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THE RESCUE

A ROMANCE OF THE SHALLOWS

BY
JOSEPH CONRAD

'Allas!' quod she, 'that ever this sholde happe!
For wende I never, by possibilitee,
That swich a monstre or merveille mighte be!'
--THE FRANKELEYN'S TALE

TO
FREDERIC COURTLAND PENFIELD
LAST AMBASSADOR OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA TO THE LATE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE, THIS
OLD TIME TALE IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED
IN MEMORY OF THE RESCUE OF CERTAIN
DISTRESSED TRAVELLERS EFFECTED BY HIM
IN THE WORLD'S GREAT STORM OF THE YEAR 1914

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Of the three long novels of mine which suffered an interruption,
"The Rescue" was the one that had to wait the longest for the
good pleasure of the Fates. I am betraying no secret when I state
here that it had to wait precisely for twenty years. I laid it
aside at the end of the summer of 1898 and it was about the end
of the summer of 1918 that I took it up again with the firm
determination to see the end of it and helped by the sudden
feeling that I might be equal to the task.

This does not mean that I turned to it with elation. I was well
aware and perhaps even too much aware of the dangers of such an
adventure. The amazingly sympathetic kindness which men of
various temperaments, diverse views and different literary tastes
have been for years displaying towards my work has done much for
me, has done all--except giving me that over-weening
self-confidence which may assist an adventurer sometimes but in
the long run ends by leading him to the gallows.

As the characteristic I want most to impress upon these short
Author's Notes prepared for my first Collected Edition is that of
absolute frankness, I hasten to declare that I founded my hopes
not on my supposed merits but on the continued goodwill of my
readers. I may say at once that my hopes have been justified out
of all proportion to my deserts. I met with the most considerate,
most delicately expressed criticism free from all antagonism and
in its conclusions showing an insight which in itself could not
fail to move me deeply, but was associated also with enough
commendation to make me feel rich beyond the dreams of avarice--I
mean an artist's avarice which seeks its treasure in the hearts
of men and women.

No! Whatever the preliminary anxieties might have been this
adventure was not to end in sorrow. Once more Fortune favoured
audacity; and yet I have never forgotten the jocular translation
of Audaces fortuna juvat offered to me by my tutor when I was a
small boy: "The Audacious get bitten." However he took care to
mention that there were various kinds of audacity. Oh, there are,
there are! . . . There is, for instance, the kind of audacity
almost indistinguishable from impudence. . . . I must believe
that in this case I have not been impudent for I am not conscious
of having been bitten.

The truth is that when "The Rescue" was laid aside it was not
laid aside in despair. Several reasons contributed to this
abandonment and, no doubt, the first of them was the growing
sense of general difficulty in the handling of the subject. The
contents and the course of the story I had clearly in my mind.
But as to the way of presenting the facts, and perhaps in a
certain measure as to the nature of the facts themselves, I had
many doubts. I mean the telling, representative facts, helpful to
carry on the idea, and, at the same time, of such a nature as not
to demand an elaborate creation of the atmosphere to the
detriment of the action. I did not see how I could avoid becoming
wearisome in the presentation of detail and in the pursuit of
clearness. I saw the action plainly enough. What I had lost for
the moment was the sense of the proper formula of expression, the
only formula that would suit. This, of course, weakened my
confidence in the intrinsic worth and in the possible interest of
the story--that is in my invention. But I suspect that all the
trouble was, in reality, the doubt of my prose, the doubt of its
adequacy, of its power to master both the colours and the shades.

It is difficult to describe, exactly as I remember it, the
complex state of my feelings; but those of my readers who take an
interest in artistic perplexities will understand me best when I
point out that I dropped "The Rescue" not to give myself up to
idleness, regrets, or dreaming, but to begin "The Nigger of the
'Narcissus'" and to go on with it without hesitation and without
a pause. A comparison of any page of "The Rescue" with any page
of "The Nigger" will furnish an ocular demonstration of the
nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis of my writing
life. For it was a crisis undoubtedly. The laying aside of a work
so far advanced was a very awful decision to take. It was wrung
from me by a sudden conviction that THERE only was the road of
salvation, the clear way out for an uneasy conscience. The
finishing of "The Nigger" brought to my troubled mind the
comforting sense of an accomplished task, and the first
consciousness of a certain sort of mastery which could accomplish
something with the aid of propitious stars. Why I did not return
to "The Rescue" at once then, was not for the reason that I had
grown afraid of it. Being able now to assume a firm attitude I
said to myself deliberately: "That thing can wait." At the same
time I was just as certain in my mind that "Youth," a story which
I had then, so to speak, on the tip of my pen, could NOT wait.
Neither could "Heart of Darkness" be put off; for the practical
reason that Mr. Wm. Blackwood having requested me to write
something for the No. M of his magazine I had to stir up at once
the subject of that tale which had been long lying quiescent in
my mind, because, obviously, the venerable Maga at her
patriarchal age of 1000 numbers could not be kept waiting. Then
"Lord Jim," with about seventeen pages already written at odd
times, put in his claim which was irresistible. Thus every stroke
of the pen was taking me further away from the abandoned
"Rescue," not without some compunction on my part but with a
gradually diminishing resistance; till at last I let myself go as
if recognising a superior influence against which it was useless
to contend.

The years passed and the pages grew in number, and the long
reveries of which they were the outcome stretched wide between me
and the deserted "Rescue" like the smooth hazy spaces of a dreamy
sea. Yet I never actually lost sight of that dark speck in the
misty distance. It had grown very small but it asserted itself
with the appeal of old associations. It seemed to me that it
would be a base thing for me to slip out of the world leaving it
out there all alone, waiting for its fate--that would never come?

