in a comically aggressive manner. He was totally unmoral and lovable; I
would have liked to give him bread, sugar, carrots. But life is a stern
thing and the sense of duty the only safe guide. So I steeled my heart
and from my elevated position on the bridge I ordered the men to fling
themselves upon him in a body.

The elderly serang, emitting a strange inarticulate cry, gave the
example. He was an excellent petty officer--very competent indeed, and a
moderate opium smoker. The rest of them in one great rush smothered that
pony. They hung on to his ears, to his mane, to his tail; they lay in
piles across his back, seventeen in all. The carpenter, seizing the hook
of the cargo-chain, flung himself on top of them. A very satisfactory
petty officer too, but he stuttered. Have you ever heard a light-yellow,
lean, sad, earnest Chinaman stutter in pidgin-English? It's very weird
indeed. He made the eighteenth. I could not see the pony at all; but
from the swaying and heaving of that heap of men I knew that there was
something alive inside.

From the wharf Almayer hailed in quavering tones:

"Oh, I say!"

Where he stood he could not see what was going on on deck unless perhaps
the tops of the men's heads; he could only hear the scuffle, the mighty
thuds, as if the ship were being knocked to pieces. I looked over: "What
is it?"

"Don't let them break his legs," he entreated me plaintively.

"Oh, nonsense! He's all right now. He can't move."