X
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 contem-
plate. 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 fore-
deck 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 eye-
brows 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 cus-
tom 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 dis-
gust. 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 associa-
tion 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 him-
self. 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 at-
tended 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 im-
agined 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; de-
fines 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 be-
cause 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 posi-
tion 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 at-
tending 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 wan-
dering 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 look-
ing 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 falter-
ing intonations of the deep voice; the taciturnity put
on like an armor; the deliberate, as if guarded, move-
ments; 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 con-
firmatory import.
Every day that passed over the Sofala appeared to
Sterne simply crammed full with proofs--with incon-
trovertible 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 re-
main 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 look-
out 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 mon-
strosity 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 everlast-
ingly 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 ex-
ceptional 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 cau-
tious 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 be-
ing 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, listen-
ing 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 ad-
vance 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; inex-
plicably 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 stu-
pidity, forgot himself completely. His stony, unwink-
ing 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 slop-
ing 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 cannon-
ball, 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 habita-
tion, 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 ap-
peared 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 cocoa-
nuts 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 bear-
ings. 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 munch-
ing, and ran to the knee of a grave dark Arab in flow-
ing 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.