Sentiment, pure sentiment as you see, prompted me in the last
instance to face the pains and hazards of that return. As I moved
slowly towards the abandoned body of the tale it loomed up big
amongst the glittering shallows of the coast, lonely but not
forbidding. There was nothing about it of a grim derelict. It had
an air of expectant life. One after another I made out the
familiar faces watching my approach with faint smiles of amused
recognition. They had known well enough that I was bound to come
back to them. But their eyes met mine seriously as was only to be
expected since I, myself, felt very serious as I stood amongst
them again after years of absence. At once, without wasting
words, we went to work together on our renewed life; and every
moment I felt more strongly that They Who had Waited bore no
grudge to the man who however widely he may have wandered at
times had played truant only once in his life.

1920. J. C.

CONTENTS

PART I. THE MAN AND THE BRIG

PART II. THE SHORE OF REFUGE

PART III. THE CAPTURE

PART IV. THE GIFT OF THE SHALLOWS

PART V. THE POINT OF HONOUR AND THE POINT OF PASSION

PART VI. THE CLAIM OF LIFE AND THE TOLL OF DEATH

PART I. THE MAN AND THE BRIG

The shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the
thousand islands, big and little, which make up the Malay
Archipelago has been for centuries the scene of adventurous
undertakings. The vices and the virtues of four nations have been
displayed in the conquest of that region that even to this day
has not been robbed of all the mystery and romance of its
past--and the race of men who had fought against the Portuguese,
the Spaniards, the Dutch and the English, has not been changed by
the unavoidable defeat. They have kept to this day their love of
liberty, their fanatical devotion to their chiefs, their blind
fidelity in friendship and hate--all their lawful and unlawful
instincts. Their country of land and water--for the sea was as
much their country as the earth of their islands--has fallen a
prey to the western race--the reward of superior strength if not
of superior virtue. To-morrow the advancing civilization will
obliterate the marks of a long struggle in the accomplishment of
its inevitable victory.

The adventurers who began that struggle have left no descendants.
The ideas of the world changed too quickly for that. But even far
into the present century they have had successors. Almost in our
own day we have seen one of them--a true adventurer in his
devotion to his impulse--a man of high mind and of pure heart,
lay the foundation of a flourishing state on the ideas of pity
and justice. He recognized chivalrously the claims of the
conquered; he was a disinterested adventurer, and the reward of
his noble instincts is in the veneration with which a strange and
faithful race cherish his memory.

Misunderstood and traduced in life, the glory of his achievement
has vindicated the purity of his motives. He belongs to history.
But there were others--obscure adventurers who had not his
advantages of birth, position, and intelligence; who had only his
sympathy with the people of forests and sea he understood and
loved so well. They can not be said to be forgotten since they
have not been known at all. They were lost in the common crowd of
seamen-traders of the Archipelago, and if they emerged from their
obscurity it was only to be condemned as law-breakers. Their
lives were thrown away for a cause that had no right to exist in
the face of an irresistible and orderly progress-- their
thoughtless lives guided by a simple feeling.

But the wasted lives, for the few who know, have tinged with
romance the region of shallow waters and forest-clad islands,
that lies far east, and still mysterious between the deep waters
of two oceans.

I

Out of the level blue of a shallow sea Carimata raises a lofty
barrenness of grey and yellow tints, the drab eminence of its
arid heights. Separated by a narrow strip of water, Suroeton, to
the west, shows a curved and ridged outline resembling the
backbone of a stooping giant. And to the eastward a troop of
insignificant islets stand effaced, indistinct, with vague
features that seem to melt into the gathering shadows. The night
following from the eastward the retreat of the setting sun
advanced slowly, swallowing the land and the sea; the land
broken, tormented and abrupt; the sea smooth and inviting with
its easy polish of continuous surface to wanderings facile and
endless.

There was no wind, and a small brig that had lain all the
afternoon a few miles to the northward and westward of Carimata
had hardly altered its position half a mile during all these
hours. The calm was absolute, a dead, flat calm, the stillness of
a dead sea and of a dead atmosphere. As far as the eye could
reach there was nothing but an impressive immobility. Nothing
moved on earth, on the waters, and above them in the unbroken
lustre of the sky. On the unruffled surface of the straits the
brig floated tranquil and upright as if bolted solidly, keel to
keel, with its own image reflected in the unframed and immense
mirror of the sea. To the south and east the double islands
watched silently the double ship that seemed fixed amongst them
forever, a hopeless captive of the calm, a helpless prisoner of
the shallow sea.

Since midday, when the light and capricious airs of these seas
had abandoned the little brig to its lingering fate, her head had
swung slowly to the westward and the end of her slender and
polished jib-boom, projecting boldly beyond the graceful curve of
the bow, pointed at the setting sun, like a spear poised high in
the hand of an enemy. Right aft by the wheel the Malay
quartermaster stood with his bare, brown feet firmly planted on
the wheel-grating, and holding the spokes at right angles, in a
solid grasp, as though the ship had been running before a gale.
He stood there perfectly motionless, as if petrified but ready to
tend the helm as soon as fate would permit the brig to gather way
through the oily sea.

The only other human being then visible on the brig's deck was
the person in charge: a white man of low stature, thick-set, with
shaven cheeks, a grizzled moustache, and a face tinted a scarlet
hue by the burning suns and by the sharp salt breezes of the
seas. He had thrown off his light jacket, and clad only in white
trousers and a thin cotton singlet, with his stout arms crossed
on his breast--upon which they showed like two thick lumps of raw
flesh--he prowled about from side to side of the half-poop. On
his bare feet he wore a pair of straw sandals, and his head was
protected by an enormous pith hat--once white but now very
dirty--which gave to the whole man the aspect of a phenomenal and
animated mushroom. At times he would interrupt his uneasy
shuffle athwart the break of the poop, and stand motionless with
a vague gaze fixed on the image of the brig in the calm water. He
could also see down there his own head and shoulders leaning out
over the rail and he would stand long, as if interested by his
own features, and mutter vague curses on the calm which lay upon
the ship like an immovable burden, immense and burning.

