[Illustration: Malays bringing on board their varied possessions]
[Illustration: As the last of the _praus_ was cleared of baggage they clustered on the gangway, shouting adieus]
He extends his hand, a hand wrinkled and seamed like a last-year’s apple and brown as a _claro_ from Sumatra. “My moniker’s Reache,” he tells us, and we tell him our names. He continues: “You are Americans, eh? Well, put ’er there! I like the way you fellows handled the railroad situation in France. Here for long? Wait: stay here a moment while I see the mate there, and I’ll take you over to the club for a drink. We’ll spin a yarn and get acquainted. Can’t spin a yarn or get chummy sudden, ’less there’s some square-face in sight; that’s solid. Back in a minute.”
As we watch him go we smile. So there is a club in Merauke! Five white men,—and a club! It is proper. Where there is a club there must be a bar. The barkeeper draws a salary, after a fashion. He must be kept awake to lend an air of liveliness to the institution, so the members foregather of an evening and sing raucously in the wee sma’ hours expressly for that purpose. True, the club is but a palm-thatched edifice with a slightly corrugated floor and reputation; nevertheless it is a club. Nondescript furniture ungraces its airy spaciousness and mud-wasps’ nests now and then fall upon one’s head as some fly-hungry chick chack lizard carelessly dislodges them, but it is still “The Club.” It being “The Club,” one must always remember to wear his coat therein, for the etiquette of fleshpots is brought to this land of the stewpots and observed with due reverence. No matter how deep in his cups the superior white man may be, he must never appear at “The Club” in negligée. It isn’t done.
The native may wander in the simmering heat of midday clad in what approximates nothing, but the Tuan, being superior even when most satisfyingly inebriated, to maintain his proper dignity must wear at all times a coat over his regulation soft-collared shirt. Of course we Americans are not really bound to do this, for our many eccentricities are passed over without undue comment. When one of those who really “belong” does make some allusion to one of our—what shall I say?—indecorums, one of his fellows offers the all-sufficient excuse or explanation, “Oh, he’s American.” This always suffices; and, too, it is said as though the speaker expected as much and would have been disappointed otherwise. And despite all this they like us. They really like our devil-may-care expediency, and I think secretly envy us. In this they “have nothing on us,” though, for it seems to be a human tendency to envy something in the other fellow.