trifling such matters become under custom." " So they do, friend Eunjeet! men's minds get hardened in that climate, and their consciences become not over squeamish on the subject of small appendages, not absolutely essential to human life." We had a tedious journey that night. The ground and air were damp ; the climate of Hindostan Proper was becoming apparent, for there is seldom any rain in Bahawulpore. We wandered from the road every half hour ; at times having none, and at others having to choose from too many footpaths; among patches of cultivation, each patch having its Persian wheel for irrigation. At length we got fairly puzzled, but a light on one side drew us towards it. It came from no village, and had no brightness, but was merely the dull light of an ember without flame. It came from the gool or hookah of a gualla or cow-herd, and on gaining it, we found ourselves amidst a herd of cattle, reposing for the night. Several cowherds were stretched out asleep, upon stretchers or charpoys, in the midst of their flocks : one only keeping Avatch. We roused a sleeper, and appointed him guide upon the spot. He vowed with uplifted hands, that the road was quite unknown to him, that he had never travelled it, and was quite a stranger to the country, and yet the sowar 272 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. asserted that his home was close by. We had to make some dreadful threats in consequence, and thus urged on, the half-sleeping guide glided before us, hookah in hand, like a will-o'-the-wisp. He was of a subdued humble caste, and had an instinctive horror of any poke he might get from be- hind. Poor fellow ! lie was quite safe, I would not have injured him upon any account, but then he did not know it, which made a difference. He turned out, however, to know the road well. I had not a fraction of a coin to bestow on him, poor old man, in lieu of two night hours, during which he worked for me ; but glad to excess at being released from compulsory service, he made no great outcry at my poverty. Sleep ! real sleep, not to be had from hop pillows, not at the command of lords and great dignitaries ; the genuine article possessed in greater purity by the pea- sant than the peer, because worked for, and which the greatest earthly physician cannot give a man, came to my pillow unasked, and sought my hospitality. We were great friends, notwithstanding the proximity of the Sikh states, and a taste that the Sikhs have for throat-cutting. A couple of marches more, conducted in this desul- tory style, brought us well within the protected Sikh states. I observed the sowar's vivacity give way, and he shewed a tendency to sink into tales of a '' raw-head and bloody-bones " stamp. The sight of a Sikh invaria- bly damped him ; he had a bad opinion of the children of the Khalsa, and looked upon them much in the same light in which nursery populations regard certain giants of old, who thought nothing of eating a few men of ordinary dimensions for breakfast, and knew nothing of indigestion after it. I had been enjoying my morning's nap after my MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSS-TROOPERS. 273 night^s march, more than usual; it might have been that a zest was given to it by a slight and constant rain which fell; when I was sensible of voices in conver- sation, and on looking up, I found a " shooter sowar " or courier, mounted on a fleet camel, all bell-adorned, and leading a similar animal. He presented a note, and asked me if I was the owner of it : my name was on it. It was from a friend at Ferozepoor, of the commissa- riat, whose shadow I hope has increased ever since, for very probably he saved my life: four days more, in sun and in rain, would certainly have made me run a great risk. When Runjeet discovered the object of the courier, he was beside himself with joy, for his fears of dipping further into .the Sikh country were very great. In an hour, he formally asked permission to depart homewards. '' Husoor ! Eooksut muncta." — ^^ My lord ! I wish my permission to go — my leave T I sent into the village, and borrowed writing mate- rials, and writing an order upon the pay establishment for twenty rupees, I presented it to the sowar, who, quite charmed therewith, bent down to my feet, and expressed a great desire that such pieces of luck might frequently fall in his way. He was quite satisfied that the note was equivalent to coin. Having given the '' shooter sowar " and his camels, four hours' rest, we got into the saddles about two p.m. The sun, magnified through the rainy clouds, produced a nausea. We soon got into the rapid, shuffling jingle of a riding camel's pace. It was sixty miles to Ferozepoor ! I determined to do it before sleeping — not a bad stretch. In about an hour, we arrived at an inundated tract : a couple of miles of water had to be got over, and the camel is far from an amphibious quadruped, indeed his element is sand; little elevations formed numerous N 3 274 LEAVES TUENED DOWN. islands, but some of the channels between them were suspiciously deep, but we took to the water, and very- soon found that we had quite enough to do ; now and then resting on an island, to let the camels' nerves settle down, which were sadly put out of tune by such a trial twice in the same twenty-four hours. At length we came to the main sheet of water. It really was serious work now ; five feet of it already, and not nmch to come and go upon, before it would be out of a man's depth. At this particular moment, the camel lost its footing, and turned over, but finding my chin above water, I was much interested in getting the quadruped once more upon his legs. When that greatly-to-be-desired result was effected, I found that my pistols had dropped from their holsters. It took a dozen dives to bring them up again, and the barrels and locks were full of mud. The sowar looked on rather astonished at my perseverance, and being more at home on camel-back, and better up to camel manage- ment, he had contrived to keep his animal upright : he had therefore much the advantage of me ; I by no means disputed it. Before feeling secure upon hard ground, the sun was low in the west. Taking off' my habiliments and wringing them, when put on again, they felt dry comparatively, and did not differ in a great degree from the effects of good hard exercise, without a lake to perform it in. The saddle being of more spongy materials, kept the moisture with great perseverance ; but for that, I had been quite comfortable. At the first village, the sowar, who was a Moslem, rejoicing in the name of Taj Mahomed, hastily cooked a curry and some barley cakes, and we made a sumptuous meal. By nine o^clock we were again on the road. Striking round the corner of a village, a large animal MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSS-TROOPERS. 275 bounded out, close to the camePs head ; it was a wolf roused by the noise ; and with the ungraceful slouching canter peculiar to the tribe, he scoured away towards the Sutlej. It was an hour past midnight as we wended our way up rather a steep ascent, to a town fortified and placed on a steep. This was called Memdote, originally con- sidered a place of strength, and held by a khan of some little pretension to turbulence and hostility to Euro- peans. The khan's stronghold frowned upon the surrounding district. The ascent was roughly paved and precipitous on either side, and at the top an old iron-studded gate, having a wicket on one side, inter- rupted further progress. Outside the gate was a post with something above it: I could not discover what it was, but the feudal towers and battlements of Memdote accumulated in a confused mass around. There was no sentry outside the iron-knobbed gate, but challenging the '^dirwan" or porter through a loophole in the wicket, the latter sleepily responded : " Dirwadza ne koine secta." — " I cannot open the gate." *^Come^ Dirwanjee! open the gate like a good fellow; there are nine "kos"^ between this and Feroze- poor, and the ground around Memdote is flooded, and we fear to go off the road, for the moon is not yet up." "Nawab ke hookum nuheen.'* — "It is the khan's order. Neither Feringee nor Sikh shall pass this gate until gun-fire. If you like you may pass outside by the footpath which is there." " Wah ! wah ! Dirwangee ! Is the khan of Memdote so sound a sleeper that a single weary traveller is refused a passage, or does the dirwan look for ^ buck- shish?^"t * About 13 miles. + Present or bribe. 276 LEAVES TUKNED DOWN. " Such is the Nawab's order," and the porter threw himself down upon his rickety bedstead, which we heard creaking and straining under the trial it had been put to. During this, and under the confidence afforded by the intervention of the gate, he refreshed himself by animadverting, in no measured terms, on the character of all our male and female relatives, from the earliest period of our having any. A heavy shower with a gust of wind passed over: we stood as well under the gateway as possible to avoid it, a creaking of rusty iron-work overhead accompanied it, fitful and melancholy. The camels trembled and shook their heads and necks, making their bells jingle ; the creaking was renewed, but the shower had already passed towards the Sutlej, and the moon was lighting up matters, but somewhat lazily. On looking up now, the creaking problem was philosophically solved. The post before-mentioned had a cage a-top of iron hoop, and a felon's body ivas undergoing a seasoning process. It was a fitting ornament to the gate of Memdote ; the wind played a sort of tune upon this rude ^olian harp, turning the whole round at times, for it swung upon a swivel — an idea altogether conservative. We had to retrace our steps and circumgyrate the feudal keep of Memdote, amid miserable suburban hovels, and herds of shelter-seeking cattle, guided to the footpath by the desultory advice of half-sleeping cowherds. Once clear of Memdote, and having got upon the main branch of the road, we still held on, but the camels' bells did not send forth so cheering a chime ; muscular fibre and strained nerve were giving tokens of exhausted energy. A dak runner, with spear and bells, passed us now, his bells had more pith in them: he could not have passed us in the morning, now he did it without much eifort. I fell asleep for five MUSTY BRICKS AND MOSS-TROOPERS, 277 minutes at a time^ and dreamt distinctly, and then awoke, still sitting upright. I mentioned it to the Sowar, who said : " Sleep on. Sahib ! I shall keep you on the right track and rouse you when we get to Ferozepoor/^ Not altogether satisfied with the safe policy of this advice, I struggled to keep awake. When a little boy I have felt the same drowsiness at church, a queer, over- powering sensation, which never overtakes a boy but there. Why it should overtake young people is quite an unsolved problem, for it does so irresistibly. I was now reminded of it ; an episode of Dr. Birch, and a memento of counter-irritation administered upon a broad principle. As we passed over the parading ground of Ferozepoor, the sun w^as up, and a troop of flying artillery passed us at a gallop, but they w^ere only in fun — it was a half-and-half review day of some sort, or perhaps, only a freak of a Major- General, whose opinions of military matters were guided by the importance of pipe-clay, and who had ideas of his own on the potency of the sun's rays. As I entered the " bungalow"* of a friend, I found him dressino^, his eyes still muzzy-looking; and throw- ing myself down upon the stretcher he had just quitted, I said : ^^ Tom, my dear fellow ! have a dak laid for me to Loodianah, and see that I am called, not sooner than twenty-four hours by the clock. I intend to sleep all that time." * A lofty cone-roofed house. 