At last, he sighed profoundly, nerved himself for a great effort,
and making a start away from the rail managed to drag his
slippers as far as the binnacle. There he stopped again,
exhausted and bored. From under the lifted glass panes of the
cabin skylight near by came the feeble chirp of a canary, which
appeared to give him some satisfaction. He listened, smiled
faintly muttered "Dicky, poor Dick--" and fell back into the
immense silence of the world. His eyes closed, his head hung low
over the hot brass of the binnacle top. Suddenly he stood up with
a jerk and said sharply in a hoarse voice:

"You've been sleeping--you. Shift the helm. She has got stern way
on her."

The Malay, without the least flinch of feature or pose, as if he
had been an inanimate object called suddenly into life by some
hidden magic of the words, spun the wheel rapidly, letting the
spokes pass through his hands; and when the motion had stopped
with a grinding noise, caught hold again and held on grimly.
After a while, however, he turned his head slowly over his
shoulder, glanced at the sea, and said in an obstinate tone:

"No catch wind--no get way."

"No catch--no catch--that's all you know about it," growled the
red-faced seaman. "By and by catch Ali--" he went on with sudden
condescension. "By and by catch, and then the helm will be the
right way. See?"

The stolid seacannie appeared to see, and for that matter to
hear, nothing. The white man looked at the impassive Malay with
disgust, then glanced around the horizon--then again at the
helmsman and ordered curtly:

"Shift the helm back again. Don't you feel the air from aft? You
are like a dummy standing there."

The Malay revolved the spokes again with disdainful obedience,
and the red-faced man was moving forward grunting to himself,
when through the open skylight the hail "On deck there!" arrested
him short, attentive, and with a sudden change to amiability in
the expression of his face.

"Yes, sir," he said, bending his ear toward the opening. "What's
the matter up there?" asked a deep voice from below.

The red-faced man in a tone of surprise said:

"Sir?"

"I hear that rudder grinding hard up and hard down. What are you
up to, Shaw? Any wind?"

"Ye-es," drawled Shaw, putting his head down the skylight and
speaking into the gloom of the cabin. "I thought there was a
light air, and--but it's gone now. Not a breath anywhere under
the heavens."

He withdrew his head and waited a while by the skylight, but
heard only the chirping of the indefatigable canary, a feeble
twittering that seemed to ooze through the drooping red blossoms
of geraniums growing in flower-pots under the glass panes. He
strolled away a step or two before the voice from down below
called hurriedly:

"Hey, Shaw? Are you there?"

"Yes, Captain Lingard," he answered, stepping back. "Have we
drifted anything this afternoon?"

"Not an inch, sir, not an inch. We might as well have been at
anchor."

"It's always so," said the invisible Lingard. His voice changed
its tone as he moved in the cabin, and directly afterward burst
out with a clear intonation while his head appeared above the
slide of the cabin entrance:

"Always so! The currents don't begin till it's dark, when a man
can't see against what confounded thing he is being drifted, and
then the breeze will come. Dead on end, too, I don't doubt."

Shaw moved his shoulders slightly. The Malay at the wheel, after
making a dive to see the time by the cabin clock through the
skylight, rang a double stroke on the small bell aft. Directly
forward, on the main deck, a shrill whistle arose long drawn,
modulated, dying away softly. The master of the brig stepped out
of the companion upon the deck of his vessel, glanced aloft at
the yards laid dead square; then, from the door-step, took a
long, lingering look round the horizon.

He was about thirty-five, erect and supple. He moved freely, more
like a man accustomed to stride over plains and hills, than like
one who from his earliest youth had been used to counteract by
sudden swayings of his body the rise and roll of cramped decks of
small craft, tossed by the caprice of angry or playful seas.

He wore a grey flannel shirt, and his white trousers were held by
a blue silk scarf wound tightly round his narrow waist. He had
come up only for a moment, but finding the poop shaded by the
main-topsail he remained on deck bareheaded. The light chestnut
hair curled close about his well-shaped head, and the clipped
beard glinted vividly when he passed across a narrow strip of
sunlight, as if every hair in it had been a wavy and attenuated
gold wire. His mouth was lost in the heavy moustache; his nose
was straight, short, slightly blunted at the end; a broad band of
deeper red stretched under the eyes, clung to the cheek bones.
The eyes gave the face its remarkable expression. The eyebrows,
darker than the hair, pencilled a straight line below the wide
and unwrinkled brow much whiter than the sunburnt face. The eyes,
as if glowing with the light of a hidden fire, had a red glint in
their greyness that gave a scrutinizing ardour to the steadiness
of their gaze.

That man, once so well known, and now so completely forgotten
amongst the charming and heartless shores of the shallow sea, had
amongst his fellows the nickname of "Red-Eyed Tom." He was proud
of his luck but not of his good sense. He was proud of his brig,
of the speed of his craft, which was reckoned the swiftest
country vessel in those seas, and proud of what she represented.

She represented a run of luck on the Victorian goldfields; his
sagacious moderation; long days of planning, of loving care in
building; the great joy of his youth, the incomparable freedom of
the seas; a perfect because a wandering home; his independence,
his love--and his anxiety. He had often heard men say that Tom
Lingard cared for nothing on earth but for his brig--and in his
thoughts he would smilingly correct the statement by adding that
he cared for nothing LIVING but the brig.

To him she was as full of life as the great world. He felt her
live in every motion, in every roll, in every sway of her
tapering masts, of those masts whose painted trucks move forever,
to a seaman's eye, against the clouds or against the stars. To
him she was always precious--like old love; always
desirable--like a strange woman; always tender--like a mother;
always faithful --like the favourite daughter of a man's heart.

