It was monotonous but not unpleasant, that voyage out. We had the customary sports on crossing the line; we fished and caught very little, though the men captured the inevitable shark with the lump of salt pork; and used the grains, as they called the three-pronged fork, to harpoon dolphins. I had my first sight of flying fish, and made friends with the officers. Then there was music and dancing on the hot moonlit nights; deck quoits under the awning by day; a good deal more sleep than we took at home; and at last we reached Ceylon and touched at Colombo, where everything struck me as being wonderfully unlike what I had pictured in my own mind. "Well," said Captain Brace one evening, after we had had a run together on the shore, "what do you think of the Cingalese?" "That they look so effeminate," I said. "Exactly," he replied, nodding his head as I went on. "They are not bad looking; but it looks so absurd to see those elderly men dressed in muslins, with drawers and clothes that put me in mind of little girls about to go to a children's party or a dance." He looked amused, and I continued-- "And then the ordinary people, with their oily black hair all done up in a knot behind and held by a comb. It does look so womanish." "Yes; to us," said Captain Brace. "But their clothes are comfortable for the hot climate, and that is more than you will be able to say of ours when you get out in the plains in full uniform some day." "And it will not be long first now," I thought; and I did not look forward to my first appearance in full uniform under a hot sun with any degree of dread. Then we were once more at sea, sailing on and on through fine weather and foul, till I learned that we were sailing up through the Sunderbunds, and on up the Hooghly, passing outward-bound vessels with great towering East Indiamen among them. Then the shore began to draw in, and I learned from one that there was good tiger-shooting in that district, beyond where I could see a fringe of palms, and from another that it would not be safe to bathe where we were. "On account of sharks," I said, with an assumption of knowledge. "No, sir; muggers." And when I stared inquiringly, he added-- "Crocodiles; and higher up the river, sir, great turtles, which will snap a man, or a horse, or a dood to pieces in no time." It was the same evening that I was standing looking at the low, far-off shore, with Captain Brace, and I said quietly-- "I say, that little stout Mr Binns--" "Mr Commissioner Binns," said the Captain. "Give him his full title. What about him?" "Was he telling me travellers' tales about the crocodiles--muggers, as he called them--and the risk of bathing?" "Oh no; they swarm in this muddy river. I wonder they have let that come down." He pointed to something floating at a short distance from the ship, and I looked at it with curiosity. "Some dead animal?" I said.