XI
Sterne crossed the deck upon the track of the chief
engineer. Jack, the second, retreating backwards down
the engine-room ladder, and still wiping his hands,
treated him to an incomprehensible grin of white teeth
out of his grimy hard face; Massy was nowhere to be
seen. He must have gone 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 alto-
gether--to the other end of the ship--quite away . . ."
The voice inside dropped low. "To the devil."
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, with a very firm expression of face,
turned the handle.
Mr. Massy's stateroom--a narrow, one-berth cabin--
smelt strongly of soap, and presented to view a swept,
dusted, unadorned neatness, not so much bare as barren,
not so much severe as starved and lacking in humanity,
like the ward of a public hospital, or rather (owing to
the small size) like the clean retreat of a desperately
poor but exemplary person. Not a single photograph
frame ornamented the bulkheads; not a single article of
clothing, not as much as a spare cap, hung from the
brass hooks. All the inside was painted in one plain
tint of pale blue; two big sea-chests in sailcloth covers
and with iron padlocks fitted exactly in the space under
the bunk. One glance was enough to embrace all the
strip of scrubbed planks within the four unconcealed
corners. The absence of the usual settee was striking;
the teak-wood top of the washing-stand seemed hermeti-
cally closed, and so was the lid of the writing-desk,
which protruded from the partition at the foot of the
bed-place, containing a mattress as thin as a pancake
under a threadbare blanket with a faded red stripe, and
a folded mosquito-net against the nights spent in harbor.
There was not a scrap of paper anywhere in sight, no
boots on the floor, no litter of any sort, not a speck of
dust anywhere; no traces of pipe-ash even, which, in
a heavy smoker, was morally revolting, like a manifesta-
tion of extreme hypocrisy; and the bottom of the old
wooden arm-chair (the only seat there), polished with
much use, shone as if its shabbiness had been waxed.
The screen of leaves on the bank, passing as if unrolled
endlessly in the round opening of the port, sent a waver-
ing network of light and shade into the place.
Sterne, holding the door open with one hand, had thrust
in his head and shoulders. At this amazing intrusion
Massy, who was doing absolutely nothing, 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 have lost 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--too upright, Mr.
Massy, to suspect anybody of such a . . . It's enough
to make your hair stand on end."
He watched for the effect: Massy seemed dazed, un-
comprehending. He only passed the palm of his hand
on the coal-black wisps plastered across the top of his
head. In a tone suddenly changed to confidential au-
dacity Sterne hastened on.
"Remember that there's only six weeks left to
run . . ." The other was looking at him stonily . . .
"so anyhow you shall require a captain for the ship
before long."
Then only, as if that suggestion had scarified his flesh
in the manner of red-hot iron, Massy gave a start and
seemed ready to shriek. He contained himself by a
great effort.
"Require a captain," he repeated with scathing slow-
ness. "Who requires a captain? You dare to tell me
that I need any of you humbugging sailors to 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--red us--e--less
f-f-f-frauds. The old ship knows as much as the best
of you." He snapped his teeth audibly and growled
through them, "The silly law requires a captain."
Sterne had taken heart of grace meantime.
"And the silly insurance people too, as well," he said
lightly. "But never mind that. What I want to ask
is: Why shouldn't _I_ do, sir? I don't say but you could
take a steamer about the world as well as any of us
sailors. I don't pretend to tell YOU that it is a very
great trick . . ." He emitted a short, hollow guffaw,
familiarly . . . "I didn't make the law--but there it
is; and I am an active young fellow! I quite hold with
your ideas; I know your ways by this time, Mr. Massy.
I wouldn't try to give myself airs like that--that--er
lazy specimen of an old man up there."
He put a marked emphasis on the last sentence, to
lead Massy away from the track in case . . . but he
did not doubt of now holding his success. The chief
engineer seemed nonplused, like a slow man invited to
catch hold of a whirligig of some sort.
"What you want, sir, is a chap with no nonsense about
him, who would be content to be your sailing-master.
Quite right, too. Well, I am fit for the 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 your ship--and no one else. Just listen
to his feet pit-patting above us on the bridge--real
officer in charge. He's taking her up the river while
the 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, one hand 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't help hearing
of it on board. It's no secret. And it has been the
talk on shore 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't dismiss him for
indolence. Difficult to prove in court, and so on. Why,
yes. But if you say the word, sir, I can tell you some-
thing about his indolence that will give you the clear
right to fire him out on the spot and put me in charge
for the rest of this very trip--yes, sir, before we leave
Batu Beru--and make him pay a dollar a day for his
keep till we 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 to take
your bare word. A definite statement from you would
be as good as a bond."
His eyes began to shine. He insisted. A simple state-
ment,--and he thought to himself that he would man-
age somehow to stick in his berth as long as it suited
him. He would make himself indispensable; the ship
had a bad name in her port; it would be easy to scare
the fellows off. Massy would 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 at close quarters with that uncon-
scious impudence which had the power to enrage Massy
beyond anything.
