PART IV. THE GIFT OF THE SHALLOWS

I

Lingard brought Mrs. Travers away from the yacht, going alone with her

in the little boat. During the bustle of the embarkment, and till the

last of the crew had left the schooner, he had remained towering and

silent by her side. It was only when the murmuring and uneasy voices

of the sailors going away in the boats had been completely lost in the

distance that his voice was heard, grave in the silence, pronouncing the

words--“Follow me.” She followed him; their footsteps rang hollow and

loud on the empty deck. At the bottom of the steps he turned round and

said very low:

“Take care.”

He got into the boat and held on. It seemed to him that she was

intimidated by the darkness. She felt her arm gripped firmly--“I've got

you,” he said. She stepped in, headlong, trusting herself blindly to his

grip, and sank on the stern seat catching her breath a little. She heard

a slight splash, and the indistinct side of the deserted yacht melted

suddenly into the body of the night.

Rowing, he faced her, a hooded and cloaked shape, and above her head he

had before his eyes the gleam of the stern lantern expiring slowly on

the abandoned vessel. When it went out without a warning flicker he

could see nothing of the stranded yacht's outline. She had vanished

utterly like a dream; and the occurrences of the last twenty-four hours

seemed also to be a part of a vanished dream. The hooded and cloaked

figure was part of it, too. It spoke not; it moved not; it would vanish

presently. Lingard tried to remember Mrs. Travers' features, even as

she sat within two feet of him in the boat. He seemed to have taken

from that vanished schooner not a woman but a memory--the tormenting

recollection of a human being he would see no more.

At every stroke of the short sculls Mrs. Travers felt the boat leap

forward with her. Lingard, to keep his direction, had to look over his

shoulder frequently--“You will be safe in the brig,” he said. She was

silent. A dream! A dream! He lay back vigorously; the water slapped

loudly against the blunt bows. The ruddy glow thrown afar by the flares

was reflected deep within the hood. The dream had a pale visage, the

memory had living eyes.

“I had to come for you myself,” he said.

“I expected it of you.” These were the first words he had heard her say

since they had met for the third time.

“And I swore--before you, too--that I would never put my foot on board

your craft.”

“It was good of you to--” she began.

“I forgot somehow,” he said, simply.

“I expected it of you,” she repeated. He gave three quick strokes before

he asked very gently:

“What more do you expect?”

“Everything,” she said. He was rounding then the stern of the brig and

had to look away. Then he turned to her.

“And you trust me to--” he exclaimed.

“I would like to trust you,” she interrupted, “because--”

Above them a startled voice cried in Malay, “Captain coming.” The

strange sound silenced her. Lingard laid in his sculls and she saw

herself gliding under the high side of the brig. A dark, staring face

appeared very near her eyes, black fingers caught the gunwale of the

boat. She stood up swaying. “Take care,” said Lingard again, but this

time, in the light, did not offer to help her. She went up alone and he

followed her over the rail.

The quarter-deck was thronged by men of two races. Lingard and Mrs.

Travers crossed it rapidly between the groups that moved out of the

way on their passage. Lingard threw open the cabin door for her, but

remained on deck to inquire about his boats. They had returned while he

was on board the yacht, and the two men in charge of them came aft to

make their reports. The boat sent north had seen nothing. The boat

which had been directed to explore the banks and islets to the south had

actually been in sight of Daman's praus. The man in charge reported

that several fires were burning on the shore, the crews of the two praus

being encamped on a sandbank. Cooking was going on. They had been near

enough to hear the voices. There was a man keeping watch on the ridge;

they knew this because they heard him shouting to the people below, by

the fires. Lingard wanted to know how they had managed to remain unseen.

“The night was our hiding place,” answered the man in his deep growling

voice. He knew nothing of any white men being in Daman's camp. Why

should there be? Rajah Hassim and the Lady, his sister, appeared

unexpectedly near his boat in their canoe. Rajah Hassim had ordered him

then in whispers to go back to the brig at once, and tell Tuan what he

had observed. Rajah Hassim said also that he would return to the brig

with more news very soon. He obeyed because the Rajah was to him a

person of authority, “having the perfect knowledge of Tuan's mind as we

all know.”--“Enough,” cried Lingard, suddenly.

The man looked up heavily for a moment, and retreated forward without

another word. Lingard followed him with irritated eyes. A new power had

come into the world, had possessed itself of human speech, had imparted

to it a sinister irony of allusion. To be told that someone had “a

perfect knowledge of his mind” startled him and made him wince. It made

him aware that now he did not know his mind himself--that it seemed

impossible for him ever to regain that knowledge. And the new power not

only had cast its spell upon the words he had to hear, but also upon the

facts that assailed him, upon the people he saw, upon the thoughts he

had to guide, upon the feelings he had to bear. They remained what

they had ever been--the visible surface of life open in the sun to the

conquering tread of an unfettered will. Yesterday they could have been

discerned clearly, mastered and despised; but now another power had come

into the world, and had cast over them all the wavering gloom of a dark

and inscrutable purpose.

II

Recovering himself with a slight start Lingard gave the order to

extinguish all the lights in the brig. Now the transfer of the crew from

the yacht had been effected there was every advantage in the darkness.

He gave the order from instinct, it being the right thing to do in the

circumstances. His thoughts were in the cabin of his brig, where there

was a woman waiting. He put his hand over his eyes, collecting himself

as if before a great mental effort. He could hear about him the excited

murmurs of the white men whom in the morning he had so ardently desired

to have safe in his keeping. He had them there now; but accident,

ill-luck, a cursed folly, had tricked him out of the success of his

plan. He would have to go in and talk to Mrs. Travers. The idea dismayed

him. Of necessity he was not one of those men who have the mastery of

expression. To liberate his soul was for him a gigantic undertaking,

a matter of desperate effort, of doubtful success. “I must have it

out with her,” he murmured to himself as though at the prospect of

a struggle. He was uncertain of himself, of her; he was uncertain of

everything and everybody; but he was very certain he wanted to look at

her.

At the moment he turned to the door of the cabin both flares went out

together and the black vault of the night upheld above the brig by the

fierce flames fell behind him and buried the deck in sudden darkness.

The buzz of strange voices instantly hummed louder with a startled note.

“Hallo!”--“Can't see a mortal thing”--“Well, what next?”--insisted a

voice--“I want to know what next?”

Lingard checked himself ready to open the door and waited absurdly for

the answer as though in the hope of some suggestion. “What's up with

you? Think yourself lucky,” said somebody.--“It's all very well--for

to-night,” began the voice.--“What are you fashing yourself for?”

remonstrated the other, reasonably, “we'll get home right enough.”--“I

am not so sure; the second mate he says--” “Never mind what he says;

that 'ere man who has got this brig will see us through. The owner's

wife will talk to him--she will. Money can do a lot.” The two voices

came nearer, and spoke more distinctly, close behind Lingard. “Suppose

them blooming savages set fire to the yacht. What's to prevent

them?”--“And suppose they do. This 'ere brig's good enough to get away

in. Ain't she? Guns and all. We'll get home yet all right. What do you

say, John?”

“I say nothing and care less,” said a third voice, peaceful and faint.

“D'you mean to say, John, you would go to the bottom as soon as you

would go home? Come now!”--“To the bottom,” repeated the wan voice,

composedly. “Aye! That's where we all are going to, in one way or

another. The way don't matter.”

“Ough! You would give the blues to the funny man of a blooming circus.

What would my missus say if I wasn't to turn up never at all?”--“She

would get another man; there's always plenty of fools about.” A quiet

and mirthless chuckle was heard in the pause of shocked silence.

Lingard, with his hand on the door, remained still. Further off a growl

burst out: “I do hate to be chucked in the dark aboard a strange ship.

I wonder where they keep their fresh water. Can't get any sense out of

them silly niggers. We don't seem to be more account here than a lot of

cattle. Likely as not we'll have to berth on this blooming quarter-deck

for God knows how long.” Then again very near Lingard the first voice

said, deadened discreetly--“There's something curious about this here

brig turning up sudden-like, ain't there? And that skipper of her--now?

What kind of a man is he--anyhow?”

“Oh, he's one of them skippers going about loose. The brig's his own, I

am thinking. He just goes about in her looking for what he may pick up

honest or dishonest. My brother-in-law has served two commissions in

these seas, and was telling me awful yarns about what's going on in them

God-forsaken parts. Likely he lied, though. Them man-of-war's men are

a holy terror for yarns. Bless you, what do I care who this skipper is?

Let him do his best and don't trouble your head. You won't see him again

in your life once we get clear.”

“And can he do anything for the owner?” asked the first voice

again.--“Can he! We can do nothing--that's one thing certain. The owner

may be lying clubbed to death this very minute for all we know. By all

accounts these savages here are a crool murdering lot. Mind you, I am

sorry for him as much as anybody.”--“Aye, aye,” muttered the other,

approvingly.--“He may not have been ready, poor man,” began again the

reasonable voice. Lingard heard a deep sigh.--“If there's anything as

can be done for him, the owner's wife she's got to fix it up with this

'ere skipper. Under Providence he may serve her turn.”

Lingard flung open the cabin door, entered, and, with a slam, shut the

darkness out.

“I am, under Providence, to serve your turn,” he said after standing

very still for a while, with his eyes upon Mrs. Travers. The brig's

swing-lamp lighted the cabin with an extraordinary brilliance. Mrs.

Travers had thrown back her hood. The radiant brightness of the little

place enfolded her so close, clung to her with such force that it might

have been part of her very essence. There were no shadows on her face;

it was fiercely lighted, hermetically closed, of impenetrable fairness.

