SAWDUST AND TINSEL IN THE ORIENT
The train rumbled into Colombo in the late afternoon. I made my way at
once through the pattering throng to Almeida’s. In the roofless
dining-room sat Askins, puffing furiously at his clay pipe and
scribbling with a sputtering pen in one of several half-penny notebooks
scattered on the table before him. At the further end lolled the Swede
and two fellow-beachcombers, staring at the writer as at the performer
of some mighty miracle.
“Doing?” grinned the Irishman, in answer to my question. “Oh! Just
another of my tales. You know you can’t knock around British-India for
twenty years without picking up a few things. About the time Ole took
his first bath I began jotting down some of the mix-ups I’ve wandered
into. That lot went to amuse Davy Jones when a tub I was playing second
engineer on threw up the sponge in the Bay of Bengal. Later on I knocked
the best of the yarns together again, and I tear off another now and
then when life gets dull.
“Published? Oh, I may shove them off one of these days on some penny
weekly. But if I don’t, the coroner can have them for his trouble when I
come to furl my mainsheet. He won’t find anything else.”
“Vonderful!” cried Ole, with a Dr. Watson accent, “I haf study in der
school an’ I rhead sometimes a story in der dog-vatch; min der man vitch
can make der stories! Vonderful, by Gott!”
“By the way, Franck,” said Askins, gathering the notebooks together,
“how about the yellow-birds who tried to shave your sky-piece over in
Kandy?”
“Why, who has been telling you—?” I gasped.
“Haven’t heard a word,” replied the Irishman; “but I knew they’d flag
you. How did it turn out?”
I related my experiences with the temple priests.
“It’s an old game out here,” mused Askins. “In the good old days,
whenever one of the boys went broke, it was get converted. Not all
played out yet either. There’s a bunch of one-time beachcombers
scattered among the Burmese monasteries. An old pal of mine wears the
yellow up in Nepal. No graft about him, though. He’s a firm believer.
“Now and then a down-and-outer, especially over Bombay side, turns
Mohammedan. But most of ’em don’t take to the surgical operation, and
the cross-legged one remains the favorite. Of course, there’s always the
missionaries, too, but there’s not much in it for a white man to turn
Christian. There was good money in the Mohammedan game before it was
worked out. There’s a little yet. Of course, you know you won’t get a
red by tying up with the rice-bowlers, but it’s a job for life—if you
behave.”
“Huh! Yank,” roared the Swede, peering at me through the smoke, “you get
burn some, eh, playin’ mit der monkeys in der jungle? Pretty soon you
ban sunstroke. Here, I make you trade.”
He pointed to the tropical helmet on the table before him.
“You’re on,” I responded.
“He ban good hat,” said Ole, proudly; “I get him last week from der
Swede consul. Min he too damn big. What you give?”
For answer I tossed my cap across the table.
“Nah!” protested the Scandinavian, “I sell him for tventy cents or I
take der cap an’ vun coat.”
I mounted to the floor above and returned with a cotton jacket that I
had left in the keeping of Askins.
“How’s this?” I demanded.
“He ban all right,” answered Ole, slipping into it; “der oder vas all
broke by der sleeves.”
I donned the helmet and strolled down to the landing jetty, where “the
boys” were accustomed to gather of an evening to enjoy the only cool
breeze that ever invaded Colombo. Few had been the changes in the
beachcomber ranks during my absence. Amid the drowsy yarning there
sounded often a familiar refrain:—“The circus is coming.” No one knew
just when; but then, one doesn’t worry in Ceylon. If he hasn’t rice, he
eats bananas. If he can’t find work, it is a joy merely to lie in the
shade and breathe.
The publicity of the cricket grounds had led me to seek other
sleeping-quarters. Opposite the shipping-office, in the heart of the
European section, lay Gordon Gardens, a park replete with fountains, gay
flower pots, and grateful shade. By day it was the rendezvous of the
élite of the city, white and black. By night its gates were closed, and
stern placards warned trespassers to beware. Small hindrance these,
however, for in all Colombo I had no better friend than Bobby, who
patroled the flanking street. Under the trees the night dew never fell,
the ocean breeze laughed at the toil of the punkah-wallah, the fountains
gave bathroom privileges, and prowling natives disturbed me no more; for
Bobby was owl-eyed. This new lodging had but one drawback. I must be up
and away with the dawn; for within pea-shooting distance of my chamber
towered the White House of Ceylon, and Governor Blake was reputed an
early riser and no friend of beachcombers.
