On the contrary, he pricked them forward
in a comically aggressive manner. He was totally unmoral and lovable; I
would have liked to give him bread, sugar, carrots. But life is a stern
thing and the sense of duty the only safe guide. So I steeled my heart,
and from my elevated position on the bridge I ordered the men to fling
themselves upon him in a body.
The elderly serang, emitting a strange, inarticulate cry, gave the
example. He was an excellent petty officer--very competent, indeed, and
a moderate opium-smoker. The rest of them in one great rush smothered
that pony. They hung on to his ears, to his mane, to his tail; they lay
in piles across his back, seventeen in all. The carpenter, seizing
the hook of the cargo-chain, flung himself on the top of them. A very
satisfactory petty officer, too, but he stuttered. Have you ever heard
a light-yellow, lean, sad, earnest Chinaman stutter in Pidgin-English?
It's very weird, indeed. He made the eighteenth. I could not see the
pony at all; but from the swaying and heaving of that heap of men I knew
that there was something alive inside.
From the wharf Almayer hailed, in quavering tones:
"Oh, I say!"
Where he stood he could not see what was going on on deck, unless,
perhaps, the tops of the men's heads; he could only hear the scuffle,
the mighty thuds, as if the ship were being knocked to pieces.
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