s leads to the formation of blatantly self-satisfied
judgments, which may be quite as wrong as the cramping system with which
we have encompassed ourselves. And in the streets outside Englishmen
summarise the situation brutally, thus: "The whole thing is a farce.
Time is money to us. We can't stick out those everlasting speeches in
the municipality. The natives choke us off, but we know that if things
get too bad the Government will step in and interfere, and so we worry
along somehow."

Meantime Calcutta continues to cry out for the bucket and the broom.

CHAPTER IV

ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI.

The clocks of the city have struck two. Where can a man get food?
Calcutta is not rich in respect of dainty accommodation. You can stay
your stomach at Peliti's or Bonsard's, but their shops are not to be
found in Hastings Street, or in the places where brokers fly to and fro
in office-jauns, sweating and growing visibly rich. There must be some
sort of entertainment where sailors congregate. "Honest Bombay Jack"
supplies nothing but Burma cheroots and whisky in liqueur-glasses, but
in Lal Bazar, not far from "The Sailors' Coffee-rooms," a board gives
bold advertisement that "officers and seamen can find good quarters." In
evidence a row of neat officers and seamen are sitting on a bench by the
"hotel" door smoking. There is an almost military likeness in their
clothes. Perhaps "Honest Bombay Jack" only keeps one kind of felt hat
and one brand of suit. When Jack of the mercantile marine is sober, he
is very sober. When he is drunk he is--but ask the river police what a
lean, mad Yankee can do with his nails and teeth. These gentlemen
smoking on the bench are impassive almost as Red Indians. Their
attitudes are unrestrained, and they do not wear braces. Nor, it would
appear from the bill of fare, are they particular as to what they eat
when they attend _table d'hote_. The fare is substantial and the
regulation "peg"--every house has its own depth of peg if you will
refrain from stopping Ganymede--something to wonder at. Three fingers
and a trifle over seems to be the use of the officers and seamen who are
talking so quietly in the doorway. One says--he has evidently finished a
long story--"and so he shipped for four pound ten with a first mate's
certificate and all. And that was in a German barque." Another spits
with conviction and says genially, without raising his voice, "That was
a hell of a ship. Who knows her?"