One by one there drifted ashore in Colombo four fellow-countrymen, who,
following my example, soon won for Gordon Gardens the sub-title
“American Park Hotel.” Model youths, perhaps, would have shunned this
quartet, for each plead guilty to a checkered past. As for myself, I
found them boon companions.
Henderson, the oldest, was a deserter from the Asiatic squadron. Arnold,
middle-aged, laden with the spoils—in drafts—of a political career in
New York, awaited in Ceylon the conclusion of the Japanese-Russian war
before hastening to Port Arthur to open an American saloon.
Down at the point of the breakwater, where we were wont to gather often
for a dip in the brine, I made the acquaintance of Marten. He was a boy
of twenty-five, hailing from Tacoma, Washington. Arriving in the Orient
some years before with a record as a champion swimmer, he had spent two
seasons in diving for pearls on the Coromandel coast. Not one of the
native striplings who surrounded each arriving steamer, clamoring for
pennies, was more nearly amphibious than Marten. It was much more to
watch his submarine feats than to swim that the beachcombers sallied
forth each afternoon from their shady retreats.
We swam cautiously, the rest of us, for the harbor was infested with
sharks. On the day after my arrival, the _Worcestershire_ had buried in
the European cemetery of Colombo the upper half of what had been one of
my companions in the “glory-hole.” The appearance of a pair of black
fins out across the sun-flecked waters was certain to send us scrambling
up the rough face of the breakwater.
[Illustration: The rickshaw men of Colombo]
[Illustration: American wanderers who slept in the Gordon Gardens of
Colombo. Left to right: Arnold, ex-New York ward heeler; myself; “Dick
Haywood”; an English lad; and Marten of Tacoma, Washington]
But not so Marten. While we fled, he swam straight for the coming
monsters of the deep. When they were almost upon him he dived with a
shout of hilarity and a dash of foam into their very midst, to come to
the surface smiling and unscathed, perhaps far out across the harbor,
perhaps under our dangling feet. How he put the sharks to flight no man
knew. The “gang” was divided in its opinion between the assertion of the
swimmer himself that he “tickled ’em under the belly,” and the
conviction of Askins that he had merely to show them his face—for Marten
was not afflicted with manly beauty.
The last member of our party was a bully born on the Bowery, younger in
years than Marten, older in rascality than Henderson. As to his name, he
owned to several, and assured us at the first meeting that “Dick
Haywood” would do well enough for the time being. His chief claim to
fame was his own assertion that he had escaped from Sing Sing after
serving two years of a seven-year sentence. The story of his “get-away,”
with which he often entertained twilight gatherings on the jetty,
smacked of veracity. For all an innate skepticism, I found no reason to
disagree with the conclusion of the “gang” that his “song and dance” was
true. Certainly there was no doubt among his most casual acquaintances
of his ability to get into Sing Sing. He was clever enough, fortune
favoring, to have broken out.
Fleeing his native land, Haywood had brought up in Bombay and, having
enlisted in the British army, was assigned to a garrison in Rajputana.
Obviously, so temperamental a youth must soon weary of the guard duty
and pipe-clay polishing that make up the long, long Indian day of Tommy
Atkins. He engineered a second “get-away.” The enlistment papers and a
buttonless uniform in his bundle certified to this adventure. In the
course of time he reached Calcutta, chiefly through the fortune of
finding himself alone in a compartment of the Northwest Mail with a
Parsee merchant of more worldly wealth than physical prowess. A rumor of
this escapade soon drove him to Madras. There his unconventional habits
again asserted themselves and fortune temporarily deserted him. He was
taken in the bazaars in the act of “weeding the leathers.”
Once more he escaped, this time from a crowded court room, and finding
India no longer attractive, turned southward to Ceylon, hoping to make a
final “get-away” by sea.
Few of “the boys” gave credence to these last tales. But they were true.
For a newcomer in the ranks reported on the day of his arrival, before
he had laid eyes on the culprit, that Madras was placarded with
descriptions—they fitted Haywood exactly—of a man charged with
desertion, robbery, pick-pocketing, and escape from custody.
Awaking penniless on the morning following my return from Kandy, I
decided to investigate a charity system in vogue in British-India.
