Chapter Twenty Eight.
In the Hooghly.
You people here in England don’t know what a river is; the Thames and Severn are only ditches, while the Humber is precious little better than a creek of the sea. Just think of such rivers as the Amazon, and the Plate, and the Mississippi, where you can sail up miles, and miles, and miles, and on the two first can’t make out the shore on either side; while after a flood down comes little islands covered with trees washed out of the banks, some with pretty little snakes on ’em twenty feet long, p’raps, while on every flat bit of shore you see the alligators a-lying by wholesale. Then there’s them big African rivers with the alligator’s first cousins—crockydiles, you know, same as there is up in that big river in Indy—the Ganges, as I’ve sailed up right through the Sunderbunds, covered in some places with jungle, where the great striped tigers lie, and as one o’ my poor mates used to say, it’s dangerous to be safe.
I’ve been up to Calcutta, I have, after sailing right across the roaring main to Adelaide, and dropping our cargo. My; how hot it is going up that river, a regular hot stifly sort of heat, as seems to get hold of you and say, “Hold hard, my boy, you can’t work here!” and we never used to do any more than we could help. Sailing up, day after day, we got anchored at last up at the grand place, and I don’t know which you takes most notice of, the grandness or the misery, for there’s a wonderful sight of both.
“What’s that?” I says to Bob Davies, as we was a-leaning over the side, looking at the native boats floating here and there, and seeing how the great muddy stream flowed swiftly down.
“That?” says Bob. “Ah, you’ll see lots of that sort of thing about. That’s a corpus, that is, and that’s how they buries ’em here. Waits till a poor fellow’s werry sick, and then takes and puts him at low tide on the bottom of the steps of the landing-places,—ghauts they calls ’em, and then, if he’s got strength enough in him, he crawls away, but if he ain’t, why the tide carries him off, and then he goes washing up and down the river till Dicky Todd lays hold on him, and pulls him under for his next meal.”
“Who’s Dicky Todd?” I says.
“Why,” says Bob, a-chuckling, “there he goes, that’s him,” and then he stood a-pinting out into the stream where there was what seemed to me to be a bit of rough bark of a tree floating slowly down towards the sea.
“Why, that’s a tree, I says, ain’t it?”
“Ho! ho! ho! what ignorance,” says Bob, “that’s a crorkodile, or a haligator, if you likes to call it so. Dicky Todd, that is, as don’t like his meals fresh, but keeps his game till it gets high, and then enjoys himself with a feast.”
’Nough to make one shudder that was, but it was true enough, for, before the body I had seen floating down had gone much further, there was a bit of a swirl in the water, and both crocodile and body disappeared, while my face felt as if it was turning white, and I knew I felt sick.
We chaps didn’t work very hard though, for there were plenty of black fellows there, ready to do anything for you, and lots of ’em were employed lading the ship, while we were busy touching her up, bending on new sheets, here and there mending sails, painting and scraping, and making right a spar or two that had sprung, for you know there’s always something amiss after a long voyage, and it’s no short distance from Liverpool to Port Adelaide, and then up to Calcutta. Rum chaps some of those blacks was, not werry decent in their ideas of dress, and all seeming to suffer from a famine in stockings. Precious particular too about what they call their caste, which you know is a complaint as exists in the old country too. Why, in our old village it was werry bad, and was like this you know: the squire’s people wouldn’t mix with the doctor’s, and the doctor’s wouldn’t visit the maltster’s, and the maltster’s didn’t know the people at the shop, who didn’t call on the clerk’s wife, who said her gal shouldn’t go to tea at Brown’s, who said Smith’s folks was low; and so on. That’s caste—that is, and they has it werry bad out in Indy. Mussulmans some on ’em, and Brahmins, and all sorts, and lots on ’em you’ll meet with a bit o’ paint on their forehead, to show what caste they belong to, I s’pose, while they’re as proud as Lucifer.
