MY MALTESE MESSMAN.
GIOVANNI, faithful one, I miss your furies. Many a nal& have we had between Malta and Muscat, sundry skir- mishes from Bushire to Bombay ; and, though it was my job, as Mess Caterer, to worst you, little malice you bore. I had last word on poop or in cabin, but your thunderous pantry rumblings have risen swift and brief as the local " Shamal," and as quickly laid. All was forgotten when you led Cooky and the Makey Learn along on pay day.
But now the best loved sloop of war that ever robbed a dhow of sugar-bags (how the grains used to cake into carbines!), or cured a coastal sheikh of his " fever," is long paid off from that commission. North of the Closed Sea she has thrust three stumpy masts up the Great River above Bussorah, to win full honours from the world's war. But the echoes of Homeric laughter, evoked by Giovanni's singular system of book-keeping, still linger on the Persian Station, caught prisoner in some deep cove of rocky Khasab, or jovially muttered back by the dry mountains squeezing the Hole-in-the-Wall of Mussendam.
In those gold-lapped days of soi-disant peace and eternal policing John would approach the Caterer, as I lay in helmet, vest, shorts, and the longest chair under the blessed double awning. John's Market-book shows the Wardroom in his debt for rupees 314 arenas 9. I leisurely check the figures he has so laboriously labelled as " brauagth forred " from page to page, and find his totting correct. As usual the uncoded items shriek for scrutiny. " Apolus " and " vagatabul " I've had my knife into before, but- " Why charge the Doctor with lanjuis,' and what ars monkanus ' ? "
"Doctor Tumson does always drinka limejuice. And de orf'cers eat da nuts same as da monkeys, doesn't it " says Giovanni, scratching his swart curled crown.
" Humph . . . this delicacy clapped in between 2 docks for dinar' and paymr I cope'—to wit, rodexas ' ? Is it a code ? A tip for Colombo Race Week ? Or—" My Messman is shaken. He snatches back the hook, presses it against his squat nose, holds it off again at arm's-length, then explodes sorrowfully, " Redishes " I continue talking and giddied.
" Then honkoko ' ? No, I'm blamed if you shall look at the book."
With lowered topgallant he goes below to reappear with the wee Goaneso wine steward. But Fernando fails. John then suggests kippers or currant jelly. " Come along. Entered as a private extra to Number One on the 14th."
" Lemme tink," groaning. " I go Mutrah dat day, cotch you dem Baloochi coffeepots, buy knife outs pawnshop for Cap'n- (a curio this, our dashing Commander not having popped his blade)—ah-hah f Why dean you read um right ? Hanclkerchers, I write for First Lootenant."
" Giovanni Jose Maria Azzopardi, I love and appreciati p-a-e-s, but who is Perlaaus ' ? Some dead Cingalee princeling # One of Great Sekunder's Captains whose bones bleached in Mekran 2,000 years agone—whose tomb you have purloined for an ice-chest ? "
John is huffily triumphant. " Pair laces," he ripostes. Whereon I meekly pay the total, quite secure in his honesty, and merely wondering how he reconciles (after my printing in capitals the orthodox spelling) " Bangles " and " suntegen " with sanatogen, why " Food for Fowlis " (is he a ballad maker 1) always costs two-eight, and whether the " Mess Wishinge " is a pious gratulation or a vulgar laundry occurrence.
Well, the Good Provvy knows where now you are, Gio', being what the Navy calls coldly a " Non-continuous " rating. Maybe on pension, gossiping in some shaded corner of Cospioua's wide rampart of hairbreadth deals with the marauding Bedou' along the green ribbon of the Batina Coast. Or—may it not be I—your sturdy bones given to the deep whilst serving shell to a gun's crew that glimpsed the dimned periscope too late. This Caterer recalls the many loyal white streaks in you rather than that strain of Arabo-Phoenician, inherited in days when Babylon was a city and well-watered fruit-gardens crowned the sandy ridges of Mekran where now only the tracks of a rifle- seeking Afghan " kafila " waver through broad deserts to the sea.
C. A.
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