Lingard looked in unconscious ecstasy at this vision, so amazing that it

seemed to have strayed into his existence from beyond the limits of

the conceivable. It was impossible to guess her thoughts, to know her

feelings, to understand her grief or her joy. But she knew all that

was at the bottom of his heart. He had told her himself, impelled by

a sudden thought, going to her in darkness, in desperation, in absurd

hope, in incredible trust. He had told her what he had told no one

on earth, except perhaps, at times, himself, but without words--less

clearly. He had told her and she had listened in silence. She had

listened leaning over the rail till at last her breath was on his

forehead. He remembered this and had a moment of soaring pride and of

unutterable dismay. He spoke, with an effort.

“You've heard what I said just now? Here I am.”

“Do you expect me to say something?” she asked. “Is it necessary? Is it

possible?”

“No,” he answered. “It is said already. I know what you expect from me.

Everything.”

“Everything,” she repeated, paused, and added much lower, “It is the

very least.” He seemed to lose himself in thought.

“It is extraordinary,” he reflected half aloud, “how I dislike that

man.” She leaned forward a little.

“Remember those two men are innocent,” she began.

“So am I--innocent. So is everybody in the world. Have you ever met a

man or a woman that was not? They've got to take their chances all the

same.”

“I expect you to be generous,” she said.

“To you?”

“Well--to me. Yes--if you like to me alone.”

“To you alone! And you know everything!” His voice dropped. “You want

your happiness.”

She made an impatient movement and he saw her clench the hand that was

lying on the table.

“I want my husband back,” she said, sharply.

“Yes. Yes. It's what I was saying. Same thing,” he muttered with strange

placidity. She looked at him searchingly. He had a large simplicity that

filled one's vision. She found herself slowly invaded by this masterful

figure. He was not mediocre. Whatever he might have been he was not

mediocre. The glamour of a lawless life stretched over him like the sky

over the sea down on all sides to an unbroken horizon. Within, he moved

very lonely, dangerous and romantic. There was in him crime, sacrifice,

tenderness, devotion, and the madness of a fixed idea. She thought with

wonder that of all the men in the world he was indeed the one she knew

the best and yet she could not foresee the speech or the act of the next

minute. She said distinctly:

“You've given me your confidence. Now I want you to give me the life of

these two men. The life of two men whom you do not know, whom to-morrow

you will forget. It can be done. It must be done. You cannot refuse them

to me.” She waited.

“Why can't I refuse?” he whispered, gloomily, without looking up.

“You ask!” she exclaimed. He made no sign. He seemed at a loss for

words.

“You ask . . . Ah!” she cried. “Don't you see that I have no kingdoms to

conquer?”

III

A slight change of expression which passed away almost directly showed

that Lingard heard the passionate cry wrung from her by the distress of

her mind. He made no sign. She perceived clearly the extreme difficulty

of her position. The situation was dangerous; not so much the facts

of it as the feeling of it. At times it appeared no more actual than a

tradition; and she thought of herself as of some woman in a ballad, who

has to beg for the lives of innocent captives. To save the lives of Mr.

Travers and Mr. d'Alcacer was more than a duty. It was a necessity, it

was an imperative need, it was an irresistible mission. Yet she had to

reflect upon the horrors of a cruel and obscure death before she could

feel for them the pity they deserved. It was when she looked at Lingard

that her heart was wrung by an extremity of compassion. The others were

pitiful, but he, the victim of his own extravagant impulses, appeared

tragic, fascinating, and culpable. Lingard lifted his head. Whispers

were heard at the door and Hassim followed by Immada entered the cabin.

Mrs. Travers looked at Lingard, because of all the faces in the cabin

his was the only one that was intelligible to her. Hassim began to speak

at once, and when he ceased Immada's deep sigh was heard in the sudden

silence. Then Lingard looked at Mrs. Travers and said:

“The gentlemen are alive. Rajah Hassim here has seen them less than two

hours ago, and so has the girl. They are alive and unharmed, so far. And

now. . . .”

He paused. Mrs. Travers, leaning on her elbow, shaded her eyes under the

glint of suspended thunderbolts.

“You must hate us,” she murmured.

“Hate you,” he repeated with, as she fancied, a tinge of disdain in his

tone. “No. I hate myself.”

“Why yourself?” she asked, very low.

“For not knowing my mind,” he answered. “For not knowing my mind. For

not knowing what it is that's got hold of me since--since this morning.

I was angry then. . . . Nothing but very angry. . . .”

“And now?” she murmured.

“I am . . . unhappy,” he said. After a moment of silence which gave to

Mrs. Travers the time to wonder how it was that this man had succeeded

in penetrating into the very depths of her compassion, he hit the table

such a blow that all the heavy muskets seemed to jump a little.

Mrs. Travers heard Hassim pronounce a few words earnestly, and a moan of

distress from Immada.

“I believed in you before you . . . before you gave me your confidence,”

she began. “You could see that. Could you not?”

He looked at her fixedly. “You are not the first that believed in me,”

he said.

Hassim, lounging with his back against the closed door, kept his eye on

him watchfully and Immada's dark and sorrowful eyes rested on the face

of the white woman. Mrs. Travers felt as though she were engaged in

a contest with them; in a struggle for the possession of that man's

strength and of that man's devotion. When she looked up at Lingard she

saw on his face--which should have been impassive or exalted, the face

of a stern leader or the face of a pitiless dreamer--an expression

of utter forgetfulness. He seemed to be tasting the delight of some

profound and amazing sensation. And suddenly in the midst of her appeal

to his generosity, in the middle of a phrase, Mrs. Travers faltered,

becoming aware that she was the object of his contemplation.

“Do not! Do not look at that woman!” cried Immada. “O! Master--look

away. . . .” Hassim threw one arm round the girl's neck. Her voice sank.

“O! Master--look at us.” Hassim, drawing her to himself, covered her

lips with his hand. She struggled a little like a snared bird and

submitted, hiding her face on his shoulder, very quiet, sobbing without

noise.

“What do they say to you?” asked Mrs. Travers with a faint and pained

smile. “What can they say? It is intolerable to think that their words

which have no meaning for me may go straight to your heart. . . .”

“Look away,” whispered Lingard without making the slightest movement.

Mrs. Travers sighed.

“Yes, it is very hard to think that I who want to touch you cannot make

myself understood as well as they. And yet I speak the language of your

childhood, the language of the man for whom there is no hope but in your

generosity.”

He shook his head. She gazed at him anxiously for a moment. “In your

memories then,” she said and was surprised by the expression of profound

sadness that over-spread his attentive face.

“Do you know what I remember?” he said. “Do you want to know?” She

listened with slightly parted lips. “I will tell you. Poverty, hard

work--and death,” he went on, very quietly. “And now I've told you, and

you don't know. That's how it is between us. You talk to me--I talk to

you--and we don't know.”

Her eyelids dropped.

“What can I find to say?” she went on. “What can I do? I mustn't

give in. Think! Amongst your memories there must be some face--some

voice--some name, if nothing more. I can not believe that there is

nothing but bitterness.”

“There's no bitterness,” he murmured.

“O! Brother, my heart is faint with fear,” whispered Immada. Lingard

turned swiftly to that whisper.

“Then, they are to be saved,” exclaimed Mrs. Travers. “Ah, I knew. . . .”

“Bear thy fear in patience,” said Hassim, rapidly, to his sister.

“They are to be saved. You have said it,” Lingard pronounced aloud,

suddenly. He felt like a swimmer who, in the midst of superhuman efforts

to reach the shore, perceives that the undertow is taking him to sea. He

would go with the mysterious current; he would go swiftly--and see the

end, the fulfilment both blissful and terrible.

With this state of exaltation in which he saw himself in some

incomprehensible way always victorious, whatever might befall, there was

mingled a tenacity of purpose. He could not sacrifice his intention,

the intention of years, the intention of his life; he could no more

part with it and exist than he could cut out his heart and live. The

adventurer held fast to his adventure which made him in his own sight

exactly what he was.

He considered the problem with cool audacity, backed by a belief in

his own power. It was not these two men he had to save; he had to save

himself! And looked upon in this way the situation appeared familiar.

Hassim had told him the two white men had been taken by their captors

to Daman's camp. The young Rajah, leaving his sister in the canoe, had

landed on the sand and had crept to the very edge of light thrown by the

fires by which the Illanuns were cooking. Daman was sitting apart by a

larger blaze. Two praus rode in shallow water near the sandbank; on the

ridge, a sentry walked watching the lights of the brig; the camp was

full of quiet whispers. Hassim returned to his canoe, then he and his

sister, paddling cautiously round the anchored praus, in which women's

voices could be heard, approached the other end of the camp. The light

of the big blaze there fell on the water and the canoe skirted it

without a splash, keeping in the night. Hassim, landing for the second

time, crept again close to the fires. Each prau had, according to the

customs of the Illanun rovers when on a raiding expedition, a smaller

war-boat and these being light and manageable were hauled up on the sand

not far from the big blaze; they sat high on the shelving shore throwing

heavy shadows. Hassim crept up toward the largest of them and then

standing on tiptoe could look at the camp across the gunwales. The

confused talking of the men was like the buzz of insects in a forest.

A child wailed on board one of the praus and a woman hailed the shore

shrilly. Hassim unsheathed his kris and held it in his hand.

Very soon--he said--he saw the two white men walking amongst the fires.

They waved their arms and talked together, stopping from time to time;

they approached Daman; and the short man with the hair on his face

addressed him earnestly and at great length. Daman sat cross-legged upon

a little carpet with an open Koran on his knees and chanted the versets

swaying to and fro with his eyes shut.

