"By God! A specimen for true!" he breathed, incredulous. "Zimballo," he added in his drawl, slow and acid, "you're getting infernally damned careless. Since when has this front room been free to any greasy lascar that comes along?"
The fat man went a rich shade of magenta.
"I can' help if he shoves in on me! 'Ow can I help?"
"He wouldn't shove in by chance—on his nerve."
"Tha's it! Tha's jus' what he done, sir. Nerve! He come after drink, and you know what he brings along with him—to buy off me? Eh—what?" Zimballo blew out his wrath. "Twenty-five Batavia cents!... Besides a lid'l fool parrot to do juggle-trick work!"
"Drink? Ah-ha. Likely enough too.... But how does he manage to call for 'em? Can he talk anything human, at least?"
And here, having confirmed his perception of the victim, Silva drove home the attack.
"Hey, you fella yonder. Bugis, Sula man, sea gypsy—whichever's your misbegotten stripe—suppose you speak'um. What pidgin belong you? Where you hail from, anyway?"
Mr. Merry stood there before them, dazed and helpless. In one hand he held his rejected coin; in the other the lorikeet's cage and a few trifles wrapped with a kerchief. He knew what these people meant. He was not so far gone as to miss what mockery was being put upon him in savage contempt, and how it measured the distance he had traveled and the depth to which he had sunk. But his head was humming like a pressure gauge, and his body was banked with unslaked clinkers, and he made his effort as best he could.
"Friends," he said, swaying on his feet. "I don't—I don't mind if somebody kindly will set me up to a bracer. I'm passing through to Amboyna; dropped off a prau up the coast this morning.... It's true I do a bit with sleight o' hand to pay my way, but I had no luck this trip and I am asking.... Brandy. Arrack or sagueir, if you say so. It's—it's quite a while since I had any. I—I want it pretty bad."