“So you still say you must go?”
“I must indeed.”
“And you couldn’t at least leave the money for a term of years?”
“Impossible.”
“Can’t trust it with me without your care, eh?”
Captain Whalley remained silent. Massy sighed deeply over the back of
the chair.
“It would just do to save me,” he said in a tremulous voice.
“I’ve saved you once.”
The chief engineer took off his coat with careful movements, and
proceeded to feel for the brass hook screwed into the wooden stanchion.
For this purpose he placed himself right in front of the binnacle, thus
hiding completely the compass-card from the quartermaster at the wheel.
“Tuan!” the lascar at last murmured softly, meaning to let the white man
know that he could not see to steer.
Mr. Massy had accomplished his purpose. The coat was hanging from the
nail, within six inches of the binnacle. And directly he had stepped
aside the quartermaster, a middle-aged, pock-marked, Sumatra Malay,
almost as dark as a negro, perceived with amazement that in that short
time, in this smooth water, with no wind at all, the ship had gone
swinging far out of her course. He had never known her get away like
this before. With a slight grunt of astonishment he turned the wheel
hastily to bring her head back north, which was the course. The grinding
of the steering-chains, the chiding murmurs of the Serang, who had come
over to the wheel, made a slight stir, which attracted Captain Whalley’s
anxious attention. He said, “Take better care.” Then everything settled
to the usual quiet on the bridge. Mr. Massy had disappeared.
But the iron in the pockets of the coat had done its work; and the
Sofala, heading north by the compass, made untrue by this simple device,
was no longer making a safe course for Pangu Bay.
The hiss of water parted by her stem, the throb of her engines, all the
sounds of her faithful and laborious life, went on uninterrupted in the
great calm of the sea joining on all sides the motionless layer of cloud
over the sky. A gentle stillness as vast as the world seemed to wait
upon her path, enveloping her lovingly in a supreme caress. Mr. Massy
thought there could be no better night for an arranged shipwreck.
Run up high and dry on one of the reefs east of Pangu--wait for
daylight--hole in the bottom--out boats--Pangu Bay same evening. That’s
about it. As soon as she touched he would hasten on the bridge, get hold
of the coat (nobody would notice in the dark), and shake it upside-down
over the side, or even fling it into the sea. A detail. Who could
guess? Coat been seen hanging there from that hook hundreds of times.
Nevertheless, when he sat down on the lower step of the bridge-ladder
his knees knocked together a little. The waiting part was the worst
of it. At times he would begin to pant quickly, as though he had been
running, and then breathe largely, swelling with the intimate sense of
a mastered fate. Now and then he would hear the shuffle of the Serang’s
bare feet up there: quiet, low voices would exchange a few words, and
lapse almost at once into silence. . . .
“Tell me directly you see any land, Serang.”
“Yes, Tuan. Not yet.”
“No, not yet,” Captain Whalley would agree.
The ship had been the best friend of his decline. He had sent all the
money he had made by and in the Sofala to his daughter. His thought
lingered on the name. How often he and his wife had talked over the cot
of the child in the big stern-cabin of the Condor; she would grow up,
she would marry, she would love them, they would live near her and look
at her happiness--it would go on without end. Well, his wife was dead,
to the child he had given all he had to give; he wished he could come
near her, see her, see her face once, live in the sound of her
voice, that could make the darkness of the living grave ready for him
supportable. He had been starved of love too long. He imagined her
tenderness.
The Serang had been peering forward, and now and then glancing at the
chair. He fidgeted restlessly, and suddenly burst out close to Captain
Whalley--
“Tuan, do you see anything of the land?”
The alarmed voice brought Captain Whalley to his feet at once. He! See!
And at the question, the curse of his blindness seemed to fall on him
with a hundredfold force.
“What’s the time?” he cried.
“Half-past three, Tuan.”
“We are close. You _must_ see. Look, I say. Look.”
Mr. Massy, awakened by the sudden sound of talking from a short doze on
the lowest step, wondered why he was there. Ah! A faintness came over
him. It is one thing to sow the seed of an accident and another to see
the monstrous fruit hanging over your head ready to fall in the sound of
agitated voices.
“There’s no danger,” he muttered thickly.
The horror of incertitude had seized upon Captain Whalley, the miserable
mistrust of men, of things--of the very earth. He had steered that very
course thirty-six times by the same compass--if anything was certain
in this world it was its absolute, unerring correctness. Then what had
happened? Did the Serang lie? Why lie? Why? Was he going blind too?
“Is there a mist? Look low on the water. Low down, I say.”
“Tuan, there’s no mist. See for yourself.”
Captain Whalley steadied the trembling of his limbs by an effort.
Should he stop the engines at once and give himself away. A gust of
irresolution swayed all sorts of bizarre notions in his mind. The
unusual had come, and he was not fit to deal with it. In this passage of
inexpressible anguish he saw her face--the face of a young girl--with
an amazing strength of illusion. No, he must not give himself away after
having gone so far for her sake. “You steered the course? You made it?
Speak the truth.”
“Ya, Tuan. On the course now. Look.”
Captain Whalley strode to the binnacle, which to him made such a dim
spot of light in an infinity of shapeless shadow. By bending his face
right down to the glass he had been able before . . .
Having to stoop so low, he put out, instinctively, his arm to where he
knew there was a stanchion to steady himself against. His hand closed
on something that was not wood but cloth. The slight pull adding to the
weight, the loop broke, and Mr. Massy’s coat falling, struck the deck
heavily with a dull thump, accompanied by a lot of clicks.
“What’s this?”
Captain Whalley fell on his knees, with groping hands extended in a
frank gesture of blindness. They trembled, these hands feeling for the
truth. He saw it. Iron near the compass. Wrong course. Wreck her! His
ship. Oh no. Not that.
“Jump and stop her!” he roared out in a voice not his own.
He ran himself--hands forward, a blind man, and while the clanging of
the gong echoed still all over the ship, she seemed to butt full tilt
into the side of a mountain.
It was low water along the north side of the strait. Mr. Massy had not
reckoned on that. Instead of running aground for half her length, the
Sofala butted the sheer ridge of a stone reef which would have been
awash at high water. This made the shock absolutely terrific. Everybody
in the ship that was standing was thrown down headlong: the shaken
rigging made a great rattling to the very trucks. All the lights went
out: several chain-guys, snapping, clattered against the funnel: there
were crashes, pings of parted wire-rope, splintering sounds, loud
cracks, the masthead lamp flew over the bows, and all the doors about
the deck began to bang heavily. Then, after having hit, she rebounded,
hit the second time the very same spot like a battering-ram. This
completed the havoc: the funnel, with all the guys gone, fell over with
a hollow sound of thunder, smashing the wheel to bits, crushing the
frame of the awnings, breaking the lockers, filling the bridge with
a mass of splinters, sticks, and broken wood. Captain Whalley picked
himself up and stood knee-deep in wreckage, torn, bleeding, knowing the
nature of the danger he had escaped mostly by the sound, and holding Mr.
Massy’s coat in his arms.
By this time Sterne (he had been flung out of his bunk) had set the
engines astern. They worked for a few turns, then a voice bawled out,
“Get out of the damned engine-room, Jack!”--and they stopped; but the
ship had gone clear of the reef and lay still, with a heavy cloud of
steam issuing from the broken deckpipes, and vanishing in wispy shapes
into the night. Notwithstanding the suddenness of the disaster there was
no shouting, as if the very violence of the shock had half-stunned the
shadowy lot of people swaying here and there about her decks. The voice
of the Serang pronounced distinctly above the confused murmurs--
“Eight fathom.” He had heaved the lead.