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Chapter I · Revolt of the Birds

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Chapter one of the Revolt of the Birds by Melville Davison post. This is
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a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker.
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The Revolt of the Birds by Melville Davison, post chapter one. It
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was the last outpost of down going men, a sort of seamen's club in
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the abominable environs of Hong Kong. The Wufang Company maintained it for the white
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officers employed in its service. Everybody knows the reputation of the Wu Fang Company.
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It is the most notorious of all the Oriental companies trading in the China
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Sea. Gun running, opium, even piracy are charged against it when its
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ships are out of the beaten track. It was a room under a warehouse,
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looking out on a sort of canal, and which the waters seemed to
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lie stagnant and unmoving. There were tables in it, and a dirty matting
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on the floor. Against the wall were a few shelves made from packing cases.
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In them were some stained, dog eared works on navigation. There was
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dirty canvas on the wall. There was the stench of alcohol in it and
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tobacco. A single window fouled with cobweb, looking out on the canal.
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Alone lighted it. One marked a smoky lamp against the wall, a cheap
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kerosene lamp that the Germans used to put out in the east. It was
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afternoon and hot. A few men were in the room. They were strange,
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human derelicts on the way down, but maintaining a sort of air,
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a sort of manner, as though it were a memory from the honorable life
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from which they had descended. A queer group gathered from all portions of the
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earth. They were all at the very end of life, I mean,
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at the end of any form of life that one could speak of. This
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club of the Wufang Company was the last stand of their fleet in the world.
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One stepped off from it into the abyss of the far east. A
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little wizened chinaman gliding about in slippered feet, carried in the drink in the
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tobacco that the Wufang Company provided. The drink was a poisonous brandy. I
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had drifted in here on my mission. Some one had told me to see
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Bennett of the Wufang Company. He would have the last knowledge of men disappearing
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into the Mystery of the East, the last glimpse of them as they descended
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through its fluid floor. He now sat beyond me at a table by the
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window. He was a big man, with pale blue eyes, a heavy,
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pasty face pitted with smallpox, A strange human creature. It was impossible
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to tell the nationality of the man. I think he was an American,
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and I think he must have been bred and trained for the sea. He
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might have been in the naval service of the States in his far off youth.
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I knew what was commonly known about the man before I went to find
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him. He had been in every form of service, and on every sea.
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He knew all about the world of waters, and he had gone steadily
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down. One heard little about the causes of this descent. There was always
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a break in the narrative when one gets the history of the Derelict of the
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East, a sort of hiatus where the speaker pauses, gets another cigarette out
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of the box on the table, or makes some vague gesture. One is
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supposed to understand that at this point in the man's life, something happened,
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and he took yet another step downward. Thus, in the end, they
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come into the service of the Wufang company, and from it the Abyss engulfs
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them. There were three other men in the room besides Bennett. I tried
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to place them in their nationality. One was a German, a northern German.
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He was not past forty, a big blonde. Bennett called him the
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Baron Nordheim. Another I thought was an Italian, a little dark man,
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thin and very carefully dressed. And there was an Englishman with the strong,
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clean cut features of some of the best families of his race. Tall,
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stooped, he sat in his chair as though all energy in him had been
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removed. The man drew my attention for the one fact that the conspicuous element
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in him was an utter weakness. There was no firm fiber left. There
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was no resistance to evil in that face or figure. He maintained the manner,
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the speech, and the customs of his race, but it was easy
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to see that he was seized upon and dominated by any temptation that approached him.
