I can get about alone yet."

It was as if he had taken his line, and would accept no help from men,
after having been cast out, like a presumptuous Titan, from his heaven.
Mr. Van Wyk, arrested, seemed to count the footsteps right out of
earshot. He walked between the tables, tapping smartly with his heels,
took up a paper-knife, dropped it after a vague glance along the blade;
then happening upon the piano, struck a few chords again and again,
vigorously, standing up before the keyboard with an attentive poise
of the head like a piano-tuner; closing it, he pivoted on his heels
brusquely, avoided the little terrier sleeping trustfully on crossed
forepaws, came upon the stairs next, and, as though he had lost his
balance on the top step, ran down headlong out of the house. His
servants, beginning to clear the table, heard him mutter to himself
(evil words no doubt) down there, and then after a pause go away with a
strolling gait in the direction of the wharf.

The bulwarks of the Sofala lying alongside the bank made a low, black
wall on the undulating contour of the shore. Two masts and a funnel
uprose from behind it with a great rake, as if about to fall: a solid,
square elevation in the middle bore the ghostly shapes of white boats,
the curves of davits, lines of rail and stanchions, all confused and
mingling darkly everywhere; but low down, amidships, a single lighted
port stared out on the night, perfectly round, like a small, full moon,
whose yellow beam caught a patch of wet mud, the edge of trodden grass,
two turns of heavy cable wound round the foot of a thick wooden post in
the ground.

Mr. Van Wyk, peering alongside, heard a muzzy boastful voice apparently
jeering at a person called Prendergast. It mouthed abuse thickly,
choked; then pronounced very distinctly the word "Murphy," and chuckled.
Glass tinkled tremulously. All these sounds came from the lighted port.
Mr. Van Wyk hesitated, stooped; it was impossible to look through unless
he went down into the mud.

"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 s