Who could have foretold that the little ragged guttersnipe boy whom big Tom Morgan found on that snowy Christmas eve, and took pity upon, would have developed into so manly a young officer, walking the quarter-deck of one of Her Majesty's cruisers, and feeling fit almost to keep a watch all by himself.
We next find the Gurnet at anchor in Bombay roadstead or harbour. She looked small, indeed, beside some of the great East Indiamen lying here, and almost hidden in the forest of masts everywhere around her.
At this time the walls of Bombay were still standing, and a ditch ran round a great portion of it. The British town was therefore far more gloomy than it is now, and the native town perhaps a deal dirtier, if that were possible. Nevertheless, Jack used to enjoy a run on shore with his friend the doctor, for there was much to be seen and much to study from a natural history point of view. So they never came off without specimens of some kind.
"If I had a year to myself," said Dr. Reikie, "I would spend it in studying anthropology and zoology in the old and new towns of Bombay."
Well, as regards these, one might go further and fare worse.
But every creature and human being, except restless Europeans, seemed calm and contented here. The doctor and Jack, after a time, got into a habit of just wandering about in the glorious sunshine and looking at things, or they would hire a buggy and make the buggy-wallah drive slowly about. A palkee or palanquin was another method of progression the two sometimes adopted. They made the bearers walk abreast, so that they could converse from their respective windows, or ports, as Dr. Reikie called them.
A palanquin is really a kind of sedan chair, borne along on a long bamboo pole by half-naked natives; only, instead of sitting you lie at full length. My own experience of palkees leads me to say that in such a mode of travelling one enjoys the dolce far niente to perfection, and people and things flit past you as if they were part and parcel of a beautiful dream, or the transformation scene in a pantomime. The natives are picturesque in the extreme—turbanned Arabs; swarthy Parsees; fat Hindus; native servants of every description; lazy blue-dressed native policemen; British soldiers in scarlet coats; British blue-jackets; solemn-looking little cows with humps and gilded horns; rings of workmen squatting on the foot-path smoking opium; droll-looking birds called adjutants, that, assisted by the bluebottle flies, do all the scavenging; and, last but not least, rows of pretty maidens, dressed in rolls of silk of various colours; with here and there bevies of beautiful children. The whole forms a picture that never passes from the mind away.
The Gurnet next went to Ceylon.
While on her voyage thither some stock-taking was done, and, to Captain Gillespie's astonishment, the rum was short.
Who could the thief be? No one could get into the spirit-room without the assistant-paymaster's orders or Lieutenant Sturdy's. It was extremely puzzling. A watch was kept on the door, nevertheless; but nothing was found out. Still the rum disappeared—more, that is, than was taken out honestly. A small cask was taken up every day at twelve. The bung was started, and the spirit drawn off with a siphon. Then the cask was returned.