Sterne went down smirking1 and apparently2 not at all disconcerted, but the engineer Massy remained on the bridge, moving about with uneasy self-assertion. Everybody on board was his inferior — everyone without exception. He paid their wages and found them in their food. They ate more of his bread and pocketed more of his money than they were worth; and they had no care in the world, while he alone had to meet all the difficulties of shipowning. When he contemplated4 his position in all its menacing entirety, it seemed to him that he had been for years the prey5 of a band of parasites6: and for years he had scowled7 at everybody connected with the Sofala except, perhaps, at the Chinese firemen who served to get her along. Their use was manifest: they were an indispensable part of the machinery8 of which he was the master.
When he passed along his decks he shouldered those he came across brutally9; but the Malay deck hands had learned to dodge10 out of his way. He had to bring himself to tolerate them because of the necessary manual labor11 of the ship which must be done. He had to struggle and plan and scheme to keep the Sofala afloat — and what did he get for it? Not even enough respect. They could not have given him enough of that if all their thoughts and all their actions had been directed to that end. The vanity of possession, the vainglory of power, had passed away by this time, and there remained only the material embarrassments12, the fear of losing that position which had turned out not worth having, and an anxiety of thought which no abject13 subservience14 of men could repay.
He walked up and down. The bridge was his own after all. He had paid for it; and with the stem of the pipe in his hand he would stop short at times as if to listen with a profound and concentrated attention to the deadened beat of the engines (his own engines) and the slight grinding of the steering15 chains upon the continuous low wash of water alongside. But for these sounds, the ship might have been lying as still as if moored16 to a bank, and as silent as if abandoned by every living soul; only the coast, the low coast of mud and mangroves with the three palms in a bunch at the back, grew slowly more distinct in its long straight line, without a single feature to arrest attention. The native passengers of the Sofala lay about on mats under the awnings17; the smoke of her funnel18 seemed the only sign of her life and connected with her gliding19 motion in a mysterious manner.
Captain Whalley on his feet, with a pair of binoculars20 in his hand and the little Malay Serang at his elbow, like an old giant attended by a wizened21 pigmy, was taking her over the shallow water of the bar.
This submarine ridge3 of mud, scoured22 by the stream out of the soft bottom of the river and heaped up far out on the hard bottom of the sea, was difficult to get over. The alluvial23 coast having no distinguishing marks, the bearings of the crossing-place had to be taken from the shape of the mountains inland. The guidance of a form flattened24 and uneven25 at the top like a grinder tooth, and of another smooth, saddle-backed summit, had to be searched for within the great unclouded glare that seemed to shift and float like a dry fiery26 mist, filling the air, ascending27 from the water, shrouding28 the distances, scorching29 to the eye. In this veil of light the near edge of the shore alone stood out almost coal-black with an opaque30 and motionless solidity. Thirty miles away the serrated range of the interior stretched across the horizon, its outlines and shades of blue, faint and tremulous like a background painted on airy gossamer31 on the quivering fabric32 of an impalpable curtain let down to the plain of alluvial soil; and the openings of the estuary33 appeared, shining white, like bits of silver let into the square pieces snipped34 clean and sharp out of the body of the land bordered with mangroves.
On the forepart of the bridge the giant and the pigmy muttered to each other frequently in quiet tones. Behind them Massy stood sideways with an expression of disdain35 and suspense36 on his face. His globular eyes were perfectly37 motionless, and he seemed to have forgotten the long pipe he held in his hand.
On the fore-deck below the bridge, steeply roofed with the white slopes of the awnings, a young lascar seaman38 had clambered outside the rail. He adjusted quickly a broad band of sail canvas under his armpits, and throwing his chest against it, leaned out far over the water. The sleeves of his thin cotton shirt, cut off close to the shoulder, bared his brown arm of full rounded form and with a satiny skin like a woman’s. He swung it rigidly39 with the rotary40 and menacing action of a slinger41: the 14-lb. weight hurtled circling in the air, then suddenly flew ahead as far as the curve of the bow. The wet thin line swished like scratched silk running through the dark fingers of the man, and the plunge42 of the lead close to the ship’s side made a vanishing silvery scar upon the golden glitter; then after an interval43 the voice of the young Malay uplifted and long-drawn declared the depth of the water in his own language.
