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
and unexpected thing that could happen; and the perturbation
of his spirit was so great that, forgetting all about
his letters, he ran rapidly up the bridge ladder.
The portable table was being put together
for dinner to the left of the wheel by two pig-tailed
“boys,” who as usual snarled at each other
over the job, while another, a doleful, burly, very
yellow Chinaman, resembling Mr. Massy, waited apathetically
with the cloth over his arm and a pile of thick dinner-plates
against his chest. A common cabin lamp with its
globe missing, brought up from below, had been hooked
to the wooden framework of the awning; the side-screens
had been lowered all round; Captain Whalley filling
the depths of the wicker-chair seemed to sit benumbed
in a canvas tent crudely lighted, and used for the
storing of nautical objects; a shabby steering-wheel,
a battered brass binnacle on a stout mahogany stand,
two dingy life-buoys, an old cork fender lying in
a corner, dilapidated deck-lockers with loops of thin
rope instead of door-handles.
He shook off the appearance of numbness
to return Mr. Van Wyk’s unusually brisk greeting,
but relapsed directly afterwards. To accept a
pressing invitation to dinner “up at the house”
cost him another very visible physical effort.
Mr. Van Wyk, perplexed, folded his arms, and leaning
back against the rail, with his little, black, shiny
feet well out, 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 real intimacy of
their intercourse had never been so vividly expressed
before.
“Tut, tut, tut!”
The wicker-chair creaked heavily.
“Irritable,” commented
Mr. Van Wyk to himself; and aloud, “I’ll
expect to see you in half an hour, then,” he
said negligently, moving off.
“In half an hour,” Captain
Whalley’s rigid silvery head repeated behind
him as if out of a trance.
Amidships, below, two voices, close
against the engineroom, could be heard 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 shut himself
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 drive any man
to drink,” Sterne said maliciously.
Massy hissed out something about bursting
the door in. Mr. Van Wyk, to avoid 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
get your 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 the
bungalow, threw their black straight-edged shadow into
the great body of the night on that side. Everything
was very still. A tinkle of cutlery and a slight
jingle of glasses were heard. Mr. Van Wyk’s
servants were laying the table for two on the veranda.
“I’m afraid you give me
no credit whatever for my good intentions in the matter
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 that his 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’t want to
make a fuss. All I ask you, as his friend, is
to tell him from me that the game’s up.
That will be sufficient.”
Mr. Van Wyk felt a loathsome dismay
at this queer privilege of friendship. He would
not demean himself by asking for the slightest explanation;
to drive the other away with contumely he did not think
prudent as yet, at any rate. So much
assurance staggered him. Who could tell what
there could be in it, he thought? His regard for
Captain Whalley had the tenacity of a disinterested
sentiment, and his practical instinct coming to his
aid, he concealed his scorn.
“I gather, then, that this is something grave.”
“Very grave,” Sterne assented
solemnly, delighted at having produced an effect at
last. He was ready to add some effusive protestations
of regret at the “unavoidable necessity,”
but Mr. Van Wyk cut him short 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 the floor
before a rocking-chair. “It looks as if
the fellow had not the pluck to play his own precious
game openly,” he thought.
This was true enough. In the
face of Massy’s last rebuff Sterne dared not
declare his knowledge. His object was simply to
get charge of the steamer and keep it for some time.
Massy would never forgive him for forcing himself
on; but if Captain Whalley left the ship of his own
accord, 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 vague menace,
a mere hint, would be enough in such a brazen case;
and, with a strange admixture of compassion, he thought
that Batu Beru was a very good place for throwing
up the sponge. The skipper could go ashore quietly,
and stay with that Dutchman of his. Weren’t
these two as thick as thieves together? And on
reflection he seemed to see that there was a way to
work the whole thing through that great friend of the
old man’s. This was another brilliant idea.
He had an inborn preference for circuitous methods.
In this particular case he desired to remain in the
background 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 isolation that invades
sometimes the closeness of human intercourse.
