"He's a miser. A miserable miser," affirmed the
hotel-keeper with great force. "The meat here is
not so good as at home--of course. And dear too.
But look at me. I only charge a dollar for the tif-
fin, and one dollar and fifty cents for the dinner.
Show me anything cheaper. Why am I doing it?
There's little profit in this game. Falk wouldn't
look at it. I do it for the sake of a lot of young
white fellows here that hadn't a place where they
could get a decent meal and eat it decently in good
company. There's first-rate company always at
my table."
The convinced way he surveyed the empty chairs
made me feel as if I had intruded upon a tiffin of
ghostly Presences.
"A white man should eat like a white man, dash
it all," he burst out impetuously. "Ought to eat
meat, must eat meat. I manage to get meat for my
patrons all the year round. Don't I? I am not ca-
tering for a dam' lot of coolies: Have another chop
captain. . . . No? You, boy--take away!"
He threw himself back and waited grimly for the
curry. The half-closed jalousies darkened the room
pervaded by the smell of fresh whitewash: a swarm
of flies buzzed and settled in turns, and poor Mrs.
Schomberg's smile seemed to express the quintes-
sence of all the imbecility that had ever spoken, had
ever breathed, had ever been fed on infamous buffalo
meat within these bare walls. Schomberg did not
open his lips till he was ready to thrust therein a
spoonful of greasy rice. He rolled his eyes ridicu-
lously before he swallowed the hot stuff, and only
then broke out afresh.
"It is the most degrading thing. They take the
dish up to the wheelhouse for him with a cover on it,
and he shuts both the doors before he begins to eat.
Fact! Must be ashamed of himself. Ask the engi-
neer. He can't do without an engineer--don't you
see--and as no respectable man can be expected to
put up with such a table, he allows them fifteen dol-
lars a month extra mess money. I assure you it is
so! You just ask Mr. Ferdinand da Costa. That's
the engineer he has now. You may have seen him
about my place, a delicate dark young man, with
very fine eyes and a little moustache. He arrived
here a year ago from Calcutta. Between you and
me, I guess the money-lenders there must have been
after him. He rushes here for a meal every chance
he can get, for just please tell me what satisfaction
is that for a well-educated young fellow to feed all
alone in his cabin--like a wild beast? That's what
Falk expects his engineers to put up with for fifteen
dollars extra. And the rows on board every time a
little smell of cooking gets about the deck! You
wouldn't believe! The other day da Costa got the
cook to fry a steak for him--a turtle steak it was
too, not beef at all--and the fat caught or some-
thing. Young da Costa himself was telling me of
it here in this room. 'Mr. Schomberg'--says he--
'if I had let a cylinder cover blow off through the
skylight by my negligence Captain Falk couldn't
have been more savage. He frightened the cook so
that he won't put anything on the fire for me now.'
Poor da Costa had tears in his eyes. Only try to
put yourself in his place, captain: a sensitive, gen-
tlemanly young fellow. Is he expected to eat his
food raw? But that's your Falk all over. Ask any
one you like. I suppose the fifteen dollars extra he
has to give keep on rankling--in there."
And Schomberg tapped his manly breast. I sat
half stunned by his irrelevant babble. Suddenly
he gripped my forearm in an impressive and cau-
tious manner, as if to lead me into a very cavern of
confidence.
"It's nothing but enviousness," he said in a low-
ered tone, which had a stimulating effect upon my
wearied hearing. "I don't suppose there is one
person in this town that he isn't envious of. I tell
you he's dangerous. Even I myself am not safe
from him. I know for certain he tried to poi-
son . . . ."
"Oh, come now," I cried, revolted.
"But I know for certain. The people themselves
came and told me of it. He went about saying
everywhere I was a worse pest to this town than the
cholera. He had been talking against me ever since
I opened this hotel. And he poisoned Captain Her-
mann's mind too. Last time the Diana was loading
here Captain Hermann used to come in every day
for a drink or a cigar. This time he hasn't been
here twice in a week. How do you account for
that?"
He squeezed my arm till he extorted from me
some sort of mumble.
"He makes ten times the money I do. I've
another hotel to fight against, and there is no other
tug on the river. I am not in his way, am I? He
wouldn't be fit to run an hotel if he tried. But that's
just his nature. He can't bear to think I am mak-
ing a living. I only hope it makes him properly
wretched. He's like that in everything. He
would like to keep a decent table well enough.