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I hardly understood how he could be of any service, even to the
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Wufang company. But as I have said, its activities were buried. They
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all wore a sort of uniform. Bennett had the uniform of an English skipper,
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threadbare and stained, picked up doubtless at some seaman's sail by the Wufang
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company. There was good cloth and gold braid on these other ship captain's uniforms,
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but it was cloth long, wetted with sea water and dried in the
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sun, and it was tarnished gold braid. The Englishman had an ancient copy
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of the Times. He was near sighted, and he held it close to
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his face. It was torn. The Chinese servant had probably fished it out
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of a rubbish heap somewhere in the European quarter. The Wuffeg Company did not
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keep up the periodicals of the world for its sea captains. It provided,
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as I have said, only the essentials uniforms of the service. Drink tobacco,
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and what was more important than any I imagine opium. The Italian had
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been reading a thumb worn little book when I came in. He put it
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down on the floor beside the chair, his big finger marking a page in
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it. He sat perfectly still, his other hand on his knee, his
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eyes fixed on the floor beyond him. He paid no attention to either Bennett
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or myself. He did not seem to see us, to see anything.
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I am trying to make you realize this place and the men I found in
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it, it did not seem to belong in the world. The men in
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the place seemed to belong in some form of nightmare, some vague conception of
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a hell where men maintained the forms and manners of the world from which they
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had descended. But it was all a sort of abominable pretense. They spoke
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with exaggerated courtesy. They were careful to accord each his title and distinction.
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They listened attentively when one spoke, and they made some remark at the end
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of it, or some courteous interjection. But one felt, as I have
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said, that it was all a ghastly pretense. I had directed the conversation.
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I had an object in it. It began when I entered, precisely
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after the manner of conversation in any officer's club in the East. I had
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a letter of introduction to Bennett. It had been given to me with a
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significant smile. If I wished to get anything out of these men, I
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must respect their fictions. I must maintain the formalities customary among officers of the
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class to which they pretended. One can understand why these derelicts were sticklers for
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form. It was the only thing they had. It maintained the pretension in
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which they alone existed. I had gotten the conversation directed towards strange happenings on
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the sea, toward mysterious incidents which had happened in their lives. I thought
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these incidents might give me some information on the thing I was after. But
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before the conversation reached the point, I was impressed with how nearly it resembled
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the conversation in the real Officers Club in Hong Kong. And what was other
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resemblance to the real club. These men were authorities on some form of life
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in which they were engaged. But it was not this counterfeit conversation of the
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real club that I was after. I moved it into another direction. I
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moved it into the direction of the experiences I spoke of. Bennett helped me.
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I do not know that he realized precisely what I was seeking, But
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here was a field in which he could be very proud of his associates,
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in which they would excel, surely of all persons in the world. They
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had had the largest experience of extraordinary events they gave me. These events as
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one recites the incidents of an historical narrative. It is not my intention here
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to elaborate what they said. Their strange tales have little to do directly with
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this story, except as it happened, they each illustrated a vital point in
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it. I listened, made the reply courteous, and thanked them for their
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consideration of me. I bought them tobacco and brandy, and bid them adieu
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when they went out, for they presently drifted out, leaving Bennett and myself
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alone by the table near the cobwebbed window that looked out on the sluggish canal.
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I was not impressed with the stories of the strange events that these men
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related. I said that much to Bennett. I said, they impressed me
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as fiction. He was silent for some time. He moved his big hand
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over his face. Finally he replied they might be true. He said,
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incredible things happen. He directed my attention to the little worn book lying by
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the chair in which the Italian had been seated. There is nothing too incredible
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to be attached to these men, he said, you wouldn't believe the things
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in which these men are interested. Let me get you that book. He
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got up, heavily crossed the room, picked up the book, and put
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it down, open before me. It was a translation in Italian of the
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Passing of Arthur, with quaint pictures of the three queens who came, in
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the legend in a mystic barge to take Arthur to Avalon. I looked at
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the book with some astonishment. What interest could a down going man have in
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a thing like this? Bennett was leaning over the table. He looked at
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me strangely. Do you think a thing like that could happen? He said?
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I told him that it never did happen in this world, that it
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was a fairy story, this tale of Arthur with the queen's and Avalon.
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The ship. Captain said he was not so certain of it. He had
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known things just as incredible to happen. A fairy story couldn't beat it.
