“Ready, doctor, ready. We’ll find him and bring him back.”
Chapter Three.
How I made my first Charge with a Lance.
We had not been a day at sea before our black follower was in trouble. As a matter of course the men began joking and teasing him about the awkward manner in which he wore his sailor’s suit, asking him if it wouldn’t be better to have a coat of white paint over him instead, as being cooler and less trouble, and the like.
All this Jimmy took with the greatest of equanimity, grasping the men’s meaning very well, and very often throwing himself flat on the deck and squirming about, which was his way of showing his delight. But it was absolutely necessary that all this banter should come from the Englishmen. If one of the Malay sailors attempted such a familiarity, Jimmy was furious.
“Hi—wup—wup!” he exclaimed to me after one of these bouts; “dirty fellow, brown fellow no good. Not white fellow, not black fellow. Bad for nothing.”
One afternoon the doctor and I were sitting forward watching the beautiful heaving waves, and talking over the plans we intended to follow when we landed, and we had agreed that a small party was far more likely to succeed than a large one, being more suitable for passing unnoticed through the country. We had just arrived at the point of determining that we would engage six natives at a friendly shore village to carry our baggage and act as guides, when the noise of some trouble aft arose, and we turned to see a Malay sailor lying upon the deck, and Jimmy showing his teeth fiercely, waddy in hand, after having given the man what he afterwards called “a topper on de headums.”
We ran up, fearing more mischief, for Jimmy could fight fiercely when roused; and we were just in time, for as the doctor reached the Malay the man had scrambled up, drawn his knife, and rushed at the black. But before he could strike, the doctor showed me what wonderful strength of arm he possessed, by seizing the Malay by the waistband and arm and literally swinging him over the low bulwark into the sea.