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Updated: June 3, 2025
Now that the danger was all over, for of course the fire-engine and all those people would save the little brown house, Polly was the last person whom Joel really wanted to see. And he busied himself in helping to haul up the water-buckets, that now came up pretty lively as the boys filled them and handed them to the firemen. "You'd better get down," said more than one fireman.
"Three mortal months of water, mud, and Mackintoshes, not to mention the agreeable sensation of being glued to a wet saddle with your feet in water-buckets, and mountain torrents running up and down the inside of your sleeves, in defiance of the laws of gravitation; such is life in the monsoon. Pah!"
The water-jugs in Bachelors' Hall and the water-buckets were frozen by it, nearly to the bottom; though there was a good stove there, and the Hall was not usually a cold place by any means. The breath of the inhabitants was congealed by it on the window-panes, until they had become coated with ice an inch thick.
In the post records, sandwiched between such mundane things as requisitions for water-buckets or commissary supplies, one would read of atrocious murders committed by the Moros; piratical expeditions headed off, and their instigators punished; or attempted slave-raids against some neighbouring island.
To Lieutenant Jovannic, the falsity and unreality of it all were as strident as a brass band; yet in the long vista of the village street, brimful of sun and silence, the few people who moved upon their business went indifferently as shadows upon a wall. An old man trudged in the wake of a laden donkey; a girl bore water-buckets slung from a yoke; a child was sweeping up dung. None turned a head.
It is probably the Livistona rotundifolia of botanists, and is the most complete and beautiful fan-leaf I have ever seen, serving admirably for folding into water-buckets and impromptu baskets, as well as for thatching and other purposes.
The smoke was first seen rising suddenly from the hold. Instantly the alarm was spread. "Firemen to your posts!" shouted the captain. "Man the water-buckets; steady, men, no hurry. Keep order." "Ay, ay, sir," was the short, prompt response, and the most perfect order was kept. Every command was obeyed instantly, with a degree of vigour that is seldom exhibited save in cases of life and death.
Meanwhile, at work under the windswept trees of the highway, were strange, dark men from the uttermost parts of the earth, physiognomies as old as the tombs of Pharaoh. It was, indeed, not so much the graven red profiles of priests and soldiers that came tome at sight of these Egyptians, but the singing fellaheen of the water-buckets of the Nile.
In this there yet remained a piece of an old tombstone, of the age of the convent, on which you perceived the trace of a female form; and near to this the figure of a skeleton, round which was twined a snake. Otto stood sunk in contemplation, when an old man, with two water-buckets suspended from a yoke on his shoulders, approached a near well.
We had some bottles of champagne cooling in canvas water-buckets, and we had an excellent lunch. The girls still remained with us, and if we liked we might have stayed to "sit with these dark Orianas in groves by the murmuring sea."
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