Cursed. England George Allan
like to see this toothpick would be stickin’ out of that swine’s ribs!”
“Ah, but you don’t realize the value of the knife, sir,” wheedled Filhiol. “It’s an extraordinarily fine piece of steel, captain, and the carving of the lotus bud on the handle is a little masterpiece. I’d like it for my collection.” He paused, struck by inspiration. “I’ll play you for the knife, sir. Let’s have that drink we were speaking of, and then a few hands of poker. I’ll play you anything I’ve got – my watch, my instrument case, my wages for the voyage, whatever you like – against that kris. Is that a go?”
“Sheer off!” mocked Briggs, raising the blade. The doctor’s eye judged distance. He would grapple, if it came to that. But still he held to craft:
“This is the first time, captain, I ever knew you to be afraid of a good gamble.”
“Afraid? Me, afraid?” shouted the drunken man. “I’ll make you eat those words, sir! The knife against your pay!”
“Done!” said the doctor, stretching out his hand. Briggs took it in a grip that gritted the bones of Filhiol, then for a moment stood blinking, dazed, hiccoughing once or twice. His purpose, vacillant, once more was drawn to the singer. He laughed, with a maudlin catch of the breath.
“Does that gibberish mean anything, doctor?” asked he.
“Never mind, sir,” answered Filhiol. “We’ve got a game to play, and – ”
“Not just yet, sir! That damned native may be laying a curse on me, for all I know. Mr. Scurlock!” he suddenly shouted forward.
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the mate’s voice, through the gloom.
“Send me a Malay – one that can talk United States!”
“Yes, sir!” And Scurlock was heard in converse with the brown men in the waist. Over the rail the captain leaned, staring at the singer and the crowd, the smoky torches, the confused crawling of life in Batu Kawan; and as he stared, he muttered to himself, and twisted at his beard with his left hand – his right still gripped the kris.
“You damned, outrageous blackguard!” the doctor thought. “If I ever get you into your cabin, God curse me if I don’t throw enough opium into you to keep you quiet till we’re a hundred miles at sea!”
Came the barefoot slatting of a Malay, pad-pad-padding aft, and the sound of a soft-voiced: “Captain Briggs, sar?”
“You the man that Mr. Scurlock sent?” demanded Briggs.
“Yas, sar.”
“All right. Listen to that fellow down there – the one that’s singing!” Briggs laid a hand on the Malay, jerked him to the rail and pointed a thick, angry finger. “Tell me what he’s sayin’! Understand?”
“Yas, sar.”
The Malay put both lean, brown hands on the rail, squinted his gray eyes, impassive as a Buddha’s, and gave attentive ear. To him arose the droning words of the long-drawn, musical cadences:
Arang itou dibasouh dengan ayer
Mawar sakalipoun tiada akan poutih.
Satahoun houdjan di langit ayer latout masakan tawar?
Sebab tiada tahon menari dikatakan tembad.
Tabour bidjian diatas tasik tiada akan toumbounh —
On, on wailed the chant. At last the Malay shook his head, shrugged thin shoulders under his cotton shirt, and cast an uneasy glance at Briggs, looming black-bearded and angry at his side.
“Well, what’s it all about?” demanded the captain, thudding a fist on the rail. “Sayin’ anythin’ about me, or the Silver Fleece? If he is – ”
“No, sar. Nothin’ so, sar.”
“Well, what?”
“He sing about wicked things. About sin. He say – ”
“What does he say, you cinder from the Pit?”
“He say, you take coal, wash him long time, in water of roses, coal never get white. Sin always stay. He say, rain fall long time, one year, ocean never get fresh water. Always salty water. Sin always stay. He say one small piece indigo fall in one jar of goat-milk, spoil all milk, make all milk blue. One sin last all life, always.” The Malay paused, trying to muster his paucity of English. Briggs shook him roughly, bidding him go on, or suffer harm.
“He say if sky will go to fall down, no man can hold him up. Sin always fall down. He say, good seed on land, him grow. Good seed on ocean, him never grow. He say – ”
“That’ll do! Stow your jaw, now!”
“Yas, sar.”
“Get out – go forrard!”
The Malay salaamed, departed. Briggs hailed him again.
“Hey, you!”
“Yes, sar?” answered the brown fellow, wheeling.
“What’s your name – if pigs have names?”
“Mahmud Baba, sar,” the Malay still replied with outward calm. Yet to call a follower of the Prophet “pig” could not by any invention of the mind have been surpassed in the vocabulary of death-inviting insult.
“My Mud Baby, eh? Good name – that’s a slick one!” And Briggs roared into a laugh of drunken discord. He saw not that the Malay face was twitching; he saw not the stained teeth in grimaces of sudden hate. Gloom veiled this. “I’ll remember that,” he went on. “My Mud Baby. Well now, Mud Baby, back to your sty!”
“Captain Briggs,” the doctor put in, fair desperate to get this brute below-decks ere blood should flow. “Captain, if you were as anxious as I am for a good stiff game of poker and a stiffer drink, you wouldn’t be wasting your breath on Malay rubbish. Shall we mix a toddy for the first one?”
“Good idea, sir!” Briggs answered, his eyes brightening. He clapped Filhiol on the shoulder, so that the man reeled toward the after-companion.
Down the stairway they went, the doctor cursing under his breath, Briggs clumping heavily, singing a snatch of low ribaldry from a Bombay gambling-hell. They entered the cabin. To them, as the door closed, still droned the voice of the minstrel on the bund:
Sebab tiada tahon menari dikatakan tembad,
Tabour bidjian diatas tasik tiada akan toumbounh.
One drop of indigo spoils the whole jar of milk;
Seed sown upon the ocean never grows.
CHAPTER III
SCURLOCK GOES ASHORE
Sweltering though the cabin was, it seemed to Dr. Filhiol a blessèd haven of refuge from the probabilities of grevious harm that menaced, without. With a deep breath of relief he saw Briggs lay the kris on the cabin table. Himself, he sat down at that table, and while Briggs stood there half-grinning with white teeth through black beard, took up the knife.
He studied it, noting its keen, double edge, its polished steel, the deft carving of the lotus-bud handle. Then, as he laid it down, he offered:
“It’s a genuine antique. I’ll go you a month’s wages against it.”
“You’ll do nothin’ of the kind, sir!” ejaculated Briggs, and took it up again. “The voyage, you said, and it’s that or nothing!”
The doctor bit his close-razored lip. Then he nodded. Filhiol was shrewd, and sober; Briggs, rash and drunk. Yes, for the sake of getting that cursed knife out of the captain’s hands, Filhiol would accept.
“Put it out of harm’s way, sir, and let’s deal the cards,” said he. “It’s poisoned. We don’t want it where we might get scratched, by accident.”
“Poisoned, sir?” demanded Briggs, running a horny thumb along the point.