The clocks of the city have struck two. Where can a man get food? Calcutta is not rich in respect of dainty accommodation. You can stay your stomach at Peliti’s or Bonsard’s, but their shops are not to be found in Hasting Street, or in the places where brokers fly to and fro in office-jauns, sweating and growing visibly _rich_. There must be some sort of entertainment where sailors congregate. “Honest Bombay Jack” supplies nothing but Burma cheroots and whisky in liqueur-glasses, but in Lal Bazar, not far from “The Sailors’ Coffee-rooms,” a board gives bold advertisement that “officers and seamen can find good quarters.” In evidence a row of neat officers and seamen are sitting on a bench by the “hotel” door smoking. There is an almost military likeness in their clothes. Perhaps “Honest Bombay Jack” only keeps one kind of felt hat and one brand of suit. When Jack of the mercantile marine is sober, he is very sober. When he is drunk he is--but ask the river police what a lean, mad Yankee can do with his nails and teeth. These gentlemen smoking on the bench are impassive almost as Red Indians. Their attitudes are unrestrained, and they do not wear braces. Nor, it would appear from the bill of fare, are they particular as to what they eat when they attend _tâble d’hôte_. The fare is substantial and the regulation peg--every house has its own depth of peg if you will refrain from stopping Ganymede--something to wonder at. Three fingers and a trifle over seems to be the use of the officers and seamen who are talking so quietly in the doorway. One says--he has evidently finished a long story--“and so he shipped for four pound ten with a first mate’s certificate and all, and that was in a German barque.” Another spits with conviction and says genially, without raising his voice: “That was a hell of a ship; who knows her?” No answer from the _panchayet_, but a Dane or a German wants to know whether the _Myra_ is “up” yet. A dry, red-haired man gives her exact position in the river--(How in the world can he know?)--and the probable hour of her arrival. The grave debate drifts into a discussion of a recent river accident, whereby a big steamer was damaged, and had to put back and discharge cargo. A burly gentleman who is taking a constitutional down Lal Bazar strolls up and says: “I tell you she fouled her own chain with her own forefoot. Hev you seen the plates?” “No.” “Then how the ---- can any ---- like you ---- say what it ---- well was?” He passes on, having delivered his highly flavored opinion without heat or passion. No one seems to resent the expletives.