For hours he would stand elbow on rail, his head in his hand and
listen--and listen in dreamy stillness to the cajoling and
promising whisper of the sea, that slipped past in vanishing
bubbles along the smooth black-painted sides of his craft. What
passed in such moments of thoughtful solitude through the mind of
that child of generations of fishermen from the coast of Devon,
who like most of his class was dead to the subtle voices, and
blind to the mysterious aspects of the world--the man ready for
the obvious, no matter how startling, how terrible or menacing,
yet defenceless as a child before the shadowy impulses of his own
heart; what could have been the thoughts of such a man, when once
surrendered to a dreamy mood, it is difficult to say.

No doubt he, like most of us, would be uplifted at times by the
awakened lyrism of his heart into regions charming, empty, and
dangerous. But also, like most of us, he was unaware of his
barren journeys above the interesting cares of this earth. Yet
from these, no doubt absurd and wasted moments, there remained on
the man's daily life a tinge as that of a glowing and serene
half-light. It softened the outlines of his rugged nature; and
these moments kept close the bond between him and his brig.

He was aware that his little vessel could give him something not
to be had from anybody or anything in the world; something
specially his own. The dependence of that solid man of bone and
muscle on that obedient thing of wood and iron, acquired from
that feeling the mysterious dignity of love. She--the craft--had
all the qualities of a living thing: speed, obedience,
trustworthiness, endurance, beauty, capacity to do and to
suffer--all but life. He--the man--was the inspirer of that thing
that to him seemed the most perfect of its kind. His will was its
will, his thought was its impulse, his breath was the breath of
its existence. He felt all this confusedly, without ever shaping
this feeling into the soundless formulas of thought. To him she
was unique and dear, this brig of three hundred and fourteen tons
register--a kingdom!

And now, bareheaded and burly, he walked the deck of his kingdom
with a regular stride. He stepped out from the hip, swinging his
arms with the free motion of a man starting out for a
fifteen-mile walk into open country; yet at every twelfth stride
he had to turn about sharply and pace back the distance to the
taffrail.

Shaw, with his hands stuck in his waistband, had hooked himself
with both elbows to the rail, and gazed apparently at the deck
between his feet. In reality he was contemplating a little house
with a tiny front garden, lost in a maze of riverside streets in
the east end of London. The circumstance that he had not, as yet,
been able to make the acquaintance of his son--now aged eighteen
months--worried him slightly, and was the cause of that flight of
his fancy into the murky atmosphere of his home. But it was a
placid flight followed by a quick return. In less than two
minutes he was back in the brig. "All there," as his saying was.
He was proud of being always "all there."

He was abrupt in manner and grumpy in speech with the seamen. To
his successive captains, he was outwardly as deferential as he
knew how, and as a rule inwardly hostile--so very few seemed to
him of the "all there" kind. Of Lingard, with whom he had only
been a short time--having been picked up in Madras Roads out of a
home ship, which he had to leave after a thumping row with the
master--he generally approved, although he recognized with regret
that this man, like most others, had some absurd fads; he defined
them as "bottom-upwards notions."

He was a man--as there were many--of no particular value to
anybody but himself, and of no account but as the chief mate of
the brig, and the only white man on board of her besides the
captain. He felt himself immeasurably superior to the Malay
seamen whom he had to handle, and treated them with lofty
toleration, notwithstanding his opinion that at a pinch those
chaps would be found emphatically "not there."

As soon as his mind came back from his home leave, he detached
himself from the rail and, walking forward, stood by the break of
the poop, looking along the port side of the main deck. Lingard
on his own side stopped in his walk and also gazed absentmindedly
before him. In the waist of the brig, in the narrow spars that
were lashed on each side of the hatchway, he could see a group of
men squatting in a circle around a wooden tray piled up with
rice, which stood on the just swept deck. The dark-faced,
soft-eyed silent men, squatting on their hams, fed decorously
with an earnestness that did not exclude reserve.

Of the lot, only one or two wore sarongs, the others having
submitted--at least at sea--to the indignity of European
trousers. Only two sat on the spars. One, a man with a childlike,
light yellow face, smiling with fatuous imbecility under the
wisps of straight coarse hair dyed a mahogany tint, was the
tindal of the crew--a kind of boatswain's or serang's mate. The
other, sitting beside him on the booms, was a man nearly black,
not much bigger than a large ape, and wearing on his wrinkled
face that look of comical truculence which is often
characteristic of men from the southwestern coast of Sumatra.

This was the kassab or store-keeper, the holder of a position of
dignity and ease. The kassab was the only one of the crew taking
their evening meal who noticed the presence on deck of their
commander. He muttered something to the tindal who directly
cocked his old hat on one side, which senseless action invested
him with an altogether foolish appearance. The others heard, but
went on somnolently feeding with spidery movements of their lean
arms.

The sun was no more than a degree or so above the horizon, and
from the heated surface of the waters a slight low mist began to
rise; a mist thin, invisible to the human eye; yet strong enough
to change the sun into a mere glowing red disc, a disc vertical
and hot, rolling down to the edge of the horizontal and
cold-looking disc of the shining sea. Then the edges touched and
the circular expanse of water took on suddenly a tint, sombre,
like a frown; deep, like the brooding meditation of evil.

The falling sun seemed to be arrested for a moment in his descent
by the sleeping waters, while from it, to the motionless brig,
shot out on the polished and dark surface of the sea a track of
light, straight and shining, resplendent and direct; a path of
gold and crimson and purple, a path that seemed to lead dazzling
and terrible from the earth straight into heaven through the
portals of a glorious death. It faded slowly. The sea vanquished
the light. At last only a vestige of the sun remained, far off,
like a red spark floating on the water. It lingered, and all at
once--without warning--went out as if extinguished by a
treacherous hand.

