He went so far as to make up with the monkeys in the trees, and once or twice I caught him condescending to have a game of leap-frog with them. I made up my mind that he had determined to turn over a new leaf, but the syce shook his head knowingly and said:—
“Lepas all the time thinking. He thinks bad things.”
And so it proved.
One night the mistress gave a very big dinner party. The high official from next door was there. So were several other high officials of Singapore, the general commanding her Majesty’s troops, and the foreign consuls and members of Legislative Council.
It was a hot night, and the punkah-wallah outside kept the punkah, or mechanical fan, switching back and forth over our heads with a rapidity that made us fear its ropes would break, as very often happened.
Suddenly there was a crash, and a champagne glass struck squarely in the high official’s soup and spattered it all over his white expanse of shirt front. We all looked up at the punkah. At the same instant a big, soft mango smashed in the high official’s face and changed its ruddy red color to a sickly yellow.
The women screamed, and the men jumped up from the table. Then began a regular fusillade of wine glasses and tropical fruits.
Sometimes they hit the high official from next door, at whom they all seemed to be aimed, but more often they fell upon the table, among the glass and dishes. In a moment everything was in wild confusion, and the mistress’s beautifully decorated table looked as though a bomb had exploded on it.
The Chinese “boys” made a rush for the end of the room, and there, up on the sideboard, among the glass, pelting his enemy, the high official, as fast as he could throw, was Lepas.
A finger bowl struck the butler full in the face, and gave the monkey time to make his escape out into the darkness through the wide-open doors.