He was a man--as there were many--of no particular value to anybody but
himself, and of no account but as the chief mate of the brig, and the
only white man on board of her besides the captain. He felt himself
immeasurably superior to the Malay seamen whom he had to handle, and
treated them with lofty toleration, notwithstanding his opinion that at
a pinch those chaps would be found emphatically "not there."

As soon as his mind came back from his home leave, he detached himself
from the rail and, walking forward, stood by the break of the poop,
looking along the port side of the main deck. Lingard on his own side
stopped in his walk and also gazed absentmindedly before him. In the
waist of the brig, in the narrow spars that were lashed on each side of
the hatchway, he could see a group of men squatting in a circle around a
wooden tray piled up with rice, which stood on the just swept deck.
The dark-faced, soft-eyed silent men, squatting on their hams, fed
decorously with an earnestness that did not exclude reserve.

Of the lot, only one or two wore sarongs, the others having
submitted--at least at sea--to the indignity of European trousers. Only
two sat on the spars. One, a man with a childlike, light yellow face,
smiling with fatuous imbecility under the wisps of straight coarse hair
dyed a mahogany tint, was the tindal of the crew--a kind of boatswain's
or serang's mate. The other, sitting beside him on the booms, was a
man nearly black, not much bigger than a large ape, and wearing on
his wrinkled face that look of comical truculence which is often
characteristic of men from the southwestern coast of Sumatra.

This was the kassab or store-keeper, the holder of a position of dignity
and ease. The kassab was the only one of the crew taking their evening
meal who noticed the presence on deck of their commander. He muttered