Kitabı oku: «Aileen Aroon, A Memoir», sayfa 10
Chapter Seventeen.
The Days When we went Cruising
“O’er the glad waters of the dark-blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless and ourselves as free.”
Byron.
When cruising round Africa some years ago in a saucy wee gunboat, that shall be nameless, I was not only junior assistant surgeon, but I was likewise head surgeon, and chief of the whole medical department, and the whole of that department consisted of – never a soul but myself. As we had only ninety men all told, the Admiralty couldn’t afford a medical officer of higher standing than myself. I was ably assisted, however, in my arduous duties, which, by the way, occupied me very nearly half an hour every morning, after, not before, breakfast, by the loblolly boy “Sugar o’ Lead.” I don’t suppose he was baptised Sugar o’ Lead. I don’t think it is likely ever he was baptised at all. This young gentleman used to make my poultices, oatmeal they were made of, of course – I’m a Scot. But Sugar o’ Lead always put salt in them, ate one half and singed the rest. He had also to keep the dispensary clean, which he never did, but he used to rub the labels off the bottles, three at a time, and stick them on again, but usually on the wrong bottles. This kept me well up in my pharmacy; but when one day I gave a man a dose of powder of jalap, instead of Gregory, Sugar o’ Lead having changed the labels, the man said “it were a kinder rough on him.” Sugar o’ Lead thought he knew as much as I, perhaps; but Epsom salts and sulphate of zinc, although alike in colour, are very different in their effects when given internally. Sugar o’ Lead had a different opinion. Another of the duties which devolved upon Sugar o’ Lead was to clean up after the dogs. At this he was quite at home. At night he slept with the monkeys. Although the old cockatoo couldn’t stand him, Sugar o’ Lead and the monkeys were on very friendly terms; they lived together on that great and broad principle which binds the whole of this mighty world of ours together, the principle of “You favour me to-day and I’ll favour you to-morrow.” Sugar o’ Lead and the monkeys acted upon it in quite the literal sense.
At Symon’s Town, I was in the habit of constantly going on shore to prospect, gun in hand, over the mountains. Grand old hills these are, too, here and there covered with bush, with bold rocky bluffs abutting from their summits, their breasts bedecked with the most gorgeous geraniums, and those rare and beautiful heaths, which at home you can only find in hot-houses.
My almost constant attendant was a midshipman, a gallant young Scotchman, whom you may know by the name of Donald McPhee, though I knew him by another.
The very first day of our many excursions “in the pursuit of game,” we were wading through some scrub, about three or four miles from the shore, when suddenly my companion hailed me thus: “Look-out, doctor, there’s a panther yonder, and he’s nearest you.”
So he was; but then he wasn’t a panther at all, but a very large Pointer. I shouldn’t like to say that he was good enough for the show bench; he was, however, good enough for work. Poor Panther, doubtless he now rests with his fathers, rests under the shadow of some of the mighty mountains, the tartaned hills, over which he and I used to wander in pursuit of game. On his grave green lizards bask, and wild cinerarias bloom, while over it glides the shimmering snake; but the poor, faithful fellow blooms fresh in my memory still. I think I became his special favourite. Perhaps he was wise enough to admire the Highland dress I often wore. Perhaps he thought, as I did, that of all costumes, that was the best one for hill work. But the interest he took in everything I did was remarkable. He seemed rejoiced to see me when I landed, as betokened by the wagging tail, the lowered ears, slightly elevated chin, and sparkling eye – a canine smile.
“Doctor,” he seemed to say, “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming. But won’t we have a day of it, just?”
And away we would go, through the busy town and along the sea beach, where the lisping wavelets broke melodiously on sands of silvery sheen, where many a monster medusa lay stranded, looking like huge umbrellas made of jelly, and on, and on, until we came to a tiny stream, up whose rocky banks we would scramble, skirting the bush, and arriving at last at the great heath land. We followed no beaten track, we went here, there, and everywhere. The scenery was enchantingly wild and beautiful, and there was health and its concomitant happiness in every breeze. Sometimes we would sit dreamily on a rock top, Panther and I, for an hour at a time, vainly trying to drink in all the beauties of the scene. How bright was the blue of the distant sea! How fleecy the cloudlets! How romantic and lovely that far-off mountain range, its rugged outline softened by the purple mists of distance! These everlasting mountains we could people with people of our own imagination. I peopled them with foreign fairies. Panther, I think, peopled them with rock rabbits. Weary at last with gazing on the grandeur everywhere around us, we would rivet our attention for a spell upon things less romantic – bloater paste and sea biscuit. I shared my lunch with Panther.
