"How many men have held this job?" asked Andrew Harben.
"Oh, I 'ave forgot 'ow many," said the skipper, with a face like wood, which is the custom of half-castes when they lie.
Andrew Harben might have lived ashore if he'd wanted, because there was a plank walk set on steel screw piles that led from the lighthouse right into the mangroves. But he preferred the idea of sitting out there in the evenings to watch the monkeys and the crabs play along the mud flats by the river mouth. This shack was his box seat.
He was so took up with getting settled in the new roost that he never thought to overhaul his supplies till the skipper was gone. Grub and oil were all right, he found, but one thing was all wrong. Those eight wicks that fed the lights had been used up short. Even when he filled the tub level he hadn't more than an inch to spare all around. And there wasn't an extra wick in the place.
Andrew Harben ran out and yelled at the tender that was just heading up for Mangkalihat, but he couldn't make them hear, and the skipper thought he was only passing compliments.
So he was, in a way, being sore. This thing about the wicks was just blamed carelessness on the part of the three Dutch marines who had held the place temporary to his arrival. Also it was likely to prove expensive to shipping and a lot of trouble to him. "How the devil can I keep those footy little lights going for a month without no wicks?" said Andrew Harben.
The more he looked and thought the less he liked it. Macassar is a regular crossroads. Junks from Kwangchow toddle by after sandalwood and birds' nests, and country wallahs go smelling their way—and smelling is right—around to Banjermasin after benzoin and rice, and tramps of all breeds with Australian coal and ironwood, and topsail schooners with anything at all from pepper to dead Chinamen—a parade like Collins Street of an afternoon.
Andrew Harben considered, and he saw what a mess he would start thereabout if he ever let his lights go out. It made him peevish, because he hadn't come to be bothered with such matters, and he started to piece out those wicks. All he could find in the way of stuff was his socks. He tied them on to the loose ends of the wicks, and they drew oil all right, but he only had six, being a frugal man in his habits. Not another thing could he rummage up around the shack to help him, no yarn, nor twine, nor goods of any kind.