Terry answered in the same tongue: "Good Evening, Señor Ledesma. A fine night."
The natives' vague fear of the dark—wrought into instinct by a thousand generations of ancestors who crouched at night around flickering campfires in jungles through which crept hostile men and marauding beasts—had fastened upon him, stripping him of the thin veneer of civilization the Spaniards had laid but lightly over the Malayan barbarism. He shifted uneasily, looked out over the starlit sea.
"Teniente," he murmured, "I like not the night. The dead rise ... some sing ... some complain ... drift through the black mists searching for those they have long lost ... the vampires seek for unprotected children.... I like not the night...."
Lost in the ghastly realms of native ghostlore, he ignored the American. Terry rounded the deck once and when he came again to where Ledesma had stood he found him gone to seek the cheer of lighted cabin. Terry stopped at the forward rail, his face upturned to the big stars which burned in the soft depths of the warm sky: the Southern Cross poised just over the crest of Apo. Below, on the black sea, the thrust of the vessel threw up a great welt which bordered the wedge of disturbed waters: phosphorescence gleamed like great wet stars. The tips of cigarettes glowed on the forward deck where members of the crew lay prone, exchanging occasional words in the hushed voices races not far from nature use in the still hours of the night.
The morning would find him in a strange place, among strangers ... he leaned upon the rail in a sudden excess of yearning for those whom he loved, summoned the spirits of those who loved him. They came to him through the night—Susan fretting, Ellis affectionately gruff, Enrico boisterously cheerful, Father Jennings wise, patient, watchful. Another, fairer, unutterably dear, hovered near him: he strove, as of old, to bridge the gap—and was baffled, as of old.
The eight bells of midnight roused him from his dejected reverie: he straightened from the rail. The Cross had dipped into the clouded crest: miles to the west a shorefire bit into the black mantle that draped the Gulf. The low wailing of an infant and the guttural endeavors of the mother to soothe it came up from the forward deck where the native passengers lay sprawled in the profound slumber of the Malay: pacified, it slept again, then the night was still but for the soft sounds of displaced waters and the creakings of the ship's old joints.
As he passed along the narrow, ill-lighted passage toward his cabin he heard a voice raised in ugly imprecation:
"I'll get him if he comes, the —— upstart! Just let him show his face on my place, by ——, I'll fix him!"
It was Sears' voice. As he felt his way down the dark corridor, he heard Lindsey's low tones, reproachful, conciliatory.