THE END OF THE TETHER

By Joseph Conrad

I

For a long time after the course of the steamer _Sofala_ had beenaltered for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearanceof a mere smudge of darkness beyond a belt of glitter. The sunraysseemed to fall violently upon the calm sea--seemed to shatter themselvesupon an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vaporof light that blinded the eye and wearied the brain with its unsteadybrightness. 

Captain Whalley did not look at it. When his Serang, approaching theroomy cane arm-chair which he filled capably, had informed him in a lowvoice that the course was to be altered, he had risen at once and hadremained on his feet, face forward, while the head of his ship swungthrough a quarter of a circle. He had not uttered a single word, noteven the word to steady the helm. It was the Serang, an elderly, alert, little Malay, with a very dark skin, who murmured the order to thehelmsman. And then slowly Captain Whalley sat down again in thearm-chair on the bridge and fixed his eyes on the deck between his feet. 

He could not hope to see anything new upon this lane of the sea. He hadbeen on these coasts for the last three years. From Low Cape to Malantanthe distance was fifty miles, six hours' steaming for the old ship withthe tide, or seven against. Then you steered straight for the land, andby-and-by three palms would appear on the sky, tall and slim, and withtheir disheveled heads in a bunch, as if in confidential criticism ofthe dark mangroves. The Sofala would be headed towards the somberstrip of the coast, which at a given moment, as the ship closed withit obliquely, would show several clean shining fractures--the brimfulestuary of a river. Then on through a brown liquid, three parts waterand one part black earth, on and on between the low shores, three partsblack earth and one part brackish water, the Sofala would plow her wayup-stream, as she had done once every month for these seven years ormore, long before he was aware of her existence, long before he had everthought of having anything to do with her and her invariable voyages. The old ship ought to have known the road better than her men, who hadnot been kept so long at it without a change; better than the faithfulSerang, whom he had brought over from his last ship to keep thecaptain's watch; better than he himself, who had been her captain forthe last three years only. She could always be depended upon to make hercourses. Her compasses were never out. She was no trouble at all totake about, as if her great age had given her knowledge, wisdom, andsteadiness. She made her landfalls to a degree of the bearing, andalmost to a minute of her allowed time. At any moment, as he sat onthe bridge without looking up, or lay sleepless in his bed, simply byreckoning the days and the hours he could tell where he was--the precisespot of the beat. He knew it well too, this monotonous huckster'sround, up and down the Straits; he knew its order and its sights and itspeople. Malacca to begin with, in at daylight and out at dusk, to crossover with a rigid phosphorescent wake this highway of the Far East. Darkness and gleams on the water, clear stars on a black sky, perhapsthe lights of a home steamer keeping her unswerving course in themiddle, or maybe the elusive shadow of a native craft with her mat sailsflitting by silently--and the low land on the other side in sightat daylight. At noon the three palms of the next place of call, up asluggish river. The only white man residing there was a retired youngsailor, with whom he had become friendly in the course of many voyages. Sixty miles farther on there was another place of call, a deep bay withonly a couple of houses on the beach. And so on, in and out, pickingup coastwise cargo here and there, and finishing with a hundred miles'steady steaming through the maze of an archipelago of small islands upto a large native town at the end of the beat. There was a three days'rest for the old ship before he started her again in inverse order, seeing the same shores from another bearing, hearing the same voicesin the same places, back again to the Sofala's port of registry onthe great highway to the East, where he would take up a berth nearlyopposite the big stone pile of the harbor office till it was time tostart again on the old round of 1600 miles and thirty days. Not a veryenterprising life, this, for Captain Whalley, Henry Whalley, otherwiseDare-devil Harry--Whalley of the Condor, a famous clipper in her day. No. Not a very enterprising life for a man who had served famous firms, who had sailed famous ships (more than one or two of them his own); whohad made famous passages, had been the pioneer of new routes and newtrades; who had steered across the unsurveyed tracts of the South Seas, and had seen the sun rise on uncharted islands. Fifty years at sea, andforty out in the East ("a pretty thorough apprenticeship, " he usedto remark smilingly), had made him honorably known to a generation ofshipowners and merchants in all the ports from Bombay clear over towhere the East merges into the West upon the coast of the two Americas. His fame remained writ, not very large but plain enough, on theAdmiralty charts. Was there not somewhere between Australia and China aWhalley Island and a Condor Reef? On that dangerous coral formation thecelebrated clipper had hung stranded for three days, her captain andcrew throwing her cargo overboard with one hand and with the other, asit were, keeping off her a flotilla of savage war-canoes. At that timeneither the island nor the reef had any official existence. Later theofficers of her Majesty's steam vessel Fusilier, dispatched to make asurvey of the route, recognized in the adoption of these two names theenterprise of the man and the solidity of the ship. Besides, as anyonewho cares may see, the "General Directory, " vol. Ii. P. 410, begins thedescription of the "Malotu or Whalley Passage" with the words: "Thisadvantageous route, first discovered in 1850 by Captain Whalley in theship Condor, " &c. , and ends by recommending it warmly to sailing vesselsleaving the China ports for the south in the months from December toApril inclusive. 

This was the clearest gain he had out of life. Nothing could rob himof this kind of fame. The piercing of the Isthmus of Suez, like thebreaking of a dam, had let in upon the East a flood of new ships, newmen, new methods of trade. It had changed the face of the Eastern seasand the very spirit of their life; so that his early experiences meantnothing whatever to the new generation of seamen. 

In those bygone days he had handled many thousands of pounds of hisemployers' money and of his own; he had attended faithfully, as by lawa shipmaster is expected to do, to the conflicting interests of owners, charterers, and underwriters. He had never lost a ship or consented toa shady transaction; and he had lasted well, outlasting in the end theconditions that had gone to the making of his name. He had buried hiswife (in the Gulf of Petchili), had married off his daughter to the manof her unlucky choice, and had lost more than an ample competence in thecrash of the notorious Travancore and Deccan Banking Corporation, whosedownfall had shaken the East like an earthquake. And he was sixty-fiveyears old. 

II

His age sat lightly enough on him; and of his ruin he was not ashamed. He had not been alone to believe in the stability of the BankingCorporation. Men whose judgment in matters of finance was as expert ashis seamanship had commended the prudence of his investments, and hadthemselves lost much money in the great failure. The only differencebetween him and them was that he had lost his all. And yet not his all. There had remained to him from his lost fortune a very pretty littlebark, Fair Maid, which he had bought to occupy his leisure of a retiredsailor--"to play with, " as he expressed it himself. 

He had formally declared himself tired of the sea the year preceding hisdaughter's marriage. But after the young couple had gone to settle inMelbourne he found out that he could not make himself happy on shore. Hewas too much of a merchant sea-captain for mere yachting to satisfy him. He wanted the illusion of affairs; and his acquisition of the FairMaid preserved the continuity of his life. He introduced her to hisacquaintances in various ports as "my last command. " When he grew tooold to be trusted with a ship, he would lay her up and go ashore to beburied, leaving directions in his will to have the bark towed out andscuttled decently in deep water on the day of the funeral. His daughterwould not grudge him the satisfaction of knowing that no stranger wouldhandle his last command after him. With the fortune he was able to leaveher, the value of a 500-ton bark was neither here nor there. All thiswould be said with a jocular twinkle in his eye: the vigorous old manhad too much vitality for the sentimentalism of regret; and a littlewistfully withal, because he was at home in life, taking a genuinepleasure in its feelings and its possessions; in the dignity of hisreputation and his wealth, in his love for his daughter, and in hissatisfaction with the ship--the plaything of his lonely leisure. 

He had the cabin arranged in accordance with his simple ideal of comfortat sea. A big bookcase (he was a great reader) occupied one side of hisstateroom; the portrait of his late wife, a flat bituminous oil-paintingrepresenting the profile and one long black ringlet of a young woman, faced his bed-place. Three chronometers ticked him to sleep and greetedhim on waking with the tiny competition of their beats. He rose at fiveevery day. The officer of the morning watch, drinking his early cupof coffee aft by the wheel, would hear through the wide orifice of thecopper ventilators all the splashings, blowings, and splutterings ofhis captain's toilet. These noises would be followed by a sustaineddeep murmur of the Lord's Prayer recited in a loud earnest voice. Fiveminutes afterwards the head and shoulders of Captain Whalley emergedout of the companion-hatchway. Invariably he paused for a while on thestairs, looking all round at the horizon; upwards at the trim of thesails; inhaling deep draughts of the fresh air. Only then he would stepout on the poop, acknowledging the hand raised to the peak of the capwith a majestic and benign "Good morning to you. " He walked the decktill eight scrupulously. Sometimes, not above twice a year, he had touse a thick cudgel-like stick on account of a stiffness in the hip--aslight touch of rheumatism, he supposed. Otherwise he knew nothing ofthe ills of the flesh. At the ringing of the breakfast bell he wentbelow to feed his canaries, wind up the chronometers, and take thehead of the table. From there he had before his eyes the big carbonphotographs of his daughter, her husband, and two fat-legged babies--his grandchildren--set in black frames into the maplewood bulkheadsof the cuddy. After breakfast he dusted the glass over these portraitshimself with a cloth, and brushed the oil painting of his wife with aplumate kept suspended from a small brass hook by the side of the heavygold frame. Then with the door of his stateroom shut, he would sit downon the couch under the portrait to read a chapter out of a thick pocketBible--her Bible. But on some days he only sat there for half an hourwith his finger between the leaves and the closed book resting on hisknees. Perhaps he had remembered suddenly how fond of boat-sailing sheused to be. 

She had been a real shipmate and a true woman too. It was like anarticle of faith with him that there never had been, and never could be, a brighter, cheerier home anywhere afloat or ashore than his home underthe poop-deck of the Condor, with the big main cabin all white and gold, garlanded as if for a perpetual festival with an unfading wreath. Shehad decorated the center of every panel with a cluster of home flowers. It took her a twelvemonth to go round the cuddy with this labor of love. To him it had remained a marvel of painting, the highest achievement oftaste and skill; and as to old Swinburne, his mate, every time hecame down to his meals he stood transfixed with admiration before theprogress of the work. You could almost smell these roses, he declared, sniffing the faint flavor of turpentine which at that time pervaded thesaloon, and (as he confessed afterwards) made him somewhat less heartythan usual in tackling his food. But there was nothing of the sort tointerfere with his enjoyment of her singing. "Mrs. Whalley is a regularout-and-out nightingale, sir, " he would pronounce with a judicial airafter listening profoundly over the skylight to the very end of thepiece. In fine weather, in the second dog-watch, the two men could hearher trills and roulades going on to the accompaniment of the piano inthe cabin. On the very day they got engaged he had written to Londonfor the instrument; but they had been married for over a year before itreached them, coming out round the Cape. The big case made part of thefirst direct general cargo landed in Hong-kong harbor--an event that tothe men who walked the busy quays of to-day seemed as hazily remote asthe dark ages of history. But Captain Whalley could in a half hour ofsolitude live again all his life, with its romance, its idyl, and itssorrow. He had to close her eyes himself. She went away from under theensign like a sailor's wife, a sailor herself at heart. He had readthe service over her, out of her own prayer-book, without a break in hisvoice. When he raised his eyes he could see old Swinburne facing himwith his cap pressed to his breast, and his rugged, weather-beaten, impassive face streaming with drops of water like a lump of chipped redgranite in a shower. It was all very well for that old sea-dog to cry. He had to read on to the end; but after the splash he did not remembermuch of what happened for the next few days. An elderly sailor of thecrew, deft at needlework, put together a mourning frock for the childout of one of her black skirts. 

He was not likely to forget; but you cannot dam up life like a sluggishstream. It will break out and flow over a man's troubles, it will closeupon a sorrow like the sea upon a dead body, no matter how much love hasgone to the bottom. And the world is not bad. People had been verykind to him; especially Mrs. Gardner, the wife of the senior partnerin Gardner, Patteson, & Co. , the owners of the Condor. It was she whovolunteered to look after the little one, and in due course took her toEngland (something of a journey in those days, even by the overlandmail route) with her own girls to finish her education. It was ten yearsbefore he saw her again. 

As a little child she had never been frightened of bad weather; shewould beg to be taken up on deck in the bosom of his oilskin coat towatch the big seas hurling themselves upon the Condor. The swirl andcrash of the waves seemed to fill her small soul with a breathlessdelight. "A good boy spoiled, " he used to say of her in joke. He hadnamed her Ivy because of the sound of the word, and obscurely fascinatedby a vague association of ideas. She had twined herself tightly roundhis heart, and he intended her to cling close to her father as to atower of strength; forgetting, while she was little, that in the natureof things she would probably elect to cling to someone else. Buthe loved life well enough for even that event to give him a certainsatisfaction, apart from his more intimate feeling of loss. 

After he had purchased the Fair Maid to occupy his loneliness, hehastened to accept a rather unprofitable freight to Australia simply forthe opportunity of seeing his daughter in her own home. What made himdissatisfied there was not to see that she clung now to somebody else, but that the prop she had selected seemed on closer examination "arather poor stick"--even in the matter of health. He disliked hisson-in-law's studied civility perhaps more than his method ofhandling the sum of money he had given Ivy at her marriage. But of hisapprehensions he said nothing. Only on the day of his departure, withthe hall-door open already, holding her hands and looking steadily intoher eyes, he had said, "You know, my dear, all I have is for you and thechicks. Mind you write to me openly. " She had answered him by an almostimperceptible movement of her head. She resembled her mother inthe color of her eyes, and in character--and also in this, that sheunderstood him without many words. 

Sure enough she had to write; and some of these letters made CaptainWhalley lift his white eye-brows. For the rest he considered he wasreaping the true reward of his life by being thus able to produce ondemand whatever was needed. He had not enjoyed himself so much in away since his wife had died. Characteristically enough his son-in-law'spunctuality in failure caused him at a distance to feel a sort ofkindness towards the man. The fellow was so perpetually being jammed ona lee shore that to charge it all to his reckless navigation would bemanifestly unfair. No, no! He knew well what that meant. It was badluck. His own had been simply marvelous, but he had seen in his life toomany good men--seamen and others--go under with the sheer weight of badluck not to recognize the fatal signs. For all that, he was cogitatingon the best way of tying up very strictly every penny he had to leave, when, with a preliminary rumble of rumors (whose first sound reachedhim in Shanghai as it happened), the shock of the big failure came;and, after passing through the phases of stupor, of incredulity, ofindignation, he had to accept the fact that he had nothing to speak ofto leave. 

Upon that, as if he had only waited for this catastrophe, the unluckyman, away there in Melbourne, gave up his unprofitable game, and satdown--in an invalid's bath-chair at that too. "He will never walkagain, " wrote the wife. For the first time in his life Captain Whalleywas a bit staggered. 

The Fair Maid had to go to work in bitter earnest now. It was no longera matter of preserving alive the memory of Dare-devil Harry Whalley inthe Eastern Seas, or of keeping an old man in pocket-money and clothes, with, perhaps, a bill for a few hundred first-class cigars thrown in atthe end of the year. He would have to buckle-to, and keep her going hardon a scant allowance of gilt for the ginger-bread scrolls at her stemand stern. 

This necessity opened his eyes to the fundamental changes of the world. Of his past only the familiar names remained, here and there, butthe things and the men, as he had known them, were gone. The name ofGardner, Patteson, & Co. Was still displayed on the walls of warehousesby the waterside, on the brass plates and window-panes in the businessquarters of more than one Eastern port, but there was no longer aGardner or a Patteson in the firm. There was no longer for CaptainWhalley an arm-chair and a welcome in the private office, with a bit ofbusiness ready to be put in the way of an old friend, for the sake ofbygone services. The husbands of the Gardner girls sat behind the desksin that room where, long after he had left the employ, he had kept hisright of entrance in the old man's time. Their ships now had yellowfunnels with black tops, and a time-table of appointed routes like aconfounded service of tramways. The winds of December and June were allone to them; their captains (excellent young men he doubted not) were, to be sure, familiar with Whalley Island, because of late years theGovernment had established a white fixed light on the north end (witha red danger sector over the Condor Reef), but most of them would havebeen extremely surprised to hear that a flesh-and-blood Whalley stillexisted--an old man going about the world trying to pick up a cargo hereand there for his little bark. 

And everywhere it was the same. Departed the men who would have noddedappreciatively at the mention of his name, and would have thoughtthemselves bound in honor to do something for Dare-devil Harry Whalley. Departed the opportunities which he would have known how to seize; andgone with them the white-winged flock of clippers that lived in theboisterous uncertain life of the winds, skimming big fortunes out ofthe foam of the sea. In a world that pared down the profits to anirreducible minimum, in a world that was able to count its disengagedtonnage twice over every day, and in which lean charters were snapped upby cable three months in advance, there were no chances of fortune foran individual wandering haphazard with a little bark--hardly indeed anyroom to exist. 

He found it more difficult from year to year. He suffered greatly fromthe smallness of remittances he was able to send his daughter. Meantimehe had given up good cigars, and even in the matter of inferior cherootslimited himself to six a day. He never told her of his difficulties, andshe never enlarged upon her struggle to live. Their confidence in eachother needed no explanations, and their perfect understanding enduredwithout protestations of gratitude or regret. He would have been shockedif she had taken it into her head to thank him in so many words, buthe found it perfectly natural that she should tell him she needed twohundred pounds. 

He had come in with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight inthe Sofala's port of registry, and her letter met him there. Its tenorwas that it was no use mincing matters. Her only resource was in openinga boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged, were good. Goodenough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with two hundredpounds she could make a start. He had torn the envelope open, hastily, on deck, where it was handed to him by the ship-chandler's runner, whohad brought his mail at the moment of anchoring. For the second timein his life he was appalled, and remained stock-still at the cabin doorwith the paper trembling between his fingers. Open a boarding-house! Twohundred pounds for a start! The only resource! And he did not know whereto lay his hands on two hundred pence. 

All that night Captain Whalley walked the poop of his anchored ship, asthough he had been about to close with the land in thick weather, anduncertain of his position after a run of many gray days without a sightof sun, moon, or stars. The black night twinkled with the guiding lightsof seamen and the steady straight lines of lights on shore; and allaround the Fair Maid the riding lights of ships cast trembling trailsupon the water of the roadstead. Captain Whalley saw not a gleamanywhere till the dawn broke and he found out that his clothing wassoaked through with the heavy dew. 

His ship was awake. He stopped short, stroked his wet beard, anddescended the poop ladder backwards, with tired feet. At the sightof him the chief officer, lounging about sleepily on the quarterdeck, remained open-mouthed in the middle of a great early-morning yawn. 

"Good morning to you, " pronounced Captain Whalley solemnly, passing intothe cabin. But he checked himself in the doorway, and without lookingback, "By the bye, " he said, "there should be an empty wooden case putaway in the lazarette. It has not been broken up--has it?"

The mate shut his mouth, and then asked as if dazed, "What empty case, sir?"

"A big flat packing-case belonging to that painting in my room. Let itbe taken up on deck and tell the carpenter to look it over. I may wantto use it before long. "

The chief officer did not stir a limb till he had heard the door of thecaptain's state-room slam within the cuddy. Then he beckoned aft thesecond mate with his forefinger to tell him that there was something "inthe wind. "

When the bell rang Captain Whalley's authoritative voice boomed outthrough a closed door, "Sit down and don't wait for me. " And hisimpressed officers took their places, exchanging looks and whispersacross the table. What! No breakfast? And after apparently knockingabout all night on deck, too! Clearly, there was something in the wind. In the skylight above their heads, bowed earnestly over the plates, three wire cages rocked and rattled to the restless jumping of thehungry canaries; and they could detect the sounds of their "oldman's" deliberate movements within his state-room. Captain Whalley wasmethodically winding up the chronometers, dusting the portrait ofhis late wife, getting a clean white shirt out of the drawers, makinghimself ready in his punctilious unhurried manner to go ashore. He couldnot have swallowed a single mouthful of food that morning. He had madeup his mind to sell the Fair Maid. 

III

Just at that time the Japanese were casting far and wide for shipsof European build, and he had no difficulty in finding a purchaser, aspeculator who drove a hard bargain, but paid cash down for the FairMaid, with a view to a profitable resale. Thus it came about thatCaptain Whalley found himself on a certain afternoon descending thesteps of one of the most important post-offices of the East with a slipof bluish paper in his hand. This was the receipt of a registered letterenclosing a draft for two hundred pounds, and addressed to Melbourne. Captain Whalley pushed the paper into his waistcoat-pocket, took hisstick from under his arm, and walked down the street. 

It was a recently opened and untidy thoroughfare with rudimentaryside-walks and a soft layer of dust cushioning the whole width ofthe road. One end touched the slummy street of Chinese shops near theharbor, the other drove straight on, without houses, for a couple ofmiles, through patches of jungle-like vegetation, to the yard gatesof the new Consolidated Docks Company. The crude frontages of the newGovernment buildings alternated with the blank fencing of vacant plots, and the view of the sky seemed to give an added spaciousness to thebroad vista. It was empty and shunned by natives after businesshours, as though they had expected to see one of the tigers from theneighborhood of the New Waterworks on the hill coming at a loping canterdown the middle to get a Chinese shopkeeper for supper. Captain Whalleywas not dwarfed by the solitude of the grandly planned street. Hehad too fine a presence for that. He was only a lonely figure walkingpurposefully, with a great white beard like a pilgrim, and with a thickstick that resembled a weapon. On one side the new Courts of Justice hada low and unadorned portico of squat columns half concealed by a few oldtrees left in the approach. On the other the pavilion wings of thenew Colonial Treasury came out to the line of the street. But CaptainWhalley, who had now no ship and no home, remembered in passing thaton that very site when he first came out from England there had stood afishing village, a few mat huts erected on piles between a muddy tidalcreek and a miry pathway that went writhing into a tangled wildernesswithout any docks or waterworks. 

No ship--no home. And his poor Ivy away there had no home either. Aboarding-house is no sort of home though it may get you a living. Hisfeelings were horribly rasped by the idea of the boarding-house. In hisrank of life he had that truly aristocratic temperament characterized bya scorn of vulgar gentility and by prejudiced views as to the derogatorynature of certain occupations. For his own part he had always preferredsailing merchant ships (which is a straightforward occupation) to buyingand selling merchandise, of which the essence is to get the better ofsomebody in a bargain--an undignified trial of wits at best. His fatherhad been Colonel Whalley (retired) of the H. E. I. Company's service, with very slender means besides his pension, but with distinguishedconnections. He could remember as a boy how frequently waiters at theinns, country tradesmen and small people of that sort, used to "My lord"the old warrior on the strength of his appearance. 

Captain Whalley himself (he would have entered the Navy if his fatherhad not died before he was fourteen) had something of a grand air whichwould have suited an old and glorious admiral; but he became lost likea straw in the eddy of a brook amongst the swarm of brown and yellowhumanity filling a thoroughfare, that by contrast with the vast andempty avenue he had left seemed as narrow as a lane and absolutelyriotous with life. The walls of the houses were blue; the shops of theChinamen yawned like cavernous lairs; heaps of nondescript merchandiseoverflowed the gloom of the long range of arcades, and the fieryserenity of sunset took the middle of the street from end to end with aglow like the reflection of a fire. It fell on the bright colors and thedark faces of the bare-footed crowd, on the pallid yellow backs of thehalf-naked jostling coolies, on the accouterments of a tall Sikh trooperwith a parted beard and fierce mustaches on sentry before the gate ofthe police compound. Looming very big above the heads in a red haze ofdust, the tightly packed car of the cable tramway navigated cautiouslyup the human stream, with the incessant blare of its horn, in the mannerof a steamer groping in a fog. 

Captain Whalley emerged like a diver on the other side, and in thedesert shade between the walls of closed warehouses removed his hat tocool his brow. A certain disrepute attached to the calling of alandlady of a boarding-house. These women were said to be rapacious, unscrupulous, untruthful; and though he contemned no class of hisfellow-creatures--God forbid!--these were suspicions to which it wasunseemly that a Whalley should lay herself open. He had not expostulatedwith her, however. He was confident she shared his feelings; he wassorry for her; he trusted her judgment; he considered it a mercifuldispensation that he could help her once more, --but in his aristocraticheart of hearts he would have found it more easy to reconcile himself tothe idea of her turning seamstress. Vaguely he remembered reading yearsago a touching piece called the "Song of the Shirt. " It was all verywell making songs about poor women. The granddaughter of ColonelWhalley, the landlady of a boarding-house! Pooh! He replaced his hat, dived into two pockets, and stopping a moment to apply a flaring matchto the end of a cheap cheroot, blew an embittered cloud of smoke at aworld that could hold such surprises. 

Of one thing he was certain--that she was the own child of a clevermother. Now he had got over the wrench of parting with his ship, heperceived clearly that such a step had been unavoidable. Perhaps he hadbeen growing aware of it all along with an unconfessed knowledge. Butshe, far away there, must have had an intuitive perception of it, withthe pluck to face that truth and the courage to speak out--all thequalities which had made her mother a woman of such excellent counsel. 

It would have had to come to that in the end! It was fortunate she hadforced his hand. In another year or two it would have been an utterlybarren sale. To keep the ship going he had been involving himself deeperevery year. He was defenseless before the insidious work of adversity, to whose more open assaults he could present a firm front; like acliff that stands unmoved the open battering of the sea, with a loftyignorance of the treacherous backwash undermining its base. As it was, every liability satisfied, her request answered, and owing no man apenny, there remained to him from the proceeds a sum of five hundredpounds put away safely. In addition he had upon his person some fortyodd dollars--enough to pay his hotel bill, providing he did not lingertoo long in the modest bedroom where he had taken refuge. 

Scantily furnished, and with a waxed floor, it opened into one ofthe side-verandas. The straggling building of bricks, as airy as abird-cage, resounded with the incessant flapping of rattan screensworried by the wind between the white-washed square pillars of thesea-front. The rooms were lofty, a ripple of sunshine flowed over theceilings; and the periodical invasions of tourists from some passengersteamer in the harbor flitted through the wind-swept dusk of theapartments with the tumult of their unfamiliar voices and impermanentpresences, like relays of migratory shades condemned to speed headlonground the earth without leaving a trace. The babble of their irruptionsebbed out as suddenly as it had arisen; the draughty corridors andthe long chairs of the verandas knew their sight-seeing hurry ortheir prostrate repose no more; and Captain Whalley, substantial anddignified, left well-nigh alone in the vast hotel by each light-heartedskurry, felt more and more like a stranded tourist with no aim in view, like a forlorn traveler without a home. In the solitude of his room hesmoked thoughtfully, gazing at the two sea-chests which held all that hecould call his own in this world. A thick roll of charts in a sheathof sailcloth leaned in a corner; the flat packing-case containing theportrait in oils and the three carbon photographs had been pushed underthe bed. He was tired of discussing terms, of assisting at surveys, ofall the routine of the business. What to the other parties was merelythe sale of a ship was to him a momentous event involving a radicallynew view of existence. He knew that after this ship there would be noother; and the hopes of his youth, the exercise of his abilities, everyfeeling and achievement of his manhood, had been indissolubly connectedwith ships. He had served ships; he had owned ships; and even the yearsof his actual retirement from the sea had been made bearable by the ideathat he had only to stretch out his hand full of money to get a ship. Hehad been at liberty to feel as though he were the owner of all theships in the world. The selling of this one was weary work; but whenshe passed from him at last, when he signed the last receipt, it was asthough all the ships had gone out of the world together, leaving him onthe shore of inaccessible oceans with seven hundred pounds in his hands. 

Striding firmly, without haste, along the quay, Captain Whalley avertedhis glances from the familiar roadstead. Two generations of seamen bornsince his first day at sea stood between him and all these ships at theanchorage. His own was sold, and he had been asking himself, What next?

From the feeling of loneliness, of inward emptiness, --and of losstoo, as if his very soul had been taken out of him forcibly, --there hadsprung at first a desire to start right off and join his daughter. "Here are the last pence, " he would say to her; "take them, my dear. Andhere's your old father: you must take him too. "

His soul recoiled, as if afraid of what lay hidden at the bottom ofthis impulse. Give up! Never! When one is thoroughly weary all sorts ofnonsense come into one's head. A pretty gift it would have been for apoor woman--this seven hundred pounds with the incumbrance of a hale oldfellow more than likely to last for years and years to come. Was he notas fit to die in harness as any of the youngsters in charge of theseanchored ships out yonder? He was as solid now as ever he had been. Butas to who would give him work to do, that was another matter. Were he, with his appearance and antecedents, to go about looking for a junior'sberth, people, he was afraid, would not take him seriously; or else ifhe succeeded in impressing them, he would maybe obtain their pity, whichwould be like stripping yourself naked to be kicked. He was not anxiousto give himself away for less than nothing. He had no use for anybody'spity. On the other hand, a command--the only thing he could try for withdue regard for common decency--was not likely to be lying in waitfor him at the corner of the next street. Commands don't go a-beggingnowadays. Ever since he had come ashore to carry out the business ofthe sale he had kept his ears open, but had heard no hint of one beingvacant in the port. And even if there had been one, his successful pastitself stood in his way. He had been his own employer too long. The onlycredential he could produce was the testimony of his whole life. Whatbetter recommendation could anyone require? But vaguely he felt thatthe unique document would be looked upon as an archaic curiosity of theEastern waters, a screed traced in obsolete words--in a half-forgottenlanguage. 

IV

Revolving these thoughts, he strolled on near the railings of the quay, broad-chested, without a stoop, as though his big shoulders had neverfelt the burden of the loads that must be carried between the cradleand the grave. No single betraying fold or line of care disfigured thereposeful modeling of his face. It was full and untanned; and the upperpart emerged, massively quiet, out of the downward flow of silvery hair, with the striking delicacy of its clear complexion and the powerfulwidth of the forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you candidand swift, like a boy's; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of theeyebrows the affability of his attention acquired the character of adark and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on flesh a little, hadincreased his girth like an old tree presenting no symptoms of decay;and even the opulent, lustrous ripple of white hairs upon his chestseemed an attribute of unquenchable vitality and vigor. 

