VI
The sun had set. And when, after drilling a deep hole
with his stick, he moved from that spot the night had
massed its army of shadows under the trees. They
filled the eastern ends of the avenues as if only waiting
the signal for a general advance upon the open spaces
of the world; they were gathering low between the deep
stone-faced banks of the canal. The Malay prau, half-
concealed under the arch of the bridge, had not altered
its position a quarter of an inch. For a long time Cap-
tain Whalley stared down over the parapet, till at last
the floating immobility of that beshrouded thing seemed
to grow upon him into something inexplicable and
alarming. The twilight abandoned the zenith; its re-
flected gleams left the world below, and the water of the
canal seemed to turn into pitch. Captain Whalley
crossed it.
The turning to the right, which was his way to his
hotel, was only a very few steps farther. He stopped
again (all the houses of the sea-front were shut up, the
quayside was deserted, but for one or two figures of
natives walking in the distance) and began to reckon the
amount of his bill. So many days in the hotel at so
many dollars a day. To count the days he used his
fingers: plunging one hand into his pocket, he jingled a
few silver coins. All right for three days more; and
then, unless something turned up, he must break into
the five hundred--Ivy's money--invested in her father.
It seemed to him that the 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
never played him false.
He did not turn to the right. He walked on, as if
there still had been a ship in the roadstead to which
he could get himself pulled off in the evening. Far
away, beyond the houses, on the slope of an indigo
promontory closing the view of the quays, the slim
column of a factory-chimney smoked quietly straight
up into the clear air. A Chinaman, curled down in the
stern of one of the half-dozen sampans floating off the
end of the jetty, caught sight of a beckoning hand.
He jumped up, rolled his pigtail round his head swiftly,
tucked in two rapid movements his wide dark trousers
high up his yellow thighs, and by a single, noiseless, fin-
like stir of the oars, sheered the sampan alongside 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 if waiting 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, were dark: the horizon had
grown somber; and across the eastern sweep of the shore
the white obelisk, marking the landing-place of the
telegraph-cable, stood like a pale ghost on the beach
before the dark spread of uneven roofs, intermingled
with palms, of the native town. Captain Whalley be-
gan again.
"Sofala. Savee So-fa-la, John?"
This time the Chinaman made out that bizarre sound,
and grunted his assent uncouthly, low down in his bare
throat. With the first yellow twinkle of a star that ap-
peared like the head of a pin stabbed deep into the
smooth, pale, shimmering fabric of the sky, the edge
of a keen chill seemed to cleave through the warm air
of the earth. At the moment of stepping into the sam-
pan to go and try for the command of the Sofala Cap-
tain Whalley shivered a little.
When on his return he landed on the quay again Venus,
like a choice jewel set low on the hem of the sky, cast
a faint gold trail behind him upon the roadstead, as
level as a floor made of one dark and polished stone.
The lofty vaults of the avenues were black--all black
overhead--and the porcelain globes on the lamp-posts
resembled egg-shaped pearls, gigantic and luminous,
displayed in a row whose farther end seemed to sink
in the distance, down to the level of his knees. He put
his hands behind his back. He would now consider
calmly the discretion of it before saying the final word
to-morrow. His feet scrunched the gravel loudly--the
discretion of it. It would have been easier to appraise
had there been a workable alternative. The honesty of
it was indubitable: he meant well by the fellow; and
periodically his shadow leaped up intense by his side on
the trunks of the trees, to lengthen itself, oblique and
dim, far over the grass--repeating his stride.
The discretion of it. Was there a choice? He seemed
already to have lost something of himself; to have given
up to a hungry specter something of his truth and dig-
nity in order to live. But his life was necessary. Let
poverty do its worst in exacting its toll of humiliation.
It was certain that Ned Eliott had rendered him, with-
out knowing it, a service for which it would have been
impossible to ask. He hoped Ned would not think there
had been something underhand in his action. He sup-
posed that now when he heard of it he would understand
--or perhaps he would only think Whalley an eccentric
old fool. What would have been the good of telling
him--any more than of blurting the whole tale to that
man Massy? Five hundred pounds ready to invest. Let
him make the best of that. Let him wonder. 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 had made upon him. . . .
