Part 1 (2/2)

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 gla.s.s panes of the cabin skylight near by came the feeble chirp of a canary, which appeared to give him some satisfaction. He listened, smiled faintly muttered ”d.i.c.ky, poor d.i.c.k--” and fell back into the immense silence of the world. His eyes closed, his head hung low over the hot bra.s.s of the binnacle top. Suddenly he stood up with a jerk and said sharply in a hoa.r.s.e voice:

”You've been sleeping--you. s.h.i.+ft the helm. She has got stern way on her.”

The Malay, without the least flinch of feature or pose, as if he had been an inanimate object called suddenly into life by some hidden magic of the words, spun the wheel rapidly, letting the spokes pa.s.s through his hands; and when the motion had stopped with a grinding noise, caught hold again and held on grimly. After a while, however, he turned his head slowly over his shoulder, glanced at the sea, and said in an obstinate tone:

”No catch wind--no get way.”

”No catch--no catch--that's all you know about it,” growled the red-faced seaman. ”By and by catch Ali--” he went on with sudden condescension. ”By and by catch, and then the helm will be the right way. See?”

The stolid seacannie appeared to see, and for that matter to hear, nothing. The white man looked at the impa.s.sive Malay with disgust, then glanced around the horizon--then again at the helmsman and ordered curtly:

”s.h.i.+ft the helm back again. Don't you feel the air from aft? You are like a dummy standing there.”

The Malay revolved the spokes again with disdainful obedience, and the red-faced man was moving forward grunting to himself, when through the open skylight the hail ”On deck there!” arrested him short, attentive, and with a sudden change to amiability in the expression of his face.

”Yes, sir,” he said, bending his ear toward the opening. ”What's the matter up there?” asked a deep voice from below.

The red-faced man in a tone of surprise said:

”Sir?”

”I hear that rudder grinding hard up and hard down. What are you up to, Shaw? Any wind?”

”Ye-es,” drawled Shaw, putting his head down the skylight and speaking into the gloom of the cabin. ”I thought there was a light air, and--but it's gone now. Not a breath anywhere under the heavens.”

He withdrew his head and waited a while by the skylight, but heard only the chirping of the indefatigable canary, a feeble twittering that seemed to ooze through the drooping red blossoms of geraniums growing in flower-pots under the gla.s.s panes. He strolled away a step or two before the voice from down below called hurriedly:

”Hey, Shaw? Are you there?”

”Yes, Captain Lingard,” he answered, stepping back. ”Have we drifted anything this afternoon?”

”Not an inch, sir, not an inch. We might as well have been at anchor.”

”It's always so,” said the invisible Lingard. His voice changed its tone as he moved in the cabin, and directly afterward burst out with a clear intonation while his head appeared above the slide of the cabin entrance:

”Always so! The currents don't begin till it's dark, when a man can't see against what confounded thing he is being drifted, and then the breeze will come. Dead on end, too, I don't doubt.”

Shaw moved his shoulders slightly. The Malay at the wheel, after making a dive to see the time by the cabin clock through the skylight, rang a double stroke on the small bell aft. Directly forward, on the main deck, a shrill whistle arose long drawn, modulated, dying away softly. The master of the brig stepped out of the companion upon the deck of his vessel, glanced aloft at the yards laid dead square; then, from the door-step, took a long, lingering look round the horizon.

He was about thirty-five, erect and supple. He moved freely, more like a man accustomed to stride over plains and hills, than like one who from his earliest youth had been used to counteract by sudden swayings of his body the rise and roll of cramped decks of small craft, tossed by the caprice of angry or playful seas.

He wore a grey flannel s.h.i.+rt, and his white trousers were held by a blue silk scarf wound tightly round his narrow waist. He had come up only for a moment, but finding the p.o.o.p shaded by the main-topsail he remained on deck bareheaded. The light chestnut hair curled close about his well-shaped head, and the clipped beard glinted vividly when he pa.s.sed across a narrow strip of sunlight, as if every hair in it had been a wavy and attenuated gold wire. His mouth was lost in the heavy moustache; his nose was straight, short, slightly blunted at the end; a broad band of deeper red stretched under the eyes, clung to the cheek bones. The eyes gave the face its remarkable expression. The eyebrows, darker than the hair, pencilled a straight line below the wide and unwrinkled brow much whiter than the sunburnt face. The eyes, as if glowing with the light of a hidden fire, had a red glint in their greyness that gave a scrutinizing ardour to the steadiness of their gaze.

That man, once so well known, and now so completely forgotten amongst the charming and heartless sh.o.r.es of the shallow sea, had amongst his fellows the nickname of ”Red-Eyed Tom.” He was proud of his luck but not of his good sense. He was proud of his brig, of the speed of his craft, which was reckoned the swiftest country vessel in those seas, and proud of what she represented.

She represented a run of luck on the Victorian goldfields; his sagacious moderation; long days of planning, of loving care in building; the great joy of his youth, the incomparable freedom of the seas; a perfect because a wandering home; his independence, his love--and his anxiety.

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