of course being on board a P. & O. steamer
doesn't count, as that hardly conveys even the feeling of being afloat.
The breeze was light and southerly, so at first we rowed, and the cheery
dark faces of the crew beamed and sweated. These coast men are nicer to
look at than the natives on shore. They did buck in with their funny
bamboo oars, long things like bakers' bread shovels, with square or
round blades tied with string to the end of a bamboo, which worked in a
hemp grummet on a single wooden thole pin.

What a study they make! Bow, Two and Three, have skull-caps of lemon
yellow and dull gold thread, and blue dungaree jackets faded and
threadbare. They are young lusty fellows, and Stroke, who is a
tough-looking, middle-aged man, with a wiry beard, has a skull-cap
between rose and brown, and round it a salmon-coloured wisp of a
turban--over them there is the arch of the frogged foot of the lateen
sail. All but Bow are in full sunlight, sweating at their oars, he is in
the shadow the sail casts on our bow. We recline, to quote our
upholsterer, in "cairless elegance" on the floor of the stern, on Turkey
red cushions under the shadow of the awning, and I feel sorry we have
spent so much time on shore.

We pass under the high stern of a lumbering native craft; its grey
sun-bitten woodwork is loosely put together: on a collection of dried
palm leaves and coir ropes on the stern, sit the naked, brown crew
feeding off a bunch of green bananas. One has a pink skull-cap, and at a
porthole below the counter the red glass of a side-light catches the sun
and glows a fine ruby red; a pleasant contrast to the grey, sun-dried
woodwork. Just as we clear our eyes off her, from seaward behind us
comes an Arab dhow, a ship from the past, surging along finely! An
out-and-out pirate, you can tell at a glance, even though she does fly a
square red flag astern with a white edge. Her bows are viking or
saucer-shaped, prettier than the usual fiddle-bow we see here, and her
high bulwarks on her long sloping quarter deck you feel must conceal
brass guns. From beyond her the afternoon sun sends the shadows of her
mast and stays in fine curves down the bend of her sail, the jib-boom is
inboard and the jib flat against the lee of the main sail. She brings
up the breeze with her, and our bamboo oars are pulled in and we go
slipping across the water in silence, only the bows talking to the small
waves. Now, how sorry we feel for those other globe t