Noon was announced by an access of activity among the deck hands, who bestirred themselves to eat their thick pink porridge of cooked millet, dipping fingers into the common bowl. They were a chattering, good-humoured crowd, clad in the remains of blue serge with white beretta-shaped caps on their shiny black heads.
Changalilo became visible threading his way through them with a plate of soup in each hand. With lunch he brought a tale of violence and interference on the part of the lean Indian passenger. A rambling story, like all native plaints, it was, starting from the moment of reaching the Mimi and leading from borrowed pans and stolen cutlery to high words that ended in a blow.
Dick's nerves had been set on edge by the heat and by anxiety over the engines. He would not listen to advice to follow Gallio. He had always hated, he said, the Indians in Africa, low-caste pedlars battening on the ignorant native, and he wasn't going to stand for any interference with his servants. He strode angrily down the hot iron deck, his white coat flapping. The deck hands followed in a curious mob.
Norah heard his voice raised in the stern, angry and a little shrill.
'I found the brute squatting half naked on his hatch,' he reported later, 'eating rice and spilling it into his beard. I asked him if he understood English, and he bowed in a condescending sort of way. That made me lose my temper a bit and I told him if he didn't leave our boys alone, I'd pitch him into the lake. The swine didn't stir a muscle except to smile. A nasty quiet sort of smile. It made me wild to see him sitting there, cross-legged and grinning, as if he'd bought the ship, and I told him to get up when a white man spoke to him. Again he didn't move, but went on picking some grains of rice out of his beard. He even had the cheek to close his eyes as if he were tired.
'That was a trifle too much, and I took him by the scruff, lifting him none too gently on to his feet. I was going to give him a good cuffing, but he slid out of my hand like a snake, and disappeared behind the galley. By his face as he went, I shouldn't say he was exactly brimming over with brotherly love.... I'd have followed him, but it wouldn't have looked dignified.'
'I'm jolly glad you didn't,' said Norah. 'He might have stuck a knife into you. Do be careful, Dick.'
'I'd like to see him try,' said Dick, 'but pluck's not his strong suit ... the odd thing was the way the crew seemed to side with him. Usually the nigger hates the Hindoo, but these blighters looked upset when I went for the swine.'
Dick was a bit upset himself. No one cares to feel he has played a poorish part. It needed all Norah's admiration to restore his equanimity, and the physical contact of her cool white hand.
If Norah's hand was cool, it was the only thing on board the boat in that condition. For, as the day wore on, the heat of the failing engines, added to the blaze of the sun, was intolerable. The sickly smell of hot oil filled the nostrils; the dazzle off the water scorched the eyeballs. Mirage with a magician's wand lifted island and headland off the horizon as the lake took a colour of deepest emerald, its surface networked irregularly with violet shadows.