A Portuguese servant I had hired in Bombay cooked my dinner and looked after me generally.

We sailed along the sometimes bare, and occasionally palm-fringed, shores with that indifference to time and progress which is often the despair and not unfrequently the envy of Europeans.

The hubble-bubble passed from mouth to mouth, and the crew whiled away the evening hours with their monotonous chants.

We always anchored at night; sometimes we stopped for fishing, and once ran into a small bay--one of those charming scenic gems which can only be found in the eastern seas--to land some salt and take in cocoa-nuts and other items.

As for the port of Mangalore, for which I was bound, it seemed to be, though only about 450 miles from Bombay, an immense distance away, and practically was nearly as far as Bombay is from Suez.