Part 13 (1/2)
At that moment forked lightning plays across the sky in a great ragged streak, and immediately there is another display as if answering it, but we can hear no thunder.
What is the North-East monsoon? It sounds rather like some kind of animal, but it is only the name given to a certain wind that blows always at one season of the year.
Across broad s.p.a.ces of the ocean there are always steady winds to be counted on, such as the trade-winds, which are caused by the air at the Equator getting hot and rising, and being replaced by the cold air from the Poles which rushes in; besides this there are other winds which blow half the year, called monsoons, these are due to very much the same causes. The North-East monsoon comes in the northern winter; the air from the North Pole coming down slowly is met by the earth as she turns, and as she rushes into it she makes it a north-eastern wind; this, coming over the land from the north, is a dry wind, while the other one, the South-Western monsoon, coming from the south over the ocean in the other half of the year, is a wet wind and brings the rain which is such a boon to India.
The lightning is continually playing, and I shouldn't be surprised if we are on the edge of a cyclone, but with a big s.h.i.+p like this, and a captain who knows his business, there is nothing to be afraid of. These cyclones, which are called typhoons in the China seas, are curious storms which twist round and round in a circle, all the time progressing onward too, and the danger is in getting into the middle of one, for there, as you may imagine, the wind comes from all quarters at once, and the waves are piled up on all sides like huge overhanging pyramids. I've never been in the middle of one, I'm thankful to say, but those who have, and have escaped with their lives, say that the s.h.i.+p is buffeted as if by mighty billows which smack down upon her from all directions.
Sometimes there is seen a s.p.a.ce of blue sky, and there is a great calm, but this to the commander is the most ominous sign of all, for he knows he must be in the centre funnel of the storm, so to speak, and that it will be worse for him directly!
We had better go to bed, there's nothing else to do.
Are you awake? Yes, I thought even you could hardly sleep through that!
What a smack! It sounds as if the heavens had opened and a water-spout had descended on deck! What a roar! Can you hear me? All right, come in here beside me if you like, but there is precious little room. It seems as if every noise on the ocean had been let loose. The rain must be simply one great volume of water, and the thunder----Even through our port-hole the cabin is as light as day with the lightning; it is just two o'clock in the morning. The thunder seems to come absolutely instantaneously with the lightning; we must be right in it! I never heard such crashes. One minute our heads are down below our feet and the next we are almost standing on end. Hang on! We shall probably get through all right, this noise doesn't mean anything very bad. But I thank my stars I'm not an officer on the bridge. How they ever manage to keep on their feet I don't know, much less how they give directions. One man told me that he was once in such a sea that when he was pitched off his feet into one end of the bridge he hadn't time to recover himself before the same pitch came again and sent him down just as he was trying to get up! At any time the life at sea is hard, but doubly so in a storm like this! Hour after hour it goes on. I don't suppose anyone has slept through this, and many must be feeling very ill. We are lucky to be spared that!
Next morning, though the lightning had ceased, the wind is terrific, it goes screeching past, and the rain comes down in buckets; with great difficulty we get into our clothes and scramble up to the smoking-room.
It is a miserable day and very few of the pa.s.sengers appear, but by the afternoon the worst is over, and we can get out into our alcove. We are still labouring heavily in a blue-black sea, and can see a very little way as we are surrounded by mountains of water. Hurrah! There is a cleft over in the east, which means the storm is breaking. Our captain knows the law of cyclones and has judged rightly which way to turn to get out of the track of the storm. We have pa.s.sed through a corner of it, and though we have got out of our course, that won't mean much delay.
Anyway, you've had an experience very few people have had, for there are few indeed of all the thousands who go to India who have ever been in the tail of a cyclone! It is most unusual, but in these seas one never knows what will happen.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A NATIVE VILLAGE.]
CHAPTER XV
A TROPICAL THUNDERSTORM
We have really arrived in the East! We are in Colombo, the capital town of Ceylon, the great island which lies swung like a pendant from the southernmost point of India. We are sitting in the shady verandah of one of the largest hotels, the Grand Oriental, called G.O.H. for short, and as we sip lemon-squash we look out over a scene so full of interest that it is difficult to take it all in. This is quite different from Port Said. There it was bright and clear, but there was not the wonderful smell and sense of being the East that we have here. The air is full of scent, a kind of spicy smell mingled with a touch of wood-smoke, and there is a balminess in it that we have never felt till now. The water in the harbour is a glorious emerald green, and small boys, almost naked, play about on roughly shaped log canoes called catamarans. They used to dive for pennies, but the sharks lopped off a leg here and an arm there and swallowed one up whole now and again, and so the Government forbade it. The dark wooden wharf forms a frame for gay figures in pure pinks and greens and yellows, and on the roads there run past continually the funniest st.u.r.dy little men with their loin-cloths tucked up, pulling light-looking chairs on high wheels with people in them. These chairs are called rickshaws and are the chief way of getting about. Very comfortable they are too, and quite cheap; we will go in them presently. The men who pull them have funny chignons of frizzy black hair sticking out under their little red caps, and it would be easy to mistake them for women. That attendant from the hotel at your elbow is asking you if you'll take another lemon-squash; he is quite a different sort of man from the runners, isn't he? Much taller and with a mild expression; his straight hair is adorned by a curved tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb of considerable size; he wears it round the back of his head, and how he makes it stay on among his very scanty locks is a miracle. His flowing white garments are immaculately clean, and he doesn't look as if he could kill a mosquito! He is a Cingalee, and the little men who run in the rickshaws are Tamils; these races live side by side in Ceylon, though there are many more Cingalese than Tamils. They are quite distinct, though they both originally came over from India, and in the old days when the Cingalese gave a line of kings to the island they were always fighting the Tamils; to-day both live together peacefully under British rule.
