The Malay revolved the spokes again with disdainful obedience, and the red-faced man was moving forward grunting to himself, when through the open skylight the hail “On deck there!” arrested him short, attentive, and with a sudden change to amiability in the expression of his face.
“Yes, sir,” he said, bending his ear toward the opening. “What's the matter up there?” asked a deep voice from below.
The red-faced man in a tone of surprise said:
“Sir?”
“I hear that rudder grinding hard up and hard down. What are you up to, Shaw? Any wind?”
“Ye-es,” drawled Shaw, putting his head down the skylight and speaking into the gloom of the cabin. “I thought there was a light air, and—but it's gone now. Not a breath anywhere under the heavens.”
He withdrew his head and waited a while by the skylight, but heard only the chirping of the indefatigable canary, a feeble twittering that seemed to ooze through the drooping red blossoms of geraniums growing in flower-pots under the glass panes. He strolled away a step or two before the voice from down below called hurriedly:
“Hey, Shaw? Are you there?”
“Yes, Captain Lingard,” he answered, stepping back. “Have we drifted anything this afternoon?”
“Not an inch, sir, not an inch. We might as well have been at anchor.”
“It's always so,” said the invisible Lingard. His voice changed its tone as he moved in the cabin, and directly afterward burst out with a clear intonation while his head appeared above the slide of the cabin entrance:
“Always so! The currents don't begin till it's dark, when a man can't see against what confounded thing he is being drifted, and then the breeze will come. Dead on end, too, I don't doubt.”
Shaw moved his shoulders slightly. The Malay at the wheel, after making a dive to see the time by the cabin clock through the skylight, rang a double stroke on the small bell aft. Directly forward, on the main deck, a shrill whistle arose long drawn, modulated, dying away softly. The master
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