Chapter 13

This was the reason why Mr. Sterne's confidential communication,
delivered hurriedly on the shore alongside the dark silent ship,
had disturbed his equanimity. It was the most incomprehensible and
unexpected thing that could happen; and the perturbation of his spirit
was so great that, forgetting all about his letters, he ran rapidly up
the bridge ladder.

The portable table was being put together for dinner to the left of the
wheel by two pig-tailed "boys," who as usual snarled at each other
over the job, while another, a doleful, burly, very yellow Chinaman,
resembling Mr. Massy, waited apathetically with the cloth over his arm
and a pile of thick dinner-plates against his chest. A common cabin lamp
with its globe missing, brought up from below, had been hooked to the
wooden framework of the awning; the side-screens had been lowered all
round; Captain Whalley filling the depths of the wicker-chair seemed to
sit benumbed in a canvas tent crudely lighted, and used for the storing
of nautical objects; a shabby steering-wheel, a battered brass binnacle
on a stout mahogany stand, two dingy life-buoys, an old cork fender
lying in a corner, dilapidated deck-lockers with loops of thin rope
instead of door-handles.

He shook off the appearance of numbness to return Mr. Van Wyk's
unusually brisk greeting, but relapsed directly afterwards. To accept
a pressing invitation to dinner "up at the house" cost him another very
visible physical effort. Mr. Van Wyk, perplexed, folded his arms, and
leaning back against the rail, with his little, black, shiny feet well
out, examined him covertly.

"I've noticed of late that you are not quite yourself, old friend."

He put an affectionate gentleness into the last two words. The real
intimacy of their intercourse had never been so vividly expressed
before.

"Tut, tut, tut!"

The wicker-chair creaked heavily.

"Irritable," commented Mr. Van Wyk to himself; and aloud, "I'll expect
to see you in half an hour, then," he said negligently, moving off.

"In half an hour," Captain Whalley's rigid silvery head repeated behind
him as if out of a trance.

Amidships, below, two voices, close against the engineroom, could be
heard answering each other--one angry and slow, the other alert.

"I tell you the beast has locked himself in to get drunk."

"Can't help it now, Mr. Massy. After all, a man has a right to shut
himself up in his cabin in his own time."

"Not to get drunk."

"I heard him swear that the worry with the boilers was enough to drive
any man to drink," Sterne said maliciously.

Massy hissed out