278 CHAPTER XXV. CAMPAIGNING CRUMBS. When a man furnishes his house, even ^^camp- fashion," three times in the same year, it is a sign that with him the times are uncertain ; and when times are uncertain in the East, every prudent man looks to the condition of his canvas. The eve of a march is inconvenient for hole-mending, and if you wait for the route before you cut tent-pins and purchase beasts of burden, you may have to carry your camp upon your own back, and you would soon get tired of that; just try! A city of cotton walls, ephemeral though it be, has many imposing points, and, excepting the " Sunder- bunds,'^ is the most perplexing subject for topographical study in reference to theory, and finding one's way through in reference to practice. The ^^ Seven Dials" pooh ! at midnight, in a London November, that noted puzzle in brick and mortar, is perfectly lucid to brains of mediocre acumen; for you have lamp-posts, and lettered corners, and gin-shops, and perhaps a member of the metropolitan police who might be accidentally in the way, to guide you. But the cotton city on a treeless plain, is the real puzzle, depend on it. If all houses CAMPAIG>;iNG CRUMBS. 279 were much of a size and shape ; if all were painted white, and disposed with the same regularity; and if all inhabitants of cities were clad in scarlet, then cities would be equally distracting ; but men not subject to military rule differ in taste, both as to houses and external garments; differences which mark their where- abouts, and are of a distinct use in this world. The canvas city has its features, however, which acquire an expression from familiarity with it, just as we in time are able to distinguish the features of one negro from other physiognomies of a sable tint. And so the countenance of the canvas city is not an unmeaning blank, from very sameness ; its expression is variable with circumstances, like the schoolboy who carries home with him the gratuity of a black eye. For instance, it may not be wholly on level ground ; luck and the quartermaster-general may put your tent upon a sandy hillock, not much of an elevation on the aggregate, it is true, but of some value nevertheless ; or in the spongy bottom of an earthy basin, not much of a ravine either, but, having on the contrary, qualifications widely at variance with the former. When the latter turns up on fortune's wheel, a prudent campaigner digs a trench around his tent, and cuts safety-valve canals at right angles with these, and in various directions towards any ground that may be lower than his own. He also heaps up earth against his cotton-walls, has occasional pulls upon his cordage, quite like a seaman, and tries the tent pins with his own hands. He longs for a barometer, and would watch it narrowly if he had one ; whilst the regimental-quartermaster pitched upon the sand hillock, never bestows a thought upon that instru- ment, and wonders what you can want it for. An attraction exists between camps and rain-clouds ; a great camp rarely keeps many days in one spot with- 280 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. out a heavy fall. It is threat ening even nowj and unfortunately we are in the basin, and not upon the sand-hillock, and just in the rear are the sick of a thousand men, only as snug as straw of a very coarse grain can make them — the coarser the better when the rain comes. The quartermaster-general cares nothing for sick men — they are not in his department ; the symmetry of a camp takes his eye out, and common- sense does ^^ snooks" at him, harmlessly, because not noticed. But I wager the ghost of a gold piece that his own camp is now on a sand-hillock ; I wish he had the charge of my sick men, and the best of luck in the treating of them. But the rain is falling: all within the basin are down in their several mercurial columns; there are other basins in this great army, but this one being alone within observation we shall stick to it. Laughter is coming from the tents upon the high ground : it is astonishing how gay they are there. The basin is so gloomy and damp, that laughter seems indecorous with- in its influence, and lucifer-matches are obstinate on the subject of ignition. If it were not for little '^ Vixen" in the corner, with a rising generation of puppies a week old, and born under great difficulties, and even already making an agreeable domestic society, it would be impossible to keep one^s heart up, for the rain now falls heavily. It is just the night for thieving Sikhs to come to make a choice in horse-flesh ; to cut their head and heel-gear and look out for long tails ; to slip upon bare backs and gallop through the camp like wild Sioux, now and then coming upon tent-ropes, spread deceitfully, and as it were to entrap them. Towards midnight the rain is in real earnest : it has completely stilled the noise-wave always present in a great camp. The camp-followers and domestics have CAMPAlGNIlSra CKUMBS. 281 already stolen to the higher grounds, and left their master to weather it out. They are quite right, for as yet he is better off than they ; in that respect the tables will be soon turned. But falling rain produces drow- siness, in virtue of its depressing qualities. In an in- definite short space of time a wild yell from the rear is heard, followed by horses in desperation, and backed by hard riders, which dash madly past : as they pass the splashing sound tells that the basin is not an empty vessel. Another half hour's slumber, and a whining noise of great distress fills the apartment, poor Yixen is afloat in her box, and very fearful about her puppies. Wet, soaked, and shivering, the first foot over the bedstead passes through eight inches of inundation. There are eight inches more to spare before the flood reaches the mattress, so taking the little things from the wreck the mother makes a spring from it, and, joyful at the deliverance, is guilty of the greatest indecorum on the subject of canine affection, consider- ing the gravity of surrounding circumstances. At dawn the rain abates, having purloined seven of the eight inches on the legs of the bedstead or charpoy ; overhanging quilts having soaked up a not inconsider- able amount, and entirely on the syphon principle. Vixen's box, a derelict, floats about with an air of perfect ease, and on a level with the bedding. There is scarcely a stir yet outside; the whole camp is as limp as wash-leather. By-and-by, a sound of limbs wading through water, of a quagmiry character, approached, followed by others which had come through many yards of inun- dation. When the bearer raised the purdah, or door, a lake of some pretensions spread out on all sides. It was far from an easy toilet that day, notwithstanding that it was done with as little attention to nicety as may 282 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. he ; but when one has to transact that very necessary part of domestic life whilst standing in a brass basin, it partakes too much of a conjuring nature, and at least needs frequent repetition to become easy, con- venient, and agreeable. With great discernment as to present condition, and anxiety for future well-being, a set of hospital-bearers, with a ^^ doolie," or litter, rescued me from my perilous situation, and placed me on a sandy bit. I never knew the exact value of sandy localities before. They had always been connected in my mind with cactus and desert plants in India, and wiry '^ bent " on the coasts of Britain, very limited in growing capabilities, and far below the general average of usefulness. Now, I would not have given a rood of sand for a square mile of the finest loam in that hollow. I looked towards my tent in the lake ; nothing could be more desolate. The hospital-tents had been struck at midnight and without orders, and already a company of soldiers were bodily transplanting the canvas dwelling without taking it to pieces, as is the use and wont. I felt quite ready to dispute the value of the useful in opposition to all the ornamental of the quartermaster- general of the army ; and I think he knew I did so, for I kept tent and hospital establishment quite out of the line from that day, and no troublesome inquiries were instituted. But many a good soldier got rheu- matism from that damp basin, which he never shook off. In a few days the clouds cleared away, and the weather became dry and crisp. Cheerful fires of kirbee stalks'^ crackled of nights, and twinkling stars peeped down upon the great camp like little holes of all sizes drilled without any plan in a plate of blued * Stalks of a coarse grain, like Indian com. CAMPAIGNING CRUMBS. 