A serang of lascars, with
whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the
baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a
name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in the hearer.
'O Serang, is that man a fool?'
'Very foolish, sahib. He comes from Surat. He only comes for his food's
sake.'
The serang grinned; the Surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and
the voices that called: 'Lower away! Stop her!' were as familiar as the
friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along
the deck. But for the passage of a few impertinent years, I should have
gone without hesitation to share their rice. Serangs used to be very
kind to little white children below the age of caste. Most familiar of
all was the ship itself. It had slipped my memory, nor was there
anything in the rates charged to remind me, that single-screws still
lingered in the gilt-edged passenger trade.
Some North Atlantic passengers accustomed to real ships made the
discovery, and were as pleased about it as American tourists at
Stratford-on-Avon.
'Oh, come and see!' they cried. 'She has one screw - only one screw!
Hear her thump! And have you seen their old barn of a saloon? And
the officers' library? It's open for two half-hours a day week-days and
one on Sundays. You pay a dollar and a quarter deposit on each book. We
wouldn't have missed this trip for anything. It's like sailing with
Columbus.'
They wandered about - voluble, amazed, and happy, for they were getting
off at Port Said.
I explored, too. From the rough-ironed table-linen, the thick
tooth-glasses for the drinks, the slummocky set-out of victuals at
meals, to the unaccommodating regulations in the curtainless cabin,
where they had not yet arrived at bunk-edge trays for morning tea, time
and progress had stood still with the P. & O. To be just, there were
electric-fan fittings in the cabins, but the fans were charged extra;
and there was a rumour, unverified, that one could eat on deck or in
one's cabin without a medical certificate from the doctor. All the rest
was under the old motto: 'Quis separabit' - 'This is quite separate
from other lines.'
'After all,' said an Anglo-Indian, whom I was telling about civilised
ocean travel, 'they don't want you Egyptian trippers. They're sure of
us, because - - ' and he gave me many strong reasons connected with
leave, finance, the absence of competition, and the ownership of the
Bombay foreshore.
'But it's absurd,' I insisted. 'The whole concern is out of date.
There's a notice on my deck forbidding smoking and the use of naked
lights, and there's a lascar messing about the hold-hatch outside my
cabin with a candle in a lantern.'
Meantime, our one-screw tub thumped gingerly toward Port Said, because
we had no mails aboard, and the Mediterranean, exhausted after severe
February hysterics, lay out like oil.
