now attained permanency, and the performance of his duties was marked by an air of serious, single-minded application.  Directly he was spoken to, he began to smile attentively, with a great deference expressed in his whole attitude; but there was in the rapid winking which went on all the time something 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 with a confident little smile.