The Illanun chiefs reclining wrapped in cloaks on the ground raised

themselves on their elbows to look at the whites. When the short white

man finished speaking he gazed down at them for a while, then stamped

his foot. He looked angry because no one understood him. Then suddenly

he looked very sad; he covered his face with his hands; the tall man put

his hand on the short man's shoulder and whispered into his ear. The dry

wood of the fires crackled, the Illanuns slept, cooked, talked, but

with their weapons at hand. An armed man or two came up to stare at the

prisoners and then returned to their fire. The two whites sank down in

the sand in front of Daman. Their clothes were soiled, there was sand in

their hair. The tall man had lost his hat; the glass in the eye of the

short man glittered very much; his back was muddy and one sleeve of his

coat torn up to the elbow.

All this Hassim saw and then retreated undetected to that part of

the shore where Immada waited for him, keeping the canoe afloat. The

Illanuns, trusting to the sea, kept very bad watch on their prisoners,

and had he been able to speak with them Hassim thought an escape could

have been effected. But they could not have understood his signs and

still less his words. He consulted with his sister. Immada murmured

sadly; at their feet the ripple broke with a mournful sound no louder

than their voices.

Hassim's loyalty was unshaken, but now it led him on not in the bright

light of hopes but in the deepened shadow of doubt. He wanted to obtain

information for his friend who was so powerful and who perhaps would

know how to be constant. When followed by Immada he approached the camp

again--this time openly--their appearance did not excite much surprise.

It was well known to the Chiefs of the Illanuns that the Rajah for whom

they were to fight--if God so willed--was upon the shoals looking out

for the coming of the white man who had much wealth and a store of

weapons and who was his servant. Daman, who alone understood the exact

relation, welcomed them with impenetrable gravity. Hassim took his

seat on the carpet at his right hand. A consultation was being held

half-aloud in short and apparently careless sentences, with long

intervals of silence between. Immada, nestling close to her brother,

leaned one arm on his shoulder and listened with serious attention and

with outward calm as became a princess of Wajo accustomed to consort

with warriors and statesmen in moments of danger and in the hours of

deliberation. Her heart was beating rapidly, and facing her the silent

white men stared at these two known faces, as if across a gulf.

Four Illanun chiefs sat in a row. Their ample cloaks fell from their

shoulders, and lay behind them on the sand in which their four long

lances were planted upright, each supporting a small oblong shield of

wood, carved on the edges and stained a dull purple. Daman stretched out

his arm and pointed at the prisoners. The faces of the white men were

very quiet. Daman looked at them mutely and ardently, as if consumed by

an unspeakable longing.

The Koran, in a silk cover, hung on his breast by a crimson cord. It

rested over his heart and, just below, the plain buffalo-horn handle of

a kris, stuck into the twist of his sarong, protruded ready to his hand.

The clouds thickening over the camp made the darkness press heavily on

the glow of scattered fires. “There is blood between me and the whites,”

he pronounced, violently. The Illanun chiefs remained impassive. There

was blood between them and all mankind. Hassim remarked dispassionately

that there was one white man with whom it would be wise to remain

friendly; and besides, was not Daman his friend already? Daman smiled

with half-closed eyes. He was that white man's friend, not his slave.

The Illanuns playing with their sword-handles grunted assent. Why, asked

Daman, did these strange whites travel so far from their country? The

great white man whom they all knew did not want them. No one wanted

them. Evil would follow in their footsteps. They were such men as are

sent by rulers to examine the aspects of far-off countries and talk of

peace and make treaties. Such is the beginning of great sorrows. The

Illanuns were far from their country, where no white man dared to come,

and therefore they were free to seek their enemies upon the open waters.

They had found these two who had come to see. He asked what they had

come to see? Was there nothing to look at in their own country?

He talked in an ironic and subdued tone. The scattered heaps of embers

glowed a deeper red; the big blaze of the chief's fire sank low and

grew dim before he ceased. Straight-limbed figures rose, sank, moved,

whispered on the beach. Here and there a spear-blade caught a red gleam

above the black shape of a head.

“The Illanuns seek booty on the sea,” cried Daman. “Their fathers and

the fathers of their fathers have done the same, being fearless like

those who embrace death closely.”

A low laugh was heard. “We strike and go,” said an exulting voice. “We

live and die with our weapons in our hands.” The Illanuns leaped to

their feet. They stamped on the sand, flourishing naked blades over the

heads of their prisoners. A tumult arose.

When it subsided Daman stood up in a cloak that wrapped him to his feet

and spoke again giving advice.

The white men sat on the sand and turned their eyes from face to face

as if trying to understand. It was agreed to send the prisoners into the

lagoon where their fate would be decided by the ruler of the land. The

Illanuns only wanted to plunder the ship. They did not care what became

of the men. “But Daman cares,” remarked Hassim to Lingard, when relating

what took place. “He cares, O Tuan!”

Hassim had learned also that the Settlement was in a state of unrest

as if on the eve of war. Belarab with his followers was encamped by his

father's tomb in the hollow beyond the cultivated fields. His stockade

was shut up and no one appeared on the verandahs of the houses within.

You could tell there were people inside only by the smoke of the cooking

fires. Tengga's followers meantime swaggered about the Settlement

behaving tyrannically to those who were peaceable. A great madness had

descended upon the people, a madness strong as the madness of love, the

madness of battle, the desire to spill blood. A strange fear also had

made them wild. The big smoke seen that morning above the forests of

the coast was some agreed signal from Tengga to Daman but what it meant

Hassim had been unable to find out. He feared for Jorgenson's safety.

He said that while one of the war-boats was being made ready to take the

captives into the lagoon, he and his sister left the camp quietly and

got away in their canoe. The flares of the brig, reflected in a faint

loom upon the clouds, enabled them to make straight for the vessel

across the banks. Before they had gone half way these flames went out

and the darkness seemed denser than any he had known before. But it was

no greater than the darkness of his mind--he added. He had looked upon

the white men sitting unmoved and silent under the edge of swords; he

had looked at Daman, he had heard bitter words spoken; he was looking

now at his white friend--and the issue of events he could not see. One

can see men's faces but their fate, which is written on their foreheads,

one cannot see. He had no more to say, and what he had spoken was true

in every word.

IV

Lingard repeated it all to Mrs. Travers. Her courage, her intelligence,

the quickness of her apprehension, the colour of her eyes and the

intrepidity of her glance evoked in him an admiring enthusiasm. She

stood by his side! Every moment that fatal illusion clung closer to his

soul--like a garment of light--like an armour of fire.

He was unwilling to face the facts. All his life--till that day--had

been a wrestle with events in the daylight of this world, but now he

could not bring his mind to the consideration of his position. It

was Mrs. Travers who, after waiting awhile, forced on him the pain

of thought by wanting to know what bearing Hassim's news had upon the

situation.

Lingard had not the slightest doubt Daman wanted him to know what had

been done with the prisoners. That is why Daman had welcomed Hassim, and

let him hear the decision and had allowed him to leave the camp on the

sandbank. There could be only one object in this; to let him, Lingard,

know that the prisoners had been put out of his reach as long as he

remained in his brig. Now this brig was his strength. To make him leave

his brig was like removing his hand from his sword.

“Do you understand what I mean, Mrs. Travers?” he asked. “They are

afraid of me because I know how to fight this brig. They fear the

brig because when I am on board her, the brig and I are one. An armed

man--don't you see? Without the brig I am disarmed, without me she can't

strike. So Daman thinks. He does not know everything but he is not far

off the truth. He says to himself that if I man the boats to go after

these whites into the lagoon then his Illanuns will get the yacht for

sure--and perhaps the brig as well. If I stop here with my brig he holds

the two white men and can talk as big as he pleases. Belarab believes in

me no doubt, but Daman trusts no man on earth. He simply does not know

how to trust any one, because he is always plotting himself. He came to

help me and as soon as he found I was not there he began to plot with

Tengga. Now he has made a move--a clever move; a cleverer move than he

thinks. Why? I'll tell you why. Because I, Tom Lingard, haven't a single

white man aboard this brig I can trust. Not one. I only just discovered

my mate's got the notion I am some kind of pirate. And all your yacht

people think the same. It is as though you had brought a curse on me

in your yacht. Nobody believes me. Good God! What have I come to! Even

those two--look at them--I say look at them! By all the stars they doubt

me! Me! . . .”

He pointed at Hassim and Immada. The girl seemed frightened. Hassim

looked on calm and intelligent with inexhaustible patience. Lingard's

voice fell suddenly.

“And by heavens they may be right. Who knows? You? Do you know? They

have waited for years. Look. They are waiting with heavy hearts. Do you

think that I don't care? Ought I to have kept it all in--told no one--no

one--not even you? Are they waiting for what will never come now?”

Mrs. Travers rose and moved quickly round the table. “Can we give

anything to this--this Daman or these other men? We could give them more

than they could think of asking. I--my husband. . . .”

“Don't talk to me of your husband,” he said, roughly. “You don't know

what you are doing.” She confronted the sombre anger of his eyes--“But I

must,” she asserted with heat.--“Must,” he mused, noticing that she was

only half a head less tall than himself. “Must! Oh, yes. Of course, you

must. Must! Yes. But I don't want to hear. Give! What can you give? You

may have all the treasures of the world for all I know. No! You can't

give anything. . . .”

“I was thinking of your difficulty when I spoke,” she interrupted. His

eyes wandered downward following the line of her shoulder.--“Of me--of

me!” he repeated.

All this was said almost in whispers. The sound of slow footsteps was

heard on deck above their heads. Lingard turned his face to the open

skylight.

“On deck there! Any wind?”