283 steel. Cold winds insinuated themselves through crannies, and any one who rejoiced in the possession of a pigmy stove was sure to be popular for the time being, especially if he would lend it for a small party. But mess-tables were poor affairs^ and legs of mutton became wonderfully scarce, and horses got lean apace, from bad grass and a paucity of it; body -servants deserted, and no wonder : in sooth, it was no fun to them. The horse is a great warrior when his blood is boil- ing. None can see him then without being reminded that " He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength ; he goeth on to meet the armed men ; he mocketh at fear and is not affrighted, neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swal- loweth the ground with fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets. Ha! ha! and he smelletli the battle afar off." Mysterious noises, prevaricating and contradictory reports, precursors of coming strife, and then the melee : nerves of men and horses on the rack, muscles strained and harness rended, in getting guns through deep sand. Now they are over it, but spent, and their work not yet begun ; yet there is a screw loose, for heavy guns, which none knew of being so near, take up the note of war, and the gay troop is weltering. Look upon this heap ! the muzzle buried, the limber overset, the shattered wheel deep in the sand, the once fiery horse hors de comhat, riders nearly cold already — lives sold for glory and a shilling a -day I Here is a warrior not yet dead — a dying horse — his nostrils sending out a column of steam mingled with minute blood-globules, and anon he struggles against 284 LEAVES TURNED DOAYX. the choking harness collar, but spent with the exertion his head falls once more ; he tries again, his filmy eyes brightening for the moment and becoming elo- quent, for he snuffs at the body beside him — he knows that one. This sandy hollow, at seasons full of water, is now only moist with blood ; it will be an easily dug grave for some. The gun and a squadron half fill it already. The masked guns were well pointed, and their goal a sure one, for the sandy hollow was a certain man-trap. But on a little way, and there are lesser groups; mark the three turbans on the ground, and grim features still with scorn upon them ! — expressive of opinions even now — a cloven skull, a trunk quite headless, a third with a Birmingham steel up to the hilt upon the breastbone — stalwart carving at such a meal, the stereotyping of a red hand. And yet this was the work of a smooth cheek and a downy chin. When days of chivalry come back again, D'Urban Bligh shall surely have his spurs. Heavy explosions have rended many miles of sky, and, answering to their pealing, clouds have hurriedly rolled down from distant mountains, and spreading over the field shroud the sights that are to be met with there. A fitting canopy ! the only pall that many may receive, deepening with the coming night : an hour of dread to those not yet dead. Wounded men are ever near to death, which is as cold on that field as it is in a colder zone. Moreover, there are other horrors on fields that have been just fought ; for monsters creep out then from cowards' hiding-places, and rifle the dead, and hasten the dying, and the next sun dawns on stiffened forms ! Here is a tent in which is laid out the last meal for the dying, and under the chaplain's surplice is a regu- lation blade. His horse is picketed to a tent-pin at CAMPAIGNING CRUMBS. 285 the door, and belt and pistols have a strange contrast with white lawn. The chaplain has been in the melee, and has cheered others to their work — he is now at his own calling, offering to pale lips bread and wine. Within another and a larger tent there is more stir — for gleaming steel is still at its office, less bearable because used slowly, when the screws of men's frames are loose, and nerves are down like slackened fiddle- strings, and an occasional shriek pierces to a distance. Surgeons are poking for bullets which have entered at holes and have forgotten to come out at corresponding lesions, and have taken all kinds of queer roads, mira- culously missing arteries by hair's-breadths, at other times splintering dense bone, the framework of men. Listen ! the " passing bell " is not heard on battle fields, but the muffled drum keeps time with the wailing of the ^^ Dead March " — the " coronach " of many dead. A great conflict has been, the smoke of it has scarcely yet cleared away, for patches keep hanging over points redder than others, where carnage had pitched and offered up her most lavish sacrifice. Come, bury this pair ! they must sleep together : side by side, they cannot be too near — the veteran sire, who covered his legion until lowered by a shot, and the son, the youth of the light curls, who stepped out and stood over him, the forlorn hope of an English home. They must sleep together : the wail of that march is not loud enough for them, and yet it may soon and blightingly reach a rent heart and a desolate hearth, where ears are ready to catch faint sounds. Bury them ! and bury them together ; for voices in the sky above the cloudy covering, in the clear ether, far, far beyond the battle-field, say to the old man and his son, " Come up hither !" 286 CHAPTER XXVI. SEA-VIEWS AND SICK-CERTIFICATES. Shipped off at a short notice, to save life by imme- diate attention to the liver, a man needs sympathy, but does not always get it. But there is something in sea air ; or the hundred miseries consequent upon the sudden adoption of a sea-life would not so often revive hope in, and prove restorative to, the invalid. To a great enemy, who has done a man a grievous wrong, and disposed to wish him ill, which God forbid ! one need go no further than wish him the same luck in a homeward passage that I had; — the same chance of life ; the same feeling, mentally and bodily ; the same comforts at bed and board; the same hard-hearted winds ; the same month of August to sail in ; the same teak ship, deficient in repairs, and aged as was the *'Europa"; with the same water-casks on deck, rendering her too crank to beat successfully ; the same closed hatches; the same ten days "hove-to" in the Bay of Bengal ; the same knowledge that the Andamans are a lee shore, and that the natives are suspected, and with SEA-VIEAVS AND SICK-CERTIFICATES. 287 good grounds, of cannibalism — a suggestion of a har- rassing nature to some folks; the same daily announce- ment of the fact at noon, that by dead-reckoning the ship is five miles further from her destination than at the same hour yesterday; and the same lady passenger with her five little pledges, having a perfect cacoethes for attention, and attachment to beating upon tin canisters. Three months after leaving the pilot, and with a blazing sky overhead, point, and headland, and breaker- laved reef of the rugged Mauritius successively greeted the lazy ^^ Europa." We wanted water and stock, for both were exhausted ; and we crept doggedly into the bay like a hound that deserves a flogging and knows it. Two enormous sharks prowled about the rudder chains; wary old fellows, far too experienced to bolt pork with a hook in it, or a red-hot brick disguised in a tarpaulin. They had haunted the bay and harbour of Port Louis for years, attending the entrance of every ship, and now and then dining on a midshipman. A Government boat came alongside, with two officials, who demanded a bill of health. The boatmen seemed to know the sharks ; and one of the latter they called " Peter," and thereupon the recognition was mutual, for ''Peter'' made a dive under the boat flourishingly, as much as to say, "If I get anything, Pll give you halves." The sharks of the Mauritius were noted at that time. I donH know how it may be now ; but the breed was not confined to the bay. I nearly hooked one upon dry land ; but in hooking him I hooked a Tartar, for he sent me back to the " Europa " without a shilling ; his jaws were enormous, he made no difficulty in bolting any thing. The kind-hearted skipper laughed when I told him, and recommended me to return to the " Europa" ; although he had no great cause for laugh- 288 LEAVEl^ TURNED DOWN. ing, for at that moment he should have been in Eng- land. It is not every temper that can get up a laugh under these circumstances. But before taking this advice I lingered at the jetty, and, borrowing a few dollars from the skipper, I in- vested them in a cage of birds, those tiny members of the feathered race called "Avadavid." The emancipated negro who sold them looked much in need of custom, but I could have bought them cheaper in England, and saved myself the trouble of importation. The feathered fairies served to enliven my cabin, for they sung during the day and fluttered during the night, pursued by hunting cockroaches. An old Indiaman, from England with troops, was moored a cable's-length from the " Europa." Strings of drying shirts ornamented the rigging. They reminded me of a necklace of human teeth belonging to an Ash- antee chief, of which I had seen a drawing ; for a white shirt hanging to a rope is no bad representation of a molar, and the arms do duty for fangs ; the blue shirts reminded me of certain mercurial effects on my own maxillary department. Instinctively I touched a molar, and it shook ; but by-and-by shirts and Guernsey- frocks disappeared from stays and shrouds, and other movements indicative of preparation went on, and before sunset the poop and quarter-deck of the huge vessel was shut in witli awnings, and flags, and spare sails, for a ball was to be that night on board the '^ Ava." As the evening advanced, and nothing of the shore but the serrated outline could be seen, and the twinkle of lights upon it, it looked against the clear sky like the spiny back of a strange shell-fish. At length sounds of brazen instruments passed over the water. They were well heard in the ^^Europa/' and even light footsteps keeping time to measured strains that were SEA VIEWS AND SICK CERTIFICATES. 