But no--for the sake of a few cents. Can't do it.
It's too much for him. That's what I call being a
slave to it. But he's mean enough to kick up a row
when his nose gets tickled a bit. See that? That
just paints him. Miserly and envious. You can't
account for it any other way. Can you? I have
been studying him these three years."
He was anxious I should assent to his theory.
And indeed on thinking it over it would have been
plausible enough if there hadn't been always the
essential falseness of irresponsibility in Schom-
berg's chatter. However, I was not disposed to in-
vestigate the psychology of Falk. I was engaged
just then in eating despondently a piece of stale
Dutch cheese, being too much crushed to care what
I swallowed myself, let along bothering my head
about Falk's ideas of gastronomy. I could expect
from their study no clue to his conduct in matters
of business, which seemed to me totally unrestrained
by morality or even by the commonest sort of de-
cency. How insignificant and contemptible I must
appear, for the fellow to dare treat me like this--I
reflected suddenly, writhing in silent agony. And
I consigned Falk and all his peculiarities to the devil
with so much mental fervour as to forget Schom-
berg's existence, till he grabbed my arm urgently.
"Well, you may think and think till every hair of
your head falls off, captain; but you can't explain
it in any other way."
For the sake of peace and quietness I admitted
hurriedly that I couldn't: persuaded that now he
would leave off. But the only result was to make
his moist face shine with the pride of cunning. He
removed his hand for a moment to scare a black
mass of flies off the sugar-basin and caught hold of
my arm again.
"To be sure. And in the same way everybody is
aware he would like to get married. Only he can't.
Let me quote you an instance. Well, two years ago
a Miss Vanlo, a very ladylike girl, came from home
to keep house for her brother, Fred, who had an en-
gineering shop for small repairs by the water side.
Suddenly Falk takes to going up to their bunga-
low after dinner, and sitting for hours in the veran-
dah saying nothing. The poor girl couldn't tell
for the life of her what to do with such a man, so she
would keep on playing the piano and singing to
him evening after evening till she was ready to
drop. And it wasn't as if she had been a strong
young woman either. She was thirty, and the cli-
mate had been playing the deuce with her. Then--
don't you know--Fred had to sit up with them for
propriety, and during whole weeks on end never got
a single chance to get to bed before midnight.
That was not pleasant for a tired man--was it?
And besides Fred had worries then because his shop
didn't pay and he was dropping money fast. He
just longed to get away from here and try his luck
somewhere else, but for the sake of his sister he
hung on and on till he ran himself into debt over his
ears--I can tell you. I, myself, could show a hand-
ful of his chits for meals and drinks in my drawer.
I could never find out tho' where he found all the
money at last. Can't be but he must have got some-
thing out of that brother of his, a coal merchant in
Port Said. Anyhow he paid everybody before he
left, but the girl nearly broke her heart. Disap-
pointment, of course, and at her age, don't you
know. . . . Mrs. Schomberg here was very friendly
with her, and she could tell you. Awful despair.
Fainting fits. It was a scandal. A notorious scan-
dal. To that extent that old Mr. Siegers--not
your present charterer, but Mr. Siegers the father,
the old gentleman who retired from business on a
fortune and got buried at sea going home, HE had
to interview Falk in his private office. He was a
man who could speak like a Dutch Uncle, and, be-
sides, Messrs. Siegers had been helping Falk with
a good bit of money from the start. In fact you
may say they made him as far as that goes.
It so happened that just at the time he turned up
here, their firm was chartering a lot of sailing ships
every year, and it suited their business that there
should be good towing facilities on the river. See?
. . . Well--there's always an ear at the keyhole--
isn't there? In fact," he lowered his tone confiden-
tially, "in this case a good friend of mine; a man
you can see here any evening; only they conversed
rather low. Anyhow my friend's certain that Falk
was trying to make all sorts of excuses, and old Mr.
Siegers was coughing a lot. And yet Falk wanted
all the time to be married too. Why! It's notorious
the man has been longing for years to make a home
for himself. Only he can't face the expense.
When it comes to putting his hand in his pocket--
it chokes him off. That's the truth and no other.
I've always said so, and everybody agrees with me
by this time. What do you think of that--eh?"
He appealed confidently to my indignation, but
having a mind to annoy him I remarked, "that it
seemed to me very pitiful--if true."
