had stolen in through
her sides of iron and taken possession of her innermost recesses. The
illusion of perfect immobility seemed to fall upon her from the luminous
blue dome without a stain arching over a flat sea without a stir. The
faint breeze she had made for herself expired, as if all at once the air
had become too thick to budge; even the slight hiss of the water on her
stem died out. The narrow, long hull, carrying its way without a ripple,
seemed to approach the shoal water of the bar by stealth. The plunge of
the lead with the mournful, mechanical cry of the lascar came at longer
and longer intervals; and the men on her bridge seemed to hold their
breath. The Malay at the helm looked fixedly at the compass card, the
Captain and the Serang stared at the coast.

Massy had left the skylight, and, walking flat-footed, had returned
softly to the very spot on the bridge he had occupied before. A slow,
lingering grin exposed his set of big white teeth: they gleamed evenly
in the shade of the awning like the keyboard of a piano in a dusky room.

At last, pretending to talk to himself in excessive astonishment, he
said not very loud--

"Stop the engines now. What next, I wonder?"

He waited, stooping from the shoulders, his head bowed, his glance
oblique. Then raising his voice a shade--

"If I dared make an absurd remark I would say that you haven't the
stomach to . . ."

But a yelling spirit of excitement, like some frantic soul wandering
unsuspected in the vast stillness of the coast, had seized upon the body
of the lascar at the lead. The languid monotony of his sing-song changed
to a swift, sharp clamor. The weight flew after a single whir, the line
whistled, splash followed splash in haste. The water had shoaled, and
the man, instead of the drowsy tale of fathoms, was calling out the
soundings in feet.

"Fifteen feet. Fifteen, fifteen! Fourteen, fourteen . . ."

Captain Whalley lowered the arm holding the glasses. It descended slowly
as if by its own weight; no other part of his towering body stirred; and
the swift cries with their eager warning note passed him by as though he
had been deaf.

Massy, very still, and turning an attentive ear, had fastened his eyes
upon the silvery, close-cropped back of the steady old head. The ship
herself seemed to be arrested but for the gradual decrease of depth
under her keel.

"Thirteen feet . . . Thirteen! Twelve!" cried the leadsman anxiously
below the bridge.