And suddenly the barefooted Serang stepped away
noiselessly to steal a glance over the side.

Narrow of shoulder, in a suit of faded blue cotton, an old gray felt hat
rammed down on his head, with a hollow in the nape of his dark neck, and
with his slender limbs, he appeared from the back no bigger than a boy
of fourteen. There was a childlike impulsiveness in the curiosity with
which he watched the spread of the voluminous, yellowish convolutions
rolling up from below to the surface of the blue water like massive
clouds driving slowly upwards on the unfathomable sky. He was not
startled at the sight in the least. It was not doubt, but the certitude
that the keel of the Sofala must be stirring the mud now, which made him
peep over the side.

His peering eyes, set aslant in a face of the Chinese type, a little old
face, immovable, as if carved in old brown oak, had informed him long
before that the ship was not headed at the bar properly. Paid off from
the Fair Maid, together with the rest of the crew, after the completion
of the sale, he had hung, in his faded blue suit and floppy gray hat,
about the doors of the Harbor Office, till one day, seeing Captain
Whalley coming along to get a crew for the Sofala, he had put himself
quietly in the way, with his bare feet in the dust and an upward mute
glance. The eyes of his old commander had fallen on him favorably--it
must have been an auspicious day--and in less than half an hour the
white men in the "Ofiss" had written his name on a document as Serang of
the fire-ship Sofala. Since that time he had repeatedly looked at that
estuary, upon that coast, from this bridge and from this side of the
bar. The record of the visual world fell through his eyes upon his
unspeculating mind as on a sensitized plate through the lens of a
camera. His knowledge was absolute and precise; nevertheless, had he
been asked his opinion, and especially if questioned in the downright,
alarming manner of white men, he would have displayed the hesitation of
ignorance. He was certain of his facts--but such a certitude counted for
little against the doubt what answer would be pleasing. Fifty years ago,
in a jungle village, and before he was a day old, his father (who died
without ever seeing a white face) had had his nativity cast by a man of
skill and wisdom in astrology, because in the arrangement of the stars
may be read the last word of human destiny. His destiny had been to
thrive by the favor of