All was still for a moment. Somebody above answered in a leisurely tone:

“A steady little draught from the northward.”

Then after a pause added in a mutter:

“Pitch dark.”

“Aye, dark enough,” murmured Lingard. He must do something. Now. At

once. The world was waiting. The world full of hopes and fear.

What should he do? Instead of answering that question he traced the

ungleaming coils of her twisted hair and became fascinated by a stray

lock at her neck. What should he do? No one to leave his brig to. The

voice that had answered his question was Carter's voice. “He is hanging

about keeping his eye on me,” he said to Mrs. Travers. She shook her

head and tried to smile. The man above coughed discreetly. “No,” said

Lingard, “you must understand that you have nothing to give.”

The man on deck who seemed to have lingered by the skylight was heard

saying quietly, “I am at hand if you want me, Mrs. Travers.” Hassim and

Immada looked up. “You see,” exclaimed Lingard. “What did I tell you?

He's keeping his eye on me! On board my own ship. Am I dreaming? Am I in

a fever? Tell him to come down,” he said after a pause. Mrs. Travers

did so and Lingard thought her voice very commanding and very sweet.

“There's nothing in the world I love so much as this brig,” he went on.

“Nothing in the world. If I lost her I would have no standing room on

the earth for my feet. You don't understand this. You can't.”

Carter came in and shut the cabin door carefully. He looked with

serenity at everyone in turn.

“All quiet?” asked Lingard.

“Quiet enough if you like to call it so,” he answered. “But if you only

put your head outside the door you'll hear them all on the quarter-deck

snoring against each other, as if there were no wives at home and no

pirates at sea.”

“Look here,” said Lingard. “I found out that I can't trust my mate.”

“Can't you?” drawled Carter. “I am not exactly surprised. I must say

_he_ does not snore but I believe it is because he is too crazy to

sleep. He waylaid me on the poop just now and said something about evil

communications corrupting good manners. Seems to me I've heard that

before. Queer thing to say. He tried to make it out somehow that if he

wasn't corrupt it wasn't your fault. As if this was any concern of mine.

He's as mad as he's fat--or else he puts it on.” Carter laughed a little

and leaned his shoulders against a bulkhead.

Lingard gazed at the woman who expected so much from him and in the

light she seemed to shed he saw himself leading a column of armed boats

to the attack of the Settlement. He could burn the whole place to the

ground and drive every soul of them into the bush. He could! And

there was a surprise, a shock, a vague horror at the thought of the

destructive power of his will. He could give her ever so many lives. He

had seen her yesterday, and it seemed to him he had been all his life

waiting for her to make a sign. She was very still. He pondered a plan

of attack. He saw smoke and flame--and next moment he saw himself alone

amongst shapeless ruins with the whispers, with the sigh and moan of the

Shallows in his ears. He shuddered, and shaking his hand:

“No! I cannot give you all those lives!” he cried.

Then, before Mrs. Travers could guess the meaning of this outburst, he

declared that as the two captives must be saved he would go alone into

the lagoon. He could not think of using force. “You understand why,” he

said to Mrs. Travers and she whispered a faint “Yes.” He would run the

risk alone. His hope was in Belarab being able to see where his true

interest lay. “If I can only get at him I would soon make him see,” he

mused aloud. “Haven't I kept his power up for these two years past? And

he knows it, too. He feels it.” Whether he would be allowed to reach

Belarab was another matter. Lingard lost himself in deep thought. “He

would not dare,” he burst out. Mrs. Travers listened with parted lips.

Carter did not move a muscle of his youthful and self-possessed face;

only when Lingard, turning suddenly, came up close to him and asked with

a red flash of eyes and in a lowered voice, “Could you fight this brig?”

something like a smile made a stir amongst the hairs of his little fair

moustache.

“'Could I?” he said. “I could try, anyhow.” He paused, and added hardly

above his breath, “For the lady--of course.”

Lingard seemed staggered as though he had been hit in the chest. “I was

thinking of the brig,” he said, gently.

“Mrs. Travers would be on board,” retorted Carter.

“What! on board. Ah yes; on board. Where else?” stammered Lingard.

Carter looked at him in amazement. “Fight! You ask!” he said, slowly.

“You just try me.”

“I shall,” ejaculated Lingard. He left the cabin calling out “serang!” A

thin cracked voice was heard immediately answering, “Tuan!” and the door

slammed to.

“You trust him, Mrs. Travers?” asked Carter, rapidly.

“You do not--why?” she answered.

“I can't make him out. If he was another kind of man I would say he was

drunk,” said Carter. “Why is he here at all--he, and this brig of his?

Excuse my boldness--but have you promised him anything?”

“I--I promised!” exclaimed Mrs. Travers in a bitter tone which silenced

Carter for a moment.

“So much the better,” he said at last. “Let him show what he can do

first and . . .”

“Here! Take this,” said Lingard, who re-entered the cabin fumbling about

his neck. Carter mechanically extended his hand.

“What's this for?” he asked, looking at a small brass key attached to a

thin chain.

“Powder magazine. Trap door under the table. The man who has this key

commands the brig while I am away. The serang understands. You have her

very life in your hand there.”

Carter looked at the small key lying in his half-open palm.

“I was just telling Mrs. Travers I didn't trust you--not

altogether. . . .”

“I know all about it,” interrupted Lingard, contemptuously. “You carry

a blamed pistol in your pocket to blow my brains out--don't you? What's

that to me? I am thinking of the brig. I think I know your sort. You

will do.”

“Well, perhaps I might,” mumbled Carter, modestly.

“Don't be rash,” said Lingard, anxiously. “If you've got to fight use

your head as well as your hands. If there's a breeze fight under way. If

they should try to board in a calm, trust to the small arms to hold them

off. Keep your head and--” He looked intensely into Carter's eyes; his

lips worked without a sound as though he had been suddenly struck dumb.

“Don't think about me. What's that to you who I am? Think of the ship,”

he burst out. “Don't let her go!--Don't let her go!” The passion in his

voice impressed his hearers who for a time preserved a profound silence.

“All right,” said Carter at last. “I will stick to your brig as though

she were my own; but I would like to see clear through all this. Look

here--you are going off somewhere? Alone, you said?”

“Yes. Alone.”

“Very well. Mind, then, that you don't come back with a crowd of those

brown friends of yours--or by the Heavens above us I won't let you come

within hail of your own ship. Am I to keep this key?”

“Captain Lingard,” said Mrs. Travers suddenly. “Would it not be better

to tell him everything?”

“Tell him everything?” repeated Lingard. “Everything! Yesterday it might

have been done. Only yesterday! Yesterday, did I say? Only six hours

ago--only six hours ago I had something to tell. You heard it. And now

it's gone. Tell him! There's nothing to tell any more.” He remained for

a time with bowed head, while before him Mrs. Travers, who had begun a

gesture of protest, dropped her arms suddenly. In a moment he looked up

again.

“Keep the key,” he said, calmly, “and when the time comes step forward

and take charge. I am satisfied.”

“I would like to see clear through all this though,” muttered Carter

again. “And for how long are you leaving us, Captain?” Lingard made no

answer. Carter waited awhile. “Come, sir,” he urged. “I ought to have

some notion. What is it? Two, three days?” Lingard started.

“Days,” he repeated. “Ah, days. What is it you want to know? Two . . .

three--what did the old fellow say--perhaps for life.” This was spoken

so low that no one but Carter heard the last words.--“Do you mean it?”

he murmured. Lingard nodded.--“Wait as long as you can--then go,” he

said in the same hardly audible voice. “Go where?”--“Where you like,

nearest port, any port.”--“Very good. That's something plain at any

rate,” commented the young man with imperturbable good humour.

“I go, O Hassim!” began Lingard and the Malay made a slow inclination of

the head which he did not raise again till Lingard had ceased speaking.

He betrayed neither surprise nor any other emotion while Lingard in a

few concise and sharp sentences made him acquainted with his purpose to

bring about singlehanded the release of the prisoners. When Lingard had

ended with the words: “And you must find a way to help me in the time of

trouble, O Rajah Hassim,” he looked up and said:

“Good. You never asked me for anything before.”

He smiled at his white friend. There was something subtle in the smile

and afterward an added firmness in the repose of the lips. Immada moved

a step forward. She looked at Lingard with terror in her black and

dilated eyes. She exclaimed in a voice whose vibration startled the

hearts of all the hearers with an indefinable sense of alarm, “He will

perish, Hassim! He will perish alone!”

“No,” said Hassim. “Thy fear is as vain to-night as it was at sunrise.

He shall not perish alone.”

Her eyelids dropped slowly. From her veiled eyes the tears fell,

vanishing in the silence. Lingard's forehead became furrowed by folds

that seemed to contain an infinity of sombre thoughts. “Remember, O

Hassim, that when I promised you to take you back to your country you

promised me to be a friend to all white men. A friend to all whites who

are of my people, forever.”

“My memory is good, O Tuan,” said Hassim; “I am not yet back in my

country, but is not everyone the ruler of his own heart? Promises made

by a man of noble birth live as long as the speaker endures.”

“Good-bye,” said Lingard to Mrs. Travers. “You will be safe here.” He

looked all around the cabin. “I leave you,” he began again and stopped

short. Mrs. Travers' hand, resting lightly on the edge of the table,

began to tremble. “It's for you . . . Yes. For you alone . . . and it

seems it can't be. . . .”

It seemed to him that he was saying good-bye to all the world, that

he was taking a last leave of his own self. Mrs. Travers did not say a

word, but Immada threw herself between them and cried:

“You are a cruel woman! You are driving him away from where his strength

is. You put madness into his heart, O! Blind--without pity--without

shame! . . .”