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It was no use to say a thing could not happen because it sounded like
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a fairy story. Take for example, the things these men told here.
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They might be true, and they might be lies. Men in the far
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East got infected with the arrabe knights virus, but strange things. Incredible things
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did happen in the China Sea. Bennett sat over the tumbler of vile brandy,
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his arms heavily on the table. I didn't drink this stuff. I
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kept pouring it out on the dirty matting. It was a trick. I
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had become deaftin one acquires skill when one must save one's self from poison.
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There was a new English label on the bottle, too new. That label
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was printed somewhere in a cellar, and the liquid only the devil knew what
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it was. Alcohol of some sort as a base with any cheap filler that
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would bite. Cheap was the idea. The Wufang company was after the kick
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for the money. He spoke suddenly, without moving. He prepared his words
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with an interjection, a sort of vocal comment, the sound one utters alone
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when one finally arrives at a conclusion or comes to the end of considering something
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incredible. That story Chillingsworth told just now he made a correction, Captain Chilworth,
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He spoke the words precisely. The talk, as I have said,
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had been on the mysteries of the sea, Strange things that happen in out
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of the way places of the world of water, indeterminate things that lie in
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the twilight country between dreams and the hard reality of life. This story that
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Bennett was thinking of was the story the English skipper related. The mystery of
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dreams had come into the talk dreams. The Englishman had repeated the word as
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one pronounces a formula which he wishes profoundly to consider. He was devitalized with
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opium, and the mere uttering of sound seemed a labor to him. But
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the voice went on in its weary monotony. He was a trader, a
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dirty little beast of a trader. And he had a picture. It was
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a water color drawing of a bit of coast. It was a neat,
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little dirty picture, but it was very clear in its details. One would
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have said that it was drawn and painted in from life. The coast line
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was as definite as a survey. The grove of cocoanut trees on its south
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point seemed placed with a sort of mathematical accuracy. The curve of the beach
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looked like a photograph. The sweep of the core reef that bowed around the
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inlet was as precisely placed as though it had been taken from a chart.
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The market place was between two of the cocoanut trees. I would have sworn
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that a geodetic survey had mapped it, and some artists sketched it in.
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And yet the tired voice drawled. It was a dream, he said,
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the dirty little beast, that he saw it first in his dream on the
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night he had to run for it. He had looted the firm of which
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he was a clerk, and he had to clear out. It was his
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one big job at the end of a crooked career. And he kept on
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seeing it in a dream, that one spot marked between the two cocoanut trees.
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He could not draw the picture, nor paint it in, but he
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could see it. He got so he could see it like a picture in
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a mirror, and finally he got a little half cast to make the picture
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for him. It must have been a tedious business. It did take days
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on end, he said. But you must realize how well he knew the
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details. Of course, the picture wasn't entirely correct. He would explain it
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like an engineer explaining the slight errors in a blueprint. The coral reef wasn't
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such a perfect arc. It had a twist in it, and the top
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of one of those cocoanut trees was heavier than the other, and the stem
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thickened a bit more at the earth. He was very much concerned to correct
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the details, and he took a lot of trouble about it. You could
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not stop him. He'd creased the picture with his thumb nail and run after
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you to explain the thing was real that dream. There was no marked inflection
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in the tired voice that went on. The little Beast was written by this
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fixed idea. There was some sort of treasure buried between those two coconut trees,
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and its exact location had been revealed to him in a dream. The
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dream kept coming back with the regularity of a cyclic monomania of the mind.
