There were several of these dormitories, each of them divided by bulkheads, uncarpeted, and containing the same kind of bedsteads, every one bearing a number at its head. The Javanese troupe occupied one of these dormitories, the men sleeping on one side of the bulkhead and the women on the other. I looked for their luggage, but could find nothing but a fiddle and an old sword. I think, if the public had seen where these musicians sleep, they would reckon the sight stranger than any other part of the performance these Eastern people were giving. There is one dormitory, however, upstairs filled with cabins similar to what they have at the old Sailors’ Home at Belvedere. These are occupied, I was told, by the better class of Asiatics.
“Why,” I was told, “Japanese officers, stewards, Chinese carpenters, native doctors, and the like.”
These are the “dignity men.” They have a little room in which they may dine apart from the Lascars, Kanakas, John Chinamen, and the others; but, somehow, they don’t seem to value exclusiveness, for most of them will quit their table to join the pigtails and half-castes in the big eating-room downstairs, where they find a relish in their rice and fish which appears to be wanting in the dishes in the other apartment. In one of the dormitories we came across a Javanese--one of the troupe--sitting cross-legged on his bed, ill with a cold in the head. His unsmoked pipe lay by his side, and he was listlessly handling some pieces of printed calico, though the use he meant to put them to I could not divine. There is a no more melancholy object than a coloured man suffering from a bad cold in the head. I saw him shiver, and then roll his eyes--black as ebony set in orange--upon the window, and I thought to myself, “How this harmless, coloured man, who speaks nothing but Javanese, and who belongs to a country where the air is radiant with beautiful birds and fragrant with delicious fruits, must enjoy the climate of the West India Dock Road!”
We struggled to impart sympathy by several kinds of gestures and motions, but it would not do; we could not get further than alarming him, and so we left him. In another dormitory we found a Ceylon man, a Madrassee Lascar, and a Japanese. The Ceylon man was a very handsome fellow, his hair parted down the middle, and he had as fine a pair of eyes as ever I saw in the human countenance, regular features, and a wonderfully good figure. He was reading an English book, and spoke English so well that, what with his correct utterance, the colour of his skin, and his striking face, a misgiving seized me.