He did not return to the kampong until daybreak; he spoke not a single word and had himself rowed out to the ship, where he locked himself in his cabin until evening. So far nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary since the Kandong Bandoeng was busy enough loading some of the blessings of the island (copra, pepper, camphor, gutta-percha, palm oil, tobacco and labour); but when in the evening he was informed that all the cargo had been stowed he merely snorted and said: ‘The boat. To the kampong.’ And again he did not return until dawn. The Swede Jensen, who helped him on board, inquired, just from politeness: ‘So we’re sailing today, captain?’ The captain spun round as if he had had a needle stuck in his behind. ‘What the hell’s that to you?’ he snapped. ‘Mind your own bloody business!’ All day long the Kandong Bandoeng rode at anchor a cable’s length off the shore of Tana Masa, doing nothing. As evening fell the captain rolled out of his cabin and commanded: ‘The boat. To the kampong.’ Zapatis, the little Greek, followed him with his one blind and one squinting eye. ‘Boys,’ he said; ‘either the old man’s got a girl there or he’s gone clean off his rocker.’ The Swede Jensen scowled. ‘What the hell’s that to you?’ he snapped at Zapatis. ‘Mind your own bloody business!’ Then, together with the Icelander Gudmunson he took the little dinghy and rowed in the direction of Devil Bay. They pulled in behind some boulders and awaited developments. In the bay the captain was pacing up and down: he seemed to be waiting for somebody. Now and again he would stop and call out something like ts, ts, ts. ‘Look,’ Gudmunson said, pointing to the sea which was now blindingly red and golden from the sunset. Jensen counted two, three, four, six fins, sharp as a blade, making for Devil Bay. ‘Shit,’ muttered Jensen; ‘all those sharks!’ Every so often one of the blades would submerge, a tail would flap above the surface and the water would be churned up. At that point Captain J. van Toch began to hop about furiously on the beach, hurl curses and shake his fist at the sharks. Then a brief tropical dusk fell and the moon sailed out over the island. Jensen gripped his oars and brought the dinghy to within a furlong of the shore. The captain was now sitting on a boulder, going ts, ts, ts. Something was moving near him, but it was difficult to make out what it was. Looks like seals, Jensen thought, but seals crawl differently. Whatever it was emerged from the water among the boulders and waddled along the beach with a swaying motion like penguins. Jensen quietly pulled on his oars and stopped half a furlong from the captain. Yes, the captain was saying something, but the devil only knew what it was - probably Malay or Tamil. He was waving his arms as if he were throwing something to the seals (except that they weren’t seals, Jensen reassured himself), and all the while he was jabbering away in Chinese or Malay. At that moment a raised oar slipped from Jensen’s hand and slapped into the water. The captain raised his head, stood up and took about thirty paces towards the water.