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 unspeculating mind as on a sensitized plate through the lens of a camera.  His knowledge was absolute and precise; nevertheless, had he been asked his opinion, and especially if questioned in the downright, alarming manner of white men, he would have displayed the hesitation of ignorance.  He was certain of his facts—­but such a certitude counted for little against the doubt what answer would be pleasing.  Fifty years ago, in a jungle village, and before he was a day old, his father (who died without ever seeing a white face) had had his nativity cast by a man of skill and wisdom in astrology, because in the arrangement of the stars may be read the last word of human destiny.  His destiny had been to thrive by the favor of various white men on the sea.  He had swept the decks of ships, had tended their helms, had minded their stores, had risen at last to be a Serang; and his placid mind had remained as incapable of penetrating the simplest motives of those he served as they themselves were incapable of detecting through the crust of the earth the secret nature of its heart, which may be fire or may be stone.  But he had no doubt whatever that the Sofala was out of the proper track for crossing the bar at Batu Beru.

It was a slight error.  The ship could not have been more than twice her own length too far to the northward; and a white man at a loss for a cause (since it was impossible to suspect Captain Whalley of blundering ignorance, of want of skill, or of neglect) would have been inclined to doubt the testimony of his senses.  It was some such feeling that kept Massy motionless, with his teeth laid bare by an anxious grin.  Not so the Serang.  He was not troubled by any intellectual mistrust of his senses.  If his captain chose to stir the mud it was well.  He had known in his life white men indulge in outbreaks equally strange.  He was only genuinely interested to see what would come of it.  At last, apparently satisfied, he stepped back from the rail.