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[Page 164]
We get one to sing occasionally but I wouldnt say it was nice being like a semi comic song. On the morning of the 17th the ocean was the calmest, I have ever seen it, smooth as glass with a slight swell on it, and the flying fish were planeing over its smooth surface. They are very pretty these flying fish, as with their pretty gauze wings set they plane, one cant call it flying, over the ocean. Natures Hydroaeroplanes. Yes the old Dame had nearly everything first.
We are now appoaching Colombo in Ceylon. On the 18th we sighted Ceylon, and at first I was dissappointed I had expected to see a wildly beautiful island like Trinidad or the West Indies with ranges covered in greenery rising from the water's edge. The harbor at Colombo is a wide flat semicircle like an Atoll with cocoanut palms on the shore. The real port is formed by a breakwater.
As soon as we had cast anchor, the coal and water barges came along side. The coal is still loaded by hand being put on the barges in ½ cut sacks and tipped into the bunkers one by one. One would think that such a port as this would have a decent system of coaling, and not this slavery for that is all it is, as the labourers only get a rupee (1/6) a day. Some of the Cingalese children came on board and the "diggers" got them boxing and threw pennies into the ring until they tired of the sport; a couple of the children made more than a days wages, at the fistie art. They are cleaner minded and much fairer to deal with than the Gippo, though of course they're out to make as much as they can out of one. Some of the Coolies came on board offering Moonstones etc for sale at 10/- each and ashore one can buy half a dozen for 2/- of course some of the native police temporarily confiscated their goods and summarily kicked them off the boat I may be wrong but I think those police do a little trade in graft now and then. Then the colonels orders came round, none of us were supposed to go ashore on account of the 'flu. The 'flu has at the present time abated