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The bay lay like a great shining shield before him, blazing with millions of mirrors that danced on the shoulders of the sleek and lazy swells, lifting in the sun-dazzle from the entrance, some twenty-five miles away. Trask looked at his watch. It was well after one, the hour when men take shelter from the sun in cafés to talk over prolonged tiffins and wait for the heat of mid-day to wane.
Morning, noon, and night have been full of sightseeing, of visiting mission churches and schools, of "chotas," or little breakfasts, of "tiffins" or substantial lunches, or afternoon-teas and dinners at the close of the day. The social and kindly spirit of it all has turned what otherwise would have been wearisome into a succession of pleasant experiences.
There were two decks, one beneath the other, both with occupants; there were cooks at the galley fire, whose complexion no soot could make blacker, and servants in white dresses and embroidered shawls, running backwards and forwards with their masters' tiffins, as luncheons are called in India.
For indeed it was no other than our stout friend who was also a passenger on board the Ramchunder. He had passed ten years in Bengal. Constant dinners, tiffins, pale ale and claret, the prodigious labour of cutcherry, and the refreshment of brandy-pawnee which he was forced to take there, had their effect upon Waterloo Sedley.
"Yes, there is shooting, but I don't think that is much in his line. Tiffins and calls, and society generally occupy most of his time, I fancy, and I think he is fonder of billiards and cards than is good for him or others.
As Englishmen in such positions generally do, they kept themselves aloof and scowled, frowned at the children who whined in the nearest neighbourhood to them, and listened in disgust to the continuous chatter about punkahs, tiffins, and bungalows. But close to them, at the end of the long table, at the common dinner, sat two ladies, on whom it was almost impossible for them to frown.
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