Chapter 7

Sterne went down smirking and apparently not at all disconcerted, but
the engineer Massy remained on the bridge, moving about with uneasy
self-assertion. Everybody on board was his inferior--everyone without
exception. He paid their wages and found them in their food. They ate
more of his bread and pocketed more of his money than they were worth;
and they had no care in the world, while he alone had to meet all the
difficulties of shipowning. When he contemplated his position in all its
menacing entirety, it seemed to him that he had been for years the
prey of a band of parasites: and for years he had scowled at everybody
connected with the Sofala except, perhaps, at the Chinese firemen
who served to get her along. Their use was manifest: they were an
indispensable part of the machinery of which he was the master.

When he passed along his decks he shouldered those he came across
brutally; but the Malay deck hands had learned to dodge out of his way.
He had to bring himself to tolerate them because of the necessary manual
labor of the ship which must be done. He had to struggle and plan and
scheme to keep the Sofala afloat--and what did he get for it? Not even
enough respect. They could not have given him enough of that if all
their thoughts and all their actions had been directed to that end. The
vanity of possession, the vainglory of power, had passed away by this
time, and there remained only the material embarrassments, the fear
of losing that position which had turned out not worth having, and an
anxiety of thought which no abject subservience of men could repay.

He walked up and down. The bridge was his own after all. He had paid
for it; and with the stem of the pipe in his hand he would stop short at
times as if to listen with a profound and concentrated attention to the
deadened beat of the engines (his own engines) and the slight grinding
of the steering chains upon the continuous low wash of water alongside.
But for these sounds, the ship might have been lying as still as if
moored to a bank, and as silent as if abandoned by every living soul;
only the coast, the low coast of mud and mangroves with the three palms
in a bunch at the back, grew slowly more distinct in its long straight
line, without a single feature to arrest attention. The native
passengers of the Sofala lay about on mats under the awnings; the smoke
of her funnel seemed the only sign of her life and connected with her
gliding motion in a mysterious manner.

Captain Whalley on his feet, with a pair of binoculars in his hand and
the little Malay Serang at his elbow, like an old giant attended by a
wizened pigmy, was taking her over the shallow water of the bar.

This submarine ridge of mud, scoured by the stream out of the