Chapter II: THE VOYAGE--(Continued)

Among the passengers on board, there were several newly-married couples, and their behaviour was sometimes rather interesting. Of all places to spend a honeymoon, I can conceive none more discouraging than the sea. We all know that some of the gilt must come off the gingerbread sooner or later, but there are many ways of removing it, and it is just as well to take care that the more solid material beneath it is not injured during the process.

It would be interesting to a psychologist who was also a good sailor, to study the appalling effects of sea-sickness upon the soul, no less remarkable in the case of a subject who does not actually suffer, but is merely compelled to witness the misery of others. Cervantes, we are told, smiled away the chivalry of Spain. Fortunate for Spain that he did so. Had he lived in an age when globe-trotting and going down to the sea in ships was as fashionable as it is now, he would have been spared the effort of smiling. All the finer feelings of human nature are more or less in abeyance during the reign of sea-sickness, but when it has passed off, they, most of them, readily reassert their sway. Not so with the feeling which we term chivalry, now rapidly becoming an obsolete word in these days of social progress. Its loss is the less felt, since its place has been supplied by coxcombry, a feeling more nearly allied to chivalry than might at first be imagined. Both have a common end in view, which is to please. But there is this distinction, that whereas chivalry arises from a man’s exalted ideas of the intrinsic perfections of the opposite sex, coxcombry originates in an exaggerated notion of the perfections of his own. Chivalry, however, cannot exist without a profound and sincere respect for woman; and when that is once destroyed, or even severely shaken, chivalry receives its deathblow. Sea-sickness is, of all iconoclasts, the most terrible, and before its fell advances chivalry withers more quickly and more surely than ever it did before the smile of Cervantes, and it withers to anything but the tune of a smile. If it were only for this reason alone, life at sea would present matrimony under the most unfavourable aspect it is possible to imagine. Can anything be more terrible than to watch a countenance in which you take the deepest interest, transfigured by sea-sickness into the ghastly semblance of a frost-bitten turnip, and every atom of self-respect crushed by this most levelling malady.

But there are other annoyances besides. Careful and comparative observation leads me to believe that a woman whose digestive organs have so far rallied from sea-sickness as to allow her to eat, but whose appearance still forbids her to leave her cabin, is the most transcendently selfish of all God’s creatures. Under such circumstances I have seen offices of vicarious selfishness thrust upon the unfortunate husband, which the veriest egotist would shrink from negotiating for himself. He is expected to secure the undivided attention of the doctor, the purser, all the stewardesses, and half of the stewards, regardless of how many other passengers there may happen to be in exactly the same, or in a worse, predicament than his wife. He is further expected to ascertain from the captain (at intervals varying from five to fifteen minutes, according to the severity of the weather), the exact position of the ship, the amount of present danger, the prospect of fine weather, and the precise moment when the destination will be reached--distant, possibly, some two or three thousand miles. Most likely he will be sent to ask the quartermaster to prevent the crew from walking about overhead, and to induce the officer of the watch to moderate the noise made by the creaking of the ship’s timbers and the working of the donkey-engine. Occasionally I have seen even severer tests applied to the devotion of man, but these have been amongst people who have been some time married. One day the vessel was rolling rather heavily, and though most of the passengers had got their sea-legs, some few remained below. Among the latter was the wife of a man whom I noticed staggering up the companion one morning, with the watery eye and uncertain gait of one just recovering from violent sickness. He reached the deck safely, however, and with a considerable slue to port, brought himself up in a deck-chair. I saw him scatter a glance round, possibly to discover the whereabouts of his better half. Finding himself quite alone, his eye brightened, and he blew his nose in that triumphant manner which a man never adopts except when he is quite at ease. He even pulled out his cigar-case and looked at it, but discretion overcame valour, and he put it back in his pocket, and prepared for perfect repose. He was not destined to enjoy it long. In a few minutes a whey-faced domestic appeared at the door of the companion, shepherding two of the most disagreeable-looking children I ever saw. They had faces like badly-baked buns, and were dressed as outrageously as only the offspring of British parents of a certain class ever are. Their legs and feet were like hockey-sticks, and looked so utterly incapable of supporting the distended waistcoats above them, that their prudent mother had attached a long red ribbon to each of their arms, to act as a sort of reins. These were now entrusted to the hands of paterfamilias, with instructions to drive his progeny up and down the deck for exercise. Of course he did so, and very ridiculous he looked; but there was a pathetic side to the picture as well. In his eye there was a piteous glance of retrospection, which seemed to recall the time when he could take his ease or his exercise, as the spirit moved him, without being required to make a greater fool of himself than Nature intended him to be.

