THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG
[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN& Co.]
If you consider the circumstances of the case, it was the only thingthat he could do. But Pambe Serang has been hanged by the neck till heis dead, and Nurkeed is dead also.
Three years ago, when the Elsass-Lothringen steamer Saarbruck wascoaling at Aden and the weather was very hot indeed, Nurkeed, the bigfat Zanzibar stoker who fed the second right furnace thirty feet downin the hold, got leave to go ashore. He departed a 'Seedee boy,' as theycall the stokers; he returned the full-blooded Sultan of Zanzibar--HisHighness Sayyid Burgash, with a bottle in each hand. Then he sat on thefore-hatch grating, eating salt fish and onions, and singing the songsof a far country. The food belonged to Pambe, the Serang or head man ofthe lascar sailors. He had just cooked it for himself, turned to borrowsome salt, and when he came back Nurkeed's dirty black fingers werespading into the rice.
A serang is a person of importance, far above a stoker, though thestoker draws better pay. He sets the chorus of 'Hya! Hulla! Hee-ah!Heh!' when the captain's gig is pulled up to the davits; he heavesthe lead too; and sometimes, when all the ship is lazy, he puts onhis whitest muslin and a big red sash, and plays with the passengers'children on the quarter-deck. Then the passengers give him money, and hesaves it all up for an orgie at Bombay or Calcutta, or Pulu Penang. 'Ho!you fat black barrel, you're eating my food!' said Pambe, in the OtherLingua Franca that begins where the Levant tongue stops, and runs fromPort Said eastward till east is west, and the sealing-brigs of theKurile Islands gossip with the strayed Hakodate junks.
'Son of Eblis, monkey-face, dried shark's liver, pigman, I am the SultanSayyid Burgash, and the commander of all this ship. Take away yourgarbage;' and Nurkeed thrust the empty pewter rice-plate into Pambe'shand.
Pambe beat it into a basin over Nurkeed's woolly head. Nurkeed drew HISsheath-knife and stabbed Pambe in the leg. Pambe drew his sheath-knife;but Nurkeed dropped down into the darkness of the hold and spat throughthe grating at Pambe, who was staining the clean fore-deck with hisblood.
Only the white moon saw these things; for the officers were lookingafter the coaling, and the passengers were tossing in their closecabins. 'All right,' said Pambe--and went forward to tie up his leg--'wewill settle the account later on.'
He was a Malay born in India: married once in Burma, where his wife hada cigar-shop on the Shwe Dagon road; once in Singapore, to a Chinesegirl; and once in Madras, to a Mahomedan woman who sold fowls. TheEnglish sailor cannot, owing to postal and telegraph facilities,marry as profusely as he used to do; but native sailors can, beinguninfluenced by the barbarous inventions of the Western savage. Pambewas 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 hadbeen drawn and food spoiled.
Next morning Nurkeed rose with a blank mind. He was no longer Sultanof Zanzibar, but a very hot stoker. So he went on deck and openedhis jacket to the morning breeze, till a sheath-knife came like aflying-fish and stuck into the woodwork of the cook's galley half aninch from his right armpit. He ran down below before his time, tryingto 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 theirmidst, and, being a placid man with a large regard for his own skin, heopened negotiations, saying, 'Men of the ship, last night I was drunk,and this morning I know that I behaved unseemly to some one or anotherof you. Who was that man, that I may meet him face to face and say thatI was drunk?'
Pambe measured the distance to Nurkeed's naked breast. If he sprang athim he might be tripped up, and a blind blow at the chest sometimes onlymeans a gash on the breast-bone. Ribs are difficult to thrust betweenunless the subject be asleep. So he said nothing; nor did the otherlascars. Their faces immediately dropped all expression, as is thecustom of the Oriental when there is killing on the carpet or any chanceof trouble. Nurkeed looked long at the white eyeballs. He was onlyan African, and could not read characters. A big sigh--almost agroan--broke from him, and he went back to the furnaces. The lascarstook up the conversation where he had interrupted it. They talked of thebest methods of cooking rice.
