Mr. Johnston rubbed his hands and tapped the table and rubbed his hands again. So comfortable did he appear, and so well-fed, that he seemed quite out of place in that severely plain cabin, beside Roger and Mr. Cledd. That he had a certain mercantile shrewdness I was ready to admit; but the others were men fearless and quick to act.
"Bless my soul!" he said at last, beating a tattoo on the table with his soft fingers. "Bless my soul!"
CHAPTER XXX
THROUGH SUNDA STRAIT
Laden deep with tea and silk, we dropped down the Chu-Kiang, past Macao and the Ladrone Islands, and out through the Great West Channel. Since the northeast monsoon now had set in and the winds were constant, we soon passed the tide-rips of St. Esprit, and sighting only a few small islands covered with brush and mangroves, where the seas broke in long lines of silver under an occasional cocoanut palm, we left astern in due time the treacherous water of the Paracel Reefs.
Each day was much like every other until we had put the China Sea behind us. We touched at the mouth of the Saigon, but found no promise of trade, and weighed anchor again with the intention of visiting Singapore. Among other curious things, we saw a number of pink porpoises and some that were mottled pink and white and brown. Porpoises not infrequently are spotted by disease; but those that we saw appeared to be in excellent health, and although we remarked on their odd appearance, we believed their strange colors to be entirely natural. A fleet of galleys, too, which we saw in the offing, helped break the monotony of our life. There must have been fifty of them, with flags a-flutter and arms bristling. Although we did not approach them near enough to learn more about them, it seemed probable that they were conveying some great mandarin or chief on affairs of state.
"That man Blodgett is telling stories of one kind or another," Mr. Cledd remarked one afternoon, after watching a little group that had gathered by the forecastle-hatch during the first dog-watch. "The fortuneteller fellow, too, Benson, is stirring up the men."
As I looked across the water at the small island of palms where the waves were rolling with a sullen roar, which carried far on the evening air, I saw a native boat lying off the land, and dimly through the mists I saw the sail of an old junk. I watched the junk uneasily. Small wonder that the men were apprehensive, I thought.
After leaving Singapore, we passed the familiar shores of eastern Sumatra, Banka Island and Banka Strait, and the mouths of the Palambang, but in an inverted order, which made them seem as strange as if we never before had sighted them. Then one night, heading west against the tide, we anchored in a rolling swell, with Kodang Island to the northeast and Sindo Island to the north. On the one hand were the Zutphen Islands; on the other was Hog Point; and almost abeam of us the Sumatran coast rose to the steep bluff that across some miles of sea faces the Java shore. We lay in Sunda Strait.
I came on deck after a while and saw the men stirring about.