“There!” exclaimed the Admiral, better pleased than if he had found a pile of rupees, instead of so much recent Album Graecum.  “Will that evidence satisfy you?  How many hundred yards off do you think can the fellow be who left this trace of his proximity?”

It was past ten o’clock when we reached our tents, which had been pitched in the morning on the borders of the celebrated lake we came to visit.  All the party were well fagged, and so ravenously hungry, that we shouted for joy on seeing supper enter just as we came to the ground.

“This,” said our excellent caterer the collector, “is the dish upon which we pride ourselves most at Trincomalee.  It is the true Malay curry—­rich, as you perceive, in flavour, and more than half of it gravy—­which gravy, I beg you particularly to take notice, is full of minced vegetables, while the whole is softened with some of the youngest kind of cocoa-nut, plucked this very evening since the sun went down.”

These praises really fell far short of the merits of this glorious supper; nor can I remember anything in the way of gourmandise in any part of the world comparable to this exquisite midnight feast.

At the door and windows of our supper tent were hung up by the neck sundry well-bedewed goglets of spring water, cheek by jowl with a jolly string of long-necked bottles of Lafitte and Chateau Margaux, joyously fanning themselves in the thorough draught of the cool night-breeze, breathing so gently along, that we could just hear it whispering through the leaves of the damp forest, and sweeping towards the lake past the tents, the curtains of which it scarcely stirred.

The wine perhaps was almost more chilled than a fastidious wine-fancier might have directed; nevertheless, it flowed over our parched palates with an intensity of zest which I do not believe it is in mortals to be conscious of enjoying till they have toiled a whole day in the sun within half-a-dozen degrees of the equator.  Bottle after bottle—­each one more rich and racy than its valued and lamented predecessor—­vanished so fast, that, ere an hour had elapsed, we felt as if a hundred mad elephants would have stood no chance with us!

As we straggled off to our respective beds, made up in the palankeens, according to the custom of the country, we became sensible of a serious annoyance, of which we had taken but little notice while baling in the hot curries and cool clarets within the tent.  A most potent and offensive smell was brought to us by the land-wind; and the Admiral, who was not a man to submit to any evil capable of remedy, insisted on an immediate investigation into the cause of this annoyance.