Nurkeed suffered considerably from lack of fresh air during the run toBombay. 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 footof his head, and an apparently firm-lashed grating on which he set hisfoot, began to turn over with the intention of dropping him on the casedcargo fifteen feet below; and one insupportable night the sheath-knifedropped from the fo'c's'le, and this time it drew blood. So Nurkeedmade complaint; and, when the Saarbruck reached Bombay, fled and buriedhimself among eight hundred thousand people, and did not sign articlestill 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 theSpicheren to Hongkong, because he realised that all play and no workgives Jack a ragged shirt. In the foggy China seas he thought a greatdeal of Nurkeed, and, when Elsass-Lothringen steamers lay in port withthe Spicheren, inquired after him and found he had gone to England viathe Cape, on the Gravelotte. Pambe came to England on the Worth. TheSpicheren met her by the Nore Light. Nurkeed was going out with theSpicheren to the Calicut coast.
'Want to find a friend, my trap-mouthed coal-scuttle?' said a gentlemanin the mercantile service. 'Nothing easier. Wait at the Nyanza Dockstill he comes. Every one comes to the Nyanza Docks. Wait, you poorheathen.' The gentleman spoke truth. There are three great doors in theworld where, if you stand long enough, you shall meet any one you wish.The head of the Suez Canal is one, but there Death comes also; CharingCross Station is the second--for inland work; and the Nyanza Docks isthe third. At each of these places are men and women looking eternallyfor those who will surely come. So Pambe waited at the docks. Time wasno object to him; and the wives could wait, as he did from day to day,week to week, and month to month, by the Blue Diamond funnels, the RedDot smoke-stacks, the Yellow Streaks, and the nameless dingy gypsies ofthe sea that loaded and unloaded, jostled, whistled, and roared inthe everlasting fog. When money failed, a kind gentleman told Pambe tobecome a Christian; and Pambe became one with great speed, getting hisreligious teachings between ship and ship's arrival, and six or sevenshillings a week for distributing tracts to mariners. What the faithwas Pambe did not in the least care; but he knew if he said 'NativeKi-lis-ti-an, Sar' to men with long black coats he might get a fewcoppers; and the tracts were vendible at a little public-house thatsold shag by the 'dottel,' which is even smaller weight than the'half-screw,' which is less than the half-ounce, and a most profitableretail trade.
But after eight months Pambe fell sick with pneumonia, contracted fromlong standing still in slush; and much against his will he was forced tolie down in his two-and-sixpenny room raging against Fate.
The kind gentleman sat by his bedside, and grieved to find that Pambetalked in strange tongues, instead of listening to good books, andalmost seemed to become a benighted heathen again--till one day he wasroused from semi-stupor by a voice in the street by the dock-head. 'Myfriend--he,' whispered Pambe. 'Call now--call Nurkeed. Quick! God hassent him!'
'He wanted one of his own race,' said the kind gentleman; and, goingout, he called 'Nurkeed!' at the top of his voice. An excessivelycoloured man in a rasping white shirt and brand-new slops, a shininghat, and a breastpin, turned round. Many voyages had taught Nurkeed howto spend his money and made him a citizen of the world.
'Hi! Yes!' said he, when the situation was explained. 'Commandhim--black nigger--when I was in the Saarbruck. Ole Pambe, good olePambe. Dam lascar. Show him up, Sar;' and he followed into the room. Oneglance told the stoker what the kind gentleman had overlooked. Pambe wasdesperately poor. Nurkeed drove his hands deep into his pockets, thenadvanced with clenched fists on the sick, shouting, 'Hya, Pambe. Hya!Hee-ah! Hulla! Heh! Takilo! Takilo! Make fast aft, Pambe. You
know,Pambe. You know me. Dekho, jee! Look! Dam big fat lazy lascar!'
Pambe beckoned with his left hand. His right was under his pillow.Nurkeed removed his gorgeous hat and stooped over Pambe till he couldcatch a faint whisper. 'How beautiful!' said the kind gentleman. 'Howthese Orientals love like children!'
'Spit him out,' said Nurkeed, leaning over Pambe yet more closely.
'Touching the matter of that fish and onions--' said Pambe--and sent theknife home under the edge of the rib-bone upwards and forwards.
There was a thick sick cough, and the body of the African slid slowlyfrom the bed, his clutching hands letting fall a shower of silver piecesthat ran across the room.
'Now I can die!' said Pambe.
But he did not die. He was nursed back to life with all the skillthat money could buy, for the Law wanted him; and in the end he grewsufficiently healthy to be hanged in due and proper form.
Pambe did not care particularly; but it was a sad blow to the kindgentleman.