This place is a positive bazaar! There is a deep, crafty old merchant sitting like a spider over his pile of sheeny silks in the corner--he hopes to get good prices from the unwary tourist; there is another with a stall of beautiful bra.s.s and copper hand-worked things, and others with jewellery and carved ivory. But more interesting than any is the snake-charmer, who has just squatted down in front of us, prepared to give us an entertainment.
That is a cobra he takes out; you know it by its large, flat head. It seems sleepy and stupid, but its bite is deadly. It is possible, of course, that he has abstracted the poison-fangs which make its bite fatal, but even without them I shouldn't care to handle it. It is a huge beast, seven or eight feet long I should guess. See how he teases it; he is making it rise up on its coils and swing this way and that, darting its forked tongue out at him, and yet all the time it fears him. He has a marvellous power over it; its narrow, wicked light eyes are fixed on his face; it never looks away. Now he begins to play to it on a little flute; it is dancing, swaying its lean unlovely body to and fro and up and down in time with the tune. He puts down his pipe and makes a motion to it as if he were mesmerising it, pa.s.sing his hands this way and that, until it comes to him and puts its flat head on his shoulder, nozzling into his neck. It makes one shudder to see it! It coils round his body again and again; he is enveloped in the coils. I should not care for that profession! It is not every man that can do it, only some of the natives have a gift for it, and they really have a power over snakes, even those in a wild state, for they make them come forth out of holes when called and remain pa.s.sive at their feet. This man deserves a good tip. Baks.h.i.+sh they call it here too; that word accompanies you round the world!
[Ill.u.s.tration: A CINGALEE WAITER.]
I think we'll go for a jaunt, if you're ready, as the light falls quickly here. There is no difficulty in getting two rickshaws, and how they spin along. They say the men who drag them don't live many years, as the constant running wears them out, but they look healthy enough and show no more exhaustion after running than a horse does after trotting.
Each one has twisted up his dhoti, as the white skirts they wear are called, showing his bare brown legs; the upper garment is simply a European cotton vest. We spin along the bright red road by the sea, seeing the long lines of foam breaking gently on the beach, and then turn into shady roads where trees with brilliant yellow leaves light the wayside. Then we pa.s.s through a native village with huts of thatch, while plantains, which at home we call bananas, grow on broad-leaved plants by each door. There is dust enough here, and mangy-looking pariah dogs, and c.o.c.ks and hens, and mult.i.tudes of bright beady-eyed children with hardly any clothing on. There is plenty of foliage and greenery and a freshness and richness of colouring that is much better than the grey leafless harshness of an Egyptian village, for this land gets plenty of rain. Everyone seems good-humoured and happy, and the children look fat enough; some of them are very black, with woolly heads, of a different type from the others. These are the children of a race called Moormen.
When we get down near the hotel I want you to come into this jeweller's shop in the arcade; you'll see a strange sight. A crowd of tourists are sitting round a table which is covered with little heaps of s.h.i.+ning stones, unset and piled on squares of white paper; some are brilliant blue, others flas.h.i.+ng crimson, others sombre in hue, but showing a glitter of living light whichever way you turn them. The odd thing is that the visitors are handling them and turning them over, and examining them quite freely, while the owner, a wizened old man in horn spectacles, hardly watches!
”They're not real?”
Indeed they are! Rubies, star-sapphires, opals, and many another precious stone. That native owner has a queer faith in the honesty of his customers! Long may it last!
We are only in Colombo for one night, and to-morrow we are going up-country to stay with a friend of mine, a tea-planter.
As we are undressing you give a sudden start, ”What's that?” Only a lizard scuttling over the dark-washed bedroom wall, first cousin to the chameleon you saw at Abu Simbel. He is quite harmless and lives on flies. He runs like a little shadow across the wall and sometimes he loses his balance and comes down thump on the floor, or breaks his fall on the mosquito curtains. He is one of the signs that we really are in the East; here is another. Listen for a moment at the window. There is a distant barking of dogs, a far-away crow from a defiant c.o.c.k, a strange murmurous chant of men, weird cries intermingled, and now and then the deep beat of a parchment drum. The people of the land are all awake and stirring though it is late--the East never really sleeps as profoundly as does the West; there is a restlessness in the blood that stirs too much, and a pulsating warmth in the air that does not allow of deep slumber; it is the restlessness of the jungle translated into town life.
Next day at the station we find that the porters, though dressed in neat blue suits, have p.r.o.nounced chignons of the same type as their brothers who draw the rickshaws, and in spite of their European-cut coats and trousers they run about with bare feet! We might make a museum of the strange porters we see on our wanderings, collecting a specimen from each country!
The train is comfortable enough and there is a luncheon-car, so we shan't starve this time; besides, the journey to Kandy is only a few hours. There I hope we shall be met, as I haven't the least idea whereabouts my friend, Mr. Hunter's, tea-plantation is; however, I sent him a wire yesterday directly we arrived to say we would come by this train, so he is sure to be there.
The line for the greater part of the way is laid on a terrace or shelf cut out of a hillside, and it winds along climbing ever up with a towering wall on one side and a precipice on the other. The little stations have hardly room to wedge in, but they are very gay with flowers--indeed the whole line is, for great yellow daisies and the terra-cotta blossoms of a pretty creeper called lantana climb everywhere. As we get higher and higher we can look down and see the country spread out before us like a map; it is cut up into neat little fields and would be like a draught-board except that the fields are often on different levels one above the other, made on land cut out from the hillsides. These people grow rice, which is to them what maize is to the Egyptian. In the fields, before it has been threshed, it is known as paddy. They live on rice and very little else, and seem to thrive on it.