The engineer spoke very distinctly.
"Listen well to me, then, Mr. Sterne: I wouldn't--
d'ye hear?--I wouldn't promise 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 of the handle pulled the door to. The
terrific slam darkened the cabin instantaneously to his
eye as if after the flash of an explosion. At once he
dropped into the chair. "Oh, no! You don't!" he
whispered faintly.
The ship had in that place to shave the bank so close
that the gigantic wall of leaves came gliding like a
shutter against the port; the darkness of the primeval
forest seemed to flow into that bare cabin with the odor
of rotting leaves, of sodden soil--the strong muddy smell
of the living earth steaming uncovered after the pass-
ing of a deluge. The bushes swished loudly alongside;
above there was a series of crackling sounds, with a
sharp rain of small broken branches falling on the
bridge; a creeper with a great rustle snapped on the
head of a boat davit, and a long, luxuriant green twig
actually whipped in and out of the open port, leaving
behind a few torn leaves that remained suddenly at rest
on Mr. Massy's blanket. Then, the ship sheering out
in the stream, the light began to return but did not
augment beyond a subdued clearness: for the sun was
very low already, and the river, wending its sinuous
course through a multitude of secular trees as if at the
bottom of a precipitous gorge, had been already in-
vaded by a deepening gloom--the swift precursor of
the night.
"Oh, no, you don't!" murmured the engineer again.
His lips trembled almost imperceptibly; his hands too,
a little: and to calm himself he opened the writing-desk,
spread out a sheet of thin grayish paper covered with
a mass of printed figures and began to scan them at-
tentively for the twentieth time this trip at least.
With his elbows propped, his head between his hands,
he seemed to lose himself in the study of an abstruse
problem in mathematics. It was the list of the winning
numbers from the last drawing of the great lottery
which 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 had slipped away from
him entirely, as another man, according to his nature,
would not have been able to conceive a world without
fresh air, without activity, or without affection. A
great pile of flimsy sheets had been growing for years
in his desk, while the Sofala, driven by the faithful
Jack, wore out her boilers in tramping up and down the
Straits, from cape to cape, from river to river, from
bay to bay; accumulating by that hard labor of an
overworked, starved ship the blackened mass of these
documents. Massy kept them under lock and key like
a treasure. There was in them, as in the experience
of life, the fascination of hope, the excitement of a half-
penetrated mystery, the longing of a half-satisfied
desire.
For days together, on a trip, he would shut himself
up in his berth with them: the thump of the toiling
engines pulsated in his ear; and he would weary his
brain poring over the rows of disconnected figures, be-
wildering by their senseless sequence, resembling the
hazards of destiny itself. He nourished a conviction
that there must be some logic lurking somewhere in the
results of chance. He thought he had seen its very
form. His head swam; his limbs ached; he puffed at
his pipe mechanically; a contemplative stupor would
soothe the fretfulness of his temper, like the passive
bodily quietude procured by a drug, while the intellect
remains tensely on the stretch. Nine, nine, aught, four,
two. He made a note. The next winning number of
the great prize was forty-seven thousand and five. These
numbers of course would have to be avoided in the future
when writing to Manilla for the tickets. He mumbled,
pencil in hand . . . "and five. Hm . . . hm." He
wetted his finger: the papers rustled. Ha! But what's
this? Three years ago, in the September drawing, it
was number nine, aught, four, two that took the first
prize. Most remarkable. There was a hint there of
a definite rule! He was afraid of missing some recondite
principle in the overwhelming wealth of his material.
What could it be? and for half an hour he would remain
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
unshaken confidence, jump and go out. He would
walk swiftly back and forth on that part of the foredeck
which was kept clear of the lumber and of the bodies of
the native passengers. They were a great nuisance, but
they were also a source of profit that could not be dis-
dained. He needed every penny of profit the Sofala
could make. Little enough it was, in all conscience!
The incertitude of chance gave him no concern, since
he 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 matter of time and of
taking as many tickets as he could afford for every
drawing. He generally took rather more; all the earn-
ings of the ship went 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 reasoned and
at the same time a passionate regret. He scowled at
the lascars with their deck brooms, at the quarter-
masters rubbing the brass rails with greasy rags; he
was eager to shake his fist and roar abuse in bad Malay
at the poor carpenter--a timid, sickly, opium-fuddled
Chinaman, in loose blue drawers for all costume, who
invariably dropped his tools and fled below, with stream-
ing tail and shaking all over, before the fury of that
"devil." But it was when he raised up his eyes to the
bridge where one of these sailor frauds was always
planted by law in charge of his ship that he felt almost
dizzy with rage. He abominated them all; it was an
old feud, from the time he first went to sea, an un-
licked cub with a great opinion of himself, in the
engine-room. The slights that had been put upon him.