Panther was most civil and obliging; he not only did duty as a pointer and guide, but he would retrieve as well, rock rabbits and rats, and such; and as he saw me bag them, he would look up in my face as much as to say —
“Now aren’t you pleased? Don’t you feel all over joyful? Wouldn’t you wag a tail if you had one? I should think so.”
Panther wouldn’t retrieve black snakes.
“No,” said Panther, “I draw the line at black snakes, doctor.”
I would fain have taken him to sea with me, as he belonged to no one; but Panther said, “No, I cannot go.”
“Then good-bye, dear friend,” I said.
“Farewell,” said Panther.
And so we parted.
He looked wistfully after the boat as it receded from the shore. I believe, poor fellow, he knew he would never see me again.
Conceive, if you can, of the lonesomeness, the dreariness of going to sea without a dog. But as Panther wouldn’t come with me, I had to sail without him. As the purple mountains grew less and less distinct, and shades of evening gathered around us, and twinkling lights from rocky points glinted over the waters, I could only lean over the taffrail and sing —
“Happy land! happy land!
Who would leave the glorious land?”
Who indeed? but sailor-men must. And now darkness covers the ocean, and hides the distant land, and next we were out in the midst of just as rough a sea as any one need care to be in. My only companion at this doleful period of my chequered career was a beautiful white pigeon. Here is how I came by him. Out at the Cape, in many a little rocky nook, and by many a rippling stream, grow sweet flowerets that come beautifully out in feather work. Feather-flower making then was one of my chief delights and amusements; the art had been taught me by a young friend of mine, whose father grew wine and kept hunters (jackal-hunting), and had kindly given me “the run” of the house. Before leaving, on the present cruise, I had secured some particularly beautiful specimens of flowers, too delicate to be imitated by anything, save the feathers of a pigeon; so I had bought a pure white one, which I had ordered to be killed and sent off.
“Steward,” I cried, as we were just under weigh, “did a boy bring a white pigeon for me?”
“He did, sir; and I put it in your cabin in its basket, which I had to give him sixpence extra for.”
“But why,” said I, “didn’t you tell him to put his nasty old basket on his back and take it off with him?”
“Because,” said the steward, “the bird would have flown away.”
“Flown away!” I cried. “Is the bird alive then?”
“To be sure, sir,” said the steward.
“To be sure, you blockhead,” said I; “how can I make feather-flowers from a live pigeon?”
The man was looking at me pityingly, I thought.
“Can’t you kill it, sir? Give him to me, sir; I’ll Wring his neck in a brace of shakes.”
“You’d never wring another neck, steward,” I said; “you’d lose the number of your mess as sure as a gun.”
When I opened the basket, knowing what rogues nigger-boys are, I fully expected to find a bird with neither grace nor beauty, and about the colour of an old white clucking hen. The boy had not deceived me, however. The pigeon was a beauty, and as white as a Spitzbergen snow-bird. Out he flew, and perched on a clothes-peg in my bulkhead, and said —
“Troubled wi’ you. Tr-rooubled with you.”
“You’ll need,” said I, “to put up with the trouble for six months to come, for we’re messmates. Steward,” I continued, “your fingers ain’t itching, are they, to kill that lovely creature?”
“Not they,” said the fellow; “I wouldn’t do it any harm for the world.”
“There’s my rum bottle,” I said; “it always stands in that corner, and it is always at your service while you tend upon the pigeon.”
The cruise before, we had a black cat on board, that the sailors looked upon as a bird of evil omen, for we got no luck, caught no slavers, ran three times on shore, and were once on fire. This cruise, we had lots of prize-money, and never a single mishap, and the men put it all down to “the surgeon’s pet,” as they called my bird. He was a pet, too. I made him a nest in a leathern hat-box, where he went when the weather was rough. He was tame, loving, and winning in all his ways, and always scrupulously white and clean.