Once rather proud of his great bodily strength, and even of his personalappearance, conscious of his worth, and firm in his rectitude, there hadremained to him, like the heritage of departed prosperity, the tranquilbearing of a man who had proved himself fit in every sort of way for thelife of his choice. He strode on squarely under the projecting brim ofan ancient Panama hat. It had a low crown, a crease through its wholediameter, a narrow black ribbon. Imperishable and a little discolored, this headgear made it easy to pick him out from afar on thronged wharvesand in the busy streets. He had never adopted the comparatively modernfashion of pipeclayed cork helmets. He disliked the form; and he hopedhe could manage to keep a cool head to the end of his life without allthese contrivances for hygienic ventilation. His hair was cropped close, his linen always of immaculate whiteness; a suit of thin gray flannel, worn threadbare but scrupulously brushed, floated about his burly limbs, adding to his bulk by the looseness of its cut. The years had mellowedthe good-humored, imperturbable audacity of his prime into a tempercarelessly serene; and the leisurely tapping of his iron-shod stickaccompanied his footfalls with a self-confident sound on the flagstones. It was impossible to connect such a fine presence and this unruffledaspect with the belittling troubles of poverty; the man's wholeexistence appeared to pass before you, facile and large, in the freedomof means as ample as the clothing of his body. 

The irrational dread of having to break into his five hundred pounds forpersonal expenses in the hotel disturbed the steady poise of his mind. There was no time to lose. The bill was running up. He nourished thehope that this five hundred would perhaps be the means, if everythingelse failed, of obtaining some work which, keeping his body and soultogether (not a matter of great outlay), would enable him to be of useto his daughter. To his mind it was her own money which he employed, asit were, in backing her father and solely for her benefit. Once at work, he would help her with the greater part of his earnings; he was good formany years yet, and this boarding-house business, he argued to himself, whatever the prospects, could not be much of a gold-mine from the firststart. But what work? He was ready to lay hold of anything in an honestway so that it came quickly to his hand; because the five hundred poundsmust be preserved intact for eventual use. That was the great point. With the entire five hundred one felt a substance at one's back; butit seemed to him that should he let it dwindle to four-fifty or evenfour-eighty, all the efficiency would be gone out of the money, as thoughthere were some magic power in the round figure. But what sort of work?

Confronted by that haunting question as by an uneasy ghost, for whom hehad no exorcising formula, Captain Whalley stopped short on the apexof a small bridge spanning steeply the bed of a canalized creek withgranite shores. Moored between the square blocks a seagoing Malay praufloated half hidden under the arch of masonry, with her spars lowereddown, without a sound of life on board, and covered from stem to sternwith a ridge of palm-leaf mats. He had left behind him the overheatedpavements bordered by the stone frontages that, like the sheer face ofcliffs, followed the sweep of the quays; and an unconfined spaciousnessof orderly and sylvan aspect opened before him its wide plots of rolledgrass, like pieces of green carpet smoothly pegged out, its long rangesof trees lined up in colossal porticos of dark shafts roofed with avault of branches. 

Some of these avenues ended at the sea. It was a terraced shore; andbeyond, upon the level expanse, profound and glistening like the gazeof a dark-blue eye, an oblique band of stippled purple lengthened itselfindefinitely through the gap between a couple of verdant twin islets. The masts and spars of a few ships far away, hull down in the outerroads, sprang straight from the water in a fine maze of rosy linespenciled on the clear shadow of the eastern board. Captain Whalley gavethem a long glance. The ship, once his own, was anchored out there. Itwas staggering to think that it was open to him no longer to take a boatat the jetty and get himself pulled off to her when the evening came. Tono ship. Perhaps never more. Before the sale was concluded, and till thepurchase-money had been paid, he had spent daily some time on board theFair Maid. The money had been paid this very morning, and now, all atonce, there was positively no ship that he could go on board of when heliked; no ship that would need his presence in order to do her work--tolive. It seemed an incredible state of affairs, something too bizarreto last. And the sea was full of craft of all sorts. There was that praulying so still swathed in her shroud of sewn palm-leaves--she too hadher indispensable man. They lived through each other, this Malay he hadnever seen, and this high-sterned thing of no size that seemed to beresting after a long journey. And of all the ships in sight, near andfar, each was provided with a man, the man without whom the finest shipis a dead thing, a floating and purposeless log. 

After his one glance at the roadstead he went on, since there wasnothing to turn back for, and the time must be got through somehow. Theavenues of big trees ran straight over the Esplanade, cutting each otherat diverse angles, columnar below and luxuriant above. The interlacedboughs high up there seemed to slumber; not a leaf stirred overhead:and the reedy cast-iron lampposts in the middle of the road, gilt likescepters, diminished in a long perspective, with their globes of whiteporcelain atop, resembling a barbarous decoration of ostriches' eggsdisplayed in a row. The flaming sky kindled a tiny crimson spark uponthe glistening surface of each glassy shell. 

With his chin sunk a little, his hands behind his back, and the end ofhis stick marking the gravel with a faint wavering line at his heels, Captain Whalley reflected that if a ship without a man was like a bodywithout a soul, a sailor without a ship was of not much more accountin this world than an aimless log adrift upon the sea. The log might besound enough by itself, tough of fiber, and hard to destroy--but what ofthat! And a sudden sense of irremediable idleness weighted his feet likea great fatigue. 

A succession of open carriages came bowling along the newly openedsea-road. You could see across the wide grass-plots the discs ofvibration made by the spokes. The bright domes of the parasols swayedlightly outwards like full-blown blossoms on the rim of a vase; andthe quiet sheet of dark-blue water, crossed by a bar of purple, made abackground for the spinning wheels and the high action of the horses, whilst the turbaned heads of the Indian servants elevated above the lineof the sea horizon glided rapidly on the paler blue of the sky. In anopen space near the little bridge each turn-out trotted smartly in awide curve away from the sunset; then pulling up sharp, entered the mainalley in a long slow-moving file with the great red stillness of the skyat the back. The trunks of mighty trees stood all touched with red onthe same side, the air seemed aflame under the high foliage, thevery ground under the hoofs of the horses was red. The wheels turnedsolemnly; one after another the sunshades drooped, folding their colorslike gorgeous flowers shutting their petals at the end of the day. Inthe whole half-mile of human beings no voice uttered a distinct word, only a faint thudding noise went on mingled with slight jingling sounds, and the motionless heads and shoulders of men and women sitting incouples emerged stolidly above the lowered hoods--as if wooden. But onecarriage and pair coming late did not join the line. 

It fled along in a noiseless roll; but on entering the avenue one of thedark bays snorted, arching his neck and shying against the steel-tippedpole; a flake of foam fell from the bit upon the point of a satinyshoulder, and the dusky face of the coachman leaned forward at once overthe hands taking a fresh grip of the reins. It was a long dark-greenlandau, having a dignified and buoyant motion between the sharplycurved C-springs, and a sort of strictly official majesty in its supremeelegance. It seemed more roomy than is usual, its horses seemed slightlybigger, the appointments a shade more perfect, the servants perchedsomewhat higher on the box. The dresses of three women--two youngand pretty, and one, handsome, large, of mature age--seemed to fillcompletely the shallow body of the carriage. The fourth face was thatof a man, heavy lidded, distinguished and sallow, with a somber, thick, iron-gray imperial and mustaches, which somehow had the air of solidappendages. His Excellency--

The rapid motion of that one equipage made all the others appear utterlyinferior, blighted, and reduced to crawl painfully at a snail's pace. The landau distanced the whole file in a sort of sustained rush; thefeatures of the occupant whirling out of sight left behind an impressionof fixed stares and impassive vacancy; and after it had vanished in fullflight as it were, notwithstanding the long line of vehicles hugging thecurb at a walk, the whole lofty vista of the avenue seemed to lie openand emptied of life in the enlarged impression of an august solitude. 

Captain Whalley had lifted his head to look, and his mind, disturbed inits meditation, turned with wonder (as men's minds will do) to mattersof no importance. It struck him that it was to this port, where he hadjust sold his last ship, that he had come with the very first he hadever owned, and with his head full of a plan for opening a new tradewith a distant part of the Archipelago. The then governor had givenhim no end of encouragement. No Excellency he--this Mr. Denham--thisgovernor with his jacket off; a man who tended night and day, so tospeak, the growing prosperity of the settlement with the self-forgetfuldevotion of a nurse for a child she loves; a lone bachelor who lived asin a camp with the few servants and his three dogs in what was calledthen the Government Bungalow: a low-roofed structure on the half-clearedslope of a hill, with a new flagstaff in front and a police orderly onthe veranda. He remembered toiling up that hill under a heavy sun forhis audience; the unfurnished aspect of the cool shaded room; the longtable covered at one end with piles of papers, and with two guns, abrass telescope, a small bottle of oil with a feather stuck in the neckat the other--and the flattering attention given to him by the man inpower. It was an undertaking full of risk he had come to expound, but atwenty minutes' talk in the Government Bungalow on the hill had made itgo smoothly from the start. And as he was retiring Mr. Denham, alreadyseated before the papers, called out after him, "Next month the Didostarts for a cruise that way, and I shall request her captain officiallyto give you a look in and see how you get on. " The Dido was one of thesmart frigates on the China station--and five-and-thirty years make abig slice of time. Five-and-thirty years ago an enterprise like his hadfor the colony enough importance to be looked after by a Queen's ship. A big slice of time. Individuals were of some account then. Men likehimself; men, too, like poor Evans, for instance, with his red face, his coal-black whiskers, and his restless eyes, who had set up the firstpatent slip for repairing small ships, on the edge of the forest, ina lonely bay three miles up the coast. Mr. Denham had encouraged thatenterprise too, and yet somehow poor Evans had ended by dying athome deucedly hard up. His son, they said, was squeezing oil out ofcocoa-nuts for a living on some God-forsaken islet of the Indian Ocean;but it was from that patent slip in a lonely wooded bay that had sprungthe workshops of the Consolidated Docks Company, with its threegraving basins carved out of solid rock, its wharves, its jetties, its electric-light plant, its steam-power houses--with its giganticsheer-legs, fit to lift the heaviest weight ever carried afloat, andwhose head could be seen like the top of a queer white monument peepingover bushy points of land and sandy promontories, as you approached theNew Harbor from the west. 

There had been a time when men counted: there were not so many carriagesin the colony then, though Mr. Denham, he fancied, had a buggy. AndCaptain Whalley seemed to be swept out of the great avenue by the swirlof a mental backwash. He remembered muddy shores, a harbor withoutquays, the one solitary wooden pier (but that was a public work) juttingout crookedly, the first coal-sheds erected on Monkey Point, that caughtfire mysteriously and smoldered for days, so that amazed ships cameinto a roadstead full of sulphurous smoke, and the sun hung blood-redat midday. He remembered the things, the faces, and something morebesides--like the faint flavor of a cup quaffed to the bottom, like asubtle sparkle of the air that was not to be found in the atmosphere ofto-day. 

In this evocation, swift and full of detail like a flash of magnesiumlight into the niches of a dark memorial hall, Captain Whalleycontemplated things once important, the efforts of small men, the growthof a great place, but now robbed of all consequence by the greatnessof accomplished facts, by hopes greater still; and they gave him for amoment such an almost physical grip upon time, such a comprehension ofour unchangeable feelings, that he stopped short, struck the ground withhis stick, and ejaculated mentally, "What the devil am I doing here!" Heseemed lost in a sort of surprise; but he heard his name called out inwheezy tones once, twice--and turned on his heels slowly. 

He beheld then, waddling towards him autocratically, a man of anold-fashioned and gouty aspect, with hair as white as his own, but withshaved, florid cheeks, wearing a necktie--almost a neckcloth--whosestiff ends projected far beyond his chin; with round legs, round arms, a round body, a round face--generally producing the effect of his shortfigure having been distended by means of an air-pump as much as theseams of his clothing would stand. This was the Master-Attendant of theport. A master-attendant is a superior sort of harbor-master; a person, out in the East, of some consequence in his sphere; a Governmentofficial, a magistrate for the waters of the port, and possessed of vastbut ill-defined disciplinary authority over seamen of all classes. This particular Master-Attendant was reported to consider it miserablyinadequate, on the ground that it did not include the power of lifeand death. This was a jocular exaggeration. Captain Eliott was fairlysatisfied with his position, and nursed no inconsiderable sense of suchpower as he had. His conceited and tyrannical disposition did not allowhim to let it dwindle in his hands for want of use. The uproarious, choleric frankness of his comments on people's character and conductcaused him to be feared at bottom; though in conversation many pretendednot to mind him in the least, others would only smile sourly at themention of his name, and there were even some who dared to pronounce him"a meddlesome old ruffian. " But for almost all of them one of CaptainEliott's outbreaks was nearly as distasteful to face as a chance ofannihilation. 

V

As soon as he had come up quite close he said, mouthing in a growl--

"What's this I hear, Whalley? Is it true you're selling the Fair Maid?"

Captain Whalley, looking away, said the thing was done--money had beenpaid that morning; and the other expressed at once his approbation ofsuch an extremely sensible proceeding. He had got out of his trap tostretch his legs, he explained, on his way home to dinner. Sir Fredericklooked well at the end of his time. Didn't he?

Captain Whalley could not say; had only noticed the carriage going past. 

The Master-Attendant, plunging his hands into the pockets of analpaca jacket inappropriately short and tight for a man of his age andappearance, strutted with a slight limp, and with his head reaching onlyto the shoulder of Captain Whalley, who walked easily, staring straightbefore him. They had been good comrades years ago, almost intimates. Atthe time when Whalley commanded the renowned Condor, Eliott had chargeof the nearly as famous Ringdove for the same owners; and when theappointment of Master-Attendant was created, Whalley would have been theonly other serious candidate. But Captain Whalley, then in the prime oflife, was resolved to serve no one but his own auspicious Fortune. Faraway, tending his hot irons, he was glad to hear the other had beensuccessful. There was a worldly suppleness in bluff Ned Eliott thatwould serve him well in that sort of official appointment. And theywere so dissimilar at bottom that as they came slowly to the end of theavenue before the Cathedral, it had never come into Whalley's head thathe might have been in that man's place--provided for to the end of hisdays. 

The sacred edifice, standing in solemn isolation amongst the convergingavenues of enormous trees, as if to put grave thoughts of heaven intothe hours of ease, presented a closed Gothic portal to the light andglory of the west. The glass of the rosace above the ogive glowed likefiery coal in the deep carvings of a wheel of stone. The two men facedabout. 

"I'll tell you what they ought to do next, Whalley, " growled CaptainEliott suddenly. 

"Well?"

"They ought to send a real live lord out here when Sir Frederick's timeis up. Eh?"

Captain Whalley perfunctorily did not see why a lord of the right sortshould not do as well as anyone else. But this was not the other's pointof view. 

"No, no. Place runs itself. Nothing can stop it now. Good enough for alord, " he growled in short sentences. "Look at the changes in our time. We need a lord here now. They have got a lord in Bombay. "

He dined once or twice every year at the Government House--amany-windowed, arcaded palace upon a hill laid out in roads and gardens. And lately he had been taking about a duke in his Master-Attendant'ssteam-launch to visit the harbor improvements. Before that he had "mostobligingly" gone out in person to pick out a good berth for the ducalyacht. Afterwards he had an invitation to lunch on board. The duchessherself lunched with them. A big woman with a red face. Complexion quitesunburnt. He should think ruined. Very gracious manners. They were goingon to Japan. . . . 

He ejaculated these details for Captain Whalley's edification, pausingto blow out his cheeks as if with a pent-up sense of importance, andrepeatedly protruding his thick lips till the blunt crimson end of hisnose seemed to dip into the milk of his mustache. The place ran itself;it was fit for any lord; it gave no trouble except in its Marinedepartment--in its Marine department he repeated twice, and aftera heavy snort began to relate how the other day her Majesty'sConsul-General in French Cochin-China had cabled to him--in his officialcapacity--asking for a qualified man to be sent over to take charge of aGlasgow ship whose master had died in Saigon. 

"I sent word of it to the officers' quarters in the Sailors' Home, " hecontinued, while the limp in his gait seemed to grow more accentuatedwith the increasing irritation of his voice. "Place's full of them. Twice as many men as there are berths going in the local trade. Allhungry for an easy job. Twice as many--and--What d'you think, Whalley? . . . "

He stopped short; his hands clenched and thrust deeply downwards, seemedready to burst the pockets of his jacket. A slight sigh escaped CaptainWhalley. 

"Hey? You would think they would be falling over each other. Not a bitof it. Frightened to go home. Nice and warm out here to lie about averanda waiting for a job. I sit and wait in my office. Nobody. Whatdid they suppose? That I was going to sit there like a dummy with theConsul-General's cable before me? Not likely. So I looked up a list ofthem I keep by me and sent word for Hamilton--the worst loafer of themall--and just made him go. Threatened to instruct the steward of theSailors' Home to have him turned out neck and crop. He did not thinkthe berth was good enough--if--you--please. 'I've your little records byme, ' said I. 'You came ashore here eighteen months ago, and you haven'tdone six months' work since. You are in debt for your board now at theHome, and I suppose you reckon the Marine Office will pay in the end. Eh? So it shall; but if you don't take this chance, away you go toEngland, assisted passage, by the first homeward steamer that comesalong. You are no better than a pauper. We don't want any white paupershere. ' I scared him. But look at the trouble all this gave me. "

"You would not have had any trouble, " Captain Whalley said almostinvoluntarily, "if you had sent for me. "

Captain Eliott was immensely amused; he shook with laughter as hewalked. But suddenly he stopped laughing. A vague recollection hadcrossed his mind. Hadn't he heard it said at the time of the Travancoreand Deccan smash that poor Whalley had been cleaned out completely. "Fellow's hard up, by heavens!" he thought; and at once he cast asidelong upward glance at his companion. But Captain Whalley was smilingausterely straight before him, with a carriage of the head inconceivablein a penniless man--and he became reassured. Impossible. Could nothave lost everything. That ship had been only a hobby of his. And thereflection that a man who had confessed to receiving that very morning apresumably large sum of money was not likely to spring upon him a demandfor a small loan put him entirely at his ease again. There had come along pause in their talk, however, and not knowing how to begin again, he growled out soberly, "We old fellows ought to take a rest now. "

"The best thing for some of us would be to die at the oar, " CaptainWhalley said negligently. 

"Come, now. Aren't you a bit tired by this time of the whole show?"muttered the other sullenly. 

"Are you?"

Captain Eliott was. Infernally tired. He only hung on to his berth solong in order to get his pension on the highest scale before he wenthome. It would be no better than poverty, anyhow; still, it was the onlything between him and the workhouse. And he had a family. Three girls, as Whalley knew. He gave "Harry, old boy, " to understand that thesethree girls were a source of the greatest anxiety and worry to him. Enough to drive a man distracted. 

"Why? What have they been doing now?" asked Captain Whalley with a sortof amused absent-mindedness. 

"Doing! Doing nothing. That's just it. Lawn-tennis and silly novels frommorning to night. . . . "

If one of them at least had been a boy. But all three! And, as ill-luckwould have it, there did not seem to be any decent young fellows leftin the world. When he looked around in the club he saw only a lot ofconceited popinjays too selfish to think of making a good woman happy. Extreme indigence stared him in the face with all that crowd to keep athome. He had cherished the idea of building himself a little house inthe country--in Surrey--to end his days in, but he was afraid it was outof the question, . . . And his staring eyes rolled upwards with sucha pathetic anxiety that Captain Whalley charitably nodded down at him, restraining a sort of sickening desire to laugh. 

"You must know what it is yourself, Harry. Girls are the very devil forworry and anxiety. "

"Ay! But mine is doing well, " Captain Whalley pronounced slowly, staringto the end of the avenue. 

The Master-Attendant was glad to hear this. Uncommonly glad. Heremembered her well. A pretty girl she was. 

Captain Whalley, stepping out carelessly, assented as if in a dream. 

"She was pretty. "

The procession of carriages was breaking up. 

One after another they left the file to go off at a trot, animating thevast avenue with their scattered life and movement; but soon the aspectof dignified solitude returned and took possession of the straight wideroad. A syce in white stood at the head of a Burmah pony harnessed to avarnished two-wheel cart; and the whole thing waiting by the curb seemedno bigger than a child's toy forgotten under the soaring trees. CaptainEliott waddled up to it and made as if to clamber in, but refrained;and keeping one hand resting easily on the shaft, he changed theconversation from his pension, his daughters, and his poverty back againto the only other topic in the world--the Marine Office, the men and theships of the port. 

He proceeded to give instances of what was expected of him; and histhick voice drowsed in the still air like the obstinate droning of anenormous bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what was the force orthe weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away. It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort. How queer. More queer than any of Ned's instances. Or was it that overpoweringsense of idleness alone that made him stand there and listen to thesestories. Nothing very real had ever troubled Ned Eliott; and graduallyhe seemed to detect deep in, as if wrapped up in the gross wheezyrumble, something of the clear hearty voice of the young captain of theRingdove. He wondered if he too had changed to the same extent; and itseemed to him that the voice of his old chum had not changed so verymuch--that the man was the same. Not a bad fellow the pleasant, jollyNed Eliott, friendly, well up to his business--and always a bit of ahumbug. He remembered how he used to amuse his poor wife. She could readhim like an open book. When the Condor and the Ringdove happened to bein port together, she would frequently ask him to bring Captain Eliottto dinner. They had not met often since those old days. Not once in fiveyears, perhaps. He regarded from under his white eyebrows this man hecould not bring himself to take into his confidence at this juncture;and the other went on with his intimate outpourings, and as remote fromhis hearer as though he had been talking on a hill-top a mile away. 

He was in a bit of a quandary now as to the steamer Sofala. Ultimatelyevery hitch in the port came into his hands to undo. They would misshim when he was gone in another eighteen months, and most likely someretired naval officer had been pitchforked into the appointment--a manthat would understand nothing and care less. That steamer was a coastingcraft having a steady trade connection as far north as Tenasserim; butthe trouble was she could get no captain to take her on her regulartrip. Nobody would go in her. He really had no power, of course, toorder a man to take a job. It was all very well to stretch a point onthe demand of a consul-general, but . . . 

"What's the matter with the ship?" Captain Whalley interrupted inmeasured tones. 

"Nothing's the matter. Sound old steamer. Her owner has been in myoffice this afternoon tearing his hair. "

"Is he a white man?" asked Whalley in an interested voice. 

"He calls himself a white man, " answered the Master-Attendant scornfully;"but if so, it's just skin-deep and no more. I told him that to his facetoo. "

"But who is he, then?"

"He's the chief engineer of her. See _that_, Harry?"

"I see, " Captain Whalley said thoughtfully. "The engineer. I see. "

How the fellow came to be a shipowner at the same time was quite atale. He came out third in a home ship nearly fifteen years ago, CaptainEliott remembered, and got paid off after a bad sort of row both withhis skipper and his chief. Anyway, they seemed jolly glad to get rid ofhim at all costs. Clearly a mutinous sort of chap. Well, he remained outhere, a perfect nuisance, everlastingly shipped and unshipped, unableto keep a berth very long; pretty nigh went through every engine-roomafloat belonging to the colony. Then suddenly, "What do you thinkhappened, Harry?"

Captain Whalley, who seemed lost in a mental effort as of doing a sumin his head, gave a slight start. He really couldn't imagine. TheMaster-Attendant's voice vibrated dully with hoarse emphasis. The manactually had the luck to win the second prize in the Manilla lottery. All these engineers and officers of ships took tickets in that gamble. It seemed to be a perfect mania with them all. 

Everybody expected now that he would take himself off home with hismoney, and go to the devil in his own way. Not at all. The Sofala, judged too small and not quite modern enough for the sort of tradeshe was in, could be got for a moderate price from her owners, who hadordered a new steamer from Europe. He rushed in and bought her. This manhad never given any signs of that sort of mental intoxication the merefact of getting hold of a large sum of money may produce--not till hegot a ship of his own; but then he went off his balance all at once:came bouncing into the Marine Office on some transfer business, with hishat hanging over his left eye and switching a little cane in his hand, and told each one of the clerks separately that "Nobody could put himout now. It was his turn. There was no one over him on earth, and therenever would be either. " He swaggered and strutted between the desks, talking at the top of his voice, and trembling like a leaf all thewhile, so that the current business of the office was suspended for thetime he was in there, and everybody in the big room stood open-mouthedlooking at his antics. Afterwards he could be seen during the hottesthours of the day with his face as red as fire rushing along up and downthe quays to look at his ship from different points of view: he seemedinclined to stop every stranger he came across just to let them know"that there would be no longer anyone over him; he had bought a ship;nobody on earth could put him out of his engine-room now. "

Good bargain as she was, the price of the Sofala took up pretty near allthe lottery-money. He had left himself no capital to work with. That didnot matter so much, for these were the halcyon days of steamcoasting trade, before some of the home shipping firms had thought ofestablishing local fleets to feed their main lines. These, when onceorganized, took the biggest slices out of that cake, of course; andby-and-by a squad of confounded German tramps turned up east of SuezCanal and swept up all the crumbs. They prowled on the cheap to and froalong the coast and between the islands, like a lot of sharks in thewater ready to snap up anything you let drop. And then the high oldtimes were over for good; for years the Sofala had made no more, hejudged, than a fair living. Captain Eliott looked upon it as his dutyin every way to assist an English ship to hold her own; and it stood toreason that if for want of a captain the Sofala began to miss her tripsshe would very soon lose her trade. There was the quandary. The man wastoo impracticable. "Too much of a beggar on horseback from the first, "he explained. "Seemed to grow worse as the time went on. In the lastthree years he's run through eleven skippers; he had tried every singleman here, outside of the regular lines. I had warned him before thatthis would not do. And now, of course, no one will look at the Sofala. Ihad one or two men up at my office and talked to them; but, as they saidto me, what was the good of taking the berth to lead a regular dog'slife for a month and then get the sack at the end of the first trip? Thefellow, of course, told me it was all nonsense; there has been a plothatching for years against him. And now it had come. All the horridsailors in the port had conspired to bring him to his knees, because hewas an engineer. "

Captain Eliott emitted a throaty chuckle. 

"And the fact is, that if he misses a couple more trips he need nevertrouble himself to start again. He won't find any cargo in his oldtrade. There's too much competition nowadays for people to keep theirstuff lying about for a ship that does not turn up when she's expected. It's a bad lookout for him. He swears he will shut himself on board andstarve to death in his cabin rather than sell her--even if he could finda buyer. And that's not likely in the least. Not even the Japs wouldgive her insured value for her. It isn't like selling sailing-ships. Steamers _do_ get out of date, besides getting old. "

"He must have laid by a good bit of money though, " observed CaptainWhalley quietly. 

The Harbor-master puffed out his purple cheeks to an amazing size. 

"Not a stiver, Harry. Not--a--single--sti-ver. "

He waited; but as Captain Whalley, stroking his beard slowly, lookeddown on the ground without a word, he tapped him on the forearm, tiptoed, and said in a hoarse whisper--

"The Manilla lottery has been eating him up. "

He frowned a little, nodding in tiny affirmative jerks. They all weregoing in for it; a third of the wages paid to ships' officers ("in myport, " he snorted) went to Manilla. It was a mania. That fellow Massyhad been bitten by it like the rest of them from the first; but afterwinning once he seemed to have persuaded himself he had only to tryagain to get another big prize. He had taken dozens and scores oftickets for every drawing since. What with this vice and his ignoranceof affairs, ever since he had improvidently bought that steamer he hadbeen more or less short of money. 

This, in Captain Eliott's opinion, gave an opening for a sensiblesailor-man with a few pounds to step in and save that fool fromthe consequences of his folly. It was his craze to quarrel with hiscaptains. He had had some really good men too, who would have been tooglad to stay if he would only let them. But no. He seemed to thinkhe was no owner unless he was kicking somebody out in the morning andhaving a row with the new man in the evening. What was wanted for himwas a master with a couple of hundred or so to take an interest in theship on proper conditions. You don't discharge a man for no fault, onlybecause of the fun of telling him to pack up his traps and go ashore, when you know that in that case you are bound to buy back his share. Onthe other hand, a fellow with an interest in the ship is not likely tothrow up his job in a huff about a trifle. He had told Massy that. Hehad said: "'This won't do, Mr. Massy. We are getting very sick of youhere in the Marine Office. What you must do now is to try whether youcould get a sailor to join you as partner. That seems to be the onlyway. ' And that was sound advice, Harry. "

Captain Whalley, leaning on his stick, was perfectly still all over, andhis hand, arrested in the act of stroking, grasped his whole beard. Andwhat did the fellow say to that?

The fellow had the audacity to fly out at the Master-Attendant. He hadreceived the advice in a most impudent manner. "I didn't come here tobe laughed at, " he had shrieked. "I appeal to you as an Englishman and ashipowner brought to the verge of ruin by an illegal conspiracy of yourbeggarly sailors, and all you condescend to do for me is to tell me togo and get a partner!" . . . The fellow had presumed to stamp with rageon the floor of the private office. Where was he going to get a partner?Was he being taken for a fool? Not a single one of that contemptible lotashore at the "Home" had twopence in his pocket to bless himself with. The very native curs in the bazaar knew that much. . . . "And it's trueenough, Harry, " rumbled Captain Eliott judicially. "They are much morelikely one and all to owe money to the Chinamen in Denham Road for theclothes on their backs. 'Well, ' said I, 'you make too much noise over itfor my taste, Mr. Massy. Good morning. ' He banged the door after him; hedared to bang my door, confound his cheek!"

The head of the Marine department was out of breath with indignation;then recollecting himself as it were, "I'll end by being late todinner--yarning with you here . . . Wife doesn't like it. "

He clambered ponderously into the trap; leaned out sideways, and onlythen wondered wheezily what on earth Captain Whalley could have beendoing with himself of late. They had had no sight of each other foryears and years till the other day when he had seen him unexpectedly inthe office. 

What on earth . . . 

Captain Whalley seemed to be smiling to himself in his white beard. 

"The earth is big, " he said vaguely. 