“Immada,” said Hassim's calm voice. Nobody moved.

“What did she say to me?” faltered Mrs. Travers and again repeated in a

voice that sounded hard, “What did she say?”

“Forgive her,” said Lingard. “Her fears are for me . . .”--“It's about

your going?” Mrs. Travers interrupted, swiftly.

“Yes, it is--and you must forgive her.” He had turned away his eyes with

something that resembled embarrassment but suddenly he was assailed by

an irresistible longing to look again at that woman. At the moment of

parting he clung to her with his glance as a man holds with his hands

a priceless and disputed possession. The faint blush that overspread

gradually Mrs. Travers' features gave her face an air of extraordinary

and startling animation.

“The danger you run?” she asked, eagerly. He repelled the suggestion by

a slighting gesture of the hand.--“Nothing worth looking at twice. Don't

give it a thought,” he said. “I've been in tighter places.” He clapped

his hands and waited till he heard the cabin door open behind his back.

“Steward, my pistols.” The mulatto in slippers, aproned to the chin,

glided through the cabin with unseeing eyes as though for him no one

there had existed. . . .--“Is it my heart that aches so?” Mrs. Travers

asked herself, contemplating Lingard's motionless figure. “How long will

this sensation of dull pain last? Will it last forever. . . .”--“How

many changes of clothes shall I put up, sir?” asked the steward, while

Lingard took the pistols from him and eased the hammers after putting

on fresh caps.--“I will take nothing this time, steward.” He received in

turn from the mulatto's hands a red silk handkerchief, a pocket book, a

cigar-case. He knotted the handkerchief loosely round his throat; it

was evident he was going through the routine of every departure for

the shore; he even opened the cigar-case to see whether it had been

filled.--“Hat, sir,” murmured the half-caste. Lingard flung it on his

head.--“Take your orders from this lady, steward--till I come back. The

cabin is hers--do you hear?” He sighed ready to go and seemed unable to

lift a foot.--“I am coming with you,” declared Mrs. Travers suddenly in

a tone of unalterable decision. He did not look at her; he did not even

look up; he said nothing, till after Carter had cried: “You can't, Mrs.

Travers!”--when without budging he whispered to himself:--“Of course.”

Mrs. Travers had pulled already the hood of her cloak over her head

and her face within the dark cloth had turned an intense and unearthly

white, in which the violet of her eyes appeared unfathomably mysterious.

Carter started forward.--“You don't know this man,” he almost shouted.

“I do know him,” she said, and before the reproachfully unbelieving

attitude of the other she added, speaking slowly and with emphasis:

“There is not, I verily believe, a single thought or act of his life

that I don't know.”--“It's true--it's true,” muttered Lingard to

himself. Carter threw up his arms with a groan. “Stand back,” said a

voice that sounded to him like a growl of thunder, and he felt a grip

on his hand which seemed to crush every bone. He jerked it away.--“Mrs.

Travers! stay,” he cried. They had vanished through the open door and

the sound of their footsteps had already died away. Carter turned about

bewildered as if looking for help.--“Who is he, steward? Who in the name

of all the mad devils is he?” he asked, wildly. He was confounded by the

cold and philosophical tone of the answer:--“'Tain't my place to trouble

about that, sir--nor yours I guess.”--“Isn't it!” shouted Carter. “Why,

he has carried the lady off.” The steward was looking critically at

the lamp and after a while screwed the light down.--“That's better,” he

mumbled.--“Good God! What is a fellow to do?” continued Carter, looking

at Hassim and Immada who were whispering together and gave him only an

absent glance. He rushed on deck and was struck blind instantly by the

night that seemed to have been lying in wait for him; he stumbled over

something soft, kicked something hard, flung himself on the rail. “Come

back,” he cried. “Come back. Captain! Mrs. Travers!--or let me come,

too.”

He listened. The breeze blew cool against his cheek. A black bandage

seemed to lie over his eyes. “Gone,” he groaned, utterly crushed.

And suddenly he heard Mrs. Travers' voice remote in the depths of

the night.--“Defend the brig,” it said, and these words, pronouncing

themselves in the immensity of a lightless universe, thrilled every

fibre of his body by the commanding sadness of their tone. “Defend,

defend the brig.” . . . “I am damned if I do,” shouted Carter in

despair. “Unless you come back! . . . Mrs. Travers!”

“. . . as though--I were--on board--myself,” went on the rising

cadence of the voice, more distant now, a marvel of faint and imperious

clearness.

Carter shouted no more; he tried to make out the boat for a time, and

when, giving it up, he leaped down from the rail, the heavy obscurity

of the brig's main deck was agitated like a sombre pool by his jump,

swayed, eddied, seemed to break up. Blotches of darkness recoiled,

drifted away, bare feet shuffled hastily, confused murmurs died out.

“Lascars,” he muttered, “The crew is all agog.” Afterward he listened

for a moment to the faintly tumultuous snores of the white men sleeping

in rows, with their heads under the break of the poop. Somewhere

about his feet, the yacht's black dog, invisible, and chained to a

deck-ringbolt, whined, rattled the thin links, pattered with his claws

in his distress at the unfamiliar surroundings, begging for the charity

of human notice. Carter stooped impulsively, and was met by a startling

lick in the face.--“Hallo, boy!” He thumped the thick curly sides,

stroked the smooth head--“Good boy, Rover. Down. Lie down, dog. You

don't know what to make of it--do you, boy?” The dog became still as

death. “Well, neither do I,” muttered Carter. But such natures are

helped by a cheerful contempt for the intricate and endless suggestions

of thought. He told himself that he would soon see what was to come of

it, and dismissed all speculation. Had he been a little older he would

have felt that the situation was beyond his grasp; but he was too

young to see it whole and in a manner detached from himself. All these

inexplicable events filled him with deep concern--but then on the other

hand he had the key of the magazine and he could not find it in his

heart to dislike Lingard. He was positive about this at last, and to

know that much after the discomfort of an inward conflict went a long

way toward a solution. When he followed Shaw into the cabin he could not

repress a sense of enjoyment or hide a faint and malicious smile.

“Gone away--did you say? And carried off the lady with him?” discoursed

Shaw very loud in the doorway. “Did he? Well, I am not surprised. What

can you expect from a man like that, who leaves his ship in an open

roadstead without--I won't say orders--but without as much as a single

word to his next in command? And at night at that! That just shows you

the kind of man. Is this the way to treat a chief mate? I apprehend he

was riled at the little al-ter-cation we had just before you came on

board. I told him a truth or two--but--never mind. There's the law and

that's enough for me. I am captain as long as he is out of the ship, and

if his address before very long is not in one of Her Majesty's jails or

other I au-tho-rize you to call me a Dutchman. You mark my words.”

He walked in masterfully, sat down and surveyed the cabin in a leisurely

and autocratic manner; but suddenly his eyes became stony with amazement

and indignation; he pointed a fat and trembling forefinger.

“Niggers,” he said, huskily. “In the cuddy! In the cuddy!” He appeared

bereft of speech for a time.

Since he entered the cabin Hassim had been watching him in thoughtful

and expectant silence. “I can't have it,” he continued with genuine

feeling in his voice. “Damme! I've too much respect for myself.” He rose

with heavy deliberation; his eyes bulged out in a severe and

dignified stare. “Out you go!” he bellowed; suddenly, making a step

forward.--“Great Scott! What are you up to, mister?” asked in a tone of

dispassionate surprise the steward whose head appeared in the doorway.

“These are the Captain's friends.” “Show me a man's friends and . . .”

began Shaw, dogmatically, but abruptly passed into the tone of

admonition. “You take your mug out of the way, bottle-washer. They ain't

friends of mine. I ain't a vagabond. I know what's due to myself. Quit!”

he hissed, fiercely. Hassim, with an alert movement, grasped the handle

of his kris. Shaw puffed out his cheeks and frowned.--“Look out! He

will stick you like a prize pig,” murmured Carter without moving

a muscle. Shaw looked round helplessly.--“And you would enjoy the

fun--wouldn't you?” he said with slow bitterness. Carter's distant

non-committal smile quite overwhelmed him by its horrid frigidity.

Extreme despondency replaced the proper feeling of racial pride in the

primitive soul of the mate. “My God! What luck! What have I done to fall

amongst that lot?” he groaned, sat down, and took his big grey head in

his hands. Carter drew aside to make room for Immada, who, in obedience

to a whisper from her brother, sought to leave the cabin. She passed

out after an instant of hesitation, during which she looked up at Carter

once. Her brother, motionless in a defensive attitude, protected her

retreat. She disappeared; Hassim's grip on his weapon relaxed; he looked

in turn at every object in the cabin as if to fix its position in

his mind forever, and following his sister, walked out with noiseless

footfalls.

They entered the same darkness which had received, enveloped, and hidden

the troubled souls of Lingard and Edith, but to these two the light from

which they had felt themselves driven away was now like the light of

forbidden hopes; it had the awful and tranquil brightness that a light

burning on the shore has for an exhausted swimmer about to give himself

up to the fateful sea. They looked back; it had disappeared; Carter had

shut the cabin door behind them to have it out with Shaw. He wanted to

arrive at some kind of working compromise with the nominal commander,

but the mate was so demoralized by the novelty of the assaults made upon

his respectability that the young defender of the brig could get nothing

from him except lamentations mingled with mild blasphemies. The brig

slept, and along her quiet deck the voices raised in her cabin--Shaw's

appeals and reproaches directed vociferously to heaven, together with

Carter's inflexible drawl mingled into one deadened, modulated, and

continuous murmur. The lockouts in the waist, motionless and peering

into obscurity, one ear turned to the sea, were aware of that strange

resonance like the ghost of a quarrel that seemed to hover at their

backs. Wasub, after seeing Hassim and Immada into their canoe, prowled

to and fro the whole length of the vessel vigilantly. There was not

a star in the sky and no gleam on the water; there was no horizon, no

outline, no shape for the eye to rest upon, nothing for the hand to

grasp. An obscurity that seemed without limit in space and time had

submerged the universe like a destroying flood.

