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.'
He pointed into the night toward the northwest and stared as if he could see from where he stood that Bay of Bengal where—as he affirmed—he would be so much more at home.
'You'll soon get used—' muttered Lingard, swinging in his rapid walk past his mate. Then he turned round, came back, and asked sharply.
'You said there was nothing afloat in sight before dark? Hey?'
'Not that I could see, sir. When I took the deck again at eight, I asked that serang whether there was anything about; and I understood him to say there was no more as when I went below at six. This is a lonely sea at times— ain't it, sir? Now, one would think at this time of the year the homeward-bounders from China would be pretty thick here.'
'Yes,' said Lingard, 'we have met very few ships since we left Pedra Branca over the stern. Yes; it has been a lonely sea. But for all that, Shaw, this sea, if lonely, is not blind. Every island in it is an eye. And now, since our squadron has left for the China waters—'
He did not finish his sentence. Shaw put his hands in his pockets, and propped his back against the sky-light, comfortably.