“Tiga stengah,” he cried after each splash and pause, gathering44 the line busily for another cast. “Tiga stengah,” which means three fathom45 and a half. For a mile or so from seaward there was a uniform depth of water right up to the bar. “Half-three. Half-three. Half-three,”— and his modulated46 cry, returned leisurely47 and monotonous48, like the repeated call of a bird, seemed to float away in sunshine and disappear in the spacious49 silence of the empty sea and of a lifeless shore lying open, north and south, east and west, without the stir of a single cloud-shadow or the whisper of any other voice.
The owner-engineer of the Sofala remained very still behind the two seamen50 of different race, creed51, and color; the European with the time-defying vigor52 of his old frame, the little Malay, old, too, but slight and shrunken like a withered53 brown leaf blown by a chance wind under the mighty54 shadow of the other. Very busy looking forward at the land, they had not a glance to spare; and Massy, glaring at them from behind, seemed to resent their attention to their duty like a personal slight upon himself.
This was unreasonable55; but he had lived in his own world of unreasonable resentments56 for many years. At last, passing his moist palm over the rare lanky57 wisps of coarse hair on the top of his yellow head, he began to talk slowly.
“A leadsman, you want! I suppose that’s your correct mail-boat style. Haven’t you enough judgment58 to tell where you are by looking at the land? Why, before I had been a twelvemonth in the trade I was up to that trick — and I am only an engineer. I can point to you from here where the bar is, and I could tell you besides that you are as likely as not to stick her in the mud in about five minutes from now; only you would call it interfering59, I suppose. And there’s that written agreement of ours, that says I mustn’t interfere60.”
His voice stopped. Captain Whalley, without relaxing the set severity of his features, moved his lips to ask in a quick mumble61 —
“How near, Serang?”
“Very near now, Tuan,” the Malay muttered rapidly.
“Dead slow,” said the Captain aloud in a firm tone.
The Serang snatched at the handle of the telegraph. A gong clanged down below. Massy with a scornful snigger walked off and put his head down the engine-room skylight.
“You may expect some rare fooling with the engines, Jack,” he bellowed62. The space into which he stared was deep and full of gloom; and the gray gleams of steel down there seemed cool after the intense glare of the sea around the ship. The air, however, came up clammy and hot on his face. A short hoot63 on which it would have been impossible to put any sort of interpretation64 came from the bottom cavernously. This was the way in which the second engineer answered his chief.
He was a middle-aged65 man with an inattentive manner, and apparently wrapped up in such a taciturn concern for his engines that he seemed to have lost the use of speech. When addressed directly his only answer would be a grunt66 or a hoot, according to the distance. For all the years he had been in the Sofala he had never been known to exchange as much as a frank Good-morning with any of his shipmates. He did not seem aware that men came and went in the world; he did not seem to see them at all. Indeed he never recognized his ship mates on shore. At table (the four white men of the Sofala messed together) he sat looking into his plate dispassionately, but at the end of the meal would jump up and bolt down below as if a sudden thought had impelled67 him to rush and see whether somebody had not stolen the engines while he dined. In port at the end of the trip he went ashore68 regularly, but no one knew where he spent his evenings or in what manner. The local coasting fleet had preserved a wild and incoherent tale of his infatuation for the wife of a sergeant69 in an Irish infantry70 regiment71. The regiment, however, had done its turn of garrison72 duty there ages before, and was gone somewhere to the other side of the earth, out of men’s knowledge. Twice or perhaps three times in the course of the year he would take too much to drink. On these occasions he returned on board at an earlier hour than usual; ran across the deck balancing himself with his spread arms like a tight-rope walker; and locking the door of his cabin, he would converse73 and argue with himself the livelong night in an amazing variety of tones; storm, sneer74, and whine75 with an inexhaustible persistence76. Massy in his berth77 next door, raising himself on his elbow, would discover that his second had remembered the name of every white man that had passed through the Sofala for years and years back. He remembered the names of men that had died, that had gone home, that had gone to America: he remembered in his cups the names of men whose connection with the ship had been so short that Massy had almost forgotten its circumstances and could barely recall their faces. The inebriated78 voice on the other side of the bulkhead commented upon them all with an extraordinary and ingenious venom79 of scandalous inventions. It seems they had all offended him in some way, and in return he had found them all out. He muttered darkly; he laughed sardonically80; he crushed them one after another; but of his chief, Massy, he babbled81 with an envious82 and naive83 admiration84. Clever scoundrel! Don’t meet the likes of him every day. Just look at him. Ha! Great! Ship of his own. Wouldn’t catch HIM going wrong. No fear — the beast! And Massy, after listening with a gratified smile to these artless tributes to his greatness, would begin to shout, thumping85 at the bulkhead with both fists —
“Shut up, you lunatic! Won’t you let me go to sleep, you fool!”
