Yet another, the pick of all the East rooms, before we have done with
blue water. Most of the nations of the earth are at issue under a
stretch of white awning above a crowded deck. The cause of the dispute,
a deep copper bowl foil of rice and fried onions, is upset in the
foreground. Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans--the
whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black--are twisting and
writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald
turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow
ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and
children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half
protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and
plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, brass and copper
_hukas_, silver opium pipes, Chinese playing cards, and properties
enough to drive half-a-dozen artists wild. In the centre of the crowd of
furious half-naked men, the fat bare back of a Burman, tattooed from
collar-bone to waist-cloth with writhing patterns of red and blue
devils, holds the eye first. It is a wicked back. Beyond it is the
flicker of a Malay _kris_. A blue, red, and yellow macaw chained to a
stanchion spreads his wings against the sun in an ecstasy of terror.
Half-a-dozen red-gold pines and bananas have been knocked down from
their ripening-places, and are lying between the feet of the fighters.
One pine has rolled against the long brown fur of a muzzled bear. His
owner, a bushy-bearded Hindu, kneels over the animal, his body-cloth
thrown clear of a hard brown arm, his fingers ready to loose the
muzzle-strap. The ship's cook, in blood-stained white, watches from the
butcher's shop, and a black Zanzibari stoker grins through the bars of
the engine-room-hatch, one ray of sun shining straight into his pink
mouth. The officer of the watch, a red-whiskered man, is kneeling down
on the bridge to peer through the railings, and is shifting a long, thin