Climbing up the rope ladder to where they could overlook the awning, the boys found the mascot crawling on his hands and knees toward the rigging and dragging behind him an umbrella in a badly damaged condition.

When Fogarty asked him what he was doing, he replied, after a long interval of silence, "Just been a practicin'," after which he informed them that had he landed all right he should have attempted to win his bet the next morning.

One experience of this kind was enough for him, however, and though the boys begged him to give them another exhibition of his skill in making the parachute leap, nothing could induce him to do so.
"Craps," a game introduced by the mascot, soon became more popular in the card-room than even poker, and the rattle of the bones and the cries of "Come, seben, come eleben, what's de mattah wid you dice," and other kindred remarks natural to the game coming from the lips of the chocolate-colored coon were to be heard at all hours.
The nights during this portion of our trip were especially fine, and we enjoyed them immensely sitting on deck until the "wee sma' hours" watching the starlight that turned the surface of the water into a great field of glistening diamonds, and the silvery wake of the ship, that stretched away out into the ocean like a track of moonbeams, growing dimmer and dimmer until it was lost in the darkness that lay beyond.
It was just as the sun peeped above the distant horizon on the morning of January 25th that we first caught a glimpse of the shores of Elephant Island, lying just off the coast of Ceylon, and at ten o'clock the shores of the island of Ceylon itself were full in sight.

As we drew nearer the narrow-bodied proas, the boats of the natives, paddled by dark-skinned boatmen innocent of clothing came crowding about the steamer in great numbers, while the white-winged gulls hung above the vessel in clouds, darting so near to us at times that we could almost touch them with our hands.

Past Point de Galle, with its crumbling walls of white cement, that made them appear as if they had but recently been whitewashed, we steamed until we came in sight of Colombo, and stopped at the entrance of the breakwater to await the arrival of the harbor master.