n the flanks. Towards evening a nor'-west course was set,
which the troops generally accepted as sufficient evidence that Colombo
would be the next port of call.

For some days the fleet swung heavily to a considerable swell from the
west; and Mac watched, from the boat deck, the long line of careering
masts ahead, sliding about like so many drunken matches, spray flying
from the bows, and the foaming wake seething from the labouring screws
of the ship ahead. It amused him to cast his eyes aft along the boat
deck, the full length of which stretched two lines of horse-boxes
facing outwards.

With an even keel only the noses of the horses showed beyond the
stalls; but, when the vessel rolled heavily to a beam swell, their
heads swung in and out like the cuckoos of cuckoo clocks. One moment,
as the ship lay well over into a trough, Mac could see nothing but a
long line of posts; the next, as she lifted to a sea, out shot those
eighty heads. They trod backwards and forwards in regular step, and
were cursed constantly by the men whose bunks were immediately below
the trampling hoofs. The horses settled down to the life in a
wonderful fashion, and through the splendid attention of the troops
appeared not a whit the worse for the first three weeks at sea. With
the increasing heat and the lack of exercise some of them were growing
a little short-tempered; and men, passing along the front of a line of
boxes, had to be prepared for a horse occasionally making a grab at him.

Least of all to appreciate the presence of horses in the vessels were
the officers of the ships accustomed to Royal Mails and jolly
passengers. They now appeared in all the immaculate glory of white
ducks; and it almost gave Mac the impression that the horses had taken
a special dislike to them. Either they would frequently be bitten at,
or else when one of them was standing comfortably on deck smoking, a
horse would give a violent sneeze behind him, and he would disappear
into his cabin, muttering wrathfully as he changed into a clean suit.
And the Captain himself was no more pleased when he noticed the way in
which the constant trampling of the horses was wearing ugly tracks in
his best teak decks.

Every morning and afternoon, when the vessels were not rolling too
heavily, long strips of cocoa-nut matting were laid round the boat deck
and the length of the upper deck; and the horses were led round and
round for a little, though valuable, exerci