He bounced in his chair as if I had run a pin into
him. I don't know what he might have said, only
at that moment we heard through the half open
door of the billiard-room the footsteps of two men
entering from the verandah, a murmur of two
voices; at the sharp tapping of a coin on a table
Mrs. Schomberg half rose irresolutely. "Sit still,"
he hissed at her, and then, in an hospitable, jovial
tone, contrasting amazingly with the angry glance
that had made his wife sink in her chair, he cried
very loud: "Tiffin still going on in here, gentle-
men."
There was no answer, but the voices dropped sud-
denly. The head Chinaman went out. We heard
the clink of ice in the glasses, pouring sounds, the
shuffling of feet, the scraping of chairs. Schom-
berg, after wondering in a low mutter who the devil
could be there at this time of the day, got up napkin
in hand to peep through the doorway cautiously.
He retreated rapidly on tip-toe, and whispering be-
hind his hand informed me that it was Falk, Falk
himself who was in there, and, what's more, he had
Captain Hermann with him.
The return of the tug from the outer Roads was
unexpected but possible, for Falk had taken away
the Diana at half-past five, and it was now two
o'clock. Schomberg wished me to observe that
neither of these men would spend a dollar on a tiffin,
which they must have wanted. But by the time I
was ready to leave the dining-room Falk had gone.
I heard the last of his big boots on the planks of
the verandah. Hermann was sitting quite alone in
the large, wooden room with the two lifeless billiard
tables shrouded in striped covers, mopping his face
diligently. He wore his best go-ashore clothes, a
stiff collar, black coat, large white waistcoat, grey
trousers. A white cotton sunshade with a cane han-
dle reposed between his legs, his side whiskers were
neatly brushed, his chin had been freshly shaved;
and he only distantly resembled the dishevelled and
terrified man in a snuffy night shirt and ignoble old
trousers I had seen in the morning hanging on to
the wheel of the Diana.
He gave a start at my entrance, and addressed
me at once in some confusion, but with genuine ea-
gerness. He was anxious to make it clear he had
nothing to do with what he called the "tam piz-
ness" of the morning. It was most inconvenient.
He had reckoned upon another day up in town to
settle his bills and sign certain papers. There were
also some few stores to come, and sundry pieces of
"my ironwork," as he called it quaintly, landed for
repairs, had been left behind. Now he would have
to hire a native boat to take all this out to the ship.
It would cost five or six dollars perhaps. He had
had no warning from Falk. Nothing. . . . He
hit the table with his dumpy fist. . . . Der ver-
fluchte Kerl came in the morning like a "tam'
ropper," making a great noise, and took him away.
His mate was not prepared, his ship was moored
fast--he protested it was shameful to come upon
a man in that way. Shameful! Yet such was the
power Falk had on the river that when I suggested
in a chilling tone that he might have simply refused
to have his ship moved, Hermann was quite startled
at the idea. I never realised so well before that this
is an age of steam. The exclusive possession of a
marine boiler had given Falk the whiphand of us
all. Hermann, recovering, put it to me appealingly
that I knew very well how unsafe it was to contra-
dict that fellow. At this I only smiled distantly.
"Der Kerl!" he cried. He was sorry he had not
refused. He was indeed. The damage! The dam-
age! What for all that damage! There was no
occasion for damage. Did I know how much dam-
age he had done? It gave me a certain satisfaction
to tell him that I had heard his old waggon of a
ship crack fore and aft as she went by. "You
passed close enough to me," I added significantly.
He threw both his hands up to heaven at the rec-
ollection. One of them grasped by the middle the
white parasol, and he resembled curiously a carica-
ture of a shopkeeping citizen in one of his own Ger-
man comic papers. "Ach! That was dangerous,"
he cried. I was amused. But directly he added
with an appearance of simplicity, "The side of
your iron ship would have been crushed in like--
like this matchbox."
"Would it?" I growled, much less amused now;
but by the time I had decided that this remark was
not meant for a dig at me he had worked himself
into a high state of resentfulness against Falk.
The inconvenience, the damage, the expense! Gott-
ferdam! Devil take the fellow. Behind the bar
Schomberg with a cigar in his teeth, pretended to
be writing with a pencil on a large sheet of paper;
and as Hermann's excitement increased it made me
comfortingly aware of my own calmness and supe-
riority. But it occurred to me while I listened to
his revilings, that after all the good man had come
up in the tug. There perhaps--since he must come
to town--he had no option. But evidently he had
had a drink with Falk, either accepted or offered.
