We were unable to find the miscellaneous again. Apparently they hid, preferring the incidental or sporadic life of Clementina. With this diminished orphanage, we set over the Indian Ocean, seeking another asylum for Susannah.
I found at Clementina a curious variety of the Asteroidea or star fish.
You never saw the beat of Susannah.
CHAPTER XI—RAM NAD
IT was at Colombo in Ceylon that we met with Ram Nad. I asked for him in the market place, and found him. He was sitting on a cobblestone, and leaning over his basket, asleep.
My acquaintance with Ram Nad began many years ago. Somewhere in my indefinite and unmapped past, I once lived on the island of Ceylon, and knew Ram Nad. He was by faith a Buddhist, by nature a painstaking liar, by profession a medical practitioner, or quasi-physician,—not of the allopathic school, nor of the homeopathic, but of the heteropathic and absurd. But he practised sleight-of-hand tricks and mesmerism in a manner that roused my profound respect. We exchanged informations, and I had a great affection for him in those days.
Even then he looked like a mixture of Abraham and an early Christian martyr, with some resemblance to a sheep.
I took him aboard the Violetta in order to get his advice respecting the orphan-asylums of his native land.