Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
Indeed, the official version of the Bhils’ anti-vaccination stampede
said nothing about Lieutenant John Chinn, his godship. But Bukta knew,
and the corps knew, and every Bhil in the Satpura hills knew.
And now Bukta is zealous that John Chinn shall swiftly be wedded and
impart his powers to a son; for if the Chinn succession fails, and the
little Bhils are left to their own imaginings, there will be fresh
trouble in the Satpuras.
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
All supplies very bad and dear, and there are no facilities for even
the smallest repairs.—SAILING DIRECTIONS.
Her nationality was British, but you will not find her house-flag in
the list of our mercantile marine. She was a nine-hundred-ton, iron,
schooner-rigged, screw cargo-boat, differing externally in no way from
any other tramp of the sea. But it is with steamers as it is with men.
There are those who will for a consideration sail extremely close to
the wind; and, in the present state of a fallen world, such people and
such steamers have their use. From the hour that the _Aglaia_ first
entered the Clyde—new, shiny, and innocent, with a quart of cheap
champagne trickling down her cut-water—Fate and her owner, who was also
her captain, decreed that she should deal with embarrassed crowned
heads, fleeing Presidents, financiers of over-extended ability, women
to whom change of air was imperative, and the lesser law-breaking
Powers. Her career led her sometimes into the Admiralty Courts, where
the sworn statements of her skipper filled his brethren with envy. The
mariner cannot tell or act a lie in the face of the sea, or mislead a
tempest; but, as lawyers have discovered, he makes up for chances
withheld when he returns to shore, an affidavit in either hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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