I mounted to the floor above and returned with a cotton jacket that I had left in the keeping of Askins.
“How’s this?” I demanded.
“He ban all right,” answered Ole, slipping into it; “der oder vas all broke by der sleeves.”
I donned the helmet and strolled down to the landing jetty, where “the boys” were accustomed to gather of an evening to enjoy the only cool breeze that ever invaded Colombo. Few had been the changes in the beachcomber ranks during my absence. Amid the drowsy yarning there sounded often a familiar refrain:—“The circus is coming.” No one knew just when; but then, one doesn’t worry in Ceylon. If he hasn’t rice, he eats bananas. If he can’t find work, it is a joy merely to lie in the shade and breathe.
The publicity of the cricket grounds had led me to seek other sleeping-quarters. Opposite the shipping-office, in the heart of the European section, lay Gordon Gardens, a park replete with fountains, gay flower pots, and grateful shade. By day it was the rendezvous of the élite of the city, white and black. By night its gates were closed, and stern placards warned trespassers to beware. Small hindrance these, however, for in all Colombo I had no better friend than Bobby, who patroled the flanking street. Under the trees the night dew never fell, the ocean breeze laughed at the toil of the punkah-wallah, the fountains gave bathroom privileges, and prowling natives disturbed me no more; for Bobby was owl-eyed. This new lodging had but one drawback. I must be up and away with the dawn; for within pea-shooting distance of my chamber towered the White House of Ceylon, and Governor Blake was reputed an early riser and no friend of beachcombers.
One by one there drifted ashore in Colombo four fellow-countrymen, who, following my example, soon won for Gordon Gardens the sub-title “American Park Hotel.” Model youths, perhaps, would have shunned this quartet, for each plead guilty to a checkered past. As for myself, I found them boon companions.
Henderson, the oldest, was a deserter from the Asiatic squadron. Arnold, middle-aged, laden with the spoils—in drafts—of a political career in New York, awaited in Ceylon the conclusion of the Japanese-Russian war before hastening to Port Arthur to open an American saloon.
Down at the point of the breakwater, where we were wont to gather often for a dip in the brine, I made the acquaintance of Marten. He was a boy of twenty-five, hailing from Tacoma, Washington. Arriving in the Orient some years before with a record as a champion swimmer, he had spent two seasons in diving for pearls on the Coromandel coast. Not one of the native striplings who surrounded each arriving steamer, clamoring for pennies, was more nearly amphibious than Marten. It was much more to watch his submarine feats than to swim that the beachcombers sallied forth each afternoon from their shady retreats.
We swam cautiously, the rest of us, for the harbor was infested with sharks. On the day after my arrival, the Worcestershire had buried in the European cemetery of Colombo the upper half of what had been one of my companions in the “glory-hole.” The appearance of a pair of black fins out across the sun-flecked waters was certain to send us scrambling up the rough face of the breakwater.