289 new to me, although stale enough In England. I did not regret declining the invitation; for I had the better part on the poop of the " Europa/' on which I smoked my cheroot and listened to the revelry; and several hours passed thus. The moon arose, and "Peter Botte," tipped with its light, looked down upon the ship-dotted bay, which speedily became distinctly visible. It was a sultry night ; the revellers in the " Ava" did not mind that ; no doubt they must have liked it, for many bouyant hearts were there. God speed those light hearts in the '^ Ava." In the meantime the sky above the spiny island became darkened, as if a cloud had arisen from the ravines of " Peter Botte." It ascended rapidly — there was not wind to stir even a withered leaf. Whilst looking at this phenomenon the officer of the watch called out — ^' See that all is ready to let go the best bower !" and then dived into the cuddy to examine the barometer. On coming on deck again he did not give the order, but muttered : " I never saw so dense a cloud rise so rapidly, and the barometers take no notice of it ; but here it is, any way ; we must take it, be what it may." In another moment it was upon us. I expected nothing but an Isle -of- France hurricane. Darkness had shut out the land, and even the "Ava" failed to loom through it ; — but it was upon us, a dense cloud without any wind to blow it. A colony of cockroaches had migrated from the sugar factories to the shipping ! The '^ Europa" became clad with them,, for her sides had that day been refreshed with a coating of coal-tar, and the nimble insects found themselves in a quagmire. The mass of them, however, alighted on the decks and rigging ; we had got the last of the batch. In a few minutes the sky cleared, and the moon broke through. O 290 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. I rushed below, and the rays, striking the port, dis- closed a battalion entering thereby. Afraid to attract them by a light, I sprung into my swinging cot. Pah ! pah ! 80° on the thermometer-scale, and cockchafers racing over me ; now and then sticking among my hair, and compelling me to liberate them with my fingers. I tossed about for an hour. I wanted to see how much cockroach society I could endure, but T got parched and feverish. Hearing the steward in the cuddy at that unusual hour, I asked him, turning the jalousie, for a glass of water. In reply he said : — " Please, sir ! we've got nothing but cockroaches." The " Europa" was but thirty hours at her anchor- age by the bell-buoy. She had wasted too much time already. A hurricane tipped us with his tail off Mada- gascar. It was a mere tip, and rather pleasant, for it cooled the air, and made the cockroaches keep to the seams, and spun us like a drunken teetotum to the latitude of the Cape, where we remained six weeks to get sober again. To one roused just after sunrise, in a Novem- ber morning. Table Mountain is a gladsome sight ; the shadow of the hill was performing its ablution in the Bay, and the white-window-speckled houses of Cape Town looked like a shepherd^ s plaid of a large pattern. The atmosphere was clear, elastic, and invigorating, and a promise of health floated in every airy particle. The tropics and their pestilence could not reach this place. The " Europa" passed between Bobbin Island and Green Point, and Table Bay lay open like a sheet of tissue-paper. But keep clear of Green Point ! it is easily rubbed against ; and it is not made of soft soap, I can tell you, for I once saw a ship's bottom which had slightly touched it, and it looked like a plum-pudding with rocky fragments deeply set in it. The pilot, therefore, looked over the side anxiously ; we saw the SEA VIEWS AND SICK CERTIFICATES. 291 lurking point a couple of fathoms off, and as many under water ; and when we had passed it the pilot gave out a long breath. He had held it rather beyond the natural period, just in the way a soldier bears a flog- ging. His anxiety was now dissipated, and he pointed out, in a graphic manner peculiar to ocean -roaming men, several noted spots ; not that they were close at hand and visible — several were, indeed, many miles off — but they were connected with the Colony, and, of course, his property in one sense. " It was there the gallant ^Doncaster' was driven ashore, and on this hand the ^Atlas' went down at her anchors." Doubt- less he will now add to these, " and it was there that on the sinking decks of the ^ Birkenhead' four hundred British warriors, at a word of command, and when many might have saved themselves by disobedience, with toe to toe and shoulder to shoulder, and with the precision of a parade, marched upon their unknown path to eternity !" The graves of these argosies are watered by the salt tears of the ocean, and winds from the great southern seas moaned the lullaby of the lost — the still wept ! Table Bay was before us, in its May-day; its table ridge like the hugest quarry. Had those great giants which, according to the nursery historian,' lived in Cornwall, known of this place, they might have lilced to work it. I was at home here, and soon after landing I wandered towards Green Point; for there, I learnt, a quaint individual who dealt in curiosities lived. The Bay sparkled; ships bound for every land sailed to and fro. The merry boatmen of the place hoisted white sails, and skimmed along as if they were taking the cream off the bay -water, if there had been any. This, however, is only found when Table Hill puts on her "nightcap" of clouds and mists — when the w^ind 02 292 LEAVES TUENED DOWN. sets in from the north-west, when vessels shift their riding-ground, strike their upper spars, and moor with many anchors. That piece of water is then no harbour; ships strain themselves, and iron links are riven; and men^s lives hinge upon the holding of an anchor-fluke. I sat upon a wave-smoothed rock ; the distant tinkle of a capstan- paul, as some ship got home her chain, came over the sleeping bay. It brought music with it, for every clanking fathom told of '^ homeward bound." Her topsails were already loose ; and I gazed at her until the white winged albatross that swooped round Robbin's Island was not more airy -like than she. A sperm whale was spouting in the bay, his brown back seen at intervals above the water, and skeletons of his species were on the beach at a little distance off. An ingenious artizan might have framed a goodly craft from these ribs and backbones: there was a queer mingling of a ship-yard and an anatomical room con- veyed to my mind as my eye caught them. On looking up, a signal blew out from the flag-staff on the ^* Lion's Head." It was a vessel from England ; and her " royals " were peeping over Green Point already. I knew that she would take half an hour to creep to the anchorage. Just as she brought up, I gained the jetty, usually a busy locality, unusually so at this moment. Cases, and hampers, and garden produce lay profusely around; waggons took airings upon the beach, and huge teams of dozens of oxen were evidently trifling with beams of wood of no great dimensions. Semi-Hottentots and Negroes, no longer slaves, flourished whips longer and stronger than goodly-sized fishing-rods. An ^^ oUa podrida " of languages surrounded me as I sat upon a capstan-purchase. I tried to separate them as well SEA VIEWS AND SICK CERTIFICATES. 293 as I could, and soon gave it up as a hopeless task; for the Negro invaded the vernacular of the Bosjes- man, and Oordu amalgamated indifferently with the Doric of semi-Dutch. It was not these^ however, that I had come to hear or to see ; but to watch the landing of the " outward bound " in yonder Indiaman, who, with an impatience that none but Indian pas- sengers can display, were fast approaching the jetty. The boats bumped against it. A general and a judge, two colonels and a captain — had each borne his insignia of office on the front of his silk hat, he could not have designated himself more correctly than did the outward man severally, and yet they all patro- nized silk hats — a manufacture I despised when a member of the "low-room." Three subalterns fol- lowed ; they all calculated on some lucky step having promoted them to "companies'^ during the voyage; and yet two of the trio were far out in their reckon- ing. A sallow youth from Haileybury College, who found great inconvenience from deficiency of nose on which to hang his spectacles, pioneered the judge's wife, who had half-a-dozen nice young ladies under her wing, whom she sheltered like a brood of chickens. And then a whole "ruck" of cadets sprung up the jetty-stairs, let loose upon society at Cape Town, full of glee and bantering, and unwearied by their ofiers to take charge of innumerable trifles belonging to the ladies. The general and colonels had renewed their youth in old England; and, with as little reflection as the cadets, poked their noses under youthful cottage- bonnets, and diversified this juvenility by referring to the boatmen about for the date of the last "line step," and the precise condition of the "frontier states ^' in India. And they expressed no interest in the Kaffirs. 294 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. I naturally reverted to the change which a tropical clime had wrought in me. I had landed on this same jetty, sanguine as the groups I now saw. Present gaiety, rapid advancement, ultimate success, flickered before me as it now did in the field of their vision. And then came a twinge in my right shoulder which told me that, in one respect, I was not the wiry man I then was when I took a part in such a scene, although still one of a very few survivors who had sat together at the cuddy-table of the broad bilged " Bamboozlebury." In the footsteps of this party, I drew towards the fashionable and most prominent street of Cape Town. I felt myself dogging them, and was almost fearful of being observed to be so doing. At length a young gentleman without a beard, but who evidently knew something of town-life, caught me poaching on the privacy of the party; for he turned to a ditto of him- self, and observed: ^^Snob! vewy wespectable Snob! an't he, Jeflfe, my pippin?" Not deeming it absolutely necessary to indicate that I had appreciated this observation of the rising genera- tion, I repaired to a window of my own apartments. Here I awaited the scene that was sure to follow: car- riages, gigs, and saddle-horses, were paraded in an inconceivable short time, at all the hotel-doors. African and Hottentot Jehus, with peaked caps of shaving manufacture, sat upon the coach boxes; shawls and bonnets fluttered for a short space before carriage- steps; the shaving-capped coachmen got the word to start, whereupon they proved themselves to be expert in whip-cracking, beyond anything imaginable; and to each carriage, four well-ribbed-up Cape-bred bays bounded along with a bright and plunging gallop. With the reins almost loose upon the horses' backs, SEA VIEWS AND SICK CERTIFICATES. 