It was a long, slow, monotonous voyage, during which I went on learning a good deal of my profession, for there was drilling every morning on deck, and the draft of men were marched and countermarched till the rough body of recruits began to fall correctly into the various movements, while I supplemented the knowledge I had acquired as a cadet, and more than once obtained a few words of praise from the sergeant with the draft, and what were to me high eulogies from Captain Brace.
“Nothing like mastering the infantry drill, Vincent,” he said to me one day. “Young officers know, as a rule, far too little of foot drill. It will save you a good deal of trouble when we get there.”
It was monotonous but not unpleasant, that voyage out. We had the customary sports on crossing the line; we fished and caught very little, though the men captured the inevitable shark with the lump of salt pork; and used the grains, as they called the three-pronged fork, to harpoon dolphins. I had my first sight of flying fish, and made friends with the officers. Then there was music and dancing on the hot moonlit nights; deck quoits under the awning by day; a good deal more sleep than we took at home; and at last we reached Ceylon and touched at Colombo, where everything struck me as being wonderfully unlike what I had pictured in my own mind.
“Well,” said Captain Brace one evening, after we had had a run together on the shore, “what do you think of the Cingalese?”
“That they look so effeminate,” I said.
“Exactly,” he replied, nodding his head as I went on.
“They are not bad looking; but it looks so absurd to see those elderly men dressed in muslins, with drawers and clothes that put me in mind of little girls about to go to a children’s party or a dance.”
He looked amused, and I continued—
“And then the ordinary people, with their oily black hair all done up in a knot behind and held by a comb. It does look so womanish.”
“Yes; to us,” said Captain Brace. “But their clothes are comfortable for the hot climate, and that is more than you will be able to say of ours when you get out in the plains in full uniform some day.”