ued--

"And then the ordinary people, with their oily black hair all done up in
a knot behind and held by a comb. It does look so womanish."

"Yes; to us," said Captain Brace. "But their clothes are comfortable
for the hot climate, and that is more than you will be able to say of
ours when you get out in the plains in full uniform some day."

"And it will not be long first now," I thought; and I did not look
forward to my first appearance in full uniform under a hot sun with any
degree of dread.

Then we were once more at sea, sailing on and on through fine weather
and foul, till I learned that we were sailing up through the
Sunderbunds, and on up the Hooghly, passing outward-bound vessels with
great towering East Indiamen among them. Then the shore began to draw
in, and I learned from one that there was good tiger-shooting in that
district, beyond where I could see a fringe of palms, and from another
that it would not be safe to bathe where we were.

"On account of sharks," I said, with an assumption of knowledge.

"No, sir; muggers."

And when I stared inquiringly, he added--

"Crocodiles; and higher up the river, sir, great turtles, which will
snap a man, or a horse, or a dood to pieces in no time."

It was the same evening that I was standing looking at the low, far-off
shore, with Captain Brace, and I said quietly--

"I say, that little stout Mr Binns--"

"Mr Commissioner Binns," said the Captain. "Give him his full title.
What about him?"

"Was he telling me travellers' tales about the crocodiles--muggers, as
he called them--and the risk of bathing?"

"Oh no; they swarm in this muddy river. I wonder they have let that
come down."

He pointed to something floating at a short distance from the ship, and
I looked at it with curiosity.

"Some dead animal?" I said.

"A dead man, Vincent. We are going up the estuary of the sacred river,
you know, and it is the burial-place of the great cities which are upon
its bank."

I turned away from the floating object with a shudder of horror, and was
silent for some minutes, but broke out with--

"But the great turtles--will they drag a man or a horse under water, and
eat him?"

"I have never seen it," he replied; "but I have seen them attack a
dood."

"What is a dood?"

"A camel; one of a troop fording the river. It had plunged into a deep
hole, and before it could struggle back into the shallow it was pulled
under, and never rose again."