The other, as if to test the statement, stared all round from hisdriving-seat. The Esplanade was very quiet; only from afar, from veryfar, a long way from the seashore, across the stretches of grass, through the long ranges of trees, came faintly the toot--toot--toot ofthe cable car beginning to roll before the empty peristyle of the PublicLibrary on its three-mile journey to the New Harbor Docks. 

"Doesn't seem to be so much room on it, " growled the Master-Attendant, "since these Germans came along shouldering us at every turn. It was notso in our time. "

He fell into deep thought, breathing stertorously, as though he had beentaking a nap open-eyed. Perhaps he too, on his side, had detected in thesilent pilgrim-like figure, standing there by the wheel, like an arrestedwayfarer, the buried lineaments of the features belonging to the youngcaptain of the Condor. Good fellow--Harry Whalley--never very talkative. You never knew what he was up to--a bit too off-hand with people ofconsequence, and apt to take a wrong view of a fellow's actions. Factwas he had a too good opinion of himself. He would have liked to tellhim to get in and drive him home to dinner. But one never knew. Wifewould not like it. 

"And it's funny to think, Harry, " he went on in a big, subdued drone, "that of all the people on it there seems only you and I left toremember this part of the world as it used to be . . . "

He was ready to indulge in the sweetness of a sentimental mood had itnot struck him suddenly that Captain Whalley, unstirring and withouta word, seemed to be awaiting something--perhaps expecting . . . Hegathered the reins at once and burst out in bluff, hearty growls--

"Ha! My dear boy. The men we have known--the ships we've sailed--ay! andthe things we've done . . . "

The pony plunged--the syce skipped out of the way. Captain Whalleyraised his arm. 

"Good-by. "

VI

The sun had set. And when, after drilling a deep hole with his stick, hemoved from that spot the night had massed its army of shadows under thetrees. They filled the eastern ends of the avenues as if only waitingthe signal for a general advance upon the open spaces of the world; theywere gathering low between the deep stone-faced banks of the canal. TheMalay prau, half-concealed under the arch of the bridge, had not alteredits position a quarter of an inch. For a long time Captain Whalleystared down over the parapet, till at last the floating immobilityof that beshrouded thing seemed to grow upon him into somethinginexplicable and alarming. The twilight abandoned the zenith; itsreflected gleams left the world below, and the water of the canal seemedto turn into pitch. Captain Whalley crossed it. 

The turning to the right, which was his way to his hotel, was onlya very few steps farther. He stopped again (all the houses of thesea-front were shut up, the quayside was deserted, but for one or twofigures of natives walking in the distance) and began to reckon theamount of his bill. So many days in the hotel at so many dollars aday. To count the days he used his fingers: plunging one hand into hispocket, he jingled a few silver coins. All right for three days more;and then, unless something turned up, he must break into the fivehundred--Ivy's money--invested in her father. It seemed to him thatthe first meal coming out of that reserve would choke him--for certain. Reason was of no use. It was a matter of feeling. His feelings had neverplayed him false. 

He did not turn to the right. He walked on, as if there still had beena ship in the roadstead to which he could get himself pulled off inthe evening. Far away, beyond the houses, on the slope of an indigopromontory closing the view of the quays, the slim column of afactory-chimney smoked quietly straight up into the clear air. AChinaman, curled down in the stern of one of the half-dozen sampansfloating off the end of the jetty, caught sight of a beckoning hand. He jumped up, rolled his pigtail round his head swiftly, tucked in tworapid movements his wide dark trousers high up his yellow thighs, andby a single, noiseless, finlike stir of the oars, sheered the sampanalongside the steps with the ease and precision of a swimming fish. 

"Sofala, " articulated Captain Whalley from above; and the Chinaman, a new emigrant probably, stared upwards with a tense attention as ifwaiting to see the queer word fall visibly from the white man's lips. "Sofala, " Captain Whalley repeated; and suddenly his heart failed him. He paused. The shores, the islets, the high ground, the low points, weredark: the horizon had grown somber; and across the eastern sweep ofthe shore the white obelisk, marking the landing-place of thetelegraph-cable, stood like a pale ghost on the beach before the darkspread of uneven roofs, intermingled with palms, of the native town. Captain Whalley began again. 

"Sofala. Savee So-fa-la, John?"

This time the Chinaman made out that bizarre sound, and grunted hisassent uncouthly, low down in his bare throat. With the first yellowtwinkle of a star that appeared like the head of a pin stabbed deep intothe smooth, pale, shimmering fabric of the sky, the edge of a keen chillseemed to cleave through the warm air of the earth. At the moment ofstepping into the sampan to go and try for the command of the SofalaCaptain Whalley shivered a little. 

When on his return he landed on the quay again Venus, like a choicejewel set low on the hem of the sky, cast a faint gold trail behind himupon the roadstead, as level as a floor made of one dark andpolished stone. The lofty vaults of the avenues were black--allblack overhead--and the porcelain globes on the lamp-posts resembledegg-shaped pearls, gigantic and luminous, displayed in a row whosefarther end seemed to sink in the distance, down to the level of hisknees. He put his hands behind his back. He would now consider calmlythe discretion of it before saying the final word to-morrow. His feetscrunched the gravel loudly--the discretion of it. It would have beeneasier to appraise had there been a workable alternative. The honestyof it was indubitable: he meant well by the fellow; and periodicallyhis shadow leaped up intense by his side on the trunks of the trees, to lengthen itself, oblique and dim, far over the grass--repeating hisstride. 

The discretion of it. Was there a choice? He seemed already to have lostsomething of himself; to have given up to a hungry specter something ofhis truth and dignity in order to live. But his life was necessary. Letpoverty do its worst in exacting its toll of humiliation. It was certainthat Ned Eliott had rendered him, without knowing it, a service forwhich it would have been impossible to ask. He hoped Ned would not thinkthere had been something underhand in his action. He supposed that nowwhen he heard of it he would understand--or perhaps he would only thinkWhalley an eccentric old fool. What would have been the good of tellinghim--any more than of blurting the whole tale to that man Massy? Fivehundred pounds ready to invest. Let him make the best of that. Let himwonder. You want a captain--I want a ship. That's enough. B-r-r-r-r. What a disagreeable impression that empty, dark, echoing steamer hadmade upon him. . . . 

A laid-up steamer was a dead thing and no mistake; a sailing-shipsomehow seems always ready to spring into life with the breath of theincorruptible heaven; but a teamer, thought Captain Whalley, with herfires out, without the warm whiffs from below meeting you on her decks, without the hiss of steam, the clangs of iron in her breast--lies thereas cold and still and pulseless as a corpse. 

In the solitude of the avenue, all black above and lighted below, Captain Whalley, considering the discretion of his course, met, as itwere incidentally, the thought of death. He pushed it aside with dislikeand contempt. He almost laughed at it; and in the unquenchable vitalityof his age only thought with a kind of exultation how little he neededto keep body and soul together. Not a bad investment for the poorwoman this solid carcass of her father. And for the rest--in case ofanything--the agreement should be clear: the whole five hundred tobe paid back to her integrally within three months. Integrally. Everypenny. He was not to lose any of her money whatever else had to go--alittle dignity--some of his self-respect. He had never before allowedanybody to remain under any sort of false impression as to himself. Well, let that go--for her sake. After all, he had never _said_ anythingmisleading--and Captain Whalley felt himself corrupt to the marrow ofhis bones. He laughed a little with the intimate scorn of his worldlyprudence. Clearly, with a fellow of that sort, and in the peculiarrelation they were to stand to each other, it would not have done toblurt out everything. He did not like the fellow. He did not like hisspells of fawning loquacity and bursts of resentfulness. In the end--apoor devil. He would not have liked to stand in his shoes. Men werenot evil, after all. He did not like his sleek hair, his queer way ofstanding at right angles, with his nose in the air, and glancing alonghis shoulder at you. No. On the whole, men were not bad--they were onlysilly or unhappy. 

Captain Whalley had finished considering the discretion of thatstep--and there was the whole long night before him. In the full lighthis long beard would glisten like a silver breastplate covering hisheart; in the spaces between the lamps his burly figure passed lessdistinct, loomed very big, wandering, and mysterious. No; there wasnot much real harm in men: and all the time a shadow marched with him, slanting on his left hand--which in the East is a presage of evil. 

. . . . . . . 

"Can you make out the clump of palms yet, Serang?" asked Captain Whalleyfrom his chair on the bridge of the Sofala approaching the bar of BatuBeru. 

"No, Tuan. By-and-by see. " The old Malay, in a blue dungaree suit, planted on his bony dark feet under the bridge awning, put his handsbehind his back and stared ahead out of the innumerable wrinkles at thecorners of his eyes. 

Captain Whalley sat still, without lifting his head to look for himself. Three years--thirty-six times. He had made these palms thirty-six timesfrom the southward. They would come into view at the proper time. ThankGod, the old ship made her courses and distances trip after trip, ascorrect as clockwork. At last he murmured again--

"In sight yet?"

"The sun makes a very great glare, Tuan. "

"Watch well, Serang. "

"Ya, Tuan. "

A white man had ascended the ladder from the deck noiselessly, and hadlistened quietly to this short colloquy. Then he stepped out on thebridge and began to walk from end to end, holding up the long cherrywoodstem of a pipe. His black hair lay plastered in long lanky wispsacross the bald summit of his head; he had a furrowed brow, a yellowcomplexion, and a thick shapeless nose. A scanty growth of whisker didnot conceal the contour of his jaw. His aspect was of brooding care;and sucking at a curved black mouthpiece, he presented such a heavyoverhanging profile that even the Serang could not help reflectingsometimes upon the extreme unloveliness of some white men. 

Captain Whalley seemed to brace himself up in his chair, but gave norecognition whatever to his presence. The other puffed jets of smoke;then suddenly--

"I could never understand that new mania of yours of having this Malayhere for your shadow, partner. "

Captain Whalley got up from the chair in all his imposing stature andwalked across to the binnacle, holding such an unswerving course thatthe other had to back away hurriedly, and remained as if intimidated, with the pipe trembling in his hand. "Walk over me now, " he muttered ina sort of astounded and discomfited whisper. Then slowly and distinctlyhe said--

"I--am--not--dirt. " And then added defiantly, "As you seem to think. "

The Serang jerked out--

"See the palms now, Tuan. "

Captain Whalley strode forward to the rail; but his eyes, instead ofgoing straight to the point, with the assured keen glance of a sailor, wandered irresolutely in space, as though he, the discoverer of newroutes, had lost his way upon this narrow sea. 

Another white man, the mate, came up on the bridge. He was tall, young, lean, with a mustache like a trooper, and something malicious in theeye. He took up a position beside the engineer. Captain Whalley, withhis back to them, inquired--

"What's on the log?"

"Eighty-five, " answered the mate quickly, and nudged the engineer withhis elbow. 

Captain Whalley's muscular hands squeezed the iron rail with anextraordinary force; his eyes glared with an enormous effort; he knittedhis eyebrows, the perspiration fell from under his hat, --and in afaint voice he murmured, "Steady her, Serang--when she is on the properbearing. "

The silent Malay stepped back, waited a little, and lifted his armwarningly to the helmsman. The wheel revolved rapidly to meet the swingof the ship. Again the made nudged the engineer. But Massy turned uponhim. 

"Mr. Sterne, " he said violently, "let me tell you--as a shipowner--thatyou are no better than a confounded fool. "

VII

Sterne went down smirking and apparently not at all disconcerted, butthe engineer Massy remained on the bridge, moving about with uneasyself-assertion. Everybody on board was his inferior--everyone withoutexception. He paid their wages and found them in their food. They atemore of his bread and pocketed more of his money than they were worth;and they had no care in the world, while he alone had to meet all thedifficulties of shipowning. When he contemplated his position in all itsmenacing entirety, it seemed to him that he had been for years theprey of a band of parasites: and for years he had scowled at everybodyconnected with the Sofala except, perhaps, at the Chinese firemenwho served to get her along. Their use was manifest: they were anindispensable part of the machinery of which he was the master. 

When he passed along his decks he shouldered those he came acrossbrutally; but the Malay deck hands had learned to dodge out of his way. He had to bring himself to tolerate them because of the necessary manuallabor of the ship which must be done. He had to struggle and plan andscheme to keep the Sofala afloat--and what did he get for it? Not evenenough respect. They could not have given him enough of that if alltheir thoughts and all their actions had been directed to that end. Thevanity of possession, the vainglory of power, had passed away by thistime, and there remained only the material embarrassments, the fearof losing that position which had turned out not worth having, and ananxiety of thought which no abject subservience of men could repay. 

He walked up and down. The bridge was his own after all. He had paidfor it; and with the stem of the pipe in his hand he would stop short attimes as if to listen with a profound and concentrated attention to thedeadened beat of the engines (his own engines) and the slight grindingof the steering chains upon the continuous low wash of water alongside. But for these sounds, the ship might have been lying as still as ifmoored to a bank, and as silent as if abandoned by every living soul;only the coast, the low coast of mud and mangroves with the three palmsin a bunch at the back, grew slowly more distinct in its long straightline, without a single feature to arrest attention. The nativepassengers of the Sofala lay about on mats under the awnings; the smokeof her funnel seemed the only sign of her life and connected with hergliding motion in a mysterious manner. 

Captain Whalley on his feet, with a pair of binoculars in his hand andthe little Malay Serang at his elbow, like an old giant attended by awizened pigmy, was taking her over the shallow water of the bar. 

This submarine ridge of mud, scoured by the stream out of the softbottom of the river and heaped up far out on the hard bottom of the sea, was difficult to get over. The alluvial coast having no distinguishingmarks, the bearings of the crossing-place had to be taken from the shapeof the mountains inland. The guidance of a form flattened and unevenat the top like a grinder tooth, and of another smooth, saddle-backedsummit, had to be searched for within the great unclouded glare thatseemed to shift and float like a dry fiery mist, filling the air, ascending from the water, shrouding the distances, scorching to the eye. In this veil of light the near edge of the shore alone stood out almostcoal-black with an opaque and motionless solidity. Thirty miles awaythe serrated range of the interior stretched across the horizon, itsoutlines and shades of blue, faint and tremulous like a backgroundpainted on airy gossamer on the quivering fabric of an impalpablecurtain let down to the plain of alluvial soil; and the openings of theestuary appeared, shining white, like bits of silver let into the squarepieces snipped clean and sharp out of the body of the land bordered withmangroves. 

On the forepart of the bridge the giant and the pigmy muttered to eachother frequently in quiet tones. Behind them Massy stood sideways withan expression of disdain and suspense on his face. His globular eyeswere perfectly motionless, and he seemed to have forgotten the long pipehe held in his hand. 

On the fore-deck below the bridge, steeply roofed with the white slopesof the awnings, a young lascar seaman had clambered outside the rail. He adjusted quickly a broad band of sail canvas under his armpits, and throwing his chest against it, leaned out far over the water. Thesleeves of his thin cotton shirt, cut off close to the shoulder, bared his brown arm of full rounded form and with a satiny skin like awoman's. He swung it rigidly with the rotary and menacing action of aslinger: the 14-lb. Weight hurtled circling in the air, then suddenlyflew ahead as far as the curve of the bow. The wet thin line swishedlike scratched silk running through the dark fingers of the man, andthe plunge of the lead close to the ship's side made a vanishing silveryscar upon the golden glitter; then after an interval the voice of theyoung Malay uplifted and long-drawn declared the depth of the water inhis own language. 

"Tiga stengah, " he cried after each splash and pause, gathering the linebusily for another cast. "Tiga stengah, " which means three fathom and ahalf. For a mile or so from seaward there was a uniform depth of waterright up to the bar. "Half-three. Half-three. Half-three, "--and hismodulated cry, returned leisurely and monotonous, like the repeatedcall of a bird, seemed to float away in sunshine and disappear in thespacious silence of the empty sea and of a lifeless shore lyingopen, north and south, east and west, without the stir of a singlecloud-shadow or the whisper of any other voice. 

The owner-engineer of the Sofala remained very still behind the twoseamen of different race, creed, and color; the European with thetime-defying vigor of his old frame, the little Malay, old, too, butslight and shrunken like a withered brown leaf blown by a chance windunder the mighty shadow of the other. Very busy looking forward at theland, they had not a glance to spare; and Massy, glaring at them frombehind, seemed to resent their attention to their duty like a personalslight upon himself. 

This was unreasonable; but he had lived in his own world of unreasonableresentments for many years. At last, passing his moist palm over therare lanky wisps of coarse hair on the top of his yellow head, he beganto talk slowly. 

"A leadsman, you want! I suppose that's your correct mail-boat style. Haven't you enough judgment to tell where you are by looking at theland? Why, before I had been a twelvemonth in the trade I was up to thattrick--and I am only an engineer. I can point to you from here where thebar is, and I could tell you besides that you are as likely as not tostick her in the mud in about five minutes from now; only you would callit interfering, I suppose. And there's that written agreement of ours, that says I mustn't interfere. "

His voice stopped. Captain Whalley, without relaxing the set severity ofhis features, moved his lips to ask in a quick mumble--

"How near, Serang?"

"Very near now, Tuan, " the Malay muttered rapidly. 

"Dead slow, " said the Captain aloud in a firm tone. 

The Serang snatched at the handle of the telegraph. A gong clanged downbelow. Massy with a scornful snigger walked off and put his head downthe engineroom skylight. 

"You may expect some rare fooling with the engines, Jack, " he bellowed. The space into which he stared was deep and full of gloom; and the graygleams of steel down there seemed cool after the intense glare of thesea around the ship. The air, however, came up clammy and hot on hisface. A short hoot on which it would have been impossible to put anysort of interpretation came from the bottom cavernously. This was theway in which the second engineer answered his chief. 

He was a middle-aged man with an inattentive manner, and apparentlywrapped up in such a taciturn concern for his engines that he seemedto have lost the use of speech. When addressed directly his only answerwould be a grunt or a hoot, according to the distance. For all the yearshe had been in the Sofala he had never been known to exchange as muchas a frank Good-morning with any of his shipmates. He did not seem awarethat men came and went in the world; he did not seem to see them at all. Indeed he never recognized his ship mates on shore. At table (the fourwhite men of the Sofala messed together) he sat looking into his platedispassionately, but at the end of the meal would jump up and bolt downbelow as if a sudden thought had impelled him to rush and see whethersomebody had not stolen the engines while he dined. In port at the endof the trip he went ashore regularly, but no one knew where he spenthis evenings or in what manner. The local coasting fleet had preserveda wild and incoherent tale of his infatuation for the wife of a sergeantin an Irish infantry regiment. The regiment, however, had done its turnof garrison duty there ages before, and was gone somewhere to the otherside of the earth, out of men's knowledge. Twice or perhaps three timesin the course of the year he would take too much to drink. On theseoccasions he returned on board at an earlier hour than usual; ranacross the deck balancing himself with his spread arms like a tight-ropewalker; and locking the door of his cabin, he would converse and arguewith himself the livelong night in an amazing variety of tones; storm, sneer, and whine with an inexhaustible persistence. Massy in his berthnext door, raising himself on his elbow, would discover that his secondhad remembered the name of every white man that had passed through theSofala for years and years back. He remembered the names of men that haddied, that had gone home, that had gone to America: he remembered in hiscups the names of men whose connection with the ship had been so shortthat Massy had almost forgotten its circumstances and could barelyrecall their faces. The inebriated voice on the other side of thebulkhead commented upon them all with an extraordinary and ingeniousvenom of scandalous inventions. It seems they had all offended him insome way, and in return he had found them all out. He muttered darkly;he laughed sardonically; he crushed them one after another; but of hischief, Massy, he babbled with an envious and naive admiration. Cleverscoundrel! Don't meet the likes of him every day. Just look at him. Ha!Great! Ship of his own. Wouldn't catch _him_ going wrong. No fear--thebeast! And Massy, after listening with a gratified smile to theseartless tributes to his greatness, would begin to shout, thumping at thebulkhead with both fists--

"Shut up, you lunatic! Won't you let me go to sleep, you fool!"

But a half smile of pride lingered on his lips; outside the solitarylascar told off for night duty in harbor, perhaps a youth fresh froma forest village, would stand motionless in the shadows of the decklistening to the endless drunken gabble. His heart would be thumpingwith breathless awe of white men: the arbitrary and obstinate men whopursue inflexibly their incomprehensible purposes, --beings with weirdintonations in the voice, moved by unaccountable feelings, actuated byinscrutable motives. 

VIII

For a while after his second's answering hoot Massy hung over theengine-room gloomily. Captain Whalley, who, by the power of five hundredpounds, had kept his command for three years, might have been suspectedof never having seen that coast before. He seemed unable to put down hisglasses, as though they had been glued under his contracted eyebrows. This settled frown gave to his face an air of invincible and justseverity; but his raised elbow trembled slightly, and the perspirationpoured from under his hat as if a second sun had suddenly blazed up atthe zenith by the side of the ardent still globe already there, in whoseblinding white heat the earth whirled and shone like a mote of dust. 

From time to time, still holding up his glasses, he raised his otherhand to wipe his streaming face. The drops rolled down his cheeks, felllike rain upon the white hairs of his beard, and brusquely, as if guidedby an uncontrollable and anxious impulse, his arm reached out to thestand of the engine-room telegraph. 

The gong clanged down below. The balanced vibration of the dead-slowspeed ceased together with every sound and tremor in the ship, as if thegreat stillness that reigned upon the coast had stolen in throughher sides of iron and taken possession of her innermost recesses. Theillusion of perfect immobility seemed to fall upon her from the luminousblue dome without a stain arching over a flat sea without a stir. Thefaint breeze she had made for herself expired, as if all at once the airhad become too thick to budge; even the slight hiss of the water on herstem died out. The narrow, long hull, carrying its way without a ripple, seemed to approach the shoal water of the bar by stealth. The plunge ofthe lead with the mournful, mechanical cry of the lascar came at longerand longer intervals; and the men on her bridge seemed to hold theirbreath. The Malay at the helm looked fixedly at the compass card, theCaptain and the Serang stared at the coast. 

Massy had left the skylight, and, walking flat-footed, had returnedsoftly to the very spot on the bridge he had occupied before. A slow, lingering grin exposed his set of big white teeth: they gleamed evenlyin the shade of the awning like the keyboard of a piano in a dusky room. 

At last, pretending to talk to himself in excessive astonishment, hesaid not very loud--

"Stop the engines now. What next, I wonder?"

He waited, stooping from the shoulders, his head bowed, his glanceoblique. Then raising his voice a shade--

"If I dared make an absurd remark I would say that you haven't thestomach to . . . "

But a yelling spirit of excitement, like some frantic soul wanderingunsuspected in the vast stillness of the coast, had seized upon the bodyof the lascar at the lead. The languid monotony of his sing-song changedto a swift, sharp clamor. The weight flew after a single whir, the linewhistled, splash followed splash in haste. The water had shoaled, andthe man, instead of the drowsy tale of fathoms, was calling out thesoundings in feet. 

"Fifteen feet. Fifteen, fifteen! Fourteen, fourteen . . . "

Captain Whalley lowered the arm holding the glasses. It descended slowlyas if by its own weight; no other part of his towering body stirred; andthe swift cries with their eager warning note passed him by as though hehad been deaf. 

Massy, very still, and turning an attentive ear, had fastened his eyesupon the silvery, close-cropped back of the steady old head. The shipherself seemed to be arrested but for the gradual decrease of depthunder her keel. 

"Thirteen feet . . . Thirteen! Twelve!" cried the leadsman anxiouslybelow the bridge. And suddenly the barefooted Serang stepped awaynoiselessly to steal a glance over the side. 

Narrow of shoulder, in a suit of faded blue cotton, an old gray felt hatrammed down on his head, with a hollow in the nape of his dark neck, andwith his slender limbs, he appeared from the back no bigger than a boyof fourteen. There was a childlike impulsiveness in the curiosity withwhich he watched the spread of the voluminous, yellowish convolutionsrolling up from below to the surface of the blue water like massiveclouds driving slowly upwards on the unfathomable sky. He was notstartled at the sight in the least. It was not doubt, but the certitudethat the keel of the Sofala must be stirring the mud now, which made himpeep over the side. 

His peering eyes, set aslant in a face of the Chinese type, a little oldface, immovable, as if carved in old brown oak, had informed him longbefore that the ship was not headed at the bar properly. Paid off fromthe Fair Maid, together with the rest of the crew, after the completionof the sale, he had hung, in his faded blue suit and floppy gray hat, about the doors of the Harbor Office, till one day, seeing CaptainWhalley coming along to get a crew for the Sofala, he had put himselfquietly in the way, with his bare feet in the dust and an upward muteglance. The eyes of his old commander had fallen on him favorably--itmust have been an auspicious day--and in less than half an hour thewhite men in the "Ofiss" had written his name on a document as Serang ofthe fire-ship Sofala. Since that time he had repeatedly looked at thatestuary, upon that coast, from this bridge and from this side of thebar. The record of the visual world fell through his eyes upon hisunspeculating mind as on a sensitized plate through the lens of acamera. His knowledge was absolute and precise; nevertheless, had hebeen asked his opinion, and especially if questioned in the downright, alarming manner of white men, he would have displayed the hesitation ofignorance. He was certain of his facts--but such a certitude counted forlittle against the doubt what answer would be pleasing. Fifty years ago, in a jungle village, and before he was a day old, his father (who diedwithout ever seeing a white face) had had his nativity cast by a man ofskill and wisdom in astrology, because in the arrangement of the starsmay be read the last word of human destiny. His destiny had been tothrive by the favor of various white men on the sea. He had swept thedecks of ships, had tended their helms, had minded their stores, hadrisen at last to be a Serang; and his placid mind had remained asincapable of penetrating the simplest motives of those he served as theythemselves were incapable of detecting through the crust of the earththe secret nature of its heart, which may be fire or may be stone. Buthe had no doubt whatever that the Sofala was out of the proper track forcrossing the bar at Batu Beru. 

It was a slight error. The ship could not have been more than twice herown length too far to the northward; and a white man at a loss for acause (since it was impossible to suspect Captain Whalley of blunderingignorance, of want of skill, or of neglect) would have been inclined todoubt the testimony of his senses. It was some such feeling that keptMassy motionless, with his teeth laid bare by an anxious grin. Not sothe Serang. He was not troubled by any intellectual mistrust of hissenses. If his captain chose to stir the mud it was well. He had knownin his life white men indulge in outbreaks equally strange. He was onlygenuinely interested to see what would come of it. At last, apparentlysatisfied, he stepped back from the rail. 

He had made no sound: Captain Whalley, however, seemed to have observedthe movements of his Serang. Holding his head rigidly, he asked with amere stir of his lips--

"Going ahead still, Serang?"

"Still going a little, Tuan, " answered the Malay. Then added casually, "She is over. "

The lead confirmed his words; the depth of water increased at everycast, and the soul of excitement departed suddenly from the lascar swungin the canvas belt over the Sofala's side. Captain Whalley ordered thelead in, set the engines ahead without haste, and averting his eyes fromthe coast directed the Serang to keep a course for the middle of theentrance. 

Massy brought the palm of his hand with a loud smack against his thigh. 

"You grazed on the bar. Just look astern and see if you didn't. Look atthe track she left. You can see it plainly. Upon my soul, I thought youwould! What made you do that? What on earth made you do that? I believeyou are trying to scare me. "

He talked slowly, as it were circumspectly, keeping his prominent blackeyes on his captain. There was also a slight plaintive note in hisrising choler, for, primarily, it was the clear sense of a wrongsuffered undeservedly that made him hate the man who, for a beggarlyfive hundred pounds, claimed a sixth part of the profits under the threeyears' agreement. Whenever his resentment got the better of the awethe person of Captain Whalley inspired he would positively whimper withfury. 

"You don't know what to invent to plague my life out of me. I would nothave thought that a man of your sort would condescend . . . "

He paused, half hopefully, half timidly, whenever Captain Whalley madethe slightest movement in the deck-chair, as though expecting to beconciliated by a soft speech or else rushed upon and hunted off thebridge. 

"I am puzzled, " he went on again, with the watchful unsmiling baring ofhis big teeth. "I don't know what to think. I do believe you are tryingto frighten me. You very nearly planted her on the bar for at leasttwelve hours, besides getting the engines choked with mud. Ships can'tafford to lose twelve hours on a trip nowadays--as you ought to knowvery well, and do know very well to be sure, only . . . "

His slow volubility, the sideways cranings of his neck, the blackglances out of the very corners of his eyes, left Captain Whalleyunmoved. He looked at the deck with a severe frown. Massy waited forsome little time, then began to threaten plaintively. 

"You think you've got me bound hand and foot in that agreement. Youthink you can torment me in any way you please. Ah! But remember it hasanother six weeks to run yet. There's time for me to dismiss you beforethe three years are out. You will do yet something that will give me thechance to dismiss you, and make you wait a twelvemonth for your moneybefore you can take yourself off and pull out your five hundred, andleave me without a penny to get the new boilers for her. You gloat overthat idea--don't you? I do believe you sit here gloating. It's as if Ihad sold my soul for five hundred pounds to be everlastingly damned inthe end. . . . "

He paused, without apparent exasperation, then continued evenly--

". . . With the boilers worn out and the survey hanging over my head, Captain Whalley--Captain Whalley, I say, what do you do with yourmoney? You must have stacks of money somewhere--a man like you must. Itstands to reason. I am not a fool, you know, Captain Whalley--partner. "

Again he paused, as though he had done for good. He passed his tongueover his lips, gave a backward glance at the Serang conning the shipwith quiet whispers and slight signs of the hand. The wash of thepropeller sent a swift ripple, crested with dark froth, upon a long flatspit of black slime. The Sofala had entered the river; the trail she hadstirred up over the bar was a mile astern of her now, out of sight, haddisappeared utterly; and the smooth, empty sea along the coast was leftbehind in the glittering desolation of sunshine. On each side of her, low down, the growth of somber twisted mangroves covered the semi-liquidbanks; and Massy continued in his old tone, with an abrupt start, as ifhis speech had been ground out of him, like the tune of a music-box, byturning a handle. 

