As to that, Su-ling said, rising and starting forward on her errand and looking at me more or less sweetly, it would be advisable for me to consult the owner of the junk; he was the custodian of everything on the junk that was lost, or misplaced, or ownerless, or in dispute. She left me.

I was furious—partly, I suppose, because I could not tell whether Su-ling was innocent. She surely seemed so. Perhaps Old Pebble had stolen the watch on his own.

I had not the inclination, as perhaps I had not the courage, to beard the owner about my watch, as Su-ling had suggested.

Instead I bottled up my anger and lay in wait for Old Pebble.

Across his mid-afternoon rice bowl I accosted him, as he squatted on the foredeck, and in a ridiculous, trembling voice, which I was obliged to keep low because other trackers were all around, I demanded the return of my watch. I had to make two or three false starts, because just as I tried to speak, the first times, the head tracker called out some instructions about hawsers, sampan, and whatnot to certain of his men. Then at last, acknowledging that he was aware of my quiet stammering over him, he turned an open, kindly face up toward mine and waited for me to speak.

I spoke, and his face turned blank.

A watch? he said. What watch? Had the young man had a watch? What kind of watch? A watch? What had happened to the watch?

I said through clenched teeth that he knew perfectly well what watch and what had happened to the watch.

Then the head tracker asked in a loud but matter-of-fact voice, as if trying to be helpful, whether anybody had happened to steal a watch from the young foreigner.

The trackers went on eating with the good appetites of athletes. There was not a flicker of humor in any eye that I could see, but I could feel the mockery running around.

The head tracker told me, as if confidentially, that there was nothing but turtle dung—by which he evidently meant his trackers—on the foredeck; certainly there was no watch there. Perhaps the cook had stolen the watch.

I said that I had a very good idea who had stolen it and that I wanted it back.

The head tracker shook his head. “Then the Old Big must have stolen the watch,” he gravely said. “That is hard to believe. It seems not to be like the Old Big. I have respect for the Old Big. I know nothing about a stolen watch. I did not know you had a watch. Watches belong in cities. On a junk we tell time by sunrise and sunset and getting hungry. Here on a junk we keep time in our heads. That is my whole work in life, to keep time in my head for the trackers’ footsteps. I have nothing to do with watches.”