How was that? So I checked him by saying loftily
that I hoped he would make Falk pay for every
penny of the damage.
"That's it! That's it! Go for him," called out
Schomberg from the bar, flinging his pencil down
and rubbing his hands.
We ignored his noise. But Hermann's excite-
ment suddenly went off the boil as when you remove
a saucepan from the fire. I urged on his considera-
tion that he had done now with Falk and Falk's con-
founded tug. He, Hermann, would not, perhaps,
turn up again in this part of the world for years to
come, since he was going to sell the Diana at the end
of this very trip ("Go home passenger in a mail
boat," he murmured mechanically). He was there-
fore safe from Falk's malice. All he had to do was
to race off to his consignees and stop payment of
the towage bill before Falk had the time to get in
and lift the money.
Nothing could have been less in the spirit of my
advice than the thoughtful way in which he set
about to make his parasol stay propped against the
edge of the table.
While I watched his concentrated efforts with as-
tonishment he threw at me one or two perplexed,
half-shy glances. Then he sat down. "That's all
very well," he said reflectively.
It cannot be doubted that the man had been
thrown off his balance by being hauled out of the
harbour against his wish. His stolidity had been
profoundly stirred, else he would never have made
up his mind to ask me unexpectedly whether I had
not remarked that Falk had been casting eyes upon
his niece. "No more than myself," I answered with
literal truth. The girl was of the sort one necessa-
rily casts eyes at in a sense. She made no noise,
but she filled most satisfactorily a good bit of space.
"But you, captain, are not the same kind of
man," observed Hermann.
I was not, I am happy to say, in a position to
deny this. "What about the lady?" I could not
help asking. At this he gazed for a time into my
face, earnestly, and made as if to change the sub-
ject. I heard him beginning to mutter something
unexpected, about his children growing old enough
to require schooling. He would have to leave them
ashore with their grandmother when he took up that
new command he expected to get in Germany.
This constant harping on his domestic arrange-
ments was funny. I suppose it must have been like
the prospect of a complete alteration in his life. An
epoch. He was going, too, to part with the Diana!
He had served in her for years. He had inherited
her. From an uncle, if I remember rightly. And
the future loomed big before him, occupying his
thought exclusively with all its aspects as on the
eve of a venturesome enterprise. He sat there
frowning and biting his lip, and suddenly he began
to fume and fret.
I discovered to my momentary amusement that
he seemed to imagine I could, should or ought,
have caused Falk in some way to pronounce him-
self. Such a hope was incomprehensible, but funny.
Then the contact with all this foolishness irritated
me. I said crossly that I had seen no symptoms,
but if there were any--since he, Hermann, was so
sure--then it was still worse. What pleasure Falk
found in humbugging people in just that way I
couldn't say. It was, however, my solemn duty to
warn him. It had lately, I said, come to my knowl-
edge that there was a man (not a very long time
ago either) who had been taken in just like this.
All this passed in undertones, and at this point
Schomberg, exasperated at our secrecy, went out
of the room slamming the door with a crash that
positively lifted us in our chairs. This, or else what
I had said, huffed my Hermann, He supposed, with
a contemptuous toss of his head towards the door
which trembled yet, that I had got hold of some of
that man's silly tales. It looked, indeed, as though
his mind had been thoroughly poisoned against
Schomberg. "His tales were--they were," he re-
peated, seeking for the word--"trash." They
were trash, he reiterated, and moreover I was young
yet . . .
This horrid aspersion (I regret I am no longer
exposed to that sort of insult) made me huffy too.
I felt ready in my own mind to back up every asser-
tion of Schomberg's and on any subject. In a mo-
ment, devil only knows why, Hermann and I were
looking at each other most inimically. He caught
up his hat without more ado and I gave myself the
pleasure of calling after him:
"Take my advice and make Falk pay for break-
ing up your ship. You aren't likely to get any-
thing else out of him."
When I got on board my ship later on, the old
mate, who was very full of the events of the morn-
ing, remarked:
"I saw the tug coming back from the outer Roads
just before two P.M." (He never by any chance used
the words morning or afternoon. Always P.M. or
A.M., log-book style.) "Smart work that. Man's
always in a state of hurry. He's a regular
chucker-out, ain't he, sir? There's a few pubs I
know of in the East-end of London that would be
all the better for one of his sort around the bar."
He chuckled at his joke. "A regular chucker-out.