295 Jehu used h\^ fishing-rod with both hands, as usual, and " Jeffe/' who sat beside him with a neck-tie of intense blue, producing a cornet-a-piston, put it to his lips and treated the inhabitants of Cape Town to a few choice bars of a popular melody, then in special favour with fast young gentlemen, and which I have since learnt, goes by the name " Susannah ! don't you cry for me/' If Mr. JefFe meant to infer that there was any chance of Cape Town shedding tears at his departure, he certainly was mistaken; for the young ladies in the carriage laughed most uproariously, for young ladies. Jehu's speed of travelling appeared to interfere with JefFe's execution, for the notes came out most irre- gularly, and in perfect violation of all kinds of musical taste, when applied to brass instrumentation. Nume- rous hired horses with outside passengers, whose gifts of equitation were exceedingly variable, kept pace with the carriages; the tout ensemble resembling cer- tain travelling equestrian companies, at present in vogue in England. Long legs and short stirrups, and short legs with long, were provokingly prevalent; pallid faces, at long intervals, bespeaking a want of confidence in jockey ship, contrasted with the general laughing and careless countenances of the mass. It was a desperate charge which those cadets made through the streets of Cape Town. Hottentots, negroes, and ladies, of Dutch extraction and develop- ment, went down before them in twos and threes. Jehu turned the corners by the playing his fishing-rod incessantly about his horses' ears; and they disappeared on the road to Wyneberg, as such parties always do, I think in virtue of a law. The ** Europa " had hitherto been an unlucky ship, and somewhat lavish of a furlough-man's days and weeks. The skipper, who bore these disappoint- 296 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. ments like a marine martyr, quite at variance with the general run of salt-water temperaments under similar trials, informed me with a serio-comic expression, that the ^' Europa/' having passed her grand climacteric some years before, was exhibiting signs of a ripe old age. Her planks showed fine specimens of the auger- worm; her ribs were suspected of the dry rot; and moreover, in heaving-in the anchor at Port Louis, the fluke had caught in her ^^ fore foot," and damaged that member considerably. As I knew that freedom from auger-worms, sound ribs, and efficient feet, both fore and aftj were highly desirable, I recommended him to put the " Europa " into the doctor's hands, for ships need patching up when injured, or their constitutions become affected. The shipwright declared that such a worn-out frame as the ^^Europa^s" was not so easily set up again, for every new plank unseated an old one. A telescope in the shape of a millstone ! and, looking through, it seemed as if I might have knocked out new holes in old constitutions, by patching up flaws with too strong materials. I watched the ^^Europa's" treatment from day to day. It was like attendance upon a clinical lecture — one at the bedside of a patient. The shipwright thought me curious in his craft; he did not see how it applied to my own; but I dipped into the pathological anatomy of the '' Europa " — pah! we must have rolled down from the Isle of France at least, " widout a linch- pin." And not a rat was to be seen, a bad sign; they must have left us at the island, for they were plentiful enough when the "Europa" lay in theHooghly. They had perhaps some inkling of the hurricane, and had knowingly changed quarters with the cockroaches. Be that as it may, it was not pleasant to dwell upon; and when the skipper came to know it, he put on a grave aspect; and yet he was a plucky fellow, and SEA VIEWS AND SICK CERTIFICATES. 297 could have made any craft spin through the waters, except the leaden-heeled " Europa," whose copper hung in shreds, as pliable and nearly as easily made to quiver by the passing breeze, as the gold leaf of a sign-painter, or the green leaf of the aspen. O 3 298 CHAPTER XXVII. MOEE SEA VIEWS AND A LITTLE BIT OP LAND. But a word or two still about the Cape, before em- barking ; for my powers of observation were restricted on my first visit. Nature was in a strange mood when she formed Table Mountain. It is a perpendicular cliif on its Bay aspect — one half of a rended mountain. Where then is the other ? it must have slipped into the sea, and the advance-guard of the dreadful avalanche peeped up again at Robbin Island ; as much as to say, ^* All is gone to the bottom but this little bit." To the south-west of Table is a twin mountain, the several points of which bear the names of " the Lion's Head" and ^^the Lion's Rump;" and from the latter, like a tail, juts out the sward-covered Green Point. Another cone-shaped hill called ^'the Devil's Head" guards Table hill on the north-east. Looking from Green Point across the bay, a long, low, swampy-looking tract of several miles, bleak and uninteresting, bounded by a range of low hills, produces a '^Pontine" effect, which is added to by the peaked outline of the Blue Mountains in the dis- tance, and the Grecian observatory placed upon it. Nor does the passing team of oxen and the waggon drawn SEA VIEWS AND A BIT OF LAND. 299 by them, detract from the idea, at least ia a sunny day. The patronymics of the Vans are becoming fewer every lustrum, and the day may yet come when '^Van Hogshead " may be little less mythical than '^ Vander- dekken; " for that famed Dutchman has not been much seen or heard of, of late years, and has probably changed his cruising-ground. I should grieve to see it; the sub- stantial "Van Hogsheads," with countenances shining as bright with hospitality as their oaken floors and twisted balustrades, gone ! Where then would English passengers beg for gratuitous glasses of Constantia, or find a host whose politeness and temper can see out the third ship-load of mendicants in one day ? Lloyd's agent declared the "Europa's " complaint to be a ^^total breaking up of the constitution.'^ She was there- fore condemned, and those on board of her had to shift for themselves. The hint given by the rats was too strong for Lloyd's — they could not stand it; so much for sail- ing from the Hooghly at a season when good ships are usually scarce. I have never doubted the correctness of Lloyd's diagnosis, but I wish that that gentleman had peeped into her condition at Calcutta. It would have saved me a little coin and a whole back-burden of trouble; but the rats had not then expressed their sentiments upon this point, and that might have made a great difference. But I had, with others, been detained a sufficient space to allow the season to overtake us, and at length came a frigate-built ship, homeward bound, which had left the Hooghly only five weeks since, and was in such a hurry that she had only time to say, " I have a cabin or two vacant, for their late owners sleep beneath the restless waves.^^ Having no dread thereanent, I took one of them. 300 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. She was a noble ship, and before reaching the Downs she made a frigate of England admit that the Admi- ralty's parchment cannot make a vessel sail. I sat upon the poop of the "Eamillies" as we ran out of Table Bay; and a heavy dew falling, I said to an old General, who lay* upon his back on a skylight top and threatened to sleep there ; "Four bells! General; and Cape dews are heavy at times ! " " Sir ! " exclaimed the General in a semi-upright position^ which he suddenly assumed, and with an air of dignity upon being thus interfered with: *^:Sir! there is no chance of my sleeping ; the want of it is my com- plaint; I am going to England to look for it; I could not get any in India." '^ A thousand pardons, General ; but I once saw you take an uncommon nap with three inches of water under your backbone. You couldn't do it now, I suppose ?" '' Perhaps not, sir ! I haven't had a minute's sleep for three years, you may therefore make yourself easy on my account." I had, by the merest accident, touched a very fine string in the General's nervous system, and without further remonstrance I sought the awning-cabin on the larboard side, and made a pretty clever board of it, as seamen say, for I was only awoke by the preparations at dawn for washing decks; and just as a swashing sound denoted that the first bucket of water had been expended, I heard the officer of the watch say: — " General I I'm sorry to disturb you, but we are going to Avash decks. The dew^^has been heavy, and you are rather damp already ; but you do sleep soundly, very soundly ; I hope you are refreshed." The General had taken a nap of eight good hours by the bells of the " Eamillies." The skylight on the poop SEA VIEWS AND A BIT OF LAND. 301 was his favourite place of repose, except in very bad weather. It became by common consent his private property, and the man at the wheel would at times in compassion throw a piece of tarpaulin over him; and called him " the hard-a- weather cove." A week brought us to the cinder called St. Helena. As we passed close under the cliffs, we might have pitched a biscuit upon them. Skippers of ships are fond of this close-shaving; I only wonder that they so seldom graze the skin. We recognised the flag-ship, as we passed the mouth of the bay, by respectfully hoisting the " trading jack.