question: public static short toShort ( byte [ ] bytes , int offset ) { if ( littleEndian ) { return Short . reverseBytes ( theUnsafe . getShort ( bytes , offset + BYTE_ARRAY_BASE_OFFSET ) ) ; } else { return theUnsafe . getShort ( bytes , offset + BYTE_ARRAY_BASE_OFFSET ) ; } }
target:  Converts a byte array to a short value considering it was written in big-endian format.