A Menagerie Aboard by Rudyard Kipling — Read

It was pyjama time on the _Madura_ in the Bay of Bengal, and the incense of the very early morning cigar went up to the stainless skies. Every one knows pyjama time -- the long hour that follows the removal of the beds from the saloon skylight and the consumption of _chota hazri_. Most men know, too, that the choicest stories of many seas may be picked up then -- from the long-winded histories of the Colonial sheep-master to the crisp anecdotes of the Californian; from tales of battle, murder and sudden death told by the Burmah-returned subaltern, to the bland drivel of the globe-trotter. The Captain, tastefully attired in pale pink, sat up on the signal-gun and tossed the husk of a banana overboard.[3]

"It looked in through my cabin-window," said he, "and scared me nearly into a fit. " We had just been talking about a monkey who appeared to a man in an omnibus, and haunted him till he cut his own throat. The apparition, amid howls of incredulity, was said to have been the result of excessive tea-drinking. The Captain's apparition promised to be better.