^^ Another week to Ascen- sion, which looked, if it hadn't been surrounded by mists, and was therefore invisible, like a Hottentot coachman's cap turned mouldy. Another week to the equator, where we fell in with two outward-bound ships and three waterspouts, and upon the very back of which (I mean the Equator's), the "Ramillies" took a sudden and very profound slumber of three days and a half, during which time the Captain, taking to his starboard awning - cabin, neither ate, nor drank, nor stirred from it, until the sails, were once more filled like balloons. This was an improvement of manners during marine trials, and vastly superior to anathema- tizing the eyes and limbs of all parties within reach, as being somewhat responsible for calms and head-winds. Another week and we ran cleverly, and at night, through the misty Azores. It is wonderful to see the good temper with which an active seaman will do this, which is a brag of the compass and chronometer, a nice adjustment between them ; I hope they won't quarrel. How the "Eamillies" ever found her way safely through that bit, scoring off ten knots an hour with the air as thick as buttermilk, I have never been able to make out. 302 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. Another week, being only the fifth, and we were at the mouth of the English Channel, as hard-hearted a bit of water as there is anywhere ; and then came the first serious check that the " Eamillies " had met with since leaving the Hooghly. It is certainly wonderful to notice how happily these first-class ships make to themselves fair winds; a subaltern accounted for it "in the liberal allowance of champagne on board." But easterly winds blew inhospitably in the Channel. Somehow it never is a fair wind there ; for when we did creep up it was by snatches; boats from Deal and other Channel ports hung in our wake for days. They reminded me of the sharks in the bay at Port Louis, and they kept up the character to the very last, for, when at anchor in a fog, somewhere between Dungeness and Dover, they came down to five guineas from an original demand of twenty, to put the General's party on shore, a distance they said of seven miles. Within ten minutes after leaving the counter of the "Eamillies," we passed between the pier-heads of a harbour. Turning to the old gentleman, who looked rather astonished at this speedy transportation to dry land : " General ! you must have been asleep when you made that bargain." '^ I think I must have been," replied the old man. A magnificent hotel stared us in the face but a stone's cast off, and we, in time, made our way there; General and lady, and little Rosa, black ayah, and young Hopeful; and taking little Kosa's hand, I listened to the former. Boatmen, porters, and Custom House officers, made a successful onslaught on the bluff old soldier, and in no time reduced to the consistency of wash-leather, limp from soaking, a man who had thrashed a whole brigade of the Khalsa. The action was conducted briskly during the advance to the hotel, and the General find- SEA VIEWS AND A BIT OP LAND. 303 ing himself hard pressed, gladly took refuge in a great entrance-hall, in which a whole regiment of little bells, all duly numbered, were conspicuous, with rows of pillars in duplicate down either side, probably placed there for the waiters to lean upon, for every pillar was so occupied, except two, perhaps the property of "boots" and chambermaid. The animated pillars looked on at the fight, but took no part in it. The General's blood was all above his cravat, and apoplexy close at hand: the boatmen and porters as cool as water-melons; for they only wanted an extra guinea for carrying some five or six trunks from the harbour. In his extremity, the General appealed to the waiters; not a white neckcloth nor a silk stocking among them had any idea of the usual charge; the same being evi- dently|most unusual. The General's lady looked very pale, and little Kosa was weeping. As I settled the business for half a crown, the shark said : " Sir, if it ha'n't a been for you, I'se 'ad done old Cocky wax!" At this point the animated pillars thawed, and con- ducted us to, I must admit, a most cheerful apart- ment ; and I was glad of it, for the General stood in need of comfort. ^^ Walford ! now I know what that is which cadets call ^home sickness:' it's very sick of home I am. I wish we could get back to the ^Eamillies' and the skylight, or we must entrench our camp. I had posi- tively no idea that things could be in such a state in England ; they absolutely will be charging a guinea for permitting a man to look at his own nose." I stood charring my boot -toes on the rib of the grate, and studying a card of prices over the mantel- piece, which I thought moderate; and I was much pleased with a " Nota hene^ that " waiters and cham- 304 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. bermaids, being charged for in the bill, are prohibited from asking gratuities or remuneration for services," an announcement the more gratifying, as the waiters wore white cravats, patent leather upon their toes, speckled silk stockings, and black small-clothes strapped down to extremity. The particular individual who devoted himself to the General's party added to these exterior embellishments a lisping refinement, which no traveller, with any pretensions to liberality, would grudge paying for. And then the chambermaid lyas thoroughly from Paris: as she spoke to the Grenerars lady you would have taken her mouth for a little clipping machine, the words dropped from it so shreddy like. But the attenuated state of mine own purse somewhat curbed my individual feelings of liberality, and a great sense of lightheartedness followed the perusal of the ^' Nota bene,^^ It was a trifling im- provement in these arrangements, that I felt confident of ultimately making the fortune of the proprietor. I drew the General's attention to it, who huskily muttered : " Thank God, Walford ! there is some comfort in that." Our first dinner was most satisfactory, and had some- thing to do with the remarkably good night's rest we had ; and next morning, such a breakfast — such cream for tea, and such eggs ; they could not be better — that was impossible. The General manifestly appre- ciated every article ; his home-sickness was waning — he almost at one time began to rub his hands, and then said : " If I only had my hookah now !" *^ I think it would add to other incumbrances, General; but as we start by express in half an hour, suppose I act as treasurer to the party, for here comes the waiter, bill in hand ?" SEA VIEWS AND A BIT PF LAND. 305 I placed the amount in the waiter's hand, not troubling mj^self to examine items minutely. The sum total was not immoderate, as these things go ; and this done, I put the bill into my pocket, and thought of calculating the railway fare for the party, aware dur- ing the process that the waiter still lingered behind my chair. I began to " smell a rat," as the phrase is, when a lisping — " Oh ! Thir, we donth tholithet, but are permitted to accept,^^ " And a very convenient understanding that must be for you; it's very kind of you, indeed, to mention it," I replied. I had still half-a-sovereign in my hand; ^^bright- toes" eyed it with a simper, that plainly said — ^^What oncommon green gentry you old Indians be." I kept chucking the little coin up and then catching it. "That half-thovering is as good as mine akeady," passed through the sensorium of '^ bright-toes.^' I referred again to the bill, and found three half- crowns under the item " Attendance." My position was very difficult and trying; I had no precedent to guide me, and time was nearly up. " Suppose we refer the matter to the landlord ; be so good as call him." " Oh, no, thir ! no occathion, thir ; quite a mistake, thir ! very sorry indeed, thir !" For all practical purposes the ^^Nota bene" was " gammon." He who takes a furlough after a lengthened absence from his native country, finds that men and manners are sufficiently changed meanwhile to be, at the least, inconvenient. But the old gentleman who dares it 306 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. after forty years, or even less, had done better to have settled in Mussoorie. The man who saw a steamer for^ the first time only ten years ago, on an Indian river, must doubtless feel out of water when on a railway train, and ten to one the electric telegraph is too much for his nerves. He is as much a ^^ Johnny Raw" as when at eighteen years of age he made a crowd of Hindoos laugh by plunging feet foremost into a palan- quin, and sitting down upon the shelf. The General and lady, little Eosa and I, black ayah and baby, just filled up the carriage. The bell rang, and the engine gave a groan, and then a " thut," an- other groan, and then "thut — thut — thut," — another groan, and then "thut-thut-thut-thut-thut" in perpe- tuity, and away we whisked distractedly along the verge of the cliff, perhaps the giddiest piece of rail in all England ; quite a brag, indeed, to venture on. " Very pleasant ! delightful mode of travelling !" said the General, rubbing his hands. "A very awkward thing if a pebble were on the line here," I exclaimed, not supposing the thing was at all likely ; but the General was more sanguine, and he fidgetted rather, and looked a shade paler than was his wont. At this moment we entered a tunnel. Little Eosa, who was standing at the window looking out, dropped down instantly at my feet. " Oh ! my dear husband ! Oh ! my dear husband ! " screamed little Eosa, whose ideas of husbands in gene- ral must have been crude, if anything — but the quota- tion is quite correct — and, gathering herself up, she poked her little head out, and again shouted — " Oh ! my dear husband !" There was a great back-draught of wind, and the sparks rained upon imprudently-exposed heads. Little Rosa's ideas of tunnels were not more mature than SEA VIEWS AND A BIT OF LAND. 307 her ideas of husbands, and from sheer terror she had sunk down, impressed with a notion that such a mode of travelling, and such a road of travelling, had con- ducted her some distance towards a very awful place. Her first thoughts, therefore, were of her papa ; but the English tongue being only imperfectly acquired during a twelve weeks' voyage, in her anguish she substituted " husband" for ^^papa." Heads were poked from various carriages, and of all classes; the phenomenon of a little girl of nine years singing out for a " dear husband" was more than they could bear, and they had not recovered themselves when we halted at the first station. The married ladies looked irritable, and could not believe their ears; bachelors looked credulous, and men of many married years put on an air approaching to indignant ; all took it as a sarcasm against matrimony — whilst it was only a little girl who knew Hindostanee better than English. I placed little Eosa on my knee ; the cloud passed by, and left her fair face as sunny as before ; — may it never be again obscured by such a terrible cloud as that ! We sped to London; two hours and a quarter did it. Last time I travelled such a distance in England I was nine hours about it, and sat behind four thorough-breds, which scored off their allotted twelve miles without once shirking their gallop, and thereby marking time with a precision not surpassed on the crack lines of " rail." For the " road" has since then been all down-hill ; the figures have grown out of the mile-stones, which are never renewed; there are no way-side inns, with swinging sign-boards, where horses changed, held by stable-boys who never would use their braces legitimately, but allowed them to hang down, repudiating use, and simply assuming the ornamental. 