foremast man, who was always so drunk ashore he used to remember nothing in India but '_scoffing_[23] one juicy benanny,' as he called it; 'but hows'ever, Jack,' he'd say, ''twas blessed good, ye know, and I'm on the look-out for a berth again, jist for to go and have another.' One of us looked to the other, and Miss Hyde laughed and coloured a bit when I offered her a second, while her father said, full five minutes after, ''Gad, Violet, it almost made me think I saw Garden Reach in the Hooghly, and the Baboo's Ghaut!' [23] _Anglicé_, eating. "This whole time we couldn't have got more than three-quarters of a mile from where the ship lay, when, all at once, the close growth on our left hand began to break into low bush, and at length a spot offered where we might get ashore tolerably, with two or three big red ant-hills heaped up out of the close prickly-pear plant, and the black ants streaming over the bank, as well as up the trunk of a large tree. The monkeys were keeping up a chattering stir everywhere about; and two or three bright green little lizards, changing into purple and back again, as they lay gleaming in the sun on the sides of the ant-heaps, darted their long tongues out like silver bodkins at the ants coming past. In we shoved with a cheer, and had scarce moored to the tree ere the ladies were being handed out and tripping over the ground-leaves to the ankles, starting on again at every rustle and prick, for fear of snakes; till the bowman in charge was left in the boat by himself, and, there being seven of us with guns over our arms, the next notion of the griffins was to get a sight of some 'natives.' "In fact, there was a sort of a half-track leading off near the bank, through among the long coarse grass and the ferny sprouts of young cocoas, and a wide stretch of open country seen beyond it, dotted all over with low clumps of trees and bush rounded off in the gush of light, that gave it all a straw-coloured tint up to where a bare reddish-looking ridge of hill looked over a long swell of wild forest, off a hot, pale, cloudless sky. Here and there you saw the shadow of one bluff lying purple on the side of another, and a faint blue peak between, letting north'ard into some pass through the hills, but no signs of life save a few dun big-headed buffaloes feeding about a swampy spot not very far off, and rather too shaggy, by all appearance, to make pleasant company. Accordingly, we held for a few yards under the shade, where the fat mid, thinking to show off his knowingness by getting cocoa-nuts for the ladies, began to shy balls of mud from the creek-sides at the monkeys in the trees.