noon
He knew it well too , this monotonous huckster 's round , up and down the Straits ; he knew its order and its sights and its people . Malacca to begin with , in at daylight and out at dusk , to cross over with a rigid phosphorescent wake this highway of the Far East . Darkness and gleams on the water , clear stars on a black sky , perhaps the lights of a home steamer keeping her unswerving course in the middle , or maybe the elusive shadow of a native craft with her mat sails flitting by silently -- and the low land on the other side in sight at daylight . At noon the three palms of the next place of call , up a sluggish river . The only white man residing there was a retired young sailor , with whom he had become friendly in the course of many voyages . Sixty miles farther on there was another place of call , a deep bay with only a couple of houses on the beach . And so on , in and out , picking up coastwise cargo here and there , and finishing with a hundred miles ' steady steaming through the maze of an archipelago of small islands up to a large native town at the end of the beat .