'The whole concern is out of date.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.
I had some talk with a Scotch quartermaster who complained that lascars
are not what they used to be, owing to their habit (but it has existed
since the beginning) of signing on as a clan or family - all sorts
together.
The serang said that, for his part, he had noticed no difference in
twenty years. 'Men are always of many kinds, sahib. And that is because
God makes men this and that. Not all one pattern - not by any means all
one pattern.' He told me, too, that wages were rising, but the price of
ghee, rice, and curry-stuffs was up, too, which was bad for wives and
families at Porbandar. 'And that also is thus, and no talk makes it
otherwise.' After Suez he would have blossomed into thin clothes and
long talks, but the bitter spring chill nipped him, as the thought of
partings just accomplished and work just ahead chilled the Anglo-Indian
contingent. Little by little one came at the outlines of the old
stories - a sick wife left behind here, a boy there, a daughter at
school, a very small daughter trusted to friends or hirelings, certain
separation for so many years and no great hope or delight in the future.
It was not a nice India that the tales hinted at.
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