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He would go at everybody that he could get to listen. He would divide
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the treasure with anyone who would go with him to find it. He said
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he had an instinct about the direction. There was never a human creature so
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possessed with a single fixed object in life. The Little Beast made his life
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a hell with it. He would work all day like a sleeve, unloading
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green ships, carrying the bags up out of the hold along with the coolies,
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and then he would tramp about at night doing anything about the brothels,
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with petty thefts thrown in. He did it for years until he finally got
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enough cash together to buy an old hull that had an engine in it,
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too dangerous for even the Chinese to risk a cargo on. He must have
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had the devil's time to pick up a crew, even the very few that
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he could get along with. For all his energy, the creature could not
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man the craft alone. There was an engine of sorts in the scale of
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a hull, and there was the navigation of the thing to manage. And
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two there was the indefinite voyage that he was setting out on. He could
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not secure a crew from a port, but he did the thing in some
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fashion. After all, for a few dollars mechs, a dive leader would
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shang Hi a crew for him. And so he went to find his treasure.
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And he did find it, but it didn't turn out precisely as he
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expected. He was bit off on what was buried between the two coconut trees.
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It turned out this way. The resident, who was already on that
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spot of the coast, wrote it in his report to the agent at Hong
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Kong. There was a storm in the old craft beached on the reef and
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broke up. The little traitor with the dream washed ashore with his lungs full
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of sea water, and the resident buried him at the marked place between the
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two cocoanut trees. Bennett took a drink out of the dirty tumbler. He
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sat back from the table, his big hands placidly linked together across his stomach.
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Hell, he said that man was tricked into hunting for his own death.
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That was the long and short of it. He had a vision,
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a quest, and he was always longing to go on it, planning to
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go on it. Saved, starved, lied, stole nothing too damned low.
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Finally he has enough dollars mex to get the undertaker's stuff that they sold
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him for a ship, and he goes on his quest. Ghastly joke all
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that trouble to get killed. He laughed, a sort of chuckle that undulated
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his body in like a wave. He made one see what he was thinking,
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a pagan fate somewhere behind the world, chuckling as he was chuckling now
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over its little pleasantry with a fool of a mortal. Ah. It was
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the interjection again. It summed up his conclusion on the thing. It summed
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up also our conclusion. Man is altogether the sport of fortune. The ancient
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said. I wished to get him out of this reflection an end to his
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own adventure that would lead along to the thing I was after. I saw
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a little in this incident bearing on anything that concerned me. Just then later
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I remembered it, not that it is a part of this story. It
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has nothing to do with this story. But you will recall it presently,
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just as I recalled it, not for itself, but because it has a
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vague resemblance to something that happened to another man. And you will see perhaps
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what I think I saw the big notion under all religions. You see,
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this traitor was a dirty little beast, had been that from the cradle.
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He was so far over on the devil's side that even Bennett looked down on
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him. Think how far over that would be. But how about a man
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who wasn't on the devil's side? That was the vague relation I saw a
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little later on you will understand that this was the English skipper Chillingsworth's story.
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The story I have just repeated. I recalled it in the intervals between Bennett's
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comments. I don't think he saw the bearing of it on the mystery that
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he was about to narrate, but perhaps he did see it in a way.
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At any rate, he turned sharp off into his own adventure. His
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voice changed. He spoke slowly, like one who wishes his words to be
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considered. I was coming up from the Malay Peninsula. I had a ship
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of the Wu Fang company, nothing to brag on. He made a slight
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gesture with the little finger of one of his hands. A great deal like
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the ship Chillingsworth's trader picked up mostly rust. There's one thing these damned Chinese
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know, the resistance of old iron. If the rusts don't go through,
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they will take a chance on it. Of course we are the men who
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take the chance. He included the room in a sweep of the eye.
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What's a white man's life to a Chinese trader? Of course, the cargoes
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something to him. He's concerned about that. But the crew and the skipper,
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if the sea gets them, why damn the luck. And there's the
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accrude wages to the good. There's no executor to knows it out. And
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who's weeping on the dock for any white man in the service of the Wufang
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company. There was a brief interval of silence, as though for a moment
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the man recalled the narrow margin that, in some dangerous experience had barely saved
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him. We had shipped our cargo at sea and were on the way north.
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We were loaded heavy. The old freighter was pretty deep in the water.
