This, too, lends the night
an exotic quality, the more effective in that at first the reason for it
is not apprehended.
A night in the tropics is always more or less broken. One awakens, and
sleeps again. Motionless white-clad figures, cigarettes glowing, are
lounging against the rail looking out over a molten sea. The moonlight
lies in patterns across the deck, shivering slightly under the throb of
the engines, or occasionally swaying slowly forward or slowly back as
the ship's course changes, but otherwise motionless, for here the sea is
always calm. You raise your head, look about, sprawl in a new position
on your mattress, fall asleep. On one of these occasions you find
unexpectedly that the velvet-gray night has become steel-gray dawn, and
that the kindly old quartermaster is bending over you. Sleepily, very
sleepily, you stagger to your feet and collapse into the nearest chair.
Then to the swish of water, as the sailors sluice the decks all around
and under you, you fall into a really deep sleep.
At six o'clock this is broken by chota-hazri, another tropical
institution, consisting merely of clear tea and biscuits. I never could
get to care for it, but nowhere in the tropics could I head it off. No
matter how tired I was or how dead sleepy, I had to receive that
confounded chota-hazri. Throwing things at the native who brought it did
no good at all. He merely dodged.
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