"Gone," cried Lingard, who had watched intently yet missed the
last moment. "Gone! Look at the cabin clock, Shaw!"

"Nearly right, I think, sir. Three minutes past six."

The helmsman struck four bells sharply. Another barefooted
seacannie glided on the far side of the poop to relieve the
wheel, and the serang of the brig came up the ladder to take
charge of the deck from Shaw. He came up to the compass, and
stood waiting silently.

"The course is south by east when you get the wind, serang," said
Shaw, distinctly.

"Sou' by eas'," repeated the elderly Malay with grave
earnestness.

"Let me know when she begins to steer," added Lingard.

"Ya, Tuan," answered the man, glancing rapidly at the sky. "Wind
coming," he muttered.

"I think so, too," whispered Lingard as if to himself.

The shadows were gathering rapidly round the brig. A mulatto put
his head out of the companion and called out:

"Ready, sir."

"Let's get a mouthful of something to eat, Shaw," said Lingard.
"I say, just take a look around before coming below. It will be
dark when we come up again."

"Certainly, sir," said Shaw, taking up a long glass and putting
it to his eyes. "Blessed thing," he went on in snatches while he
worked the tubes in and out, "I can't--never somehow--Ah! I've
got it right at last!"

He revolved slowly on his heels, keeping the end of the tube on
the sky-line. Then he shut the instrument with a click, and said
decisively:

"Nothing in sight, sir."

He followed his captain down below rubbing his hands cheerfully.

For a good while there was no sound on the poop of the brig. Then
the seacannie at the wheel spoke dreamily:

"Did the malim say there was no one on the sea?"

"Yes," grunted the serang without looking at the man behind him.

"Between the islands there was a boat," pronounced the man very
softly.

The serang, his hands behind his back, his feet slightly apart,
stood very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand.
His face, now hardly visible, was as inexpressive as the door of
a safe.

"Now, listen to me," insisted the helmsman in a gentle tone.

The man in authority did not budge a hair's breadth. The
seacannie bent down a little from the height of the wheel
grating.

"I saw a boat," he murmured with something of the tender
obstinacy of a lover begging for a favour. "I saw a boat, O Haji
Wasub! Ya! Haji Wasub!"

The serang had been twice a pilgrim, and was not insensible to
the sound of his rightful title. There was a grim smile on his
face.

"You saw a floating tree, O Sali," he said, ironically.

"I am Sali, and my eyes are better than the bewitched brass thing
that pulls out to a great length," said the pertinacious
helmsman. "There was a boat, just clear of the easternmost
island. There was a boat, and they in her could see the ship on
the light of the west--unless they are blind men lost on the sea.
I have seen her. Have you seen her, too, O Haji Wasub?"

"Am I a fat white man?" snapped the serang. "I was a man of the
sea before you were born, O Sali! The order is to keep silence
and mind the rudder, lest evil befall the ship."

After these words he resumed his rigid aloofness. He stood, his
legs slightly apart, very stiff and straight, a little on one
side of the compass stand. His eyes travelled incessantly from
the illuminated card to the shadowy sails of the brig and back
again, while his body was motionless as if made of wood and built
into the ship's frame. Thus, with a forced and tense
watchfulness, Haji Wasub, serang of the brig Lightning, kept the
captain's watch unwearied and wakeful, a slave to duty.

In half an hour after sunset the darkness had taken complete
possession of earth and heavens. The islands had melted into the
night. And on the smooth water of the Straits, the little brig
lying so still, seemed to sleep profoundly, wrapped up in a
scented mantle of star light and silence.

II

It was half-past eight o'clock before Lingard came on deck again.
Shaw--now with a coat on--trotted up and down the poop leaving
behind him a smell of tobacco smoke. An irregularly glowing spark
seemed to run by itself in the darkness before the rounded form
of his head. Above the masts of the brig the dome of the clear
heaven was full of lights that flickered, as if some mighty
breathings high up there had been swaying about the flame of the
stars. There was no sound along the brig's decks, and the heavy
shadows that lay on it had the aspect, in that silence, of secret
places concealing crouching forms that waited in perfect
stillness for some decisive event. Lingard struck a match to
light his cheroot, and his powerful face with narrowed eyes stood
out for a moment in the night and vanished suddenly. Then two
shadowy forms and two red sparks moved backward and forward on
the poop. A larger, but a paler and oval patch of light from the
compass lamps lay on the brasses of the wheel and on the breast
of the Malay standing by the helm. Lingard's voice, as if unable
altogether to master the enormous silence of the sea, sounded
muffled, very calm--without the usual deep ring in it.

"Not much change, Shaw," he said.

"No, sir, not much. I can just see the island--the big one--still
in the same place. It strikes me, sir, that, for calms, this here
sea is a devil of loc-ality."

He cut "locality" in two with an emphatic pause. It was a good
word. He was pleased with himself for thinking of it. He went on
again:

"Now--since noon, this big island--"

"Carimata, Shaw," interrupted Lingard.

"Aye, sir; Carimata--I mean. I must say--being a stranger
hereabouts--I haven't got the run of those--"

He was going to say "names" but checked himself and said,
"appellations," instead, sounding every syllable lovingly.

"Having for these last fifteen years," he continued, "sailed
regularly from London in East-Indiamen, I am more at home over
there--in the Bay."

He pointed into the night toward the northwest and stared as if
he could see from where he stood that Bay of Bengal where--as he
affirmed--he would be so much more at home.

"You'll soon get used--" muttered Lingard, swinging in his rapid
walk past his mate. Then he turned round, came back, and asked
sharply.

"You said there was nothing afloat in sight before dark? Hey?"