Now he has fired out that Dutchman head over heels,
I suppose our turn's coming to-morrow morning."
We were all on deck at break of day (even the
sick--poor devils--had crawled out) ready to cast
off in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing came.
Falk did not come. At last, when I began to think
that probably something had gone wrong in his
engine-room, we perceived the tug going by, full
pelt, down the river, as if we hadn't existed. For a
moment I entertained the wild notion that he was
going to turn round in the next reach. Afterwards
I watched his smoke appear above the plain, now
here, now there, according to the windings of the
river. It disappeared. Then without a word I
went down to breakfast. I just simply went down
to breakfast.
Not one of us uttered a sound till the mate, after
imbibing--by means of suction out of a saucer--
his second cup of tea, exclaimed: "Where the devil
is the man gone to?"
"Courting!" I shouted, with such a fiendish
laugh that the old chap didn't venture to open his
lips any more.
I started to the office perfectly calm. Calm with
excessive rage. Evidently they knew all about it
already, and they treated me to a show of conster-
nation. The manager, a soft-footed, immensely
obese man, breathing short, got up to meet me,
while all round the room the young clerks, bend-
ing over the papers on their desks, cast upward
glances in my direction. The fat man, without
waiting for my complaint, wheezing heavily and
in a tone as if he himself were incredulous, con-
veyed to me the news that Falk--Captain Falk--
had declined--had absolutely declined--to tow my
ship--to have anything to do with my ship--this
day or any other day. Never!
I did my best to preserve a cool appearance, but,
all the same, I must have shown how much taken
aback I was. We were talking in the middle of the
room. Suddenly behind my back some ass blew
his nose with great force, and at the same time an-
other quill-driver jumped up and went out on the
landing hastily. It occurred to me I was cutting
a foolish figure there. I demanded angrily to see
the principal in his private room.
The skin of Mr. Siegers' head showed dead white
between the iron grey streaks of hair lying plas-
tered cross-wise from ear to ear over the top of his
skull in the manner of a bandage. His narrow
sunken face was of an uniform and permanent ter-
ra-cotta colour, like a piece of pottery. He was
sickly, thin, and short, with wrists like a boy of ten.
But from that debile body there issued a bullying
voice, tremendously loud, harsh and resonant, as
if produced by some powerful mechanical contriv-
ance in the nature of a fog-horn. I do not know
what he did with it in the private life of his home,
but in the larger sphere of business it presented the
advantage of overcoming arguments without the
slightest mental effort, by the mere volume of
sound. We had had several passages of arms. It
took me all I knew to guard the interests of my
owners--whom, nota bene, I had never seen--while
Siegers (who had made their acquaintance some
years before, during a business tour in Australia)
pretended to the knowledge of their innermost
minds, and, in the character of "our very good
friends," threw them perpetually at my head.
He looked at me with a jaundiced eye (there was
no love lost between us), and declared at once that
it was strange, very strange. His pronunciation
of English was so extravagant that I can't even
attempt to reproduce it. For instance, he said
"Fferie strantch." Combined with the bellowing
intonation it made the language of one's childhood
sound weirdly startling, and even if considered
purely as a kind of unmeaning noise it filled you
with astonishment at first. "They had," he con-
tinued, "been acquainted with Captain Falk for
very many years, and never had any reason. . . ."
"That's why I come to you, of course," I inter-
rupted. "I've the right to know the meaning of
this infernal nonsense." In the half light of the
room, which was greenish, because of the tree-tops
screening the window, I saw him writhe his meagre
shoulders. It came into my head, as disconnected
ideas will come at all sorts of times into one's head,
that this, most likely, was the very room where, if
the tale were true, Falk had been lectured by Mr.
Siegers, the father. Mr. Siegers' (the son's) over-
whelming voice, in brassy blasts, as though he had
been trying to articulate his words through a trom-
bone, was expressing his great regret at a conduct
characterised by a very marked want of discre-
tion. . . As I lived I was being lectured too! His
deafening gibberish was difficult to follow, but it
was MY conduct--mine!--that . . . Damn! I
wasn't going to stand this.
"What on earth are you driving at?" I asked
in a passion. I put my hat on my head (he never
offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for
the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I
turned my back on him and marched out. His vo-
cal arrangements blared after me a few threats of
coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the
lighters, and all the other expenses consequent
upon the delays arising from my frivolity.
