September 13.—Yesterday at Kuala Lumpor, to which I motored while the ship was at Port Swettenham, I entered an editorial office, and stood unannounced over an old friend, now an exile, while he corrected his proofs. He flung up petulantly a blue-penciled sheet at me, because no doubt mine was only the shadow of another coolie. His astonishment and unbelief on his discovery that I refused to take it suggested that the boundary between belief and doubt can never be drawn in this world. I felt almost sorry that I could not fade away before his staring and questioning eyes, and so convince him of the mysterious dimension. But there is never much in a miracle, when it is explained.
In the next dawn we approached Penang. The day, which was still behind the heights of the mainland, was announced in old rose and gold. A little of that light had just touched Penang Island ahead of us; that was a faint augury of coast, with but one blue-and-white building on a hill awake and bright, though the yellow eye of its lighthouse on the sea level still watched us in the night. A junk appeared to be in midair. There was a smell of spice.
September 15.—Pulo Way in sight, some distance to port. This time it is the last of the Malay Islands. Farewell, the East Indies!
CHAPTER XLI
It was not pleasant to be on deck that night, and the promenaders and gossipers had abandoned it. Spume was shooting inboard. The deck chairs huddled in the nook amidships were empty. One chair left the pack and began a stealthy move toward the ship’s side. The darkness surging past was of immense weight, and at times it seemed to rise above its bounds and to burst. Somewhere forward a loosened wind screen was giving a startling imitation of gunfire. He went to look overside, but it was like staring at fate. Nothing could be seen. His hands had touched the clammy canvas of a life belt in its rack, and as he wiped them with his handkerchief he glanced at the belt. An amusing little object! A fat lot of magic in that hopeful circle of life! He descended to his cabin, and then the noisy world stood still again, muffled and quiet, under the glow-lamps. Yet he did not find it easy to read. At times a mass of water exploded on the forward deck, and then his safe and muffled world trembled. His mind left his book. Amiel’s intimate Journal became foreign, and dropped to the blanket. He listened to sounds that were like the echoes of distant battle, to forlorn and nameless alarms and warnings, to sudden fierce shouting far away in another world, to despairing and dying cries. Well, all of it was in another world, anyhow. Outer night and its sounds had nothing to do with him. Men who knew what to do were doing it. The movements of the ship were like those of a great living creature. In its long leisurely breathing its body rose and fell. The faint tremor of the turbines was of the will which repressed an astonishing vitality and strength. He began reading again....
A lurch of the ship woke him. It was four o’clock. For a moment he wondered whether something had happened in the world beyond him, or whether he had been dreaming. But the big creature was still breathing in a deep and leisurely way. Now and then, though, it growled and shook itself, for the wind seemed worse and the noises more challenging. He turned out the lights; and when next he woke it was because the sun had risen high enough to shine through his port window, and the steward had rattled the teacup when placing the morning tray where he could reach it without leaving his bunk.
“Fine morning, sir,” said the steward.
“A bad night, wasn’t it, steward?”