“Hallo!” said Bob, going up. “You are not a Malay?”
“No, sahib: I Kling, from Madras. Sell fruit—flowers. This Malaya man.”
He pointed to a flat-nosed, high-cheek-boned man with him, who was dressed in the inevitable plaid sarong of bright colours, and wore a natty little plaited-grass cap upon his head.
Bob turned, and saw that this man carried a kris stuck in the folds of his sarong, which had slipped from the hilt, and he was now busy with a little brass box and a leaf. This leaf of one of the pepper plants he was smearing with a little creamy-looking mixed lime from the brass box, on which he placed a fragment of betel-nut, rolled it in the leaf, thrust it into his mouth, which it seemed to distort, and then began to expectorate a nasty red juice, with which he stained the pure water.
“Hope you feel better now,” said Bob, who, in his interest in the Malay’s proceedings, had forgotten all about the squabble with Tom Long. “Ugh! the dirty brute! Chewing tobacco’s bad enough; but as for that—I’d just like to get the armourer’s tongs and fetch that out of your mouth, and then swab it clean.”
“No speak English; Malaya man,” said the Kling laughing. “Chew betel, very good, sahib. Like try?”
“Try! No,” said Bob, with a gesture of disgust. “Here, I say; we’ll buy some fruit directly: let’s have a look at your kris.”
The Kling, who seemed to have quite adopted the customs of the people amongst whom he was, hesitated for a moment, looking suspiciously at the two lads, and then took the weapon he wore from his waist, and held it out.
Bob took it, and Tom Long closed up, being as much interested as the midshipman.
“I say, Tom Long,” the latter said, with a laugh, “which of us two will get the first taste of that brown insect’s sting?”