He revolved slowly on his heels, keeping the end of the tube on the sky-line.  Then he shut the instrument with a click, and said decisively: 

“Nothing in sight, sir.”

He followed his captain down below rubbing his hands cheerfully.

For a good while there was no sound on the poop of the brig.  Then the seacannie at the wheel spoke dreamily: 

“Did the malim say there was no one on the sea?”

“Yes,” grunted the serang without looking at the man behind him.

“Between the islands there was a boat,” pronounced the man very softly.

The serang, his hands behind his back, his feet slightly apart, stood very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand.  His face, now hardly visible, was as inexpressive as the door of a safe.

“Now, listen to me,” insisted the helmsman in a gentle tone.

The man in authority did not budge a hair’s breadth.  The seacannie bent down a little from the height of the wheel grating.

“I saw a boat,” he murmured with something of the tender obstinacy of a lover begging for a favour.  “I saw a boat, O Haji Wasub!  Ya!  Haji Wasub!”

The serang had been twice a pilgrim, and was not insensible to the sound of his rightful title.  There was a grim smile on his face.

“You saw a floating tree, O Sali,” he said, ironically.

“I am Sali, and my eyes are better than the bewitched brass thing that pulls out to a great length,” said the pertinacious helmsman.  “There was a boat, just clear of the easternmost island.  There was a boat, and they in her could see the ship on the light of the west—­unless they are blind men lost on the sea.  I have seen her.  Have you seen her, too, O Haji Wasub?”

“Am I a fat white man?” snapped the serang.  “I was a man of the sea before you were born, O Sali!  The order is to keep silence and mind the rudder, lest evil befall the ship.”

After these words he resumed his rigid aloofness.  He stood, his legs slightly apart, very stiff and straight, a little on one side of the compass stand.  His eyes travelled incessantly from the illuminated card to the shadowy sails of the brig and back again, while his body was motionless as if made of wood and built into the ship’s frame.  Thus, with a forced and tense watchfulness, Haji Wasub, serang of the brig Lightning, kept the captain’s watch unwearied and wakeful, a slave to duty.

In half an hour after sunset the darkness had taken complete possession of earth and heavens.  The islands had melted into the night.  And on the smooth water of the Straits, the little brig lying so still, seemed to sleep profoundly, wrapped up in a scented mantle of star light and silence.

II