This was the kassab or store-keeper, the holder of a position of dignity and ease. The kassab was the only one of the crew taking their evening meal who noticed the presence on deck of their commander. He muttered something to the tindal who directly cocked his old hat on one side, which senseless action invested him with an altogether foolish appearance. The others heard, but went on somnolently feeding with spidery movements of their lean arms.
The sun was no more than a degree or so above the horizon, and from the heated surface of the waters a slight low mist began to rise; a mist thin, invisible to the human eye; yet strong enough to change the sun into a mere glowing red disc, a disc vertical and hot, rolling down to the edge of the horizontal and cold-looking disc of the shining sea. Then the edges touched and the circular expanse of water took on suddenly a tint, sombre, like a frown; deep, like the brooding meditation of evil.
The falling sun seemed to be arrested for a moment in his descent by the sleeping waters, while from it, to the motionless brig, shot out on the polished and dark surface of the sea a track of light, straight and shining, resplendent and direct; a path of gold and crimson and purple, a path that seemed to lead dazzling and terrible from the earth straight into heaven through the portals of a glorious death. It faded slowly. The sea vanquished the light. At last only a vestige of the sun remained, far off, like a red spark floating on the water. It lingered, and all at once—without warning—went out as if extinguished by a treacherous hand.
“Gone,” cried Lingard, who had watched intently yet missed the last moment. “Gone! Look at the cabin clock, Shaw!”
“Nearly right, I think, sir. Three minutes past six.”
The helmsman struck four bells sharply. Another barefooted seacannie glided on the far side of the poop to relieve the wheel, and the serang of the brig came up the ladder to take charge of the deck from Shaw. He came up to the compass, and stood waiting silently.
“The course is south by east when you get the wind, serang,” said Shaw, distinctly.
“Sou' by eas',” repeated the elderly Malay with grave earnestness.
“Let me know when she begins to steer,” added Lingard.
“Ya, Tuan,” answered the man, glancing rapidly at the sky. “Wind coming,” he muttered.
“I think so, too,” whispered Lingard as if to himself.
The shadows were gathering rapidly round the brig. A mulatto put his head out of the companion and called out:
“Ready, sir.”
“Let's get a mouthful of something to eat, Shaw,” said Lingard. “I say, just take a look around before coming below. It will be dark when we come up again.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Shaw, taking up a long glass and putting it to his eyes. “Blessed thing,” he went on in snatches while he worked the tubes in and out, “I can't—never somehow—Ah! I've got it right at last!”
He revolved slowly on his heels, keeping the end of the tube on the sky-line. Then he shut the instrument with a click, and said decisively:
“Nothing in sight, sir.”
He followed his captain down below rubbing his hands cheerfully.
For a good while there was no sound on the poop of the brig. Then the seacannie at the wheel spoke dreamily:
“Did the malim say there was no one on the sea?”
“Yes,” grunted the serang without looking at the man behind him.
“Between the islands there was a boat,” pronounced the man very softly.
The serang, his hands behind his back, his feet slightly apart, stood very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand. His face, now hardly visible, was as inexpressive as the door of a safe.
“Now, listen to me,” insisted the helmsman in a gentle tone.
The man in authority did not budge a hair's breadth. The seacannie bent down a little from the height of the wheel grating.
“I saw a boat,” he murmured with something of the tender obstinacy of a lover begging for a favour. “I saw a boat, O Haji Wasub! Ya! Haji Wasub!”
The serang had been twice a pilgrim, and was not insensible to the sound of his rightful title. There was a grim smile on his face.
“You saw a floating tree, O Sali,” he said, ironically.
“I am Sali, and my eyes are better than the bewitched brass thing that pulls out to a great length,” said the pertinacious helmsman. “There was a boat, just clear of the easternmost island. There was a boat, and they in her could see the ship on the light of the west—unless they are blind men lost on the sea. I have seen her. Have you seen her, too, O Haji Wasub?”
“Am I a fat white man?” snapped the serang. “I was a man of the sea before you were born, O Sali! The order is to keep silence and mind the rudder, lest evil befall the ship.”
After these words he resumed his rigid aloofness. He stood, his legs slightly apart, very stiff and straight, a little on one side of the compass stand. His eyes travelled incessantly from the illuminated card to the shadowy sails of the brig and back again, while his body was motionless as if made of wood and built into the ship's frame. Thus, with a forced and tense watchfulness, Haji Wasub, serang of the brig Lightning, kept the captain's watch unwearied and wakeful, a slave to duty.
In half an hour after sunset the darkness had taken complete possession of earth and heavens. The islands had melted into the night. And on the smooth water of the Straits, the little brig lying so still, seemed to sleep profoundly, wrapped up in a scented mantle of star light and silence.
II
It was half-past eight o'clock before Lingard came on deck again. Shaw—now with a coat on—trotted up and down the poop leaving behind him a smell of tobacco smoke. An irregularly glowing spark seemed to run by itself in the darkness before the rounded form of his head. Above the masts of the brig the dome of the clear heaven was full of lights that flickered, as if some mighty breathings high up there had been swaying about the flame of the stars. There was no sound along the brig's decks, and the heavy shadows that lay on it had the aspect, in that silence, of secret places concealing crouching forms that waited in perfect stillness for some decisive event. Lingard struck a match to light his cheroot, and his powerful face with narrowed eyes stood out for a moment in the night and vanished suddenly. Then two shadowy forms and two red sparks moved backward and forward on the poop. A larger, but a paler and oval patch of light from the compass lamps lay on the brasses of the wheel and on the breast of the Malay standing by the helm. Lingard's voice, as if unable altogether to master the enormous silence of the sea, sounded muffled, very calm—without the usual deep ring in it.
“Not much change, Shaw,” he said.
“No, sir, not much. I can just see the island—the big one—still in the same place. It strikes me, sir, that, for calms, this here sea is a devil of locality.”
He cut “locality” in two with an emphatic pause. It was a good word. He was pleased with himself for thinking of it. He went on again:
“Now—since noon, this big island—”
“Carimata, Shaw,” interrupted Lingard.
“Aye, sir; Carimata—I mean. I must say—being a stranger hereabouts—I haven't got the run of those—”
He was going to say “names” but checked himself and said, “appellations,” instead, sounding every syllable lovingly.
“Having for these last fifteen years,” he continued, “sailed regularly from London in East-Indiamen, I am more at home over there—in the Bay.”