Safe, she crouched down behind the window curtain with her eyes fixed unseeingly on the distorted figures of the Java frieze.
BOOK II
THE EAST
CHAPTER XXVI
"But when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life."—The Bible.
The first-class passengers, leastways the passengers travelling first class, lay stretched out side by side, one sex to starboard, t'other to port, divided, however, more by the fear of the eyes of the other sex, than by any hatch piled with chairs, or ship rule pinned upon the notice-board, and signed by the chief.
Surely the hours of the tropical nights passed in sleep on deck are those in which we should return thanks for lacking the gift of seeing ourselves as the officer going on, or coming off watch, the fugitive apprentice, or some stray passenger see us.
Human chrysalis, wrapt in the cocoon of sheet or unsightly night attire, with starboard boudoir cap awry, exposing the steel cracker or the lanky lock; unsightly pedal extremities peeping from the unfeminine pyjama; ruby lips, uncarmined, ajar; whilst to port like rocks from the ocean, unshaven chins rise unrebuked from blanket billows, and pyjama button and buttonhole play touch across the unseemly, unrestrained and unconfined masculine torso.
It was one of those insufferably hot nights you get sometimes as you turn into the Hoogli, when the smell of the land comes in sickening wafts, and the enchantment of the East is considerably lessened in your opinion by the oppression of the atmosphere.
You are going up the Hoogli! you are passing the Sunderbunds! you can almost see the tigers squatting in rows at the water's edge! it is the East! it is India!—also it is infernally hot, and having retired to your cabin to disrobe, you anathemise your stable companion who has been likewise inspired; curse your overworked cabin steward who has heaved your bedding on to the wrong site; re-arrange everything and bed down.