“. . . With the boilers worn out and the survey hanging over my head,
Captain Whalley--Captain Whalley, I say, what do you do with your
money? You must have stacks of money somewhere--a man like you must. It
stands to reason. I am not a fool, you know, Captain Whalley--partner.”
Again he paused, as though he had done for good. He passed his tongue
over his lips, gave a backward glance at the Serang conning the ship
with quiet whispers and slight signs of the hand. The wash of the
propeller sent a swift ripple, crested with dark froth, upon a long flat
spit of black slime. The Sofala had entered the river; the trail she had
stirred up over the bar was a mile astern of her now, out of sight, had
disappeared utterly; and the smooth, empty sea along the coast was left
behind in the glittering desolation of sunshine. On each side of her,
low down, the growth of somber twisted mangroves covered the semi-liquid
banks; and Massy continued in his old tone, with an abrupt start, as if
his speech had been ground out of him, like the tune of a music-box, by
turning a handle.
“Though if anybody ever got the best of me, it is you. I don’t mind
saying this. I’ve said it--there! What more can you want? Isn’t that
enough for your pride, Captain Whalley. You got over me from the first.
It’s all of a piece, when I look back at it. You allowed me to insert
that clause about intemperance without saying anything, only looking
very sick when I made a point of it going in black on white. How could
I tell what was wrong about you. There’s generally something wrong
somewhere. And, lo and behold! when you come on board it turns out that
you’ve been in the habit of drinking nothing but water for years and
years.”
His dogmatic reproachful whine stopped. He brooded profoundly, after
the manner of crafty and unintelligent men. It seemed inconceivable
that Captain Whalley should not laugh at the expression of disgust that
overspread the heavy, yellow countenance. But Captain Whalley never
raised his eyes--sitting in his arm-chair, outraged, dignified, and
motionless.
“Much good it was to me,” Massy remonstrated monotonously, “to insert a
clause for dismissal for intemperance against a man who drinks nothing
but water. And you looked so upset, too, when I read my draft in
the lawyer’s office that morning, Captain Whalley,--you looked so
crestfallen, that I made sure I had gone home on your weak spot. A
shipowner can’t be too careful as to the sort of skipper he gets. You
must have been laughing at me in your sleeve all the blessed time. . . .
Eh? What are you going to say?”
Captain Whalley had only shuffled his feet slightly. A dull animosity
became apparent in Massy’s sideways stare.
“But recollect that there are other grounds of dismissal. There’s
habitual carelessness, amounting to incompetence--there’s gross and
persistent neglect of duty. I am not quite as big a fool as you try to
make me out to be. You have been careless of late--leaving everything
to that Serang. Why! I’ve seen you letting that old fool of a Malay
take bearings for you, as if you were too big to attend to your work
yourself. And what do you call that silly touch-and-go manner in which
you took the ship over the bar just now? You expect me to put up with
that?”
Leaning on his elbow against the ladder abaft the bridge, Sterne, the
mate, tried to hear, blinking the while from the distance at the second
engineer, who had come up for a moment, and stood in the engine-room
companion. Wiping his hands on a bunch of cotton waste, he looked about
with indifference to the right and left at the river banks slipping
astern of the Sofala steadily.
Massy turned full at the chair. The character of his whine became again
threatening.
“Take care. I may yet dismiss you and freeze to your money for a year. I
may . . .”
But before the silent, rigid immobility of the man whose money had come
in the nick of time to save him from utter ruin, his voice died out in
his throat.
“Not that I want you to go,” he resumed after a silence, and in an
absurdly insinuating tone. “I want nothing better than to be friends
and renew the agreement, if you will consent to find another couple of
hundred to help with the new boilers, Captain Whalley. I’ve told you
before. She must have new boilers; you know it as well as I do. Have you
thought this over?”
He waited. The slender stem of the pipe with its bulky lump of a bowl at
the end hung down from his thick lips. It had gone out. Suddenly he took
it from between his teeth and wrung his hands slightly.
“Don’t you believe me?” He thrust the pipe bowl into the pocket of his
shiny black jacket.
“It’s like dealing with the devil,” he said. “Why don’t you speak? At
first you were so high and mighty with me I hardly dared to creep about
my own deck. Now I can’t get a word from you. You don’t seem to see me
at all. What does it mean? Upon my soul, you terrify me with this deaf
and dumb trick. What’s going on in that head of yours? What are you
plotting against me there so hard that you can’t say a word? You will
never make me believe that you--you--don’t know where to lay your hands
on a couple of hundred. You have made me curse the day I was born. . . .”
“Mr. Massy,” said Captain Whalley suddenly, without stirring.
The engineer started violently.
“If that is so I can only beg you to forgive me.”
“Starboard,” muttered the Serang to the helmsman; and the Sofala began
to swing round the bend into the second reach.
“Ough!” Massy shuddered. “You make my blood run cold. What made you come
here? What made you come aboard that evening all of a sudden, with your
high talk and your money--tempting me? I always wondered what was your
motive? You fastened yourself on me to have easy times and grow fat on
my life blood, I tell you. Was that it? I believe you are the greatest
miser in the world, or else why . . .”
“No. I am only poor,” interrupted Captain Whalley, stonily.
“Steady,” murmured the Serang. Massy turned away with his chin on his
shoulder.
“I don’t believe it,” he said in his dogmatic tone. Captain Whalley
made no movement. “There you sit like a gorged vulture--exactly like a
vulture.”
He embraced the middle of the reach and both the banks in one blank
unseeing circular glance, and left the bridge slowly.