"Though if anybody ever got the best of me, it is you. I don't mindsaying this. I've said it--there! What more can you want? Isn't thatenough for your pride, Captain Whalley. You got over me from the first. It's all of a piece, when I look back at it. You allowed me to insertthat clause about intemperance without saying anything, only lookingvery sick when I made a point of it going in black on white. How couldI tell what was wrong about you. There's generally something wrongsomewhere. And, lo and behold! when you come on board it turns out thatyou've been in the habit of drinking nothing but water for years andyears. "

His dogmatic reproachful whine stopped. He brooded profoundly, afterthe manner of crafty and unintelligent men. It seemed inconceivablethat Captain Whalley should not laugh at the expression of disgust thatoverspread the heavy, yellow countenance. But Captain Whalley neverraised his eyes--sitting in his arm-chair, outraged, dignified, andmotionless. 

"Much good it was to me, " Massy remonstrated monotonously, "to insert aclause for dismissal for intemperance against a man who drinks nothingbut water. And you looked so upset, too, when I read my draft inthe lawyer's office that morning, Captain Whalley, --you looked socrestfallen, that I made sure I had gone home on your weak spot. Ashipowner can't be too careful as to the sort of skipper he gets. Youmust have been laughing at me in your sleeve all the blessed time. . . . Eh? What are you going to say?"

Captain Whalley had only shuffled his feet slightly. A dull animositybecame apparent in Massy's sideways stare. 

"But recollect that there are other grounds of dismissal. There'shabitual carelessness, amounting to incompetence--there's gross andpersistent neglect of duty. I am not quite as big a fool as you try tomake me out to be. You have been careless of late--leaving everythingto that Serang. Why! I've seen you letting that old fool of a Malaytake bearings for you, as if you were too big to attend to your workyourself. And what do you call that silly touch-and-go manner in whichyou took the ship over the bar just now? You expect me to put up withthat?"

Leaning on his elbow against the ladder abaft the bridge, Sterne, themate, tried to hear, blinking the while from the distance at the secondengineer, who had come up for a moment, and stood in the engine-roomcompanion. Wiping his hands on a bunch of cotton waste, he looked aboutwith indifference to the right and left at the river banks slippingastern of the Sofala steadily. 

Massy turned full at the chair. The character of his whine became againthreatening. 

"Take care. I may yet dismiss you and freeze to your money for a year. Imay . . . "

But before the silent, rigid immobility of the man whose money had comein the nick of time to save him from utter ruin, his voice died out inhis throat. 

"Not that I want you to go, " he resumed after a silence, and in anabsurdly insinuating tone. "I want nothing better than to be friendsand renew the agreement, if you will consent to find another couple ofhundred to help with the new boilers, Captain Whalley. I've told youbefore. She must have new boilers; you know it as well as I do. Have youthought this over?"

He waited. The slender stem of the pipe with its bulky lump of a bowl atthe end hung down from his thick lips. It had gone out. Suddenly he tookit from between his teeth and wrung his hands slightly. 

"Don't you believe me?" He thrust the pipe bowl into the pocket of hisshiny black jacket. 

"It's like dealing with the devil, " he said. "Why don't you speak? Atfirst you were so high and mighty with me I hardly dared to creep aboutmy own deck. Now I can't get a word from you. You don't seem to see meat all. What does it mean? Upon my soul, you terrify me with this deafand dumb trick. What's going on in that head of yours? What are youplotting against me there so hard that you can't say a word? You willnever make me believe that you--you--don't know where to lay your handson a couple of hundred. You have made me curse the day I was born. . . . "

"Mr. Massy, " said Captain Whalley suddenly, without stirring. 

The engineer started violently. 

"If that is so I can only beg you to forgive me. "

"Starboard, " muttered the Serang to the helmsman; and the Sofala beganto swing round the bend into the second reach. 

"Ough!" Massy shuddered. "You make my blood run cold. What made you comehere? What made you come aboard that evening all of a sudden, with yourhigh talk and your money--tempting me? I always wondered what was yourmotive? You fastened yourself on me to have easy times and grow fat onmy life blood, I tell you. Was that it? I believe you are the greatestmiser in the world, or else why . . . "

"No. I am only poor, " interrupted Captain Whalley, stonily. 

"Steady, " murmured the Serang. Massy turned away with his chin on hisshoulder. 

"I don't believe it, " he said in his dogmatic tone. Captain Whalleymade no movement. "There you sit like a gorged vulture--exactly like avulture. "

He embraced the middle of the reach and both the banks in one blankunseeing circular glance, and left the bridge slowly. 

IX

On turning to descend Massy perceived the head of Sterne the mateloitering, with his sly confident smile, his red mustaches and blinkingeyes, at the foot of the ladder. 

Sterne had been a junior in one of the larger shipping concerns beforejoining the Sofala. He had thrown up his berth, he said, "on generalprinciples. " The promotion in the employ was very slow, he complained, and he thought it was time for him to try and get on a bit in the world. It seemed as though nobody would ever die or leave the firm; they allstuck fast in their berths till they got mildewed; he was tired ofwaiting; and he feared that when a vacancy did occur the best servantswere by no means sure of being treated fairly. Besides, the captain hehad to serve under--Captain Provost--was an unaccountable sort of man, and, he fancied, had taken a dislike to him for some reason or other. For doing rather more than his bare duty as likely as not. When hehad done anything wrong he could take a talking to, like a man; buthe expected to be treated like a man too, and not to be addressedinvariably as though he were a dog. He had asked Captain Provost plumpand plain to tell him where he was at fault, and Captain Provost, in amost scornful way, had told him that he was a perfect officer, and thatif he disliked the way he was being spoken to there was the gangway--hecould take himself off ashore at once. But everybody knew what sort ofman Captain Provost was. It was no use appealing to the office. CaptainProvost had too much influence in the employ. All the same, they had togive him a good character. He made bold to say there was nothing in theworld against him, and, as he had happened to hear that the mate of theSofala had been taken to the hospital that morning with a sunstroke, hethought there would be no harm in seeing whether he would not do. . . . 

He had come to Captain Whalley freshly shaved, red-faced, thin-flanked, throwing out his lean chest; and had recited his little tale with anopen and manly assurance. Now and then his eyelids quivered slightly, his hand would steal up to the end of the flaming mustache; his eyebrowswere straight, furry, of a chestnut color, and the directness of hisfrank gaze seemed to tremble on the verge of impudence. Captain Whalleyhad engaged him temporarily; then, the other man having been orderedhome by the doctors, he had remained for the next trip, and then thenext. He had now attained permanency, and the performance of his dutieswas marked by an air of serious, single-minded application. Directlyhe was spoken to, he began to smile attentively, with a great deferenceexpressed in his whole attitude; but there was in the rapid winkingwhich went on all the time something quizzical, as though he hadpossessed the secret of some universal joke cheating all creation andimpenetrable to other mortals. 

Grave and smiling he watched Massy come down step by step; when thechief engineer had reached the deck he swung about, and they foundthemselves face to face. Matched as to height and utterly dissimilar, they confronted each other as if there had been something betweenthem--something else than the bright strip of sunlight that, fallingthrough the wide lacing of two awnings, cut crosswise the narrowplanking of the deck and separated their feet as it were a stream;something profound and subtle and incalculable, like an unexpressedunderstanding, a secret mistrust, or some sort of fear. 

At last Sterne, blinking his deep-set eyes and sticking forward hisscraped, clean-cut chin, as crimson as the rest of his face, murmured--

"You've seen? He grazed! You've seen?"

Massy, contemptuous, and without raising his yellow, fleshy countenance, replied in the same pitch--

"Maybe. But if it had been you we would have been stuck fast in themud. "

"Pardon me, Mr. Massy. I beg to deny it. Of course a shipowner may saywhat he jolly well pleases on his own deck. That's all right; but I begto . . . "

"Get out of my way!"

The other had a slight start, the impulse of suppressed indignationperhaps, but held his ground. Massy's downward glance wandered right andleft, as though the deck all round Sterne had been bestrewn with eggsthat must not be broken, and he had looked irritably for places wherehe could set his feet in flight. In the end he too did not move, thoughthere was plenty of room to pass on. 

"I heard you say up there, " went on the mate--"and a very just remark itwas too--that there's always something wrong. . . . "

"Eavesdropping is what's wrong with _you_, Mr. Sterne. "

"Now, if you would only listen to me for a moment, Mr. Massy, sir, Icould . . . "

"You are a sneak, " interrupted Massy in a great hurry, and even managedto get so far as to repeat, "a common sneak, " before the mate had brokenin argumentatively--

"Now, sir, what is it you want? You want . . . "

"I want--I want, " stammered Massy, infuriated and astonished--"I want. How do you know that I want anything? How dare you? . . . What do youmean? . . . What are you after--you . . . "

"Promotion. " Sterne silenced him with a sort of candid bravado. Theengineer's round soft cheeks quivered still, but he said quietlyenough--

"You are only worrying my head off, " and Sterne met him with a confidentlittle smile. 

"A chap in business I know (well up in the world he is now) used to tellme that this was the proper way. 'Always push on to the front, ' he wouldsay. 'Keep yourself well before your boss. Interfere whenever you get achance. Show him what you know. Worry him into seeing you. ' That was hisadvice. Now I know no other boss than you here. You are the owner, andno one else counts for _that_ much in my eyes. See, Mr. Massy? I want toget on. I make no secret of it that I am one of the sort that means toget on. These are the men to make use of, sir. You haven't arrived atthe top of the tree, sir, without finding that out--I dare say. "

"Worry your boss in order to get on, " mumbled Massy, as if awestruck bythe irreverent originality of the idea. "I shouldn't wonder if this wasjust what the Blue Anchor people kicked you out of the employ for. Isthat what you call getting on? You shall get on in the same way here ifyou aren't careful--I can promise you. "

At this Sterne hung his head, thoughtful, perplexed, winking hard atthe deck. All his attempts to enter into confidential relations withhis owner had led of late to nothing better than these dark threatsof dismissal; and a threat of dismissal would check him at once into ahesitating silence as though he were not sure that the proper time fordefying it had come. On this occasion he seemed to have lost his tonguefor a moment, and Massy, getting in motion, heavily passed him by withan abortive attempt at shouldering. Sterne defeated it by steppingaside. He turned then swiftly, opening his mouth very wide as if toshout something after the engineer, but seemed to think better of it. 

Always--as he was ready to confess--on the lookout for an opening toget on, it had become an instinct with him to watch the conduct of hisimmediate superiors for something "that one could lay hold of. " It washis belief that no skipper in the world would keep his command for aday if only the owners could be "made to know. " This romantic andnaive theory had led him into trouble more than once, but he remainedincorrigible; and his character was so instinctively disloyal thatwhenever he joined a ship the intention of ousting his commander outof the berth and taking his place was always present at the back of hishead, as a matter of course. It filled the leisure of his waking hourswith the reveries of careful plans and compromising discoveries--thedreams of his sleep with images of lucky turns and favorable accidents. Skippers had been known to sicken and die at sea, than which nothingcould be better to give a smart mate a chance of showing what he's madeof. They also would tumble overboard sometimes: he had heard of one ortwo such cases. Others again . . . But, as it were constitutionally, he was faithful to the belief that the conduct of no single one of themwould stand the test of careful watching by a man who "knew what's what"and who kept his eyes "skinned pretty well" all the time. 

After he had gained a permanent footing on board the Sofala he allowedhis perennial hope to rise high. To begin with, it was a great advantageto have an old man for captain: the sort of man besides who in thenature of things was likely to give up the job before long from onecause or another. Sterne was greatly chagrined, however, to notice thathe did not seem anyway near being past his work yet. Still, theseold men go to pieces all at once sometimes. Then there was theowner-engineer close at hand to be impressed by his zeal and steadiness. Sterne never for a moment doubted the obvious nature of his own merits(he was really an excellent officer); only, nowadays, professional meritalone does not take a man along fast enough. A chap must have some pushin him, and must keep his wits at work too to help him forward. He madeup his mind to inherit the charge of this steamer if it was to be doneat all; not indeed estimating the command of the Sofala as a very greatcatch, but for the reason that, out East especially, to make a start iseverything, and one command leads to another. 

He began by promising himself to behave with great circumspection;Massy's somber and fantastic humors intimidated him as being outsideone's usual sea experience; but he was quite intelligent enough torealize almost from the first that he was there in the presence of anexceptional situation. His peculiar prying imagination penetrated itquickly; the feeling that there was in it an element which eluded hisgrasp exasperated his impatience to get on. And so one trip came to anend, then another, and he had begun his third before he saw an openingby which he could step in with any sort of effect. It had all been veryqueer and very obscure; something had been going on near him, as ifseparated by a chasm from the common life and the working routine ofthe ship, which was exactly like the life and the routine of any othercoasting steamer of that class. 

Then one day he made his discovery. 

It came to him after all these weeks of watchful observation and puzzledsurmises, suddenly, like the long-sought solution of a riddle thatsuggests itself to the mind in a flash. Not with the same authority, however. Great heavens! Could it be that? And after remainingthunderstruck for a few seconds he tried to shake it off withself-contumely, as though it had been the product of an unhealthy biastowards the Incredible, the Inexplicable, the Unheard-of--the Mad!

This--the illuminating moment--had occurred the trip before, on thereturn passage. They had just left a place of call on the mainlandcalled Pangu; they were steaming straight out of a bay. To the east amassive headland closed the view, with the tilted edges of the rockystrata showing through its ragged clothing of rank bushes and thornycreepers. The wind had begun to sing in the rigging; the sea along thecoast, green and as if swollen a little above the line of the horizon, seemed to pour itself over, time after time, with a slow and thunderingfall, into the shadow of the leeward cape; and across the wide openingthe nearest of a group of small islands stood enveloped in the hazyyellow light of a breezy sunrise; still farther out the hummocky topsof other islets peeped out motionless above the water of the channelsbetween, scoured tumultuously by the breeze. 

The usual track of the Sofala both going and returning on every trip ledher for a few miles along this reefinfested region. She followed a broadlane of water, dropping astern, one after another, these crumbs of theearth's crust resembling a squadron of dismasted hulks run in disorderupon a foul ground of rocks and shoals. Some of these fragments of landappeared, indeed, no bigger than a stranded ship; others, quite flat, lay awash like anchored rafts, like ponderous, black rafts of stone;several, heavily timbered and round at the base, emerged in squat domesof deep green foliage that shuddered darkly all over to the flying touchof cloud shadows driven by the sudden gusts of the squally season. Thethunderstorms of the coast broke frequently over that cluster; it turnedthen shadowy in its whole extent; it turned more dark, and as if morestill in the play of fire; as if more impenetrably silent in the pealsof thunder; its blurred shapes vanished--dissolving utterly at timesin the thick rain--to reappear clear-cut and black in the stormy lightagainst the gray sheet of the cloud--scattered on the slaty round tableof the sea. Unscathed by storms, resisting the work of years, unfrettedby the strife of the world, there it lay unchanged as on that day, fourhundred years ago, when first beheld by Western eyes from the deck of ahigh-pooped caravel. 

It was one of these secluded spots that may be found on the busy sea, as on land you come sometimes upon the clustered houses of a hamletuntouched by men's restlessness, untouched by their need, by theirthought, and as if forgotten by time itself. The lives of uncountedgenerations had passed it by, and the multitudes of seafowl, urgingtheir way from all the points of the horizon to sleep on the outer rocksof the group, unrolled the converging evolutions of their flight inlong somber streamers upon the glow of the sky. The palpitating cloud oftheir wings soared and stooped over the pinnacles of the rocks, overthe rocks slender like spires, squat like martello towers; over thepyramidal heaps like fallen ruins, over the lines of bald bowldersshowing like a wall of stones battered to pieces and scorched bylightning--with the sleepy, clear glimmer of water in every breach. Thenoise of their continuous and violent screaming filled the air. 

This great noise would meet the Sofala coming up from Batu Beru; itwould meet her on quiet evenings, a pitiless and savage clamor enfeebledby distance, the clamor of seabirds settling to rest, and struggling fora footing at the end of the day. No one noticed it especially on board;it was the voice of their ship's unerring landfall, ending the steadystretch of a hundred miles. She had made good her course, she had runher distance till the punctual islets began to emerge one by one, thepoints of rocks, the hummocks of earth . . . And the cloud of birdshovered--the restless cloud emitting a strident and cruel uproar, thesound of the familiar scene, the living part of the broken land beneath, of the outspread sea, and of the high sky without a flaw. 

But when the Sofala happened to close with the land after sunset shewould find everything very still there under the mantle of the night. All would be still, dumb, almost invisible--but for the blotting out ofthe low constellations occulted in turns behind the vague masses of theislets whose true outlines eluded the eye amongst the dark spaces of theheaven: and the ship's three lights, resembling three stars--the red andthe green with the white above--her three lights, like three companionstars wandering on the earth, held their unswerving course for thepassage at the southern end of the group. Sometimes there were humaneyes open to watch them come nearer, traveling smoothly in the sombervoid; the eyes of a naked fisherman in his canoe floating over a reef. He thought drowsily: "Ha! The fire-ship that once in every moon goes inand comes out of Pangu bay. " More he did not know of her. And just as hehad detected the faint rhythm of the propeller beating the calm watera mile and a half away, the time would come for the Sofala to alter hercourse, the lights would swing off him their triple beam--and disappear. 

A few miserable, half-naked families, a sort of outcast tribe oflong-haired, lean, and wild-eyed people, strove for their living in thislonely wilderness of islets, lying like an abandoned outwork of the landat the gates of the bay. Within the knots and loops of the rocks thewater rested more transparent than crystal under their crooked and leakycanoes, scooped out of the trunk of a tree: the forms of the bottomundulated slightly to the dip of a paddle; and the men seemed to hangin the air, they seemed to hang inclosed within the fibers of a dark, sodden log, fishing patiently in a strange, unsteady, pellucid, greenair above the shoals. 

Their bodies stalked brown and emaciated as if dried up in the sunshine;their lives ran out silently; the homes where they were born, went torest, and died--flimsy sheds of rushes and coarse grass eked out with afew ragged mats--were hidden out of sight from the open sea. No glowof their household fires ever kindled for a seaman a red spark upon theblind night of the group: and the calms of the coast, the flaming longcalms of the equator, the unbreathing, concentrated calms like the deepintrospection of a passionate nature, brooded awfully for days and weekstogether over the unchangeable inheritance of their children; till atlast the stones, hot like live embers, scorched the naked sole, tillthe water clung warm, and sickly, and as if thickened, about the legs oflean men with girded loins, wading thigh-deep in the pale blaze of theshallows. And it would happen now and then that the Sofala, through somedelay in one of the ports of call, would heave in sight making for Pangubay as late as noonday. 

Only a blurring cloud at first, the thin mist of her smoke would arisemysteriously from an empty point on the clear line of sea and sky. Thetaciturn fishermen within the reefs would extend their lean arms towardsthe offing; and the brown figures stooping on the tiny beaches, thebrown figures of men, women, and children grubbing in the sand in searchof turtles' eggs, would rise up, crooked elbow aloft and hand overthe eyes, to watch this monthly apparition glide straight on, swerveoff--and go by. Their ears caught the panting of that ship; their eyesfollowed her till she passed between the two capes of the mainland goingat full speed as though she hoped to make her way unchecked into thevery bosom of the earth. 

On such days the luminous sea would give no sign of the dangers lurkingon both sides of her path. Everything remained still, crushed by theoverwhelming power of the light; and the whole group, opaque in thesunshine, --the rocks resembling pinnacles, the rocks resembling spires, the rocks resembling ruins; the forms of islets resembling beehives, resembling mole-hills, the islets recalling the shapes of haystacks, thecontours of ivy-clad towers, --would stand reflected together upsidedown in the unwrinkled water, like carved toys of ebony disposed on thesilvered plate-glass of a mirror. 

The first touch of blowing weather would envelop the whole at once inthe spume of the windward breakers, as if in a sudden cloudlike burstof steam; and the clear water seemed fairly to boil in all the passages. The provoked sea outlined exactly in a design of angry foam the widebase of the group; the submerged level of broken waste and refuse leftover from the building of the coast near by, projecting its dangerousspurs, all awash, far into the channel, and bristling with wicked longspits often a mile long: with deadly spits made of froth and stones. 

And even nothing more than a brisk breeze--as on that morning, thevoyage before, when the Sofala left Pangu bay early, and Mr. Sterne'sdiscovery was to blossom out like a flower of incredible and evil aspectfrom the tiny seed of instinctive suspicion, --even such a breeze hadenough strength to tear the placid mask from the face of the sea. ToSterne, gazing with indifference, it had been like a revelation tobehold for the first time the dangers marked by the hissing lividpatches on the water as distinctly as on the engraved paper of a chart. It came into his mind that this was the sort of day most favorable for astranger attempting the passage: a clear day, just windy enough for thesea to break on every ledge, buoying, as it were, the channel plainlyto the sight; whereas during a calm you had nothing to depend on but thecompass and the practiced judgment of your eye. And yet the successivecaptains of the Sofala had had to take her through at night more thanonce. Nowadays you could not afford to throw away six or seven hoursof a steamer's time. That you couldn't. But then use is everything, andwith proper care . . . The channel was broad and safe enough; the mainpoint was to hit upon the entrance correctly in the dark--for if a mangot himself involved in that stretch of broken water over yonder hewould never get out with a whole ship--if he ever got out at all. 

This was Sterne's last train of thought independent of the greatdiscovery. He had just seen to the securing of the anchor, and hadremained forward idling away a moment or two. The captain was in chargeon the bridge. With a slight yawn he had turned away from his survey ofthe sea and had leaned his shoulders against the fish davit. 

These, properly speaking, were the very last moments of ease he was toknow on board the Sofala. All the instants that came after were to bepregnant with purpose and intolerable with perplexity. No more idle, random thoughts; the discovery would put them on the rack, tillsometimes he wished to goodness he had been fool enough not to makeit at all. And yet, if his chance to get on rested on the discovery of"something wrong, " he could not have hoped for a greater stroke of luck. 

X

The knowledge was too disturbing, really. There was "something wrong"with a vengeance, and the moral certitude of it was at first simplyfrightful to contemplate. Sterne had been looking aft in a mood so idle, that for once he was thinking no harm of anyone. His captain on thebridge presented himself naturally to his sight. How insignificant, howcasual was the thought that had started the train of discovery--likean accidental spark that suffices to ignite the charge of a tremendousmine!

Caught under by the breeze, the awnings of the foredeck bellied upwardsand collapsed slowly, and above their heavy flapping the gray stuff ofCaptain Whalley's roomy coat fluttered incessantly around his arms andtrunk. He faced the wind in full light, with his great silvery beardblown forcibly against his chest; the eyebrows overhung heavily theshadows whence his glance appeared to be staring ahead piercingly. Sterne could just detect the twin gleam of the whites shifting under theshaggy arches of the brow. At short range these eyes, for all the man'saffable manner, seemed to look you through and through. Sterne nevercould defend himself from that feeling when he had occasion to speakwith his captain. He did not like it. What a big heavy man he appearedup there, with that little shrimp of a Serang in close attendance--aswas usual in this extraordinary steamer! Confounded absurd custom that. He resented it. Surely the old fellow could have looked after his shipwithout that loafing native at his elbow. Sterne wriggled his shoulderswith disgust. What was it? Indolence or what?

That old skipper must have been growing lazy for years. They all grewlazy out East here (Sterne was very conscious of his own unimpairedactivity); they got slack all over. But he towered very erect on thebridge; and quite low by his side, as you see a small child looking overthe edge of a table, the battered soft hat and the brown face of theSerang peeped over the white canvas screen of the rail. 

No doubt the Malay was standing back, nearer to the wheel; but thegreat disparity of size in close association amused Sterne like theobservation of a bizarre fact in nature. They were as queer fish out ofthe sea as any in it. 

He saw Captain Whalley turn his head quickly to speak to his Serang;the wind whipped the whole white mass of the beard sideways. He wouldbe directing the chap to look at the compass for him, or what not. Ofcourse. Too much trouble to step over and see for himself. Sterne'sscorn for that bodily indolence which overtakes white men in the Eastincreased on reflection. Some of them would be utterly lost if theyhadn't all these natives at their beck and call; they grew perfectlyshameless about it too. He was not of that sort, thank God! It wasn'tin him to make himself dependent for his work on any shriveled-up littleMalay like that. As if one could ever trust a silly native for anythingin the world! But that fine old man thought differently, it seems. Therethey were together, never far apart; a pair of them, recalling to themind an old whale attended by a little pilot-fish. 

The fancifulness of the comparison made him smile. A whale with aninseparable pilot-fish! That's what the old man looked like; for itcould not be said he looked like a shark, though Mr. Massy had calledhim that very name. But Mr. Massy did not mind what he said in hissavage fits. Sterne smiled to himself--and gradually the ideas evokedby the sound, by the imagined shape of the word pilot-fish; the ideasof aid, of guidance needed and received, came uppermost in his mind:the word pilot awakened the idea of trust, of dependence, the idea ofwelcome, clear-eyed help brought to the seaman groping for the landin the dark: groping blindly in fogs: feeling their way in the thickweather of the gales that, filling the air with a salt mist blown upfrom the sea, contract the range of sight on all sides to a shrunkenhorizon that seems within reach of the hand. 

A pilot sees better than a stranger, because his local knowledge, likea sharper vision, completes the shapes of things hurriedly glimpsed;penetrates the veils of mist spread over the land by the storms of thesea; defines with certitude the outlines of a coast lying under the pallof fog, the forms of landmarks half buried in a starless night as in ashallow grave. He recognizes because he already knows. It is not tohis far-reaching eye but to his more extensive knowledge that the pilotlooks for certitude; for this certitude of the ship's position onwhich may depend a man's good fame and the peace of his conscience, thejustification of the trust deposited in his hands, with his own lifetoo, which is seldom wholly his to throw away, and the humble lives ofothers rooted in distant affections, perhaps, and made as weighty asthe lives of kings by the burden of the awaiting mystery. The pilot'sknowledge brings relief and certitude to the commander of a ship; theSerang, however, in his fanciful suggestion of a pilot-fish attending awhale, could not in any way be credited with a superior knowledge. Whyshould he have it? These two men had come on that run together--thewhite and the brown--on the same day: and of course a white man wouldlearn more in a week than the best native would in a month. He wasmade to stick to the skipper as though he were of some use--as thepilot-fish, they say, is to the whale. But how--it was very marked--how?A pilot-fish--a pilot--a . . . But if not superior knowledge then . . . 

Sterne's discovery was made. It was repugnant to his imagination, shocking to his ideas of honesty, shocking to his conception of mankind. This enormity affected one's outlook on what was possible in this world:it was as if for instance the sun had turned blue, throwing a new andsinister light on men and nature. Really in the first moment he had feltsickish, as though he had got a blow below the belt: for a second thevery color of the sea seemed changed--appeared queer to his wanderingeye; and he had a passing, unsteady sensation in all his limbs as thoughthe earth had started turning the other way. 

A very natural incredulity succeeding this sense of upheaval brought ameasure of relief. He had gasped; it was over. But afterwards during allthat day sudden paroxysms of wonder would come over him in the midstof his occupations. He would stop and shake his head. The revolt ofhis incredulity had passed away almost as quick as the first emotionof discovery, and for the next twenty-four hours he had no sleep. Thatwould never do. At meal-times (he took the foot of the table set upfor the white men on the bridge) he could not help losing himself ina fascinated contemplation of Captain Whalley opposite. He watched thedeliberate upward movements of the arm; the old man put his food to hislips as though he never expected to find any taste in his daily bread, as though he did not know anything about it. He fed himself like asomnambulist. "It's an awful sight, " thought Sterne; and he watched thelong period of mournful, silent immobility, with a big brown handlying loosely closed by the side of the plate, till he noticed the twoengineers to the right and left looking at him in astonishment. He wouldclose his mouth in a hurry then, and lowering his eyes, wink rapidly athis plate. It was awful to see the old chap sitting there; it was evenawful to think that with three words he could blow him up sky-high. All he had to do was to raise his voice and pronounce a single shortsentence, and yet that simple act seemed as impossible to attempt asmoving the sun out of its place in the sky. The old chap could eat inhis terrific mechanical way; but Sterne, from mental excitement, couldnot--not that evening, at any rate. 

He had had ample time since to get accustomed to the strain of themeal-hours. He would never have believed it. But then use is everything;only the very potency of his success prevented anything resemblingelation. He felt like a man who, in his legitimate search for a loadedgun to help him on his way through the world, chances to come upon atorpedo--upon a live torpedo with a shattering charge in its head anda pressure of many atmospheres in its tail. It is the sort of weapon tomake its possessor careworn and nervous. He had no mind to be blown uphimself; and he could not get rid of the notion that the explosion wasbound to damage him too in some way. 

This vague apprehension had restrained him at first. He was able now toeat and sleep with that fearful weapon by his side, with the convictionof its power always in mind. It had not been arrived at by anyreflective process; but once the idea had entered his head, theconviction had followed overwhelmingly in a multitude of observed littlefacts to which before he had given only a languid attention. The abruptand faltering intonations of the deep voice; the taciturnity put onlike an armor; the deliberate, as if guarded, movements; the longimmobilities, as if the man he watched had been afraid to disturb thevery air: every familiar gesture, every word uttered in his hearing, every sigh overheard, had acquired a special significance, aconfirmatory import. 

Every day that passed over the Sofala appeared to Sterne simply crammedfull with proofs--with incontrovertible proofs. At night, when off duty, he would steal out of his cabin in pyjamas (for more proofs) and standa full hour, perhaps, on his bare feet below the bridge, as absolutelymotionless as the awning stanchion in its deck socket near by. On thestretches of easy navigation it is not usual for a coasting captain toremain on deck all the time of his watch. The Serang keeps it for him asa matter of custom; in open water, on a straight course, he is usuallytrusted to look after the ship by himself. But this old man seemedincapable of remaining quietly down below. No doubt he could not sleep. And no wonder. This was also a proof. Suddenly in the silence of theship panting upon the still, dark sea, Sterne would hear a low voiceabove him exclaiming nervously--

"Serang!"

"Tuan!"

"You are watching the compass well?"

