Ch. 8: The Limitations of Pambe Serang - Page 2

used to do; but native sailors can, being
uninfluenced by the barbarous inventions of the Western savage. Pambe
was a good husband when he happened to remember the existence of a wife;
but he was also a very good Malay; and it is not wise to offend a Malay,
because he does not forget anything. Moreover, in Pambe's case blood had
been drawn and food spoiled.

Next morning Nurkeed rose with a blank mind. He was no longer Sultan of
Zanzibar, but a very hot stoker. So he went on deck and opened his
jacket to the morning breeze, till a sheath-knife came like a flying-
fish and stuck into the woodwork of the cook's galley half an inch from
his right armpit. He ran down below before his time, trying to remember
what he could have said to the owner of the weapon. At noon, when all
the ship's lascars were feeding, Nurkeed advanced into their midst, and,
being a placid man with a large regard for his own skin, he opened
negotiations, saying, 'Men of the ship, last night I was drunk, and this
morning I know that I behaved unseemly to some one or another of you.
Who was that man, that I may meet him face to face and say that I was
drunk?'

Pambe measured the distance to Nurkeed's naked breast. If he sprang at
him he might be tripped up, and a blind blow at the chest sometimes only
means a gash on the breast-bone. Ribs are difficult to thrust between
unless the subject be asleep. So he said nothing; nor did the other
lascars. Their faces immediately dropped all expression, as is the
custom of the Oriental when there is killing on the carpet or any chance
of trouble. Nurkeed looked long at the white eyeballs. He was only an
African, and could not read characters. A big sigh--almost a groan--
broke from him, and he went back to the furnaces. The lascars took up
the conversation where he had interrupted it. They talked of the best
methods of cooking rice.

Nurkeed suffered considerably from lack of fresh air during the run to
Bombay. He only came on deck to breathe when all the world was about;
and even then a heavy block once dropped from a derrick within a foot of
his head, and an apparently firm-lashed grating on which he set his
foot, began to turn over with the intention of dropping him on the cased
cargo fifteen feet below; and one insupportable night the sheath-knife
dropped from the fo'c's'le, and this time it drew blood. So Nurkeed made
complaint; and, when the Saarbruck reached Bombay, fled and buried
himself among eight hundred thousand people, and did not sign articles
till the ship had been a month gone from the port. Pambe waited too; but
his Bombay wife grew clamorous, and he was forced to sign in the
Spicheren to Hongkong, because he realised that all play and no work
gives Jack a ragged