But there, I shan’t give up, for there’s nothing like a bit o’ pluck to carry you through your troubles, and I’m a-going to scheme a noo sorter public Shakespearian dramatic entertainment, one as will be patronised by all the nobility and gentry, when in consequence of the unparalleled success, we shall stop all the press orders and free list, and come out arterwards with a new drum, and get presented with a set o’ silver-mounted pipes by a grateful nation. Leastwise I mean it to be a success if I can, but if it don’t turn out all right, through me and my pardner being so touched in the wind, Bill’s a-going to get up a subscription to buy a barrel-orgin and a four-wheel thing as ’ll take us both—me and the orgin; when I shall sit there with a tin plate to take the coppers, and Bill will grind away like that Italian chap as drew round the gentleman wot had been operated on. I don’t want to come down to that, though, for one can’t help ’sociating barrel-orgins with monkeys, and pitying the poor little chattering beggars as is chained up to an eight-toon box, played slow, as if it was wrong in its inside. And that makes me rather shrink a bit from it, for thinking as I might get tired of the organ-grinder.
Steps, steps, steps. Here’s the missus coming, and there’ll be the physic to take, and then, after a bit of a nap, I mean to sit up and put my theaytrical company to rights.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
In the Hooghly.
You people here in England don’t know what a river is; the Thames and Severn are only ditches, while the Humber is precious little better than a creek of the sea. Just think of such rivers as the Amazon, and the Plate, and the Mississippi, where you can sail up miles, and miles, and miles, and on the two first can’t make out the shore on either side; while after a flood down comes little islands covered with trees washed out of the banks, some with pretty little snakes on ’em twenty feet long, p’raps, while on every flat bit of shore you see the alligators a-lying by wholesale. Then there’s them big African rivers with the alligator’s first cousins—crockydiles, you know, same as there is up in that big river in Indy—the Ganges, as I’ve sailed up right through the Sunderbunds, covered in some places with jungle, where the great striped tigers lie, and as one o’ my poor mates used to say, it’s dangerous to be safe.
I’ve been up to Calcutta, I have, after sailing right across the roaring main to Adelaide, and dropping our cargo. My; how hot it is going up that river, a regular hot stifly sort of heat, as seems to get hold of you and say, “Hold hard, my boy, you can’t work here!” and we never used to do any more than we could help. Sailing up, day after day, we got anchored at last up at the grand place, and I don’t know which you takes most notice of, the grandness or the misery, for there’s a wonderful sight of both.
“What’s that?” I says to Bob Davies, as we was a-leaning over the side, looking at the native boats floating here and there, and seeing how the great muddy stream flowed swiftly down.
“That?” says Bob. “Ah, you’ll see lots of that sort of thing about. That’s a corpus, that is, and that’s how they buries ’em here. Waits till a poor fellow’s werry sick, and then takes and puts him at low tide on the bottom of the steps of the landing-places,—ghauts they calls ’em, and then, if he’s got strength enough in him, he crawls away, but if he ain’t, why the tide carries him off, and then he goes washing up and down the river till Dicky Todd lays hold on him, and pulls him under for his next meal.”