Chapter 9 - Page 2

quizzical, as though he had
possessed the secret of some universal joke cheating all creation and
impenetrable to other mortals.

Grave and smiling he watched Massy come down step by step; when the
chief engineer had reached the deck he swung about, and they found
themselves face to face. Matched as to height and utterly dissimilar,
they confronted each other as if there had been something between
them--something else than the bright strip of sunlight that, falling
through the wide lacing of two awnings, cut crosswise the narrow
planking of the deck and separated their feet as it were a stream;
something profound and subtle and incalculable, like an unexpressed
understanding, a secret mistrust, or some sort of fear.

At last Sterne, blinking his deep-set eyes and sticking forward his
scraped, clean-cut chin, as crimson as the rest of his face, murmured--

"You've seen? He grazed! You've seen?"

Massy, contemptuous, and without raising his yellow, fleshy countenance,
replied in the same pitch--

"Maybe. But if it had been you we would have been stuck fast in the
mud."

"Pardon me, Mr. Massy. I beg to deny it. Of course a shipowner may say
what he jolly well pleases on his own deck. That's all right; but I beg
to . . ."

"Get out of my way!"

The other had a slight start, the impulse of suppressed indignation
perhaps, but held his ground. Massy's downward glance wandered right and
left, as though the deck all round Sterne had been bestrewn with eggs
that must not be broken, and he had looked irritably for places where
he could set his feet in flight. In the end he too did not move, though
there was plenty of room to pass on.

"I heard you say up there," went on the mate--"and a very just remark it
was too--that there's always something wrong. . . ."

"Eavesdropping is what's wrong with _you_, Mr. Sterne."

"Now, if you would only listen to me for a moment, Mr. Massy, sir, I
could . . ."

"You are a sneak," interrupted Massy in a great hurry, and even managed
to get so far as to repeat, "a common sneak," before the mate had broken
in argumentatively--

"Now, sir, what is it you want? You want . . ."

"I want--I want," stammered Massy, infuriated and astonished--"I want.
How do you know that I want anything? How dare you? . . . What do you
mean? . . . What are you after--you . . ."

"Promotion." Sterne silenced him with a sort of candid bravado. The
engineer's round soft cheeks quivered still, but he said quietly
enough--

"You are only worrying my head off," and Sterne met him