[P.7]the once dreaded, now contemptible, "stormy waters" only by the
band-a standing nuisance be it remarked-performing
"There we lay
All the day,
In the Bay of Biscay, O!"
The sight of glorious Trafalgar[FN#7]| excites none of the sentiments
with which a tedious sail used to invest it. "Gib" is, probably, better
known to you, by Theophile Gautier and Eliot Warburton, than the
regions about Cornhill; besides which, you anchor under the Rock
exactly long enough to land and to breakfast. Malta, too, wears an old
familiar face, which bids you order a dinner and superintend the iceing
of claret (beginning of Oriental barbarism), instead of galloping about
on donkey-back through fiery air in memory of St. Paul and White-Cross
Knights. But though our journey might be called monotonous, there was
nothing to complain of. The ship was in every way comfortable; the
cook, strange to say, was good, and the voyage lasted long enough, and
not too long. On the evening of the thirteenth day after our start, the
big-trowsered pilot, so lovely in his deformities to western eyes, made
his appearance, and the good screw "Bengal" found herself at anchor off
the Headland of Clay.[FN#8]
Having been invited to start from the house of a kind friend, John W.
Larking, I disembarked with him, and
[p.8]rejoiced to see that by dint of a beard and a shaven head I had
succeeded, like the Lord of Geesh, in "misleading the inquisitive
spirit of the populace." The mingled herd of spectators before whom we
passed in review on the landing-place, hearing an audible
"Alhamdolillah"[FN#9] whispered "Muslim!" The infant population spared
me the compliments usually addressed to hatted heads; and when a little
boy, presuming that the occasion might possibly open the hand of
generosity, looked in my face and exclaimed "Bakhshish,"[FN#10] he
obtained in reply a "Mafish;"[FN#11] which convinced the bystanders
that the sheep-skin covered a real sheep.
