Chapter 8 - Page 2

stillness of the coast, had seized upon the body
of the lascar at the lead. The languid monotony of his sing-song changed
to a swift, sharp clamor. The weight flew after a single whir, the line
whistled, splash followed splash in haste. The water had shoaled, and
the man, instead of the drowsy tale of fathoms, was calling out the
soundings in feet.

"Fifteen feet. Fifteen, fifteen! Fourteen, fourteen . . ."

Captain Whalley lowered the arm holding the glasses. It descended slowly
as if by its own weight; no other part of his towering body stirred; and
the swift cries with their eager warning note passed him by as though he
had been deaf.

Massy, very still, and turning an attentive ear, had fastened his eyes
upon the silvery, close-cropped back of the steady old head. The ship
herself seemed to be arrested but for the gradual decrease of depth
under her keel.

"Thirteen feet . . . Thirteen! Twelve!" cried the leadsman anxiously
below the bridge. And suddenly the barefooted Serang stepped away
noiselessly to steal a glance over the side.

Narrow of shoulder, in a suit of faded blue cotton, an old gray felt hat
rammed down on his head, with a hollow in the nape of his dark neck, and
with his slender limbs, he appeared from the back no bigger than a boy
of fourteen. There was a childlike impulsiveness in the curiosity with
which he watched the spread of the voluminous, yellowish convolutions
rolling up from below to the surface of the blue water like massive
clouds driving slowly upwards on the unfathomable sky. He was not
startled at the sight in the least. It was not doubt, but the certitude
that the keel of the Sofala must be stirring the mud now, which made him
peep over the side.

His peering eyes, set aslant in a face of the Chinese type, a little old
face, immovable, as if carved in old brown oak, had informed him long
before that the ship was not headed at the bar properly. Paid off from
the Fair Maid, together with the rest of the crew, after the completion
of the sale, he had hung, in his faded blue suit and floppy gray hat,
about the doors of the Harbor Office, till one day, seeing Captain
Whalley coming along to get a crew for the Sofala, he had put himself
quietly in the way, with his bare feet in the dust and an upward mute
glance. The eyes of his old commander had fallen on him favorably--it
must have been an auspicious day--and in less than half an hour the
white men in the "Ofiss" had written his name on a document as Serang of
the fire-ship Sofala. Since that time he had repeatedly looked at that
estuary, upon that coast, from this bridge and from this side of the
bar. The record of the visual world fell through his eyes upon his