untry all about." I think he meant as far as the
Circular Road or perhaps Raneegunge. Some of these days, when the voice
of the two uncomprehending cities carries to London, and its advice is
acted upon, there will be trouble. Till this second journey to Calcutta
I was unable to account for the acid tone and limited range of the
Presidency journals. I see now that they are ward papers and ought to be
treated as such.

In the fulness of time--there was no hurry--imagine that, O you toilers
of the land--I took ship and fled from Calcutta by that which they call
the Mutton-Mail, because it takes sheep and correspondence to Rangoon.
Half the Punjab was going with us to serve the Queen in the Burma
Military Police, and it was grateful to catch once more the raw, rasping
up-country speech amid the jabber of Burmese and Bengali.

To Rangoon, then, aboard the _Madura_, come with me down the Hughli, and
try to understand what sort of life is led by the pilots, those strange
men who only seem to know the land by watching it from the river.

"And I fetched up under the north ridge with six inches o' water under
me, with a sou'west monsoon blowing, an' me not knowing any more than
the dead where in--Paradise--I was taking her," says one deep voice.

"Well, what do you expect?" says another. "They ought not all to be
occulting lights. Give me a red with two flashes for outlying danger
anyhow. The Hughli's the worst river in the world. Why, off the Lower
Gasper only last year...."

"And look at the way Government treats you!"

The Hughli pilot is human. He may talk Greek in the exercise of his
profession, but he can unite at swearing at the Government as thoroughly
as though he were an uncovenanted civilian. His life is a hard one; but
he is full of strange stories, and when treated with proper respect may
condescend to tell some of them. If he has served on the river for six
years as a "cub," and is neither dead nor decrepit, I believe he can
earn as much as fifty rupees by sending two thousand tons of ship and a
few hundred souls flying down the reaches at twelve miles an hour. Then
he drops over the side with your last love-letters and wanders about the
estuary in a tug until he finds another steamer and brings her up. It
does not take much to comfort him.

* * * * *

_Somewhere in the open sea some days later._ I give it up. I _cannot_
write, and to sleep I am not ashamed. A glorious idlenes