The knowledge was too disturbing,
really. There was “something wrong”
with a vengeance, and the moral certitude of it was
at first simply frightful 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 the bridge presented himself naturally to his sight.
How insignificant, how casual was the thought that
had started the train of discovery like
an accidental spark that suffices to ignite the charge
of a tremendous mine!
Caught under by the breeze, the awnings
of the foredeck bellied upwards and collapsed slowly,
and above their heavy flapping the gray stuff of Captain
Whalley’s roomy coat fluttered incessantly around
his arms and trunk. He faced the wind in full
light, with his great silvery beard blown forcibly
against his chest; the eyebrows overhung heavily the
shadows whence his glance appeared to be staring ahead
piercingly. Sterne could just detect the twin
gleam of the whites shifting under the shaggy arches
of the brow. At short range these eyes, for all
the man’s affable manner, seemed to look you
through and through. Sterne never could defend
himself from that feeling when he had occasion to speak
with his captain. He did not like it. What
a big heavy man he appeared up there, with that little
shrimp of a Serang in close attendance as
was usual in this extraordinary steamer! Confounded
absurd custom that. He resented it. Surely
the old fellow could have looked after his ship without
that loafing native at his elbow. Sterne wriggled
his shoulders with disgust. What was it?
Indolence or what?
That old skipper must have been growing
lazy for years. They all grew lazy out East here
(Sterne was very conscious of his own unimpaired activity);
they got slack all over. But he towered very erect
on the bridge; and quite low by his side, as you see
a small child looking over the edge of a table, the
battered soft hat and the brown face of the Serang
peeped over the white canvas screen of the rail.
No doubt the Malay was standing back,
nearer to the wheel; but the great disparity of size
in close association amused Sterne like the observation
of a bizarre fact in nature. They were as queer
fish out of the 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 would
be directing the chap to look at the compass for him,
or what not. Of course. Too much trouble
to step over and see for himself. Sterne’s
scorn for that bodily indolence which overtakes white
men in the East increased on reflection. Some
of them would be utterly lost if they hadn’t
all these natives at their beck and call; they grew
perfectly shameless about it too. He was not
of that sort, thank God! It wasn’t in him
to make himself dependent for his work on any shriveled-up
little Malay like that. As if one could ever
trust a silly native for anything in the world!
But that fine old man thought differently, it seems.
There they were together, never far apart; a pair
of them, recalling to the mind an old whale attended
by a little pilot-fish.
The fancifulness of the comparison
made him smile. A whale with an inseparable pilot-fish!
That’s what the old man looked like; for it
could not be said he looked like a shark, though Mr.
Massy had called him that very name. But Mr.
Massy did not mind what he said in his savage fits.
Sterne smiled to himself and gradually the
ideas evoked by the sound, by the imagined shape of
the word pilot-fish; the ideas of aid, of guidance
needed and received, came uppermost in his mind:
the word pilot awakened the idea of trust, of dependence,
the idea of welcome, clear-eyed help brought to the
seaman groping for the land in the dark: groping
blindly in fogs: feeling their way in the thick
weather of the gales that, filling the air with a salt
mist blown up from the sea, contract the range of
sight on all sides to a shrunken horizon that seems
within reach of the hand.
A pilot sees better than a stranger,
because his local knowledge, like a sharper vision,
completes the shapes of things hurriedly glimpsed;
penetrates the veils of mist spread over the land by
the storms of the sea; defines with certitude the
outlines of a coast lying under the pall of fog, the
forms of landmarks half buried in a starless night
as in a shallow grave. He recognizes because
he already knows. It is not to his far-reaching
eye but to his more extensive knowledge that the pilot
looks for certitude; for this certitude of the ship’s
position on which may depend a man’s good fame
and the peace of his conscience, the justification
of the trust deposited in his hands, with his own life
too, which is seldom wholly his to throw away, and
the humble lives of others rooted in distant affections,
perhaps, and made as weighty as the lives of kings
by the burden of the awaiting mystery. The pilot’s
knowledge brings relief and certitude to the commander
of a ship; the Serang, however, in his fanciful suggestion
of a pilot-fish attending a whale, could not in any
way be credited with a superior knowledge. Why
should he have it? These two men had come on that
run together the white and the brown on
the same day: and of course a white man would
learn more in a week than the best native would in
a month. He was made to stick to the skipper
as though he were of some use as the pilot-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 and
sinister light on men and nature. Really in the
first moment he had felt sickish, as though he had
got a blow below the belt: for a second the very
color of the sea seemed changed appeared
queer to his wandering eye; and he had a passing,
unsteady sensation in all his limbs as though the
earth had started turning the other way.
