hardly face it himself, let alone
pointing it out to somebody else. Moreover, with a desperado of that
sort one never knew. The object was not to get him out (that was as well
as done already), but to step into his place. Bizarre as the thought
seemed he might have shown fight. A fellow up to working such a fraud
would have enough cheek for anything; a fellow that, as it were, stood
up against God Almighty Himself. He was a horrid marvel--that's what he
was: he was perfectly capable of brazening out the affair scandalously
till he got him (Sterne) kicked out of the ship and everlastingly
damaged his prospects in this part of the East. Yet if you want to get
on something must be risked. At times Sterne thought he had been unduly
timid of taking action in the past; and what was worse, it had come to
this, that in the present he did not seem to know what action to take.

Massy's savage moroseness was too disconcerting. It was an incalculable
factor of the situation. You could not tell what there was behind that
insulting ferocity. How could one trust such a temper; it did not put
Sterne in bodily fear for himself, but it frightened him exceedingly as
to his prospects.

Though of course inclined to credit himself with exceptional powers of
observation, he had by now lived too long with his discovery. He had
gone on looking at nothing else, till at last one day it occurred to him
that the thing was so obvious that no one could miss seeing it. There
were four white men in all on board the Sofala. Jack, the second
engineer, was too dull to notice anything that took place out of his
engine-room. Remained Massy--the owner--the interested person--nearly
going mad with worry. Sterne had heard and seen more than enough on
board to know what ailed him; but his exasperation seemed to make him
deaf to cautious overtures. If he had only known it, there was the very
thing he wanted. But how could you bargain with a man of that sort? It
was like going into a tiger's den with a piece of raw meat in your hand.
He was as likely as not to rend you for your pains. In fact, he was
always threatening to do that very thing; and the urgency of the case,
combined with the impossibility of handling it with safety, made Sterne
in his watches below toss and mutter open-eyed in his bunk, for hours,
as though he had been burning with fever.

Occurrences like the crossing of the bar just now were extremely
alarming to his prospects. He did not want t