e 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 clearing anywhere; not a
trace of human habitation, 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 appeared with that peculiar
aspect 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 cocoanuts 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 stream smoothly, 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 bearings. 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 munching,
and ran to the knee of a grave dark Arab in flowing 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 m