A very natural incredulity succeeding
this sense of upheaval brought a measure of relief.
He had gasped; it was over. But afterwards during
all that day sudden paroxysms of wonder would come
over him in the midst of his occupations. He
would stop and shake his head. The revolt of
his incredulity had passed away almost as quick as
the first emotion of discovery, and for the next twenty-four
hours he had no sleep. That would never do.
At meal-times (he took the foot of the table set up
for the white men on the bridge) he could not help
losing himself in a fascinated contemplation of Captain
Whalley opposite. He watched the deliberate upward
movements of the arm; the old man put his food to his
lips 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 a somnambulist.
“It’s an awful sight,” thought Sterne;
and he watched the long period of mournful, silent
immobility, with a big brown hand lying loosely closed
by the side of the plate, till he noticed the two
engineers to the right and left looking at him in astonishment.
He would close his mouth in a hurry then, and lowering
his eyes, wink rapidly at his plate. It was awful
to see the old chap sitting there; it was even awful
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 short sentence, and yet that
simple act seemed as impossible to attempt as moving
the sun out of its place in the sky. The old chap
could eat in his terrific mechanical way; but Sterne,
from mental excitement, could not not that
evening, at any rate.
He had had ample time since to get
accustomed to the strain of the meal-hours. He
would never have believed it. But then use is
everything; only the very potency of his success prevented
anything resembling elation. He felt like a man
who, in his legitimate search for a loaded gun to
help him on his way through the world, chances to come
upon a torpedo upon a live torpedo with
a shattering charge in its head and a pressure of
many atmospheres in its tail. It is the sort of
weapon to make its possessor careworn and nervous.
He had no mind to be blown up himself; and he could
not get rid of the notion that the explosion was bound
to damage him too in some way.
This vague apprehension had restrained
him at first. He was able now to eat and sleep
with that fearful weapon by his side, with the conviction
of its power always in mind. It had not been arrived
at by any reflective process; but once the idea had
entered his head, the conviction had followed overwhelmingly
in a multitude of observed little facts to which before
he had given only a languid attention. The abrupt
and faltering intonations of the deep voice; the taciturnity
put on like an armor; the deliberate, as if guarded,
movements; the long immobilities, as if the man he
watched had been afraid to disturb the very air:
every familiar gesture, every word uttered in his hearing,
every sigh overheard, had acquired a special significance,
a confirmatory import.
Every day that passed over the Sofala
appeared to Sterne simply crammed full with proofs with
incontrovertible proofs. At night, when off duty,
he would steal out of his cabin in pyjamas (for more
proofs) and stand a full hour, perhaps, on his bare
feet below the bridge, as absolutely motionless as
the awning stanchion in its deck socket near by.
On the stretches of easy navigation it is not usual
for a coasting captain to remain on deck all the time
of his watch. The Serang keeps it for him as
a matter of custom; in open water, on a straight course,
he is usually trusted to look after the ship by himself.
But this old man seemed incapable of remaining quietly
down below. No doubt he could not sleep.
And no wonder. This was also a proof. Suddenly
in the silence of the ship panting upon the still,
dark sea, Sterne would hear a low voice above 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 to mind the helmsmen
and keep a lookout with care, the same as if I were
not on deck.”