Kind-hearted sahibs, members of a national association known as the
“Friend-in-Need Society,” maintain in the larger cities a refuge for
stranded Europeans and Eurasians. Above the door of each Society
building appear the initial letters of its title. The inventive
wanderer, for other reasons than this, perhaps, has dubbed the kindly
institution the “Finish.”
In Colombo the Society offered only out-door relief, meal tickets
distributed by its president or secretary. I found the first of these
officials to be the youthful editor of Colombo’s English newspaper, with
offices a ship’s length from Gordon Gardens. Tickets, however, had he
none.
“This office was too blooming handy,” he explained, throwing aside his
blue pencil to mop his brow. “If the hooligans loafing in the Gardens or
on the jetty had an idle hour on their hands, they spent it inventing
tales and strolled up here to see how much they could get out of the
Society by springing them on me. There was more than one of them, too,
that I’d have taken on the staff if he could have dished up as good a
yarn every week. But the thing got to be a fad, and, when I found that a
couple of fellows that applied to me had their pockets full of dibs at
the time, I decided to let the secretary, the Baptist minister, do the
distributing. His parsonage is four miles from the harbor, and the man
that will walk that far in Ceylon deserves all he can get out of him.”
Far out beyond the leper hospital, where putrescent mortals peered
dejectedly through the palings, I came upon the bungalow of the Reverend
Peacock, set well back from the red highway in a grove of palms. Several
old acquaintances, including Askins, had assembled. One of them stood
abjectly, hat in hand, before the judgment-seat at the end of the
veranda.
The secretary was a man of pugilistic build, with the voice of a
side-show barker. His very roar seemed an assertion that he was an
infallible judge of human nature. Yet, strangely enough, he treated most
liberally the professional vagrants, and turned away empty-handed those
whose stories were told stammeringly for want of practice. Among those
who appeared before him that morning, for example, were two grafters,
Askins and myself; and an Italian sailor, really deserving of
assistance.
The Irishman chose to state his case in the language of university
circles.
“Surely,” cried the reverend gentleman, in delight, “this must be the
first time a man of your parts has found himself in this predicament?”
“Verily, yes, Reverend Peacock,” quoth the learned son of Erin, with an
unrestrainable sigh, “the first indeed. As I can’t count the other
times, they don’t count,” he murmured to himself. “It’s the asthma,
reverend sir.”
“I shall be glad to make yours a special case,” said the secretary;
“Step aside into my study.”
I advanced to tell my tale and received eight tickets, twice the usual
number. A moment later the Italian was driven from the parsonage grounds
with the nearest approach to an oath that a minister is entitled to
include in his vocabulary.
The tickets, worth four cents each, entitled the holder to as many meals
of currie and rice, tea, bananas, and cakes in a native shop chosen by
the Society; it was the poorest in town. A faulty management was
suggested, too, by the fact that the proprietor was easily induced to
make good the Society vouchers in a neighboring arrack-shop.
Three day later, as dawn was breaking, I climbed the fence of the
“American Park Hotel” and strolled away to the beach for a dip in the
surf. Breakfast would have been more to the point, but my last ticket
was spent. One by one, “the boys,” little suspecting that this was to
prove the red-letter day of that Colombo season, turned back into the
squat city; and as the sun mounted higher I retreated to the freight
wharves, where the vague promise of a job had been held out to me the
day before.
The dock superintendent was slow in coming. At ten o’clock I was still
stretched out in the shade of his veranda, when I was suddenly aroused
by a shout from the shore end of the pier. I sprang up to see the Swede
struggling to keep a footing in the maelstrom of bullock carts, coolie
carriers, and shrieking stevedores, and waving his arms wildly above his
head.
“Circus!” he cried, “Der circus is coom, Franck! Creeket ground!” and,
turning about, he dashed off at a pace that is rarely equaled in Ceylon
by white men who look forward to a long and active life.
I dived into the throng and fought my way to the gate. The Scandinavian
was already far down the red driveway leading to the native section.
Among such a company of out-of-works as graced Colombo at that season,
there was small chance of employment to those who lingered. I dashed
after the flying Norseman and overtook him at the entrance to the public
playground.
A circus at the hour of its arrival presents a chaotic scene under the
best of circumstances. When it has just disembarked from a sea voyage,
in a land swarming with half-civilized brown men, its disorder is
oppressive. The center of the cricket field was a wild confusion of
animal cages, rolls of canvas, scattered tent poles, and all else that
goes to make up a traveling menagerie, not forgetting those pompous
persons whose hectic garb make them as effective advertising mediums as
walking billboards.