One old chap used to come to work and bring his gang with him to go on with the lading, and one day when he came some of our fellows began to chaff him, for he’d got his head shaved, and what for do you think, but because he was in mourning, and had put away his wife? Not as that seemed to me anything to go in mourning for, since some of our chaps would have been a wonderful deal better without their wives as they left behind in Liverpool. But this chap had divorced his wife because she had let the child die, so he said, and there was the poor woman in double trouble.
“S’pose she couldn’t help the little ’un going,” says Bob to him.
“Ah! yes, Sahib,” says this old chap, Jamsy Jam, as he called himself, “oh yes, Sahib, she let child die—mosh trouble.” But I’m blest if I don’t think it was him wanted to get rid of his wife, and so made this an excuse.
Bob Davis and me one day stood looking over the side o’ the ship, same as we often did, and he says to me, he says:—
“Last time as I was here, we was lying a hundred yards further up the stream, and one day when I was in the bows, I could see something hitched on to the chain as moored us to the buoy, and if it wasn’t one of them poor fellows as had come down with the stream from perhaps hundreds of miles up the country, and there wasn’t one of our chaps as would get him off, so it came to my share to do it, and I undertook it out of a bit of bounce because the others wouldn’t, for I felt proper scared and frightened over it. They often gets hitched in the mooring chains of ships, and p’raps we shall come in for one before we goes.”
About an hour after I goes and looks down at the chain, when if I didn’t turn all shivering, for there was something dusky hitched on sure enough, and I ran and called Bob Davis up to have a look, and see if it wasn’t what he’d been a talking about.
“So it is,” he says; and he went and told the captain and mate, and they came and had a look, when the dinghy was ordered down, and Bob and me in her, to set the body free.
Now I didn’t like the job a bit, and I pulled a long face at Bob, just same time as he was pulling a long face at me; but our captain was a man who would stand no nonsense, so we were soon down in the boat, and I put her along the side, while Bob got hold of the boat-hook, and reached out at the body.
But it warn’t a body of a poor black at all, but a god as was dressed up, and had been sent sailing down from one of their grand feasts somewhere up the river, one of those set-outs where there’s so much dancing and beating of tom-toms and singing in their benighted, un-Christian-like, dreary fashion, all Ea-la-ba-sha-la-ma-ca-la-fa; for it sounds like nothing else to a sailor chap as don’t understand Hindostanee.
Well, we brings this great idol on board, and the captain has it dried and stood on deck; but I’m blest if the black chaps didn’t all turn huffy about it, and kicked up a shine, and then took and went off, leaving all their work. They came back, though, next morning reg’lar as could be, and I says to Bob Davis, “Bob,” I says, “that’s just for all the world like coves at home: cuts off in a passion, and then comes back when they’re cool again.”
“Ah,” says Bob, with a bit of a chuckle; “p’raps it is, but not quite; for they was afraid to work with one o’ their gods a-looking at ’em.”
“Then what made ’em come back now?” I say.
“Because he’s gone again bobbing about among the Dicky Todds and corpuses; and it’s my belief,” he says, “that our watch didn’t keep much of a look-out, or they’d have seen some of the swarthy beggars come aboard and heave it overboard, for it’s gone sure enough.”
Gone it was, and no mistake; and I suppose Bob must have been right; and, though the cap went on a good ’un about losing his curiosity, it warn’t no good at all.
“Some of you knows something of it,” says the cap to old Jam, as we called him for short.
“Captain Sahib no got god of his own at home that he want black fellow’s,” says old Jam very grandly, but making a great salaam a’most down to the deck.
But the cap only grumbled out something, and went off, for he didn’t want to offend the men.
One day we had a sad upset—one as gave our chaps the horrors, and made them restless to get out of the place, and worse, for after that the men were always looking out for the crocodiles, and bodies, and things that came down the great stream, while now everything they saw floating, if it was only a lump of rotten rushes or a bit of tree-trunk, got to be called something horrid. Then the chaps got tired of its being so hot, and discontented at having not enough to do, I s’pose, for a ship’s crew never seems so happy as when the men are full swing an’ at the work.
