back, and sought for Mr. Massy's coat. He
could swim indeed; people sucked down by the whirlpool of a sinking ship
do come up sometimes to the surface, and it was unseemly that a Whalley,
who had made up his mind to die, should be beguiled by chance into a
struggle. He would put all these pieces of iron into his own pockets.

They, looking from the boat, saw the Sofala, a black mass upon a black
sea, lying still at an appalling cant. No sound came from her. Then,
with a great bizarre shuffling noise, as if the boilers had broken
through the bulkheads, and with a faint muffled detonation, where the
ship had been there appeared for a moment something standing upright and
narrow, like a rock out of the sea. Then that too disappeared.

When the Sofala failed to come back to Batu Beru at the proper time, Mr.
Van Wyk understood at once that he would never see her any more. But he
did not know what had happened till some months afterwards, when, in a
native craft lent him by his Sultan, he had made his way to the Sofala's
port of registry, where already her existence and the official inquiry
into her loss was beginning to be forgotten.

It had not been a very remarkable or interesting case, except for the
fact that the captain had gone down with his sinking ship. It was the
only life lost; and Mr. Van Wyk would not have been able to learn any
details had it not been for Sterne, whom he met one day on the quay
near the bridge over the creek, almost on the very spot where Captain
Whalley, to preserve his daughter's five hundred pounds intact, had
turned to get a sampan which would take him on board the Sofala.

From afar Mr. Van Wyk saw Sterne blink straight at him and raise his
hand to his hat. They drew into the shade of a building (it was a bank),
and the mate related how the boat with the crew got into Pangu Bay about
six hours after the accident, and how they had lived for a fortnight in
a state of destitution before they found an opportunity to get away from
that beastly place. The inquiry had exonerated everybody from all blame.
The loss of the ship was put down to an unusual set of the current.
Indeed, it could not have been anything else: there was no other way
to account for the ship being set seven miles to the eastward of her
position during the middle watch.

"A piece of bad luck for me, sir."

Sterne passed his tongue on his lips, and glanced aside. "I lost the
advantage of being employed by you, sir. I can