"Not that I could see, sir. When I took the deck again at eight,
I asked that serang whether there was anything about; and I
understood him to say there was no more as when I went below at
six. This is a lonely sea at times--ain't it, sir? Now, one would
think at this time of the year the homeward-bounders from China
would be pretty thick here."

"Yes," said Lingard, "we have met very few ships since we left
Pedra Branca over the stern. Yes; it has been a lonely sea. But
for all that, Shaw, this sea, if lonely, is not blind. Every
island in it is an eye. And now, since our squadron has left for
the China waters--"

He did not finish his sentence. Shaw put his hands in his
pockets, and propped his back against the sky-light, comfortably.

"They say there is going to be a war with China," he said in a
gossiping tone, "and the French are going along with us as they
did in the Crimea five years ago. It seems to me we're getting
mighty good friends with the French. I've not much of an opinion
about that. What do you think, Captain Lingard?"

"I have met their men-of-war in the Pacific," said Lingard,
slowly. "The ships were fine and the fellows in them were civil
enough to me--and very curious about my business," he added with
a laugh. "However, I wasn't there to make war on them. I had a
rotten old cutter then, for trade, Shaw," he went on with
animation.

"Had you, sir?" said Shaw without any enthusiasm. "Now give me a
big ship--a ship, I say, that one may--"

"And later on, some years ago," interrupted Lingard, "I chummed
with a French skipper in Ampanam--being the only two white men in
the whole place. He was a good fellow, and free with his red
wine. His English was difficult to understand, but he could sing
songs in his own language about ah-moor--Ah-moor means love, in
French--Shaw."

"So it does, sir--so it does. When I was second mate of a
Sunderland barque, in forty-one, in the Mediterranean, I could
pay out their lingo as easy as you would a five-inch warp over a
ship's side--"

"Yes, he was a proper man," pursued Lingard, meditatively, as if
for himself only. "You could not find a better fellow for company
ashore. He had an affair with a Bali girl, who one evening threw
a red blossom at him from within a doorway, as we were going
together to pay our respects to the Rajah's nephew. He was a
good-looking Frenchman, he was--but the girl belonged to the
Rajah's nephew, and it was a serious matter. The old Rajah got
angry and said the girl must die. I don't think the nephew cared
particularly to have her krissed; but the old fellow made a great
fuss and sent one of his own chief men to see the thing done
--and the girl had enemies--her own relations approved! We could
do nothing. Mind, Shaw, there was absolutely nothing else between
them but that unlucky flower which the Frenchman pinned to his
coat--and afterward, when the girl was dead, wore under his
shirt, hung round his neck in a small box. I suppose he had
nothing else to put it into."

"Would those savages kill a woman for that?" asked Shaw,
incredulously.

"Aye! They are pretty moral there. That was the first time in my
life I nearly went to war on my own account, Shaw. We couldn't
talk those fellows over. We couldn't bribe them, though the
Frenchman offered the best he had, and I was ready to back him to
the last dollar, to the last rag of cotton, Shaw! No use--they
were that blamed respectable. So, says the Frenchman to me: 'My
friend, if they won't take our gunpowder for a gift let us burn
it to give them lead.' I was armed as you see now; six
eight-pounders on the main deck and a long eighteen on the
forecastle--and I wanted to try 'em. You may believe me! However,
the Frenchman had nothing but a few old muskets; and the beggars
got to windward of us by fair words, till one morning a boat's
crew from the Frenchman's ship found the girl lying dead on the
beach. That put an end to our plans. She was out of her trouble
anyhow, and no reasonable man will fight for a dead woman. I was
never vengeful, Shaw, and--after all--she didn't throw that
flower at me. But it broke the Frenchman up altogether. He began
to mope, did no business, and shortly afterward sailed away. I
cleared a good many pence out of that trip, I remember."

With these words he seemed to come to the end of his memories of
that trip. Shaw stifled a yawn.

"Women are the cause of a lot of trouble," he said,
dispassionately. "In the Morayshire, I remember, we had once a
passenger--an old gentleman--who was telling us a yarn about them
old-time Greeks fighting for ten years about some woman. The
Turks kidnapped her, or something. Anyway, they fought in Turkey;
which I may well believe. Them Greeks and Turks were always
fighting. My father was master's mate on board one of the
three-deckers at the battle of Navarino--and that was when we
went to help those Greeks. But this affair about a woman was long
before that time."

"I should think so," muttered Lingard, hanging over the rail, and
watching the fleeting gleams that passed deep down in the water,
along the ship's bottom.

"Yes. Times are changed. They were unenlightened in those old
days. My grandfather was a preacher and, though my father served
in the navy, I don't hold with war. Sinful the old gentleman
called it--and I think so, too. Unless with Chinamen, or niggers,
or such people as must be kept in order and won't listen to
reason; having not sense enough to know what's good for them,
when it's explained to them by their betters--missionaries, and
such like au-tho-ri-ties. But to fight ten years. And for a
woman!"

"I have read the tale in a book," said Lingard, speaking down
over the side as if setting his words gently afloat upon the sea.
"I have read the tale. She was very beautiful."

"That only makes it worse, sir--if anything. You may depend on it
she was no good. Those pagan times will never come back, thank
God. Ten years of murder and unrighteousness! And for a woman!
Would anybody do it now? Would you do it, sir? Would you--"

The sound of a bell struck sharply interrupted Shaw's discourse.
High aloft, some dry block sent out a screech, short and
lamentable, like a cry of pain. It pierced the quietness of the
night to the very core, and seemed to destroy the reserve which
it had imposed upon the tones of the two men, who spoke now
loudly.