Captain Whalley failed lamentably and obviously in
his attempts to eat something. He seemed overcome
by a strange absentmindedness. His hand would
hover irresolutely, as if left without guidance by
a preoccupied mind. Mr. Van Wyk had heard him
coming up from a long way off in the profound stillness
of the river-side, and had noticed the irresolute
character of the footfalls. The toe of his boot
had struck the bottom stair as though he had come
along mooning with his head in the air right up to
the steps of the veranda. Had the captain of the
Sofala been another sort of man he would have suspected
the work of age there. But one glance at him
was enough. Time after, indeed, marking
him for its own had given him up to his
usefulness, in which his simple faith would see a
proof of Divine mercy. “How could I contrive
to warn him?” Mr. Van Wyk wondered, as if Captain
Whalley had been miles and miles away, out of sight
and earshot of all evil. He was sickened by an
immense disgust of Sterne. To even mention his
threat to a man like Whalley would be positively indecent.
There was something more vile and insulting in its
hint than in a definite charge of crime the
debasing taint of blackmailing. “What could
anyone bring against him?” he asked himself.
This was a limpid personality. “And for
what object?” The Power that man trusted had
thought fit to leave him nothing on earth that envy
could lay 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 coveting the command of the Sofala.
His cynicism was quite startled by what looked like
a proof that no man may count himself safe from his
kind unless in the very abyss of misery. An intrigue
of that sort was hardly worth troubling about, he
judged; but still, with such a fool as Massy to deal
with, Whalley ought to and must be warned.
At this moment Captain Whalley, bolt
upright, the deep cavities of the eyes overhung by
a bushy frown, and one large brown hand resting on
each side of his empty plate, spoke across the tablecloth
abruptly “Mr. Van Wyk, you’ve
always treated me with the most humane consideration.”
“My dear captain, you make too
much of a simple fact that I am not a savage.”
Mr. Van Wyk, utterly revolted by the thought of Sterne’s
obscure attempt, raised his voice incisively, as if
the mate had been hiding somewhere within earshot.
“Any consideration I have been able to show
was no more than the rightful due of a character I’ve
learned to regard by this time with an esteem that
nothing can shake.”
A slight ring of glass made him lift
his eyes from the slice of pine-apple he was cutting
into small pieces on his plate. In changing his
position Captain Whalley had contrived to upset an
empty tumbler.
Without looking that way, leaning
sideways on his elbow, his other hand shading his
brow, he groped shakily for it, then desisted.
Van Wyk stared blankly, as if something momentous
had happened all at once. He did not know why
he should feel so startled; but he forgot Sterne utterly
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 his voice.
“Say no more! I can make you no return.
I am too poor even for that now. Your esteem
is worth having. You are not a man that would
stoop to deceive the poorest sort of devil on earth,
or make a ship unseaworthy every time he takes her
to sea.”
Mr. Van Wyk, leaning forward, his
face gone pink all over, with the starched table-napkin
over his knees, was inclined to mistrust his senses,
his power of comprehension, the sanity of his guest.
“Where? Why? In the
name of God! what’s this? What
ship? I don’t understand who . . .”
“Then, in the name of God, it
is I! A ship’s unseaworthy when her captain
can’t see. I am going blind.”
Mr. Van Wyk made a slight movement,
and sat very still afterwards for a few seconds; then,
with the thought of Sterne’s “The game’s
up,” he ducked under the table to pick up the
napkin which had slipped off his knees. This
was the game that was up. And at the same time
the muffled voice of Captain Whalley passed over him
“I’ve deceived them all. Nobody knows.”
He emerged flushed to the eyes.
Captain Whalley, motionless under the full 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 humane man a a gentleman,
Mr. Van Wyk. You may have asked me what I had
done with 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 things when
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 for a wealthy
sailor fool, and I let him. I wanted to keep up
my importance because there was poor Ivy
away there my daughter. What did I
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
knew it. 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 to live for a year. A year! In
a year there will be no sun in the sky for her father.”
His deep voice came out, awfully veiled,
as though he had been overwhelmed by the earth of
a landslide, and talking to you of the thoughts that
haunt the dead in their graves. A cold shudder
ran down Mr. 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 this
visitation.” Captain Whalley spoke with
gloomy patience from under his hand.
He had not thought he had deserved
it. He had begun by deceiving himself from day
to day, from week to week. He had the Serang at
hand there an old servant. It came
on gradually, and when he could no longer deceive
himself . . .
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
appalling murmur flowed on.
“Not even the sign of God’s
anger could make me forget her. How could I forsake
my child, feeling my vigor all the time the
blood warm within me? Warm as yours. It
seems to me that, like the blinded Samson, I would
find the strength to shake down a temple upon my head.
She’s a struggling woman my own child
that we used to pray over together, my poor wife and
I. Do you remember that day I as well as told you that
I believed God would let me live to a hundred for
her sake? What sin is there in loving your child?
