It was very hot all
day, with hardly a breath of air, and we have all returned to our
former light and airy costumes: the gentlemen to their shirts and
trousers, the children to their pinafores and nothing else, and I to
my beloved Tahitian dresses.
Before we left England we could not make ourselves believe what we
were told about heat in the tropics; so we started with very few
windsails and without any punkahs or double awnings. It was all very
well in the Atlantic or Pacific, but between Hongkong and Singapore
the state of things became simply unbearable. The carpenter has rigged
up a punkah, and the men have improvised some double awnings. At
Colombo they made some windsails, so we are now better off than on our
last hot voyage. It has been really hotter than ever to-day, but a
pleasant breeze sprang up in the afternoon.
_Sunday, April 8th_.--A delightful fresh morning after a cool night.
Everybody looks quite different, and we begin to hope we shall carry
the north-east monsoon right across, which would be an exceptional
piece of good fortune. We had service in the saloon at eleven o'clock
and at four, and though there was an unusually full attendance it was
cool and pleasant even without the punkah. The thermometer registers
nearly the same as it did on Friday, when we were all dead with the
heat.
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