At the moment, these romantic beings were doing garrison duty; for the
recumbent circus was in a state of siege. Around it surged an
ever-increasing multitude of natives, peering, pushing, chattering,
falling back terror-stricken before the frenzied circus men who, armed
with iron-headed tent stakes, charged back and forth across the space;
but sweeping out upon the scattered paraphernalia again after each
onslaught.
We battled our way into the inner circle and shouted an offer of our
services to the blaspheming manager. He was a typical circus boss;
Irish, of course, bullet-headed, of powerful build, and free of
movement, with a belligerent cast of countenance that proclaimed his
readiness to engage in a “scrap” at any time that he could find leisure
for such entertainment. Tugging at a heap of canvas, he peered at us
between his out-stretched legs, and shouted above the din of battle:—
“Yis, I want four min! White wans! Are you fellows sailors? There’s a
hill of a lot o’ climbin’ to do.”
“Both A. Bs.,” I answered.
“All right! If ye want the job, bring two more.”
We turned to scrutinize the sea of humanity about us. There was not a
white face to be seen.
“Ve look by Almeida’s!” shouted the Swede, as we charged the mob.
Before we could escape, however, I caught sight of a familiar slouch hat
well back in the crowd, and a moment later Askins stood beside us.
Behind him came Dick Haywood and, our squad complete, we dashed back to
the boss.
“Well!” he roared, “I pay a quid a week an’ find yerselves! Want it?”
“A pound a week,” muttered Askins, “that’s more’n two chips a day. Aye!
We’ll take it.”
“All right! Jump onto that center pole an’ get ’er up. If these niggers
get in the way, brain ’em with a tent stake. Stip lively now!”
The upper canvas was soon spread and a space roped off. The boss tossed
a pick-ax at me and set me to grubbing holes for the seat supports.
Carefully and evenly I swung the tool up and down in an old maid’s
stroke. The least slip would have broken a Singhalese head, so closely
did the natives press around me. To them the sight of a white man
employed at manual labor was the source of as much astonishment as any
of the wonders of the circus. Few, indeed, had ever before seen a
European manipulating heavier tools than pen or pencil. Within an hour
the news had spread abroad through the city that the circus had imported
the novelty of the age, some “white coolies;” and all Colombo and his
wife omitted the afternoon siesta and trooped to the cricket ground to
behold this reversal of society.
The mob that I drove from hole to hole increased rapidly. My mates,
carrying seat boards or sawdust for the ring, were as seriously
handicapped. Haywood of the untamed temper, taking the caustic advice of
the boss too literally, snatched up a tent stake and stretched two
natives bleeding on the ground. Even that brought small relief.
Strange comments sounded in my ears; for the native who speaks English
never loses an opportunity to display his learning. A pair at my elbow
opened fire in the diction of schoolbooks:—
“This sight is to me astounding!” shrieked the high-caste youth to his
older companion; “I have never before know that Europeans can do such
workings.”
“Why, indeed, yes!” cried the babu. “In his home the sahib does just so
strong work as our coolies, but because he is play cricket and tennis he
is doing even stronger. He is not rich always and sitting in shade.”
“But do the white man not losing his caste when he is working like
coolies?” demanded the youth. “Why is this man work at such? Is he
perhaps prisoner that he disgraces himself lower than the keeper of the
arrack-shop?”
“Truly, my friend, I not understand,” admitted the older man, a bit
sadly, “but I am reading that in sahib’s country he is make the workings
of coolie and yet is not coolie.”
There were others besides the native residents whose attention was
attracted to the “white coolies.” Here and there in the crowd I caught
sight of a European scowling darkly at us; just why, I could not guess,
unconscious of having done anything to provoke the ill-will of my race.
In due time, however, I learned the cause of their displeasure.
When night fell, all was in readiness for the initial performance;
though at the cost of a day’s work that we agreed could not be indulged
in more than semi-annually, even for an inducement of “more than two
chips.” The tents, large and small, were stretched, the circle of seats
complete. Rings, flying apparatus, properties, and lights were ready for
use. A half-thousand chairs, reserved for Europeans, had been ranged at
the ring side, the cage of the performing lion bolted together, and the
ticket booth set up at the entrance. The boss gave vent to a final
snarl, called a ’rickshaw, and drove off to his hotel for dinner.
