Towards night we arrived at Colombo and moored two miles off the low coast, bordered with cocoa-nut trees crowned with green palms. A long greystone breakwater with a round-topped tower at the end ran out into the sea, and over it in the distance Colombo with its red-tiled houses lay half hidden in deep green vegetation. Canoes brought on board Singhalese merchants with stuffs and other products of the land. We see everywhere British flags flying. We are on English ground under the tropic sun of Ceylon. From afar we perceive Adam’s Peak, the region where Paradise was. On the summit of the Peak there is the impress of a gigantic foot, the first footstep of Adam out of Paradise, according to the Christian legends, of Siva for the Brahmins, of Buddha for the Buddhists.
The Océanien is going to stop here twenty-four hours to discharge coal. I saw Singhalese porters, with sacks on their heads, mounting on deck and plunging down into the hold to come out again bent in two under their loads. We walked to the Great Oriental Hotel, which stands on the quay, quite near to the port, a large building surrounded on all sides by the broad veranda. There are colonnades underneath the hotel with shops.
The heat and damp of Ceylon are just as terrible as in Java. I passed a wretched night. I went to bed but not to sleep—oh, dear, no! for I just began to doze when swarms of mosquitoes recalled me to reality very soon.
November 2nd.—I was glad to return to the Océanien early in the morning. I stood on deck until we unmoored, watching a band of bronzed natives, in a state of almost Adamic nudity, beautifully shaped men unconscious of immodesty, their wardrobe reduced to a rag replacing the traditional fig-leaf swinging to and fro in a canoe and singing “Tarra-Boumbia” at the top of their voices, with a great supply of gesticulations and grimaces, slapping themselves energetically on the hips at the same time.
The Océanien has weighed anchor. The Isle of Ceylon decreases more and more in the distance. The ocean is as smooth as a lake, and as blue as the sky over us.
November 3rd.—Between Ceylon and Aden the voyage is long and tedious. The Océanien makes the trip in seven days. I had a very bad headache and went on deck for a breath of fresh air. The ship’s doctor, a physician without patients just now, as all the passengers are in perfect health, appropriated the empty chair next my own and stared at me fixedly as if he wanted to know me by heart, and then made notes in his copy-book. He was writing a novel, in which I was to take the principal part, as it appeared, because I had a very strong resemblance to his first love. This doctor has kept his heart of seventeen through thrice seventeen summers. Wherever I went, there he was, and a little manœuvring was always necessary to prevent him from sitting near me and paying me compliments, whilst his bulging eyes stared at me as if he had the intention to devour me. He was ridiculous with his gallantry, having scarcely any hair on his head. He was stout, jolly-looking and effusive, and seemed to have stepped out of a comic opera.
Nearly everyone on board has a flirtation going on. At nightfall in nice flirting corners, on the part of the deck far away and out of the sphere of electricity, couples sat hand in hand deeply immersed in their eager whispers, out of the lights of the ship’s lanterns.
November 4th.—When I mounted on deck this morning, my fat Esculapius came up to me, and crushed my fingers in his grasp; I gave a little squeak, for he had forgotten my rings. He had a drooping appearance, and looked profoundly miserable and martyrlike because yesterday I avoided him and looked the other way when he drew near. Nevertheless he took a chair in a way that told me distinctly of his intention not to desert me, and as I felt at the moment that I would have given anything to be deserted, I pretended to be absorbed in a thrilling novel. A long drawn sigh which escaped him failed to produce the intended effect. He said now in low, mournful accents, that I made fun of him, and doubted whether I had any heart at all.
November 5th.—We pass near the African coast, and the peninsula of Socotra. These parts were formerly the terror of the navigators; many ships have gone to pieces in this treacherous place, where strong hurricanes prevail. The Portuguese sailormen have named that cape Guardafui, which means “Be on your guard.” But the great boats of our days laugh at the danger, though a terrible rolling and tossing is always felt in these parts.
Sea-sickness is a very good remedy for cooling down love. My fat doctor has become indifferent and mute. He lay stretched in his deck-chair, looking dreadfully green in the face.