HMS Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin, #3)

by Patrick O'Brian

A warm hand slipped into his, and looking down Stephen saw Dil smiling up at him. ‘Art very strangely clothed, Stephen,’ she said. ‘I almost took thee for a topi-wallah. I have a whole leaf of pondoo: come and eat it before it spills. Mind thy good bazaar shirt in the dung – it is far too long, thy shirt.’ She led him across the trampled grass to the rising glacis of the fort, and there, finding an empty place, they sat down. ‘Lean thy head forward,’ she said, unfolding the leaf and setting the turgid mess between them. ‘Nay, nay, forward, more forward. Dost not see thy shirt all slobbered, oh for shame. Where wast thou brought up? What mother bore thee? Forward.’ Despairing of making him eat like a human being, she stood up, licked his shirt clean, and then, folding her brown jointless legs under her she squatted close in front of him. ‘Open thy mouth.’ With an expert hand she moulded the pondoo into little balls and fed him. ‘Close thy mouth, Stephen. Swallow. Open. There, maharaj. Another. There, my garden of nightingales. Open. Close.’ The sweet, gritty unctuous mass flowed into him, and all the time Dil’s voice rose and fell. ‘Thou canst not eat much better than a bear. Swallow. Pause now and belch. Dost not know how to belch? Thus. I can belch whenever I choose. Belch twice. Look, look; the Mahratta chiefs.’ A splendid group of horsemen in crimson with gold-embroidered turbans and saddle-cloths. ‘That is the Peshwa in the middle: and there the Bhonsli rajah – har, ha...