JUNGLE MEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 215, 11 September 1929, Page 9

JUNGLE MEN.

SHIP'S LASCAR CREW.

SOUVENIRS OF RELATIVES.

RESPECT FOR VERMIN.

TWILIGHT OF THE SHEEP

To the lay eye., the black crew of the steamer City of Lincoln, now lying at the Queen's wharf, look just like any ordinary Lascars, but for that the ship's officers claim all the credit. A short five months ago those Lascars were prowling the jungle of their native India clad in a single piece of string—or, if the chief steward is to be believed, they were swinging through the tree, tops from branch to branch in search of birds' nests and nut?. Since the present crew joined the ship at Calcutta in April last, the officers have had a lot of hard work, and a lot of amusement. Their "wild men" have cost much careful training. Sacred Girdle. "This is the first time I have sailed with such a collection of primitive savages,"' said one of the. oflicers. "You can tell just how primitive they are by their monkey faces. Look at the old fellow with the white beard. Doesn't he look just like a monkey peeping through a bundle of oakum?" The speaker did not approve of Lascare; they were too much bother, he said. When they first joined the ship at Calcutta, their only article of attire was a piece of string for a belt, and wisp of rag hung in the front. Although they are now decently clad in dungarees, they still wear the piece of string. It is sacred. When a child is born,° the mother takes a piece of specially blessed string, makes in it certain knots of religious significance, and ties it round her offspring's waist. As the child grows, other bits of string are added to the original piece, but it is never taken off. This sometimes leads to cruel suffering when a Lascar begins to tow fat on the unaccustomed abundance of food aboard ship. If he cannot get a suitable piece of string to add into his girdle, or if there is no one in the crew qualified to mutter the proper charms over it, then he must either diet or live in danger of being cut in half.

"Besides themselves, these Lascars brought their ancestors aboard when they joined us," remarked the officer who •was retailing to a landsman the peculiarities of his crew. "You don't believe me? Well, see those little brass cases hanging on bracelets round their arms. Each of those cases contains a pinch of the ashes of a departed relative. The dead are cremated, and their dust divided~amongst the relatives, who carry the melancholy remains as charms. Our serang is quite a family tree." Sacrificial Ceremony. "Said serang, by the way, is one of the qualified killers," continued the officer. "These fellows, although" Mohammedans, hold many of the tenets both of the Buddhists and the Hindus, as •well as a whole lot of private superstitions of their own. They must kill their meat themselves, and so live sheep are carried for them. But to be entitled to kill, a Lascar must have learnt a certain number of chapters of the Koran, and then he wears a little medal on a string round his neck to tell the world how good he is. It takes them over an hour to kill a sheep. First they pray over it; then the killer takes the bluntest knife he can find, and starts to saw away at the poor animal's neck. Half an hour later he gets right through, and then an assistant hands him a little brass bowl full of water. He pours the ■water over the blade of the knife so that all the blood runs down on to the severed neck of the animal. All the while he is muttering spells/ That finished, he sneaks off by himself, chatter ing more charms to cleanse from - his black soul the stain of his heinous deed, while the cooks curry the meat with rice. Everything is eaten except the ihooves and the skin, and a few of the largest bones." The Company's Loss! On the voyage from New York to •Auckland a sad event happened. The largest of the sheep died a natural death. Tho chief steward (so the story goes) was keeping an eye on it, intending, if it got very bad, to kill it before it passed away, and so have it used. Unfortunately,"it died in the night. The chief steward, mourning over the finest of his little flock, roundly cussed the officer of the watch for not having called him to the deathbed. "If I had got the serang in time to cut short even its very last gasp with his old knife, they would have eaten it, and the line would have saved thirty dollars," he lamented. Apparently the particular caste or creed to which the crew of the City of Lincoln belong have absorbed some of the doctrines of the Jain sect, who are forbidden to take life. When a Jain priest goes for a walk, he is preceded by a disciple who sweeps the ground before him with a broom, lest he should 6tep on and kill some crawling creature.

"Our Lascars won't even scratch themselves, for fear of injuring any of their wee beasties," said the officer. "Their quarters could be alive with every sort of vermin, and they would never kill one. One day another officer gave them a couple of live rats (with which the ship is swarming) just to see what they would do with them. We half hoped to watch them eat the creatures. But no. A couple of the men carefully herded them along the deck, takinpr care they did not run overboard, and chivvied them down below. T-hat fair made us sick. What's the good of having cats and setting rat-traps when your crew nurse the pests?" . Concluding 1113 little character sketch of a Lascar life, the officer invited his vjstors to see tho next sheep-killinsr. "It is worth watching," he said. "They make such hard work of it. In India a sheep that weighs over 141b on the lioof is a giant. They tie a rope thicker than our mooring lines round its neck, and have a dozen men to handle it. We have some good big Yankee •woollies aboard now, and when they start kickin?. they scare seven bells put of all hands."