"Yes, I am watching, Tuan. "

"The ship is making her course?"

"She is, Tuan. Very straight. "

"It is well; and remember, Serang, that the order is that you are tomind the helmsmen and keep a lookout with care, the same as if I werenot on deck. "

Then, when the Serang had made his answer, the low tones on the bridgewould cease, and everything round Sterne seemed to become more stilland more profoundly silent. Slightly chilled and with his back aching alittle from long immobility, he would steal away to his room on theport side of the deck. He had long since parted with the last vestigeof incredulity; of the original emotions, set into a tumult by thediscovery, some trace of the first awe alone remained. Not the awe ofthe man himself--he could blow him up sky-high with six words--rather itwas an awestruck indignation at the reckless perversity of avarice (whatelse could it be?), at the mad and somber resolution that for thesake of a few dollars more seemed to set at naught the common ruleof conscience and pretended to struggle against the very decree ofProvidence. 

You could not find another man like this one in the whole roundworld--thank God. There was something devilishly dauntless in thecharacter of such a deception which made you pause. 

Other considerations occurring to his prudence had kept him tongue-tiedfrom day to day. It seemed to him now that it would yet have been easierto speak out in the first hour of discovery. He almost regrettednot having made a row at once. But then the very monstrosity of thedisclosure . . . Why! He could hardly face it himself, let alonepointing it out to somebody else. Moreover, with a desperado of thatsort one never knew. The object was not to get him out (that was as wellas done already), but to step into his place. Bizarre as the thoughtseemed he might have shown fight. A fellow up to working such a fraudwould have enough cheek for anything; a fellow that, as it were, stoodup against God Almighty Himself. He was a horrid marvel--that's what hewas: he was perfectly capable of brazening out the affair scandalouslytill he got him (Sterne) kicked out of the ship and everlastinglydamaged his prospects in this part of the East. Yet if you want to geton something must be risked. At times Sterne thought he had been undulytimid of taking action in the past; and what was worse, it had come tothis, that in the present he did not seem to know what action to take. 

Massy's savage moroseness was too disconcerting. It was an incalculablefactor of the situation. You could not tell what there was behind thatinsulting ferocity. How could one trust such a temper; it did not putSterne in bodily fear for himself, but it frightened him exceedingly asto his prospects. 

Though of course inclined to credit himself with exceptional powers ofobservation, he had by now lived too long with his discovery. He hadgone on looking at nothing else, till at last one day it occurred to himthat the thing was so obvious that no one could miss seeing it. Therewere four white men in all on board the Sofala. Jack, the secondengineer, was too dull to notice anything that took place out of hisengine-room. Remained Massy--the owner--the interested person--nearlygoing mad with worry. Sterne had heard and seen more than enough onboard to know what ailed him; but his exasperation seemed to make himdeaf to cautious overtures. If he had only known it, there was the verything he wanted. But how could you bargain with a man of that sort? Itwas like going into a tiger's den with a piece of raw meat in your hand. He was as likely as not to rend you for your pains. In fact, he wasalways threatening to do that very thing; and the urgency of the case, combined with the impossibility of handling it with safety, made Sternein his watches below toss and mutter open-eyed in his bunk, for hours, as though he had been burning with fever. 

Occurrences like the crossing of the bar just now were extremelyalarming to his prospects. He did not want to be left behind by someswift catastrophe. Massy being on the bridge, the old man had to bracehimself up and make a show, he supposed. But it was getting very badwith him, very bad indeed, now. Even Massy had been emboldened to findfault this time; Sterne, listening at the foot of the ladder, had heardthe other's whimpering and artless denunciations. Luckily the beast wasvery stupid and could not see the why of all this. However, small blameto him; it took a clever man to hit upon the cause. Nevertheless, it washigh time to do something. The old man's game could not be kept up formany days more. 

"I may yet lose my life at this fooling--let alone my chance, " Sternemumbled angrily to himself, after the stooping back of the chiefengineer had disappeared round the corner of the skylight. Yes, nodoubt--he thought; but to blurt out his knowledge would not advance hisprospects. On the contrary, it would blast them utterly as likely asnot. He dreaded another failure. He had a vague consciousness of notbeing much liked by his fellows in this part of the world; inexplicablyenough, for he had done nothing to them. Envy, he supposed. People werealways down on a clever chap who made no bones about his determinationto get on. To do your duty and count on the gratitude of that bruteMassy would be sheer folly. He was a bad lot. Unmanly! A vicious man!Bad! Bad! A brute! A brute without a spark of anything human about him;without so much as simple curiosity even, or else surely he would haveresponded in some way to all these hints he had been given. . . . Suchinsensibility was almost mysterious. Massy's state of exasperationseemed to Sterne to have made him stupid beyond the ordinary sillinessof shipowners. 

Sterne, meditating on the embarrassments of that stupidity, forgothimself completely. His stony, unwinking stare was fixed on the planksof the deck. 

The slight quiver agitating the whole fabric of the ship was moreperceptible in the silent river, shaded and still like a forestpath. The Sofala, gliding with an even motion, had passed beyond thecoast-belt of mud and mangroves. The shores rose higher, in firm slopingbanks, and the forest of big trees came down to the brink. Where theearth had been crumbled by the floods it showed a steep brown cut, denuding a mass of roots intertwined as if wrestling underground; and inthe air, the interlaced boughs, bound and loaded with creepers, carriedon the struggle for life, mingled their foliage in one solid wallof leaves, with here and there the shape of an enormous dark pillarsoaring, or a ragged opening, as if torn by the flight of a cannonball, disclosing the impenetrable gloom within, the secular inviolable shadeof the virgin forest. The thump of the engines reverberated regularlylike the strokes of a metronome beating the measure of the vast silence, the shadow of the western wall had fallen across the river, and thesmoke pouring backwards from the funnel eddied down behind the ship, spread a thin dusky veil over the somber water, which, checked by theflood-tide, seemed to lie stagnant in the whole straight length of thereaches. 

Sterne's body, as if rooted on the spot, trembled slightly from top totoe with the internal vibration of the ship; from under his feet camesometimes a sudden clang of iron, the noisy burst of a shout below; tothe right the leaves of the tree-tops caught the rays of the low sun, and seemed to shine with a golden green light of their own shimmeringaround the highest boughs which stood out black against a smooth bluesky that seemed to droop over the bed of the river like the roof of atent. The passengers for Batu Beru, kneeling on the planks, were engagedin rolling their bedding of mats busily; they tied up bundles, theysnapped the locks of wooden chests. A pockmarked peddler of small waresthrew his head back to drain into his throat the last drops out of anearthenware bottle before putting it away in a roll of blankets. Knotsof traveling traders standing about the deck conversed in low tones;the followers of a small Rajah from down the coast, broad-faced, simpleyoung fellows in white drawers and round white cotton caps with theircolored sarongs twisted across their bronze shoulders, squatted on theirhams on the hatch, chewing betel with bright red mouths as if they hadbeen tasting blood. Their spears, lying piled up together within thecircle of their bare toes, resembled a casual bundle of dry bamboos; athin, livid Chinaman, with a bulky package wrapped up in leaves alreadythrust under his arm, gazed ahead eagerly; a wandering Kling rubbed histeeth with a bit of wood, pouring over the side a bright stream of waterout of his lips; the fat Rajah dozed in a shabby deck-chair, --and at theturn of every bend the two walls of leaves reappeared running parallelalong the banks, with their impenetrable solidity fading at the top toa vaporous mistiness of countless slender twigs growing free, of youngdelicate branches shooting from the topmost limbs of hoary trunks, of feathery heads of climbers like delicate silver sprays standing upwithout a quiver. There was not a sign of a clearing anywhere; not atrace of human habitation, except when in one place, on the bare end ofa low point under an isolated group of slender tree-ferns, the jagged, tangled remnants of an old hut on piles appeared with that peculiaraspect of ruined bamboo walls that look as if smashed with a club. Farther on, half hidden under the drooping bushes, a canoe containing aman and a woman, together with a dozen green cocoanuts in a heap, rockedhelplessly after the Sofala had passed, like a navigating contrivance ofventuresome insects, of traveling ants; while two glassy folds of waterstreaming away from each bow of the steamer across the whole width ofthe river ran with her up stream smoothly, fretting their outer endsinto a brown whispering tumble of froth against the miry foot of eachbank. 

"I must, " thought Sterne, "bring that brute Massy to his bearings. It'sgetting too absurd in the end. Here's the old man up there buried in hischair--he may just as well be in his grave for all the use he'll ever bein the world--and the Serang's in charge. Because that's what he is. In charge. In the place that's mine by rights. I must bring that savagebrute to his bearings. I'll do it at once, too . . . "

When the mate made an abrupt start, a little brown half-naked boy, withlarge black eyes, and the string of a written charm round his neck, became panic-struck at once. He dropped the banana he had been munching, and ran to the knee of a grave dark Arab in flowing robes, sitting likea Biblical figure, incongruously, on a yellow tin trunk corded with arope of twisted rattan. The father, unmoved, put out his hand to pat thelittle shaven poll protectingly. 

XI

Sterne crossed the deck upon the track of the chief engineer. Jack, the second, retreating backwards down the engine-room ladder, and stillwiping his hands, treated him to an incomprehensible grin of white teethout of his grimy hard face; Massy was nowhere to be seen. He must havegone straight into his berth. Sterne scratched at the door softly, then, putting his lips to the rose of the ventilator, said--

"I must speak to you, Mr. Massy. Just give me a minute or two. "

"I am busy. Go away from my door. "

"But pray, Mr. Massy . . . "

"You go away. D'you hear? Take yourself off altogether--to the otherend of the ship--quite away . . . " The voice inside dropped low. "To thedevil. "

Sterne paused: then very quietly--

"It's rather pressing. When do you think you will be at liberty, sir?"

The answer to this was an exasperated "Never"; and at once Sterne, witha very firm expression of face, turned the handle. 

Mr. Massy's stateroom--a narrow, one-berth cabin--smelt strongly ofsoap, and presented to view a swept, dusted, unadorned neatness, notso much bare as barren, not so much severe as starved and lacking inhumanity, like the ward of a public hospital, or rather (owing to thesmall size) like the clean retreat of a desperately poor but exemplaryperson. Not a single photograph frame ornamented the bulkheads; not asingle article of clothing, not as much as a spare cap, hung from thebrass hooks. All the inside was painted in one plain tint of pale blue;two big sea-chests in sailcloth covers and with iron padlocks fittedexactly in the space under the bunk. One glance was enough to embraceall the strip of scrubbed planks within the four unconcealed corners. The absence of the usual settee was striking; the teak-wood top of thewashing-stand seemed hermetically closed, and so was the lid of thewriting-desk, which protruded from the partition at the foot of thebed-place, containing a mattress as thin as a pancake under a threadbareblanket with a faded red stripe, and a folded mosquito-net againstthe nights spent in harbor. There was not a scrap of paper anywhere insight, no boots on the floor, no litter of any sort, not a speck ofdust anywhere; no traces of pipe-ash even, which, in a heavy smoker, wasmorally revolting, like a manifestation of extreme hypocrisy; and thebottom of the old wooden arm-chair (the only seat there), polishedwith much use, shone as if its shabbiness had been waxed. The screenof leaves on the bank, passing as if unrolled endlessly in the roundopening of the port, sent a wavering network of light and shade into theplace. 

Sterne, holding the door open with one hand, had thrust in his head andshoulders. At this amazing intrusion Massy, who was doing absolutelynothing, jumped up speechless. 

"Don't call names, " murmured Sterne hurriedly. "I won't be called names. I think of nothing but your good, Mr. Massy. "

A pause as of extreme astonishment followed. They both seemed to havelost their tongues. Then the mate went on with a discreet glibness. 

"You simply couldn't conceive what's going on on board your ship. It wouldn't enter your head for a moment. You are too good--too--tooupright, Mr. Massy, to suspect anybody of such a . . . It's enough tomake your hair stand on end. "

He watched for the effect: Massy seemed dazed, uncomprehending. He onlypassed the palm of his hand on the coal-black wisps plastered acrossthe top of his head. In a tone suddenly changed to confidential audacitySterne hastened on. 

"Remember that there's only six weeks left to run . . . " The other waslooking at him stonily . . . "so anyhow you shall require a captain forthe ship before long. "

Then only, as if that suggestion had scarified his flesh in the mannerof red-hot iron, Massy gave a start and seemed ready to shriek. Hecontained himself by a great effort. 

"Require a captain, " he repeated with scathing slowness. "Who requiresa captain? You dare to tell me that I need any of you humbugging sailorsto run my ship. You and your likes have been fattening on me for years. It would have hurt me less to throw my money overboard. Pam--pe--redus--e--less f-f-f-frauds. The old ship knows as much as the best ofyou. " He snapped his teeth audibly and growled through them, "The sillylaw requires a captain. "

Sterne had taken heart of grace meantime. 

"And the silly insurance people too, as well, " he said lightly. "Butnever mind that. What I want to ask is: Why shouldn't _I_ do, sir? Idon't say but you could take a steamer about the world as well as any ofus sailors. I don't pretend to tell _you_ that it is a very great trick. . . " He emitted a short, hollow guffaw, familiarly . . . "I didn'tmake the law--but there it is; and I am an active young fellow! Iquite hold with your ideas; I know your ways by this time, Mr. Massy. Iwouldn't try to give myself airs like that--that--er lazy specimen of anold man up there. "

He put a marked emphasis on the last sentence, to lead Massy away fromthe track in case . . . But he did not doubt of now holding his success. The chief engineer seemed nonplused, like a slow man invited to catchhold of a whirligig of some sort. 

"What you want, sir, is a chap with no nonsense about him, who would becontent to be your sailing-master. Quite right, too. Well, I am fit forthe work as much as that Serang. Because that's what it amounts to. Do you know, sir, that a dam' Malay like a monkey is in charge of yourship--and no one else. Just listen to his feet pit-patting above us onthe bridge--real officer in charge. He's taking her up the river whilethe great man is wallowing in the chair--perhaps asleep; and if he is, that would not make it much worse either--take my word for it. "

He tried to thrust himself farther in. Massy, with lowered forehead, onehand grasping the back of the arm-chair, did not budge. 

"You think, sir, that the man has got you tight in his agreement . . . "Massy raised a heavy snarling face at this . . . "Well, sir, one can'thelp hearing of it on board. It's no secret. And it has been the talk onshore for years; fellows have been making bets about it. No, sir!It's _you_ who have got him at your mercy. You will say that you can'tdismiss him for indolence. Difficult to prove in court, and so on. Why, yes. But if you say the word, sir, I can tell you something about hisindolence that will give you the clear right to fire him out on the spotand put me in charge for the rest of this very trip--yes, sir, beforewe leave Batu Beru--and make him pay a dollar a day for his keep tillwe get back, if you like. Now, what do you think of that? Come, sir. Say the word. It's really well worth your while, and I am quite ready totake your bare word. A definite statement from you would be as good as abond. "

His eyes began to shine. He insisted. A simple statement, --and hethought to himself that he would manage somehow to stick in his berth aslong as it suited him. He would make himself indispensable; the ship hada bad name in her port; it would be easy to scare the fellows off. Massywould have to keep him. 

"A definite statement from me would be enough, " Massy repeated slowly. 

"Yes, sir. It would. " Sterne stuck out his chin cheerily and blinked atclose quarters with that unconscious impudence which had the power toenrage Massy beyond anything. 

The engineer spoke very distinctly. 

"Listen well to me, then, Mr. Sterne: I wouldn't--d'ye hear?--I wouldn'tpromise you the value of two pence for anything _you_ can tell me. "

He struck Sterne's arm away with a smart blow, and catching hold ofthe handle pulled the door to. The terrific slam darkened the cabininstantaneously to his eye as if after the flash of an explosion. At once he dropped into the chair. "Oh, no! You don't!" he whisperedfaintly. 

The ship had in that place to shave the bank so close that the giganticwall of leaves came gliding like a shutter against the port; thedarkness of the primeval forest seemed to flow into that bare cabin withthe odor of rotting leaves, of sodden soil--the strong muddy smell ofthe living earth steaming uncovered after the passing of a deluge. Thebushes swished loudly alongside; above there was a series of cracklingsounds, with a sharp rain of small broken branches falling on thebridge; a creeper with a great rustle snapped on the head of a boatdavit, and a long, luxuriant green twig actually whipped in and out ofthe open port, leaving behind a few torn leaves that remained suddenlyat rest on Mr. Massy's blanket. Then, the ship sheering out in thestream, the light began to return but did not augment beyond a subduedclearness: for the sun was very low already, and the river, wending itssinuous course through a multitude of secular trees as if at thebottom of a precipitous gorge, had been already invaded by a deepeninggloom--the swift precursor of the night. 

"Oh, no, you don't!" murmured the engineer again. His lips trembledalmost imperceptibly; his hands too, a little: and to calm himselfhe opened the writing-desk, spread out a sheet of thin grayishpaper covered with a mass of printed figures and began to scan themattentively for the twentieth time this trip at least. 

With his elbows propped, his head between his hands, he seemed to losehimself in the study of an abstruse problem in mathematics. It was thelist of the winning numbers from the last drawing of the great lotterywhich had been the one inspiring fact of so many years of his existence. The conception of a life deprived of that periodical sheet of paper hadslipped away from him entirely, as another man, according to his nature, would not have been able to conceive a world without fresh air, withoutactivity, or without affection. A great pile of flimsy sheets had beengrowing for years in his desk, while the Sofala, driven by the faithfulJack, wore out her boilers in tramping up and down the Straits, fromcape to cape, from river to river, from bay to bay; accumulating by thathard labor of an overworked, starved ship the blackened mass of thesedocuments. Massy kept them under lock and key like a treasure. Therewas in them, as in the experience of life, the fascination of hope, theexcitement of a half-penetrated mystery, the longing of a half-satisfieddesire. 

For days together, on a trip, he would shut himself up in his berth withthem: the thump of the toiling engines pulsated in his ear; and hewould weary his brain poring over the rows of disconnected figures, bewildering by their senseless sequence, resembling the hazards ofdestiny itself. He nourished a conviction that there must be some logiclurking somewhere in the results of chance. He thought he had seenits very form. His head swam; his limbs ached; he puffed at his pipemechanically; a contemplative stupor would soothe the fretfulness of histemper, like the passive bodily quietude procured by a drug, while theintellect remains tensely on the stretch. Nine, nine, aught, four, two. He made a note. The next winning number of the great prize wasforty-seven thousand and five. These numbers of course would have tobe avoided in the future when writing to Manilla for the tickets. Hemumbled, pencil in hand . . . "and five. Hm . . . Hm. " He wetted hisfinger: the papers rustled. Ha! But what's this? Three years ago, in theSeptember drawing, it was number nine, aught, four, two that took thefirst prize. Most remarkable. There was a hint there of a definite rule!He was afraid of missing some recondite principle in the overwhelmingwealth of his material. What could it be? and for half an hour he wouldremain dead still, bent low over the desk, without twitching a muscle. At his back the whole berth would be thick with a heavy body of smoke, as if a bomb had burst in there, unnoticed, unheard. 

At last he would lock up the desk with the decision of unshakenconfidence, jump and go out. He would walk swiftly back and forth onthat part of the foredeck which was kept clear of the lumber and of thebodies of the native passengers. They were a great nuisance, but theywere also a source of profit that could not be disdained. He neededevery penny of profit the Sofala could make. Little enough it was, inall conscience! The incertitude of chance gave him no concern, sincehe had somehow arrived at the conviction that, in the course of years, every number was bound to have his winning turn. It was simply a matterof time and of taking as many tickets as he could afford for everydrawing. He generally took rather more; all the earnings of the shipwent that way, and also the wages he allowed himself as chief engineer. It was the wages he paid to others that he begrudged with a reasonedand at the same time a passionate regret. He scowled at the lascars withtheir deck brooms, at the quartermasters rubbing the brass rails withgreasy rags; he was eager to shake his fist and roar abuse in bad Malayat the poor carpenter--a timid, sickly, opium-fuddled Chinaman, in looseblue drawers for all costume, who invariably dropped his tools and fledbelow, with streaming tail and shaking all over, before the fury of that"devil. " But it was when he raised up his eyes to the bridge where oneof these sailor frauds was always planted by law in charge of his shipthat he felt almost dizzy with rage. He abominated them all; it was anold feud, from the time he first went to sea, an unlicked cub with agreat opinion of himself, in the engine-room. The slights that hadbeen put upon him. The persecutions he had suffered at the hands ofskippers--of absolute nobodies in a steamship after all. And now thathe had risen to be a shipowner they were still a plague to him: hehad absolutely to pay away precious money to the conceited uselessloafers:--As if a fully qualified engineer--who was the owner aswell--were not fit to be trusted with the whole charge of a ship. Well!he made it pretty warm for them; but it was a poor consolation. He hadcome in time to hate the ship too for the repairs she required, for thecoal-bills he had to pay, for the poor beggarly freights she earned. He would clench his hand as he walked and hit the rail a sudden blow, viciously, as though she could be made to feel pain. And yet he couldnot do without er; he needed her; he must hang on to her tooth and nailto keep his head above water till the expected flood of fortune camesweeping up and landed him safely on the high shore of his ambition. 

It was now to do nothing, nothing whatever, and have plenty of moneyto do it on. He had tasted of power, the highest form of it his limitedexperience was aware of--the power of shipowning. What a deception!Vanity of vanities! He wondered at his folly. He had thrown away thesubstance for the shadow. Of the gratification of wealth he did not knowenough to excite his imagination with any visions of luxury. Howcould he--the child of a drunken boiler-maker--going straight from theworkshop into the engine-room of a north-country collier! But the notionof the absolute idleness of wealth he could very well conceive. Hereveled in it, to forget his present troubles; he imagined himselfwalking about the streets of Hull (he knew their gutters well as a boy)with his pockets full of sovereigns. He would buy himself a house; hismarried sisters, their husbands, his old workshop chums, would renderhim infinite homage. There would be nothing to think of. His word wouldbe law. He had been out of work for a long time before he won his prize, and he remembered how Carlo Mariani (commonly known as Paunchy Charley), the Maltese hotel-keeper at the slummy end of Denham Street, hadcringed joyfully before him in the evening, when the news had come. Poor Charley, though he made his living by ministering to various abjectvices, gave credit for their food to many a piece of white wreckage. Hewas naively overjoyed at the idea of his old bills being paid, andhe reckoned confidently on a spell of festivities in the cavernousgrog-shop downstairs. Massy remembered the curious, respectful looks ofthe "trashy" white men in the place. His heart had swelled within him. Massy had left Charley's infamous den directly he had realized thepossibilities open to him, and with his nose in the air. Afterwards thememory of these adulations was a great sadness. 

This was the true power of money, --and no trouble with it, nor anythinking required either. He thought with difficulty and felt vividly;to his blunt brain the problems offered by any ordered scheme of lifeseemed in their cruel toughness to have been put in his way by theobvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner everyone had conspired tomake him a nobody. How could he have been such a fool as to purchasethat accursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there was no endto this swindling; and as the difficulties of his improvident ambitiongathered thicker round him, he really came to hate everybody he hadever come in contact with. A temper naturally irritable and an amazingsensitiveness to the claims of his own personality had ended by makingof life for him a sort of inferno--a place where his lost soul had beengiven up to the torment of savage brooding. 

But he had never hated anyone so much as that old man who had turned upone evening to save him from an utter disaster, --from the conspiracy ofthe wretched sailors. He seemed to have fallen on board from the sky. His footsteps echoed on the empty steamer, and the strange deep-tonedvoice on deck repeating interrogatively the words, "Mr. Massy, Mr. Massythere?" had been startling like a wonder. And coming up from the depthsof the cold engine-room, where he had been pottering dismally with acandle amongst the enormous shadows, thrown on all sides by the skeletonlimbs of machinery, Massy had been struck dumb by astonishment in thepresence of that imposing old man with a beard like a silver plate, towering in the dusk rendered lurid by the expiring flames of sunset. 

"Want to see me on business? What business? I am doing no business. Can't you see that this ship is laid up?" Massy had turned at bay beforethe pursuing irony of his disaster. Afterwards he could not believe hisears. What was that old fellow getting at? Things don't happen that way. It was a dream. He would presently wake up and find the man vanishedlike a shape of mist. The gravity, the dignity, the firm and courteoustone of that athletic old stranger impressed Massy. He was almostafraid. But it was no dream. Five hundred pounds are no dream. At oncehe became suspicious. What did it mean? Of course it was an offer tocatch hold of for dear life. But what could there be behind?

Before they had parted, after appointing a meeting in a solicitor'soffice early on the morrow, Massy was asking himself, What is hismotive? He spent the night in hammering out the clauses of theagreement--a unique instrument of its sort whose tenor got bruitedabroad somehow and became the talk and wonder of the port. 

Massy's object had been to secure for himself as many ways as possibleof getting rid of his partner without being called upon at once to payback his share. Captain Whalley's efforts were directed to making themoney secure. Was it not Ivy's money--a part of her fortune whose onlyother asset was the time-defying body of her old father? Sure of hisforbearance in the strength of his love for her, he accepted, withstately serenity, Massy's stupidly cunning paragraphs against hisincompetence, his dishonesty, his drunkenness, for the sake of otherstringent stipulations. At the end of three years he was at liberty towithdraw from the partnership, taking his money with him. Provision wasmade for forming a fund to pay him off. But if he left the Sofala beforethe term, from whatever cause (barring death), Massy was to have a wholeyear for paying. "Illness?" the lawyer had suggested: a young man freshfrom Europe and not overburdened with business, who was rather amused. Massy began to whine unctuously, "How could he be expected? . . . "

"Let that go, " Captain Whalley had said with a superb confidence in hisbody. "Acts of God, " he added. In the midst of life we are in death, buthe trusted his Maker with a still greater fearlessness--his Maker whoknew his thoughts, his human affections, and his motives. His Creatorknew what use he was making of his health--how much he wanted it . . . "I trust my first illness will be my last. I've never been ill that Ican remember, " he had remarked. "Let it go. "

But at this early stage he had already awakened Massy's hostility byrefusing to make it six hundred instead of five. "I cannot do that, " wasall he had said, simply, but with so much decision that Massy desistedat once from pressing the point, but had thought to himself, "Can't! Oldcurmudgeon. _Won't_ He must have lots of money, but he would like to gethold of a soft berth and the sixth part of my profits for nothing if heonly could. "

And during these years Massy's dislike grew under the restraintof something resembling fear. The simplicity of that man appeareddangerous. Of late he had changed, however, had appeared less formidableand with a lessened vigor of life, as though he had received a secretwound. But still he remained incomprehensible in his simplicity, fearlessness, and rectitude. And when Massy learned that he meant toleave him at the end of the time, to leave him confronted with theproblem of boilers, his dislike blazed up secretly into hate. 

It had made him so clear-eyed that for a long time now Mr. Sterne couldhave told him nothing he did not know. He had much ado in trying toterrorize that mean sneak into silence; he wanted to deal alone with thesituation; and--incredible as it might have appeared to Mr. Sterne--hehad not yet given up the desire and the hope of inducing that hatedold man to stay. Why! there was nothing else to do, unless he were toabandon his chances of fortune. But now, suddenly, since the crossing ofthe bar at Batu Beru things seemed to be coming rapidly to a point. Itdisquieted him so much that the study of the winning numbers failedto soothe his agitation: and the twilight in the cabin deepened, verysomber. 

He put the list away, muttering once more, "Oh, no, my boy, you don't. Not if I know it. " He did not mean the blinking, eavesdropping humbug toforce his action. He took his head again into his hands; his immobilityconfined in the darkness of this shut-up little place seemed to makehim a thing apart infinitely removed from the stir and the sounds of thedeck. 

He heard them: the passengers were beginning to jabber excitedly;somebody dragged a heavy box past his door. He heard Captain Whalley'svoice above--

"Stations, Mr. Sterne. " And the answer from somewhere on deck forward--

"Ay, ay, sir. "

"We shall moor head up stream this time; the ebb has made. "

"Head up stream, sir. "

"You will see to it, Mr. Sterne. "

The answer was covered by the autocratic clang on the engine-roomgong. The propeller went on beating slowly: one, two, three; one, two, three--with pauses as if hesitating on the turn. The gong clanged timeafter time, and the water churned this way and that by the blades wasmaking a great noisy commotion alongside. Mr. Massy did not move. Ashore-light on the other bank, a quarter of a mile across the river, drifted, no bigger than a tiny star, passing slowly athwart the circleof the port. Voices from Mr. Van Wyk's jetty answered the hails from theship; ropes were thrown and missed and thrown again; the swaying flameof a torch carried in a large sampan coming to fetch away in state theRajah from down the coast cast a sudden ruddy glare into his cabin, over his very person. Mr. Massy did not move. After a few last ponderousturns the engines stopped, and the prolonged clanging of the gongsignified that the captain had done with them. A great number of boatsand canoes of all sizes boarded the off-side of the Sofala. Then aftera time the tumult of splashing, of cries, of shuffling feet, of packagesdropped with a thump, the noise of the native passengers goingaway, subsided slowly. On the shore, a voice, cultivated, slightlyauthoritative, spoke very close alongside--

"Brought any mail for me this time?"

"Yes, Mr. Van Wyk. " This was from Sterne, answering over the rail in atone of respectful cordiality. "Shall I bring it up to you?"

But the voice asked again--

"Where's the captain?"

"Still on the bridge, I believe. He hasn't left his chair. Shall I . . . "

The voice interrupted negligently. 

"I will come on board. "

"Mr. Van Wyk, " Sterne suddenly broke out with an eager effort, "will youdo me the favor . . . "

The mate walked away quickly towards the gangway. A silence fell. Mr. Massy in the dark did not move. 

He did not move even when he heard slow shuffling footsteps pass hiscabin lazily. He contented himself to bellow out through the closeddoor--

"You--Jack!"

The footsteps came back without haste; the door handle rattled, and thesecond engineer appeared in the opening, shadowy in the sheen of theskylight at his back, with his face apparently as black as the rest ofhis figure. 

"We have been very long coming up this time, " Mr. Massy growled, withoutchanging his attitude. 

