it off was Sir Mohini Padishah, a tremendous swell, a
Piccadilly swell you might say up to the neck of him, and then an ugly
black head and a whopping turban, with this diamond in it. The blessed
bird pecked suddenly and had it, and when the chap made a fuss it
realised it had done wrong, I suppose, and went and mixed itself with
the others to preserve its _incog_. It all happened in a minute. I was
among the first to arrive, and there was this heathen going over his
gods, and two sailors and the man who had charge of the birds laughing
fit to split. It was a rummy way of losing a jewel, come to think of
it. The man in charge hadn't been about just at the moment, so that he
didn't know which bird it was. Clean lost, you see. I didn't feel half
sorry, to tell you the truth. The beggar had been swaggering over his
blessed diamond ever since he came aboard.

"A thing like that goes from stem to stern of a ship in no time. Every
one was talking about it. Padishah went below to hide his feelings.
At dinner--he pigged at a table by himself, him and two other
Hindoos--the captain kind of jeered at him about it, and he got very
excited. He turned round and talked into my ear. He would not buy the
birds; he would have his diamond. He demanded his rights as a British
subject. His diamond must be found. He was firm upon that. He would
appeal to the House of Lords. The man in charge of the birds was one
of those wooden-headed chaps you can't get a new idea into anyhow. He
refused any proposal to interfere with the birds by way of medicine.
His instructions were to feed them so-and-so and treat them so-and-so,
and it was as much as his place was worth not to feed them so-and-so
and treat them so-and-so. Padishah had wanted a stomach-pump--though
you can't do that to a bird, you know. This Padishah was full of bad
law, like most of these blessed Bengalis, and talked of having a lien
on the birds, and so forth. But an old boy, who said his son was a
London barrister, argued that what a bird swallowed became _ipso
facto_ part of the bird, and that Padishah's only remedy lay in
an action for damages, and even then it might be possible to show
contributory negligence. He hadn't any right of way about an ostrich
that didn't belong to him. That upset Padishah extremely, the more so
as most of us expressed an opinion that that was the reasonable view.
There wasn't any lawyer aboard to settle the matter, so we all talked
pretty free. At las