The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Second: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Siam and Java; With Descriptions of Cochin-China, Cambodia, Sumatra and the Malay ArchipelagoKnox, Thomas Wallace
General
The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Second: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Siam and Java; With Descriptions of Cochin-China, Cambodia, Sumatra and the Malay Archipelago
Knox, Thomas Wallace
East Indies -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature; Java (Indonesia) -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature; Thailand -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
The voyage from Bangkok to Singapore was without any features of special
interest. The Gulf of Siam presented its accustomed calmness, and at
times the air was so still that there was not wind enough for proper
ventilation of the ship. Our friends slept on deck, as the cabin was
altogether too hot for comfort; they only went below to dress and take
their meals and baths, and to escape from the showers that were of daily
occurrence. In the daytime, when the heavy sprinklings came on, the boys
indulged in baths of the kind they enjoyed on the _Danube_, and they
were generally pleased at the announcement of an approaching shower. But
at night, when they were comfortably sleeping, they did not relish a
rude awakening, accompanied with the suggestion that they had better go
below till the rain was over. The change from the cool deck to the
stifling cabin was the reverse of enjoyable; Fred remarked that the only
good thing about it was that it made them appreciate the deck all the
more when the rain was over, and they could come again to the open air.
About thirty miles from Singapore they saw an overturned boat, and as
they neared it two natives were perceived clinging to the wreck. A boat
was lowered and sent to rescue them, and in a short time the poor
fellows were safe on the steamer's deck. They said their craft was upset
by a squall on the previous evening, and for twenty hours they had been
holding on, with nothing to eat or drink, under the broiling heat of a
tropical sun. They were nearly exhausted with hunger and thirst, and
would have fallen off and died in a few hours if they had not been
rescued. Frank was the first to discover the overturned boat, and was
naturally proud of having been in some way the means of saving these
unhappy Malays from death. He wanted to talk with the men, and hear
their story; but as their knowledge of English was no better than his of
Malay, he was compelled to abandon the idea.
The occurrence called to the Doctor's recollection an incident of his
first experience of the sea, when he was spending the summer at a small
seaport town. He was fond of fishing, and hardly a day passed that he
did not go out on the Atlantic in pursuit of his favorite sport.
"One afternoon," said he, "there were a dozen or more boats outside,
when a sudden squall came up that caused us to seek the harbor as fast
as possible. Every one steered for home, and most of us reached the
entrance of the port before the fury of the squall broke upon us. The
rain was so thick that we could not see a quarter of a mile off; we
could not tell whether any of the boats were capsized or not; and if it
had not been that a great rock just by the entrance loomed up, and made
a fine landmark, we could not have found our way inside. One after
another the boats came in, with the exception of one that had ventured
farther than the rest, and was a good distance off the coast when the
squall came up.
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