"What do you expect with half the boiler tubes plugged up for leaks. "The second defended himself loquaciously. 

"None of your lip, " said Massy. 

"None of your rotten boilers--I say, " retorted his faithful subordinatewithout animation, huskily. "Go down there and carry a head of steam onthem yourself--if you dare. I don't. "

"You aren't worth your salt then, " Massy said. The other made a faintnoise which resembled a laugh but might have been a snarl. 

"Better go slow than stop the ship altogether, " he admonished hisadmired superior. Mr. Massy moved at last. He turned in his chair, andgrinding his teeth--

"Dam' you and the ship! I wish she were at the bottom of the sea. Thenyou would have to starve. "

The trusty second engineer closed the door gently. 

Massy listened. Instead of passing on to the bathroom where he shouldhave gone to clean himself, the second entered his cabin, which was nextdoor. Mr. Massy jumped up and waited. Suddenly he heard the lock snap inthere. He rushed out and gave a violent kick to the door. 

"I believe you are locking yourself up to get drunk, " he shouted. 

A muffled answer came after a while. 

"My own time. "

"If you take to boozing on the trip I'll fire you out, " Massy cried. 

An obstinate silence followed that threat. Massy moved away perplexed. On the bank two figures appeared, approaching the gangway. He heard avoice tinged with contempt--

"I would rather doubt your word. But I shall certainly speak to him ofthis. "

The other voice, Sterne's, said with a sort of regretful formality--

"Thanks. That's all I want. I must do my duty. "

Mr. Massy was surprised. A short, dapper figure leaped lightly on thedeck and nearly bounded into him where he stood beyond the circle oflight from the gangway lamp. When it had passed towards the bridge, after exchanging a hurried "Good evening, " Massy said surlily to Sternewho followed with slow steps--

"What is it you're making up to Mr. Van Wyk for, now?"

"Far from it, Mr. Massy. I am not good enough for Mr. Van Wyk. Neitherare you, sir, in his opinion, I am afraid. Captain Whalley is, it seems. He's gone to ask him to dine up at the house this evening. "

Then he murmured to himself darkly--

"I hope he will like it. "

XII

Mr. Van Wyk, the white man of Batu Beru, an ex-naval officer who, for reasons best known to himself, had thrown away the promise of abrilliant career to become the pioneer of tobacco-planting on thatremote part of the coast, had learned to like Captain Whalley. Theappearance of the new skipper had attracted his attention. Nothing moreunlike all the diverse types he had seen succeeding each other on thebridge of the Sofala could be imagined. 

At that time Batu Beru was not what it has become since: the center ofa prosperous tobacco-growing district, a tropically suburban-lookinglittle settlement of bungalows in one long street shaded with two rowsof trees, embowered by the flowering and trim luxuriance of the gardens, with a three-mile-long carriage-road for the afternoon drives and afirst-class Resident with a fat, cheery wife to lead the society ofmarried estate-managers and unmarried young fellows in the service of thebig companies. 

All this prosperity was not yet; and Mr. Van Wyk prospered alone on theleft bank on his deep clearing carved out of the forest, which came downabove and below to the water's edge. His lonely bungalow faced acrossthe river the houses of the Sultan: a restless and melancholy old rulerwho had done with love and war, for whom life no longer held any savor(except of evil forebodings) and time never had any value. He was afraidof death, and hoped he would die before the white men were ready to takehis country from him. He crossed the river frequently (with neverless than ten boats crammed full of people), in the wistful hope ofextracting some information on the subject from his own white man. Therewas a certain chair on the veranda he always took: the dignitaries ofthe court squatted on the rugs and skins between the furniture: theinferior people remained below on the grass plot between the house andthe river in rows three or four deep all along the front. Not seldom thevisit began at daybreak. Mr. Van Wyk tolerated these inroads. He wouldnod out of his bedroom window, tooth-brush or razor in hand, or passthrough the throng of courtiers in his bathing robe. He appeared anddisappeared humming a tune, polished his nails with attention, rubbedhis shaved face with _eau-de-Cologne_, drank his early tea, went out tosee his coolies at work: returned, looked through some papers on hisdesk, read a page or two in a book or sat before his cottage pianoleaning back on the stool, his arms extended, fingers on the keys, hisbody swaying slightly from side to side. When absolutely forced to speakhe gave evasive vaguely soothing answers out of pure compassion: thesame feeling perhaps made him so lavishly hospitable with the aerateddrinks that more than once he left himself without soda-water for a wholeweek. That old man had granted him as much land as he cared to havecleared: it was neither more nor less than a fortune. 

Whether it was fortune or seclusion from his kind that Mr. Van Wyksought, he could not have pitched upon a better place. Even themail-boats of the subsidized company calling on the veriest clusters ofpalm-thatched hovels along the coast steamed past the mouth of Batu Beruriver far away in the offing. The contract was old: perhaps in a fewyears' time, when it had expired, Batu Beru would be included in theservice; meantime all Mr. Van Wyk's mail was addressed to Malacca, whence his agent sent it across once a month by the Sofala. It followedthat whenever Massy had run short of money (through taking too manylottery tickets), or got into a difficulty about a skipper, Mr. Van Wykwas deprived of his letter and newspapers. In so far he had a personalinterest in the fortunes of the Sofala. Though he considered himselfa hermit (and for no passing whim evidently, since he had stood eightyears of it already), he liked to know what went on in the world. 

Handy on the veranda upon a walnut _etagere_ (it had come last year by theSofala)--everything came by the Sofala there lay, piled up under bronzeweights, a pile of the Times' weekly edition, the large sheets of theRotterdam Courant, the Graphic in its world-wide green wrappers, anillustrated Dutch publication without a cover, the numbers of a Germanmagazine with covers of the "_Bismarck malade_" color. There were alsoparcels of new music--though the piano (it had come years ago by theSofala in the damp atmosphere of the forests was generally out of tune. )It was vexing to be cut off from everything for sixty days at a stretchsometimes, without any means of knowing what was the matter. And whenthe Sofala reappeared Mr. Van Wyk would descend the steps of the verandaand stroll over the grass plot in front of his house, down to thewaterside, with a frown on his white brow. 

"You've been laid up after an accident, I presume. "

He addressed the bridge, but before anybody could answer Massy was sureto have already scrambled ashore over the rail and pushed in, squeezingthe palms of his hands together, bowing his sleek head as if gummed allover the top with black threads and tapes. And he would be so enragedat the necessity of having to offer such an explanation that his moaningwould be positively pitiful, while all the time he tried to compose hisbig lips into a smile. 

"No, Mr. Van Wyk. You would not believe it. I couldn't get one of thosewretches to take the ship out. Not a single one of the lazy beasts couldbe induced, and the law, you know, Mr. Van Wyk . . . "

He moaned at great length apologetically; the words conspiracy, plot, envy, came out prominently, whined with greater energy. Mr. Van Wyk, examining with a faint grimace his polished finger-nails, would say, "H'm. Very unfortunate, " and turn his back on him. 

Fastidious, clever, slightly skeptical, accustomed to the best society(he had held a much-envied shore appointment at the Ministry of Marinefor a year preceding his retreat from his profession and from Europe), he possessed a latent warmth of feeling and a capacity for sympathywhich were concealed by a sort of haughty, arbitrary indifference ofmanner arising from his early training; and by a something an enemymight have called foppish, in his aspect--like a distorted echo of pastelegance. He managed to keep an almost military discipline amongst thecoolies of the estate he had dragged into the light of day out of thetangle and shadows of the jungle; and the white shirt he put on everyevening with its stiff glossy front and high collar looked as if he hadmeant to preserve the decent ceremony of evening-dress, but had wounda thick crimson sash above his hips as a concession to the wilderness, once his adversary, now his vanquished companion. 

Moreover, it was a hygienic precaution. Worn wide open in front, a shortjacket of some airy silken stuff floated from his shoulders. His fluffy, fair hair, thin at the top, curled slightly at the sides; a carefullyarranged mustache, an ungarnished forehead, the gleam of low patentshoes peeping under the wide bottom of trowsers cut straight from thesame stuff as the gossamer coat, completed a figure recalling, with itssash, a pirate chief of romance, and at the same time the elegance ofa slightly bald dandy indulging, in seclusion, a taste for unorthodoxcostume. 

It was his evening get-up. The proper time for the Sofala to arriveat Batu Beru was an hour before sunset, and he looked picturesque, andsomehow quite correct too, walking at the water's edge on the backgroundof grass slope crowned with a low long bungalow with an immensely steeproof of palm thatch, and clad to the eaves in flowering creepers. Whilethe Sofala was being made fast he strolled in the shade of the few treesleft near the landing-place, waiting till he could go on board. Herwhite men were not of his kind. The old Sultan (though his wistfulinvasions were a nuisance) was really much more acceptable to hisfastidious taste. But still they were white; the periodical visits ofthe ship made a break in the well-filled sameness of the days withoutdisturbing his privacy. Moreover, they were necessary from a businesspoint of view; and through a strain of preciseness in his nature he wasirritated when she failed to appear at the appointed time. 

The cause of the irregularity was too absurd, and Massy, in his opinion, was a contemptible idiot. The first time the Sofala reappeared under thenew agreement swinging out of the bend below, after he had almost givenup all hope of ever seeing her again, he felt so angry that he did notgo down at once to the landing-place. His servants had come running tohim with the news, and he had dragged a chair close against the frontrail of the veranda, spread his elbows out, rested his chin on hishands, and went on glaring at her fixedly while she was being made fastopposite his house. He could make out easily all the white faces onboard. Who on earth was that kind of patriarch they had got there on thebridge now?

At last he sprang up and walked down the gravel path. It was a factthat the very gravel for his paths had been imported by the Sofala. Exasperated out of his quiet superciliousness, without looking at anyoneright or left, he accosted Massy straightway in so determined a mannerthat the engineer, taken aback, began to stammer unintelligibly. Nothingcould be heard but the words: "Mr. Van Wyk . . . Indeed, Mr. Van Wyk. . . For the future, Mr. Van Wyk"--and by the suffusion of blood Massy'svast bilious face acquired an unnatural orange tint, out of which thedisconcerted coal-black eyes shone in an extraordinary manner. 

"Nonsense. I am tired of this. I wonder you have the impudence to comealongside my jetty as if I had it made for your convenience alone. "

Massy tried to protest earnestly. Mr. Van Wyk was very angry. He hada good mind to ask that German firm--those people in Malacca--what wastheir name?--boats with green funnels. They would be only too gladof the opening to put one of their small steamers on the run. Yes;Schnitzler, Jacob Schnitzler, would in a moment. Yes. He had decided towrite without delay. 

In his agitation Massy caught up his falling pipe. 

"You don't mean it, sir!" he shrieked. 

"You shouldn't mismanage your business in this ridiculous manner. "

Mr. Van Wyk turned on his heel. The other three whites on the bridge hadnot stirred during the scene. Massy walked hastily from side to side, puffed out his cheeks, suffocated. 

"Stuck up Dutchman!"

And he moaned out feverishly a long tale of griefs. The efforts he hadmade for all these years to please that man. This was the return yougot for it, eh? Pretty. Write to Schnitzler--let in the green-funnelboats--get an old Hamburg Jew to ruin him. No, really he could laugh. . . . He laughed sobbingly. . . . Ha! ha! ha! And make him carry theletter in his own ship presumably. 

He stumbled across a grating and swore. He would not hesitate to flingthe Dutchman's correspondence overboard--the whole confounded bundle. He had never, never made any charge for that accommodation. But CaptainWhalley, his new partner, would not let him probably; besides, it wouldbe only putting off the evil day. For his own part he would make a holein the water rather than look on tamely at the green funnels overrunninghis trade. 

He raved aloud. The China boys hung back with the dishes at the foot ofthe ladder. He yelled from the bridge down at the deck, "Aren't we goingto have any chow this evening at all?" then turned violently to CaptainWhalley, who waited, grave and patient, at the head of the table, smoothing his beard in silence now and then with a forbearing gesture. 

"You don't seem to care what happens to me. Don't you see that thisaffects your interests as much as mine? It's no joking matter. "

He took the foot of the table growling between his teeth. 

"Unless you have a few thousands put away somewhere. I haven't. "

Mr. Van Wyk dined in his thoroughly lit-up bungalow, putting a point ofsplendor in the night of his clearing above the dark bank of the river. Afterwards he sat down to his piano, and in a pause he became awareof slow footsteps passing on the path along the front. A plank or twocreaked under a heavy tread; he swung half round on the music-stool, listening with his fingertips at rest on the keyboard. His littleterrier barked violently, backing in from the veranda. A deep voiceapologized gravely for "this intrusion. " He walked out quickly. 

At the head of the steps the patriarchal figure, who was the new captainof the Sofala apparently (he had seen a round dozen of them, but notone of that sort), towered without advancing. The little dog barkedunceasingly, till a flick of Mr. Van Wyk's handkerchief made him springaside into silence. Captain Whalley, opening the matter, was met by apunctiliously polite but determined opposition. 

They carried on their discussion standing where they had come face toface. Mr. Van Wyk observed his visitor with attention. Then at last, asif forced out of his reserve--

"I am surprised that you should intercede for such a confounded fool. "

This outbreak was almost complimentary, as if its meaning had been, "That such a man as you should intercede!" Captain Whalley let it passby without flinching. One would have thought he had heard nothing. Hesimply went on to state that he was personally interested in puttingthings straight between them. Personally . . . 

But Mr. Van Wyk, really carried away by his disgust with Massy, becamevery incisive--

"Indeed--if I am to be frank with you--his whole character does not seemto me particularly estimable or trustworthy . . . "

Captain Whalley, always straight, seemed to grow an inch taller andbroader, as if the girth of his chest had suddenly expanded under hisbeard. 

"My dear sir, you don't think I came here to discuss a man with whom Iam--I am--h'm--closely associated. "

A sort of solemn silence lasted for a moment. He was not used to askingfavors, but the importance he attached to this affair had made himwilling to try. . . . Mr. Van Wyk, favorably impressed, and suddenlymollified by a desire to laugh, interrupted--

"That's all right if you make it a personal matter; but you can do noless than sit down and smoke a cigar with me. "

A slight pause, then Captain Whalley stepped forward heavily. As to theregularity of the service, for the future he made himself responsiblefor it; and his name was Whalley--perhaps to a sailor (he was speakingto a sailor, was he not?) not altogether unfamiliar. There was alighthouse now, on an island. Maybe Mr. Van Wyk himself . . . 

"Oh yes. Oh indeed. " Mr. Van Wyk caught on at once. He indicated achair. How very interesting. For his own part he had seen some servicein the last Acheen War, but had never been so far East. Whalley Island?Of course. Now that was very interesting. What changes his guest musthave seen since. 

"I can look further back even--on a whole half-century. "

Captain Whalley expanded a bit. The flavor of a good cigar (it was aweakness) had gone straight to his heart, also the civility of thatyoung man. There was something in that accidental contact of which hehad been starved in his years of struggle. 

The front wall retreating made a square recess furnished like a room. A lamp with a milky glass shade, suspended below the slope of the highroof at the end of a slender brass chain, threw a bright round of lightupon a little table bearing an open book and an ivory paper-knife. And, in the translucent shadows beyond, other tables could be seen, a numberof easy-chairs of various shapes, with a great profusion of skin rugsstrewn on the teakwood planking all over the veranda. The floweringcreepers scented the air. Their foliage clipped out between the uprightsmade as if several frames of thick unstirring leaves reflecting thelamplight in a green glow. Through the opening at his elbow CaptainWhalley could see the gangway lantern of the Sofala burning dim by theshore, the shadowy masses of the town beyond the open lustrous darknessof the river, and, as if hung along the straight edge of the projectingeaves, a narrow black strip of the night sky full of stars--resplendent. The famous cigar in hand he had a moment of complacency. 

"A trifle. Somebody must lead the way. I just showed that the thingcould be done; but you men brought up to the use of steam cannotconceive the vast importance of my bit of venturesomeness to the Easterntrade of the time. Why, that new route reduced the average time of asouthern passage by eleven days for more than half the year. Elevendays! It's on record. But the remarkable thing--speaking to a sailor--Ishould say was . . . "

He talked well, without egotism, professionally. The powerful voice, produced without effort, filled the bungalow even into the empty roomswith a deep and limpid resonance, seemed to make a stillness outside;and Mr. Van Wyk was surprised by the serene quality of its tone, likethe perfection of manly gentleness. Nursing one small foot, in asilk sock and a patent leather shoe, on his knee, he was immenselyentertained. It was as if nobody could talk like this now, and theovershadowed eyes, the flowing white beard, the big frame, theserenity, the whole temper of the man, were an amazing survival from theprehistoric times of the world coming up to him out of the sea. 

Captain Whalley had been also the pioneer of the early trade in the Gulfof Pe-tchi-li. He even found occasion to mention that he had buriedhis "dear wife" there six-and-twenty years ago. Mr. Van Wyk, impassive, could not help speculating in his mind swiftly as to the sort of womanthat would mate with such a man. Did they make an adventurous andwell-matched pair? No. Very possible she had been small, frail, nodoubt very feminine--or most likely commonplace with domestic instincts, utterly insignificant. But Captain Whalley was no garrulous bore, andshaking his head as if to dissipate the momentary gloom that had settledon his handsome old face, he alluded conversationally to Mr. Van Wyk'ssolitude. 

Mr. Van Wyk affirmed that sometimes he had more company than he wanted. He mentioned smilingly some of the peculiarities of his intercourse with"My Sultan. " He made his visits in force. Those people damaged his grassplot in front (it was not easy to obtain some approach to a lawn inthe tropics) and the other day had broken down some rare bushes he hadplanted over there. And Captain Whalley remembered immediately that, in 'forty-seven, the then Sultan, "this man's grandfather, " had beennotorious as a great protector of the piratical fleets of praus fromfarther East. They had a safe refuge in the river at Batu Beru. Hefinanced more especially a Balinini chief called Haji Daman. CaptainWhalley, nodding significantly his bushy white eyebrows, had very goodreason to know something of that. The world had progressed since thattime. 

Mr. Van Wyk demurred with unexpected acrimony. Progressed in what? hewanted to know. 

Why, in knowledge of truth, in decency, in justice, in order--in honestytoo, since men harmed each other mostly from ignorance. It was, CaptainWhalley concluded quaintly, more pleasant to live in. 

Mr. Van Wyk whimsically would not admit that Mr. Massy, for instance, was more pleasant naturally than the Balinini pirates. 

The river had not gained much by the change. They were in their wayevery bit as honest. Massy was less ferocious than Haji Daman no doubt, but . . . 

"And what about you, my good sir?" Captain Whalley laughed a deep softlaugh. "_You_ are an improvement, surely. "

He continued in a vein of pleasantry. A good cigar was better than aknock on the head--the sort of welcome he would have found on thisriver forty or fifty years ago. Then leaning forward slightly, he becameearnestly serious. It seems as if, outside their own sea-gypsytribes, these rovers had hated all mankind with an incomprehensible, bloodthirsty hatred. Meantime their depredations had been stopped, andwhat was the consequence? The new generation was orderly, peaceable, settled in prosperous villages. He could speak from personal knowledge. And even the few survivors of that time--old men now--had changed somuch, that it would have been unkind to remember against them that theyhad ever slit a throat in their lives. He had one especially in hismind's eye: a dignified, venerable headman of a certain large coastvillage about sixty miles sou'west of Tampasuk. It did one's heartgood to see him--to hear that man speak. He might have been a ferocioussavage once. What men wanted was to be checked by superior intelligence, by superior knowledge, by superior force too--yes, by force held intrust from God and sanctified by its use in accordance with His declaredwill. Captain Whalley believed a disposition for good existed in everyman, even if the world were not a very happy place as a whole. In thewisdom of men he had not so much confidence. The disposition had to behelped up pretty sharply sometimes, he admitted. They might be silly, wrongheaded, unhappy; but naturally evil--no. There was at bottom acomplete harmlessness at least . . . 

"Is there?" Mr. Van Wyk snapped acrimoniously. 

Captain Whalley laughed at the interjection, in the good humor of large, tolerating certitude. He could look back at half a century, he pointedout. The smoke oozed placidly through the white hairs hiding his kindlylips. 

"At all events, " he resumed after a pause, "I am glad that they've hadno time to do you much harm as yet. "

This allusion to his comparative youthfulness did not offend Mr. VanWyk, who got up and wriggled his shoulders with an enigmatic half-smile. They walked out together amicably into the starry night towards theriver-side. Their footsteps resounded unequally on the dark path. At theshore end of the gangway the lantern, hung low to the handrail, threwa vivid light on the white legs and the big black feet of Mr. Massywaiting about anxiously. From the waist upwards he remained shadowy, with a row of buttons gleaming up to the vague outline of his chin. 

"You may thank Captain Whalley for this, " Mr. Van Wyk said curtly to himbefore turning away. 

The lamps on the veranda flung three long squares of light betweenthe uprights far over the grass. A bat flitted before his face like acircling flake of velvety blackness. Along the jasmine hedge the nightair seemed heavy with the fall of perfumed dew; flowerbeds bordered thepath; the clipped bushes uprose in dark rounded clumps here and therebefore the house; the dense foliage of creepers filtered the sheen ofthe lamplight within in a soft glow all along the front; and everythingnear and far stood still in a great immobility, in a great sweetness. 

Mr. Van Wyk (a few years before he had had occasion to imagine himselftreated more badly than anybody alive had ever been by a woman) feltfor Captain Whalley's optimistic views the disdain of a man who had oncebeen credulous himself. His disgust with the world (the woman for atime had filled it for him completely) had taken the form of activityin retirement, because, though capable of great depth of feeling, he wasenergetic and essentially practical. But there was in that uncommon oldsailor, drifting on the outskirts of his busy solitude, something thatfascinated his skepticism. His very simplicity (amusing enough) was likea delicate refinement of an upright character. The striking dignityof manner could be nothing else, in a man reduced to such a humbleposition, but the expression of something essentially noble in thecharacter. With all his trust in mankind he was no fool; the serenityof his temper at the end of so many years, since it could not obviouslyhave been appeased by success, wore an air of profound wisdom. Mr. VanWyk was amused at it sometimes. Even the very physical traits of theold captain of the Sofala, his powerful frame, his reposeful mien, hisintelligent, handsome face, the big limbs, the benign courtesy, thetouch of rugged severity in the shaggy eyebrows, made up a seductivepersonality. Mr. Van Wyk disliked littleness of every kind, but therewas nothing small about that man, and in the exemplary regularity ofmany trips an intimacy had grown up between them, a warm feelingat bottom under a kindly stateliness of forms agreeable to hisfastidiousness. 

They kept their respective opinions on all worldly matters. His otherconvictions Captain Whalley never intruded. The difference of theirages was like another bond between them. Once, when twitted with theuncharitableness of his youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over thevast proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly banter--

"Oh. You'll come to my way of thinking yet. You'll have plenty of time. Don't call yourself old: you look good for a round hundred. "

But he could not help his stinging incisiveness, and though moderatingit by an almost affectionate smile, he added--

"And by then you will probably consent to die from sheer disgust. "

Captain Whalley, smiling too, shook his head. "God forbid!"

He thought that perhaps on the whole he deserved something better thanto die in such sentiments. The time of course would have to come, and hetrusted to his Maker to provide a manner of going out of which he neednot be ashamed. For the rest he hoped he would live to a hundred if needbe: other men had been known; it would be no miracle. He expected nomiracles. 

The pronounced, argumentative tone caused Mr. Van Wyk to raise his headand look at him steadily. Captain Whalley was gazing fixedly with a raptexpression, as though he had seen his Creator's favorable decree writtenin mysterious characters on the wall. He kept perfectly motionless fora few seconds, then got his vast bulk on to his feet so impetuously thatMr. Van Wyk was startled. 

He struck first a heavy blow on his inflated chest: and, throwing outhorizontally a big arm that remained steady, extended in the air likethe limb of a tree on a windless day--

"Not a pain or an ache there. Can you see this shake in the least?"

His voice was low, in an awing, confident contrast with the headlongemphasis of his movements. He sat down abruptly. 

"This isn't to boast of it, you know. I am nothing, " he said in hiseffortless strong voice, that seemed to come out as naturally as a riverflows. He picked up the stump of the cigar he had laid aside, and addedpeacefully, with a slight nod, "As it happens, my life is necessary; itisn't my own, it isn't--God knows. "

He did not say much for the rest of the evening, but several times Mr. Van Wyk detected a faint smile of assurance flitting under the heavymustache. 

Later on Captain Whalley would now and then consent to dine "at thehouse. " He could even be induced to drink a glass of wine. "Don't thinkI am afraid of it, my good sir, " he explained. "There was a very goodreason why I should give it up. "

On another occasion, leaning back at ease, he remarked, "You havetreated me most--most humanely, my dear Mr. Van Wyk, from the veryfirst. "

"You'll admit there was some merit, " Mr. Van Wyk hinted slyly. "Anassociate of that excellent Massy. . . . Well, well, my dear captain, Iwon't say a word against him. "

"It would be no use your saying anything against him, " Captain Whalleyaffirmed a little moodily. "As I've told you before, my life--my work, is necessary, not for myself alone. I can't choose" . . . He paused, turned the glass before him right round. . . . "I have an only child--adaughter. "

The ample downward sweep of his arm over the table seemed to suggesta small girl at a vast distance. "I hope to see her once more before Idie. Meantime it's enough to know that she has me sound and solid, thankGod. You can't understand how one feels. Bone of my bone, flesh of myflesh; the very image of my poor wife. Well, she . . . "

Again he paused, then pronounced stoically the words, "She has a hardstruggle. "

And his head fell on his breast, his eyebrows remained knitted, as byan effort of meditation. But generally his mind seemed steeped in theserenity of boundless trust in a higher power. Mr. Van Wyk wonderedsometimes how much of it was due to the splendid vitality of the man, to the bodily vigor which seems to impart something of its force to thesoul. But he had learned to like him very much. 

XIII

This was the reason why Mr. Sterne's confidential communication, delivered hurriedly on the shore alongside the dark silent ship, had disturbed his equanimity. It was the most incomprehensible andunexpected thing that could happen; and the perturbation of his spiritwas so great that, forgetting all about his letters, he ran rapidly upthe bridge ladder. 

The portable table was being put together for dinner to the left of thewheel by two pig-tailed "boys, " who as usual snarled at each otherover the job, while another, a doleful, burly, very yellow Chinaman, resembling Mr. Massy, waited apathetically with the cloth over his armand a pile of thick dinner-plates against his chest. A common cabin lampwith its globe missing, brought up from below, had been hooked to thewooden framework of the awning; the side-screens had been lowered allround; Captain Whalley filling the depths of the wicker-chair seemed tosit benumbed in a canvas tent crudely lighted, and used for the storingof nautical objects; a shabby steering-wheel, a battered brass binnacleon a stout mahogany stand, two dingy life-buoys, an old cork fenderlying in a corner, dilapidated deck-lockers with loops of thin ropeinstead of door-handles. 

He shook off the appearance of numbness to return Mr. Van Wyk'sunusually brisk greeting, but relapsed directly afterwards. To accepta pressing invitation to dinner "up at the house" cost him another veryvisible physical effort. Mr. Van Wyk, perplexed, folded his arms, andleaning back against the rail, with his little, black, shiny feet wellout, examined him covertly. 

"I've noticed of late that you are not quite yourself, old friend. "

He put an affectionate gentleness into the last two words. The realintimacy of their intercourse had never been so vividly expressedbefore. 

"Tut, tut, tut!"

The wicker-chair creaked heavily. 

"Irritable, " commented Mr. Van Wyk to himself; and aloud, "I'll expectto see you in half an hour, then, " he said negligently, moving off. 

"In half an hour, " Captain Whalley's rigid silvery head repeated behindhim as if out of a trance. 

Amidships, below, two voices, close against the engineroom, could beheard answering each other--one angry and slow, the other alert. 

"I tell you the beast has locked himself in to get drunk. "

"Can't help it now, Mr. Massy. After all, a man has a right to shuthimself up in his cabin in his own time. "

"Not to get drunk. "

"I heard him swear that the worry with the boilers was enough to driveany man to drink, " Sterne said maliciously. 

Massy hissed out something about bursting the door in. Mr. Van Wyk, toavoid them, crossed in the dark to the other side of the deserted deck. The planking of the little wharf rattled faintly under his hasty feet. 

"Mr. Van Wyk! Mr. Van Wyk!"

He walked on: somebody was running on the path. "You've forgotten to getyour mail. "

Sterne, holding a bundle of papers in his hand, caught up with him. 

"Oh, thanks. "

But, as the other continued at his elbow, Mr. Van Wyk stopped short. The overhanging eaves, descending low upon the lighted front of thebungalow, threw their black straight-edged shadow into the great body ofthe night on that side. Everything was very still. A tinkle of cutleryand a slight jingle of glasses were heard. Mr. Van Wyk's servants werelaying the table for two on the veranda. 

"I'm afraid you give me no credit whatever for my good intentions in thematter I've spoken to you about, " said Sterne. 

"I simply don't understand you. "

"Captain Whalley is a very audacious man, but he will understand thathis game is up. That's all that anybody need ever know of it from me. Believe me, I am very considerate in this, but duty is duty. I don'twant to make a fuss. All I ask you, as his friend, is to tell him fromme that the game's up. That will be sufficient. "

Mr. Van Wyk felt a loathsome dismay at this queer privilege offriendship. He would not demean himself by asking for the slightestexplanation; to drive the other away with contumely he did not thinkprudent--as yet, at any rate. So much assurance staggered him. Whocould tell what there could be in it, he thought? His regard for CaptainWhalley had the tenacity of a disinterested sentiment, and his practicalinstinct coming to his aid, he concealed his scorn. 

"I gather, then, that this is something grave. "

"Very grave, " Sterne assented solemnly, delighted at having producedan effect at last. He was ready to add some effusive protestationsof regret at the "unavoidable necessity, " but Mr. Van Wyk cut himshort--very civilly, however. 