A lull of the breeze kept for a time the small boat in the neighbourhood

of the brig. The hoisted sail, invisible, fluttered faintly,

mysteriously, and the boat rising and falling bodily to the passage of

each invisible undulation of the waters seemed to repose upon a living

breast. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat up erect, expectant and

silent. Mrs. Travers had drawn her cloak close around her body. Their

glances plunged infinitely deep into a lightless void, and yet they were

still so near the brig that the piteous whine of the dog, mingled with

the angry rattling of the chain, reached their ears faintly, evoking

obscure images of distress and fury. A sharp bark ending in a plaintive

howl that seemed raised by the passage of phantoms invisible to men,

rent the black stillness, as though the instinct of the brute inspired

by the soul of night had voiced in a lamentable plaint the fear of the

future, the anguish of lurking death, the terror of shadows. Not far

from the brig's boat Hassim and Immada in their canoe, letting their

paddles trail in the water, sat in a silent and invincible torpor as

if the fitful puffs of wind had carried to their hearts the breath of a

subtle poison that, very soon, would make them die.--“Have you seen

the white woman's eyes?” cried the girl. She struck her palms together

loudly and remained with her arms extended, with her hands clasped. “O

Hassim! Have you seen her eyes shining under her eyebrows like rays of

light darting under the arched boughs in a forest? They pierced me. I

shuddered at the sound of her voice! I saw her walk behind him--and

it seems to me that she does not live on earth--that all this is

witchcraft.”

She lamented in the night. Hassim kept silent. He had no illusions and

in any other man but Lingard he would have thought the proceeding no

better than suicidal folly. For him Travers and d'Alcacer were two

powerful Rajahs--probably relatives of the Ruler of the land of the

English whom he knew to be a woman; but why they should come and

interfere with the recovery of his own kingdom was an obscure problem.

He was concerned for Lingard's safety. That the risk was incurred mostly

for his sake--so that the prospects of the great enterprise should not

be ruined by a quarrel over the lives of these whites--did not strike

him so much as may be imagined. There was that in him which made such

an action on Lingard's part appear all but unavoidable. Was he not Rajah

Hassim and was not the other a man of strong heart, of strong arm, of

proud courage, a man great enough to protect highborn princes--a friend?

Immada's words called out a smile which, like the words, was lost in the

darkness. “Forget your weariness,” he said, gently, “lest, O Sister, we

should arrive too late.” The coming day would throw its light on some

decisive event. Hassim thought of his own men who guarded the Emma and

he wished to be where they could hear his voice. He regretted Jaffir was

not there. Hassim was saddened by the absence from his side of that man

who once had carried what he thought would be his last message to his

friend. It had not been the last. He had lived to cherish new hopes and

to face new troubles and, perchance, to frame another message yet, while

death knocked with the hands of armed enemies at the gate. The breeze

steadied; the succeeding swells swung the canoe smoothly up the unbroken

ridges of water travelling apace along the land. They progressed slowly;

but Immada's heart was more weary than her arms, and Hassim, dipping the

blade of his paddle without a splash, peered right and left, trying to

make out the shadowy forms of islets. A long way ahead of the canoe and

holding the same course, the brig's dinghy ran with broad lug extended,

making for that narrow and winding passage between the coast and the

southern shoals, which led to the mouth of the creek connecting the

lagoon with the sea.

Thus on that starless night the Shallows were peopled by uneasy souls.

The thick veil of clouds stretched over them, cut them off from the

rest of the universe. At times Mrs. Travers had in the darkness the

impression of dizzy speed, and again it seemed to her that the boat was

standing still, that everything in the world was standing still and only

her fancy roamed free from all trammels. Lingard, perfectly motionless

by her side, steered, shaping his course by the feel of the wind.

Presently he perceived ahead a ghostly flicker of faint, livid light

which the earth seemed to throw up against the uniform blackness of

the sky. The dinghy was approaching the expanse of the Shallows. The

confused clamour of broken water deepened its note.

“How long are we going to sail like this?” asked Mrs. Travers, gently.

She did not recognize the voice that pronounced the word “Always” in

answer to her question. It had the impersonal ring of a voice without a

master. Her heart beat fast.

“Captain Lingard!” she cried.

“Yes. What?” he said, nervously, as if startled out of a dream.

“I asked you how long we were going to sail like this,” she repeated,

distinctly.

“If the breeze holds we shall be in the lagoon soon after daybreak. That

will be the right time, too. I shall leave you on board the hulk with

Jorgenson.”

“And you? What will you do?” she asked. She had to wait for a while.

“I will do what I can,” she heard him say at last. There was another

pause. “All I can,” he added.

The breeze dropped, the sail fluttered.

“I have perfect confidence in you,” she said. “But are you certain of

success?”

“No.”

The futility of her question came home to Mrs. Travers. In a few hours

of life she had been torn away from all her certitudes, flung into

a world of improbabilities. This thought instead of augmenting her

distress seemed to soothe her. What she experienced was not doubt and

it was not fear. It was something else. It might have been only a great

fatigue.

She heard a dull detonation as if in the depth of the sea. It was hardly

more than a shock and a vibration. A roller had broken amongst the

shoals; the livid clearness Lingard had seen ahead flashed and flickered

in expanded white sheets much nearer to the boat now. And all this--the

wan burst of light, the faint shock as of something remote and immense

falling into ruins, was taking place outside the limits of her

life which remained encircled by an impenetrable darkness and by an

impenetrable silence. Puffs of wind blew about her head and expired;

the sail collapsed, shivered audibly, stood full and still in turn;

and again the sensation of vertiginous speed and of absolute immobility

succeeding each other with increasing swiftness merged at last into

a bizarre state of headlong motion and profound peace. The darkness

enfolded her like the enervating caress of a sombre universe. It was

gentle and destructive. Its languor seduced her soul into surrender.

Nothing existed and even all her memories vanished into space. She was

content that nothing should exist.

Lingard, aware all the time of their contact in the narrow stern sheets

of the boat, was startled by the pressure of the woman's head drooping

on his shoulder. He stiffened himself still more as though he had

tried on the approach of a danger to conceal his life in the breathless

rigidity of his body. The boat soared and descended slowly; a region

of foam and reefs stretched across her course hissing like a gigantic

cauldron; a strong gust of wind drove her straight at it for a moment

then passed on and abandoned her to the regular balancing of the swell.

The struggle of the rocks forever overwhelmed and emerging, with the sea

forever victorious and repulsed, fascinated the man. He watched it as he

would have watched something going on within himself while Mrs. Travers

slept sustained by his arm, pressed to his side, abandoned to his

support. The shoals guarding the Shore of Refuge had given him his first

glimpse of success--the solid support he needed for his action. The

Shallows were the shelter of his dreams; their voice had the power to

soothe and exalt his thoughts with the promise of freedom for his hopes.

Never had there been such a generous friendship. . . . A mass of white

foam whirling about a centre of intense blackness spun silently past the

side of the boat. . . . That woman he held like a captive on his arm had

also been given to him by the Shallows.

Suddenly his eyes caught on a distant sandbank the red gleam of Daman's

camp fire instantly eclipsed like the wink of a signalling lantern along

the level of the waters. It brought to his mind the existence of the two

men--those other captives. If the war canoe transporting them into the

lagoon had left the sands shortly after Hassim's retreat from Daman's

camp, Travers and d'Alcacer were by this time far away up the creek.

Every thought of action had become odious to Lingard since all he could

do in the world now was to hasten the moment of his separation from that

woman to whom he had confessed the whole secret of his life.

And she slept. She could sleep! He looked down at her as he would have

looked at the slumbering ignorance of a child, but the life within him

had the fierce beat of supreme moments. Near by, the eddies sighed along

the reefs, the water soughed amongst the stones, clung round the rocks

with tragic murmurs that resembled promises, good-byes, or prayers. From

the unfathomable distances of the night came the booming of the swell

assaulting the seaward face of the Shallows. He felt the woman's

nearness with such intensity that he heard nothing. . . . Then suddenly

he thought of death.

“Wake up!” he shouted in her ear, swinging round in his seat. Mrs.

Travers gasped; a splash of water flicked her over the eyes and she felt

the separate drops run down her cheeks, she tasted them on her lips,

tepid and bitter like tears. A swishing undulation tossed the boat on

high followed by another and still another; and then the boat with the

breeze abeam glided through still water, laying over at a steady angle.

“Clear of the reef now,” remarked Lingard in a tone of relief.

“Were we in any danger?” asked Mrs. Travers in a whisper.

“Well, the breeze dropped and we drifted in very close to the rocks,” he

answered. “I had to rouse you. It wouldn't have done for you to wake up

suddenly struggling in the water.”

So she had slept! It seemed to her incredible that she should have

closed her eyes in this small boat, with the knowledge of their

desperate errand, on so disturbed a sea. The man by her side leaned

forward, extended his arm, and the boat going off before the wind went

on faster on an even keel. A motionless black bank resting on the sea

stretched infinitely right in their way in ominous stillness. She called

Lingard's attention to it. “Look at this awful cloud.”

“This cloud is the coast and in a moment we shall be entering the

creek,” he said, quietly. Mrs. Travers stared at it. Was it land--land!

