The poetic power, the wonderful visualising imagination of a dark race, that had peopled their forests with marvellous pagan deities was awake, revelling in her soul. The tropical moonbeams that poured through the grog shanty’s vine-clad window crept across her dancing eyes and head of bronzed curls as she swayed and chanted on.
“Well, I’m blowed! if it don’t beat all,” ejaculated the half-mesmerised shellbacks. Waylao’s performance had created an atmosphere that affected them strangely. “Is visions abart,” said Grimes in an awestruck voice.
“My dear Gawd, ain’t she bewtifool!” he murmured to himself as he licked his parched lips and called for a “deep-sea” beer.
At the sound of the men’s voices the spell was broken. The half-caste girl abruptly ceased to dance. With the sight of reality so grim-looking around her, and the disenchantment of her own senses came a sense of shame. For a moment she gazed at the men before her with a bewildered stare, then stooped and picked up her little basket.
“Waal, Wayee, I guess I never seed yer dance like that ’ere afore,” said Uncle Sam.
“Why, blimey, kiddie, if I had yer in London town I’d put yer before a top-note audience, and make yer blooming fortoone and [sotto voce] me hone fortoon too,” said the late jockey, Mr Slimes.
Grimes went to the bar and ordered a glass of the best lime-juice; he handed it to Waylao with a trembling hand. His clumsy courtesy was almost pathetic; his half-opened mouth reminded me in some mysterious way of the pathetic spout of a tea-pot. The shellbacks winked and nudged each other, for the look in Grimes’s eyes was unmistakable—he had fallen in love.
Grimes noticed the manner of the men. He returned to his tub, and gave them that inimitable, contemptuous Cockney sidelong glance, which is accompanied by a little jerk of the head, that defiance, that imperturbable disdain, and the genius required to inflict it upon one whom one may hate, which is the sole prerogative of Cockneys. Men of all races throughout the world have sought to imitate that Cockney glance, but only to end in inevitable, miserable failure.
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