“No.  I am only poor,” interrupted Captain Whalley, stonily.

“Steady,” murmured the Serang.  Massy turned away with his chin on his shoulder.

“I don’t believe it,” he said in his dogmatic tone.  Captain Whalley made no movement.  “There you sit like a gorged vulture—­exactly like a vulture.”

He embraced the middle of the reach and both the banks in one blank unseeing circular glance, and left the bridge slowly.

IX

On turning to descend Massy perceived the head of Sterne the mate loitering, with his sly confident smile, his red mustaches and blinking eyes, at the foot of the ladder.

Sterne had been a junior in one of the larger shipping concerns before joining the Sofala.  He had thrown up his berth, he said, “on general principles.”  The promotion in the employ was very slow, he complained, and he thought it was time for him to try and get on a bit in the world.  It seemed as though nobody would ever die or leave the firm; they all stuck fast in their berths till they got mildewed; he was tired of waiting; and he feared that when a vacancy did occur the best servants were by no means sure of being treated fairly.  Besides, the captain he had to serve under—­Captain Provost—­was an unaccountable sort of man, and, he fancied, had taken a dislike to him for some reason or other.  For doing rather more than his bare duty as likely as not.  When he had done anything wrong he could take a talking to, like a man; but he expected to be treated like a man too, and not to be addressed invariably as though he were a dog.  He had asked Captain Provost plump and plain to tell him where he was at fault, and Captain Provost, in a most scornful way, had told him that he was a perfect officer, and that if he disliked the way he was being spoken to there was the gangway—­he could take himself off ashore at once.  But everybody knew what sort of man Captain Provost was.  It was no use appealing to the office.  Captain Provost had too much influence in the employ.  All the same, they had to give him a good character.  He made bold to say there was nothing in the world against him, and, as he had happened to hear that the mate of the Sofala had been taken to the hospital that morning with a sunstroke, he thought there would be no harm in seeing whether he would not do. . . .

He had come to Captain Whalley freshly shaved, red-faced, thin-flanked, throwing out his lean chest; and had recited his little tale with an open and manly assurance.  Now and then his eyelids quivered slightly, his hand would steal up to the end of the flaming mustache; his eyebrows were straight, furry, of a chestnut color, and the directness of his frank gaze seemed to tremble on the verge of impudence.  Captain Whalley had engaged him temporarily; then, the other man having been ordered home by the doctors, he had remained for the next trip, and then the next.  He had