“He say if sky will go to fall down, no man can hold him up. Sin always fall down. He say, good seed on land, him grow. Good seed on ocean, him never grow. He say—”
The Malay salaamed, departed. Briggs hailed him again.
“Yes, sar?” answered the brown fellow, wheeling.
“Mahmud Baba, sar,” the Malay still replied with outward calm. Yet to call a follower of the Prophet “pig” could not by any invention of the mind have been surpassed in the vocabulary of death-inviting insult.
“My Mud Baby, eh? Good name—that’s a slick one!” And Briggs roared into a laugh of drunken discord. He saw not that the Malay face was twitching; he saw not the stained teeth in grimaces of sudden hate. Gloom veiled this. “I’ll remember that,” he went on. “My Mud Baby. Well now, Mud Baby, back to your sty!”
“Captain Briggs,” the doctor put in, fair desperate to get this brute below-decks ere blood should flow. “Captain, if you were as anxious as I am for a good stiff game of poker and a stiffer drink, you wouldn’t be wasting your breath on Malay rubbish. Shall we mix a toddy for the first one?”
“Good idea, sir!” Briggs answered, his eyes brightening. He clapped Filhiol on the shoulder, so that the man reeled toward the after-companion.
Down the stairway they went, the doctor cursing under his breath, Briggs clumping heavily, singing a snatch of low ribaldry from a Bombay gambling-hell. They entered the cabin. To them, as the door closed, still droned the voice of the minstrel on the bund:
_Sebab tiada tahon menari dikatakan tembad, Tabour bidjian diatas tasik tiada akan toumbounh._
One drop of indigo spoils the whole jar of milk; Seed sown upon the ocean never grows.
Sweltering though the cabin was, it seemed to Dr. Filhiol a blessèd haven of refuge from the probabilities of grevious harm that menaced, without. With a deep breath of relief he saw Briggs lay the kris on the cabin table. Himself, he sat down at that table, and while Briggs stood there half-grinning with white teeth through black beard, took up the knife.
He studied it, noting its keen, double edge, its polished steel, the deft carving of the lotus-bud handle. Then, as he laid it down, he offered:
“It’s a genuine antique. I’ll go you a month’s wages against it.”