Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/53

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LETTERS FROM INDIA.
45

at every roll within two inches of the ceiling. I thought it might be better up stairs, and contrived to struggle up, to find his Excellency under the breakfast table (his chair, in spite of its lashings, having slipped from under him), empty cup in one hand—his piece of toast crushed in the other. I would not for ever so much that Rumm Hy Jeet Raj Singh should have seen him in such a situation: he would never have given the proper number of ko-toos, and there would have been a war.

Quiet! Quiet! How I do long for a little Quiet! All my life I have hated noise. I banished that angel of a grey parrot, because he made a noise: he has his revenge now. We have seen three dead whales, seven live ones; a porpoise has been harpooned, and an albatros, which was so gorged with oil from one of the dead whales that it could not fly off the water: it measured from nine to ten feet from wing to wing. Think what the ‘ancient mariner’ must have suffered when his was hanging round his neck! We passed within a few yards of one dead whale; the sharks were gnawing it, and the albatroses pecking at it. Such an enormous mass, and neither fish nor bird took the trouble