MOTI GUJ—­MUTINEER

THE LANG MEN O’ LARUT [Footnote:  Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & CO.]

The Chief Engineer’s sleeping suit was of yellow striped with blue, and his speech was the speech of Aberdeen.  They sluiced the deck under him, and he hopped on to the ornamental capstan, a black pipe between his teeth, though the hour was not seven of the morn.

‘Did you ever hear o’ the Lang Men o’ Larut?’ he asked when the Man from Orizava had finished a story of an aboriginal giant discovered in the wilds of Brazil.  There was never story yet passed the lips of teller, but the Man from Orizava could cap it.

‘No, we never did,’ we responded with one voice.  The Man from Orizava watched the Chief keenly, as a possible rival.

‘I’m not telling the story for the sake of talking merely,’ said the Chief, ’but as a warning against betting, unless you bet on a perrfect certainty.  The Lang Men o’ Larut were just a certainty.  I have had talk wi’ them.  Now Larut, you will understand, is a dependency, or it may be an outlying possession, o’ the island o’ Penang, and there they will get you tin and manganese, an’ it mayhap mica, and all manner o’ meenerals.  Larut is a great place.’

‘But what about the population?’ said the Man from Orizava.

‘The population,’ said the Chief slowly, ’were few but enorrmous.  You must understand that, exceptin’ the tin-mines, there is no special inducement to Europeans to reside in Larut.  The climate is warm and remarkably like the climate o’ Calcutta; and in regard to Calcutta, it cannot have escaped your obsairvation that—­’

‘Calcutta isn’t Larut; and we’ve only just come from it,’ protested the Man from Orizava.  ’There’s a meteorological department in Calcutta, too.’

’Ay, but there’s no meteorological department in Larut.  Each man is a law to himself.  Some drink whisky, and some drink brandipanee, and some drink cocktails—­vara bad for the coats o’ the stomach is a cocktail—­ and some drink sangaree, so I have been credibly informed; but one and all they sweat like the packing of piston-head on a fourrteen-days’ voyage with the screw racing half her time.  But, as I was saying, the population o’ Larut was five all told of English—­that is to say, Scotch—­an’ I’m Scotch, ye know,’ said the Chief.

The Man from Orizava lit another cigarette, and waited patiently.  It was hopeless to hurry the Chief Engineer.

‘I am not pretending to account for the population o’ Larut being laid down according to such fabulous dimensions.  O’ the five white men engaged upon the extraction o’ tin ore and mercantile pursuits, there were three o’ the sons o’ Anak.  Wait while I remember.  Lammitter was the first by two inches—­a giant in the land, an’ a terreefic man to cross in his ways.  From heel to head he was six feet nine inches, and proportionately built across and through the thickness