End of the Tether | Page 3

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THE END OF THE TETHER

I
For a long time after the course of the steamer Sofala had been altered
for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearance of a
mere smudge of darkness beyond a belt of glitter. The sunrays seemed
to fall violently upon the calm sea--seemed to shatter them- selves upon
an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vapor of light
that blinded the eye and wearied the brain with its unsteady brightness.
Captain Whalley did not look at it. When his Serang, approaching the
roomy cane arm-chair which he filled capably, had informed him in a
low voice that the course was to be altered, he had risen at once and
had remained on his feet, face forward, while the head of his ship
swung through a quarter of a circle. He had not uttered a single word,
not even the word to steady the helm. It was the Serang, an elderly,
alert, little Malay, with a very dark skin, who murmured the order to
the helmsman. And then slowly Captain Whalley sat down again in the
arm-chair on the bridge and fixed his eyes on the deck between his feet.
He could not hope to see anything new upon this lane of the sea. He
had been on these coasts for the last three years. From Low Cape to
Malantan the distance was fifty miles, six hours' steaming for the old
ship with the tide, or seven against. Then you steered straight for the
land, and by-and-by three palms would appear on the sky, tall and slim,
and with their disheveled heads in a bunch, as if in confidential
criticism of the dark mangroves. The Sofala would be headed towards
the somber strip of the coast, which at a given moment, as the ship
closed with it obliquely, would show several clean shining

fractures--the brimful estuary of a river. Then on through a brown
liquid, three parts water and one part black earth, on and on between
the low shores, three parts black earth and one part brackish water, the
Sofala would plow her way up-stream, as she had done once every
month for these seven years or more, long before he was aware of her
existence, long before he had ever thought of having anything to do
with her and her invariable voyages. The old ship ought to have known
the road better than her men, who had not been kept so long at it
without a change; better than the faithful Serang, whom he had brought
over from his last ship to keep the captain's watch; better than he
himself, who had been her captain for the last three years only. She
could always be depended upon to make her courses. Her compasses
were never out. She was no trouble at all to take about, as if her great
age had given her knowledge, wisdom, and steadiness. She made her
landfalls to a degree of the bearing, and al- most to a minute of her
allowed time. At any moment, as he sat on the bridge without looking
up, or lay sleep- less in his bed, simply by reckoning the days and the
hours he could tell where he was--the precise spot of the beat. He knew
it well too, this monotonous huckster's round, up and down the Straits;
he knew its order and its sights and its people. Malacca to begin with,
in at daylight and out at dusk, to cross over with a rigid phosphorescent
wake this highway of the Far East. Darkness and gleams on the water,
clear stars on a black sky, perhaps the lights of a home steamer keeping
her unswerving course in the middle, or maybe the elusive shadow of a
native craft with her mat sails flitting by silently--and the low land on
the other side in sight at daylight. At noon the three palms of the next
place of call, up a sluggish river. The only white man re- siding there
was a retired young sailor, with whom he had become friendly in the
course of many voyages. Sixty miles farther on there was another place
of call, a deep bay with only a couple of houses