Part 12 (1/2)
”But mother doesn't forbid me to have them,” she retorted, standing on one leg with her finger in her mouth.
If she refrained from doing only what her mother _did_ forbid her she would have a fairly easy time I think.
It is too stifling to sleep in the cabin, so we will try the deck to-night. It is rather pleasant stepping out on to the warm dry boards when the lights are out. The awning shuts us in overhead, but at the side we can see the smooth water lying white in the moonlight. Here is our place, with our mattresses laid out neatly side by side and the number of our cabin scrawled in white chalk on the wooden boards beside them. There is a story of a certain ape who got loose on board s.h.i.+p and paid a visit to the deck when all the men were asleep! A funny sight it must have been as he landed on the top of one after the other!
In spite of the calmness of the night it is always more or less noisy on a s.h.i.+p: there is the flap of an awning, the crack of a rope, the creaking of the plates, and the frilling away of the water past the s.h.i.+p's side. I lie awake a long time, turning uneasily and feeling the taste of the salt on my lips. At last, low down between the rails, away on the horizon, I see the well-known constellation, the Southern Cross.
You have often heard of it I expect. It is one of the most famous groups of stars in the southern hemisphere and as much beloved by southerners as the Great Bear is by us. As the Great Bear sinks night by night lower in the north so the Southern Cross rises into sight. It is not a very brilliant or even cross, but rather straggly, and the stars are not very large, but it means much--hot skies, blue-black and brilliantly star-spangled, lines of white surf breaking on silvery sand beneath palm trees, fire-flies and scented air--I am growing drowsy at last--sleep is coming.... I must show you the cross another night.
Hullo! it's morning! A Lascar is standing by grinning, with a bucket of water and a deck-swab; they want to begin holystoning down the decks.
How sleepy I am! And as for you, the night steward, who is still on duty, lifts you in his arms and carries you into your bunk, where you'll find yourself when you do wake. It's only five--time for some more hours yet. Sleeping on deck is rather an overrated amus.e.m.e.nt I think!
Before getting out of the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean we have to pa.s.s through the Straits of Babel-Mandeb, which means the Gate of Affliction or Tears, because of the numerous wrecks there have been here. Then we stop at Aden, where the pa.s.sengers going on to India change to another P. & O. steamer, the _Salsette_, which is waiting for them. The _Medina_ goes across to Ceylon and then south to Australia, but the s.h.i.+p following her next week goes straight to India.
It is lucky for Britain that she owns Aden, for it is the doorway at the south end of the Red Sea, as the ca.n.a.l is the doorway at the north end.
Of course it is more important to us that the route to the East should be kept clear than it is to any nation, because in case of difficulties in India we should have to send troops there at once. It is more by good luck than good management that just these little corners of the world, that mean so much, should happen to fall into our possession--Gibraltar, for instance, the gateway of the Mediterranean. And though the British Government refused to have any hand in the making of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, yet afterwards, because the Khedive of Egypt was hard up and willing to sell his shares, we bought at a reasonable rate and have much influence in the management of the ca.n.a.l.
Standing beside us, watching the pa.s.sengers for India climb down the gangway, is a fresh-looking, pink-faced young man of about one-and-twenty. He has a simple look, and you would think he was too young and innocent to go round the world by himself.
”I'm right down glad I'm not going to 'do' India,” he remarks. ”I'm sick of travelling; I'm just longing to get back.”
”To Australia?”
”Yes; I'm a sheep-farmer there. I've worked four years without a break, so I took a holiday in Europe.”
Anything less like one's idea of a sheep-farmer it would be hard to find! I always pictured them stern bearded men, with brick-red faces and sinewy limbs. This lad doesn't look as if he had ever been in a strong sun, and his slender loose-jointed legs and arms do not give the impression of an open-air life spent mostly in the saddle.
”You have a sheep-farm? Hard life, isn't it?”
”Best life in the world,” he answers with enthusiasm. ”Always on horseback, miles of open country, not shut in by beastly houses.”
”But there's a lack of water, isn't there?”
”You can always sink a well, that's what they do now. It costs a good deal, but you can get water almost anywhere within reason.”
”Are you far out?”
”No, only about three hundred and forty miles from the town where my mother lives. I go down to see her at week-ends; we're lucky in being close to a station, only a fifteen-mile ride.”
Three hundred and forty miles! About the distance from London to Berwick! Good place for week-ends, especially with a fifteen-mile ride at one end! I suppose our ideas get small from living in a little country. Pity we can't visit Australia, but we can't manage it this time. That great island-continent and its sister, New Zealand, are well worth seeing. Except for the Canadians there are no people nearer akin to us than the Australasians. The world-famous harbour of Sydney, the great hills clothed in eucalyptus, hiding in their depths vast caverns of stalact.i.tes, the wide open ranges stretching for leagues inland, all these things are attractive. In New Zealand, too, we should find tree-ferns of gigantic size, lovely scenery, and spouting geysers; it is an England set in a very different climate from ours! Then we might pa.s.s on to those strange South Seas, gemmed by coral islands, and to the lat.i.tudes where the mighty albatross swings overhead like an aeroplane, only, unlike an aeroplane, he glides in a never-ending plane without apparent effort or even one flap of his huge twelve-foot wings.
Alas, we can't see everything this trip!
[Ill.u.s.tration: A FLYING FISH.]
CHAPTER XIV
THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN
Now we are right out in the Indian Ocean, and it is a bright day with a certain freshness in the air, instead of that horrible muggy heat that made us feel so languid when we were in the Red Sea. Look over the s.h.i.+p's side and watch the rainbow in the spray; that is one of the prettiest things to see on board. As the vessel cuts through the water she raises a frill of foam on either side--what the sailors call ”a bone in her mouth.” The frill, rising to a continuous wave along the side, catches the sunlight and a perpetual rainbow dances in it, changing always but remaining ever. Whew! What a rus.h.!.+ Flying fish. Look at them!
These are the first we have seen so near; when they spring out of the water like that and skim along in the air they are not doing it for fun, but to escape a bitter enemy in the water, the bonito, a ferocious large fish who preys upon them; he is their chief foe, but there are many others also. They curve up all together like a glittering bow and slither down again. In dropping back into the sea they make a kind of pattering noise, though, of course, we are too far to hear it, and the fishermen in the small islands near India make use of this in trying to catch the bonito. They go out in boats specially built for the purpose, with a kind of platform overhanging the stern; here they sit and make a splas.h.i.+ng with their paddles, at the same time using some little fish, which they catch and breed in tanks, for bait. The noise attracts the large fish, who think there is a shoal of the small fry about, and they jump at the bait and are caught. The catch is often very good, and the boats come back to the huts laden with the ogre fish, destined to be eaten in their turn!