The persecutions he had suffered at the hands of skip-
pers--of absolute nobodies in a steamship after all.
And now that he had risen to be a shipowner they were
still a plague to him: he had absolutely to pay away
precious money to the conceited useless loafers:--As if
a fully qualified engineer--who was the owner as well--
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 had come in time to hate
the ship too for the repairs she required, for the coal-
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 could not do without
er; he needed her; he must hang on to her tooth and
nail to keep his head above water till the expected flood
of fortune came sweeping up and landed him safely on
the high shore of his ambition.
It was now to do nothing, nothing whatever, and have
plenty of money to do it on. He had tasted of power,
the highest form of it his limited experience was aware
of--the power of shipowning. What a deception!
Vanity of vanities! He wondered at his folly. He had
thrown away the substance for the shadow. Of the
gratification of wealth he did not know enough to excite
his imagination with any visions of luxury. How could
he--the child of a drunken boiler-maker--going
straight from the workshop into the engine-room of a
north-country collier! But the notion of the absolute
idleness of wealth he could very well conceive. He
reveled in it, to forget his present troubles; he imagined
himself walking about the streets of Hull (he knew their
gutters well as a boy) with his pockets full of sov-
ereigns. He would buy himself a house; his married
sisters, their husbands, his old workshop chums, would
render him infinite homage. There would be nothing
to think of. His word would be 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, had cringed joyfully
before him in the evening, when the news had come.
Poor Charley, though he made his living by ministering
to various abject vices, gave credit for their food to
many a piece of white wreckage. He was naively over-
joyed at the idea of his old bills being paid, and he
reckoned confidently on a spell of festivities in the
cavernous grog-shop downstairs. Massy remembered
the curious, respectful looks of the "trashy" white men
in the place. His heart had swelled within him. Massy
had left Charley's infamous den directly he had realized
the possibilities open to him, and with his nose in the air.
Afterwards the memory of these adulations was a great
sadness.
This was the true power of money,--and no trouble
with it, nor any thinking required either. He thought
with difficulty and felt vividly; to his blunt brain the
problems offered by any ordered scheme of life seemed
in their cruel toughness to have been put in his way
by the obvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner
everyone had conspired to make him a nobody. How
could he have been such a fool as to purchase that ac-
cursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there
was no end to this swindling; and as the difficulties of his
improvident ambition gathered thicker round him, he
really came to hate everybody he had ever come in con-
tact with. A temper naturally irritable and an amazing
sensitiveness to the claims of his own personality had
ended by making of life for him a sort of inferno--a
place where his lost soul had been given up to the tor-
ment of savage brooding.
But he had never hated anyone so much as that old
man who had turned up one evening to save him from
an utter disaster,--from the conspiracy of the wretched
sailors. He seemed to have fallen on board from the
sky. His footsteps echoed on the empty steamer, and
the strange deep-toned voice on deck repeating inter-
rogatively the words, "Mr. Massy, Mr. Massy there?"
had been startling like a wonder. And coming up from
the depths of the cold engine-room, where he had been
pottering dismally with a candle amongst the enormous
shadows, thrown on all sides by the skeleton limbs of ma-
chinery, Massy had been struck dumb by astonishment
in the presence 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 before the pursuing
irony of his disaster. Afterwards he could not believe
his ears. 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 vanished like a
shape of mist. The gravity, the dignity, the firm and
courteous tone of that athletic old stranger impressed
Massy. He was almost afraid. But it was no dream.
Five hundred pounds are no dream. At once he became
suspicious. What did it mean? Of course it was an
offer to catch hold of for dear life. But what could
there be behind?
Before they had parted, after appointing a meeting
in a solicitor's office early on the morrow, Massy was
asking himself, What is his motive? He spent the night
in hammering out the clauses of the agreement--a
unique instrument of its sort whose tenor got bruited
abroad somehow and became the talk and wonder of the
port.
Massy's object had been to secure for himself as many
ways as possible of getting rid of his partner without
being called upon at once to pay back his share. Cap-
tain Whalley's efforts were directed to making the money
secure. Was it not Ivy's money--a part of her fortune
whose only other asset was the time-defying body of her
old father? Sure of his forbearance in the strength of
his love for her, he accepted, with stately serenity,
Massy's stupidly cunning paragraphs against his in-
competence, his dishonesty, his drunkenness, for the sake
of other stringent stipulations. At the end of three
years he was at liberty to withdraw from the partner-
ship, taking his money with him. Provision was made
for forming a fund to pay him off. But if he left the
Sofala before the term, from whatever cause (barring
death), Massy was to have a whole year for paying.
"Illness?" the lawyer had suggested: a young man
fresh from Europe and not overburdened with business,
who was rather amused. Massy began to whine unctu-
ously, "How could he be expected? . . ."