308 CHAPTER XXVIII. NOT AT HOME ALTHOUGH IN ENGLAND. After seeing the General and his household depart for the west end I thought I should feel more at home at some " Swan with Three Necks," or other anti- quated hostelry of a similar stamp, one or two of which establishments I had a faint recollection. I found one not very far from Cornhill, but the whole establishment had an air of its ^^ occupation " being " gone." The yard, all surrounded by tiers of spiral pillars which had half-hourly sent forth a fully equip- ped coach- and-f our, was reduced to two daily pairs and an unicorn. The rail had swallowed up the rest. I was not long, however, in discovering how great a desert London may be to a stranger, I have felt less lonely with an hostile country on one side, and five hundred miles of sand on the other, and the nearest white face two hundred off, than I did on my first evening. It was a metropolitan feature which I could not appreciate at twenty-two ; but now that its double had been checked off* in seams upon the facial dial by that truthful index of time the nose, the desert nature NOT AT HOME ALTHOUGH IN ENGLAND. 309 of an overgrown city was the first sentiment which tapped at my hired apartment door, and welcomed me so intrusively, that it was nothinoj more than Paul- Pryism in disguise. I thought of half-price at the Adelphi, and ringing the bell, I asked the waiter if a certain great actor was still upon the boards; it was doubtless a silly question, and I apologised to the waiter for disturbing him. On the following morning I thought of leaving my card at Mr. Strutt's, and I did so ; but that gentleman was not there, he had many years before been gathered to his fathers. His remembrance, even, was not so deeply cut in the hearts of his successors as to prevent them smiling at me. I felt just as Eip Van Winkle did when he returned from his nap on the Katskills, and a young clerk, up to city 'cuteness, and with the intuitiveness for which his class is remarkable, piercing my thoughts, said, as I turned to go : " Sir, after all, a living donkey is better than a dead lion.'' I then tried to ferret out the bland Mr. Funny ; I felt sure that he would be gratified with a visit ; but he, I found, had been totally blotted out from the parish of Westminster. On returning to the city I found upon my table a very kind note from Mr. Hard- file. I had not thought of calling upon this gentlemaUj but the disappointments of the morning made me rejoice to think that at least one in this great city had noted my return to my native country, and I passed along to the old office hastily. I presented my card, and was immediately ushered into Mr. Hardfile's apartment. A gentleman of thirty-five, as unlike Mr. Hardfile as possible, stood up and heartily pump-handled my 310 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. right hand and arm for about a minute. I thought I had not had the pleasure of his acquaintance. I had only one end of a chain ; but, on drawing largely on my memory, a boy of thirteen, to whom I had given a crown for seeing my traps on board the " Bamboozle- bury," gradually resolved himself Into the other end of the chain, all between being a vacuum. Mr. Hardfile had retired many years before, having accumulated a com- petency, and sold his name for the benefit of others ; and the note of welcome was only in the way of business. I turned to go, and went. I stepped into Lloyd's, and there I ascertained the names of the owners of the " Europa." At their oflice I found a letter addressed to me three months old, and that letter informed me of the departure of my nearest relation for a somewhat lengthened Continental resi- dence, with a programme of six weeks at one place, six days at another, and so on ; I calculated these steps up to three months ; then giving an extra month for con- tingencies, I came to the conclusion that, if all went well, the party might be in Brussels. At ten p.m. of that day I was on board a steamer for Ostend, which was well pressed out with return Belgians, Inclusive of a Countess. Bain fell that night, and we sat packed round the saloon like volumes on a book-shelf. It was steamy, and by morning we were done, the Countess particu- larly, who sang a lamentation In German, which made no great impression on the others ; but as a swell from the eastward prevailed, and oxygen was scarce. In me it created the sensation of a passage In the 'tween- decks of a slaver. Next day at noon, when the sand- hlllocky steeple-graduated coast of Belgium presented itself, we found that the air of that saloon had exerted NOT AT HOME ALTHOUGH IN ENGLAND. 311 an astounding effect on the growth of the beard, from which I deduced the scientific inference that young gentlemen who are anxious upon that subject, might find good results from passing occasional rainy evenings in Ostend packets ; and that carbonic acid is the staff of hirsute life, a morceau of science which I claim specially as my own discovery ; and hope, that if any philosopher reads a paper upon the subject before any learned society, he will not omit to acknowledge its source. The railway train was detained on our account, and having no time for rectifying the vegetative effects of the last twelve hours, I got into a luxurious carriage, the back of which was ingeniously padded with chamois leather, which seemed to accommodate itself to all kinds of shapes of back bones, the consequence of which was, that I fell into a nap sufiSciently refreshing and wherewithal so sound, that on my arrival in Brussels at six p.m., I thought of writing a whole volume of observations upon the condition of Belgium in an ao-ricultural sense. So much for stickino; one's rail ticket conspicuously in the hatband. The ticket- takers took compassion and the hint, and let me pass through Belgium in a dream. May their shadows increase until they cover as much ground as that of the great crusade-leading Godfrey, who in bronze did me the honour of holding up a banner all night in front of my chamber -window, and continuing that attention during my short stay in that locality ! The Crusader is evidently calling upon the Belgians to accompany him to the wars ; I hope the bronze warrior may find less cause of complaint than the iron had. Next morning I was at the passport-office and police, but no name such as that I was in search of was known in Brussels. Thinking it as well to consider my future 312 LEAVES TUKNED DOWN. route in all its bearings, I determined to linger in Brussels for a few days. The capital of Belgium is a bewildering city, and far from fragrant. I climbed steep streets and unwit- tingly came out three several times at the same point. Close to this was an arcade of shops — the fashionable resort of Belgian officers, who in the matter of waists are very tight-laced, and far from agreeable in an ana- tomical point of view, which, with the remarkable freedom from crease and wrinkle of the blue uniform, gives them a beetly appearance. Determined that the third visit to this locality in one day was enough, I boldly struck out in a new line, and soon found myself in an avenue of a park, and taking a prominent path I arrived at a tank with a fountain. The tank was stagnant, but teeming with golden perch to an extent almost beyond belief. There was no room for performing fishy evolutions, and the perch had become ofeese in consequence, and had acquired a reptile sort of motion, which anything with a fin ought to have been ashamed of. This unpleasant sight was presided over by some six or eight busts of hideous taste and proportions, and the fountain had expired from thirst. Wandering now at random I gained what I was sure was the boulevard. It had a sufficiently strong resemblance to the Parisian promenade of that name, as to require no pointing out ; but the rows of trees were ill fed, and the roadway was black and coal- dusty. As I approached one of the gates, the Porte de Namur, the keepers were in discussion with a little lady of middle age in mourning, who had got out of a cab which still waited, in order the more efficiently to conduct matters. She spoke very fluently; the keeper, cab-driver, a wasp in rifle green, and a few pea- sants, listened attentively ; the lady continued ; it then NOT AT HOME ALTHOUGH IN ENGLAND. 