MARSEILLES TO SINGAPORE 3 



ask that my steamship tickets be changed to so 

 radically different a destination, I believe the clerk 

 in the P. & O. office must have thought that he was 

 dealing with either a lunatic at large or an abscond- 

 ing bank cashier. At any rate, the alteration was 

 effected, my berth cheerfully booked to Singapore, 

 and in delightful ignorance of the purpose of this 

 change or what lay before me, I found myself, that 

 bright September day of starting, in the possession 

 of the three conditions most necessary to the perfect 

 contentment of the average traveller little bag- 

 gage, fewer cares, and no plans at all. 



From the moment of setting foot on the India, I 

 felt that I was already in the East. She smelled of 

 the tropics, her cabins and wide decks were built to 

 secure the greatest possible amount of ventilation 

 in tepid seas and breathless eastern ports, and the 

 barefooted Lascars with their simple blue tunics 

 and red turbans and their inimitable monkey-like 

 agility in going aloft, might have come straight 

 from the Indian jungle, so little did they resemble 

 white sailors. At night the British officers, of whom 

 there were, as always, many on board, returning 

 from leave of absence to their posts in India, wore 

 cool duck mess-jackets with silk cumerbunds, which 

 contrasted cheerfully with the sombre black of the 

 staid western evening dress; the deck piano was 



