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The old, swinging punkah, with which most of us are so familiar, held on its silent way in spite of occasional attempts from time to time to oust it from its well and firmly established position. The different inventions that made their appearance always lacked the one essential point of giving expression to the kick or jerk of the hand-pulled punkah, and consequently they proved unsuccessful.
Sherwood had only just time to lead him into the bungalow before he fainted away, and the hall being the least heated place, a couch was made ready for him there, where for some days he lay very ill; and the thermometer was never below 96 degrees, though the punkah never ceased.
And Colonel Kirby hoped it was the punkah, and not funk, that made the sweat stream down his neck until his collar was a mere uncomfortable mess. "For more than a year there has been much talk in India. The winds have brought it all to me. There was talk and the government has known it, for I am one of those who told the government of a ripe time for a blow for independence.
It was impossible to sit still in the dark, empty, echoing house and watch the punkah beat the dead air. So, at ten o'clock of the night, I set my walking-stick on end in the middle of the garden, and waited to see how it would fall. It pointed directly down the moonlit road that leads to the City of Dreadful Night. The sound of its fall disturbed a hare.
So Tess went to Yasmini's room, and sat beneath the punkah crooning Moody and Sankey hymns and darky lullabies, until Yasmini dropped into the land of dreams.
A great white punkah was lazily vibrating over the heavy rosewood table. Unko Sulliman, the Prince Governor of Maur, came forward and gave me his hand. "It will be a hard climb and a hard day's work?" he said, pleasantly, in good English. "I have done worse," I answered. "But not under a Malayan sky. However, it is your wish, and his Highness the Sultan has granted it.
The heat of the night is ominously suggestive of shed's popularly conceived temperature, and, in the absence of the customary punkah and nodding, see-sawing wallah, a villager is employed to sit beside my charpoy and agitate the air immediately about my head with a big palm-leaf fan.
A Javanese boy bowed them into a room where nothing was in evidence save a punkah, a giant porcelain stove, a huge desk and chair, and a monster man. Cornelius was fleshy to enormity. He was very like a mammoth but benevolent spider. Wealthy as he was fat, while many men had cursed him, many more had blessed him.
Yesterday evening we had service in the hall, the whole white population being "rounded up" for it; seven men and two women, three of whom are Roman Catholics. The congregation sat under one punkah and the Resident under another, both being worked by bigoted Mohammedans! Everything was "ship-shape," as becomes Mr.
A punkah that may once have been white waggled officiously overhead. But for all that the flies were lords of the meal; and enjoyed it far better than those who paid for it. "Thank God for my good dinner!" Desmond muttered with a wry face as he put down his money. "You must supplement it out of Lenox's rations, old lady. Hukm hai . . . sumja?" She laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
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