, keel to keel,
with its own image reflected in the unframed and immense mirror of
the sea. To the south and east the double islands watched silently the
double ship that seemed fixed amongst them forever, a hopeless captive
of the calm, a helpless prisoner of the shallow sea.

Since midday, when the light and capricious airs of these seas had
abandoned the little brig to its lingering fate, her head had swung
slowly to the westward and the end of her slender and polished jib-boom,
projecting boldly beyond the graceful curve of the bow, pointed at the
setting sun, like a spear poised high in the hand of an enemy. Right
aft by the wheel the Malay quartermaster stood with his bare, brown feet
firmly planted on the wheel-grating, and holding the spokes at right
angles, in a solid grasp, as though the ship had been running before a
gale. He stood there perfectly motionless, as if petrified but ready
to tend the helm as soon as fate would permit the brig to gather way
through the oily sea.

The only other human being then visible on the brig's deck was the
person in charge: a white man of low stature, thick-set, with shaven
cheeks, a grizzled moustache, and a face tinted a scarlet hue by the
burning suns and by the sharp salt breezes of the seas. He had thrown
off his light jacket, and clad only in white trousers and a thin cotton
singlet, with his stout arms crossed on his breast--upon which they
showed like two thick lumps of raw flesh--he prowled about from side to
side of the half-poop. On his bare feet he wore a pair of straw sandals,
and his head was protected by an enormous pith hat--once white but now
very dirty--which gave to the whole man the aspect of a phenomenal
and animated mushroom. At times he would interrupt his uneasy shuffle
athwart the break of the poop, and stand motionless with a vague gaze
fixed on the image of the brig in the calm water. He could also see down
there his own head and shoulders leaning out over the rail and he would
stand long, as if interested by his own features, and mutter vague
curses on the calm which lay upon the ship like an immovable burden,
immense and burning.

At last, he sighed profoundly, nerved himself for a great effort, and
making a start away from the rail managed to drag his slippers as far
as the binnacle. There he stopped again, exhausted and bored. From under
the lifted glass panes of the cabin skylight near by came the feeble
chirp of a canary, which appeared to