It is nearing twenty years ago since I celebrated my last bump supper in my old college at Cambridge, but the remembrance of it is so bright and cheering in the monotony of daily life that time is much abridged, and it seems but yesterday that the two pailfuls of smoking milk punch worked such deadly havoc amongst four crews of well-trained men that ultimately they were mostly laid out in a row, with consequent sore heads and interviews with the dean next morning. A bump supper is an orgy never to be forgotten.
A jamboree is a very analogous function. Where and what the word comes from I do not know, but its meaning in the Far East is universally understood to be a bachelor entertainment consisting of an enormous dinner with plenty of wine, tales, songs and general hilarity, occasionally verging on riotousness with breakage of household furniture and other effects.
As I glance back over the past fifteen years such wild nights stand out like beacons in pleasing relief from the many respectable gatherings, be it in Church or Society, at which I have had the honour of assisting, but which have left no impressions sufficiently vivid to class them with treasured souvenirs or even provoke a smile.
Some years since there visited Hankow a personage of exalted rank, who, being a near kinsman of one of the most powerful of Europe's present rulers, was received with patriotic enthusiasm by the large colony of his nationals domiciled there, and with every mark of respect by all other members of the cosmopolitan community.
His arrival in one of the fine Chinese river-boats was signalised by what might have been a fatal catastrophe but for the skilful manœuvring of his ship by the veteran American skipper.
Just as the vessel had threaded her way through numerous ocean steamers and foreign gun-boats anchored in the stream, and was slowly approaching the hulk alongside which she was to be made fast, an enormous raft of timber, bearing a whole village of huts and a considerable population of raft navigators, caught by the swirling eddy caused by a freshet from the River Han, which 200 yards above this point was pouring at right angles into the mighty Yangtse's five-knot current, bore swiftly down on the steamer, threatening to strike her amidships and either pin her to the hulk or crush her against the stone-faced bund, when she must have been immediately sunk. Unaware of the danger until it was almost upon him, the captain had just time to reverse his engines, and by going full speed astern with the helm hard over bring his ship round so as to receive the threatened blow end on instead of abeam. The impact nearly drove the vessel's stern into the hulk, but with her engines now going full speed ahead, and churning up two white lanes of foam with her paddle-wheels, she rammed her bows into the raft, and just managing to deflect its course they floated down with the stream locked together, until by a miracle they had passed clear of all the shipping, though at times only by a few feet, and the steamer with her illustrious passenger again bore up for her berth, after the narrowest of escapes but without having sustained the slightest damage.
These enormous rafts, composed chiefly of bamboos and pines, generally come from the forests of Hunan, and after crossing the Tongting lake float down the Yangtse to places where wood is scarce and a good market obtains. They vary in size, but sometimes are a hundred yards in length by twenty in breadth, and draw probably from ten to twenty feet. With their huts of bamboo and matting, with long sweeps both ahead and astern for steering, and great coils of plaited bamboo ropes for mooring purposes, they present an extremely picturesque appearance.
Amongst other festivities arranged by his compatriots in honour of the distinguished visitor, a banquet, preceded by a reception of prominent residents, was given at the club. It being almost midsummer, the weather was fearfully hot, the thermometer registering over ninety after sundown, and as a notification had been issued with all invitations that black evening dress would be de rigueur we were debarred from wearing our cool, white mess jackets, and all arrived at the club almost melting inside thick broadcloths.
A very amusing little episode occurred at the reception.
Amongst the few ladies present were the wife and daughter of a Western official. They had evidently been "raised" away from the beaten tracks of Society and crowned heads had not been their daily companions. On this party being presented, the official and his wife preserved a diplomatic silence, but mademoiselle was not inclined to take things for granted, and seeing neither golden crown nor purple robe she evidently had misgivings. "Are you really the grand duke?" she inquired with striking accent; "are you really a prince?" The prince smilingly replied that such was the case, on which his fair interrogator exclaimed, "Oh, my! I am surprised," and then slowly retired from the front but with many backward glances of unconcealed disappointment.