But a half smile of pride lingered on his lips; outside the solitary86 lascar told off for night duty in harbor, perhaps a youth fresh from a forest village, would stand motionless in the shadows of the deck listening to the endless drunken gabble. His heart would be thumping with breathless awe87 of white men: the arbitrary and obstinate88 men who pursue inflexibly89 their incomprehensible purposes,— beings with weird90 intonations91 in the voice, moved by unaccountable feelings, actuated by inscrutable motives92.
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1
smirking
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| v.傻笑( smirk的现在分词 ) | |
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2
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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parasites
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| 寄生物( parasite的名词复数 )； 靠他人为生的人； 诸虫 | |
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scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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brutally
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| adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地 | |
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dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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12
embarrassments
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| n.尴尬( embarrassment的名词复数 )；难堪；局促不安；令人难堪或耻辱的事 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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subservience
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| n.有利，有益；从属（地位），附属性；屈从，恭顺；媚态 | |
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steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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moored
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| adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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awnings
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| 篷帐布 | |
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funnel
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| n.漏斗；烟囱；v.汇集 | |
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gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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binoculars
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| n.双筒望远镜 | |
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wizened
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| adj.凋谢的；枯槁的 | |
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scoured
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| 走遍（某地）搜寻（人或物）( scour的过去式和过去分词 )； （用力）刷； 擦净； 擦亮 | |
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alluvial
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| adj.冲积的；淤积的 | |
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flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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shrouding
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| n.覆盖v.隐瞒( shroud的现在分词 )；保密 | |
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scorching
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| adj. 灼热的 | |
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opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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gossamer
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| n.薄纱，游丝 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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estuary
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| n.河口，江口 | |
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snipped
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| v.剪( snip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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rotary
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| adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的 | |
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slinger
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| 投石者，吊物工人； 吊索 | |
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42
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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43
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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fathom
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| v.领悟，彻底了解 | |
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46
modulated
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| 已调整[制]的，被调的 | |
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47
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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48
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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50
seamen
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| n.海员 | |
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51
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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52
vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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53
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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54
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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55
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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56
resentments
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| （因受虐待而）愤恨，不满，怨恨( resentment的名词复数 ) | |
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57
lanky
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| adj.瘦长的 | |
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58
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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59
interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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60
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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61
mumble
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| n./v.喃喃而语，咕哝 | |
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62
bellowed
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| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的过去式和过去分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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63
hoot
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| n.鸟叫声，汽车的喇叭声； v.使汽车鸣喇叭 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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66
grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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67
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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68
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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71
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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72
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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73
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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74
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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75
whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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76
persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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inebriated
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| adj.酒醉的 | |
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79
venom
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| n.毒液，恶毒，痛恨 | |
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80
sardonically
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| adv.讽刺地，冷嘲地 | |
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81
babbled
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| v.喋喋不休( babble的过去式和过去分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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82
envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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83
naive
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| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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84
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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85
thumping
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| adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持 | |
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86
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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87
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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88
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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89
inflexibly
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| adv.不屈曲地，不屈地 | |
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90
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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91
intonations
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| n.语调，说话的抑扬顿挫( intonation的名词复数 )；（演奏或唱歌中的）音准 | |
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92
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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