He started to stroll away, though he had no idea of where he was going to, when a swarthy little man unceremoniously sprang in front of him, caught him by the arm and waved him back. Jones had not observed the little man before. The latter had come on board at the same time as the doctor, and perhaps he thought that Jones wanted to disappear from view when it was necessary that he should be visible. Anyhow, he addressed Samuel in a perfectly unintelligible tongue, much to our young Jamaican’s astonishment, and wildly waved his arms. “What you mean?” indignantly demanded Jones, planting his feet firmly on the deck and refusing to move.
The little man appeared to be annoyed, and again poured forth a flood of Spanish. As Jones could not understand what he was saying, and could not possibly guess what he would be at, he concluded that the man was a fool, and said so loudly.
“You seem to be preposterously ignorant!” he exclaimed, addressing his excited aggressor. “You can’t even talk English! What you call you’self—Chinese or Cuban, or what?”
Now the man could not speak English, but he understood just enough of it to grasp the fact that Jones was insulting him. So he again addressed Mr. Jones in a violent manner, and gave him a backward push.
“Look here!” exclaimed Jones. “It’s about time you finish pushing me, you understand? I am not a Colon man, but an English gentleman, an’ if you touch me again I will box the head off you’ body!”
The little man was not daunted; indeed, he appeared to increase in pugnacity. But just then, fortunately, one of the petty officers of the ship, seeing that a serious quarrel was imminent, interfered.
“You’d better not argue with that man,” he said to Jones; “he’s the Captain of the Port.”
“But that is no reason why he should push me,” argued Jones, bent upon establishing at the outset his claim to deferential treatment at the hands of foreigners. “What he push me for?”
“Thought you were doing something you shouldn’t do, I suppose. They are rather funny, these people. There are all sorts of rules you have to obey down here.”
Jones fell back, not at all pleased with his first experience of Panamanian methods. But he waited quietly till the doctor, who was an American official, came up the second-class deck and assured himself that the passengers there had all been vaccinated at home and were suffering from no serious complaints. It took a longer time to examine the deckers: the doctor was very strict with these. But it was all over at last; the officials of the port boarded their respective launches and sped away (Jones following the launch of the Captain of the Port with eyes expressive of unmitigated contempt), and then the ship began to draw towards the dock. The gangways were shoved out, word was passed that the passengers were free to go ashore. Susan and Samuel prepared to land, the latter still fuming over his treatment by a little dark fiery man amongst whose serious offences was his utter inability to speak the English language.