Do you see it? I was ready for her sake to live
for ever. I half believed I would. I’ve
been praying for death since. Ha! Presumptuous
man you wanted to live . . .”
A tremendous, shuddering upheaval
of that big frame, shaken by a gasping sob, set the
glasses jingling all over the table, seemed to make
the whole house tremble to the roof-tree. And
Mr. Van Wyk, whose feeling of outraged love had been
translated into a form of struggle with nature, understood
very well that, for that man whose whole life had been
conditioned by action, there could exist no other expression
for all the emotions; that, to voluntarily cease venturing,
doing, enduring, for his child’s sake, would
have been exactly like plucking his warm love for
her out of his living heart. Something too monstrous,
too impossible, even to conceive.
Captain Whalley had not changed his
attitude, that seemed to express something 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 I lied to you? Weren’t
you going to trust your property on board this very
trip?”
“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 it were
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 asked who he was, what
he was doing; Massy might have heard something.
He had lived on without any help, human or divine.
The very prayers stuck in his 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 down he 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
was fading before his great fear of giving himself
away. The old ship was his last friend; he was
not afraid of her; he knew every inch of her deck;
but at her too he hardly dared to look, for fear of
finding he could see less than the day before.
A great incertitude enveloped him. The horizon
was gone; the sky mingled darkly with the sea.
Who was this figure standing over yonder? what was
this thing lying down there? And a frightful
doubt of the reality of what he could see made even
the remnant of sight that remained to him an added
torment, a pitfall always open for his miserable pretense.
He was afraid to stumble inexcusably over something to
say a fatal Yes or No to a question. The hand
of God was upon him, but it could not tear him away
from his child. And, as if in 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 great white beard lying like
a silver breastplate over the awful secret of his
heart. Yes; that was the only hope there was for
him of ever seeing her again, of securing the money,
the last he could do for her, before he crept away
somewhere useless, a burden, a reproach
to himself. His voice faltered.
“Think of it! Never see
her any more: the only human being besides myself
now on earth that can remember my wife. She’s
just like her mother. Lucky the poor woman is
where there are no tears shed over those they loved
on earth and that remain to pray not to be led into
temptation because, I suppose, the blessed
know the secret of grace in God’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 meaning of the rigid
head, the hesitating feet, the vaguely extended hand.
His heart was beating fast; he moved a chair aside,
and instinctively advanced 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 a sort
of awe. Then going to the head of the stairs,
he asked a little tremulously
“What is it like like a mist like
. . .”
Captain Whalley, half-way down, stopped,
and turned round undismayed to answer.
“It is as if the light were
ebbing out of the world. Have you ever watched
the ebbing sea on an open stretch of sands withdrawing
farther and farther away from you? It is like
this only there will be no flood to follow.
Never. It is as if the sun were growing smaller,
the stars going 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 been able to make out Mr. Van Wyk, because
he checked him by an authoritative gesture 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 of earshot. 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 poise of the head like a piano-tuner;
closing it, he pivoted on his heels brusquely, avoided
the little terrier sleeping trustfully on crossed
forepaws, came upon the stairs next, and, as though
he had lost his balance on the top step, ran down
headlong out of the house. His servants, beginning
to clear the table, heard him mutter to himself (evil
words no doubt) down there, and then after a pause
go away with a strolling gait in the direction of
the wharf.
The bulwarks of the Sofala lying alongside
the bank made a low, black wall on the undulating
contour of the shore. Two masts and a funnel
uprose 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
and mingling darkly everywhere; but low down, amidships,
a single lighted port 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 in the ground.
Mr. Van Wyk, peering alongside, heard
a muzzy boastful voice apparently jeering 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 unless he 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 over him.
He would just love to see you starve.”
Mr. Van Wyk moved away, made out farther
forward a shadowy head stuck out from under the awnings
as if on the watch, and spoke quietly in Malay, “Is
the mate asleep?”
“No. Here, at your service.”
In a moment Sterne appeared, walking
as noiselessly as a cat on the wharf.
“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
the cause of a shudder than ran over him audibly.
“Jack’s broken out on
a drunk. That’s our second. It’s
his way. He will be right enough by to-morrow
afternoon, only Mr. Massy will keep on worrying up
and down the deck. We had better get away.”
