“Sterne,” he said, half aloud.

The drunken voice within said gladly—­

“Sterne—­of course.  Look at him blink.  Look at him!  Sterne, Whalley, Massy.  Massy, Whalley, Sterne.  But Massy’s the best.  You can’t come over him.  He would just love to see you starve.”

Mr. Van Wyk moved away, made out farther forward a shadowy head stuck out from under the awnings as if on the watch, and spoke quietly in Malay, “Is the mate asleep?”

“No.  Here, at your service.”

In a moment Sterne appeared, walking as noiselessly as a cat on the wharf.

“It’s so jolly dark, and I had no idea you would be down to-night.”

“What’s this horrible raving?” asked Mr. Van Wyk, as if to explain the cause of a shudder than ran over him audibly.

“Jack’s broken out on a drunk.  That’s our second.  It’s his way.  He will be right enough by to-morrow afternoon, only Mr. Massy will keep on worrying up and down the deck.  We had better get away.”

He muttered suggestively of a talk “up at the house.”  He had long desired to effect an entrance there, but Mr. Van Wyk nonchalantly demurred:  it would not, he feared, be quite prudent, perhaps; and the opaque black shadow under one of the two big trees left at the landing-place swallowed them up, impenetrably dense, by the side of the wide river, that seemed to spin into threads of glitter the light of a few big stars dropped here and there upon its outspread and flowing stillness.

“The situation is grave beyond doubt,” Mr. Van Wyk said.  Ghost-like in their white clothes they could not distinguish each others’ features, and their feet made no sound on the soft earth.  A sort of purring was heard.  Mr. Sterne felt gratified by such a beginning.

“I thought, Mr. Van Wyk, a gentleman of your sort would see at once how awkwardly I was situated.”

“Yes, very.  Obviously his health is bad.  Perhaps he’s breaking up.  I see, and he himself is well aware—­I assume I am speaking to a man of sense—­he is well aware that his legs are giving out.”

“His legs—­ah!” Mr. Sterne was disconcerted, and then turned sulky.  “You may call it his legs if you like; what I want to know is whether he intends to clear out quietly.  That’s a good one, too!  His legs!  Pooh!”

“Why, yes.  Only look at the way he walks.”  Mr. Van Wyk took him up in a perfectly cool and undoubting tone.  “The question, however, is whether your sense of duty does not carry you too far from your true interest.  After all, I too could do something to serve you.  You know who I am.”

“Everybody along the Straits has heard of you, sir.”