Ships at
anchor reared their tall masts, here and there; and the broad stream was
enlivened and colored by junks and boats of all sizes and vivid hues,
propelled on the screw principle by a great scull at the stern, with
projecting handles for the crew to work; and at times a gorgeous mandarin
boat, with two great glaring eyes set in the bows, came flying, rowed
with forty paddles by an armed crew, whose shields hung on the gunwale
and flashed fire in the sunbeams; the mandarin, in conical and buttoned
hat, sitting on the top of his cabin calmly smoking Paradise, alias
opium, while his gong boomed and his boat flew fourteen miles an hour,
and all things scuttled out of his celestial way. And there, looking
majestically down on all these water ants, the huge _Agra_, cynosure of
so many loving eyes and loving hearts in England, lay at her moorings;
homeward bound.
Her tea not being yet on board, the ship's hull floated high as a castle,
and to the subtle, intellectual, doll-faced, bolus-eyed people, that
sculled to and fro, busy as bees, though looking forked mushrooms, she
sounded like a vast musical shell: for a lusty harmony of many mellow
voices vibrated in her great cavities, and made the air ring cheerily
around her.
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