It seemed to her even less palpable than a cloud, a mere sinister

immobility above the unrest of the sea, nursing in its depth the unrest

of men who, to her mind, were no more real than fantastic shadows.

V

What struck Mrs. Travers most, directly she set eyes on him, was the

other-world aspect of Jorgenson. He had been buried out of sight so long

that his tall, gaunt body, his unhurried, mechanical movements, his

set face and his eyes with an empty gaze suggested an invincible

indifference to all the possible surprises of the earth. That appearance

of a resuscitated man who seemed to be commanded by a conjuring spell

strolled along the decks of what was even to Mrs. Travers' eyes the mere

corpse of a ship and turned on her a pair of deep-sunk, expressionless

eyes with an almost unearthly detachment. Mrs. Travers had never been

looked at before with that strange and pregnant abstraction. Yet she

didn't dislike Jorgenson. In the early morning light, white from head to

foot in a perfectly clean suit of clothes which seemed hardly to contain

any limbs, freshly shaven (Jorgenson's sunken cheeks with their withered

colouring always had a sort of gloss as though he had the habit of

shaving every two hours or so), he looked as immaculate as though he

had been indeed a pure spirit superior to the soiling contacts of the

material earth. He was disturbing but he was not repulsive. He gave no

sign of greeting.

Lingard addressed him at once.

“You have had a regular staircase built up the side of the hulk,

Jorgenson,” he said. “It was very convenient for us to come aboard now,

but in case of an attack don't you think . . .”

“I did think.” There was nothing so dispassionate in the world as the

voice of Captain H. C. Jorgenson, ex Barque Wild Rose, since he had

recrossed the Waters of Oblivion to step back into the life of men. “I

did think, but since I don't want to make trouble. . . .”

“Oh, you don't want to make trouble,” interrupted Lingard.

“No. Don't believe in it. Do you, King Tom?”

“I may have to make trouble.”

“So you came up here in this small dinghy of yours like this to start

making trouble, did you?”

“What's the matter with you? Don't you know me yet, Jorgenson?”

“I thought I knew you. How could I tell that a man like you would come

along for a fight bringing a woman with him?”

“This lady is Mrs. Travers,” said Lingard. “The wife of one of the

luckless gentlemen Daman got hold of last evening. . . . This is

Jorgenson, the friend of whom I have been telling you, Mrs. Travers.”

Mrs. Travers smiled faintly. Her eyes roamed far and near and the

strangeness of her surroundings, the overpowering curiosity, the

conflict of interest and doubt gave her the aspect of one still new to

life, presenting an innocent and naive attitude before the surprises

of experience. She looked very guileless and youthful between those two

men. Lingard gazed at her with that unconscious tenderness mingled with

wonder, which some men manifest toward girlhood. There was nothing of

a conqueror of kingdoms in his bearing. Jorgenson preserved his

amazing abstraction which seemed neither to hear nor see anything. But,

evidently, he kept a mysterious grip on events in the world of living

men because he asked very naturally:

“How did she get away?”

“The lady wasn't on the sandbank,” explained Lingard, curtly.

“What sandbank?” muttered Jorgenson, perfunctorily. . . . “Is the yacht

looted, Tom?”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Lingard.

“Ah, many dead?” inquired Jorgenson.

“I tell you there was nothing of the kind,” said Lingard, impatiently.

“What? No fight!” inquired Jorgenson again without the slightest sign of

animation.

“No.”

“And you a fighting man.”

“Listen to me, Jorgenson. Things turned out so that before the time came

for a fight it was already too late.” He turned to Mrs. Travers still

looking about with anxious eyes and a faint smile on her lips. “While I

was talking to you that evening from the boat it was already too late.

No. There was never any time for it. I have told you all about myself,

Mrs. Travers, and you know that I speak the truth when I say too late.

If you had only been alone in that yacht going about the seas!”

“Yes,” she struck in, “but I was not alone.”

Lingard dropped his chin on his breast. Already a foretaste of noonday

heat staled the sparkling freshness of the morning. The smile had

vanished from Edith Travers' lips and her eyes rested on Lingard's bowed

head with an expression no longer curious but which might have appeared

enigmatic to Jorgenson if he had looked at her. But Jorgenson looked at

nothing. He asked from the remoteness of his dead past, “What have you

left outside, Tom? What is there now?”

“There's the yacht on the shoals, my brig at anchor, and about a hundred

of the worst kind of Illanun vagabonds under three chiefs and with two

war-praus moored to the edge of the bank. Maybe Daman is with them, too,

out there.”

“No,” said Jorgenson, positively.

“He has come in,” cried Lingard. “He brought his prisoners in himself

then.”

“Landed by torchlight,” uttered precisely the shade of Captain

Jorgenson, late of the Barque Wild Rose. He swung his arm pointing

across the lagoon and Mrs. Travers turned about in that direction.

All the scene was but a great light and a great solitude. Her gaze

travelled over the lustrous, dark sheet of empty water to a shore

bordered by a white beach empty, too, and showing no sign of human life.

The human habitations were lost in the shade of the fruit trees, masked

by the cultivated patches of Indian corn and the banana plantations.

Near the shore the rigid lines of two stockaded forts could be

distinguished flanking the beach, and between them with a great open

space before it, the brown roof slope of an enormous long building that

seemed suspended in the air had a great square flag fluttering above it.

Something like a small white flame in the sky was the carved white coral

finial on the gable of the mosque which had caught full the rays of

the sun. A multitude of gay streamers, white and red, flew over the

half-concealed roofs, over the brilliant fields and amongst the sombre

palm groves. But it might have been a deserted settlement decorated and

abandoned by its departed population. Lingard pointed to the stockade on

the right.

“That's where your husband is,” he said to Mrs. Travers.

“Who is the other?” uttered Jorgenson's voice at their backs. He also

was turned that way with his strange sightless gaze fixed beyond them

into the void.

“A Spanish gentleman I believe you said, Mrs Travers,” observed Lingard.

“It is extremely difficult to believe that there is anybody there,”

murmured Mrs. Travers.

“Did you see them both, Jorgenson?” asked Lingard.

“Made out nobody. Too far. Too dark.”

As a matter of fact Jorgenson had seen nothing, about an hour before

daybreak, but the distant glare of torches while the loud shouts of an

excited multitude had reached him across the water only like a faint

and tempestuous murmur. Presently the lights went away processionally

through the groves of trees into the armed stockades. The distant glare

vanished in the fading darkness and the murmurs of the invisible crowd

ceased suddenly as if carried off by the retreating shadow of the night.

Daylight followed swiftly, disclosing to the sleepless Jorgenson the

solitude of the shore and the ghostly outlines of the familiar forms of

grouped trees and scattered human habitations. He had watched the varied

colours come out in the dawn, the wide cultivated Settlement of

many shades of green, framed far away by the fine black lines of the

forest-edge that was its limit and its protection.

Mrs. Travers stood against the rail as motionless as a statue. Her face

had lost all its mobility and her cheeks were dead white as if all the

blood in her body had flowed back into her heart and had remained there.

Her very lips had lost their colour. Lingard caught hold of her arm

roughly.

“Don't, Mrs. Travers. Why are you terrifying yourself like this? If you

don't believe what I say listen to me asking Jorgenson. . . .”

“Yes, ask me,” mumbled Jorgenson in his white moustache.

“Speak straight, Jorgenson. What do you think? Are the gentlemen alive?”

“Certainly,” said Jorgenson in a sort of disappointed tone as though he

had expected a much more difficult question.

“Is their life in immediate danger?”

“Of course not,” said Jorgenson.

Lingard turned away from the oracle. “You have heard him, Mrs. Travers.

You may believe every word he says. There isn't a thought or a purpose

in that Settlement,” he continued, pointing at the dumb solitude of the

lagoon, “that this man doesn't know as if they were his own.”

“I know. Ask me,” muttered Jorgenson, mechanically.

Mrs. Travers said nothing but made a slight movement and her whole rigid

figure swayed dangerously. Lingard put his arm firmly round her waist

and she did not seem aware of it till after she had turned her head and

found Lingard's face very near her own. But his eyes full of concern

looked so close into hers that she was obliged to shut them like a woman

about to faint.

The effect this produced upon Lingard was such that she felt the

tightening of his arm and as she opened her eyes again some of the

colour returned to her face. She met the deepened expression of his

solicitude with a look so steady, with a gaze that in spite of herself

was so profoundly vivid that its clearness seemed to Lingard to throw

all his past life into shade.--“I don't feel faint. It isn't that at

all,” she declared in a perfectly calm voice. It seemed to Lingard as

cold as ice.

“Very well,” he agreed with a resigned smile. “But you just catch hold

of that rail, please, before I let you go.” She, too, forced a smile on

her lips.

“What incredulity,” she remarked, and for a time made not the slightest

movement. At last, as if making a concession, she rested the tips of her

fingers on the rail. Lingard gradually removed his arm. “And pray don't

look upon me as a conventional 'weak woman' person, the delicate lady of

your own conception,” she said, facing Lingard, with her arm extended to

the rail. “Make that effort please against your own conception of what

a woman like me should be. I am perhaps as strong as you are, Captain

Lingard. I mean it literally. In my body.”--“Don't you think I have

seen that long ago?” she heard his deep voice protesting.--“And as to

my courage,” Mrs. Travers continued, her expression charmingly undecided

between frowns and smiles; “didn't I tell you only a few hours ago, only

last evening, that I was not capable of thinking myself into a fright;

you remember, when you were begging me to try something of the kind.

Don't imagine that I would have been ashamed to try. But I couldn't have

done it. No. Not even for the sake of somebody else's kingdom. Do you

understand me?”