He muttered suggestively of a talk
“up at the house.” He had long desired
to effect an entrance there, but Mr. Van Wyk nonchalantly
demurred: it would not, he feared, be quite prudent,
perhaps; and the opaque black shadow under one of
the two big trees left at the landing-place swallowed
them up, impenetrably dense, by the side of the wide
river, that seemed to spin into threads of glitter
the light of a few big stars dropped here and there
upon its outspread and flowing stillness.
“The situation is grave beyond
doubt,” Mr. Van Wyk said. Ghost-like in
their white clothes they could not distinguish each
others’ features, and their feet made no sound
on the soft earth. A sort of purring was heard.
Mr. Sterne felt gratified by such a beginning.
“I thought, Mr. Van Wyk, a gentleman
of your sort would see at once how awkwardly I was
situated.”
“Yes, very. Obviously his
health is bad. Perhaps he’s breaking up.
I see, and he himself is well aware I assume
I am speaking to a man of sense 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 he intends 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 a perfectly cool and undoubting tone. “The
question, however, is whether your 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 had a soft laugh
at this pleasantry. He should think so! To
the opening statement, that the partnership agreement
was to expire at the end of this very trip, he gave
an attentive assent. He was aware. One heard
of nothing else on board all the blessed day long.
As to Massy, it was no secret that he was in a jolly
deep hole with these worn-out boilers. He would
have to borrow somewhere a couple of hundred first
of all to pay off the captain; and then he would have
to raise money on mortgage upon the 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 earnings for the year and
there was always the danger of having his connection
filched away from him by the Germans. It was whispered
about that he had already tried two firms. Neither
would have anything to do with him. Ship too
old, and the man too well known in the place. . . .
Mr. Sterne’s final rapid winking remained buried
in the deep darkness sibilating with his whispers.
“Supposing, then, he got the
loan,” Mr. Van Wyk resumed in a deliberate undertone,
“on your own showing he’s more than likely
to get a mortgagee’s man thrust upon him as
captain. For my part, I know that I would 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 worth my while in many ways. Do you
see how this would bear on the case under discussion?”
“Thank you, sir. I am sure
you couldn’t get anybody that would care more
for 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 can be done, I’ll be on the spot when
all these changes take place, and in a position 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 as
my employer now) the thing is more safe than it looks.
If anybody had told me of it I wouldn’t have
believed it, but I have been looking on myself.
That old Serang has been trained up to the game.
There’s nothing the matter with his his limbs,
sir. He’s got used to doing things himself
in a remarkable way. And let me tell you, sir,
that Captain Whalley, 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 enough
what to do. Why, he must have kept captain’s
watches in all sorts of country ships off and on for
the last five-and-twenty years. These natives,
sir, as long as they have a white man close at the
back, will go on doing the right thing most surprisingly
well even if left quite to themselves.
Only the white man must be of the sort to put starch
into them, and the captain is just the one for that.
Why, sir, he has drilled him so well that now he needs
hardly speak at all. I have seen that little
wrinkled ape made to take the ship out of Pangu Bay
on a blowy morning 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 you
could not have told for the life of you which of the
two was doing the work up there. That’s
where our poor friend would be still of use to the
ship even if if he could no longer
lift a foot, sir. Provided the Serang does not
know that there’s anything wrong.”
“He doesn’t.”
“Naturally not. Quite beyond
his apprehension. They aren’t capable of
finding out anything about us, sir.”
“You seem to be a shrewd man,”
said Mr. Van Wyk in a choked mutter, as though 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 shape wavered, and instantly
seemed to melt away in the black air under the roof
of boughs. The mate was startled. Yes.
There was that faint thumping clatter.
He stole out silently from under the
shade. The lighted port-hole shone from afar.
His head swam with the intoxication of sudden success.
What a thing it was to have a gentleman to deal with!
He crept aboard, and there was something weird in
the shadowy stretch of empty decks, echoing with shouts
and blows proceeding from a darker part amidships.
Mr. Massy was raging before the door of the berth:
the drunken voice within flowed on undisturbed in
the violent racket of kicks.
“Shut up! Put your light
out and turn in, you confounded swilling pig you!
D’you hear me, you beast?”
The kicking stopped, and in the pause
the muzzy oracular voice announced from 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 of horrors.” The chief engineer appeared
vague and big at the corner of the engineroom.
“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. His head swam with
exultation. He got into his bunk as if in a dream.
A feeling of profound peace, of pacific joy, came
over him. On deck all was quiet.
