"Good!" agreed the third engineer with emphasis. "Let us consider the matter."
Meantime, in the chart-house Li Fu had delivered the second mate's message to the befuddled skipper, who sat dreamily over his charts. The message was literally delivered, but it could not stir the captain into action. He was lost in the reverie of contemplation that comes of good opium; not actual dreams, as some think, but a complacent sweetishness in the mind that shoves aside all immediate problems and refuses to take a crisis seriously.
The captain, indeed, was a lost soul. Usually your opium-eater cannot smoke the drug at all, and the smoker cannot attain Nirvana by eating it. This Macaense, however, both ate and smoked, thereby letting damnation into himself by two channels. He was a thin, pasty man, once of powerful physique, but now rather rickety on his pins.
"One hundred and seventy miles to the mouth of the Sesajap," he murmured. "We shall reach it at five o'clock tomorrow morning."
He gave over thinking and plucked vacuously at his thin mustaches.
"Providing the engines hold," added Li Fu, who spoke better Portuguese than English. "If the night is clear, there will be a new moon. We should sight the coast by midnight."
"The engines!" repeated the skipper. "Where is the chief? He was here an hour ago."
"He went below, sir. The mate woke up and went into the wheel-house."
"Bring him here, Li Fu."
The quartermaster went out of the chart-house, presently to return alone.