The sounds
that met my ear, however, dispelled this somewhat fanciful idea; for
in the stillness of the night voices grow distinct, while forms are
indebted to the imagination for filling up their outlines.
The native passengers, who had remained, silent and dull, in a
constrained position during the whole of the day, felt a load taken
off their spirits as soon as they set foot on dry land; and in a trice
the silence that had hitherto reigned was broken by a very Babel of
tongues, among which could be distinguished the guttural jargon of the
Scindian, the bastard dialect of Mahratti, of the Hindoo from the
Deccan, and the ungrammatical _patois_ of Hindostani, which--although,
when exclusively used, it marked out the Mussulman--was yet the
_lingua franca_ of the whole party; but amidst the unceasing torrent
of words, little could be distinguished, save when the ear was saluted
with an outburst of nature's universal and unvaried language in the
shape of a light-hearted laugh. By and by, my attention became
directed, by an occasional shout of merriment, to a group of Seedies
clustered round a fire near me.
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