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Loaded too heavy, I thought, But that's neither here nor there.
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The skipper on the Dutch ship wanted me to carry a little stuff as a
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favor to him, and of course I did the freemasonry of the sea.
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He shot his head forward at me in a sort of gesture. I knew
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what he meant, a little crooked business on the side. Even the canny
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Chinese shipowner couldn't stop that. He would figure what his ship could carry,
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and the skipper would add a few bags or a few cases on his own
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hook. We were creeping north. No one could make time with that junk
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heap. The old engines in her knew what she could stand. Any sort
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of speed would have shaken the bolts out of her rusty plates. But the
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sea was like a floor, not a ripple on it. She chugged along
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in that glassy sea with the smoke hanging around her rusty stack. There wasn't
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any wind enough to carry the smoke away, but that was luck. I
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don't know what we should have done in a sea still, there's that resistance
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an old iron that I mentioned. The damned chinks can smell it out.
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We might have weathered a gale, but I didn't want to try, not
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with the weight we had in the rusty hull. And that's what kept me
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with a weather eye out and a finger up for a breeze. I knew
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the primitive test. I had seen the Chinese sailors at it. To wet
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the finger and hold it up. It will feel cold on the side of
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the wind. And I could realize Bennett's concern. He had the old freighter
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overloaded. A squall might put her under. It was about noon, Bennett
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continued, when the thing began to happen. I was keeping a pretty sharp
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look out. You see. We were out of the usual trade route north,
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a good distance west of it, and we had the sea to ourselves.
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I understood what he meant. He was running some sort of contraband German
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rifles reshipped at sea perhaps, or the devil knows what, and he was
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keeping out of the track of ships. He wanted the sea to himself.
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As he said it, he would keep a sharp look out, both for
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wind and ships. He went on, My reflection wasn't audible. The lookout
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gave me a signal of something west. Strange. How sharp eyed a native
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can be. Give me a chink in a crow's nest to see everything under
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the sky, he said. There was a cloud appearing that brought me up.
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I was a tiffin in the officer's cabin. I had ice and some
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bottles, a present from the Dutch skipper I left them. I wanted to
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look at that cloud, but I couldn't make out anything, not even with
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a glass. The sea, as far as the eye could reach, was
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as clear as a plate of metal. There wasn't a ripple on it.
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I cursed the chink in the top and sent another up. He squinted about
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a bit and began to squeal. There was a tiny cloud to the west.
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He paused, fiddling the fingers of his folded hands. An hour later
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I saw it, I mean, with the glass, a speck of a
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cloud on the extreme horizon of the sea. I got a chair up and
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sat down on the bridge. That cloud troubled me. It would be a
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land storm on the way out. If it hung together, it would be
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one of those dangerous tornadoes following a track. If we were in the track.
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He turned the thumb of one of his hands slowly down. It was
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a gesture more significant than any word he could have spoken, a gesture like
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the decree of a fate. There were a lot of islands to the west
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of us, some not charted, hardly any of them known. We were
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taking a chance on this route north. I shouldn't have risked it, perhaps
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except for the Dutch skipper's bottles. After all, I wasn't there to insure
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the damned cargo. The long packing cases were marked mowing scythes from brimmen.
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That was the woofing company's business. I kept watching that cloud, that speck
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in the sea. It was right on the water. That would be the
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track of a tornado. But what puzzled me was that it did not seem
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to move. The cloud of a tornado ought to travel, It ought to
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travel like hell. I thought the thing must be smoke from a steamer,
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But it didn't look like any smoke that I had ever seen, and it
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didn't act like smoke. The chinks in the top jabbered at the suggestion of
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smoke. It was not smoke, And presently they began to jabber about the
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cloud. They hung out of the top like a pair of yellow jacks in
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the box. And finally they gave me another decision. It was a sail.
