sleepily, you stagger to your feet and collapse into the nearest chair.
Then to the swish of water, as the sailors sluice the decks all around
and under you, you fall into a really deep sleep.

At six o'clock this is broken by chota-hazri, another tropical
institution, consisting merely of clear tea and biscuits. I never could
get to care for it, but nowhere in the tropics could I head it off. No
matter how tired I was or how dead sleepy, I had to receive that
confounded chota-hazri. Throwing things at the native who brought it did
no good at all. He merely dodged. Admonition did no good, nor
prohibition in strong terms. I was but one white man of the whole white
race; and I had no right to possess idiosyncrasies running counter to
dastur, the custom. However, as the early hours are profitable hours in
the tropics, it did not drive me to homicide.

The ship's company now developed. Our two prize members, fortunately for
us, sat at our table. The first was the Swedish professor
aforementioned. He was large, benign, paternal, broad in mind,
thoroughly human and beloved, and yet profoundly erudite. He was our
iconoclast in the way of food; for he performed small but illuminating
dissections on his plate, and announced triumphantly results that were
not a bit in accordance with the menu. A single bone was sufficient to
take the pretension out of any fish. Our other particular friend was C.,
with whom later we travelled in the interior of Africa. C. is a very
celebrated hunter and explorer, an old Africander, his face seamed and
tanned by many years in a hard climate. For several days we did not
recognize him, although he sat fairly alongside, but put him down as a
shy man, and let it go at that. He never stayed for the long _table
d'hote_ dinners, but fell upon the first solid course and made a
complete meal from that. When he had quite finished eating all he
could, he drank all he could; then he departed from the table, and took
up a remote and inaccessible position in the corner of the smoking-room.
He was engaged in growing the beard he customarily wore in the jungle--a
most fierce outstanding Mohammedan-looking beard that terrified the
intrusive into submission. And yet Bwana C. possesses the kindest blue
eyes in the world, full of quiet patience, great understanding, and
infinite gentleness. His manner was abrupt and uncompromising, but he
would do anything in the world for one who stood in need of him. From
women h