Eight days after leaving Aden we got to Galle, and a greater contrast than the two places it would be difficult to find. At Aden, all the inhabitants who can afford the luxury drive out daily a distance of four miles to refresh their weary eyes with the sight of the Botanical Gardens, which consist of six weak-looking trees and twelve blades of grass in a flower-pot. But at Galle the sight is over-powered by the extraordinary luxuriance of the vegetation, and the variety of shades of green displayed among the trees and bushes. Round the edges, of course, there is a decided preponderance of cocoa-nut trees, but a little distance from the shore the crowded way in which all sorts of trees and creepers are arranged is quite bewildering. There is a sort of show place, called Wak-Walleh, a few miles from Galle, to which everyone rushes directly they land, to get a view of the island. It is needless to say that there is a public-house and a tea-garden there; and as you approach it, the “spoor” of the British tourist, in the shape of orange-peel and beer-bottles, is very strongly marked. The view is glorious. A broad valley of green paddy-fields, fringed on each side with densely-wooded hills, lies stretched out below. It is mapped out almost into islands, so winding is the course of the river which runs through it, its waters shining like silver in the sunlight. In the distance rises the bold outline of Adam’s Peak, supported by numerous other mountains of lesser pretensions. In the foreground are several marble tables with iron legs, chairs to match, and a party of tourists. Partly disguised by pith helmets and white trousers, nevertheless these last remind one forcibly of Greenwich Fair. They are shouting--positively shouting--and laughing in that aggressive way that only a Briton out for a holiday is master of. Several of them are drinking beer and throwing sticks at cocoa-nuts; and one or two, more utterly degraded than the rest, pick up little pieces of stone to carry away as relics of Wak-Walleh. The native jewellers do a very healthy trade in counterfeit stones, manufactured at Birmingham expressly for exportation to Ceylon. Sapphires are the favourite importations offered to the verdant traveller. I saw one man beautifully let in. He was offered a sapphire about the size of a small tea-cup, of a brilliant hue that would have shamed the waters of the Mediterranean. Two hundred pounds was the price demanded for this startling gem. The traveller to whom it was offered had heard something of the dishonest practices of the jewellers of Galle, and was anxious to display his capacity for dealing. He winked at an admiring crowd of fellow-passengers, and offered the man three pounds. Much to his disgust, the native instantly closed with his offer, and, securing the coins, left the ship with all possible speed. Of course the sapphire was glass, and, with the setting, might have been worth half-a-crown. There are some real sapphires but no very good ones to be had, as all that are worth anything go direct to the London market.

Five days after leaving Galle we got to Singapore, and had to wait there a week, which was a nuisance, as there is only one hotel in the place fit to live in, and even that one is certainly one of the vilest in the world. The food is simply filthy, and not much of it, the attendance wretched, and the manager gratuitously insulting to everyone. While I was there he was knocked down and shut up in his own coal-cellar by a resident in the town, to whom he had been impertinent, to the intense delight of everyone else in the place.

Singapore itself is a lovely place, with rather a disagreeable climate. The thermometer never varies above a few degrees, and stands at about 85° day and night, all the year round. The wealthier class of inhabitants live in bungalows scattered about over the ridges in the neighbourhood of the town, most of them surrounded by beautiful gardens. They all seem utterly depressed by the enervating climate, and do not aspire to any higher interest in life than a generous rivalry in the concoction of marvellous curries. An old resident of Singapore takes as much interest and pride in his curries as an Englishman does in his racehorses or his hunters, and he always speaks of a rival connoisseur with deep feeling and respect. Both men and women look very faded and washed-out, and the only colour in their faces is yellow from a prolonged course of curry. I used to walk all round the place for miles every day, in the heat of the day, and never felt anything but better for it. Nothing will induce Indians to expose themselves to the sun, for fear of sunstroke, and nothing makes them so angry as to be told that if they drank less, led a more healthy life, and took more exercise, they would be able to stand the sun with impunity. And yet it is the case. Of course, a man who lies on his back drinking brandy and beer half the day, sleeps the other half, and sits up most of the night, cannot safely expose himself to the full power of an Indian sun without risk. There is something peculiarly treacherous in the sun all over India and the East Indies, but the medical profession know that nine-tenths of the cases of sunstroke that occur are the result of drink.

