'The what?'
'The m'm m'm m'm. They live?oh, so many of them?in the thin part of the ship.' 'He means the bow,'2 said Olive. 'Oh, come along, Lion. He's hopeless.' 'What are m'm m'm m'm?' 'M'm.' He whirled his arms about, and chalked some marks on the planks. 'What are those?' 'M'm.' 'What's their name?' 'They have no name.' 'What do they do?' 'They just go so and oh! and so?ever?always ' 'Flying fish? . . . Fairies? . . . Noughts and crosses?'3 'They have no name.' 'Mother!' said Olive to a lady who was promenading with a gentleman, 'hasn't everything a name?'
'I suppose so.'
'Who's this?' asked the lady's companion.
'He's always hanging on to my children. I don't know.'
'Touch of the tar-brush,4 eh?'
'Yes, but it doesn't matter on a voyage home. I would never allow it going to India.' They passed on, Mrs March calling back, 'Shout as much as you like, boys, but don't scream, don't scream.' 'They must have a name,' said Lionel, recollecting, 'because Adam named all the animals when the Bible was beginning.' 'They weren't in the Bible, m'm m'm m'm; they were all the time up in the
1. Triangular hats worn in navy and army. 4. Appearance of having non-European ancestry, 2. Forward part of the ship. i.e., of having brown skin. 3. Tic-tac-toe.
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THE OTHER BOAT / 2061
thin part of the sheep, and when you pop out they pop in, so how could Adam
have?'
'Noah's ark is what he's got to now.'
Baby said 'Noah's ark, Noah's ark, Noah's ark,' and they all bounced up and down and roared. Then, without any compact, they drifted from the saloon5 deck on to the lower, and from the lower down the staircase that led to the forecastle,6 much as the weeds and jellies were drifting about outside in the tropical sea. Soldiering was forgotten, though Lionel said, 'We may as well wear our cocked hats.' They played with a fox-terrier, who was in the charge of a sailor, and asked the sailor himself if a roving life was a happy one. Then drifting forward again, they climbed into the bows, where the m'm m'm m'm were said to be.
Here opened a glorious country, much the best in the boat. None of the March children had explored there before, but Cocoanut, having few domesticities, knew it well. That bell that hung in the very peak-?it was the ship's bell and if you rang it the ship would stop. Those big ropes were tied into knots?twelve knots an hour. This paint was wet, but only as far as there. Up that hole was coming a Lascar.7 But of the m'm m'm he said nothing until asked. Then he explained in offhand tones that if you popped out they popped in, so that you couldn't expect to see them.
What treachery! How disappointing! Yet so ill-balanced were the children's minds that they never complained. Olive, in whom the instincts of a lady were already awaking, might have said a few well-chosen words, but when she saw her brothers happy she forgot too, and lifted Baby up on to a bollard8 because he asked her to. They all screamed. Into their midst came the Lascar and laid down a mat for his three-o'clock prayer. He prayed as if he was still in India, facing westward, not knowing that the ship had rounded Arabia so that his holy places now lay behind him.9 They continued to scream.
Mrs March and her escort remained on the saloon deck, inspecting the approach to Suez.1 Two continents were converging with great magnificence of mountains and plain. At their junction, nobly placed, could be seen the smoke and the trees of the town. In addition to her more personal problems, she had become anxious about Pharaoh. 'Where exactly was Pharaoh drowned?'2 she asked Captain Armstrong. 'I shall have to show my boys.' Captain Armstrong did not know, but he offered to ask Mr Hotblack, the Moravian3 missionary. Mr Hotblack knew?in fact he knew too much. Somewhat snubbed by the military element in the earlier part of the voyage, he now bounced to the surface, became authoritative and officious, and undertook to wake Mrs March's little ones when they were passing the exact spot. He spoke of the origins of Christianity in a way that made her look down her nose, saying that the Canal was one long genuine Bible picture gallery, that donkeys could still be seen going down into Egypt carrying Holy Families,'' and naked Arabs
5. Deck with large cabin(s) for passenger use. 6. Raised deck at the forward part of the ship. 7. An Indian sailor. 8. A thick post for securing ropes to. 9. Muslims pray facing Mecca. 1. Egyptian city at the south end of the Suez Canal (the shortest maritime route between Europe and India; it separates Asia from Africa). 2. In Exodus 14.21-23 Moses parts the Red Sea, but after the Israelites have passed, the sea closes, drowning Pharoah and his army.
3. Member of a Protestant denomination, originally from a 1 5th-century reform religious movement in Moravia and Bohemia. 4. In Matthew 2.13-15 the family of the baby Jesus, fleeing from King Herod, travels from Bethlehem into Egypt; the journey is often depicted as taking place by donkey.
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2062 / E. M. FORSTER
wading into the water to fish; 'Peter and Andrew by Galilee's shore, why, it hits the truth plumb.'5 A clergyman's daughter and a soldier's wife, she could not admit that Christianity had ever been oriental. What good thing can come out of the Levant/' and is it likely that the apostles7 ever had a touch of the tar-brush? Still, she thanked Mr Hotblack (for, having asked a favour of him, she had contracted an obligation towards him), and she resigned herself to greeting him daily until Southampton,8 when their paths would part.
Then she observed, against the advancing land, her children playing in the bows without their topis9 on. The sun in those far-off days was a mighty power and hostile to the Ruling Race.1 Officers staggered at a touch of it, Tommies2 collapsed. When the regiment was under canvas, it wore helmets at tiffin,3 lest the rays penetrated the tent. She shouted at her doomed offspring, she gesticulated, Captain Armstrong and Mr Hotblack shouted, but the wind blew their cries backwards. Refusing company, she hurried forward alone; the children were far too excited and covered with paint.
'Lionel! Olive! Olive! What are you doing?'
'M'm m'm m'm, mummy?it's a new game.'
'Go back and play properly under the awning at once?it's far too hot. You'll have sunstroke every one of you.