Once on the veranda Mr. Van Wyk put his hands in his pockets, and, straddling his legs, stared down at a black panther skin lying on thefloor before a rocking-chair. "It looks as if the fellow had not thepluck to play his own precious game openly, " he thought. 

This was true enough. In the face of Massy's last rebuff Sterne darednot declare his knowledge. His object was simply to get charge of thesteamer and keep it for some time. Massy would never forgive him forforcing himself on; but if Captain Whalley left the ship of his ownaccord, the command would devolve upon him for the rest of the trip;so he hit upon the brilliant idea of scaring the old man away. A vaguemenace, a mere hint, would be enough in such a brazen case; and, witha strange admixture of compassion, he thought that Batu Beru was avery good place for throwing up the sponge. The skipper could go ashorequietly, and stay with that Dutchman of his. Weren't these two as thickas thieves together? And on reflection he seemed to see that there was away to work the whole thing through that great friend of the oldman's. This was another brilliant idea. He had an inborn preference forcircuitous methods. In this particular case he desired to remain in thebackground as much as possible, to avoid exasperating Massy needlessly. No fuss! Let it all happen naturally. 

Mr. Van Wyk all through the dinner was conscious of a sense of isolationthat invades sometimes the closeness of human intercourse. CaptainWhalley failed lamentably and obviously in his attempts to eatsomething. He seemed overcome by a strange absentmindedness. His handwould hover irresolutely, as if left without guidance by a preoccupiedmind. Mr. Van Wyk had heard him coming up from a long way off in theprofound stillness of the river-side, and had noticed the irresolutecharacter of the footfalls. The toe of his boot had struck the bottomstair as though he had come along mooning with his head in the airright up to the steps of the veranda. Had the captain of the Sofala beenanother sort of man he would have suspected the work of age there. Butone glance at him was enough. Time--after, indeed, marking him for itsown--had given him up to his usefulness, in which his simple faith wouldsee a proof of Divine mercy. "How could I contrive to warn him?" Mr. VanWyk wondered, as if Captain Whalley had been miles and miles away, outof sight and earshot of all evil. He was sickened by an immense disgustof Sterne. To even mention his threat to a man like Whalley would bepositively indecent. There was something more vile and insulting inits hint than in a definite charge of crime--the debasing taint ofblackmailing. "What could anyone bring against him?" he asked himself. This was a limpid personality. "And for what object?" The Power that mantrusted had thought fit to leave him nothing on earth that envy couldlay hold of, except a bare crust of bread. 

"Won't you try some of this?" he asked, pushing a dish slightly. Suddenly it seemed to Mr. Van Wyk that Sterne might possibly be covetingthe command of the Sofala. His cynicism was quite startled by whatlooked like a proof that no man may count himself safe from his kindunless in the very abyss of misery. An intrigue of that sort was hardlyworth troubling about, he judged; but still, with such a fool as Massyto deal with, Whalley ought to and must be warned. 

At this moment Captain Whalley, bolt upright, the deep cavities of theeyes overhung by a bushy frown, and one large brown hand resting on eachside of his empty plate, spoke across the tablecloth abruptly--"Mr. VanWyk, you've always treated me with the most humane consideration. "

"My dear captain, you make too much of a simple fact that I am nota savage. " Mr. Van Wyk, utterly revolted by the thought of Sterne'sobscure attempt, raised his voice incisively, as if the mate had beenhiding somewhere within earshot. "Any consideration I have been able toshow was no more than the rightful due of a character I've learned toregard by this time with an esteem that nothing can shake. "

A slight ring of glass made him lift his eyes from the slice ofpine-apple he was cutting into small pieces on his plate. In changinghis position Captain Whalley had contrived to upset an empty tumbler. 

Without looking that way, leaning sideways on his elbow, his otherhand shading his brow, he groped shakily for it, then desisted. Van Wykstared blankly, as if something momentous had happened all at once. He did not know why he should feel so startled; but he forgot Sterneutterly for the moment. 

"Why, what's the matter?"

And Captain Whalley, half-averted, in a deadened, agitated voice, muttered--

"Esteem!"

"And I may add something more, " Mr. Van Wyk, very steady-eyed, pronounced slowly. 

"Hold! Enough!" Captain Whalley did not change his attitude or raise hisvoice. "Say no more! I can make you no return. I am too poor even forthat now. Your esteem is worth having. You are not a man that wouldstoop to deceive the poorest sort of devil on earth, or make a shipunseaworthy every time he takes her to sea. "

Mr. Van Wyk, leaning forward, his face gone pink all over, with thestarched table-napkin over his knees, was inclined to mistrust hissenses, his power of comprehension, the sanity of his guest. 

"Where? Why? In the name of God!--what's this? What ship? I don'tunderstand who . . . "

"Then, in the name of God, it is I! A ship's unseaworthy when hercaptain can't see. I am going blind. "

Mr. Van Wyk made a slight movement, and sat very still afterwards fora few seconds; then, with the thought of Sterne's "The game's up, " heducked under the table to pick up the napkin which had slipped off hisknees. This was the game that was up. And at the same time the muffledvoice of Captain Whalley passed over him--

"I've deceived them all. Nobody knows. "

He emerged flushed to the eyes. Captain Whalley, motionless under thefull blaze of the lamp, shaded his face with his hand. 

"And you had that courage?"

"Call it by what name you like. But you are a humaneman--a--a--gentleman, Mr. Van Wyk. You may have asked me what I had donewith my conscience. "

He seemed to muse, profoundly silent, very still in his mournful pose. 

"I began to tamper with it in my pride. You begin to see a lot of thingswhen you are going blind. I could not be frank with an old chum even. I was not frank with Massy--no, not altogether. I knew he took me fora wealthy sailor fool, and I let him. I wanted to keep up myimportance--because there was poor Ivy away there--my daughter. What didI want to trade on his misery for? I did trade on it--for her. And now, what mercy could I expect from him? He would trade on mine if he knewit. He would hunt the old fraud out, and stick to the money for a year. Ivy's money. And I haven't kept a penny for myself. How am I going tolive for a year. A year! In a year there will be no sun in the sky forher father. "

His deep voice came out, awfully veiled, as though he had beenoverwhelmed by the earth of a landslide, and talking to you of thethoughts that haunt the dead in their graves. A cold shudder ran downMr. Van Wyk's back. 

"And how long is it since you have . . . ?" he began. 

"It was a long time before I could bring myself to believe in this--thisvisitation. " Captain Whalley spoke with gloomy patience from under hishand. 

He had not thought he had deserved it. He had begun by deceiving himselffrom day to day, from week to week. He had the Serang at hand there--anold servant. It came on gradually, and when he could no longer deceivehimself . . . 

His voice died out almost. 

"Rather than give her up I set myself to deceive you all. "

"It's incredible, " whispered Mr. Van Wyk. Captain Whalley's appallingmurmur flowed on. 

"Not even the sign of God's anger could make me forget her. How could Iforsake my child, feeling my vigor all the time--the blood warm withinme? Warm as yours. It seems to me that, like the blinded Samson, Iwould find the strength to shake down a temple upon my head. She's astruggling woman--my own child that we used to pray over together, mypoor wife and I. Do you remember that day I as well as told you that Ibelieved God would let me live to a hundred for her sake? What sin isthere in loving your child? Do you see it? I was ready for her saketo live for ever. I half believed I would. I've been praying for deathsince. Ha! Presumptuous man--you wanted to live . . . "

A tremendous, shuddering upheaval of that big frame, shaken by a gaspingsob, set the glasses jingling all over the table, seemed to make thewhole house tremble to the roof-tree. And Mr. Van Wyk, whose feeling ofoutraged love had been translated into a form of struggle with nature, understood very well that, for that man whose whole life had beenconditioned by action, there could exist no other expression for all theemotions; that, to voluntarily cease venturing, doing, enduring, for hischild's sake, would have been exactly like plucking his warm love forher out of his living heart. Something too monstrous, too impossible, even to conceive. 

Captain Whalley had not changed his attitude, that seemed to expresssomething of shame, sorrow, and defiance. 

"I have even deceived you. If it had not been for that word 'esteem. 'These are not the words for me. I would have lied to you. Haven't Ilied to you? Weren't you going to trust your property on board this verytrip?"

"I have a floating yearly policy, " Mr. Van Wyk said almost unwittingly, and was amazed at the sudden cropping up of a commercial detail. 

"The ship is unseaworthy, I tell you. The policy would be invalid if itwere known . . . "

"We shall share the guilt, then. "

"Nothing could make mine less, " said Captain Whalley. 

He had not dared to consult a doctor; the man would have perhaps askedwho he was, what he was doing; Massy might have heard something. He hadlived on without any help, human or divine. The very prayers stuck inhis throat. What was there to pray for? and death seemed as far as ever. Once he got into his cabin he dared not come out again; when he sat downhe dared not get up; he dared not raise his eyes to anybody's face;he felt reluctant to look upon the sea or up to the sky. The world wasfading before his great fear of giving himself away. The old ship washis last friend; he was not afraid of her; he knew every inch of herdeck; but at her too he hardly dared to look, for fear of finding hecould see less than the day before. A great incertitude enveloped him. The horizon was gone; the sky mingled darkly with the sea. Who was thisfigure standing over yonder? what was this thing lying down there? Anda frightful doubt of the reality of what he could see made even theremnant of sight that remained to him an added torment, a pitfall alwaysopen for his miserable pretense. He was afraid to stumble inexcusablyover something--to say a fatal Yes or No to a question. The hand of Godwas upon him, but it could not tear him away from his child. And, as ifin a nightmare of humiliation, every featureless man seemed an enemy. 

He let his hand fall heavily on the table. Mr. Van Wyk, arms down, chin on breast, with a gleam of white teeth pressing on the lower lip, meditated on Sterne's "The game's up. "

"The Serang of course does not know. "

"Nobody, " said Captain Whalley, with assurance. 

"Ah yes. Nobody. Very well. Can you keep it up to the end of the trip?That is the last under the agreement with Massy. "

Captain Whalley got up and stood erect, very stately, with the greatwhite beard lying like a silver breastplate over the awful secret of hisheart. Yes; that was the only hope there was for him of ever seeing heragain, of securing the money, the last he could do for her, before hecrept away somewhere--useless, a burden, a reproach to himself. Hisvoice faltered. 

"Think of it! Never see her any more: the only human being besidesmyself now on earth that can remember my wife. She's just like hermother. Lucky the poor woman is where there are no tears shed overthose they loved on earth and that remain to pray not to be led intotemptation--because, I suppose, the blessed know the secret of grace inGod's dealings with His created children. "

He swayed a little, said with austere dignity--

"I don't. I know only the child He has given me. "

And he began to walk. Mr. Van Wyk, jumping up, saw the full meaningof the rigid head, the hesitating feet, the vaguely extended hand. His heart was beating fast; he moved a chair aside, and instinctivelyadvanced as if to offer his arm. But Captain Whalley passed him by, making for the stairs quite straight. 

"He could not see me at all out of his line, " Van Wyk thought, with asort of awe. Then going to the head of the stairs, he asked a littletremulously--

"What is it like--like a mist--like . . . "

Captain Whalley, half-way down, stopped, and turned round undismayed toanswer. 

"It is as if the light were ebbing out of the world. Have you everwatched the ebbing sea on an open stretch of sands withdrawing fartherand farther away from you? It is like this--only there will be no floodto follow. Never. It is as if the sun were growing smaller, the starsgoing out one by one. There can't be many left that I can see by this. But I haven't had the courage to look of late . . . " He must have beenable to make out Mr. Van Wyk, because he checked him by an authoritativegesture and a stoical--

"I can get about alone yet. "

It was as if he had taken his line, and would accept no help from men, after having been cast out, like a presumptuous Titan, from his heaven. Mr. Van Wyk, arrested, seemed to count the footsteps right out ofearshot. He walked between the tables, tapping smartly with his heels, took up a paper-knife, dropped it after a vague glance along the blade;then happening upon the piano, struck a few chords again and again, vigorously, standing up before the keyboard with an attentive poiseof the head like a piano-tuner; closing it, he pivoted on his heelsbrusquely, avoided the little terrier sleeping trustfully on crossedforepaws, came upon the stairs next, and, as though he had lost hisbalance on the top step, ran down headlong out of the house. Hisservants, beginning to clear the table, heard him mutter to himself(evil words no doubt) down there, and then after a pause go away with astrolling gait in the direction of the wharf. 

The bulwarks of the Sofala lying alongside the bank made a low, blackwall on the undulating contour of the shore. Two masts and a funneluprose from behind it with a great rake, as if about to fall: a solid, square elevation in the middle bore the ghostly shapes of white boats, the curves of davits, lines of rail and stanchions, all confused andmingling darkly everywhere; but low down, amidships, a single lightedport stared out on the night, perfectly round, like a small, full moon, whose yellow beam caught a patch of wet mud, the edge of trodden grass, two turns of heavy cable wound round the foot of a thick wooden post inthe ground. 

Mr. Van Wyk, peering alongside, heard a muzzy boastful voice apparentlyjeering at a person called Prendergast. It mouthed abuse thickly, choked; then pronounced very distinctly the word "Murphy, " and chuckled. Glass tinkled tremulously. All these sounds came from the lighted port. Mr. Van Wyk hesitated, stooped; it was impossible to look through unlesshe went down into the mud. 

"Sterne, " he said, half aloud. 

The drunken voice within said gladly--

"Sterne--of course. Look at him blink. Look at him! Sterne, Whalley, Massy. Massy, Whalley, Sterne. But Massy's the best. You can't come overhim. He would just love to see you starve. "

Mr. Van Wyk moved away, made out farther forward a shadowy head stuckout from under the awnings as if on the watch, and spoke quietly inMalay, "Is the mate asleep?"

"No. Here, at your service. "

In a moment Sterne appeared, walking as noiselessly as a cat on thewharf. 

"It's so jolly dark, and I had no idea you would be down to-night. "

"What's this horrible raving?" asked Mr. Van Wyk, as if to explain thecause of a shudder than ran over him audibly. 

"Jack's broken out on a drunk. That's our second. It's his way. He willbe right enough by to-morrow afternoon, only Mr. Massy will keep onworrying up and down the deck. We had better get away. "

He muttered suggestively of a talk "up at the house. " He had longdesired to effect an entrance there, but Mr. Van Wyk nonchalantlydemurred: it would not, he feared, be quite prudent, perhaps; andthe opaque black shadow under one of the two big trees left at thelanding-place swallowed them up, impenetrably dense, by the side of thewide river, that seemed to spin into threads of glitter the light ofa few big stars dropped here and there upon its outspread and flowingstillness. 

"The situation is grave beyond doubt, " Mr. Van Wyk said. Ghost-like intheir white clothes they could not distinguish each others' features, and their feet made no sound on the soft earth. A sort of purring washeard. Mr. Sterne felt gratified by such a beginning. 

"I thought, Mr. Van Wyk, a gentleman of your sort would see at once howawkwardly I was situated. "

"Yes, very. Obviously his health is bad. Perhaps he's breaking up. Isee, and he himself is well aware--I assume I am speaking to a man ofsense--he is well aware that his legs are giving out. "

"His legs--ah!" Mr. Sterne was disconcerted, and then turned sulky. "You may call it his legs if you like; what I want to know is whether heintends to clear out quietly. That's a good one, too! His legs! Pooh!"

"Why, yes. Only look at the way he walks. " Mr. Van Wyk took him up in aperfectly cool and undoubting tone. "The question, however, is whetheryour sense of duty does not carry you too far from your true interest. After all, I too could do something to serve you. You know who I am. "

"Everybody along the Straits has heard of you, sir. "

Mr. Van Wyk presumed that this meant something favorable. Sterne hada soft laugh at this pleasantry. He should think so! To the openingstatement, that the partnership agreement was to expire at the end ofthis very trip, he gave an attentive assent. He was aware. One heard ofnothing else on board all the blessed day long. As to Massy, it was nosecret that he was in a jolly deep hole with these worn-out boilers. Hewould have to borrow somewhere a couple of hundred first of all to payoff the captain; and then he would have to raise money on mortgage uponthe ship for the new boilers--that is, if he could find a lender at all. At best it meant loss of time, a break in the trade, short earningsfor the year--and there was always the danger of having his connectionfilched away from him by the Germans. It was whispered about that hehad already tried two firms. Neither would have anything to do withhim. Ship too old, and the man too well known in the place. . . . Mr. Sterne's final rapid winking remained buried in the deep darknesssibilating with his whispers. 

"Supposing, then, he got the loan, " Mr. Van Wyk resumed in a deliberateundertone, "on your own showing he's more than likely to get amortgagee's man thrust upon him as captain. For my part, I know that Iwould make that very stipulation myself if I had to find the money. And as a matter of fact I am thinking of doing so. It would be worthmy while in many ways. Do you see how this would bear on the case underdiscussion?"

"Thank you, sir. I am sure you couldn't get anybody that would care morefor your interests. "

"Well, it suits my interest that Captain Whalley should finish his time. I shall probably take a passage with you down the Straits. If that canbe done, I'll be on the spot when all these changes take place, and in aposition to look after _your_ interests. "

"Mr. Van Wyk, I want nothing better. I am sure I am infinitely . . . "

"I take it, then, that this may be done without any trouble. "

"Well, sir, what risk there is can't be helped; but (speaking to you asmy employer now) the thing is more safe than it looks. If anybody hadtold me of it I wouldn't have believed it, but I have been looking onmyself. That old Serang has been trained up to the game. There's nothingthe matter with his--his--limbs, sir. He's got used to doing thingshimself in a remarkable way. And let me tell you, sir, that CaptainWhalley, poor man, is by no means useless. Fact. Let me explain to you, sir. He stiffens up that old monkey of a Malay, who knows well enoughwhat to do. Why, he must have kept captain's watches in all sorts ofcountry ships off and on for the last five-and-twenty years. Thesenatives, sir, as long as they have a white man close at the back, willgo on doing the right thing most surprisingly well--even if left quiteto themselves. Only the white man must be of the sort to put starch intothem, and the captain is just the one for that. Why, sir, he has drilledhim so well that now he needs hardly speak at all. I have seen thatlittle wrinkled ape made to take the ship out of Pangu Bay on a blowymorning and on all through the islands; take her out first-rate, sir, dodging under the old man's elbow, and in such quiet style that youcould not have told for the life of you which of the two was doing thework up there. That's where our poor friend would be still of use tothe ship even if--if--he could no longer lift a foot, sir. Provided theSerang does not know that there's anything wrong. "

"He doesn't. "

"Naturally not. Quite beyond his apprehension. They aren't capable offinding out anything about us, sir. "

"You seem to be a shrewd man, " said Mr. Van Wyk in a choked mutter, asthough he were feeling sick. 

"You'll find me a good enough servant, sir. "

Mr. Sterne hoped now for a handshake at least, but unexpectedly, with a"What's this? Better not to be seen together, " Mr. Van Wyk's white shapewavered, and instantly seemed to melt away in the black air underthe roof of boughs. The mate was startled. Yes. There was that faintthumping clatter. 

He stole out silently from under the shade. The lighted port-hole shonefrom afar. His head swam with the intoxication of sudden success. Whata thing it was to have a gentleman to deal with! He crept aboard, andthere was something weird in the shadowy stretch of empty decks, echoingwith shouts and blows proceeding from a darker part amidships. Mr. Massywas raging before the door of the berth: the drunken voice within flowedon undisturbed in the violent racket of kicks. 

"Shut up! Put your light out and turn in, you confounded swillingpig--you! D'you hear me, you beast?"

The kicking stopped, and in the pause the muzzy oracular voice announcedfrom within--

"Ah! Massy, now--that's another thing. Massy's deep. "

"Who's that aft there? You, Sterne? He'll drink himself into a fit ofhorrors. " The chief engineer appeared vague and big at the corner of theengineroom. 

"He will be good enough for duty to-morrow. I would let him be, Mr. Massy. "

Sterne slipped away into his berth, and at once had to sit down. Hishead swam with exultation. He got into his bunk as if in a dream. Afeeling of profound peace, of pacific joy, came over him. On deck allwas quiet. 

Mr. Massy, with his ear against the door of Jack's cabin, listenedcritically to a deep stertorous breathing within. This was a dead-drunksleep. The bout was over: tranquilized on that score, he too went in, and with slow wriggles got out of his old tweed jacket. It was a garmentwith many pockets, which he used to put on at odd times of the day, being subject to sudden chilly fits, and when he felt warmed he wouldtake it off and hang it about anywhere all over the ship. It wouldbe seen swinging on belaying-pins, thrown over the heads of winches, suspended on people's very door-handles for that matter. Was he not theowner? But his favorite place was a hook on a wooden awning stanchion onthe bridge, almost against the binnacle. He had even in the early daysmore than one tussle on that point with Captain Whalley, who desired thebridge to be kept tidy. He had been overawed then. Of late, though, hehad been able to defy his partner with impunity. Captain Whalley neverseemed to notice anything now. As to the Malays, in their awe of thatscowling man not one of the crew would dream of laying a hand on thething, no matter where or what it swung from. 

With an unexpectedness which made Mr. Massy jump and drop the coatat his feet, there came from the next berth the crash and thud of aheadlong, jingling, clattering fall. The faithful Jack must have droppedto sleep suddenly as he sat at his revels, and now had gone over chairand all, breaking, as it seemed by the sound, every single glass andbottle in the place. After the terrific smash all was still for a timein there, as though he had killed himself outright on the spot. Mr. Massy held his breath. At last a sleepy uneasy groaning sigh was exhaledslowly on the other side of the bulkhead. 

"I hope to goodness he's too drunk to wake up now, " muttered Mr. Massy. 

The sound of a softly knowing laugh nearly drove him to despair. Heswore violently under his breath. The fool would keep him awake allnight now for certain. He cursed his luck. He wanted to forget hismaddening troubles in sleep sometimes. He could detect no movements. Without apparently making the slightest attempt to get up, Jack went onsniggering to himself where he lay; then began to speak, where he hadleft off as it were--

"Massy! I love the dirty rascal. He would like to see his poor old Jackstarve--but just you look where he has climbed to. " . . . He hiccoughedin a superior, leisurely manner. . . . "Ship-owning it with the best. A lottery ticket you want. Ha! ha! I will give you lottery tickets, myboy. Let the old ship sink and the old chum starve--that's right. Hedon't go wrong--Massy don't. Not he. He's a genius--that man is. That'sthe way to win your money. Ship and chum must go. "

"The silly fool has taken it to heart, " muttered Massy to himself. And, listening with a softened expression of face for any slight sign ofreturning drowsiness, he was discouraged profoundly by a burst oflaughter full of joyful irony. 

"Would like to see her at the bottom of the sea! Oh, you clever, cleverdevil! Wish her sunk, eh? I should think you would, my boy; the damnedold thing and all your troubles with her. Rake in the insurance money--turn your back on your old chum--all's well--gentleman again. "

A grim stillness had come over Massy's face. Only his big black eyesrolled uneasily. The raving fool. And yet it was all true. Yes. Lotterytickets, too. All true. What? Beginning again? He wished hewouldn't. . . . 

But it was even so. The imaginative drunkard on the other side of thebulkhead shook off the deathlike stillness that after his last words hadfallen on the dark ship moored to a silent shore. 

"Don't you dare to say anything against George Massy, Esquire. When he'stired of waiting he will do away with her. Look out! Down she goes--chumand all. He'll know how to . . . "

The voice hesitated, weary, dreamy, lost, as if dying away in a vastopen space. 

". . . Find a trick that will work. He's up to it--never fear . . . "

He must have been very drunk, for at last the heavy sleep gripped himwith the suddenness of a magic spell, and the last word lengtheneditself into an interminable, noisy, in-drawn snore. And then even thesnoring stopped, and all was still. 

But it seemed as though Mr. Massy had suddenly come to doubt theefficacy of sleep as against a man's troubles; or perhaps he had foundthe relief he needed in the stillness of a calm contemplation thatmay contain the vivid thoughts of wealth, of a stroke of luck, of longidleness, and may bring before you the imagined form of every desire;for, turning about and throwing his arms over the edge of his bunk, hestood there with his feet on his favorite old coat, looking out throughthe round port into the night over the river. Sometimes a breath of windwould enter and touch his face, a cool breath charged with the damp, fresh feel from a vast body of water. A glimmer here and there was allhe could see of it; and once he might after all suppose he had dozedoff, since there appeared before his vision, unexpectedly and connectedwith no dream, a row of flaming and gigantic figures--three naught sevenone two--making up a number such as you may see on a lottery ticket. And then all at once the port was no longer black: it was pearly gray, framing a shore crowded with houses, thatched roof beyond thatchedroof, walls of mats and bamboo, gables of carved teak timber. Rowsof dwellings raised on a forest of piles lined the steely band of theriver, brimful and still, with the tide at the turn. This was BatuBeru--and the day had come. 

Mr. Massy shook himself, put on the tweed coat, and, shivering nervouslyas if from some great shock, made a note of the number. A fortunate, rare hint that. Yes; but to pursue fortune one wanted money--ready cash. 

Then he went out and prepared to descend into the engine-room. Severalsmall jobs had to be seen to, and Jack was lying dead drunk on thefloor of his cabin, with the door locked at that. His gorge rose atthe thought of work. Ay! But if you wanted to do nothing you had to getfirst a good bit of money. A ship won't save you. He cursed the Sofala. True, all true. He was tired of waiting for some chance that would ridhim at last of that ship that had turned out a curse on his life. 

XIV

The deep, interminable hoot of the steam-whistle had, in its grave, vibrating note, something intolerable, which sent a slight shudder downMr. Van Wyk's back. It was the early afternoon; the Sofala was leavingBatu Beru for Pangu, the next place of call. She swung in the stream, scantily attended by a few canoes, and, gliding on the broad river, became lost to view from the Van Wyk bungalow. 

Its owner had not gone this time to see her off. Generally he came downto the wharf, exchanged a few words with the bridge while she cast off, and waved his hand to Captain Whalley at the last moment. This day hedid not even go as far as the balustrade of the veranda. "He couldn'tsee me if I did, " he said to himself. "I wonder whether he can make outthe house at all. " And this thought somehow made him feel more alonethan he had ever felt for all these years. What was it? six or seven?Seven. A long time. 

He sat on the veranda with a closed book on his knee, and, as it were, looked out upon his solitude, as if the fact of Captain Whalley'sblindness had opened his eyes to his own. There were many sorts ofheartaches and troubles, and there was no place where they could notfind a man out. And he felt ashamed, as though he had for six yearsbehaved like a peevish boy. 

His thought followed the Sofala on her way. On the spur of the moment hehad acted impulsively, turning to the thing most pressing. And what elsecould he have done? Later on he should see. It seemed necessary thathe should come out into the world, for a time at least. He hadmoney--something could be arranged; he would grudge no time, no trouble, no loss of his solitude. It weighed on him now--and Captain Whalleyappeared to him as he had sat shading his eyes, as if, being deceived inthe trust of his faith, he were beyond all the good and evil that can bewrought by the hands of men. 

Mr. Van Wyk's thoughts followed the Sofala down the river, winding aboutthrough the belt of the coast forest, between the buttressed shafts ofthe big trees, through the mangrove strip, and over the bar. The shipcrossed it easily in broad daylight, piloted, as it happened, by Mr. Sterne, who took the watch from four to six, and then went below to hughimself with delight at the prospect of being virtually employed by arich man--like Mr. Van Wyk. He could not see how any hitch could occurnow. He did not seem able to get over the feeling of being "fixed up atlast. " From six to eight, in the course of duty, the Serang looked aloneafter the ship. She had a clear road before her now till about threein the morning, when she would close with the Pangu group. At eight Mr. Sterne came out cheerily to take charge again till midnight. At ten hewas still chirruping and humming to himself on the bridge, and aboutthat time Mr. Van Wyk's thought abandoned the Sofala. Mr. Van Wyk hadfallen asleep at last. 

Massy, blocking the engine-room companion, jerked himself into his tweedjacket surlily, while the second waited with a scowl. 

"Oh. You came out? You sot! Well, what have you got to say foryourself?"

He had been in charge of the engines till then. A somber fury darkenedhis mind: a hot anger against the ship, against the facts of life, against the men for their cheating, against himself too--because of aninward tremor of his heart. 

An incomprehensible growl answered him. 

"What? Can't you open your mouth now? You yelp out your infernal rotloud enough when you are drunk. What do you mean by abusing people inthat way?--you old useless boozer, you!"

"Can't help it. Don't remember anything about it. You shouldn't listen. "

"You dare to tell me! What do you mean by going on a drunk like this!"

"Don't ask me. Sick of the dam' boilers--you would be. Sick of life. "

"I wish you were dead, then. You've made me sick of you. Don't youremember the uproar you made last night? You miserable old soaker!"

"No; I don't. Don't want to. Drink is drink. "

"I wonder what prevents me from kicking you out. What do you want here?"

"Relieve you. You've been long enough down there, George. "

"Don't you George me--you tippling old rascal, you! If I were to dieto-morrow you would starve. Remember that. Say Mr. Massy. "

"Mr. Massy, " repeated the other stolidly. 

Disheveled, with dull blood-shot eyes, a snuffy, grimy shirt, greasytrowsers, naked feet thrust into ragged slippers, he bolted in head downdirectly Massy had made way for him. 

The chief engineer looked around. The deck was empty as far as thetaffrail. All the native passengers had left in Batu Beru this time, andno others had joined. The dial of the patent log tinkled periodicallyin the dark at the end of the ship. It was a dead calm, and, under theclouded sky, through the still air that seemed to cling warm, with aseaweed smell, to her slim hull, on a sea of somber gray and unwrinkled, the ship moved on an even keel, as if floating detached in empty space. But Mr. Massy slapped his forehead, tottered a little, caught hold of abelaying-pin at the foot of the mast. 

"I shall go mad, " he muttered, walking across the deck unsteadily. Ashovel was scraping loose coal down below--a fire-door clanged. Sterneon the bridge began whistling a new tune. 

Captain Whalley, sitting on the couch, awake and fully dressed, heardthe door of his cabin open. He did not move in the least, waiting torecognize the voice, with an appalling strain of prudence. 