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He put his two big hands out on the table in front of him,
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as one might put out documents to prove a statement. They seemed,
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as one would say, it detached from the man. Then we noticed something
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that we had overlooked in the excitement. There was a bit of air moving,
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a faint breeze coming to us from the land. The thing was a
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sail. I saw it after a time, but there was something about it
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that didn't seem right in a sail. The chinks in the top marked it,
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and I could see it when the land breeze freshened. It looked heavy
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and formless. A sail ought to have a sharp outline. It was moving
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directly out toward the route of the steamer. It ought to cross our track
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north about dark. If the breeze held, it was a damned curious thing,
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and I kept a watch on it, but I wasn't concerned about it.
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There was no threat in the bit of wind. We were not in
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for a storm, and a thing with a sail like that could only be
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some native craft. Beating about that conclusion was correct in part. I mean
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it was a native craft when it came within reach of the glass, a
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Chinese sailing sampong of the common type along the coast. There was nothing unusual
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about the sampong. The thing that puzzled me, puzzled the chinks in the
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top was the aspect of the sails on the crude rigging. They looked heavy
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and ponderous. The whole rigging seemed to be covered with a loose, thick,
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wooly sail, not drawn taut, but hanging as though it were draped
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over the rigging. I was astonished. I'd never seen anything like that on
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any sailing craft on any water in the world. But in the slight breeze,
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it seemed able to carry the sampan slowly out into the open sea.
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He didn't move his hands now, they remained before him, like two bags
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of coin before a player on a gaming table. I had only a native
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crew, no other white man. A native crew isn't curious. A thing
26:37
has got to get out of the order of nature to get a native crew
26:41
excited. But something about the sail on that sampan worked the Chinese up.
26:45
It worked me up too. I didn't give a fiddler's curse for the sompan.
26:51
It would cross the route of the ship a mile ahead, and the
26:53
night would take it, could have it and be damned for me. Still
26:57
it puzzled me as I watched it, just as the Chinks watched it.
27:02
I could hear the jabber in the top, and there was a yellow head
27:03
everywhere about the deck. As the outline of the thing grew clearer, one
27:08
could understand why the native lookout called the thing a cloud when he first saw
27:14
it. It was a cloud at any rate. It was no proper sail.
27:19
It was something heavy and thick mast around the rigging, A heavy cloud
27:25
of some sort banked around the rigging. That was the impression I got,
27:29
and that is what it was. I continued to watch it through the afternoon
27:33
as the breeze carried the sampond out across our route ahead. It reached the
27:37
line of the steamer ahead about sunset, and then a miracle happened. He
27:44
rested his weight heavily on his hands and looked at me steadily across the table.
27:49
You could call it only a miracle. I had my glass on the
27:52
craft at the moment, and every chink was watching. That thick, wooly
27:56
cloud sail suddenly detached itself from the rigging of the sampan, lifted and moved
28:03
away, and it moved against the wind, back toward the land from which
28:07
it had come. He shot out his jaw against the wind. That would
28:15
be a miracle. I saw it, and every native of the crew saw
28:21
it. There was an audible murmur, like a sigh over the whole ship,
28:25
that oriental murmur of profound astonishment that one hears perhaps once in a life,
28:30
as though the sea had opened. Bennett did not say very much about
28:36
it, but I could understand the profound curiosity on the ship as the sampan