The first place we ran into was Delagoa Bay. How sweetly pretty, how English-like, is the scenery all around! The gently undulating hills, clothed in clouds of green; the trees growing down almost to the water’s edge; the white houses nestling among the foliage, the fruit, the flowers, the blue marbled sky, and the wavelets breaking musically on the silvery sands – what a watering-place it would make, and what a pity we can’t import it body bulk! The houses are all built on the sand, so that the beach is the only carpet. In the Portuguese governor’s house, where we spent such a jolly evening, it was just the same; the chair-legs sank in the soft white sand, the table was off the plane, and the piano all awry; and a dog belonging to one of the officers, a monster boarhound, with eyes like needles, and tusks that would have made umbrella handles, scraped a hole at one end of the room, and nearly buried himself. That dog, his owner told me, would kill a jackal with one blow of his paw; but he likewise caught mice like winking, and killed a cockroach wherever he saw one. His owner wrote this down for me, and I afterwards translated it.
Next morning, at eleven, the governor and his officers came off, arrayed in scarlet, blue, and burnished gold, cocked-hats and swords, all so gay, and we had tiffin in the captain’s cabin; Carlo, the dog, came too, of course, and seated himself thoughtfully at one end, abaft the mess table. There we were, then, just six of us – the captain, a fiery looking, wee, red man, but not half a bad fellow; the governor, bald in pate, round-faced, jolly, but incapable of getting very close to the table because of the rotundity of his body; his aide-de-camp, a little thin man, as bright and as merry as moonshine; his lieutenant, a jolly old fellow, with eyes like an Ulmer hound, and nose like a kidney potato; myself, and Carlo.
Our conversation during tiffin was probably not very edifying, but it was very spirited. You see, our captain couldn’t speak a word of Portuguese, and the poor Portuguese hadn’t a word of English. I myself possessed a smattering of Spanish, and a little French, and I soon discovered that by mixing the two together, throwing in an occasional English word and a sprinkling of Latin, I could manufacture very decent Portuguese. At least, the foreigners themselves seemed to understand me, or pretended to for politeness sake. To be sure they didn’t always give me the answer I expected, but that was all the funnier, and kept the laugh up. I really believe each one of us knew exactly what he himself meant, but I’m sure couldn’t for the life of him have told what his neighbour was driving at. And so we got a little mixed somehow, but everybody knew the road to his mouth, and that was something. We got into an argument upon a very interesting topic indeed, and kept it up for nearly an hour, and were getting quite excited over it, when somehow or other it came out, that the Portuguese had all the while been argle-bargling about the rights of the Pope, while we Englishmen had been deep in the mystery of the prices of yams and sucking pig, in the different villages of the coast. Then we all laughed and shook hands, and shrugged our shoulders, and turned up our palms, and laughed again.
Presently I observed the captain trying to draw my attention unobserved: he was squinting down towards the cruet stand, and I soon perceived the cause. An immense cockroach had got into a bottle of cayenne, and feeling uncomfortably warm, was standing on his hind-legs and frantically waving his long feelers as a signal of distress. I was just wondering how I could get the bottle away without letting the governor see me, when some one else spotted that unhappy cockroach, and that was Carlo.
Now Carlo was a dog who acted on the spur of the moment, so as soon as he saw the beast in the bottle he flew straight at it. That spring would have taken him over a six-barred gate. And, woe is me for the result! Down rolled the table, crockery and all; down rolled the governor, with his bald pate and rotundity of body; down went the merry little thin man; over rolled the fellow with the nose like a kidney potato. The captain fell, and I fell, and there was an end to the whole feast.
When we all got up, Carlo was intent upon his cockroach, and looking as unconcerned as if nothing out of the common had occurred.
Chapter Eighteen.
Blue-Jackets’ Pets
“Hard is the heart that loveth nought.”
Shelley.
“All love is sweet,
Given or returned.
Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.”
Idem.
Blue-jackets, as Her Majesty’s sailors are sometimes styled, are passionately fond of pets. They must have something to love, if it be but a woolly-headed nigger-boy or a cockroach in a ’baccy-box. Little nigger-boys, indeed, may often be found on board a man-o’-war, the reigning pets. Young niggers are very precocious. You can teach them all they will ever learn in the short space of six months. Of this kind was one I remember, little Freezing-powders, as black as midnight, and shining all over like a billiard ball, with his round curly head and pleasant dimply face. Freezing-powders soon became a general favourite both fore and aft. His master, our marine officer, picked him up somewhere on the West coast; and although only nine years of age, before he was four months in the ship, he could speak good English, was a perfect little gymnast, and knew as many tricks and capers as the cook and the monkey. Snowball was another I knew; but Snowball grew bad at an early age, lost caste, became dissipated, and a gambler, and finally fled to his native jungle.