"Throw the cover over the binnacle," said Lingard in his duty
voice. "The thing shines like a full moon. We mustn't show more
lights than we can help, when becalmed at night so near the land.
No use in being seen if you can't see yourself--is there? Bear
that in mind, Mr. Shaw. There may be some vagabonds prying
about--"

"I thought all this was over and done for," said Shaw, busying
himself with the cover, "since Sir Thomas Cochrane swept along
the Borneo coast with his squadron some years ago. He did a rare
lot of fighting--didn't he? We heard about it from the chaps of
the sloop Diana that was refitting in Calcutta when I was there
in the Warwick Castle. They took some king's town up a river
hereabouts. The chaps were full of it."

"Sir Thomas did good work," answered Lingard, "but it will be a
long time before these seas are as safe as the English Channel is
in peace time. I spoke about that light more to get you in the
way of things to be attended to in these seas than for anything
else. Did you notice how few native craft we've sighted for all
these days we have been drifting about--one may say--in this
sea?"

"I can't say I have attached any significance to the fact, sir."

"It's a sign that something is up. Once set a rumour afloat in
these waters, and it will make its way from island to island,
without any breeze to drive it along."

"Being myself a deep-water man sailing steadily out of home ports
nearly all my life," said Shaw with great deliberation, "I cannot
pretend to see through the peculiarities of them out-of-the-way
parts. But I can keep a lookout in an ordinary way, and I have
noticed that craft of any kind seemed scarce, for the last few
days: considering that we had land aboard of us--one side or
another--nearly every day."

"You will get to know the peculiarities, as you call them, if you
remain any time with me," remarked Lingard, negligently.

"I hope I shall give satisfaction, whether the time be long or
short!" said Shaw, accentuating the meaning of his words by the
distinctness of his utterance. "A man who has spent thirty-two
years of his life on saltwater can say no more. If being an
officer of home ships for the last fifteen years I don't
understand the heathen ways of them there savages, in matters of
seamanship and duty, you will find me all there, Captain
Lingard."

"Except, judging from what you said a little while ago--except in
the matter of fighting," said Lingard, with a short laugh.

"Fighting! I am not aware that anybody wants to fight me. I am a
peaceable man, Captain Lingard, but when put to it, I could fight
as well as any of them flat-nosed chaps we have to make shift
with, instead of a proper crew of decent Christians. Fighting!"
he went on with unexpected pugnacity of tone, "Fighting! If
anybody comes to fight me, he will find me all there, I swear!"

"That's all right. That's all right," said Lingard, stretching
his arms above his head and wriggling his shoulders. "My word! I
do wish a breeze would come to let us get away from here. I am
rather in a hurry, Shaw."

"Indeed, sir! Well, I never yet met a thorough seafaring man who
was not in a hurry when a con-demned spell of calm had him by the
heels. When a breeze comes . . . just listen to this, sir!"

"I hear it," said Lingard. "Tide-rip, Shaw."

"So I presume, sir. But what a fuss it makes. Seldom heard such
a--"

On the sea, upon the furthest limits of vision, appeared an
advancing streak of seething foam, resembling a narrow white
ribbon, drawn rapidly along the level surface of the water by its
two ends, which were lost in the darkness. It reached the brig,
passed under, stretching out on each side; and on each side the
water became noisy, breaking into numerous and tiny wavelets, a
mimicry of an immense agitation. Yet the vessel in the midst of
this sudden and loud disturbance remained as motionless and
steady as if she had been securely moored between the stone walls
of a safe dock. In a few moments the line of foam and ripple
running swiftly north passed at once beyond sight and earshot,
leaving no trace on the unconquerable calm.

"Now this is very curious--" began Shaw.

Lingard made a gesture to command silence. He seemed to listen
yet, as if the wash of the ripple could have had an echo which he
expected to hear. And a man's voice that was heard forward had
something of the impersonal ring of voices thrown back from hard
and lofty cliffs upon the empty distances of the sea. It spoke in
Malay--faintly.

"What?" hailed Shaw. "What is it?"

Lingard put a restraining hand for a moment on his chief
officer's shoulder, and moved forward smartly. Shaw followed,
puzzled. The rapid exchange of incomprehensible words thrown
backward and forward through the shadows of the brig's main deck
from his captain to the lookout man and back again, made him feel
sadly out of it, somehow.

Lingard had called out sharply--"What do you see?" The answer
direct and quick was--"I hear, Tuan. I hear oars."

"Whereabouts?"

"The night is all around us. I hear them near."

"Port or starboard?"

There was a short delay in answer this time. On the quarter-deck,
under the poop, bare feet shuffled. Somebody coughed. At last the
voice forward said doubtfully:

"Kanan."

"Call the serang, Mr. Shaw," said Lingard, calmly, "and have the
hands turned up. They are all lying about the decks. Look sharp
now. There's something near us. It's annoying to be caught like
this," he added in a vexed tone.

He crossed over to the starboard side, and stood listening, one
hand grasping the royal back-stay, his ear turned to the sea, but
he could hear nothing from there. The quarter-deck was filled
with subdued sounds. Suddenly, a long, shrill whistle soared,
reverberated loudly amongst the flat surfaces of motionless
sails, and gradually grew faint as if the sound had escaped and
gone away, running upon the water. Haji Wasub was on deck and
ready to carry out the white man's commands. Then silence fell
again on the brig, until Shaw spoke quietly.

"I am going forward now, sir, with the tindal. We're all at
stations."

"Aye, Mr. Shaw. Very good. Mind they don't board you--but I can
hear nothing. Not a sound. It can't be much."

"The fellow has been dreaming, no doubt. I have good ears, too,
and--"

He went forward and the end of his sentence was lost in an
indistinct growl. Lingard stood attentive. One by one the three
seacannies off duty appeared on the poop and busied themselves
around a big chest that stood by the side of the cabin companion.
A rattle and clink of steel weapons turned out on the deck was
heard, but the men did not even whisper. Lingard peered steadily
into the night, then shook his head.

