I dashed after the flying Norseman, and overtook him at the entrance to the public playground.
The center of the cricket-field was a wild jumble of animal-cages, rolls of canvas, scattered tent-poles, clowns, jockeys, snake-charmers, and everything else that goes to make up a traveling show. Around it a growing crowd of natives were peering, pushing, chattering, falling back in terror when the angry circus men shook their tent-stakes at them, but sweeping out upon the scattered trappings again as soon as the latter had passed.
We fought our way through the crowd into the center of the mass. “Do you want help?” we shouted to the circus manager. He was a powerful Irishman, with a head like a cannon-ball, and a face and jaw that looked as if he were ready for a fight. Tugging at a heap of canvas, he peered at us between his outstretched legs and shouted: “Yes! I want four min! White wans! If ye want the job, bring two more.”
We turned to look at the sea of faces about us. There was not a white man in the crowd.
“Ve look by Almeida’s!” shouted the Swede, as we battled our way through the mob. Before we could escape, however, I caught sight of a familiar slouch hat well back in the crowd. A moment later Askins stood beside us. Behind him came Dick Haywood. The four of us dashed back to the boss.
“Well!” he roared, “I pay a quid a week! Want it?”
“A pound a week,” muttered Askins. “That’s more’n two chips a day. Aye! We’ll take it.”
“All right! Jump on to that center pole an’ get ’er up. If these natives get in the way, thump ’em with a tent-pole. Step lively, now!”
We soon had a space roped off. The boss tossed a pickax at me and set me to grubbing holes for the poles that were to hold up the seats. Carefully and evenly I swung the tool up and down, like an old lady; for the natives pressed around me so closely that the least slip would have broken a Singhalese head. To them the sight of a white man doing such work was as astonishing as any of the wonders of the circus. Few of them had ever before seen a European using heavier tools than a pen or pencil. Within an hour the news spread through the city that the circus had brought some “white coolies” to town; and all Colombo and his wife did without the afternoon nap and trooped down to the cricket-field to gaze upon the odd sight of white men doing muscular labor.
The mob followed me as I went from hole to hole. My mates, too, were hindered in their work by the crowd as they carried seat-boards, or sawdust for the ring. Haywood, of the untamed temper, taking the boss at his word, snatched up a tent-pole and struck two natives. Even after that they still crowded around him.