“But do the white man not losing his caste when he is working like coolies?” demanded the youth. “Why is this man work at such? Is he perhaps prisoner that he disgraces himself lower than the keeper of the arrack-shop?”
“Truly, my friend, I not understand,” admitted the older man, a bit sadly, “but I am reading that in sahib’s country he is make the workings of coolie and yet is not coolie.”
There were others besides the native residents whose attention was attracted to the “white coolies.” Here and there in the crowd I caught sight of a European scowling darkly at us; just why, I could not guess, unconscious of having done anything to provoke the ill-will of my race. In due time, however, I learned the cause of their displeasure.
When night fell, all was in readiness for the initial performance; though at the cost of a day’s work that we agreed could not be indulged in more than semi-annually, even for an inducement of “more than two chips.” The tents, large and small, were stretched, the circle of seats complete. Rings, flying apparatus, properties, and lights were ready for use. A half-thousand chairs, reserved for Europeans, had been ranged at the ring side, the cage of the performing lion bolted together, and the ticket booth set up at the entrance. The boss gave vent to a final snarl, called a ’rickshaw, and drove off to his hotel for dinner. Luckily, Askin’s credit was good in the favorite shop across the way. We ate our currie and rice quickly, and returned to stretch out on the grass at the players’ entrance.
Our pipes were barely lighted when two Europeans, dressed in snow-white garments, stepped forward out of the darkness. We recognized in them two Englishmen connected with the Lipton Tea Company.
“It strikes me, me men,” began one, in a high, querulous voice, “that you chaps should know better than to do coolie labor in sight of all the natives of the city.”
“What’s that?” I cried, in my surprise, though I heard Askins chuckling behind me.
“I suppose you chaps have only come to Ceylon,” suggested the other, in a more conciliatory tone. “You probably don’t realize what a different world this is out here. You cawn’t work at manual labor here, you know, the way you can in Hyde Park. Why, you will destroy the prestige of every white man on the island, if—”
“You’ve stirred up a fine kettle of fish already,” burst out the first speaker. “But Arthur, these chaps are not bank clerks. They cawn’t understand the sowt of language you talk to your stenographer, you knoaw. They are only sailors. Let me tell them the trouble.
“Now look heah, me men. This awfternoon my Hindu servant stuck his head in at my office door, and shouted right out for me to go to the cricket ground and see the sahib coolies. By four o’clock he was talking back every time I called him to do an errand. To-night, blawst me, he was so slow in filling my pipe that I had to chuck a boot at him. By to-morrow morning I suppose he’ll tell me to prepare me own bawth, bah Jove. This sort of thing, ye knoaw, is giving the natives the notion that they’re as good as Englishmen.”