Luckily, Askin’s credit was good in the favorite shop across the way. We
ate our currie and rice quickly, and returned to stretch out on the
grass at the players’ entrance.
Our pipes were barely lighted when two Europeans, dressed in snow-white
garments, stepped forward out of the darkness. We recognized in them two
Englishmen connected with the Lipton Tea Company.
“It strikes me, me men,” began one, in a high, querulous voice, “that
you chaps should know better than to do coolie labor in sight of all the
natives of the city.”
“What’s that?” I cried, in my surprise, though I heard Askins chuckling
behind me.
“I suppose you chaps have only come to Ceylon,” suggested the other, in
a more conciliatory tone. “You probably don’t realize what a different
world this is out here. You cawn’t work at manual labor here, you know,
the way you can in Hyde Park. Why, you will destroy the prestige of
every white man on the island, if—”
“You’ve stirred up a fine kettle of fish already,” burst out the first
speaker. “But Arthur, these chaps are not bank clerks. They cawn’t
understand the sowt of language you talk to your stenographer, you
knoaw. They are only sailors. Let me tell them the trouble.
“Now look heah, me men. This awfternoon my Hindu servant stuck his head
in at my office door, and shouted right out for me to go to the cricket
ground and see the sahib coolies. By four o’clock he was talking back
every time I called him to do an errand. To-night, blawst me, he was so
slow in filling my pipe that I had to chuck a boot at him. By to-morrow
morning I suppose he’ll tell me to prepare me own bawth, bah Jove. This
sort of thing, ye knoaw, is giving the natives the notion that they’re
as good as Englishmen.”
“Think you’ll find,” said Askins, puffing slowly at his broken pipe, “if
you reflect a bit, that this unwonted arrogance in the aborigines and
the noticeable decrease in their respect for Europeans, which you
attribute entirely to our alleged indiscretion, are very largely due to
the recent victories of Japan over Russia.”
The Swede snorted like a stalled winch. The boot-chucker peered through
the darkness at the rags that covered Askins, M. A. Even “Arthur” could
not suppress a chuckle at his companion’s notion of a mere sailor’s
vocabulary. Before the other had recovered, he took up the broken thread
of the sermon.
“Reginald is right, me men, all the same. Ye knoaw of all the castes out
here only the very lowest work with their hands, and they are despised
by every other class. Why, the lowest caste in Ceylon, ye knoaw, won’t
undertake our meanest labor. We have to send over for Tamil and Hindu
coolies. Now the Englishmen are at the top of this caste system. The
natives look up to us as above their highest caste. If this highest
class, then, does labor that would degrade those of their lowest caste,
you can see where their reverence for white men would soon go.
“Chaps have come out here at different times, missionaries especially,
determined to treat the natives like equals, saying it was all rot and
wrong to keep up this caste system. And they chatted with their
servants, and patted the babies on the back, and sat at the same table
with natives, and even planted their own gardens. And those who haven’t
got knives in their ribs for hoodooing the children are looked upon as
insane or degenerate, or as men being punished for some crime. Why, if
these people ceased to look upon us as their social superiors they’d
drive us into the sea in a month. If you chaps want to stop long in
Colombo you’d better drop this circus job.”
“But if that’s all the work we can find on the whole blooming island?” I
demanded.
“Work!” cried Reginald, excitedly, “Why, blawst it! Don’t work! Better
loaf than make us all lose caste with the natives.”
“But if the wily chip continues to elude us?” drawled Askins.
“Eh!” gasped Reggie.
“I mean if the currie and rice refuse to come at our whistle?”
“Oah! Yeou mean if you have no money to buy food?”
“You’ve hit it,” replied the Dublin sage; “that’s the very idea.”
“Why, blawst it, me man,” shrieked Reggie, “don’t you know there’s a
Friend-in-Need Society in Colombo? What do you fawncy we contribute to
it for? Now if you chaps don’t stop disgracing all the—”
“What’s the bloody row?” growled a voice in the darkness.
Our employer loomed up out of the night.
“Oh! That’ll be all right,” he asserted, in a soothing voice, when the
controversy had been explained to him; “The tints is all up. T’night
I’ll give these byes their uniforems, an’ whinever the show is goin’ on
an’ the niggers can see thim, they’ll wear thim.”
“Uniforms!” cried the Englishmen. “That’s different, ye knoaw.”