28:41
approached under this strange sail, and when the cloud lifted and went back against
28:45
the wind, the whole crew must have hung breathless, a yellow head out
28:51
of every hole on that ship. To get the earliest possible solution to this
28:55
mystery. They understood clouds and wind They were creature of the sea. Clouds
29:02
and winds were important to them. They studied them, they weighed the phenomena
29:07
of them. They were vital factors. And when suddenly the definite order of
29:11
nature was reversed, they were appalled. A cloud did not move against the
29:15
wind. A thing like that had never been observed to happen since the world
29:19
began. It was beyond every detail of their experience. It was beyond every
29:23
experience from the beginning. As the winds moved, so did the clouds in
29:29
heaven move. But here was a wind blowing from the land, and here
29:33
was a cloud that lifted and went away in the opposite direction. It was
29:37
a thing that reversed life, and it impressed this old primitive race more profoundly
29:41
than any modern phenomena of mystery could possibly have impressed it. If there had
29:48
been a dead man come to life, they would have been astonished. If
29:52
they had seen an ancient woman growing back to her youth, they would have
29:56
been amazed with it. But they could have explained it as being the protein
30:00
quality of a drug, the result of some feet of a witch doctor,
30:04
the spell of some manner of magic, or the thing white men accomplished with
30:08
their miracle business. But there was no white man here except the captain of
30:14
the ship, who seemed equally amazed with the thing. And there was no
30:18
witch doctor. There was no magic. This was the sea that they traveled
30:22
and dwelt on as races travel and dwell on the land. This was the
30:27
sea they knew. How could the order of nature get reversed here? There
30:32
could be no explanation of it, unless the explanation awaited them on the sampan
30:37
that they were overhauling, The sapon that now stood bare rigged on the sea,
30:41
motionless on the track of the route north they approached it. It must
30:47
have been the tensest sort of journey the last hour of the old freighter as
30:52
it chugged toward the mystery of the Sampan. It is a marvel to us,
30:56
to the people of any other race, that no effort was made to
30:59
increase the speed of the freighter. That would be the inscrutable oriental control of
31:03
self. They must have been wild to know what was on the deck of
31:07
the sumb Pon. But it would be like this ancient race to move toward
31:11
it with the usual calm. An English Stoker would have coaled his ship and
31:17
strained his engines. There would have been every form of hurry. But there
31:21
was no change on the deck of the freighter, except that a yellow head
31:23
popped out at every corner. Bennett was himself on the deck of the freighter,
31:29
on the bridge of it. If this absurdity of a ship had a
31:32
bridge. He kept a glass on the sumb pan. At the first distances
31:37
it seemed empty. Nothing moved on it. It seemed to undulate gently in
31:41
the sea under its bare rigging. Bennett said he thought it was an abandoned,
31:47
derelict of a thing drifting about. Certainly there was no crew on it.
31:51
They would be moving, baking some sort of signal, but there was
31:55
no signal visible, and there was no motion of any living thing on the
31:57
deck. He concled luted finally that the sampan was abandoned. He said something
32:02
like it. He called out to the men in the top, but they
32:06
did not agree with him. They saw clearer with their naked eye. These
32:09
orientals bred to the visibility of the sea than the exotic white man could.
32:14
At once with his glass, they said there was something on the sompan,
32:19
an indefinite something. Bennett tried to make it out, and finally he got
32:24
it in the glass. It looked like a heap or bundle lying on the
32:29
bare deck. That detail intrigued his curiosity. What sort of cargo could such
32:35
a drifting craft carry? A mystery craft convoyed by a sail cloud that lifted
32:40
from its rigging and set aside by its axe the established laws of the universe,
32:45
they could not make out what this cargo was as the freighter advanced,
32:50
but the men in the top began to have some conception of it or some
32:53
theory about it. Usually silent, they began to chatter. Bennett did not
33:00
wire into their theory. Perhaps there was a bit of pride in this denial
33:04
to his curiosity. Surely, with a glass a white man could see as
33:07
well as a half naked yellow asiatic in the top. At any rate,
33:12
he could presently see as well. And presently he did see what the cargo
33:15
was. It took a clearer outline it became visible through his glass. Bennett
33:22
sat back in his chair, looking down at his motionless hands on the table,
33:27
his heavy face, and a sort of reflection. When we overhauled the
33:30
sumb pond, he said, It was standing motionless in the sea, no
33:37
sign of a sail on its bare rigging. The only thing on it was
33:42
an unconscious white man lying in the sun on the rotten deck. End of Chapter one