This was true enough.  In the face of Massy’s last rebuff Sterne dared not declare his knowledge.  His object was simply to get charge of the steamer and keep it for some time.  Massy would never forgive him for forcing himself on; but if Captain Whalley left the ship of his own accord, the command would devolve upon him for the rest of the trip; so he hit upon the brilliant idea of scaring the old man away.  A vague menace, a mere hint, would be enough in such a brazen case; and, with a strange admixture of compassion, he thought that Batu Beru was a very good place for throwing up the sponge.  The skipper could go ashore quietly, and stay with that Dutchman of his.  Weren’t these two as thick as thieves together?  And on reflection he seemed to see that there was a way to work the whole thing through that great friend of the old man’s.  This was another brilliant idea.  He had an inborn preference for circuitous methods.  In this particular case he desired to remain in the background as much as possible, to avoid exasperating Massy needlessly.  No fuss!  Let it all happen naturally.

Mr. Van Wyk all through the dinner was conscious of a sense of isolation that invades sometimes the closeness of human intercourse.  Captain Whalley failed lamentably and obviously in his attempts to eat something.  He seemed overcome by a strange absentmindedness.  His hand would hover irresolutely, as if left without guidance by a preoccupied mind.  Mr. Van Wyk had heard him coming up from a long way off in the profound stillness of the river-side, and had noticed the irresolute character of the footfalls.  The toe of his boot had struck the bottom stair as though he had come along mooning with his head in the air right up to the steps of the veranda.  Had the captain of the Sofala been another sort of man he would have suspected the work of age there.  But one glance at him was enough.  Time—­after, indeed, marking him for its own—­had given him up to his usefulness, in which his simple faith would see a proof of Divine mercy.  “How could I contrive to warn him?” Mr. Van Wyk wondered, as if Captain Whalley had been miles and miles away, out of sight and earshot of all evil.  He was sickened by an immense disgust of Sterne.  To even mention his threat to a man like Whalley would be positively indecent.  There was something more vile and insulting in its hint than in a definite charge of crime—­the debasing taint of blackmailing.  “What could anyone bring against him?” he asked himself.  This was a limpid personality.  “And for what object?” The Power that man trusted had thought fit to leave him nothing on earth that envy could lay hold of, except a bare crust of bread.

“Won’t you try some of this?” he asked, pushing a dish slightly.  Suddenly it seemed to Mr. Van Wyk that Sterne might possibly be coveting the command of the Sofala.  His cynicism was quite startled by what looked like a proof that no man may count himself safe from his kind unless in the very abyss of misery.  An intrigue of that sort was hardly worth troubling about, he judged; but still, with such a fool as Massy to deal with, Whalley ought to and must be warned.