The next day the passengers went ashore; officers full fig; ladies, civilians, and cadets, all in their best attire, crowding the benches of the Massoolah boat, and balancing, and holding on as best they could. Of all sea-going craft, from the canoe of the Greenlander to the line-of-battle-ship, the Massoolah boat is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary. Imagine a huge affair, something in shape like one of those paper cock-boats which children make for amusement, or an old-fashioned tureen, or the transverse section of a pear or pumpkin, stem and stern alike, composed of light and flexible planks, sewn together with coir, and riding buoyant as a gull on the heaving wave, the sides rising six feet or so above its surface, the huge empty shell crossed by narrow planks or benches, on which, when seated, or rather roosted, your legs dangle in air several feet from the bottom: further, picture in the fore-part a dozen or more spare black creatures, each working an unwieldy pole-like paddle to a dismal and monotonous chant—and you may have some idea of a Massoolah boat and its equipage; the only thing, however, that can live in the tremendous surf that lashes the coast of Coromandel.
“Are you all right there, in the Massoolah boat?” shouted one of the ship’s officers.
“Ay, ay, sir,” responded a little middy in charge of us.
“Cast her off then,” said the voice; and immediately the connecting rope was thrown on board, and off we swung, gently rising and falling on the long undulations, which were soon to assume the more formidable character of bursting surges. As we advance, I honestly confess, though I put a bold face on it, I felt most confoundedly nervous, being under serious apprehensions that one of the many sharks I had just seen would soon have the pleasure of breakfasting on a gentleman cadet, cote-lettes à la Griffin, no doubt, if gastronomy ranks as an art amongst that voracious fraternity. On approaching the surf, the boatmen’s monotonous chant quickened to a wild ulluloo. We were in medias res. I looked astern, and there, at some distance, but in full chase, advanced a curling mountain-billow, opening its vast concave jaws, as if to devour us. On, on it came. “Ullee! ullee! ullee!” shouted the rowers; smash came the wave; up flew the stern, down went the prow; squall went the ladies, over canted the major, Grundy, and the ex-resident, while those more fortunate in retaining their seats held on with all the energy of alarm with one hand and dashed the brine from their habiliments with the other. The wave passed, and order a little restored, the boatmen pulled again with redoubled energy, to make as much way as they could before the next should overtake us. It soon came, roaring like so many fiends, and with nearly similar results. Another and another followed, till, at last, the unwieldy bark, amidst an awful bobbery, swung high and dry on the shelving beach; and out we all sprung, right glad once more to feel ourselves on terra firma, respecting which, be it observed, en passant, I hold the opinion of the Persian, that a yard of it is worth a thousand miles of salt-water.
Here then was I at last, in very truth, treading the soil of India—of that wondrous, teaming, and antique land, the fertile subject of my earliest thoughts and imaginations—that land whose “barbaric pearl and gold” has stimulated the cupidity of nations down the long stream of time, from Sabæan, Phœnician, Tyrian, and Venetian, to Mynheer Van Stockenbreech, and honest John Bull himself—whose visionary luxuries have warmed full many a Western poet’s imagination, and whose strange vicissitudes have furnished such ample matter to adorn the moralist’s and historian’s pages.
As I gazed on the turbaned crowds, the flaunting robes, the huge umbrellas, the passing palankeens, the black sentinels, the strange birds, and even (pardon the climax) the little striped squirrels, which gambolled up and down the pillars of the custom-house—sights so new and strange to me,—I almost began to doubt my own identity, and to think I had fallen into some new planet. Assuredly, of all the sunny moments which chequer the path of life’s pilgrimage here below, there are few whose brightness can compare with those of our first entrance on a new and untrodden land. What music is there in every sound! What an exhilarating freshness in every object! The peach’s bloom, the butterfly’s down, or the painted bubble, however, are but types of them. Alas! as of all sublunary enjoyments, they vanish upon contact, or at best, bear not long the grasp of possession.
My feelings were still in a state of tumultuous excitement, when, gazing about, I observed a native, in flowing robes and large gold ear rings, bearing down upon me. With a profound salaam, and the smirking smile of an old acquaintance, he proceeded to address me:
“How d’ye do, Sare?” said he.
“Pretty well, thank you,” said I, smiling; “but who are you?”
“I, Ramee Sawmee Dabash, Sare, come to make master proper compliment. Very glad to see master safe on shore; too much surf, I think, and master’s coat leetle wet.”