“Of course,” continued Reggie, lighting a cigarette, “it will be all
right with uniforms. When a man weahs a uniform, the natives think he is
doing something they cawn’t do, ye knoaw, and he keeps his cawste. Oah,
yes, that’ll do very nicely, Mr. Manager. We’ll be off, then,” and the
pair tripped away into the night.
“Fitzgerald’s Circus” was an Australian enterprise. Its personnel, from
Fritz himself to the trick poodle, hailed from the little continent. In
competition with the circuses of our own land this one-ring affair would
have attracted small attention; but its annual circuit of Oriental
cities, from Hong Kong to Bombay, was on virgin soil where the most
stereotyped “act” was greeted with bursts of enthusiasm.
To us, surfeited and sophisticated beings from an unmarveling world, the
sights of interest were in the amphitheater of benches rather than in
the ring. The burners lighted, we dashed off to don our uniforms. These
were light blue in color and richly trimmed with gold braid—things of
glory above which even the bald crown of Askins and the straw-tinted
thatch of the Swede inspired a deep Singhalese reverence. The designers
of the garments, however, having in mind durability rather than the
comfort of scores of annual wearers, had forced upon us a costume
appropriate to the upper ranges of the Himalayas.
Our first uniformed duties were those of ushers, and between the
appearance of the frightened vanguard of the audience and the first
fanfare of the audacious “orchestra,” life moved with a vim. The hordes
that swarmed in upon us before the barker had concluded his first appeal
comprised every caste of Singhalese society. Weighty problems unknown to
the most experienced circus man of the western world crowded themselves
upon us, demanding instantaneous solution. A delegation of priests in
cheese-cloth robes raised their shrill voices in protest because the
space allotted them gave no room for their betel-nut boxes. Half-breeds
shouted strenuous objections to being seated with natives. Merchants
refused to enter the same section with shopkeepers. Shopkeepers were
chary of pollution at the touch of scribes. Scribes cried out hoarsely
at contact with laborers. Skilled workmen screamed in frenzy at every
attempt to make place among them for mere coolies.
The lower the caste of the newcomer the more prolonged was the uproar
against him, and the more vindictive his own disgust at his inferiors.
The Hindu _sudra_, in his scanty loin-cloth, was abhorred of all, and
shrank servilely behind the usher during the circuit of the tent, while
each section in turn rose against him. The natives, for the most part,
refused to sit as circus seats are meant to be sat on, but squatted
obstinately on their heels, hugging their scrawny knees. Wily ’rickshaw
runners could be kept from crawling in among the chairs only by extreme
vigilance and occasional violence. Buxom brown women, caught in the
crush of humanity, ran imminent peril of being separated from their
loosely-fastened skirts, and through it all native youths from the
mission-schools, swarmed round us, intent on displaying their “English”
by asking useless and unanswerable questions.
The entrance of the European patrons, staid and pompous of demeanor, put
the natives on their best behavior, and, with the appearance of the
bicyclers for the first act, even the Eurasian forgot that the despised
sudra sat under the same tent with him. The heterogeneous throng settled
down into a motionless sea of strained, astonished faces. Fitzgerald
sahib prided himself on the smooth manner in which his entertainment was
run off, and to the four of us fell the task of supplying the oil to his
circus machinery. The “Wonderful Cycle Whiz! Never Before Performed by
Australians! Never!” once over, we had one minute to pull down the
bicycle track and carry the heavily weighted sections outside the tent.
While we lowered “Master Waldron’s” trapeze with one hand, we placed and
held the hurdles with the other. Tables and chairs for “Hadgie Tabor’s
Hand-Balancing Act!” must appear as if by magic. In breathless
succession the trick ponies must be led on, the ring cleared for the
performing elephant, set again for the “Astounding Jockey Act,” and
cleared for the “Hungarian Horses.”
Then “Mlle. Montgomery,” forgetting her bunion, capered into the glare
of publicity in a costume that made even the tropically-clad Singhalese
women gasp with envy. Most valiantly we struggled during her “Daring
Equestrian Act!” to drop the streamers low on her horse’s flanks, and to
strike the fair equestrienne squarely on the head with our paper hoops;
not so much from a desire to charm the audience with our dexterity as to
escape the sizzling comments which the fairy-like “mademoiselle” flung
back in snarling sotto voce at each blunderer.
