The chaps on board our ship roused me up, or I think I should have turned quite dizzy, and rolled out of the boat; but now I jumped up, and setting an oar out of the stern, paddled a little further down, trying hard to make myself believe that the poor chap would come up again. But no, nothing more was seen of him but the bubbles on the top of the water, and that horrid red patch which came directly after. I paddled here and paddled there, trembling all over the whole time, but it was of no use, and at last when I was some distance off, and they began shouting for me, I put out both sculls, and rowed back, when mine wasn't the only pale, sickly looking face aboard, for there were the men talking in whispers, and the other chap that had been painting came off of his stage, while if the captain had persisted in trying to get that bit of painting finished, I believe the men would have all mutinied and left the ship. But he didn't, for though he couldn't have liked to see the ship half done, he said nothing about it, for there was no one to blame, since that poor lost man rigged up his own stage; and all the rest of the time as we stopped there in the Hooghly--Ugly as we calls it--the cap and the mate used to spend hours every day practising rifle shooting at the crocodiles, as must have been the end of my poor ship-mate. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE. A TALE OF THE GREAT PASSION. In the good old times--the very good old times, before trade, competition, and the spreading of knowledge, had upset and spoiled everything--sending people off in a mad hurry, here, there, and everywhere; by road, rail, and river; sea, sky, and last, but not least, blown through tubes to their journey's end; in the good old times, before people thought about Atlantic cables, or understood the meaning of the words _cheap_ and _clear_, chivalry used to flourish throughout our land: everybody who did not happen to have been born a vassal, serf, or villein, was a knight, and used to wear a first-class suit of mail-- rather uncomfortable suits, by the way, that took no end of emery powder and Bath brick to keep them clean; besides which they were terribly cold in winter, and horribly hot in summer, and had the unpleasant propensity of rubbing the skin off the corners of the person. But then it all appertained to knighthood, and it was very glorious to go pricking over the plain as a gallant upon a Barclay and Perkins style of horse, and shining like an ironmonger's shop on a market day; excepting such times as it rained, when the lordly gallant would most probably ride rusty while his waving plumes would hang streaky and straight. But those were the days. Every man was his own lawyer then, and if any base varlet offended his knighthood, he exclaimed--"Grammercy!"