October 29, 1859.]
PRAWN CURRY.
359
tionately large and disagreeably expressive, that
seemed to roll about without keeping time, and to
squint and leer through the murky vapour most
abominably.
The cool shelter of the inn was grateful enough after the sweltering heat of the mid-day sun, so I put on a fresh suit of grass-cloth, dipped my head in Cologne-water, and composed my mind for dinner. The huge, stone-walled apartment in which my repast was prepared, had an earthy odour from the tiled floor, and a smell of cocoa- nut oil that must have been something like the atmosphere of Ali Baba’s oil-jars. I was the only dinner guest, and as I sat in the vast solitude, listening to footsteps echoing far and faint — what with the earthy smell and some burning josstick with its incense fumes curling slowly into the shadows of the lofty timber roof, I felt it was like dining in a cathedral.
A sort of grand servitor of the house in a specially fine cotton garment and an extra big tortoiseshell comb arranged the table in a style that only needed some orange blossoms and tin foil to look like a small wedding; and when I took my preliminary sip of sherry I felt it almost incumbent to make a little pleasant speech to myself, and return thanks in a proper soliloquy. The prawns were sublime. I seem to forget the accessories of sauce and vegetable. Dr. Johnson once said of a lady that she had been so well dressed that he could not recollect what she had on, and my prawns were just as well dressed as that lady. Half an hour was spent in a dreamy enjoyment of a dry curry and Amontillado, my white attendant quietly looking on like a benign spectre. Talking would have spoiled the thing. I pointed to a slender-stemmed wine-glass of the substance of a soap bubble, and waved my hand with a gesture of confidence, as Captain Cook might have done to a Polynesian savage. The tortoiseshell comb bent gracefully as divining my desires, and moved away as gent- ly as a tortoiseshell cat. The wine was rich as ever ripened on a volcano. With delicately deferential but quietly decisive manner the spectre removed the debris of the first course.
Green cocoa-nut cur- ry was the next item in the programme.
The first spoonful threw me into a pa- roxysm of astonish- ment and delight.
My bosom throbbed, and I think a tear fell into my fourth plate. A little slow music at thin junc- ture would perhaps have tranquillised the system. A melo- dious gurgling alone broke the silence.
Sparkling St. Peray of 1811, the year of the great
comet. Candied pine-apple, jack fruit, maraschino,
mango jam, cigars, and coffee, are all that I can
clearly recollect afterwards, except that my ghostly
guardian extended my legs on the telescope chair,
undid my necktie, and sprinkled me with rose-
water.
Perhaps it was the monotonous swinging of the punkah as it waved above my head like a dusty banner in a windy cathedral, or the angry droning of the mosquitos who could make no impression on my seasoned epidermis; but, at any rate, I found myself getting strangely drowsy, and eveiy- thing growing misty and changing its aspect, just like a shilling’s worth of dissolving views, only without the music and bad grammar. And gradu- ally a most portentous tightness came upon me, and I felt an inclination to curl like toasted bacon.
I struggled to rise, but felt a sense of general com- pression as though I were in a suit of plate armour a size too small, with an odd tendency to curva- ture. I was in a state of collapse, in fact, my nose and toes approximating, and at last was per- fectly doubled up, in which condition I tapped my forehead pensively with my big toe, and thought about it. And then the appalling truth opened on me — I was become a prawn! — a scaly monster with a florid complexion and a head fit for nothing. And methought I was seized by two Cingalese policemen in tortoiseshell hats, and carried before a great golden cross-legged magistrate, and I felt myself in the focus of his huge round eyes as though I had been fixed for a stereoscope.
“What’s this?” said the gilt-gingerbread-look- ing fellow on the bench.
“Over-fed himself, please your worship,” said a sneaking, cotton-wrapped constable, as he re- ferred to the charge, written with Indian ink on a talipot leaf.
“Fined a three months* indigestion and costs,” was the severe sentence.
“Please, your wor- ship,” I appealed, looking at his cru- ciform extremities through my upper eye-lashes, “three months' indigestion will bring no end of distress around my domestic hearth — I mean my American cooking-stove.”
“Mere stomach- ache repentance,” said the obdurate brute. “Call the next case.”
I gave a howl, and woke. Next morning I sent for Mr. Toodle’s pills — one of the 4 4 family boxes that contain four. ” This was five months ago: I am now out of danger.
Austral.