Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/107

Rh huge surf-boats to make a very imposing appearance when the fleet approached the gangway in line. There was a smooth, smiling sunlit sea flickering beyond the breakwater that serene December day, and the fabled surf of the Coromandel coast and the "life-in-your-hand" embarkations at Madras were other outlived illusions.

There had been a bedlam of coolies at the pier, but there was ten times more bedlam at the one gangway of the Khedive; one stream of passengers, servants, and baggage-coolies ascending the narrow, swaying gangway, and another stream trying to descend, every lung and muscle in the lot working overtime. We hesitated long, but David, scenting a fray, was as intractable as a war-horse, and, leaping ahead, screamed, pushed, kicked, and slapped a way for us through the struggling bearers, the toppling trunks and bags. The others did the same, and one would rather have jumped over than have attempted to return. As one woman was jerked up by both arms from the rocking massoula-boat, a lurch sent her against the gangway chains and knocked her chatelaine-bag off and into the water. With it went watch, purse, keys, tickets, and letter of credit. And the ship was to sail in an hour! The purser sent a boatman in haste, a lighter came alongside, and the diver was dressed, his headpiece screwed on before our eyes, and his leaden knapsack arranged as his weighted feet were lowered from rung to rung of the ladder until beneath the water. A line of bubbles showed where he walked about at the bottom of the sea, and in five minutes he came up with the bag on