courage, and inherited by the East. The East you may see in it all day long, lounging, loitering, in an unending stream through the streets and the bazars. The West you see but for one hour only, the blessed hour of afternoon, when the shore wind freshens and a veil seems drawn over the melting brilliance of the sun. Then the white faces which have been toiling in warehouse and office and orderly room make their way for talk and a cup of tea to the green lawn of the yacht club, which looks across the harbour at the distant crests of the Ghats. There for that hour they play at being in England, the men, their sun armour laid aside, in straw hats and serges, the women in their most charming frocks. Outside, rigorously outside, along the sea front and the Apollo Bunder the wealth of the city drives behind servants in spotless liveries; Parsis in high "fly-paper" hats, with gaily-dressed families, and Hindus in gorgeous turbans; while on the pavement moves all the colour and diversity that the bazars can show, with British soldiers from Kolaba and a few sailors from the ships, drinking in the sea breezes and listening to the band, while from the Bunder steps, for all the world like Brighton trippers, boat-loads of Hindus embark for a four-anna trip across the harbour in felucca-rigged craft, and the lateen-sailed fishingboats skim on the light wind between the steamer anchorage and the shore.

The sun sinks, a flood of orange light stains for a few wonderful moments everything it touches, masts and sails and the ships' sides and funnels, turning the sea from purple to pea-green, and the distant hills from brick-red to amber. Then the light goes, and a high white radiance tinged with rose rises above the sunset, and the scene strangely and swiftly becomes diaphanous and unreal. The yellow riding lights of the ships and the green and red eyes of the launches come queerly into being in the clear twilight, the gray war-ships and the great white troopers grow ghostly and frail, while, like moths, the sailing boats still flutter about them, catching here and there faintly the rose of the sky.

At the yacht club it is too dark already to distinguish faces; the groups about the tea-tables break up and stroll about the lawn. Outside the syces light the carriage lamps, the crowd begins to move dispersedly. So brief and so lovely is the hour of illusion; its ending announced as the band on the lawn breaks into "God Save the King." Within the railings men rise to their feet with heads uncovered; without, in the crowd, the soldiers lolling against the sea-wall stand to attention. So far the symbol reaches, and no further. To the others, the outnumbering others, it is but a signal for departure.

Well, if that be the irony of it, is it not the glory also?

B

CHAPTER III

BOMBAY'S FAREWELL

WE left Bombay in a soft haze of light, like a city on which a thousand swarms of fire-flies have settled, red, yellow, green, blue, pale mauve, and violet. Her daytime ineptitude of decoration was more than atoned for, the garish flags, the stupid mottoes, by this delicate dress of flames which she had made for herself.

Elsewhere, that is, out of India, such an adorning would probably prove too costly. Even here, where labour forms so small a part of it, the cost is considerable. First, carpenters go over the entire outline of the building with thin strips of wood. To dome and spire, pillar, capital, window, arch and string-course the strips are fastened, till a frail close-fitting external skeleton has been fixed to the whole. This is done, as also the hanging of lamps and their lighting, by ropes run through pulleys carried out from the roof, so that in the daytime the building seems to be enveloped in a vast spider's web.

The lamps are small square boxes open at the top, with coloured glass in three sides and tin in the other. They are put together by hand

and then hung on the wooden laths, with only a few inches between them. A day or two later -it is all very leisurely-small custard glasses filled with thick oil, through which a wick has been stuck, are placed in them. Thus the illuminator has to be hoisted four times from the ground to the roof, for nailing, hanging, oiling, and lighting before the festa. In practice he is hoisted about four hundred, as he can only carry a few lamps and still fewer oil-pots at a time, and the fact that he is generally thinking about something else, or about nothing, necessitates a good many supplementary trips to correct omissions. The process of dismantling is, of course, save for the lighting, about equally long, but the result justifies all the labour, for the effect is unmatchable by any other means.

The softness of the lights, their close following of the architecture, the curious way in which the dim hidden flames illuminate the stone, produces the impression not that the building has been illuminated, but that it has become transparent, and that one sees the glowing spiritual shape

within.

The great structures bordering the Maidan, the Secretariat, the University Hall and Library, and the Courts of Justice, planned all of them on a surprising scale and in the Gothic manner, reaching up with their pale lamps into the night, lemon and lilac, blood-red and orange, emerald

and rose, looked like cathedrals of which, one might dream, only fair thoughts and prayers had gone to the building, while the headquarters of the Baroda railway amid the trees, with its domes and minarets decked with prismatic gems, looked like a palace out of the "Arabian Nights."

From Malabar Hill, whence one looks across the Back Bay over the long lean town to the sea again and the hills beyond it, a wonderful view was to be had of the city, drawn in tinted light, and the incandescent shapes of liner and trooper, cruiser and battle-ship beyond it upon the dark waters.

The lighting of the city was of itself a curious sight, and for it quite a small army of coolies was required.

They squatted in their idle contented way for the entire day in the shady skirts of the building they were to illuminate; slim boys for the most part, with nothing but a loin cloth about their brown bodies and carrying a reed to which a wick was wired.

Long before the worst heat was gone out of the sun they were sprawling like brown insects. at the rope-ends high up in mid-air, thrusting their thin torches, as a butterfly its tongue, into the many-hued chalices, and leaving an invisible thread of flame behind.

The white sheaf of rockets from the Renown, on which the Prince was dining, and from which