313 appeared evident that they did not understand the lady. Almost in tears she at length addressed herself to me. ^^ It is an'inexpressible comfort, Madam," I replied, ^^ to listen to French that one can understand." ^' I am delighted to hear you say so/' exclaimed the lady, in very good English : *^ these men don't under- stand mij dialect. Cannot yowmake them understand? I want my valise carried to No. — Glacis de Waterloo/' said the little lady. " My French, like yours, is too pure for these gentle- men ; but I will carry your valise myself," said I, lifting up the valise with one hand, and taking off my hat with the other. I had a rough idea of the Glacis de Waterloo from a pocket-map I carried. So taking things quite easily, w^e trudged on together towards the next gate,' close to which we found it. In that lady, therefore, I have a staunch friend if I knew where to find her ; and when the door was closed upon her and her little valise, I felt sure of that. From this gate the road to Waterloo leads. I took it for a few hundred yards, then breaking off to the left I traversed the undulating suburb of IxeUe. Thence I don't know how or where I wandered, but at length I found myself near to a small graveyard, which, from the predominance of English names on the tomb- stones, I rightly conjectured to be the Protestant place of burial. It seemed to be a neglected place ; and not entirely without an object, I entered. I had a friend lying within it, but I knew this from report only, and the stone plants had thriven there ; they always seem to thrive ; with them we never hear of failing harvests ; devoid of culture and cramped for room, they never languicjh or decay. P 314 LEAVES TUKNED DOWN. I could not find the stone I looked for, but I sat down to rest awhile and bethink me of whither I should bend my steps, to Paris or the Rhine towns ? It was a mild day for the season, and a daisy peeped out here and there, and plainly said : " I see you, and I dare say you wonder to see me here ;" the surprise, perhaps, was mutual. Whilst intent upon these trifles, a party entered the grave-gard ; they did not disturb me, but kept on the further side. Still there was no great distance between us. A gentleman somewhat beyond middle life, a blooming mother of ten years less, and a very hand- some youth of seventeen seasons, all serious in step and object, contrasted with the others, a beauteous boy and girl of nine and ten, and a fairy of five years. I looked for wings upon her little shoulders, but she had not any; she will have them some day, but may it be many, many years before that time ! I was sufficiently removed to observe them without intrusion. The father led them to a grave, and they all stood and read the superscription. After awhile, the elders sitting down, the youth and the little ones set to work busily, and shewed far from a slight acquaintance with the use of certain tiny spades and trowels they had brought ; and the little fellow often busied him- self specially in digging out the moss plants from the nearly obliterated letters. The girls shewed more anxiety about the grassy knoll — their taste led that way; perhaps there were daisies looking at them. The mother smiled upon her children at their work; the father while gazing had fallen back many years, and little '^ fairy" peeped into nooks and corners, as I have often seen a humming-bird pry into the calyx of a bell-flower. As the work got on, the workmen slackened in their NOT AT HOME, ALTHOUGH IN ENGLAND. 315 labours; and they gradually extended their scope of letter-cutting. The little boy in time approached my locality, chisel and mallet in hand, and frankly, but with a blush, said in English — " Please, Sir ! have you any friends here in this yard, because I might clear them of the moss-plants ?" " Thank you, my dear little friend ; I fear you are but tired already.'^ " I never tire of chiselling that stone. Uncle William lies beneath it, and he fell in battle." The little boy had a strange mixture of pathos and energy in his countenance, which was beautifully formed ; a nose coming straight from his brow, and a short curled upper-lip, gave him the air of a Greek statue, suddenly animated. '' And will you be a soldier, my boy, like Uncle William?" '^ Yes !" said the little fellow. ^^ It would never do for me to be anything else ; for my name is Arthur ; and perhaps, like Uncle William, I may one day have the colours of the regiment waved over me when struck down. Besides, my brother there carried the colours of the Highlanders on the day that he was sixteen, and he is not seventeen yet. And — and — and " " And what, my little fellow ?" " And Uncle Wilmington is a kind of soldier too, for he wears a cocked-hat and a sword; but mamma says he never kills any body." " And what does papa say T "He says he has his doubts upon that point, and that perhaps Uncle Wilmington has killed more men than anybody in the corps." I took the little boy's hand, and slowly approached the group ; I could not help it. Some little hope, gauzy p 2 316 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. Withal, and ill-defined, led to the movement; and lifting my hat, whilst I did so my eye caught the newly-lettered tomb : it told of an officer of the who had fallen on the 15th of June, 1815, and this was the tomb I was in search of. As I turned, the lady looked very pale, and had sunk, as it were, at her husband's feet, but not sud- denly or fainting. He bowed, but with some precision; the lady recovered herself in a wonderful manner, and making quite a dash at me, threw her arms about my neck. She had not fallen ofiT in weight in more than twenty years ; I even think she was a little heavier. ^^ Mamma ! you never told us that Uncle Wilming- ton was so like Mr. Potts," whispered my little nephew to his mother as we were bending our steps towards the Porte Louise ; then, half afraid of the comparison not meeting with very distinct approval, he looked up in my face and said — "But Uncle Wilmington, tell me, did you ever shoot a tiger ?^' Then a juvenile Babel of small tongues, clipping up French into such very small morsels that I could make no manner of use of them, and mingled with glee, followed ; and little Lucy volunteered to get upon the back of her brother who carried the colours of the Highlanders, for she was fatigued, and the handsome youth stooped down as if he had been quite accustomed to that work and liked it, and indeed preferred it to any other. And thus we trudged along, bent upon holding a family party, which we all managed to get up in the very best domestic style, and without a single flaw that any one could, by any overstraining, detect, up to bed-time. 317 CHAPTER XXIX. ODD SCRAPS. There were suiSScient reasons for not making a family party to Waterloo ; nevertheless I needs must visit it. Not all the cockney visitors of all the seasons, since steamers and railways have drawn that noted ground within thirty-six or forty hours of London, can vulgarize the pilgrimage. From the Grande ,Place, where her Grace of Richmond's ball was held, to the village of Mont St. Jean, where the lion-topped mound suddenly presents itself, every foot of ground is sacred to an Englishman. Of all the guides to that field, by far the best is a youth who has just got a pair of colours to carry, and who has visited it several times before. As we skirted the forest of Soignies, a party in a carriage passed on the same errand ; a military - looking man, in blue frogged coat, white moustache, and medal on his breast, rode beside them. He was legitimate successor to a certain noted " Sergeant Cotton," who, in capacity of guide to the field, resided at the village for many years. 318 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. When the latter died, a short time jDreviously, this man, a connection, put his relative's boots on. He was a beardless trooper on the 18th of June, 1815, and had an excellent right to the succession ; yet the Belgian guides do not hesitate to say that he was not at the battle ; a foul slander — they said the same of Sergeant Cotton. As I examined cursorily the open side of the country, my youthful companion drew my attention to the forest side. He was particu- larly anxious to have my opinion as to what stand the Duke might probably have made, had he fallen back hard-pressed into the wood as he had intended. I was harder pressed than ever the Duke was, and had not the most distant idea in the world. After the long and straggling village of Waterloo, the detached hamlet of Mont St. Jean forms the key to the field, which undulates beneath it. Belgian guides in blue blouses, and manufacturers of relics, hang about the inn-doors, who are not ashamed to say that their countrymen fled, if, by a sally thereanent, they can secure a patron for the day. I had a better guide than any of these could be. He led me to the mound where two cottages are ; we booked our names, and paid our fee, and received our change in a bad franc, which blushed along its edges — more sensitive than the donor, who received it again with an air that plainly said, "When am I to get rid of that piece ?" From the summit of the mound, the eye covers the whole field; it is far more limited than might be supposed ; a couple of miles embrace it, from the extreme French to that of Wellington. It was won- derful to hear the precision with which my guide pointed out the localities. He knew to a foot where each brigade was planted, and what corps held Hougou- ODD SCRAPS. 319 mont and La Haye Sainte ; and the noted ridge behind which the Guards bided their time, ere they extermi- nated the last hope of Napoleon, was as familiar to him as the boulevard in Brussels. Pie knew that there the " Ninety-second" gathered in Death's harvest, and the very spot where the *' Greys" made their daring charge, when — " A cloud of martial thunder Had darkened all the host, When its depths had rolled asunder, What a mighty realm was lost ! ' IJp, Guards, and at them I' then Was the watchword to the men — For the spirit 'mid the haze, That had caused the foe to quail, ^ Was the onset of the Gael, With the charge of the Greys ! ? " Oh ! who can tell the slaughter And the havoc that ensued, For blood was poured like water Where the daring victors stood ! Away, oh ! fled away Was the chieftain of the fray, For Napoleon's fairest bays And his laurels all were torn, And his beams of glory shorn By the charge of the Greys !'* The youth's eyes glistened at these lines from a Scottish poet. From the mound we went to the shot-riddled Chateau of Hougoumont, where we again booked and again received a copper franc; but we were on our guard, and having no respect for Bel- gian feelings, detected it instantly ; — the repetition of this incident denoted some demand for copper francs in that part of the Belgian dominions. As we passed, 320 LEAVES TURNED DOWN. on our return through the village of Waterloo^ a sign- board on an hostelry, with letters two feet high, informed us that there resided '^ SERGEANT MUNDY WHO SERVED AT THE BATTLE.'^ Mav he live ^ until his shin - bones cut tobacco !' THE END. I^RIJTTED BY HAURlSOiJ AJJD S0if3> LONDOiV GA/E'lTK OftlCK, ST. 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