CHAPTER XV
IN THE LAND OF THE WANDERING PRINCE
The scenery that met my gaze as I moved through the streets of Colombo seemed much like that of some great painting. The golden sunshine, the rich green, the dark bodies moving here and there among figures clad in snowy white, were more colorful than I had ever imagined. At noonday the fiery sun beat down on me so unmercifully that I sought shelter in a neighboring park. There I dreamed away my first day’s freedom from the holy-stone. A native runner awoke me toward nightfall, and thrust into my hands a card. On it was printed an advertisement of a “Sailors’ Boarding House of Colombo, Proprietor Almeida.” I found it easily. It was a two-story building, with stone floor, but otherwise of the lightest wooden material. The dining-room, in the center of the building, had no roof. Narrow, windowless rooms in the second story faced this open space. These housed the sailors who stayed there.
Almeida, who kept the boarding-house, was a Singhalese who belonged to a higher class or caste than certain other natives of Ceylon. In proof of this he wore tiny pearl earrings and a huge circle comb. His hair was gray, and being thin did not hold the comb in position very long at a time. It dropped on the floor behind him so often that he had a little brown boy follow him about all day with nothing else to do but to pick it up for him. Almeida wore a white silk jacket decorated with red braid and glistening brass buttons, and a skirt of the gayest plaid. His feet were bare, and his toes spread out so that they pointed in five different directions.
I signed a note promising to pay for my room and board after I had earned the money, and was made a guest in the Sailors’ Boarding House. Four white men and as many black leaned their elbows on the board used for a table, and waited for the evening meal. In a cave near by, two brown men were sitting on their heels, stirring something in a kettle over a fire of sticks. After a time they ceased stirring, and began chattering like monkeys in high, squeaky voices. Suddenly they became silent, dashed through the smoke in the cave, and dragged the steaming kettle forth into the dining-room. One of them scooped out the steaming rice and filled our plates. The younger ran back into the smoky cave and snatched up a smaller pot containing chopped fish. Besides this, we had bananas and drinking water that was saltish, discolored, and lukewarm.
The cooks gave us each a tin spoon, then filled a battered basin with rice, and, squatting on their heels, began eating their own supper with their fingers. The wick that floated in a bottle of oil lighted up only one corner of the table, and the rising moon, falling upon the naked figures, cast strange shadows across the uneven floor.
I laid my head on a hand to show that I was getting sleepy, and one of the cooks led the way to the second story and into one of the narrow rooms. It was furnished with three low wooden tables having queerly curved legs. I asked for my bed. But the cook spoke no English, and I sat down and waited for my room-mates.
A long hour afterward two white men stumbled up the stairs. The first carried a candle high above his head. He was lean, gray-haired, and clean-shaven. The other man was a heavy, yellow-haired Swede.
“Oho! Ole,” grinned the older man, “here’s a new bunkie. Why don’t you turn in, mate?”
“I haven’t found my bed yet,” I answered.
