Tide Marks by H.M. Tomlinson — Read

One morning I escaped from the heat and the bewildering life of Singapore into a shaded office. Its windows opened south and east to a glowing panorama of ships, clouds, and islands. The long traffic of that office with the Orient had settled into a tradition of intent ease which seemed the same as cool leisure. A mounted telescope projected from an open window toward the anchorage. A man stood there with straddled legs, watching a ship coming in. He left the telescope and came to me, and talked familiarly, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief, of America, England, China, and Japan; he spoke even of Java. But when I mentioned such places as Lombok, Flones, Flores, and Gilolo, he picked up a massive shell which was keeping a pile of papers in one place and examined it as though he hoped to divine from it what I wanted to know. The shell did not help him. Only one thing became certain: the Moluccas were as far from Singapore as that city is from New York. It was easier to get to New York. I discovered at Singapore that to talk there of Timor and Halmaheira was as profitless as asking a policeman at Charing Cross the way to the Faroes. It would be tactless and inconsiderate to embarrass the friendly fellow with such a question.

I was shown, through the office telescope, a Dutch steamer at anchor in the roads. She was bound, so I gathered, for Java and the outer blue. She would be away for months, and she might go, according to fate and local cocoanuts, to some of the islands I had named. Why not board her and see what happened? There is much to be said, when traveling, for keeping a mind as open and doubtful as to where you are going as that of a great diplomatist when negotiating a peace treaty; and more still for not caring. I boarded that Dutchman, the _Savoe_, went into an empty cabin, and waited. Her windlass began at once to labor with the anchor, as though she had been waiting for me. The picture of distant Singapore began to revolve across my cabin port. That settled it. Now it was certain I should have to take whatever came.