Jock of ours was a seal of tender years, who for many months retained the affection of all hands, until washed overboard in a gale of wind. This creature’s time on board was fully occupied in a daily round of duty, pleasure, and labour. His duty consisted in eating seven meals a day, and bathing in a tub after each; his pleasure, to lie on his side on the quarter-deck and be scratched and petted; while his labour consisted of earnestly endeavouring to enlarge a large scupper-hole sufficiently to permit his escape to his native ocean. How indefatigably he used to work day by day, and hour after hour, scraping on the iron first with one flipper, then with another, then poking his nose in to measure the result with his whiskered face! He kept the hole bright and clear, but did not sensibly enlarge it, at least to human ken. Jock’s successor on that ship was a youthful bear of Arctic nativity. He wasn’t a nice pet. He took all you gave him, and wanted to eat your hand as well, but he never said “Thank you,” and permitted no familiarity. When he took his walks abroad, which he did every morning, although he never went out of his road for a row, he walked straight ahead with his nose downwards growling, and gnawed and tore everything that touched him – not at all a pet worth being troubled with.
Did the reader ever hear of the sailor who tamed a cockroach? Well, this man I was “shipmates” with. He built a little cage, with a little kennel in the corner of it, expressly for his unsavoury pet, and he called the creature “Idzky” – “which he named himself, sir,” he explained to me. Idzky was a giant of his race. His length was fully four inches, his breadth one inch, while each of his waving feelers measured six. This monster knew his name and his master’s voice, hurrying out from his kennel when called upon, and emitting the strange sound which gained for him the cognomen Idzky. The boatswain, his master, was as proud of him as he might have been of a prize pug, and never tired of exhibiting his eccentricities.
I met the boatswain the other day at the Cape, and inquired for his pet.
“Oh, sir,” he said, with genuine feeling, “he’s gone, sir. Shortly after you left the ship, poor Idzky took to taking rather much liquor, and that don’t do for any of us, you know, sir; I think it was that, for I never had the heart to pat him on allowance; and he went raving mad, had regular fits of delirium, and did nothing at all but run round his cage and bark, and wouldn’t look at anything in the way of food. Well, one day I was coming off the forenoon watch, when, what should I see but a double line of them ‘P’ ants working in and out of the little place: twenty or so were carrying a wing, and a dozen a leg, and half a score running off with a feeler, just like men carrying a stowed mainsail; and that, says I, is poor Idzky’s funeral; and so it was, and I didn’t disturb them. Poor Idzky!”
Peter was a pet mongoose of mine, a kindly, cosy little fellow, who slept around my neck at night, and kept me clear of cockroaches, as well as my implacable enemies, the rats. I was good to Peter, and fed him well, and used to take him on shore at the Cape, among the snakes. The snakes were for Peter to fight; and the way my wary wee friend dodged and closed with, and finally throttled and killed a cobra was a caution to that subtlest of all the beasts of the field. The presiding Malay used to clap his brown hands with joy as he exclaimed – “Ah! sauvé good mongoose, sar, proper mongoose to kill de snake.”
“You don’t object, do you,” I modestly asked my captain one day, while strolling on the quarter-deck after tiffin – “you don’t object, I hope, to the somewhat curious pets I at times bring on board?”
“Object?” he replied. “Well, no; not as a rule. Of course you know I don’t like your snakes to get gliding all over the ship, as they were the other day. But, doctor, what’s the good of my objecting? If any one were to let that awful beast in the box yonder loose – ”
“Don’t think of it, captain,” I interrupted; “he’d be the death of somebody, to a dead certainty.”
“No; I’m not such a fool,” he continued. “But if I shot him, why, in a few days you’d be billeting a boar-constrictor or an alligator on me, and telling me it was for the good of science and the service.”
The awful beast in the box was the most splendid and graceful specimen of the monitor lizard I have ever seen. Fully five feet long from tip to tail, he swelled and tapered in the most perfect lines of beauty. Smooth, though scaly, and inky black, tartaned all over with transverse rows of bright yellow spots, with eyes that shone like wildfire, and teeth like quartz, with his forked tongue continually flashing out from his bright-red mouth, he had a wild, weird loveliness that was most uncanny. Mephistopheles, as the captain not inaptly called him, knew me, however, and took his cockroaches from my hand, although perfectly frantic when any one else went near him. If a piece of wood, however hard, were dropped into his cage, it was instantly torn in pieces; and if he seized the end of a rope, he might quit partnership with his head or teeth, but never with the rope.
