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. The vocalists were the Cyclops, to judge by the tremendous
thumps that kept clean time to their sturdy tune. Yet it was but human
labour, so heavy and so knowing, that it had called in music to help. It
was the third mate and his gang completing his floor to receive the
coming tea-chests. Yesterday he had stowed his dunnage, many hundred
bundles of light flexible canes from Sumatra and Malacca; on these he had
laid tons of rough saltpetre, in 200 lb. gunny-bags: and was now mashing
it to music, bags and all. His gang of fifteen, naked to the waist, stood
in line, with huge wooden beetles called commanders, and lifted them high
and brought them down on the nitre in cadence with true nautical power
and unison, singing as follows, with a ponderous bump on the first note
in each bar.
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