Part 12 (1/2)
”Captain says it's impossible; in fact the s.h.i.+p's moving now.”
Well, as we were tied to time and many other things, and could not afford to miss our landing, I threw on a shawl and a petticoat, as one might in a s.h.i.+pwreck, and rushed out with my hair down, crying to the steward:
”Bundle all my things into the boat as well as you can; and if anything is left, take it back to the hotel at Bombay.”
I hurried on deck, and to my surprise found that the steamer was not moving at all. Richard and the captain were quietly chatting together, and when they saw me all excited and dishevelled they asked me the cause of my undress and agitation. When I told them, the captain said:
”I never sent any message of the kind. I told you last night I should steam on at seven, and it is now only five.”
I was intensely angry at the idea of a negro servant playing such a practical joke. I was paying 10 pounds sterling for a thirty-six hour's pa.s.sage; and as I always treated everybody courteously, it was quite uncalled for and unprovoked. I thought it exceedingly impertinent, and told the captain so. Nevertheless he did not trouble to inquire into the matter. The Bishop of Ascalon, Vicar-Apostolic at Bombay, was on board, and I told him about it, and he said that he had been treated just in the same way a year before on the same spot. The idea that such things should be allowed is a little too outrageous.
Suppose that I had been a delicate and nervous pa.s.senger with heart complaint, it might have done me a great deal of harm.
A large boat arrived to take us and our baggage ash.o.r.e. We were cast adrift in the open sea on account of a doubtful shoal. We had eight miles to row before we could reach Goa. Fortunately there was no storm.
We rowed a mile and a half of open sea, five miles of bay, and one and a half of winding river, and at last landed on a little stone pier jutting a few yards into the water. We found a total absence of anything at Goa but the barest necessaries of life. There was no inn and no tent.
We had either to sleep in our filthy open boat, or take our tents and everything with us. Goa is not healthy enough to sleep out _al fresco_.
Fortunately a kind-hearted man, who was the agent of the steamers, and his wife, seeing the plight we were in, conceded us a small room in their house with their only spare bed. Luckily we had one of those large straw Pondicherry reclining-chairs, which I just bought from the captain of the steamer, and a rug; so Richard and I took the bed in turns night about, the other in the chair. We did not mind much, for we had come to see Goa, and were used to roughing it better out of doors than inside. There was little to be bought in Goa; but all that the residents had to give they offered with alacrity. It is the worst climate I ever was in, and I have experienced many bad ones. The thermometer was not nearly so high as I have known it in other places, but the depression was fearful. There was not a breath of air in Goa even at night, and the thirst was agonizing; even the water was hot, and the more one drank the more one wanted: it was a sort of purgatory.
I cannot think how the people manage to live there: the place was simply _dead_; there is no other word for it. Of all the places I have ever been to, in sandy deserts and primeval forests, Goa was the worst.
However, Richard wanted to revisit it, and I wanted to see it also with a particular object, which was to pay my respects to the shrine of the Apostle of India, St. Francis Xavier, which is situated in Old Goa.
We hired the only horse in the country, a poor old screw of a pony, broken down by mange and starvation and sores; and we harnessed him to the only vehicle we could find, a small open thing of wood made in the year 1 B.C., with room for two persons only. The wheels were nearly off, and the spring of one side was broken. The harness was made of old rusty chains and bits of string tied together. Our coachman and footman were two boys in little dirty s.h.i.+rts, with something round the loins kept together with bits of twine, and bare legs peeping out underneath like two sticks of chocolate.
Our first drive was to Cazalem, a place which reminded me of the Barra at Santos, in Brazil. Here several Europeans lived, I mean native Portuguese, mainly officials of the Government. As Richard wrote a book about Goa when he was there some thirty years before, there is not much that I can add to his description of the place.
Our next drive was to Old Goa, where is the tomb of St. Francis Xavier.
Nothing is left of Old Goa but churches and monasteries. In the distance, with its glittering steeples and domes, it looks a grand place; but when we entered it, I found it to be a city of the dead--indeed it was the very abomination of desolation. The Bom Jesus is the church dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, my favourite saint, on account of his conversion of so many unbelievers. It is after the same pattern as all other Portuguese churches, a long, whitewashed, barn-shaped building.
The object of my devotion, the tomb, is contained in a recess on a side of the altar dedicated to Xavier, and consists of a magnificently carved silver sarcophagus, enriched with _alto relievi_, representing different acts of the Saint's life. Inside is a gold box containing the remains of the Saint, shown to people with a great feast once in a century.
We made many excursions around and about Goa. In consequence of the dreadful climate they had of course to be either very early or very late.
I shall never forget the moonlight scenery of the distant bay. The dull grey piles of ruined, desolate habitations, the dark hills clothed with a semi-transparent mist, the little streams glistening like lines of silver over the plain, and the purple surface of the creek--such was our night picture of Goa. We made two boat expeditions together--one to see a coffee plantation, in which is a petrified forest. Each expedition occupied two or three days. We embarked for the first in a filthy boat, full of unmentionable vermin, and started down the river in the evening, with storms of thunder and lightning and wind preluding the monsoon. On arrival we toiled up two miles of steep, rocky paths through cocoa groves. At the bottom of the hill was a little rivulet, and pieces of petrified wood were sticking to the bank. As we ascended the hill again we found the petrification scattered all over the ground; they were composed chiefly of palms and pines; and most interesting they were. We returned from this expedition with our skins in a state of eruption from the bites of the lice and the stings of the mosquitoes.
