124 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



served in dignified fashion within indicated an impromptu 

 assistant. 



Plantain fritters and good coffee rounded off a banquet 

 which could hardly have been bettered at home. 



' Plenty salaams to the Mem-Sahib, but I have no tea,' 

 said the old man, knowing our English ways. I told him 

 how much better I liked coffee (a fib which, I trust, was 

 blotted out then and there), and I asked for another cup. 



They are all wizards, these cooks, at making something 

 good out of nothing (from our point of view), but here was 

 a born chef. Nor was he wasted in his solitude, for the 

 visitors' book showed how many years he had served here 

 and the reputation he had built up for himself, his Govern- 

 ment ' pinchon ' being now within sight. 



F. had his brandy flask with him, and much delighted 

 the old fellow by complimenting him on his skill and offering 

 him a glass this wet, cold night. His eyes twinkled for 

 answer as he went off quite youthfully to fetch a half cocoa- 

 nut shell that served him for a glass, which when filled 

 was received with deep salaams in a hand fairly trembling 

 with the pride and pleasure aroused by the appreciative 

 words. 



At cock-crow the next morning carpenters were despatched 

 to the place where the carts had been stranded, and when 

 F. rode out himself he found them being lightened, the 

 more easily to pull them over the temporarily repaired 

 bridge, reloading them on the far side, the best thing to be 

 done under the circumstances, though a long job, with three 

 of these bridges to be thus manoeuvred ! 



When, for the first and only time in my life, a premonition 

 of danger came to me, it had to do with a broken bridge. 



On long journeys we occasionally used a travelling coach 

 holding a mattress and other bedding. One night — a very 

 dark one, moonless and starless — I was fast asleep in the 

 coach ; F. was riding near it at a walk, and the string of 