One day, greatly to my horror, the steward entered the wardroom, pale with fear, and reported: “Mephistopheles escaped, sir, and yaffling (rending) the men.” I rushed on deck. The animal had indeed escaped. He had torn his cage into splinters, and declared war against all hands. Making for the fore hatchway, he had seized a man by the jacket skirts, going down the ladder. The man got out of the garment without delay, and fled faster than any British sailor ought to have done. On the lower deck he chased the cook from the coppers, and the carpenter from his bench. A circle of Kroomen were sitting mending a foresail; Mephistopheles suddenly appeared in their midst. The niggers unanimously threw up their toes, individually turned somersaults backwards, and sought the four winds of heaven. These routed, my pet turned his attention to Peepie. Peepie was a little Arab slave-lass. She was squatting by a calabash, singing low to herself, and eating rice. He seized her cummerbund, or waist garment. But Peepie wriggled clear – natural – and ran on deck, the innocent, like the “funny little maiden” in Hans Breitmann. On the cummerbund Mephistopheles spent the remainder of his fury, and the rest of his life; for not knowing what might happen next, I sent for a fowling-piece, and the plucky fellow succumbed to the force of circumstances and a pipeful of buck-shot. I have him yonder on the sideboard, in body and in spirit (gin), bottle-mates with a sandsnake, three centipedes, and a tarantula.
With monkeys, baboons, apes, and all of that ilk, navy ships, when homeward bound, are ofttimes crowded. Of our little crew of seventy, I think nearly every man had one, and some two, such pets, although fully one-half died of chest-disease as soon as the ship came into colder latitudes. These monkeys made the little craft very lively indeed, and were a never-ending source of amusement and merriment to all hands. I don’t like monkeys, however. They “are so near, and yet so far,” as respects humanity. I went shooting them once – a cruel sport, and more cowardly even than elephant-hunting in Ceylon – and when I broke the wrist of one, instead of hobbling off, as it ought to have done, it came howling piteously towards me, shaking and showing me the bleeding limb. The little wretch preached me a sermon anent cruelty to animals that I shall not forget till the day I die.
We had a sweet-faced, delicate, wee marmoset, not taller, when on end, than a quart bottle – Bobie the sailors called him; and we had also a larger ape, Hunks by name, of what our Scotch engineer called the “ill-gettit breed”; and that was a mild way of putting it. This brute was never out of mischief. He stole the men’s tobacco, smashed their pipes, spilled their soup, and ran aloft with their caps, which he minutely inspected and threw overboard afterwards. He was always on the black list; in fact, when rubbing his back after one thrashing, he was wondering all the time what mischief he could do next. Bobie was arrayed in a neatly fitting sailor-costume, cap and all complete; and so attired, of course could not escape the persecutions of the ape. Hunks, after contenting himself with cockroaches, would fill his mouth; then holding out his hand with one to Bobie, “Hae, hae, hae,” he would cry, then seize the little innocent, and escape into the rigging with him. Taking his seat in the maintop, Hunks first and foremost emptied his mouth, cramming the contents down his captive’s throat. He next got out on to the stays for exercise, and used Bobie as a species of dumb-bell, swinging him by the tail, hanging him by a foot, by an ear, by the nose, etc, and threatening to throw him overboard if any sailor attempted a rescue. Last of all, he threw him at the nearest sailor.
On board the Orestes was a large ape as big as a man. He was a most unhappy ape. There wasn’t a bit of humour in his whole corporation. “He had a silent sorrow” somewhere, “a grief he’d ne’er impart.” Whenever you spoke to him, he seized and wrung your hand in the most pathetic manner, and drew you towards him. His other arm was thrown across his chest, while he shook his head, and gazed in your face with such a woe-begone countenance, that the very smile froze on your lips; and as you couldn’t laugh out of politeness, you felt very awkward. For anything I know, this melancholy ape may be still alive.
Deer are common pets in some ships. We had a fine large buck in the old Semiramie. A romping, rollicking rascal, in truth a very satyr, who never wanted a quid of tobacco in his mouth, nor refused rum and milk. Whenever the steward came up to announce dinner, he bolted below at once; and we were generally down just in time to find him dancing among the dishes, after eating all the potatoes.