“God knows,” said the attentive Lingard after a time, with an unexpected

sigh. “You people seem to be made of another stuff.”

“What has put that absurd notion into your head?”

“I didn't mean better or worse. And I wouldn't say it isn't good stuff

either. What I meant to say is that it's different. One feels it. And

here we are.”

“Yes, here we are,” repeated Mrs. Travers. “And as to this moment of

emotion, what provoked it is not a concern for anybody or anything

outside myself. I felt no terror. I cannot even fix my fears upon any

distinct image. You think I am shamelessly heartless in telling you

this.”

Lingard made no sign. It didn't occur to him to make a sign. He

simply hung on Mrs. Travers' words as it were only for the sake of the

sound.--“I am simply frank with you,” she continued. “What do I know of

savagery, violence, murder? I have never seen a dead body in my life.

The light, the silence, the mysterious emptiness of this place have

suddenly affected my imagination, I suppose. What is the meaning of this

wonderful peace in which we stand--you and I alone?”

Lingard shook his head. He saw the narrow gleam of the woman's teeth

between the parted lips of her smile, as if all the ardour of her

conviction had been dissolved at the end of her speech into wistful

recognition of their partnership before things outside their knowledge.

And he was warmed by something a little helpless in that smile. Within

three feet of them the shade of Jorgenson, very gaunt and neat, stared

into space.

“Yes. You are strong,” said Lingard. “But a whole long night sitting in

a small boat! I wonder you are not too stiff to stand.”

“I am not stiff in the least,” she interrupted, still smiling. “I am

really a very strong woman,” she added, earnestly. “Whatever happens you

may reckon on that fact.”

Lingard gave her an admiring glance. But the shade of Jorgenson, perhaps

catching in its remoteness the sound of the word woman, was suddenly

moved to begin scolding with all the liberty of a ghost, in a flow of

passionless indignation.

“Woman! That's what I say. That's just about the last touch--that you,

Tom Lingard, red-eyed Tom, King Tom, and all those fine names, that you

should leave your weapons twenty miles behind you, your men, your guns,

your brig that is your strength, and come along here with your mouth

full of fight, bare-handed and with a woman in tow.--Well--well!”

“Don't forget, Jorgenson, that the lady hears you,” remonstrated Lingard

in a vexed tone. . . . “He doesn't mean to be rude,” he remarked to Mrs.

Travers quite loud, as if indeed Jorgenson were but an immaterial and

feelingless illusion. “He has forgotten.”

“The woman is not in the least offended. I ask for nothing better than

to be taken on that footing.”

“Forgot nothing!” mumbled Jorgenson with a sort of ghostly assertiveness

and as it were for his own satisfaction. “What's the world coming to?”

“It was I who insisted on coming with Captain Lingard,” said Mrs.

Travers, treating Jorgenson to a fascinating sweetness of tone.

“That's what I say! What is the world coming to? Hasn't King Tom a mind

of his own? What has come over him? He's mad! Leaving his brig with a

hundred and twenty born and bred pirates of the worst kind in two praus

on the other side of a sandbank. Did you insist on that, too? Has he put

himself in the hands of a strange woman?”

Jorgenson seemed to be asking those questions of himself. Mrs. Travers

observed the empty stare, the self-communing voice, his unearthly lack

of animation. Somehow it made it very easy to speak the whole truth to

him.

“No,” she said, “it is I who am altogether in his hands.”

Nobody would have guessed that Jorgenson had heard a single word of that

emphatic declaration if he had not addressed himself to Lingard with the

question neither more nor less abstracted than all his other speeches.

“Why then did you bring her along?”

“You don't understand. It was only right and proper. One of the

gentlemen is the lady's husband.”

“Oh, yes,” muttered Jorgenson. “Who's the other?”

“You have been told. A friend.”

“Poor Mr. d'Alcacer,” said Mrs. Travers. “What bad luck for him to have

accepted our invitation. But he is really a mere acquaintance.”

“I hardly noticed him,” observed Lingard, gloomily. “He was talking to

you over the back of your chair when I came aboard the yacht as if he

had been a very good friend.”

“We always understood each other very well,” said Mrs. Travers, picking

up from the rail the long glass that was lying there. “I always liked

him, the frankness of his mind, and his great loyalty.”

“What did he do?” asked Lingard.

“He loved,” said Mrs. Travers, lightly. “But that's an old story.” She

raised the glass to her eyes, one arm extended fully to sustain the long

tube, and Lingard forgot d'Alcacer in admiring the firmness of her pose

and the absolute steadiness of the heavy glass. She was as firm as a

rock after all those emotions and all that fatigue.

Mrs. Travers directed the glass instinctively toward the entrance of the

lagoon. The smooth water there shone like a piece of silver in the dark

frame of the forest. A black speck swept across the field of her vision.

It was some time before she could find it again and then she saw,

apparently so near as to be within reach of the voice, a small canoe

with two people in it. She saw the wet paddles rising and dipping with

a flash in the sunlight. She made out plainly the face of Immada, who

seemed to be looking straight into the big end of the telescope. The

chief and his sister, after resting under the bank for a couple of

hours in the middle of the night, had entered the lagoon and were making

straight for the hulk. They were already near enough to be perfectly

distinguishable to the naked eye if there had been anybody on board to

glance that way. But nobody was even thinking of them. They might not

have existed except perhaps in the memory of old Jorgenson. But that was

mostly busy with all the mysterious secrets of his late tomb.

Mrs. Travers lowered the glass suddenly. Lingard came out from a sort of

trance and said:

“Mr. d'Alcacer. Loved! Why shouldn't he?”

Mrs. Travers looked frankly into Lingard's gloomy eyes. “It isn't that

alone, of course,” she said. “First of all he knew how to love and then.

. . . You don't know how artificial and barren certain kinds of life

can be. But Mr. d'Alcacer's life was not that. His devotion was worth

having.”

“You seem to know a lot about him,'” said Lingard, enviously. “Why do

you smile?” She continued to smile at him for a little while. The long

brass tube over her shoulder shone like gold against the pale fairness

of her bare head.--“At a thought,” she answered, preserving the low tone

of the conversation into which they had fallen as if their words could

have disturbed the self-absorption of Captain H. C. Jorgenson. “At the

thought that for all my long acquaintance with Mr. d'Alcacer I don't

know half as much about him as I know about you.”

“Ah, that's impossible,” contradicted Lingard. “Spaniard or no Spaniard,

he is one of your kind.”

“Tarred with the same brush,” murmured Mrs. Travers, with only a

half-amused irony. But Lingard continued:

“He was trying to make it up between me and your husband, wasn't he? I

was too angry to pay much attention, but I liked him well enough. What

pleased me most was the way in which he gave it up. That was done like a

gentleman. Do you understand what I mean, Mrs. Travers?”

“I quite understand.”

“Yes, you would,” he commented, simply. “But just then I was too angry

to talk to anybody. And so I cleared out on board my own ship and stayed

there, not knowing what to do and wishing you all at the bottom of the

sea. Don't mistake me, Mrs. Travers; it's you, the people aft, that I

wished at the bottom of the sea. I had nothing against the poor devils

on board, They would have trusted me quick enough. So I fumed there

till--till. . . .”

“Till nine o'clock or a little after,” suggested Mrs. Travers,

impenetrably.

“No. Till I remembered you,” said Lingard with the utmost innocence.

“Do you mean to say that you forgot my existence so completely till

then? You had spoken to me on board the yacht, you know.”

“Did I? I thought I did. What did I say?”

“You told me not to touch a dusky princess,” answered Mrs. Travers with

a short laugh. Then with a visible change of mood as if she had suddenly

out of a light heart been recalled to the sense of the true situation:

“But indeed I meant no harm to this figure of your dream. And, look over

there. She is pursuing you.” Lingard glanced toward the north shore and

suppressed an exclamation of remorse. For the second time he discovered

that he had forgotten the existence of Hassim and Immada. The canoe was

now near enough for its occupants to distinguish plainly the heads of

three people above the low bulwark of the Emma. Immada let her paddle

trail suddenly in the water, with the exclamation, “I see the white

woman there.” Her brother looked over his shoulder and the canoe

floated, arrested as if by the sudden power of a spell.--“They are no

dream to me,” muttered Lingard, sturdily. Mrs. Travers turned abruptly

away to look at the further shore. It was still and empty to the naked

eye and seemed to quiver in the sunshine like an immense painted curtain

lowered upon the unknown.

“Here's Rajah Hassim coming, Jorgenson. I had an idea he would perhaps

stay outside.” Mrs. Travers heard Lingard's voice at her back and the

answering grunt of Jorgenson. She raised deliberately the long glass to

her eye, pointing it at the shore.

She distinguished plainly now the colours in the flutter of the

streamers above the brown roofs of the large Settlement, the stir of

palm groves, the black shadows inland and the dazzling white beach of

coral sand all ablaze in its formidable mystery. She swept the whole

range of the view and was going to lower the glass when from behind

the massive angle of the stockade there stepped out into the brilliant

immobility of the landscape a man in a long white gown and with an

enormous black turban surmounting a dark face. Slow and grave he

paced the beach ominously in the sunshine, an enigmatical figure in an

Oriental tale with something weird and menacing in its sudden emergence

and lonely progress.

With an involuntary gasp Mrs. Travers lowered the glass. All at once

behind her back she heard a low musical voice beginning to pour out

incomprehensible words in a tone of passionate pleading. Hassim and

Immada had come on board and had approached Lingard. Yes! It was

intolerable to feel that this flow of soft speech which had no meaning

for her could make its way straight into that man's heart.