I went out on the Orient liner Ortona, and my eldest child, a girl, was born while I was upon the voyage, so I had her christened Ortona.
At Colombo the boat was surrounded by divers, who dived for silver coins thrown into the water by the passengers, and very quick and clever at it, too, some of them were.
Finally a one-armed chap offered to dive right under the bottom of the vessel, going in on one side and coming up on the other, for a shilling.
“All right!” we said. In he went, and we all ran over to the other side to see him come up.
Greatly to our surprise there were about twenty one-armed natives there, all treading water, and each calling out loudly that he had done the trick and demanding to be paid.
For a few moments we were utterly at a loss. Then the real one-armed chap bobbed up, and the rest swam away, using both arms.
They had been holding one arm behind them, and in the water, against their black skins, it was invisible to us.
On the Orient boats, both the first and second-class passengers dined à la carte, a gastronomic system the advantages of which have always appealed to me. I returned by the P. & O. liner Moldavia, and on these boats, so far as regards the second-class passengers at all events, we dined on the table d’hôte principle. This entailed a good deal of waiting between the courses, while if one desired to miss, say, the soup, or the fish course, there was more delay.
Some people are very quick eaters, some are very slow; and our pace at dinner on the Moldavia was set by the slowest amongst us. I, being a quick eater, used to jib and fidget at this, and when we got to Colombo I hit upon an expedient that resulted in my at least getting a little bit of my own back.
I should have mentioned that at dinner the serving of each course was ordered by the chief steward, a rather pompous and self-important individual, who used to ring a small gong bell when everybody had completely finished with, say, the soup course, as a signal to serve the fish, and so on throughout the meal. Well, while I was on shore in Colombo, I bought a small but very loud sounding gong bell, similar to the one used by the chief steward, and when we went on board again I fixed it underneath our table.