It is, perhaps, the same now, as far as evil tongues and pens can wag, and will always be, and people wince with moral pain; but it breaks no bones, scorches no skin, and the object of envy may still breathe fresh air and light, and enjoy life and liberty, though a few soi-disant friends may fall away. Nay, the fact of being of a different race, tongue, and creed, a variance of opinion, family rivalries, an unhappy love, a little spite or jealousy,—all was turned to account, all was of use to denounce one's enemy on a religious ground. It was enough for a "familiar" to open his mouth to make people lose their judgment and reason.
I have had a sight of all the documents existing, exclusively Goanese, by the present descendants of the Inquisitors, and the authorities of that time.
We had a charming Portuguese dinner with Dr. Da Gama. Our last evening Mr. Major took us an excursion in his boat to Cazalem. We coasted along for an hour and sang glees under a fine moon, accompanied by a heavy swell, and we were carried ashore through the surf on native shoulders, and passed a very merry evening.
At last the time came round for us to leave Goa. The steamers are due once a fortnight, but this one was long past her time. At last we had a telegram to say, "The steamer would pass Goa at midnight." We started in a large open boat in the evening with Mr. Major, his secretary, four men to row and one to steer. We rowed down the river in the evening, and then across the bay for three hours against wind and tide to open sea, bow on to heavy rollers, and at last reached the mouth of the bay, where is the fort. We remained bobbing about in the sea, in the trough of the big waves, for a considerable time. A violent storm of rain, thunder, and lightning came on, and Mr. Major proposed we should put back to the fort, at the entrance of the bay, and take shelter under some arches, which we did. Then we went to sleep, leaving the secretary and the boatwála to watch for the steamer.
At 1.30 I was awoke by the sound of a gun booming across the water. I sprang up and roused the others; but the storm was so heavy we could see no lights, and returned to sleep. We ought to have gone off when the gun fired; the ship had been laying to for us for three-quarters of an hour. If the ship went without us, we should have lost our passage to Europe, we should have been caught in the monsoon, we should have had to return another fortnight to Goa, of which we were heartily tired, and knew by heart, only to renew the same a fortnight hence. We were soon under way again, and by-and-by saw the lights of the steamer about three miles off. Knowing the independence of these captains, the monopoly, and the futility of complaints, and seeing that my husband and Mr. Major slept, I began to be very disagreeable with the boat-hook. I got the secretary to stand in the bows and wave a lamp on a pole. I urged the boatwálas with perpetual promises of bakshish. Everybody else was leaving it to Kismet. Our kind host had been holloaing at the boatwálas the whole evening because the boat was dirty, and making them bale out the horrid-smelling bilge water, and now we wanted him, he was sound asleep and as good as gold. "Can't you shout?" I cried to him; "they might hear you. You can shout loud enough when nobody wants you to." At last, after an hour's anxiety, we reached the ship, and heavy seas kept washing us away from the ladder. No one had the energy to hold on to the rope, or to take the boat-hook to keep us to her, so at last I did it myself; my husband roaring with laughter at their supineness, and at me making myself so disagreeably officious and energetic. An English sailor threw me a rope. "Thanks," I said, as I took advantage of an enormous wave to spring on to the ladder. "I am the only man in the boat to-night." All came on board with us, and we had a parting stirrup-cup, and said farewell, and often after, our good host and his wife used to write to me, and call me the "only man in the boat."
We had been six months in India, and had made the most of it, and the day of departure came round. We were glad and sorry—glad to leave the intolerable heat, to escape the coming monsoon; sorry to leave the ever-increasing interest and the daily accumulating friends. We generally chose Austrian-Lloyd's steamers. They owned at that time a fleet of sixty-nine keel, covering twenty-two different lines, reasonable in charges. An Italian cuisine, everything clean, with a certain style and refinement. They are safe ships, and their sailors, mostly Dalmatians, are a brave seafaring race, quiet, docile, and sober, stalwart, honest, and civil, and mind their ship in a storm.
On calm nights, say a delightful evening with balmy air, crescent moon, with its attendant star, our Dalmatian crew sing better than many a usual opera chorus, though quite untutored. They are thorough sailors, gay in fine weather, hard-working and brave in the worst of storms, and never drink. I know nothing pleasanter than a voyage in Austrian-Lloyd's in fine weather with few passengers. This time, however, we were physically uncomfortable. The boats were not fitted for regular English passengers from India. They steam very slow—eight knots an hour. They then carried no stewardess or doctor; they do now. Then they had no ice or soda-water, no skylight for wind-sails, only one awning instead of three, no punkahs and tatties. I believe all that is changed. So we were seventeen English passengers, and we fried alive in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.
The average English people, if not made comfortable at sea, are as troublesome as a mustard plaster—nothing was right. They wanted their huge lumps of beef and mutton four times a day; they ate up all the provisions like locusts, and drank the cellar dry almost before we got to Aden. What would last Italians and Greek six weeks, does not last an Englishman one.
Italians and Greeks have quite another form of being troublesome. They would send every half-hour for the captain to ask if there is any danger; if the sea and wind are going down; to say that they feel very bad, and ask him what they shall take. He, with the greatest good nature, instead of giving them the hearty "blessing" that ours would, recommends a little eau sucrée, and says we shall be in smooth water in another hour, though he knows quite well that the glass is down, and that we are going straight into a gale, which will last several days.