A laid-up steamer was a dead thing and no mistake;
a sailing-ship somehow seems always ready to spring
into life with the breath of the incorruptible heaven;
but a teamer, thought Captain Whalley, with her fires
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 there as cold and still and pulseless as
a corpse.
In the solitude of the avenue, all black above and
lighted below, Captain Whalley, considering the dis-
cretion of his course, met, as it were incidentally, the
thought of death. He pushed it aside with dislike and
contempt. He almost laughed at it; and in the un-
quenchable vitality of his age only thought with a kind
of exultation how little he needed to keep body and soul
together. Not a bad investment for the poor woman
this solid carcass of her father. And for the rest--in
case of anything--the agreement should be clear: the
whole five hundred to be paid back to her integrally
within three months. Integrally. Every penny. He
was not to lose any of her money whatever else had
to go--a little dignity--some of his self-respect. He
had never before allowed anybody to remain under any
sort of false impression as to himself. Well, let that
go--for her sake. After all, he had never SAID any-
thing misleading--and Captain Whalley felt himself
corrupt to the marrow of his bones. He laughed a little
with the intimate scorn of his worldly prudence.
Clearly, with a fellow of that sort, and in the peculiar
relation they were to stand to each other, it would not
have done to blurt out everything. He did not like the
fellow. He did not like his spells of fawning loquacity
and bursts of resentfulness. In the end--a poor devil.
He would not have liked to stand in his shoes. Men
were not evil, after all. He did not like his sleek hair,
his queer way of standing at right angles, with his nose
in the air, and glancing along his shoulder at you. No.
On the whole, men were not bad--they were only silly
or unhappy.
Captain Whalley had finished considering the discre-
tion of that step--and there was the whole long night
before him. In the full light his long beard would
glisten like a silver breastplate covering his heart; in
the spaces between the lamps his burly figure passed less
distinct, loomed very big, wandering, and mysterious.
No; there was not 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 Whalley from his chair on the bridge of
the Sofala approaching the bar of Batu Beru.
"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 hands behind his back and
stared ahead out of the innumerable wrinkles at the
corners 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 times from the south-
ward. They would come into view at the proper time.
Thank God, the old ship made her courses and distances
trip after trip, as correct as clockwork. At last he mur-
mured 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 had listened quietly to this short col-
loquy. Then he stepped out on the bridge and began
to walk from end to end, holding up the long cherry-
wood stem of a pipe. His black hair lay plastered in
long lanky wisps across the bald summit of his head;
he had a furrowed brow, a yellow complexion, and a
thick shapeless nose. A scanty growth of whisker did
not conceal the contour of his jaw. His aspect was of
brooding care; and sucking at a curved black mouth-
piece, he presented such a heavy overhanging profile
that even the Serang could not help reflecting sometimes
upon the extreme unloveliness of some white men.
Captain Whalley seemed to brace himself up in his
chair, but gave no recognition whatever to his presence.
The other puffed jets of smoke; then suddenly--
"I could never understand that new mania of yours
of having this Malay here for your shadow, partner."
Captain Whalley got up from the chair in all his im-
posing stature and walked across to the binnacle, hold-
ing such an unswerving course that the other had to
back away hurriedly, and remained as if intimidated,
with the pipe trembling in his hand. "Walk over me
now," he muttered in a sort of astounded and dis-
comfited whisper. Then slowly and distinctly he
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 of going straight to the point, with the
assured keen glance of a sailor, wandered irresolutely
in space, as though he, the discoverer of new routes, 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 the eye. He took
up a position beside the engineer. Captain Whalley,
with his back to them, inquired--
"What's on the log?"
"Eighty-five," answered the mate quickly, and nudged
the engineer with his elbow.
Captain Whalley's muscular hands squeezed the iron
rail with an extraordinary force; his eyes glared with
an enormous effort; he knitted his eyebrows, the per-
spiration fell from under his hat,--and in a faint voice
he murmured, "Steady her, Serang--when she is on
the proper bearing."
The silent Malay stepped back, waited a little, and
lifted his arm warningly to the helmsman. The wheel
revolved rapidly to meet the swing of the ship. Again
the made nudged the engineer. But Massy turned upon
him.
"Mr. Sterne," he said violently, "let me tell you--
as a shipowner--that you are no better than a con-
founded fool."
