African and European Addresses | Page 9

into a deep, restful slumber. And
yet it is a slumber wherein certain small pleasant things persist from the
world outside. You remain dimly conscious of the rhythmic throbbing
of the engines, of the beat of soft, warm air on your cheek.
At three o'clock or thereabout you rise as gently back to life, and sit
erect in your chair without a stretch or a yawn in your whole anatomy.
Then is the one time of day for a display of energy--if you have any to
display. Ship games, walks--fairly brisk--explorations to the forecastle,
a watch for flying fish or Arab dhows, anything until tea-time. Then the

glowing sunset; the opalescent sea, and the soft afterglow of the
sky--and the bugle summoning you to dress. That is a mean job.
Nothing could possibly swelter worse than the tiny cabin. The electric
fan is an aggravation. You reappear in your fresh "whites" somewhat
warm and flustered in both mind and body. A turn around the deck
cools you off; and dinner restores your equanimity--dinner with the soft,
warm tropic air breathing through all the wide-open ports; the electric
fans drumming busily; the men all in clean white; the ladies, the very
few precious ladies, in soft, low gowns. After dinner the deck, as near
cool as it will be, and heads bare to the breeze of our progress, and
glowing cigars. At ten or eleven o'clock the groups begin to break up,
the canvas chairs to empty. Soon reappears a pyjamaed figure followed
by a steward carrying a mattress. This is spread, under its owner's
direction, in a dark corner forward. With a sigh you in your turn plunge
down into the sweltering inferno of your cabin, only to reappear
likewise with a steward and a mattress. The latter, if you are wise, you
spread where the wind of the ship's going will be full upon you. It is a
strong wind and blows upon you heavily, so that the sleeves and legs of
your pyjamas flop, but it is a soft, warm wind, and beats you as with
muffled fingers. In no temperate clime can you ever enjoy this peculiar
effect of a strong breeze on your naked skin without even the faintest
surface chilly sensation. So habituated has one become to feeling cooler
in a draught that the absence of chill lends the night an
unaccustomedness, the more weird in that it is unanalyzed, so that one
feels definitely that one is in a strange, far country. This is intensified
by the fact that in these latitudes the moon, the great, glorious, calm
tropical moon, is directly overhead--follows the centre line of the
zenith--instead of being, as with us in our temperate zone, always more
or less declined to the horizon. This, too, lends the night an exotic
quality, the more effective in that at first the reason for it is not
apprehended.
A night in the tropics is always more or less broken. One awakens, and
sleeps again. Motionless white-clad figures, cigarettes glowing, are
lounging against the rail looking out over a molten sea. The moonlight
lies in patterns across the deck, shivering slightly under the throb of the
engines, or occasionally swaying slowly forward or slowly back as the

ship's course changes, but otherwise motionless, for here the sea is
always calm. You raise your head, look about, sprawl in a new position
on your mattress, fall asleep. On one of these occasions you find
unexpectedly that the velvet-gray night has become steel-gray dawn,
and that the kindly old quartermaster is bending over you. Sleepily,
very sleepily, you stagger to your feet and collapse into the nearest
chair. Then to the swish of water, as the sailors sluice the decks all
around and under you, you fall into a really deep sleep.
At six o'clock this is broken by chota-hazri, another tropical institution,
consisting merely of clear tea and biscuits. I never could get to care for
it, but nowhere in the tropics could I head it off. No matter how tired I
was or how dead sleepy, I had to receive that confounded chota-hazri.
Throwing things at the native who brought it did no good at all. He
merely dodged. Admonition did no good, nor prohibition in strong
terms. I was but one white man of the whole white race; and I had no
right to possess idiosyncrasies running counter to dastur, the custom.
However, as the early hours are profitable hours in the tropics, it did
not drive me to homicide.
The ship's company now developed. Our two prize members,
fortunately for us, sat at our table. The first was the Swedish professor
aforementioned. He was large, benign, paternal, broad in mind,
thoroughly human and beloved, and yet profoundly erudite. He was our
iconoclast in the way