Our last day at Goa was a very pleasant one. We had received a telegram saying the steamer would pa.s.s outside Goa at midnight, and would pick us up for the return journey to Bombay. These steamers are due once in a fortnight, and this one was long past her time. Everybody was sorry that we were leaving, and we had great hospitality. In the morning we were entertained at breakfast by a gentleman who owned the largest and the best house in Goa. We had every variety of native food and fruit in abundance, good cool air and water--the latter produced by hanging the earthen water-bottles in the window, clothed with wet hay or gra.s.s. We were, in all, ten at table, native and European. Then the heat came on, and we had to retire. In the evening we were taken for an excursion in a boat to Cazalem. We coasted along for an hour, and sang glees under a fine moon, accompanied by a heavy swell. We were carried ash.o.r.e on the shoulders of the natives, and were heralded first by the watch- dogs and then by the European inmates, who did not expect us. They were a.s.sembled in the verandah playing cards by the light of torches.
We pa.s.sed a merry evening and returned to Goa by carriage. The seat gave way, and we had to sit on the edges.
On our return the night was dark, but we at once started in a large open boat, with four men to row and one to steer, to reach our steamer bound for Bombay, which, as I have already explained, did not pa.s.s nearer Goa than eight miles. We rowed down the river, and then across the bay for three hours, against wind and tide, bow on to heavy rollers, and at last reached the mouth of the bay, where is the Fort. We remained bobbing about in the open sea in the trough of the great waves for a considerable time, and a violent storm of rain, thunder, and lightning came on, so we put back to the Fort to find shelter under some arches. Then we went to sleep, leaving the boat _wala_ to watch for the steamer.
At 1.30 I was awakened by the sound of a gun booming across the water. I sprang up and aroused the others; but we could not see the lights of the steamer, and turned to sleep. An officer pa.s.sed out of the Fort, and I fancied he said to another man that the s.h.i.+p was in; but he only looked at us and pa.s.sed on. Presently I felt more fidgety, and making a trumpet of my hands I called out to the Secretary, who answered back that the s.h.i.+p had been laying to three-quarters of an hour, and that we should have gone off when the gun fired. People are so lazy and indolent in this climate that he did not trouble to let us know it before, though he was left there for that purpose. If we had not happened to have the mails and the agent with us in the boat, the s.h.i.+p would have gone on without us, which would have been an appalling disaster. So I stirred them up, and we were soon under way again and out to sea. By-and-by I saw the lights of the steamer, which looked about three miles off.
Knowing the independence of these captains and the futility of complaints, I trembled lest the steamer should put farther to sea, and determined that no effort of mine should be spared to prevent it.
Richard slept or pretended to sleep, and so did some of the others; but I managed adroitly to be awkward with the boat-hook, and occasionally to p.r.i.c.k their s.h.i.+ns. I urged the boat _walas_ on with perpetual promises of _baks.h.i.+sh_. Everybody except myself was behaving with oriental calm, and leaving it to Kismet. It was of no use doing anything to Richard, so I pitched into the Secretary, who really had been most kind.
”Can't you shout 'Mails?'” I cried to him, as we got nearer. ”They might hear you. You can shout loud enough when n.o.body wants to hear you.”
At last, after an hour of anxiety, we reached the s.h.i.+p; but heavy seas kept was.h.i.+ng us away from the ladder. No one had the energy to hold on to the rope, or hold the boat-hook to keep us close to her, so at last I did it myself, Richard laughing all the while at their supineness, and at my making myself so officious and energetic. But it was absolutely necessary. An English sailor threw me the rope. ”Thanks,” I cried, as I took advantage of an enormous wave to spring on to the ladder; ”I am the only man in the boat to-night.” All came on board with us, and we had a parting stirrup-cup, in which they drank my health as ”the only man in the boat.” We then said farewell to our friends and to Goa.
We stayed at Bombay no longer than was absolutely necessary, and we embarked on our return journey to Trieste in the Austrian Lloyd's _Minerva_. It was an uneventful voyage, take it altogether. There were a good many pa.s.sengers on board, who grumbled greatly at the food, as the manner is, and it was certainly a very hot and uncomfortable voyage. We stopped at Aden again, and pa.s.sed Jeddah. Thence we steamed to Suez, where we anch.o.r.ed.
Here Richard and myself and six others left the s.h.i.+p to have a little run through Egypt, and we were soon surrounded by a number of Richard's old friends of the Mecca days. It was a lovely evening when we landed, familiar to all who know Suez, with its blue sea, yellow sands, azure sky, and pink-and-purple mountains. Our visit was to Moses' Wells, about three miles in the Arabian Desert--a most picturesque spot, surrounded by tropical verdure, intermingled with fellah huts. The most romantic spot was a single tiny spring under an isolated palm tree, all alone on a little hillock of sand in the desert, far from all else. I said to Richard, ”That tree and that spring have been created for each other, like you and I.” We took our _kayf_ for some hours with the Arabs, and we had some delicious Arab coffee and narghileh with them.