"Let that go," Captain Whalley had said with a
superb confidence in his body. "Acts of God," he
added. In the midst of life we are in death, but he
trusted his Maker with a still greater fearlessness--his
Maker who knew his thoughts, his human affections, and
his motives. His Creator knew 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
I can remember," he had remarked. "Let it go."
But at this early stage he had already awakened
Massy's hostility by refusing to make it six hundred
instead of five. "I cannot do that," was all he had said,
simply, but with so much decision that Massy desisted
at once from pressing the point, but had thought to
himself, "Can't! Old curmudgeon. WON'T! He must
have lots of money, but he would like to get hold of a
soft berth and the sixth part of my profits for nothing
if he only could."
And during these years Massy's dislike grew under the
restraint of something resembling fear. The simplicity
of that man appeared dangerous. Of late he had
changed, however, had appeared less formidable and
with a lessened vigor of life, as though he had received
a secret wound. But still he remained incomprehensible
in his simplicity, fearlessness, and rectitude. And when
Massy learned that he meant to leave him at the end of
the time, to leave him confronted with the problem of
boilers, his dislike blazed up secretly into hate.
It had made him so clear-eyed that for a long time now
Mr. Sterne could have told him nothing he did not
know. He had much ado in trying to terrorize that
mean sneak into silence; he wanted to deal alone with
the situation; and--incredible as it might have ap-
peared to Mr. Sterne--he had not yet given up the de-
sire and the hope of inducing that hated old man to
stay. Why! there was nothing else to do, unless he were
to abandon his chances of fortune. But now, suddenly,
since the crossing of the bar at Batu Beru things
seemed to be coming rapidly to a point. It disquieted
him so much that the study of the winning numbers
failed to soothe his agitation: and the twilight in the
cabin deepened, very somber.
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 to force his
action. He took his head again into his hands; his im-
mobility confined in the darkness of this shut-up little
place seemed to make him a thing apart infinitely re-
moved from the stir and the sounds of the deck.
He heard them: the passengers were beginning to
jabber excitedly; somebody dragged a heavy box
past his door. He heard Captain Whalley's voice
above--
"Stations, Mr. Sterne." And the answer from some-
where 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-room gong. The propeller went on beating
slowly: one, two, three; one, two, three--with pauses as
if hesitating on the turn. The gong clanged time after
time, and the water churned this way and that by the
blades was making a great noisy commotion alongside.
Mr. Massy did not move. A shore-light on the other
bank, a quarter of a mile across the river, drifted, no
bigger than a tiny star, passing slowly athwart the cir-
cle of the port. Voices from Mr. Van Wyk's jetty an-
swered the hails from the ship; ropes were thrown and
missed and thrown again; the swaying flame of a torch
carried in a large sampan coming to fetch away in state
the Rajah 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 ponderous turns the
engines stopped, and the prolonged clanging of the
gong signified that the captain had done with them. A
great number of boats and canoes of all sizes boarded
the off-side of the Sofala. Then after a time the tumult
of splashing, of cries, of shuffling feet, of packages
dropped with a thump, the noise of the native passen-
gers going away, subsided slowly. On the shore, a
voice, cultivated, slightly authoritative, spoke very
close alongside--
"Brought any mail for me this time?"
"Yes, Mr. Van Wyk." This was from Sterne, an-
swering over the rail in a tone 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 you do 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 his cabin lazily. He contented himself
to bellow out through the closed door--
"You--Jack!"
The footsteps came back without haste; the door
handle rattled, and the second engineer appeared in the
opening, shadowy in the sheen of the skylight at his
back, with his face apparently as black as the rest of
his figure.
"We have been very long coming up this time," Mr.
Massy growled, without changing 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 subordinate without animation, huskily. "Go
down there and carry a head of steam on them yourself--
if you dare. I don't."
"You aren't worth your salt then," Massy said. The
other made a faint noise which resembled a laugh but
might have been a snarl.
"Better go slow than stop the ship altogether," he
admonished his admired superior. Mr. Massy moved
at last. He turned in his chair, and grinding his
teeth--
"Dam' you and the ship! I wish she were at the
bottom of the sea. Then you would have to starve."
The trusty second engineer closed the door gently.
Massy listened. Instead of passing on to the bath-
room where he should have gone to clean himself, the
second entered his cabin, which was next door. Mr.
Massy jumped up and waited. Suddenly he heard the
lock snap in there. 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 ap-
peared, approaching the gangway. He heard a voice
tinged with contempt--
"I would rather doubt your word. But I shall cer-
tainly speak to him of this."
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 the deck and nearly bounded into him
where he stood beyond the circle of light from the gang-
way lamp. When it had passed towards the bridge,
after exchanging a hurried "Good evening," Massy
said surlily to Sterne who 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. Neither are 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."
