They sailed toward the end of March, touched at Madras and again at Ceylon, remaining a day or two at Colombo, and then away to sea again, across the Indian Ocean on one of those long, peaceful, eventless, tropic voyages, where at night one steeps on deck and in daytime wears the whitest and lightest garments and cares to do little more than sit drowsily in a steamer-chair and read and doze and dream.
From the note-book:
Here in the wastes of the Indian Ocean just under the equator the sea is blue, the motion gentle, the sunshine brilliant, the broad decks with their grouped companies of talking, reading, or game- playing folk suggestive of a big summer hotel--but outside of the ship is no life visible but the occasional flash of a flying-fish. I would like the voyage, under these conditions, to continue forever.
The Injian Ocean sits and smiles So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue, There aren't a wave for miles an' miles Excep' the jiggle of the screw.
--KIP.
How curiously unanecdotical the colonials and the ship-going English are--I believe I haven't told an anecdote or heard one since I left America, but Americans when grouped drop into anecdotes as soon as they get a little acquainted.
Preserve your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but not live.
Swore off from profanity early this morning--I was on deck in the peaceful dawn, the calm of holy dawn. Went down, dressed, bathed, put on white linen, shaved--a long, hot, troublesome job and no profanity. Then started to breakfast. Remembered my tonic--first time in 3 months without being told--poured it into measuring-glass, held bottle in one hand, it in the other, the cork in my teeth-- reached up & got a tumbler--measuring-glass slipped out of my fingers--caught it, poured out another dose, first setting the tumbler on wash-stand--just got it poured, ship lurched, heard a crash behind me--it was the tumbler, broken into millions of fragments, but the bottom hunk whole. Picked it up to throw out of the open port, threw out the measuring-glass instead--then I released my voice. Mrs. Clemens behind me in the door.
"Don't reform any more. It is not an improvement."
This is a good time to read up on scientific matters and improve the mind, for about us is the peace of the great deep. It invites to dreams, to study, to reflection. Seventeen days ago this ship sailed out of Calcutta, and ever since, barring a day or two in Ceylon, there has been nothing in sight but the tranquil blue sea & a cloudless blue sky. All down the Bay of Bengal it was so. It is still so in the vast solitudes of the Indian Ocean--17 days of heaven. In 11 more it will end. There will be one passenger who will be sorry. One reads all day long in this delicious air. Today I have been storing up knowledge from Sir John Lubbock about the ant. The thing which has struck me most and most astonished me is the ant's extraordinary powers of identification--memory of his friend's person. I will quote something which he says about Formica fusca. Formica fusca is not something to eat; it's the name of a breed of ants.
He does quote at great length and he transferred most of it later to his book. In another note he says:
In the past year have read Vicar of Wakefield and some of Jane Austen--thoroughly artificial. Have begun Children of the Abbey. It begins with this "Impromptu" from the sentimental heroine:
"Hail, sweet asylum of my infancy! Content and innocence reside beneath your humble roof and charity unboastful of the good it renders . . . . Here unmolested may I wait till the rude storm of sorrow is overblown and my father's arms are again extended to receive me."
Has the ear-marks of preparation.