I find it a bit dull here. There is positively nothing to do in the evening but to sit on the veranda and admire the beautiful tropical night, which falls suddenly without twilight. Everything is queer in these equatorial regions. The moon is right over our heads, the sickle pointing upwards, and the shade caused by the planet spreads right under our feet.
October 22nd.—We took the train back to Batavia this morning, and put up this time at the Hôtel Niderlander, a cool white building with deep pillared verandas, carpeted with cocoa-nut mattings and strewn with tables and easy cane chairs. We sat on the veranda after dinner, listening to the band playing in Waterloo-Square, just opposite. Strolling merchants bothered us, offering their wares; we sent them off by saying “piggie,” meaning in Javanese “get off with you,” at which they beat a hasty retreat.
October 24th.—We are leaving Java to-day without regret. The hideous climate is depressing, the hot, steamy atmosphere awfully enervating. The head-manager came to knock at our door at four o’clock in the morning to inform us that it was time to go to the railway station. Mr. Bakounine and the agent of the Méssageries Maritimes rode down with us to the port, a veritable inferno, full of mosquitoes and pestered by malarial fever, in which deadly miasmas seem to evaporate from the unwholesome soil.
The Godavéri set sail at ten o’clock in the morning. Adieu, Java!
We are about twenty passengers on board. There is a young half-caste among them, the proprietor of a rich tea-estate, sent back for his health to Europe.
CHAPTER LXXXIII
SINGAPORE
October 25th.—At dawn we approached Singapore. We put up at the Hôtel d’Europe. After tiffin, we visited the cisterns which supply the inhabitants with potable water. There are no wells in Singapore, the natives must be satisfied with the water produced by the rains, which is gathered and kept in large ponds. On our way we met natives driving in chariots drawn by small bisons, who have not the lazy drag of their western brethren, but trot briskly as horses. The aborigines, clad with a band of stuff round their thighs, held burning torches in their hands, and beat the tom-tom with all their might to chase away the spirits of darkness, because evil spirits, according to their belief, shun daylight.
October 26th.—We spent the whole afternoon on the veranda bargaining with natives who carried trays of precious stones. One has to be very careful with these vendors, who frequently sell worthless stones for precious ones. Sergy bought me a beautiful moonstone necklace.
Before dinner, Sergy called upon the Governor-General of Singapore, who had governed the Fiji Islands for a long time.