“A beam sea setting in, Mr. Colet. Makes her roll.”
It was making her roll. But it was very agreeable. It shook off the weight of the heat. These were the first seas worth the lively name since the voyage began. It was like the real thing to see the decks getting wet, to be caught at a corner by a dollop of rollicking brine. Hullo, Sinclair! Colet mentioned this novelty as they met by the engine-room entrance. He spoke of it lightly, wiping some spray from his eyes. Sinclair showed amusement, but his gaze was elsewhere. They had to steady themselves, in their pause, by gripping the ironwork. The movements of the ship, to Colet’s surprise, were exhilarating. They shifted him from an old centre of thought. The rhythm of the ship’s compensations was the measure of easy and solid courage.
“I don’t know,” mused Colet, “but once, just once, I think I’d like to see all this when it was not play.”
“Play?” exclaimed the sailor. “Play? If anybody else had said that, I’d tell him not to be a fool.”
Colet made a dramatic appeal to the listening and jealous gods to forget his childish indiscretion. It was only his ignorance. It was born of his trust in his company. He reposed in the faith that the Altair was a sound old dear.
Sinclair grinned. “Perhaps you didn’t catch what the old man was mumbling at breakfast?” He poked his companion in the ribs. “You’re coming along, my son. A bit too confident, that’s all. When you’re a sailor, you’ll cross yourself if you hear someone talk as you did.”
“I’m sure of it. What was it the captain said at breakfast?”
“Oh, nothing. He’s a cautious old boy, I think. Wanted me to believe he doesn’t like the look of it. But I can’t smell anything in the wind. Seems all right. I don’t see anything in this.”
It was all right, though the draught which was upset by the rocking of the ship was languid, and the breath of an oven.
Night fell; the day was abolished abruptly. There were brief up-glarings of a desperate sun taken by an insurrection of darkness. He was put down. The authority of day was overturned. The ship alone of all the world below held with startled emphasis the memory of a brightness extinguished. For a few moments there was the pale wraith of a deck, vertiginous in its slant, with its fixtures bleak and exposed; and then the only lights were the stars concentrated low in patch of southern sky. In the south, the stars were the lights of a city without a name where there could be no land. They could see the frenzied glittering of its lamps. For the show of that city behaved only as would an hallucination in a region that was enthralled by the powers of darkness. Now its level was below them, and now it soared towards the meridian.
XV
“Come now, will you?” said the captain.
Colet was glad of a change from that erratic dinner-table, and gestured his readiness. He was to be purser for the evening. He followed the master out of the saloon. As he reached its door the opening uprose, as though to frustrate his intent. He gripped the doorpost. Whoa! He waited. The chance came. The deck took a slope the other way, and almost under control Colet shot through. The far side of the alleyway saved him, though harshly.
“She’s lively,” said the master. “Here we are.” He steadied Colet into his room.
“I thought monsoons were friendly winds,” Colet joked.
“There is no wind,” he was told. “Not yet. Just a bit of a swell. Sit there. That way you won’t feel it so much. There you are, if you would check the manifest for me with the stowage plan.” He stood over Colet, and explained the documents. “I was not about when she was loaded, and we have a number of ports. You can help me here. It’ll keep you from noticing her capers.”
It was not easy to ignore her capers. They raised a number of doubts which jolted one’s consideration from the job, yet could not be answered. Get on with the job then. Didn’t know enough to answer them. He knew about as much as an ant in its hill under a blundering cow; and the astral cow blundering about now had enormous splay hooves. There was a boom, and an answering panic of crocks in the pantry. His consideration of his job was shifted, and he glanced at Hale, to see whether this was serious. The attention of the captain, however, rapt as at prayer, was devoted to his desk. Hale but cleared his throat, and turned over a sheet as though it were a token of a rosary.
They worked without a word for a time, and then Colet put a question to the master.
“Eh?” said Hale, turning leisurely. “No, that is probably a slip. Make a mark there.”
The master remained, for a spell, thoughtful in that apposition to his amateur purser.
“It’s an idea of mine that there’s an intention to sell her out East, when we are cleared,” he soliloquised. “Chinese owners, I expect. But don’t discuss that outside. It’s only a guess since I took her over. I go by this and that.”
“Surely the owners would have told you?” Colet became bright. He was relieved to hear some cool and intelligent human sounds. It was enjoyable to encourage them.
Hale smiled wanly. “A ship’s master is not so important as he used to be. Like the rest
