as trying
to get up! At any time the life at sea is hard, but doubly so in a storm
like this! Hour after hour it goes on. I don't suppose anyone has slept
through this, and many must be feeling very ill. We are lucky to be
spared that!

Next morning, though the lightning had ceased, the wind is terrific, it
goes screeching past, and the rain comes down in buckets; with great
difficulty we get into our clothes and scramble up to the smoking-room.
It is a miserable day and very few of the passengers appear, but by the
afternoon the worst is over, and we can get out into our alcove. We are
still labouring heavily in a blue-black sea, and can see a very little
way as we are surrounded by mountains of water. Hurrah! There is a cleft
over in the east, which means the storm is breaking. Our captain knows
the law of cyclones and has judged rightly which way to turn to get out
of the track of the storm. We have passed through a corner of it, and
though we have got out of our course, that won't mean much delay.
Anyway, you've had an experience very few people have had, for there are
few indeed of all the thousands who go to India who have ever been in
the tail of a cyclone! It is most unusual, but in these seas one never
knows what will happen.

[Illustration: A NATIVE VILLAGE.]

CHAPTER XV

A TROPICAL THUNDERSTORM

We have really arrived in the East! We are in Colombo, the capital town
of Ceylon, the great island which lies swung like a pendant from the
southernmost point of India. We are sitting in the shady verandah of one
of the largest hotels, the Grand Oriental, called G.O.H. for short, and
as we sip lemon-squash we look out over a scene so full of interest that
it is difficult to take it all in. This is quite different from Port
Said. There it was bright and clear, but there was not the wonderful
smell and sense of being the East that we have here. The air is full of
scent, a kind of spicy smell mingled with a touch of wood-smoke, and
there is a balminess in it that we have never felt till now. The water
in the harbour is a glorious emerald green, and small boys, almost
naked, play about on roughly shaped log canoes called catamarans. They
used to dive for pennies, but the sharks lopped off a leg here and an
arm there and swallowed one up whole now and again, and so the
Government forbade it. The dark wooden wharf forms a frame for gay
figures in pure pinks and greens and yellows, and on the roads there run