elf corrupt to the marrow of
his bones. He laughed a little with the intimate scorn of his worldly
prudence. Clearly, with a fellow of that sort, and in the peculiar
relation they were to stand to each other, it would not have done to
blurt out everything. He did not like the fellow. He did not like his
spells of fawning loquacity and bursts of resentfulness. In the end--a
poor devil. He would not have liked to stand in his shoes. Men were
not evil, after all. He did not like his sleek hair, his queer way of
standing at right angles, with his nose in the air, and glancing along
his shoulder at you. No. On the whole, men were not bad--they were only
silly or unhappy.

Captain Whalley had finished considering the discretion of that
step--and there was the whole long night before him. In the full light
his long beard would glisten like a silver breastplate covering his
heart; in the spaces between the lamps his burly figure passed less
distinct, loomed very big, wandering, and mysterious. No; there was
not much real harm in men: and all the time a shadow marched with him,
slanting on his left hand--which in the East is a presage of evil.

. . . . . . .

"Can you make out the clump of palms yet, Serang?" asked Captain Whalley
from his chair on the bridge of the Sofala approaching the bar of Batu
Beru.

"No, Tuan. By-and-by see." The old Malay, in a blue dungaree suit,
planted on his bony dark feet under the bridge awning, put his hands
behind his back and stared ahead out of the innumerable wrinkles at the
corners of his eyes.

Captain Whalley sat still, without lifting his head to look for himself.
Three years--thirty-six times. He had made these palms thirty-six times
from the southward. They would come into view at the proper time. Thank
God, the old ship made her courses and distances trip after trip, as
correct as clockwork. At last he murmured again--

"In sight yet?"

"The sun makes a very great glare, Tuan."

"Watch well, Serang."

"Ya, Tuan."

A white man had ascended the ladder from the deck noiselessly, and had
listened quietly to this short colloquy. Then he stepped out on the
bridge and began to walk from end to end, holding up the long cherrywood
stem of a pipe. His black hair lay plastered in long lanky wisps
across the bald summit of his head; he had a furrowed brow, a yellow
complexion, and a thick shapeless nose. A scanty growth of whisker did
not conceal the contour of his jaw. His aspect wa