houted: said he knew a man
who had lived in India and studied the native life for twenty-eight
years, and confessed he knew as little about it at the end as at the
beginning; but R. admitted that whenever he had a knotty question of
native affairs to settle he always went to this man, and the decision
was invariably right. R. has qualified admiration for the Indians
honesty. Once, he said, he had to leave his house at a moment's notice,
to take home a sick relation, and left all standing, and on coming back
months after found every single stick of furniture just as he left it,
and not a single article stolen, except one door-mat; his night watchman
had taken it with him to another situation, leaving a humble message to
the effect that he had got so accustomed to it that he couldn't sleep
without it! Their honesty must run in grooves for R. gave a heavy
overcoat to one of his men in a cold station, and when he and his
servants went to a very hot station, he noticed this man still wearing
the thick coat and sweating like anything, so he asked him why he did
so, and the man replied that he dared not put it off for a minute or it
would be stolen.

[Illustration]

We had quite an audience for the fiddles this Saturday--there are two
lady violinists now, both very good players--but we had only a short
spell of music in the music room on account of a choir practise, for
to-morrow; the parson came and took our musicians down to the
dining-room to sing over hymns and psalms, verse by verse. I heard the
wheeze of the harmonium, and got back to my own chest-lid (sailor term
for my own business)--"Every man to his own chest-lid and the cook to
the foresheet," is it not a suggestive saying? To every man his
prerogative, his chest-lid, and his duties, and the same for the cook
and the least bit more! It is now getting passably mild, and we can sit
out on deck at night. It was supposed to be hot enough for the punkahs
in the saloon; one is hung over the length of each of the five tables,
to port and starboard, and there are others the whole length of the
table that runs up the middle of the saloon. I have long wished to see a
punkah, now I wish I may never see another! On this ship they are narrow
velvet rugs hung on edge from horizontal bars, this is swung by two
ropes from the roof, and they are all guyed together with cords, so that
one pull, from a lascar outside the cabin, sets them all into violent
commotion. They hit your fac