only to beckon from the doorway to Almayer, who had remained aft, with
downcast eyes, on the very spot where I had left him. He strolled up
moodily, shook hands, and at once asked permission to shut the cabin
door.

"I have a pretty story to tell you," were the last words I heard.

The bitterness of tone was remarkable.

I went away from the door, of course. For the moment I had no crew on
board; only the Chinaman carpenter, with a canvas bag hung round his
neck and a hammer in his hand, roamed about the empty decks,
knocking out the wedges of the hatches and dropping them into the bag
conscientiously. Having nothing to do I joined our two engineers at the
door of the engine-room. It was near breakfast-time.

"He's turned up early, hasn't he?" commented the second engineer, and
smiled indifferently. He was an abstemious man, with a good digestion
and a placid, reasonable view of life even when hungry.

"Yes," I said. "Shut up with the old man. Some very particular
business."

"He will spin him a damned endless yarn," observed the chief engineer.

He smiled rather sourly. He was dyspeptic, and suffered from gnawing
hunger in the morning. The second smiled broadly, a smile that made two
vertical folds on his shaven cheeks. And I smiled, too, but I was not
exactly amused. In that man, whose name apparently could not be uttered
anywhere in the Malay Archipelago without a smile, there was nothing