Once outside in the sunshine my head swam. It
was no longer a question of mere delay. I per-
ceived myself involved in hopeless and humiliating
absurdities that were leading me to something very
like a disaster. "Let us be calm," I muttered to
myself, and ran into the shade of a leprous wall.
From that short side-street I could see the broad
main thoroughfare ruinous and gay, running
away, away between stretches of decaying mason-
ry, bamboo fences, ranges of arcades of brick and
plaster, hovels of lath and mud, lofty temple gates
of carved timber, huts of rotten mats--an im-
mensely wide thoroughfare, loosely packed as far
as the eye could reach with a barefooted and brown
multitude paddling ankle deep in the dust. For a
moment I felt myself about to go out of my mind
with worry and desperation.
Some allowance must be made for the feelings
of a young man new to responsibility. I thought
of my crew. Half of them were ill, and I really
began to think that some of them would end by dy-
ing on board if I couldn't get them out to sea soon.
Obviously I should have to take my ship down the
river, either working under canvas or dredging
with the anchor down; operations which, in com-
mon with many modern sailors, I only knew theo-
retically. And I almost shrank from undertaking
them shorthanded and without local knowledge
of the river bed, which is so necessary for the con-
fident handling of the ship. There were no pilots,
no beacons, no buoys of any sort; but there was a
very devil of a current for anybody to see, no end
of shoal places, and at least two obviously awkward
turns of the channel between me and the sea. But
how dangerous these turns were I would not tell. I
didn't even know what my ship was capable of!
I had never handled her in my life. A misunder-
standing between a man and his ship in a difficult
river with no room to make it up, is bound to end in
trouble for the man. On the other hand, it must
be owned I had not much reason to count upon a
general run of good luck. And suppose I had the
misfortune to pile her up high and dry on some
beastly shoal? That would have been the final un-
doing of that voyage. It was plain that if Falk
refused to tow me out he would also refuse to pull
me off. This meant--what? A day lost at the
very best; but more likely a whole fortnight of
frizzling on some pestilential mudflat, of desperate
work, of discharging cargo; more than likely it
meant borrowing money at an exorbitant rate of
interest--from the Siegers' gang too at that. They
were a power in the port. And that elderly seaman
of mine, Gambril, had looked pretty ghastly when
I went forward to dose him with quinine that morn-
ing. HE would certainly die--not to speak of two
or three others that seemed nearly as bad, and of
the rest of them just ready to catch any tropical
disease going. Horror, ruin and everlasting re-
morse. And no help. None. I had fallen amongst
a lot of unfriendly lunatics!
At any rate, if I must take my ship down myself
it was my duty to procure if possible some local
knowledge. But that was not easy. The only per-
son I could think of for that service was a certain
Johnson, formerly captain of a country ship, but
now spliced to a country wife and gone utterly to
the bad. I had only heard of him in the vaguest
way, as living concealed in the thick of two hundred
thousand natives, and only emerging into the light
of day for the purpose of hunting up some brandy.
I had a notion that if I could lay my hands on him
I would sober him on board my ship and use him
for a pilot. Better than nothing. Once a sailor
always a sailor--and he had known the river for
years. But in our Consulate (where I arrived drip-
ping after a sharp walk) they could tell me noth-
ing. The excellent young men on the staff, though
willing to help me, belonged to a sphere of the
white colony for which that sort of Johnson does
not exist. Their suggestion was that I should hunt
the man up myself with the help of the Consulate's
constable--an ex-sergeant-major of a regiment of
Hussars.
This man, whose usual duty apparently consisted
in sitting behind a little table in an outer room
of Consular offices, when ordered to assist me in
my search for Johnson displayed lots of energy
and a marvellous amount of local knowledge of a
sort. But he did not conceal an immense and scep-
tical contempt for the whole business. We explored
together on that afternoon an infinity of infamous
grog shops, gambling dens, opium dens. We
walked up narrow lanes where our gharry--a tiny
box of a thing on wheels, attached to a jibbing Bur-
mah pony--could by no means have passed. The
constable seemed to be on terms of scornful inti-
macy with Maltese, with Eurasians, with China-
men, with Klings, and with the sweepers attached
to a temple, with whom he talked at the gate. We
interviewed also through a grating in a mud wall
closing a blind alley an immensely corpulent Ital-
ian, who, the ex-sergeant-major remarked to me
perfunctorily, had "killed another man last year."