Away with hoops and ribbons! Properties for the clown act! On the heels
of the fools came that “Mighty Demonstration of Man’s Power over
FEROCIOUS BEASTS!” during which an emaciated and moth-eaten tiger,
crouched on a horse, rode twice round the ring with the contrite and
crestfallen countenance of a hen-pecked suburbanite who has returned
home without recalling the reason for the knot in his handkerchief.
Ten minutes’ intermission, that was no intermission for us, and there
came more properties, hoops and rings of fire, tables and chairs,
performing dogs to be held in leash, and a final act for which we set up
the elephant’s bicycle and drove the lion out for a spin on the huge
animal’s back. Had our uniforms been as airy as the raiment of the Hindu
coolies slinking at the tail of the howling hordes that poured through
the exit, our labyrinthian paths about the enclosure could easily have
been traced by the streams of sweat left behind us. Even though our
tasks were by no means ended with the performance, we rarely waited for
the disappearance of the last stragglers to strip as far as unexacting
Singhalese propriety would permit.
When the last property had been laid away, we arranged our beds by
setting together several chairs chosen from the general havoc, and
turned in. Unless we were disturbed by prowling natives, we even slept;
though rarely all at once and never for an extended period.
The boss, during that strenuous first day, had promised us ample leisure
when once the tents and cages were set up. Unfortunately, he forgot his
promise. Each day we were stirring at dawn, and, after a banana and a
wafer across the way, we fell to work. The benches, which the departing
multitude had scattered pellmell in their dash for the cooler night
outside, must be reset. The chairs of the sahibs, strewn about the ring
like wreckage washed ashore, must be rearranged in symmetrical rows and
decorated with ribbons. Cast-off programs, banana peelings, betel-nut
leaves, and all the rubbish of a band of merrymakers had to be picked
up; the tent ropes “sweated” to keep them taut; the lion’s cage minutely
inspected; the ring re-sprinkled with sawdust and, a job abhorred,
freshly whitewashed. Between these regular duties came a hundred and one
chores of the boss’s finding; and, whatever the task in hand, it must be
interrupted ever and anon to throw tent stakes at the awe-stricken faces
that peered through the openings in the canvas. Strange fortune if we
were finished when the cry of “touch off the lights” sent us shinnying
up the tent poles and ropes in Jack Tar fashion to kindle the gasoline
burners. Not even the Reverend Peacock could have accused us, during
those merry days, of living, like drones, on the industry of others.
Fitzgerald’s Circus had been domiciled nearly a week in Colombo, when I
was unexpectedly advanced from the position of a “swipe” to one of
weighty importance. It was during an idle hour late one afternoon. The
four of us were displaying our accomplishments in the deserted ring,
when it was my good fortune, or bad, according to the individual point
of view, to be detected by the ringmaster and the proprietor in the act
of “doing a hand-stand.” Certain so commonplace a feat in itself could
not have attracted the attention the pair bestowed upon me, I regained
my accustomed posture fully expecting to lose my cherished “quid a week”
for this defilement of the sawdust circle. I waited contritely. The
ringmaster looked me over with critical dispassion from my shorn head to
my bare feet, turned his perpetual scowl on “Fitz” for a moment, and
addressed me in the metallic voice of a phonograph:—
“Know any other stunts?”
Was the question meant seriously, or was this caustic sarcasm but a
forerunner of my dismissal?
“One or two,” I admitted.
“Where’d ye learn ’em?” snapped the ringmaster.
I pleaded in exoneration a few years of gymnasium membership.
“Gymnasium on shipboard?” asked the owner.
“Why, no, sir, on land.”
“Could you do a dive over that chair into the ring, a head-stand, a
stiff-fall, and a roll-up?” rasped the ringmaster.
A chuckle and a snort sounded from my companions. Losing a job was, from
their point of view, neither a disgrace nor a misfortune—merely a joke.
“Yes, sir, I can work those,” I stammered.
“You’re a sailor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then a few tumbles won’t hurt you any. Can you hold a man of twelve
stone on your shoulders?”
I made a brief mental calculation; twelve times fourteen—one hundred and
sixty-eight pounds.
“Sure,” I answered.
“Well,” snapped the ringmaster, savagely, “I want you to go on for
Walhalla’s turn.”
“Whaat!” I gasped; “Walha—!” In my astonishment I had all but taken to
my heels. Walhalla and Faust were our two clowns, and the joy with which
the antics of the pair were greeted by the natives kept them more in
evidence than any other performer. My companions roared with delight at
the fancied jest.