Then, when the Serang had made his
answer, the low tones on the bridge would cease, and
everything round Sterne seemed to become more still
and more profoundly silent. Slightly chilled and
with his back aching a little from long immobility,
he would steal away to his room on the port side of
the deck. He had long since parted with the last
vestige of incredulity; of the original emotions,
set into a tumult by the discovery, some trace of
the first awe alone remained. Not the awe of
the man himself he could blow him up sky-high
with six words rather it was an awestruck
indignation at the reckless perversity of avarice (what
else could it be?), at the mad and somber resolution
that for the sake of a few dollars more seemed to
set at naught the common rule of conscience and pretended
to struggle against the very decree of Providence.
You could not find another man like
this one in the whole round world thank
God. There was something devilishly dauntless
in the character of such a deception which made you
pause.
Other considerations occurring to
his prudence had kept him tongue-tied from day to
day. It seemed to him now that it would yet have
been easier to speak out in the first hour of discovery.
He almost regretted not having made a row at once.
But then the very monstrosity of the disclosure .
. . Why! He could hardly face it himself,
let alone pointing it out to somebody else. Moreover,
with a desperado of that sort one never knew.
The object was not to get him out (that was as well
as done already), but to step into his place.
Bizarre as the thought seemed he might have shown
fight. A fellow up to working such a fraud would
have enough cheek for anything; a fellow that, as it
were, stood up against God Almighty Himself.
He was a horrid marvel that’s what
he was: he was perfectly capable of brazening
out the affair scandalously till he got him (Sterne)
kicked out of the ship and everlastingly damaged his
prospects in this part of the East. Yet if you
want to get on something must be risked. At times
Sterne thought he had been unduly timid of taking
action in the past; and what was worse, it had come
to this, that in the present he did not seem to know
what action to take.
Massy’s savage moroseness was
too disconcerting. It was an incalculable factor
of the situation. You could not tell what there
was behind that insulting ferocity. How could
one trust such a temper; it did not put Sterne in
bodily fear for himself, but it frightened him exceedingly
as to his prospects.
Though of course inclined to credit
himself with exceptional powers of observation, he
had by now lived too long with his discovery.
He had gone on looking at nothing else, till at last
one day it occurred to him that the thing was so obvious
that no one could miss seeing it. There were
four white men in all on board the Sofala. Jack,
the second engineer, was too dull to notice anything
that took place out of his engine-room. Remained
Massy the owner the interested
person nearly going mad with worry.
Sterne had heard and seen more than enough on board
to know what ailed him; but his exasperation seemed
to make him deaf to cautious overtures. If he
had only known it, there was the very thing he wanted.
But how could you bargain with a man of that sort?
It was 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
was always threatening to do that very thing; and
the urgency of the case, combined with the impossibility
of handling it with safety, made Sterne in 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 extremely alarming to his prospects.
He did not want to be left behind by some swift catastrophe.
Massy being on the bridge, the old man had to brace
himself up and make a show, he supposed. But it
was getting very bad with him, very bad indeed, now.
Even Massy had been emboldened to find fault this
time; Sterne, listening at the foot of the ladder,
had heard the other’s whimpering and artless
denunciations. Luckily the beast was very stupid
and could not see the why of all this. However,
small blame to him; it took a clever man to hit upon
the cause. Nevertheless, it was high time to
do something. The old man’s game could not
be kept up for many days more.
“I may yet lose my life at this
fooling let alone my chance,” Sterne
mumbled angrily to himself, after the stooping back
of the chief engineer had disappeared round the corner
of the skylight. Yes, no doubt he
thought; but to blurt out his knowledge would not advance
his prospects. On the contrary, it would blast
them utterly as likely as not. He dreaded another
failure. He had a vague consciousness of not
being much liked by his fellows in this part of the
world; inexplicably enough, for he had done nothing
to them. Envy, he supposed. People were
always down on a clever chap who made no bones about
his determination to get on. To do your duty
and count on the gratitude of that brute Massy 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 have responded in some way to all these hints
he had been given. . . . Such insensibility was
almost mysterious. Massy’s state of exasperation
seemed to Sterne to have made him stupid beyond the
ordinary silliness of shipowners.
Sterne, meditating on the embarrassments
of that stupidity, forgot himself completely.
His stony, unwinking stare was fixed on the planks
of the deck.
