“Not a little,” said I, “for we have all had a complete sousing.”
“Oh, never mind souse, Sare; I take to Navy Tavern there makee changee—eat good dinner. Navy Tavern very good place—plenty gentlemen go there.”
“Where you please,” said I; “I am at your service.”
“Ver well, Sare; but (in a tone of entreaty) you please not forget my name, Ramee Sawmee Dabash—master’s dabash—I am ver honest man; too much every gentleman know me.”
Here Ramee Sawmee unconsciously spoke the truth, as I had afterwards full occasion to discover. I was soon besieged with more of these gentry offering their services; but Ramee Sawmee, having the best right to pluck me, by reason of prior possession, ordered them off indignantly; and not to incur risks by unnecessary delays, he called a palankeen, and requested me to get into it. In I tumbled, wrong side foremost, and off we started for the Navy Tavern. He ran alongside, not wishing to lose sight of me for a moment, pouring his disinterested advice into my ear in one voluble and continuous stream.
“Master, you please take care; dis place,” said he, “too much dam rogue, this Madras; plenty bad beebee, and some rascal dabash ver much cheatee gentlemen. I give master best advice. I ver honest man.”
I thought myself singularly fortunate, in the simplicity of my griffinish heart, in having fallen in with so valuable a character; but, in the sequel, as has been before hinted, I discovered what, I dare say, many a griff had discovered before, that Ramee Sawmee had a little overestimated himself in the above particular article of honesty.
Sweltering through a broiling sun, and abundance of dust, we reached the Navy Tavern, a building somewhat resembling, if I recollect rightly, one of our own green verandah’d suburban taverns, in which comfortable cits dine and drink heavy wet in sultry summer evenings. Here I found a vast congregation of naval and military officers, red coats and blue; mates, midshipmen, pursers, captains, and cadets; some playing billiards, some smoking, and others drowning care in bowls of sangaree, in which fascinating beverage, by the way, with guavas, pine-apples, &c., I also indulged, till brought up, some time after, by a pleasant little touch of dysentery, which had nearly produced a catastrophe; amongst the dire consequences of which would have been the non-appearance of these valuable Memoirs. From the Navy Tavern, Grundy and I went the next day to the quarters appointed for young Bengal officers detained at Madras. These consisted of some tents pitched in an open sandy spot, within the fort, and presented few attractions; besides some small ones for dormitories, there was a larger one dignified with the appellation of the mess-tent. Here, at certain stated hours, a purveyor, denominated a butler, but as unlike “one of those gentlemanly personages so called at home as can well be imagined, placed breakfast, tiffin, and dinner, on table at so much ahead. For two or three days I revelled in the delights of sour Madeira, tough mutton, and skinny kid, with yams, and other miserable succedanea for European vegetables. An Egyptian plague of flies, and a burning sun beating through the single cloth of the tent, made up the sum of the agreeables to which we were subjected. My faith in the “luxuries of the East” had received a severe shock, and I was fast tending to downright infidelity on that head, when a big-whiskered fellow, with turban, badge, and silver stick, put a billet into my hand, which was the means of soon restoring me to the pale of orthodoxy. It was from an eccentric baronet, to whom I had brought letters and a parcel from his daughter in England, and ran thus:
“Col. Sir Jeremy Skeggs presents his compliments to Mr. Gernon, and thanks him for the care he has taken of the letters, &c., from his daughter. Mrs. Hearty, Sir J. Skeggs sister, will be happy to see Mr. G., and will send a palankeen for him.”
I packed up my all (an operation soon effected), got into an elegant palankeen, which made its appearance shortly after the note, and escorted by a body of silver-stick men (for Mr. Hearty was “a man in authority”), I bade adieu to the tents, and leaving Grundy and some other cadets, though with a strong commiserative feeling, to struggle with the discomforts I have mentioned, was conveyed at a slapping pace to my host’s garden residence, on the Mount Road. This was a flat roofed building, in the peculiar style of the country, of two stories—a large portico occupying nearly the whole length of the front. It was approached by a long avenue of parkinsonias, and surrounded, and partly obscured, by rich masses of tropical foliage, in which the bright green of the plantain contrasted pleasingly with the darker hues of the mango and the jack. Beyond the house stretched a pleasant domain, slightly undulating, dotted with clumps, and intersected by rows of cocoa-nut trees. Here it constituted one of my chief pleasures to saunter, to chase the little striped squirrels up the trees, or to watch the almost as agile ascent of the toddyman, as he mounted by a most simple contrivance the tall and branchless stems to procure the exhilarating juice; or to pelt the paroquets, as they clung screaming to the pendent leaves. To possess a parrot of my own, in England, had long constituted one of the unattainable objects of my juvenile ambition. I had longed so much for it, that an inordinate idea of the value of parrots had clung to me ever since. To see them, therefore, by dozens, in their wild state, was like in some measure spreading out before me the treasures of Golconda.