The only break in the monotony of this part of the voyage was made by our passing the extremities of these deserted volcanic islets, St. Paul’s and Amsterdam, of which I attempted a sketch, which occasioned no little amusement.
These dreary oases of fused rock are said to contain two springs in juxtaposition, one of boiling and the other of cold water. These might, as I reflected, afford invaluable assistance to a shipwrecked mariner, who could possibly boil a fish or a stray gull’s egg in the former, while the latter would supply the means of performing his ablutions and quenching his thirst. The only geographical interest attaching to these spots is that they are equidistant from the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and Tasmania.
Meanwhile the ship was rapidly approaching her destination; the days of the voyage were already numbered, and it was resolved to give a grand fancy dress ball on the first evening that we should spend at anchor in the river. From the difference in the colour of the water, it soon became apparent that the remainder of the voyage might be counted by hours; the Gangetic delta was pouring forth its mud from many gaping mouths; and the water grew more and more uninviting, till we at last passed the Pilot Brig, and anon came in sight of a low-lying, muddy-looking coast, fringed with cocoanut trees. In an hour or so we were in the Hooghly; and I cannot say that either the river or its banks impressed me very favourably.
We were now in the month of December, which, being the coolest season of the year, is the favourite time of arrival for all sorts and conditions of ships; and it was probably in consequence of this that no steam tug was at first available to tow us the remaining hundred miles. Very reluctantly, therefore, we had to let go the anchor only a short distance from the mouth of the river.
That night we were to have enjoyed the fancy dress ball for which so much preparation had been made, when an untoward accident put an end to all our merriment. A young middy, a promising lad and a great favourite on board, fell from the mizen-top—
“To die! to sleep:
To sleep! perchance to dream.”
Such is fate! William III, whose diseased and emaciated form had survived the thickest of a dozen frays, dies through his horse stumbling on a mole-hill in his own park; a great African explorer is killed by the accidental explosion of his own gun; so, too, our poor little middy, after having many a time helped furl a sail in mid-ocean, with the billows raging in their fury, and the lightning playing about the yards, must needs fall here, with the vessel riding at anchor in a very duck-pond! He was probably a victim to sunstroke. Never shall I forget the thud that brought me up from below, caused by his head being shattered against the deck. One of the ship’s boats conveyed his remains to a small European cemetery not far from the shore, where others of his countrymen had preceded him—a lonely spot, around which the jackal yelled and the tiger prowled.
As the tug could not be with us till the following day, I seized the opportunity of going ashore in one of the native craft with which European ships are invariably beset on entering an Eastern river.
I proceeded on foot through a small village, very clean and regularly built, composed of well-thatched, one-storied houses. Something—I suppose it was the manner in which the men were lolling about and smoking, while the women did all the work—reminded me of small villages that I had seen in Ireland.