Well, it so happened that in two places the cap had had little swing stages slung over the side for the men who were touching up the ship’s ribs with a new streak of paint; and there the chaps were dabbing away very coolly as to the way they worked, but very hotly as to the weather, for the sun comes down there a scorcher when there’s no breeze on. I was very busy myself trying to find a cool place somewhere; and not getting it, when the man over the bulwarks gives a hail, and I goes to see what he wanted, which it was more paint, because he didn’t want to come up the side, and get it himself. So I takes the pot from him, and gets it half filled with colour, and goes back to the side all on the dawdle-and-crawl system just like the other chaps on deck.
“Now then,” I says, “lay hold;” but my gentleman didn’t move, for there he was, squatted down and smoking his pipe; when, finding it comforting, he wouldn’t move.
“I say,” he says, looking up, “just see if them lashings is all right; for, if I was to go down here, it’s my idee as I shouldn’t come up again for the crockydiles, and I don’t kear about giving up the number of my mess jest yet; so look out.”
“Well, lay hold of this pot,” says I, reaching down to him as far as I could.
“Wait a minute,” he says, when he began to groan himself up, and next moment he would have reached what I was holding to him, when I heard something give, a sort of crack; then there was a shriek and a loud splash, and I saw the poor fellow’s horror-stricken face for an instant as he disappeared beneath the water.
“Man overboard!” I shouted, dropping the paint, and running to the rope which held the dinghy; when sliding down I was in her in a moment, and shoving along towards where the poor chap went down. First I looked one way, then another, and kept paddling about expecting that I should see his head come up, while now at the sides half the crew were looking over, for they had forgotten all about feeling tired or lazy in their anxiety to be of use.
“There, look out,” cried Bob Davis; “he’ll come up there where that eddy is, and then I watched there and leaned over the sides ready to catch hold of the poor chap when he came up.”
“Let her float down with the stream,” shouted the captain, excitedly; “he must come to the top directly,” and so I let her float down; kneeling there as I did, ready to snatch at anything which appeared. The river was running down muddy and strong, so that you could see nothing but the swirling about of the current, as it came rushing round by the ships and boats moored there, and I began to think that the poor fellow would soon be sucked under one of the big hulls, when it seemed to me that there was more swirling and rushing about of the water than usual, for my little boat began to rock a little and some bubbles of air came rising up and floating atop of the water.
Here he is now, I thinks, getting hold of the boat-hook, and holding it just a little in the water, when all at once I turned quite sick and queer, for there was a great patchy stream of blood came up, and floated on the surface, slowly spreading out, and floating down the stream, when in a sort of mad fit I made a thrust down as far as I could reach with the hook to bring something up, and sure enough I caught against something, but the next moment there was a snatch and a jerk, and I had to let go of the hook, to save being pulled overboard, when I clung shuddering to the thwarts, and saw the long shaft disappear under water.
The chaps on board our ship roused me up, or I think I should have turned quite dizzy, and rolled out of the boat; but now I jumped up, and setting an oar out of the stern, paddled a little further down, trying hard to make myself believe that the poor chap would come up again. But no, nothing more was seen of him but the bubbles on the top of the water, and that horrid red patch which came directly after.
I paddled here and paddled there, trembling all over the whole time, but it was of no use, and at last when I was some distance off, and they began shouting for me, I put out both sculls, and rowed back, when mine wasn’t the only pale, sickly looking face aboard, for there were the men talking in whispers, and the other chap that had been painting came off of his stage, while if the captain had persisted in trying to get that bit of painting finished, I believe the men would have all mutinied and left the ship. But he didn’t, for though he couldn’t have liked to see the ship half done, he said nothing about it, for there was no one to blame, since that poor lost man rigged up his own stage; and all the rest of the time as we stopped there in the Hooghly—Ugly as we calls it—the cap and the mate used to spend hours every day practising rifle shooting at the crocodiles, as must have been the end of my poor ship-mate.