I once went into my cabin and found two Liliputian deer in my bed. It was our engineer who had placed them there. We were lying off Lamoo, and he had brought them from shore.
“Ye’ll just be a faither to the lammies, doctor,” he said, “for I’m no on vera guid terms wi’ the skipper.”
They were exactly the size of an Italian greyhound, perfectly formed, and exceedingly graceful. They were too tender, poor things, for life on shipboard, and did not live long.
In the stormy latitudes of the Cape, the sailors used to amuse themselves by catching Cape pigeons, thus: a little bit of wood floated astern attached by a string, a few pieces of fat thrown into the water, and the birds, flying tack and half-tack towards them, came athwart the line, by a dexterous movement of which they entangled their wings, and landed them on board. They caught albatrosses in the same fashion, and nothing untoward occurred.
I had for many months a gentle, loving pet in the shape of a snow-white dove. I had bought him that I might make feather-flowers from his plumage; but the boy brought him off alive, and I never had the heart to kill him. So he lived in a leathern hat-box, and daily took his perch on my shoulder at meal-times (see page 178).
It was my lot once upon a time to be down with fever in India. The room in which I lay was the upper flat of an antiquated building, in a rather lonely part of the suburbs of a town. It had three windows, close to which grew a large banyan-tree, beneath the shade of whose branches the crew of a line-of-battle ship might have hung their hammocks with comfort. The tree was inhabited by a colony of crows; we stood – the crows and I – in the relation of over-the-way to each other. Now, of all birds that fly, the Indian crow most bear the palm for audacity. Living by his wits, he is ever on the best of terms with himself, and his impudence leads him to dare anything. Whenever, by any chance, Pandoo, my attendant, left the room, these black gentry paid me a visit. Hopping in by the score, and regarding me no more than the bed-post, they commenced a minute inspection of everything in the room, trying to destroy everything that could not be eaten or carried away. They rent the towels, drilled holes in my uniform, stole the buttons from my coat, and smashed my bottles. One used to sit on a screen close by my bed every day, and scan my face with his evil eye, saying as plainly as could be – “You’re getting thinner and beautifully less; in a day or two, you won’t be able to lift a hand; then I’ll have the pleasure of picking out your two eyes.”
Amid such doings, my servant would generally come to my relief, perhaps to find such a scene as this: Two or three pairs of hostile crows with their feathers standing up around their necks, engaged in deadly combat on the floor over a silver spoon or a tooth-brush; half a dozen perched upon every available chair; an unfortunate lizard with a crow at each end of it, getting whirled wildly round the room, each crow thinking he had the best right to it; crows everywhere, hopping about on the table, and drinking from the bath; crows perched on the window-sill, and more crows about to come, and each crow doing all in his power to make the greatest possible noise. The faithful Pandoo would take all this in at a glance; then would ensue a helter-skelter retreat, and the windows be darkened by the black wings of the flying crows, then silence for a moment, only broken by some apologetic remark from Pandoo.
When at length happy days of convalescence came round, and I was able to get up and even eat my meals at table, I found my friends the crows a little more civil and respectful. The thought occurred to me to make friends with them; I consequently began a regular system of feeding them after every meal-time. One old crow I caught, and chained to a chair with a fiddle-string. He was a funny old fellow, with one club-foot. He never refused his food from the very day of his captivity, and I soon taught him a few tricks. One was to lie on his back when so placed for any length of time till set on his legs again. This was called turning the turtle. But one day this bird of freedom hopped away, fiddle-string and all, and a whole fortnight elapsed before I saw him again. I was just beginning to put faith in a belief common in India – namely, that a crow or any other bird, that has been for any time living with human beings, is put to instant death the moment he returns to the bosom of his family; when one day, while engaged breakfasting some forty crows, my club-footed pet reappeared, and actually picked the bit from my hand, and ever after, until I left, he came regularly thrice a day to be fed. The other crows came with surprising exactness at meal-times; first one would alight on the shutter outside the window, and peep in, as if to ascertain how nearly done I happened to be, then fly away for five or ten minutes, when he would return, and have another keek. As soon, however, as I approached the window, and raised my arm, I was saluted with a chorus of cawing from the banyan-tree; then down they swooped in dozens; and it was no very easy task to fill so many mouths, although the loaves were Government ones.