The slight quiver agitating the whole
fabric of the ship was more perceptible in the silent
river, shaded and still like a forest path. The
Sofala, gliding with an even motion, had passed beyond
the coast-belt of mud and mangroves. The
shores rose higher, in firm sloping banks, and the
forest of big trees came down to the brink. Where
the earth had been crumbled by the floods it showed
a steep brown cut, denuding a mass of roots intertwined
as if wrestling underground; and in the air, the interlaced
boughs, bound and loaded with creepers, carried on
the struggle for life, mingled their foliage in one
solid wall of leaves, with here and there the shape
of an enormous dark pillar soaring, or a ragged opening,
as if torn by the flight of a cannonball, disclosing
the impenetrable gloom within, the secular inviolable
shade of the virgin forest. The thump of the
engines reverberated regularly like the strokes of
a metronome beating the measure of the vast silence,
the shadow of the western wall had fallen across the
river, and the smoke pouring backwards from the funnel
eddied down behind the ship, spread a thin dusky veil
over the somber water, which, checked by the flood-tide,
seemed to lie stagnant in the whole straight length
of the reaches.
Sterne’s body, as if rooted
on the spot, trembled slightly from top to toe with
the internal vibration of the ship; from under his
feet came sometimes a sudden clang of iron, the noisy
burst of a shout below; to the 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 shimmering around the highest boughs which stood
out black against a smooth blue sky that seemed to
droop over the bed of the river like the roof of a
tent. The passengers for Batu Beru, kneeling on
the planks, were engaged in rolling their bedding
of mats busily; they tied up bundles, they snapped
the locks of wooden chests. A pockmarked peddler
of small wares threw his head back to drain into his
throat the last drops out of an earthenware bottle
before putting it away in a roll of blankets.
Knots of traveling traders standing about the deck
conversed in low tones; the followers of a small Rajah
from down the coast, broad-faced, simple young fellows
in white drawers and round white cotton caps with their
colored sarongs twisted across their bronze shoulders,
squatted on their hams on the hatch, chewing betel
with bright red mouths as if they had been tasting
blood. Their spears, lying piled up together within
the circle of their bare toes, resembled a casual
bundle of dry bamboos; a thin, livid Chinaman, with
a bulky package wrapped up in leaves already thrust
under his arm, gazed ahead eagerly; a wandering Kling
rubbed his teeth with a bit of wood, pouring over
the side a bright stream of water out of his lips;
the fat Rajah dozed in a shabby deck-chair, and
at the turn of every bend the two walls of leaves
reappeared running parallel along the banks, with
their impenetrable solidity fading at the top to a
vaporous mistiness of countless slender twigs growing
free, of young delicate branches shooting from the
topmost limbs of hoary trunks, of feathery heads of
climbers like delicate silver sprays standing up without
a quiver. There was not a sign of a clearing anywhere;
not a trace of human habitation, except when in one
place, on the bare end of a low point under an isolated
group of slender tree-ferns, the jagged, tangled remnants
of an old hut on piles appeared with that peculiar
aspect of ruined bamboo walls that look as if smashed
with a club. Farther on, half hidden under the
drooping bushes, a canoe containing a man and a woman,
together with a dozen green cocoanuts in a heap, rocked
helplessly after the Sofala had passed, like a navigating
contrivance of venturesome insects, of traveling ants;
while two glassy folds of water streaming away from
each bow of the steamer across the whole width of
the river ran with her up stream smoothly, fretting
their outer ends into a brown whispering tumble of
froth against the miry foot of each bank.
“I must,” thought Sterne,
“bring that brute Massy to his bearings.
It’s getting too absurd in the end. Here’s
the old man up there buried in his chair he
may just as well be in his grave for all the use he’ll
ever be in 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 savage brute to his bearings.
I’ll do it at once, too . . .”
When the mate made an abrupt start,
a little brown half-naked boy, with large 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 like a Biblical
figure, incongruously, on a yellow tin trunk corded
with a rope of twisted rattan. The father, unmoved,
put out his hand to pat the little shaven poll protectingly.