pidity, forgot himself completely. His stony, unwink-
ing stare was fixed on the planks of the deck.

The slight quiver agitating the whole fabric of the
ship was more perceptible in the silent river, shaded and

still like a forest path. The Sofala, gliding with an
even motion, had passed beyond the coast-belt of mud

and mangroves. The shores rose higher, in firm slop-
ing banks, and the forest of big trees came down to the

brink. Where the earth had been crumbled by the
floods it showed a steep brown cut, denuding a mass of

roots intertwined as if wrestling underground; and in
the air, the interlaced boughs, bound and loaded with

creepers, carried on the struggle for life, mingled their
foliage in one solid wall of leaves, with here and there

the shape of an enormous dark pillar soaring, or a
ragged opening, as if torn by the flight of a cannon-

ball, disclosing the impenetrable gloom within, the
secular inviolable shade of the virgin forest. The

thump of the engines reverberated regularly like the
strokes of a metronome beating the measure of the vast

silence, the shadow of the western wall had fallen across
the river, and the smoke pouring backwards from the

funnel eddied down behind the ship, spread a thin
dusky veil over the somber water, which, checked by

the flood-tide, seemed to lie stagnant in the whole
straight length of the reaches.

Sterne's body, as if rooted on the spot, trembled slightly
from top to toe with the internalvibration of the ship;

from under his feet came sometimes a sudden clang of
iron, the noisy burst of a shout below; to the right the

leaves of the tree-tops caught the rays of the low sun,
and seemed to shine with a golden green light of their

own shimmering around the highest boughs which stood
out black against a smooth blue sky that seemed to

droop over the bed of the river like the roof of a tent.
The passengers for Batu Beru, kneeling on the planks,

were engaged in rolling their bedding of mats busily;
they tied up bundles, they snapped the locks of wooden

chests. A pockmarked peddler of small wares threw his
head back to drain into his throat the last drops out of

an earthenware bottle before putting it away in a roll
of blankets. Knots of traveling traders standing about

the deck conversed in low tones; the followers of a small
Rajah from down the coast, broad-faced, simple young

fellows in white drawers and round white cotton caps
with their colored sarongs twisted across their bronze

shoulders, squatted on their hams on the hatch, chewing
betel with bright red mouths as if they had been tasting

blood. Their spears, lying piled up together within the
circle of their bare toes, resembled a casualbundle of

dry bamboos; a thin, livid Chinaman, with a bulky
package wrapped up in leaves already thrust under his

arm, gazed ahead eagerly; a wandering Kling rubbed
his teeth with a bit of wood, pouring over the side a

bright stream of water out of his lips; the fat Rajah
dozed in a shabby deck-chair,--and at the turn of every

bend the two walls of leaves reappeared running
parallel along the banks, with their impenetrable solidity

fading at the top to a vaporous mistiness of countless
slender twigs growing free, of young delicate branches

shooting from the topmost limbs of hoary trunks, of
feathery heads of climbers like delicate silver sprays

standing up without a quiver. There was not a sign
of a clearinganywhere; not a trace of human habita-

tion, except when in one place, on the bare end of a low
point under an isolated group of slender tree-ferns, the

jagged, tangled remnants of an old hut on piles ap-
peared with that peculiaraspect of ruined bamboo walls

that look as if smashed with a club. Farther on, half
hidden under the drooping bushes, a canoe containing

a man and a woman, together with a dozen green cocoa-
nuts in a heap, rocked helplessly after the Sofala had

passed, like a navigating contrivance of venturesome
insects, of traveling ants; while two glassy folds of

water streaming away from each bow of the steamer
across the whole width of the river ran with her up

streamsmoothly, fretting their outer ends into a brown
whispering tumble of froth against the miry foot of

each bank.
"I must," thought Sterne, "bring that brute Massy

to his bearings. It's getting too absurd in the end.
Here's the old man up there buried in his chair--he

may just as well be in his grave for all the use he'll ever
be in the world--and the Serang's in charge. Because

that's what he is. In charge. In the place that's mine
by rights. I must bring that savage brute to his bear-

ings. I'll do it at once, too . . ."
When the mate made an abrupt start, a little brown

half-naked boy, with large black eyes, and the string
of a written charm round his neck, became panic-struck

at once. He dropped the banana he had been munch-
ing, and ran to the knee of a grave dark Arab in flow-

ing robes, sitting like a Biblical figure, incongruously,
on a yellow tin trunk corded with a rope of twisted

rattan. The father, unmoved, put out his hand to pat
the little shaven poll protectingly.

XI
Sterne crossed the deck upon the track of the chief

engineer. Jack, the second, retreating backwards down
the engine-room ladder, and still wiping his hands,

treated him to an incomprehensible grin of white teeth
out of his grimy hard face; Massy was nowhere to be

seen. He must have gone straight into his berth.
Sterne scratched at the door softly, then, putting his

lips to the rose of the ventilator, said--
"I must speak to you, Mr. Massy. Just give me a

minute or two."
"I am busy. Go away from my door."

"But pray, Mr. Massy . . ."
"You go away. D'you hear? Take yourself off alto-

gether--to the other end of the ship--quite away . . ."
The voice inside dropped low. "To the devil."

Sterne paused: then very quietly--
"It's rather pressing. When do you think you will

be at liberty, sir?"
The answer to this was an exasperated "Never"; and

at once Sterne, with a very firm expression of face,
turned the handle.

Mr. Massy's stateroom--a narrow, one-berth cabin--
smelt strongly of soap, and presented to view a swept,

dusted, unadorned neatness, not so much bare as barren,
not so much severe as starved and lacking in humanity,

like the ward of a public hospital, or rather (owing to
the small size) like the clean retreat of a desperately

poor but exemplary person. Not a single photograph
frame ornamented the bulkheads; not a single article of

clothing, not as much as a spare cap, hung from the
brass hooks. All the inside was painted in one plain

tint of pale blue; two big sea-chests in sailcloth covers