This was Sterne’s last train of thought independent of the great discovery.  He had just seen to the securing of the anchor, and had remained forward idling away a moment or two.  The captain was in charge on the bridge.  With a slight yawn he had turned away from his survey of the sea and had leaned his shoulders against the fish davit.

These, properly speaking, were the very last moments of ease he was to know on board the Sofala.  All the instants that came after were to be pregnant with purpose and intolerable with perplexity.  No more idle, random thoughts; the discovery would put them on the rack, till sometimes he wished to goodness he had been fool enough not to make it at all.  And yet, if his chance to get on rested on the discovery of “something wrong,” he could not have hoped for a greater stroke of luck.

X

The knowledge was too disturbing, really.  There was “something wrong” with a vengeance, and the moral certitude of it was at first simply frightful to contemplate.  Sterne had been looking aft in a mood so idle, that for once he was thinking no harm of anyone.  His captain on the bridge presented himself naturally to his sight.  How insignificant, how casual was the thought that had started the train of discovery—­like an accidental spark that suffices to ignite the charge of a tremendous mine!

Caught under by the breeze, the awnings of the foredeck bellied upwards and collapsed slowly, and above their heavy flapping the gray stuff of Captain Whalley’s roomy coat fluttered incessantly around his arms and trunk.  He faced the wind in full light, with his great silvery beard blown forcibly against his chest; the eyebrows overhung heavily the shadows whence his glance appeared to be staring ahead piercingly.  Sterne could just detect the twin gleam of the whites shifting under the shaggy arches of the brow.  At short range these eyes, for all the man’s affable manner, seemed to look you through and through.  Sterne never could defend himself from that feeling when he had occasion to speak with his captain.  He did not like it.  What a big heavy man he appeared up there, with that little shrimp of a Serang in close attendance—­as was usual in this extraordinary steamer!  Confounded absurd custom that.  He resented it.  Surely the old fellow could have looked after his ship without that loafing native at his elbow.  Sterne wriggled his shoulders with disgust.  What was it?  Indolence or what?

That old skipper must have been growing lazy for years.  They all grew lazy out East here (Sterne was very conscious of his own unimpaired activity); they got slack all over.  But he towered very erect on the bridge; and quite low by his side, as you see a small child looking over the edge of a table, the battered soft hat and the brown face of the Serang peeped over the white canvas screen of the rail.

No doubt the Malay was standing back, nearer to the wheel; but the great disparity of size in close association amused Sterne like the observation of a bizarre fact in nature.  They were as queer fish out of the sea as any in it.