Thereupon he addressed him as "Antonio" and
"Old Buck," though that bloated carcase, appar-
ently more than half filling the sort of cell where-
in it sat, recalled rather a fat pig in a stye. Fa-
miliar and never unbending, the sergeant chucked
--absolutely chucked--under the chin a horribly
wrinkled and shrivelled old hag propped on a stick,
who had volunteered some sort of information: and
with the same stolid face he kept up an animated
conversation with the groups of swathed brown
women, who sat smoking cheroots on the door-steps
of a long range of clay hovels. We got out of the
gharry and clambered into dwellings airy like
packing crates, or descended into places sinister
like cellars. We got in, we drove on, we got out
again for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of looking
behind a heap of rubble. The sun declined; my
companion was curt and sardonic in his answers,
but it appears we were just missing Johnson all
along. At last our conveyance stopped once more
with a jerk, and the driver jumping down opened
the door.
A black mudhole blocked the lane. A mound of
garbage crowned with the dead body of a dog ar-
rested us not. An empty Australian beef tin
bounded cheerily before the toe of my boot. Sud-
denly we clambered through a gap in a prickly
fence. . . .
It was a very clean native compound: and the
big native woman, with bare brown legs as thick
as bedposts, pursuing on all fours a silver dollar
that came rolling out from somewhere, was Mrs.
Johnson herself. "Your man's at home," said the
ex-sergeant, and stepped aside in complete and
marked indifference to anything that might follow.
Johnson--at home--stood with his back to a native
house built on posts and with its walls made of
mats. In his left hand he held a banana. Out of
the right he dealt another dollar into space. The
woman captured this one on the wing, and there
and then plumped down on the ground to look at
us with greater comfort.
My man was sallow of face, grizzled, unshaven,
muddy on elbows and back; where the seams of his
serge coat yawned you could see his white naked-
ness. The vestiges of a paper collar encircled his
neck. He looked at us with a grave, swaying sur-
prise. "Where do you come from?" he asked.
My heart sank. How could I have been stupid
enough to waste energy and time for this?
But having already gone so far I approached a
little nearer and declared the purpose of my visit.
He would have to come at once with me, sleep on
board my ship, and to-morrow, with the first of the
ebb, he would give me his assistance in getting my
ship down to the sea, without steam. A six-hun-
dred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I pro-
posed to give him eighteen dollars for his local
knowledge; and all the time I was speaking he
kept on considering attentively the various aspects
of the banana, holding first one side up to his eye,
then the other.
"You've forgotten to apologise," he said at last
with extreme precision. "Not being a gentleman
yourself, you don't know apparently when you in-
trude upon a gentleman. I am one. I wish you to
understand that when I am in funds I don't work,
and now . . ."
I would have pronounced him perfectly sober
hadn't he paused in great concern to try and brush
a hole off the knee of his trousers.
"I have money--and friends. Every gentle-
man has. Perhaps you would like to know my
friend? His name is Falk. You could borrow
some money. Try to remember. F-A-L-K, Falk."
Abruptly his tone changed. "A noble heart," he
said muzzily.
"Has Falk been giving you some money?" I
asked, appalled by the detailed finish of the dark
plot.
"Lent me, my good man, not given me. Lent,"
he corrected suavely. "Met me taking the air
last evening, and being as usual anxious to oblige
-- Hadn't you better go to the devil out of my
compound?"
And upon this, without other warning, he let
fly with the banana which missed my head, and took
the constable just under the left eye. He rushed
at the miserable Johnson, stammering with fury.
They fell. . . . But why dwell on the wretched-
ness, the breathlessness, the degradation, the sense-
lessness, the weariness, the ridicule and humiliation
and--and--the perspiration, of these moments? I
dragged the ex-hussar off. He was like a wild
beast. It seems he had been greatly annoyed at
losing his free afternoon on my account. The gar-
den of his bungalow required his personal atten-
tion, and at the slight blow of the banana the brute
in him had broken loose. We left Johnson on his
back, still black in the face, but beginning to kick
feebly. Meantime, the big woman had remained
sitting on the ground, apparently paralysed with
extreme terror.
For half an hour we jolted inside our rolling
box, side by side, in profound silence. The ex-ser-
geant was busy staunching the blood of a long
scratch on his cheek. "I hope you're satisfied," he
said suddenly. "That's what comes of all that
tomfool business. If you hadn't quarrelled with
that tugboat skipper over some girl or other, all
this wouldn't have happened."
"You heard THAT story?" I said.