The only residents I ever saw, either in India, Ceylon, or Singapore, who enjoyed perfect health, and had not the slightest fear of exposing themselves to the sun, were invariably men who led most temperate lives, and who were out of doors all day long. In the bush of Australia, where men work all day long under a vertical sun, with little covering on their heads, sunstroke is absolutely unknown. But in the towns, where they drink all day, and take no exercise, it is not an uncommon thing at all for a man to be knocked over by the sun just in crossing the street.

A week’s loafing around Singapore produced a wild longing to leave it, but I must say I was not exhilarated by the sight of the boat that was to carry me to Australia. She was called the _Somerset_, and was the property of the Eastern and Australian Company, and was about as depressing an old tub as I ever travelled in. In the best of weather she was not good for more than eight knots, and if it came on to blow ahead she went astern. The captain was in every respect worthy of the ship he commanded. He spent most of his time sulking in his cabin, and the remainder in entertaining the passengers with most gloomy forebodings. Three days after leaving Singapore the weather got very squally, and the rain came down in such torrents that, when standing on the bridge, it was sometimes impossible to see the foremast. After dark it grew worse, and the captain, who had been blowing an infernal fog-whistle at intervals of five minutes all through the day, informed the passengers that he had no idea where he was, but about three in the morning he ought to go through a winding passage two miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, between two sunken reefs. After which, he turned the fog-whistle permanently on, and retired into his cabin.

Anything like the horrors of that voyage I never remember. The smell of bilge-water and cockroaches in the saloon was so overpowering that it was almost impossible to stay down long enough to swallow a meal. There were 320 Chinese emigrants forward, who not only smelt horribly themselves, but spent their whole time in cooking nauseous oily messes, the stench from which was wafted aft in a continuous stream from one day’s end to another. For days at a time there was not a breath of air, and the heat was so intense that the pitch used to melt and bubble up in the seams of the deck. I used to lie on deck all day and smoke, with a saucer of chloride of lime under my nose as a disinfectant. It was beginning to make the whole crowd of us quite ill. The captain, the officers, and, I believe every one in the ship except myself, took to being sick as violently as if they had never been to sea before. Fortunately, when we got to the Arafura Sea we dropped in for a gale of wind. This, as Robinson Crusoe observed, was an amusement the other way. It delayed us three days, but I have not a doubt it saved some of our lives. In the middle of the night, when the gale was at its height, the boiler of the old _Somerset_ burst. The manhole plate flew clean off, and every particle of steam, of course, escaped. It took seventeen hours to repair it, during which time we lay like a log in the trough of the sea, with the waves breaking over us fore and aft. It cleaned us a little, though, which was very healthy.

Two nights afterwards we ran down a native boat, and drowned everyone in it. How many men there were in her I do not know, but we never picked up one. The next day we lost a man overboard ourselves. He was on the jibboom, where he had no business to have been sent, as there was a heavy sea on at the time. The old _Somerset_ put her nose right into a wave, and, of course, the man was washed away. In spite of the sea that was running, he swam like a duck for about twenty minutes, during which time the captain was busily engaged in turning his old craft round to pick him up. I believe naval authorities are divided as to the advisability of going astern or turning the ship round to pick up a man overboard; but in the case of the _Somerset_ I should certainly have preferred the former process, as she had at all times a natural inclination to go astern instead of ahead. However, the captain turned round, and I thought we should have got the poor fellow on board again all right. He was swimming beautifully, keeping his head and shoulders right out of the water, when suddenly he threw up his arms, rose half out of the water, and then sank like a stone. I expect a shark must have got him, as one had been prowling after us for some time. This incident brought the captain’s ill-humour to a climax, and next day, when he found me throwing little pieces of stick over the side to see which way the vessel was going, he became quite uncivil.