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 of the brig stepped out of the companion upon the deck of his
vessel, glanced aloft at the yards laid dead square; then, from the
door-step, took a long, lingering look round the horizon.
He was about thirty-five, erect and supple. He moved freely, more like
a man accustomed to stride over plains and hills, than like one who from
his earliest youth had been used to counteract by sudden swayings of his
body the rise and roll of cramped decks of small craft, tossed by the
caprice of angry or playful seas.
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