A bulkhead lamp blazed on the white paint, the crimson plush, thebrown varnish of mahogany tops. The white wood packing-case under thebed-place had remained unopened for three years now, as though CaptainWhalley had felt that, after the Fair Maid was gone, there could beno abiding-place on earth for his affections. His hands rested on hisknees; his handsome head with big eyebrows presented a rigid profile tothe doorway. The expected voice spoke out at last. 

"Once more, then. What am I to call you?"

Ha! Massy. Again. The weariness of it crushed his heart--and the pain ofshame was almost more than he could bear without crying out. 

"Well. Is it to be 'partner' still?"

"You don't know what you ask. "

"I know what I want . . . "

Massy stepped in and closed the door. 

". . . And I am going to have a try for it with you once more. "

His whine was half persuasive, half menacing. 

"For it's no manner of use to tell me that you are poor. You don't spendanything on yourself, that's true enough; but there's another name forthat. You think you are going to have what you want out of me for threeyears, and then cast me off without hearing what I think of you. Youthink I would have submitted to your airs if I had known you had only abeggarly five hundred pounds in the world. You ought to have told me. "

"Perhaps, " said Captain Whalley, bowing his head. "And yet it has savedyou. " . . . Massy laughed scornfully. . . . "I have told you oftenenough since. "

"And I don't believe you now. When I think how I let you lord it overmy ship! Do you remember how you used to bullyrag me about my coat and_your_ bridge? It was in his way. _His_ bridge! 'And I won't be a partyto this--and I couldn't think of doing that. ' Honest man! And now it allcomes out. 'I am poor, and I can't. I have only this five hundred in theworld. '"

He contemplated the immobility of Captain Whalley, that seemed topresent an inconquerable obstacle in his path. His face took a mournfulcast. 

"You are a hard man. "

"Enough, " said Captain Whalley, turning upon him. "You shall get nothingfrom me, because I have nothing of mine to give away now. "

"Tell that to the marines!"

Mr. Massy, going out, looked back once; then the door closed, andCaptain Whalley, alone, sat as still as before. He had nothing of hisown--even his past of honor, of truth, of just pride, was gone. All hisspotless life had fallen into the abyss. He had said his last good-byto it. But what belonged to _her_, that he meant to save. Only a littlemoney. He would take it to her in his own hands--this last gift of a manthat had lasted too long. And an immense and fierce impulse, the verypassion of paternity, flamed up with all the unquenched vigor of hisworthless life in a desire to see her face. 

Just across the deck Massy had gone straight to his cabin, struck alight, and hunted up the note of the dreamed number whose figures hadflamed up also with the fierceness of another passion. He must contrivesomehow not to miss a drawing. That number meant something. But whatexpedient could he contrive to keep himself going?

"Wretched miser!" he mumbled. 

If Mr. Sterne could at no time have told him anything new about hispartner, he could have told Mr. Sterne that another use could be made ofa man's affliction than just to kick him out, and thus defer the term ofa difficult payment for a year. To keep the secret of the afflictionand induce him to stay was a better move. If without means, he would beanxious to remain; and that settled the question of refunding him hisshare. He did not know exactly how much Captain Whalley was disabled;but if it so happened that he put the ship ashore somewhere for good andall, it was not the owner's fault--was it? He was not obliged to knowthat there was anything wrong. But probably nobody would raise such apoint, and the ship was fully insured. He had had enough self-restraintto pay up the premiums. But this was not all. He could not believeCaptain Whalley to be so confoundedly destitute as not to have some moremoney put away somewhere. If he, Massy, could get hold of it, that wouldpay for the boilers, and everything went on as before. And if shegot lost in the end, so much the better. He hated her: he loathed thetroubles that took his mind off the chances of fortune. He wished herat the bottom of the sea, and the insurance money in his pocket. Andas, baffled, he left Captain Whalley's cabin, he enveloped in the samehatred the ship with the worn-out boilers and the man with the dimmedeyes. 

And our conduct after all is so much a matter of outside suggestion, that had it not been for his Jack's drunken gabble he would have thereand then had it out with this miserable man, who would neither help, norstay, nor yet lose the ship. The old fraud! He longed to kick him out. But he restrained himself. Time enough for that--when he liked. Therewas a fearful new thought put into his head. Wasn't he up to it afterall? How that beast Jack had raved! "Find a safe trick to get rid ofher. " Well, Jack was not so far wrong. A very clever trick had occurredto him. Aye! But what of the risk?

A feeling of pride--the pride of superiority to common prejudices--creptinto his breast, made his heart beat fast, his mouth turn dry. Noteverybody would dare; but he was Massy, and he was up to it!

Six bells were struck on deck. Eleven! He drank a glass of water, andsat down for ten minutes or so to calm himself. Then he got out of hischest a small bull's-eye lantern of his own and lit it. 

Almost opposite his berth, across the narrow passage under the bridge, there was, in the iron deck-structure covering the stokehold fiddle andthe boiler-space, a storeroom with iron sides, iron roof, iron-platedfloor, too, on account of the heat below. All sorts of rubbish was shotthere: it had a mound of scrap-iron in a corner; rows of empty oil-cans;sacks of cotton-waste, with a heap of charcoal, a deck-forge, fragmentsof an old hencoop, winch-covers all in rags, remnants of lamps, and abrown felt hat, discarded by a man dead now (of a fever on the Brazilcoast), who had been once mate of the Sofala, had remained for yearsjammed forcibly behind a length of burst copper pipe, flung at sometime or other out of the engine-room. A complete and imperious blacknesspervaded that Capharnaum of forgotten things. A small shaft of lightfrom Mr. Massy's bull's-eye fell slanting right through it. 

His coat was unbuttoned; he shot the bolt of the door (there was noother opening), and, squatting before the scrap-heap, began to pack hispockets with pieces of iron. He packed them carefully, as if the rustynuts, the broken bolts, the links of cargo chain, had been so much goldhe had that one chance to carry away. He packed his side-pockets tillthey bulged, the breast pocket, the pockets inside. He turned over thepieces. Some he rejected. A small mist of powdered rust began to riseabout his busy hands. Mr. Massy knew something of the scientific basisof his clever trick. If you want to deflect the magnetic needle of aship's compass, soft iron is the best; likewise many small pieces inthe pockets of a jacket would have more effect than a few large ones, because in that way you obtain a greater amount of surface for weight inyour iron, and it's surface that tells. 

He slipped out swiftly--two strides sufficed--and in his cabin heperceived that his hands were all red--red with rust. It disconcertedhim, as though he had found them covered with blood: he looked himselfover hastily. Why, his trowsers too! He had been rubbing his rusty palmson his legs. 

He tore off the waistband button in his haste, brushed his coat, washedhis hands. Then the air of guilt left him, and he sat down to wait. 

He sat bolt upright and weighted with iron in his chair. He had a hard, lumpy bulk against each hip, felt the scrappy iron in his pockets touchhis ribs at every breath, the downward drag of all these pounds hangingupon his shoulders. He looked very dull too, sitting idle there, and hisyellow face, with motionless black eyes, had something passive and sadin its quietness. 

When he heard eight bells struck above his head, he rose and made readyto go out. His movements seemed aimless, his lower lip had dropped alittle, his eyes roamed about the cabin, and the tremendous tension ofhis will had robbed them of every vestige of intelligence. 

With the last stroke of the bell the Serang appeared noiselessly on thebridge to relieve the mate. Sterne overflowed with good nature, since hehad nothing more to desire. 

"Got your eyes well open yet, Serang? It's middling dark; I'll wait tillyou get your sight properly. "

The old Malay murmured, looked up with his worn eyes, sidled away intothe light of the binnacle, and, crossing his hands behind his back, fixed his eyes on the compass-card. 

"You'll have to keep a good look-out ahead for land, about half-pastthree. It's fairly clear, though. You have looked in on the captain asyou came along--eh? He knows the time? Well, then, I am off. "

At the foot of the ladder he stood aside for the captain. He watched himgo up with an even, certain tread, and remained thoughtful for a moment. "It's funny, " he said to himself, "but you can never tell whether thatman has seen you or not. He might have heard me breathe this time. "

He was a wonderful man when all was said and done. They said he had hada name in his day. Mr. Sterne could well believe it; and he concludedserenely that Captain Whalley must be able to see people more or less--as himself just now, for instance--but not being certain of anybody, had to keep up that unnoticing silence of manner for fear of givinghimself away. Mr. Sterne was a shrewd guesser. 

This necessity of every moment brought home to Captain Whalley's heartthe humiliation of his falsehood. He had drifted into it from paternallove, from incredulity, from boundless trust in divine justice meted outto men's feelings on this earth. He would give his poor Ivy the benefitof another month's work; perhaps the affliction was only temporary. Surely God would not rob his child of his power to help, and cast himnaked into a night without end. He had caught at every hope; and whenthe evidence of his misfortune was stronger than hope, he tried not tobelieve the manifest thing. 

In vain. In the steadily darkening universe a sinister clearness fellupon his ideas. In the illuminating moments of suffering he saw life, men, all things, the whole earth with all her burden of created nature, as he had never seen them before. 

Sometimes he was seized with a sudden vertigo and an overwhelmingterror; and then the image of his daughter appeared. Her, too, he hadnever seen so clearly before. Was it possible that he should ever beunable to do anything whatever for her? Nothing. And not see her anymore? Never. 

Why? The punishment was too great for a little presumption, for a littlepride. And at last he came to cling to his deception with a fiercedetermination to carry it out to the end, to save her money intact, andbehold her once more with his own eyes. Afterwards--what? The idea ofsuicide was revolting to the vigor of his manhood. He had prayed fordeath till the prayers had stuck in his throat. All the days of his lifehe had prayed for daily bread, and not to be led into temptation, in achildlike humility of spirit. Did words mean anything? Whence did thegift of speech come? The violent beating of his heart reverberated inhis head--seemed to shake his brain to pieces. 

He sat down heavily in the deck-chair to keep the pretense of his watch. The night was dark. All the nights were dark now. 

"Serang, " he said, half aloud. 

"Ada, Tuan. I am here. "

"There are clouds on the sky?"

"There are, Tuan. "

"Let her be steered straight. North. "

"She is going north, Tuan. "

The Serang stepped back. Captain Whalley recognized Massy's footfalls onthe bridge. 

The engineer walked over to port and returned, passing behind the chairseveral times. Captain Whalley detected an unusual character as ofprudent care in this prowling. The near presence of that man broughtwith it always a recrudescence of moral suffering for Captain Whalley. It was not remorse. After all, he had done nothing but good to the poordevil. There was also a sense of danger--the necessity of a greatercare. 

Massy stopped and said--

"So you still say you must go?"

"I must indeed. "

"And you couldn't at least leave the money for a term of years?"

"Impossible. "

"Can't trust it with me without your care, eh?"

Captain Whalley remained silent. Massy sighed deeply over the back ofthe chair. 

"It would just do to save me, " he said in a tremulous voice. 

"I've saved you once. "

The chief engineer took off his coat with careful movements, andproceeded to feel for the brass hook screwed into the wooden stanchion. For this purpose he placed himself right in front of the binnacle, thushiding completely the compass-card from the quartermaster at the wheel. "Tuan!" the lascar at last murmured softly, meaning to let the white manknow that he could not see to steer. 

Mr. Massy had accomplished his purpose. The coat was hanging from thenail, within six inches of the binnacle. And directly he had steppedaside the quartermaster, a middle-aged, pock-marked, Sumatra Malay, almost as dark as a negro, perceived with amazement that in that shorttime, in this smooth water, with no wind at all, the ship had goneswinging far out of her course. He had never known her get away likethis before. With a slight grunt of astonishment he turned the wheelhastily to bring her head back north, which was the course. The grindingof the steering-chains, the chiding murmurs of the Serang, who had comeover to the wheel, made a slight stir, which attracted Captain Whalley'sanxious attention. He said, "Take better care. " Then everything settledto the usual quiet on the bridge. Mr. Massy had disappeared. 

But the iron in the pockets of the coat had done its work; and theSofala, heading north by the compass, made untrue by this simple device, was no longer making a safe course for Pangu Bay. 

The hiss of water parted by her stem, the throb of her engines, all thesounds of her faithful and laborious life, went on uninterrupted in thegreat calm of the sea joining on all sides the motionless layer of cloudover the sky. A gentle stillness as vast as the world seemed to waitupon her path, enveloping her lovingly in a supreme caress. Mr. Massythought there could be no better night for an arranged shipwreck. 

Run up high and dry on one of the reefs east of Pangu--wait fordaylight--hole in the bottom--out boats--Pangu Bay same evening. That'sabout it. As soon as she touched he would hasten on the bridge, get holdof the coat (nobody would notice in the dark), and shake it upside-downover the side, or even fling it into the sea. A detail. Who couldguess? Coat been seen hanging there from that hook hundreds of times. Nevertheless, when he sat down on the lower step of the bridge-ladderhis knees knocked together a little. The waiting part was the worstof it. At times he would begin to pant quickly, as though he had beenrunning, and then breathe largely, swelling with the intimate sense ofa mastered fate. Now and then he would hear the shuffle of the Serang'sbare feet up there: quiet, low voices would exchange a few words, andlapse almost at once into silence. . . . 

"Tell me directly you see any land, Serang. "

"Yes, Tuan. Not yet. "

"No, not yet, " Captain Whalley would agree. 

The ship had been the best friend of his decline. He had sent all themoney he had made by and in the Sofala to his daughter. His thoughtlingered on the name. How often he and his wife had talked over the cotof the child in the big stern-cabin of the Condor; she would grow up, she would marry, she would love them, they would live near her and lookat her happiness--it would go on without end. Well, his wife was dead, to the child he had given all he had to give; he wished he could comenear her, see her, see her face once, live in the sound of hervoice, that could make the darkness of the living grave ready for himsupportable. He had been starved of love too long. He imagined hertenderness. 

The Serang had been peering forward, and now and then glancing at thechair. He fidgeted restlessly, and suddenly burst out close to CaptainWhalley--

"Tuan, do you see anything of the land?"

The alarmed voice brought Captain Whalley to his feet at once. He! See!And at the question, the curse of his blindness seemed to fall on himwith a hundredfold force. 

"What's the time?" he cried. 

"Half-past three, Tuan. "

"We are close. You _must_ see. Look, I say. Look. "

Mr. Massy, awakened by the sudden sound of talking from a short doze onthe lowest step, wondered why he was there. Ah! A faintness came overhim. It is one thing to sow the seed of an accident and another to seethe monstrous fruit hanging over your head ready to fall in the sound ofagitated voices. 

"There's no danger, " he muttered thickly. 

The horror of incertitude had seized upon Captain Whalley, the miserablemistrust of men, of things--of the very earth. He had steered that verycourse thirty-six times by the same compass--if anything was certainin this world it was its absolute, unerring correctness. Then what hadhappened? Did the Serang lie? Why lie? Why? Was he going blind too?

"Is there a mist? Look low on the water. Low down, I say. "

"Tuan, there's no mist. See for yourself. "

Captain Whalley steadied the trembling of his limbs by an effort. Should he stop the engines at once and give himself away. A gust ofirresolution swayed all sorts of bizarre notions in his mind. Theunusual had come, and he was not fit to deal with it. In this passage ofinexpressible anguish he saw her face--the face of a young girl--withan amazing strength of illusion. No, he must not give himself away afterhaving gone so far for her sake. "You steered the course? You made it?Speak the truth. "

"Ya, Tuan. On the course now. Look. "

Captain Whalley strode to the binnacle, which to him made such a dimspot of light in an infinity of shapeless shadow. By bending his faceright down to the glass he had been able before . . . 

Having to stoop so low, he put out, instinctively, his arm to where heknew there was a stanchion to steady himself against. His hand closedon something that was not wood but cloth. The slight pull adding to theweight, the loop broke, and Mr. Massy's coat falling, struck the deckheavily with a dull thump, accompanied by a lot of clicks. 

"What's this?"

Captain Whalley fell on his knees, with groping hands extended in afrank gesture of blindness. They trembled, these hands feeling for thetruth. He saw it. Iron near the compass. Wrong course. Wreck her! Hisship. Oh no. Not that. 

"Jump and stop her!" he roared out in a voice not his own. 

He ran himself--hands forward, a blind man, and while the clanging ofthe gong echoed still all over the ship, she seemed to butt full tiltinto the side of a mountain. 

It was low water along the north side of the strait. Mr. Massy had notreckoned on that. Instead of running aground for half her length, theSofala butted the sheer ridge of a stone reef which would have beenawash at high water. This made the shock absolutely terrific. Everybodyin the ship that was standing was thrown down headlong: the shakenrigging made a great rattling to the very trucks. All the lights wentout: several chain-guys, snapping, clattered against the funnel: therewere crashes, pings of parted wire-rope, splintering sounds, loudcracks, the masthead lamp flew over the bows, and all the doors aboutthe deck began to bang heavily. Then, after having hit, she rebounded, hit the second time the very same spot like a battering-ram. Thiscompleted the havoc: the funnel, with all the guys gone, fell over witha hollow sound of thunder, smashing the wheel to bits, crushing theframe of the awnings, breaking the lockers, filling the bridge witha mass of splinters, sticks, and broken wood. Captain Whalley pickedhimself up and stood knee-deep in wreckage, torn, bleeding, knowing thenature of the danger he had escaped mostly by the sound, and holding Mr. Massy's coat in his arms. 

By this time Sterne (he had been flung out of his bunk) had set theengines astern. They worked for a few turns, then a voice bawled out, "Get out of the damned engine-room, Jack!"--and they stopped; but theship had gone clear of the reef and lay still, with a heavy cloud ofsteam issuing from the broken deckpipes, and vanishing in wispy shapesinto the night. Notwithstanding the suddenness of the disaster there wasno shouting, as if the very violence of the shock had half-stunned theshadowy lot of people swaying here and there about her decks. The voiceof the Serang pronounced distinctly above the confused murmurs--

"Eight fathom. " He had heaved the lead. 

Mr. Sterne cried out next in a strained pitch--

"Where the devil has she got to? Where are we?"

Captain Whalley replied in a calm bass--

"Amongst the reefs to the eastward. "

"You know it, sir? Then she will never get out again. "

"She will be sunk in five minutes. Boats, Sterne. Even one will save youall in this calm. "

The Chinaman stokers went in a disorderly rush for the port boats. Nobody tried to check them. The Malays, after a moment of confusion, became quiet, and Mr. Sterne showed a good countenance. Captain Whalleyhad not moved. His thoughts were darker than this night in which he hadlost his first ship. 

"He made me lose a ship. "

Another tall figure standing before him amongst the litter of the smashon the bridge whispered insanely--

"Say nothing of it. "

Massy stumbled closer. Captain Whalley heard the chattering of histeeth. 

"I have the coat. "

"Throw it down and come along, " urged the chattering voice. "B-b-b-b-boat!"

"You will get fifteen years for this. "

Mr. Massy had lost his voice. His speech was a mere dry rustling in histhroat. 

"Have mercy!"

"Had you any when you made me lose my ship? Mr. Massy, you shall getfifteen years for this!"

"I wanted money! Money! My own money! I will give you some money. Takehalf of it. You love money yourself. "

"There's a justice . . . "

Massy made an awful effort, and in a strange, half choked utterance--

"You blind devil! It's you that drove me to it. "

Captain Whalley, hugging the coat to his breast, made no sound. Thelight had ebbed for ever from the world--let everything go. But this manshould not escape scot-free. 

Sterne's voice commanded--

"Lower away!"

The blocks rattled. 

"Now then, " he cried, "over with you. This way. You, Jack, here. Mr. Massy! Mr. Massy! Captain! Quick, sir! Let's get--

"I shall go to prison for trying to cheat the insurance, but you'll getexposed; you, honest man, who has been cheating me. You are poor. Aren'tyou? You've nothing but the five hundred pounds. Well, you have nothingat all now. The ship's lost, and the insurance won't be paid. "

Captain Whalley did not move. True! Ivy's money! Gone in this wreck. Again he had a flash of insight. He was indeed at the end of his tether. 

Urgent voices cried out together alongside. Massy did not seem ableto tear himself away from the bridge. He chattered and hisseddespairingly--

"Give it up to me! Give it up!"

"No, " said Captain Whalley; "I could not give it up. You had better go. Don't wait, man, if you want to live. She's settling down by the headfast. No; I shall keep it, but I shall stay on board. "

Massy did not seem to understand; but the love of life, awakenedsuddenly, drove him away from the bridge. 

Captain Whalley laid the coat down, and stumbled amongst the heaps ofwreckage to the side. 

"Is Mr. Massy in with you?" he called out into the night. 

Sterne from the boat shouted--

"Yes; we've got him. Come along, sir. It's madness to stay longer. "

Captain Whalley felt along the rail carefully, and, without a word, castoff the painter. They were expecting him still down there. They werewaiting, till a voice suddenly exclaimed--

"We are adrift! Shove off!"

"Captain Whalley! Leap! . . . Pull up a little . . . Leap! You canswim. "

In that old heart, in that vigorous body, there was, that nothing shouldbe wanting, a horror of death that apparently could not be overcomeby the horror of blindness. But after all, for Ivy he had carried hispoint, walking in his darkness to the very verge of a crime. God had notlistened to his prayers. The light had finished ebbing out of the world;not a glimmer. It was a dark waste; but it was unseemly that a Whalleywho had gone so far to carry a point should continue to live. He mustpay the price. 

"Leap as far as you can, sir; we will pick you up. "

They did not hear him answer. But their shouting seemed to remind him ofsomething. He groped his way back, and sought for Mr. Massy's coat. Hecould swim indeed; people sucked down by the whirlpool of a sinking shipdo come up sometimes to the surface, and it was unseemly that a Whalley, who had made up his mind to die, should be beguiled by chance into astruggle. He would put all these pieces of iron into his own pockets. 

They, looking from the boat, saw the Sofala, a black mass upon a blacksea, lying still at an appalling cant. No sound came from her. Then, with a great bizarre shuffling noise, as if the boilers had brokenthrough the bulkheads, and with a faint muffled detonation, where theship had been there appeared for a moment something standing upright andnarrow, like a rock out of the sea. Then that too disappeared. 

When the Sofala failed to come back to Batu Beru at the proper time, Mr. Van Wyk understood at once that he would never see her any more. But hedid not know what had happened till some months afterwards, when, in anative craft lent him by his Sultan, he had made his way to the Sofala'sport of registry, where already her existence and the official inquiryinto her loss was beginning to be forgotten. 

It had not been a very remarkable or interesting case, except for thefact that the captain had gone down with his sinking ship. It was theonly life lost; and Mr. Van Wyk would not have been able to learn anydetails had it not been for Sterne, whom he met one day on the quaynear the bridge over the creek, almost on the very spot where CaptainWhalley, to preserve his daughter's five hundred pounds intact, hadturned to get a sampan which would take him on board the Sofala. 

From afar Mr. Van Wyk saw Sterne blink straight at him and raise hishand to his hat. They drew into the shade of a building (it was a bank), and the mate related how the boat with the crew got into Pangu Bay aboutsix hours after the accident, and how they had lived for a fortnight ina state of destitution before they found an opportunity to get away fromthat beastly place. The inquiry had exonerated everybody from all blame. The loss of the ship was put down to an unusual set of the current. Indeed, it could not have been anything else: there was no other wayto account for the ship being set seven miles to the eastward of herposition during the middle watch. 

"A piece of bad luck for me, sir. "

Sterne passed his tongue on his lips, and glanced aside. "I lost theadvantage of being employed by you, sir. I can never be sorry enough. But here it is: one man's poison, another man's meat. This could nothave been handier for Mr. Massy if he had arranged that shipwreckhimself. The most timely total loss I've ever heard of. "

"What became of that Massy?" asked Mr. Van Wyk. 

"He, sir? Ha! ha! He would keep on telling me that he meant to buyanother ship; but as soon as he had the money in his pocket he clearedout for Manilla by mail-boat early in the morning. I gave him chaseright aboard, and he told me then he was going to make his fortune deadsure in Manilla. I could go to the devil for all he cared. And yet he asgood as promised to give me the command if I didn't talk too much. "

"You never said anything . . . " Mr. Van Wyk began. 

"Not I, sir. Why should I? I mean to get on, but the dead aren't in myway, " said Sterne. His eyelids were beating rapidly, then drooped for aninstant. "Besides, sir, it would have been an awkward business. You mademe hold my tongue just a bit too long. "

"Do you know how it was that Captain Whalley remained on board? Did hereally refuse to leave? Come now! Or was it perhaps an accidental . . . ?"

"Nothing!" Sterne interrupted with energy. "I tell you I yelled for himto leap overboard. He simply _must_ have cast off the painter of theboat himself. We all yelled to him--that is, Jack and I. He wouldn'teven answer us. The ship was as silent as a grave to the last. Then theboilers fetched away, and down she went. Accident! Not it! The game wasup, sir, I tell you. "

This was all that Sterne had to say. 

Mr. Van Wyk had been of course made the guest of the club for afortnight, and it was there that he met the lawyer in whose office hadbeen signed the agreement between Massy and Captain Whalley. 

"Extraordinary old man, " he said. "He came into my office from nowherein particular as you may say, with his five hundred pounds to place, andthat engineer fellow following him anxiously. And now he is gone outa little inexplicably, just as he came. I could never understand himquite. There was no mystery at all about that Massy, eh? I wonderwhether Whalley refused to leave the ship. It would have been foolish. He was blameless, as the court found. "

Mr. Van Wyk had known him well, he said, and he could not believe insuicide. Such an act would not have been in character with what he knewof the man. 

"It is my opinion, too, " the lawyer agreed. The general theory was thatthe captain had remained too long on board trying to save something ofimportance. Perhaps the chart which would clear him, or else somethingof value in his cabin. The painter of the boat had come adrift of itselfit was supposed. However, strange to say, some little time before thatvoyage poor Whalley had called in his office and had left with him asealed envelope addressed to his daughter, to be forwarded to her incase of his death. Still it was nothing very unusual, especially in aman of his age. Mr. Van Wyk shook his head. Captain Whalley looked goodfor a hundred years. 

"Perfectly true, " assented the lawyer. "The old fellow looked as thoughhe had come into the world full-grown and with that long beard. I couldnever, somehow, imagine him either younger or older--don't you know. There was a sense of physical power about that man too. And perhaps thatwas the secret of that something peculiar in his person which struckeverybody who came in contact with him. He looked indestructible byany ordinary means that put an end to the rest of us. His deliberate, stately courtesy of manner was full of significance. It was as thoughhe were certain of having plenty of time for everything. Yes, there wassomething indestructible about him; and the way he talked sometimes youmight have thought he believed it himself. When he called on me lastwith that letter he wanted me to take charge of, he was not depressedat all. Perhaps a shade more deliberate in his talk and manner. Notdepressed in the least. Had he a presentiment, I wonder? Perhaps! Stillit seems a miserable end for such a striking figure. "

"Oh yes! It was a miserable end, " Mr. Van Wyk said, with so much fervorthat the lawyer looked up at him curiously; and afterwards, afterparting with him, he remarked to an acquaintance--

"Queer person that Dutch tobacco-planter from Batu Beru. Know anythingof him?"

"Heaps of money, " answered the bank manager. "I hear he's going homeby the next mail to form a company to take over his estates. Anothertobacco district thrown open. He's wise, I think. These good times won'tlast for ever. "

In the southern hemisphere Captain Whalley's daughter had nopresentiment of evil when she opened the envelope addressed to her inthe lawyer's handwriting. She had received it in the afternoon; all theboarders had gone out, her boys were at school, her husband sat upstairsin his big arm-chair with a book, thin-faced, wrapped up in rugs to thewaist. The house was still, and the grayness of a cloudy day lay againstthe panes of three lofty windows. 

In a shabby dining-room, where a faint cold smell of dishes lingered allthe year round, sitting at the end of a long table surrounded bymany chairs pushed in with their backs close against the edge of theperpetually laid table-cloth, she read the opening sentence: "Mostprofound regret--painful duty--your father is no more--in accordancewith his instructions--fatal casualty--consolation--no blame attached tohis memory. . . . "

Her face was thin, her temples a little sunk under the smooth bands ofblack hair, her lips remained resolutely compressed, while her dark eyesgrew larger, till at last, with a low cry, she stood up, and instantlystooped to pick up another envelope which had slipped off her knees onto the floor. 

She tore it open, snatched out the inclosure. . . . 

"My dearest child, " it said, "I am writing this while I am able yet towrite legibly. I am trying hard to save for you all the money that isleft; I have only kept it to serve you better. It is yours. It shall notbe lost: it shall not be touched. There's five hundred pounds. Of whatI have earned I have kept nothing back till now. For the future, if Ilive, I must keep back some--a little--to bring me to you. I must cometo you. I must see you once more. 

"It is hard to believe that you will ever look on these lines. Godseems to have forgotten me. I want to see you--and yet death would bea greater favor. If you ever read these words, I charge you to begin bythanking a God merciful at last, for I shall be dead then, and it willbe well. My dear, I am at the end of my tether. "

The next paragraph began with the words: "My sight is going . . . "

She read no more that day. The hand holding up the paper to her eyesfell slowly, and her slender figure in a plain black dress walkedrigidly to the window. Her eyes were dry: no cry of sorrow or whisper ofthanks went up to heaven from her lips. Life had been too hard, for allthe efforts of his love. It had silenced her emotions. But for the firsttime in all these years its sting had departed, the carking care ofpoverty, the meanness of a hard struggle for bread. Even the image ofher husband and of her children seemed to glide away from her into thegray twilight; it was her father's face alone that she saw, as though hehad come to see her, always quiet and big, as she had seen him last, butwith something more august and tender in his aspect. 

She slipped his folded letter between the two buttons of her plain blackbodice, and leaning her forehead against a window-pane remained theretill dusk, perfectly motionless, giving him all the time she couldspare. Gone! Was it possible? My God, was it possible! The blow had comesoftened by the spaces of the earth, by the years of absence. There hadbeen whole days when she had not thought of him at all--had no time. Butshe had loved him, she felt she had loved him, after all.