“Here! You swipes,” cried the ringmaster, whirling upon them; “go over
and brush the flies off that elephant! An’ keep ’em brushed off! D’ye
hear me!”
“Now, then, Franck,” said the proprietor—this sudden rise in the social
scale had given me even the right to be addressed by name—“Walhalla has
a fever. Out for good, I suppose. Damn it, Casey!” turning to his
right-hand man, “I’m always losing my exhibits. Look at this trip! My
best bare-back skirt dies of cholera in Singapore. My best cycler breaks
his neck in Rangoon. The plague walks off with my best trap man in
Bombay—damn the hole! Why in hell is it always the stars that go? Now
it’s Walhalla. Five turns cut out already. If we lose any more, we’re
done for. We can’t, that’s all. Now—”
“But I’m no circus man!” I protested, as his eye fell on me.
“Oh, hell!” said the ringmaster, “You’ve been with us long enough to
know Walhalla’s gags, and you can work up the stunts in a couple of
rehearsals.”
“But there’s the violin act!” I objected, recalling a combination of
alleged music and tumbling that always “brought down the house.”
“We’ll have to cut that out. But you can put on the others.”
“There’ll be ten chips a day in it,” put in “Fitz,” casually.
“Eh—er—ten rupees!” I choked. Self-respecting beachcomber though I was,
I would have turned missionary at that price.
“All right, sir. I’ll make a try at it,” I answered.
“Of course,” said “Fitz.” “Go and get tiffin and be back in half an
hour. I’ll have Faust here for a rehearsal.”
I sprang for an exit, but stopped suddenly as a thought struck me:—
[Illustration: The trick elephant of Fitzgerald’s circus and a
high-caste Singhalese with circle-comb]
[Illustration: John Askins, M.A., who had been “on the road” in the
Orient twenty years]
“But say,” I wailed, “we’re aground! The clothes—!”
“Stretch a leg and get tiffin!” cried the ringmaster; “Walhalla’s rags
are all here.”
From nightfall until the audience, which “Fitz” was holding back as long
as possible, stormed the tent, I worked feverishly with Faust in
perfecting “gags,” tumbles, and the time-honored brands of “horse-play.”
When our privacy was invaded, I scurried away to the dressing-tent to be
made up. Several long-established antics we were obliged to omit until
the next day gave more opportunity for rehearsal; but the clouted
audience was uncritical, the Europeans indifferent to “tommy-rot,” and
the performance passed with no worse mishap to the new member of the
troupe than one too realistic fall and an occasional relapse into
seriousness.
Yet life as a circus clown was nothing if not serious—under the paint.
The least difficult functions of this new calling were those executed in
public. To strike “Mlle. Montgomery” squarely on the head with a paper
hoop while holding one leg in the air, and to fall down from the
imaginary impact with a whoop was as simple a matter as to do the same
thing in all solemnity and the uniform of a “swipe.” It was back in the
dressing-tent, scraping dried paint off one side of my blistered
countenance while my fellow fool daubed fresh colors on the other,
jumping out of one ridiculous costume into one more idiotic, turning the
place topsy-turvy in a mad scramble for a misplaced dunce cap or a lost
slap-stick, that I began to lose my fascination for this honored
profession. On those days when we favored Colomboans with two
performances, there was little hilarity in the dethroned scaramouch who
made his bed of chairs at the ring side. I wondered no more at the
funereal countenance with which Walhalla had been wont to haunt our
morning hours before the fever fell upon him.
One long week I wore the cap and bells on the cricket ground of Colombo.
All good fortune, however, must have an end—even ten-rupee incomes for
stranded wanderers. There dawned a day when our canvas dwelling came
down by the run, and the mixed odor of sweat and sawdust was wafted away
on the hot monsoon that sweeps across the playground of Ceylon. The
season of Fitzgerald was over. The naked stevedores bundled into the
ship’s hold the chest that contained Walhalla’s merry raiment as
carelessly as they threw the sections of the lion’s cage on top of it.
On the forward deck the moth-eaten tiger peered through the bars at his
native jungle behind the city, and rubbed a watery eye; at the rail an
unpainted Faust stared gloomily down at the churning screw. There were
no tears shed by the united quartet that, from the far end of the
breakwater, watched the circus sink hull-down on the southern horizon;
but as we straggled back at dusk to join the beachcombers under the
palms of Gordon Gardens, I caught myself feeling now and then in the
band of my trousers for the sovereigns I had sewed there.