Mr. Massy, with his ear against the
door of Jack’s cabin, listened critically to
a deep stertorous breathing within. This was a
dead-drunk sleep. 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 garment
with 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 would take it off and hang
it about anywhere all over the ship. It would
be seen swinging on belaying-pins, thrown over the
heads of winches, suspended on people’s very
door-handles for that matter. Was he not the
owner? But his favorite place was a hook on a
wooden awning stanchion on the bridge, almost against
the binnacle. He had even in the early days more
than one tussle on that point with Captain Whalley,
who desired the bridge to be kept tidy. He had
been overawed then. Of late, though, he had been
able to defy his partner with impunity. Captain
Whalley never seemed to notice anything now.
As to the Malays, in their awe of that scowling man
not one of the crew would dream of laying a hand on
the thing, no matter where or what it swung from.
With an unexpectedness which made
Mr. Massy jump and drop the coat at his feet, there
came from the next berth the crash and thud of a headlong,
jingling, clattering fall. The faithful Jack must
have dropped to sleep suddenly as he sat at his revels,
and now had gone over chair and all, breaking, as
it seemed by the sound, every single glass and bottle
in the place. After the terrific smash all was
still for a time in there, as though he had killed
himself outright on the spot. Mr. Massy held
his breath. At last a sleepy uneasy groaning sigh
was exhaled slowly 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. He swore violently
under his breath. The fool would keep him awake
all night now for certain. He cursed his luck.
He wanted to forget his maddening troubles in sleep
sometimes. He could detect no movements.
Without apparently making the slightest attempt to
get up, Jack went on sniggering to himself where he
lay; then began to speak, where he had left off as
it were
“Massy! I love the dirty
rascal. He would like to see his poor old Jack
starve but just you look where he has climbed
to.” . . . He hiccoughed in a superior,
leisurely manner. . . . “Ship-owning it
with the best. A lottery ticket you want.
Ha! ha! I will give you lottery tickets, my boy.
Let the old ship sink and the old chum starve that’s
right. He don’t go wrong Massy
don’t. Not he. He’s a genius that
man is. That’s the 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 of returning drowsiness, he was discouraged
profoundly by a burst of laughter full of joyful irony.
“Would like to see her at the
bottom of the sea! Oh, you clever, clever devil!
Wish her sunk, eh? I should think you would, my
boy; the damned old 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 eyes rolled uneasily.
The raving fool. And yet it was all true.
Yes. Lottery tickets, too. All true.
What? Beginning again? He wished he wouldn’t.
. . .
But it was even so. The imaginative
drunkard on the other side of the bulkhead shook off
the deathlike stillness that after his last words had
fallen on the dark ship moored to a silent shore.
“Don’t you dare to say
anything against George Massy, Esquire. When he’s
tired of waiting he will do away with her. Look
out! Down she goes chum and all.
He’ll know how to . . .”
The voice hesitated, weary, dreamy,
lost, as if dying away in a vast open 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 him with the suddenness
of a magic spell, and the last word lengthened itself
into an interminable, noisy, in-drawn snore. And
then even the snoring stopped, and all was still.
But it seemed as though Mr. Massy
had suddenly come to doubt the efficacy of sleep as
against a man’s troubles; or perhaps he had found
the relief he needed in the stillness of a calm contemplation
that may contain the vivid thoughts of wealth, of
a stroke of luck, of long idleness, and may bring
before you the imagined form of every desire; for,
turning about and throwing his arms over the edge of
his bunk, he stood there with his feet on his favorite
old coat, looking out through the round port into
the night over the river. Sometimes a breath of
wind would 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 all he
could see of it; and once he might after all suppose
he had dozed off, since there appeared before his
vision, unexpectedly and connected with no dream,
a row of flaming and gigantic figures three
naught seven one 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 thatched roof, walls of mats
and bamboo, gables of carved teak timber. Rows
of dwellings raised on a forest of piles lined the
steely band of the river, brimful and still, with
the tide at the turn. This was Batu Beru and
the day had come.
Mr. Massy shook himself, put on the
tweed coat, and, shivering nervously as 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. Several small jobs had
to be seen to, and Jack was lying dead drunk on the
floor of his cabin, with the door locked at that.
His gorge rose at the thought of work. Ay!
But if you wanted to do nothing you had to get first
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 rid
him at last of that ship that had turned out a curse
on his life.