"Serang!" he called, half aloud.

The spare old man ran up the ladder so smartly that his bony feet
did not seem to touch the steps. He stood by his commander, his
hands behind his back; a figure indistinct but straight as an
arrow.

"Who was looking out?" asked Lingard.

"Badroon, the Bugis," said Wasub, in his crisp, jerky manner.

"I can hear nothing. Badroon heard the noise in his mind."

"The night hides the boat."

"Have you seen it?"

"Yes, Tuan. Small boat. Before sunset. By the land. Now coming
here--near. Badroon heard him."

"Why didn't you report it, then?" asked Lingard, sharply.

"Malim spoke. He said: 'Nothing there,' while I could see. How
could I know what was in his mind or yours, Tuan?"

"Do you hear anything now?"

"No. They stopped now. Perhaps lost the ship--who knows? Perhaps
afraid--"

"Well!" muttered Lingard, moving his feet uneasily. "I believe
you lie. What kind of boat?"

"White men's boat. A four-men boat, I think. Small. Tuan, I hear
him now! There!"

He stretched his arm straight out, pointing abeam for a time,
then his arm fell slowly.

"Coming this way," he added with decision.

From forward Shaw called out in a startled tone:

"Something on the water, sir! Broad on this bow!"

"All right!" called back Lingard.

A lump of blacker darkness floated into his view. From it came
over the water English words--deliberate, reaching him one by
one; as if each had made its own difficult way through the
profound stillness of the night.

"What--ship--is--that--pray?"

"English brig," answered Lingard, after a short moment of
hesitation.

"A brig! I thought you were something bigger," went on the voice
from the sea with a tinge of disappointment in its deliberate
tone. "I am coming alongside--if--you--please."

"No! you don't!" called Lingard back, sharply. The leisurely
drawl of the invisible speaker seemed to him offensive, and woke
up a hostile feeling. "No! you don't if you care for your boat.
Where do you spring from? Who are you--anyhow? How many of you
are there in that boat?"

After these emphatic questions there was an interval of silence.
During that time the shape of the boat became a little more
distinct. She must have carried some way on her yet, for she
loomed up bigger and nearly abreast of where Lingard stood,
before the self-possessed voice was heard again:

"I will show you."

Then, after another short pause, the voice said, less loud but
very plain:

"Strike on the gunwale. Strike hard, John!" and suddenly a blue
light blazed out, illuminating with a livid flame a round patch
in the night. In the smoke and splutter of that ghastly halo
appeared a white, four-oared gig with five men sitting in her in
a row. Their heads were turned toward the brig with a strong
expression of curiosity on their faces, which, in this glare,
brilliant and sinister, took on a deathlike aspect and resembled
the faces of interested corpses. Then the bowman dropped into the
water the light he held above his head and the darkness, rushing
back at the boat, swallowed it with a loud and angry hiss.

"Five of us," said the composed voice out of the night that
seemed now darker than before. "Four hands and myself. We belong
to a yacht--a British yacht--"

"Come on board!" shouted Lingard. "Why didn't you speak at once?
I thought you might have been some masquerading Dutchmen from a
dodging gunboat."

"Do I speak like a blamed Dutchman? Pull a stroke, boys--oars!
Tend bow, John."

The boat came alongside with a gentle knock, and a man's shape
began to climb at once up the brig's side with a kind of
ponderous agility. It poised itself for a moment on the rail to
say down into the boat--"Sheer off a little, boys," then jumped
on deck with a thud, and said to Shaw who was coming aft: "Good
evening . . . Captain, sir?"

"No. On the poop!" growled Shaw.

"Come up here. Come up," called Lingard, impatiently.

The Malays had left their stations and stood clustered by the
mainmast in a silent group. Not a word was spoken on the brig's
decks, while the stranger made his way to the waiting captain.
Lingard saw approaching him a short, dapper man, who touched his
cap and repeated his greeting in a cool drawl:

"Good evening. . . Captain, sir?"

"Yes, I am the master--what's the matter? Adrift from your ship?
Or what?"

"Adrift? No! We left her four days ago, and have been pulling
that gig in a calm, nearly ever since. My men are done. So is the
water. Lucky thing I sighted you."

"You sighted me!" exclaimed Lingard. "When? What time?"

"Not in the dark, you may be sure. We've been knocking about
amongst some islands to the southward, breaking our hearts
tugging at the oars in one channel, then in another--trying to
get clear. We got round an islet--a barren thing, in shape like a
loaf of sugar--and I caught sight of a vessel a long way off. I
took her bearing in a hurry and we buckled to; but another of
them currents must have had hold of us, for it was a long time
before we managed to clear that islet. I steered by the stars,
and, by the Lord Harry, I began to think I had missed you
somehow--because it must have been you I saw."

"Yes, it must have been. We had nothing in sight all day,"
assented Lingard. "Where's your vessel?" he asked, eagerly.

"Hard and fast on middling soft mud--I should think about sixty
miles from here. We are the second boat sent off for assistance.
We parted company with the other on Tuesday. She must have passed
to the northward of you to-day. The chief officer is in her with
orders to make for Singapore. I am second, and was sent off
toward the Straits here on the chance of falling in with some
ship. I have a letter from the owner. Our gentry are tired of
being stuck in the mud and wish for assistance."

"What assistance did you expect to find down here?"

"The letter will tell you that. May I ask, Captain, for a little
water for the chaps in my boat? And I myself would thank you for
a drink. We haven't had a mouthful since this afternoon. Our
breaker leaked out somehow."

"See to it, Mr. Shaw," said Lingard. "Come down the cabin, Mr.--"

"Carter is my name."

"Ah! Mr. Carter. Come down, come down," went on Lingard, leading
the way down the cabin stairs.

The steward had lighted the swinging lamp, and had put a decanter
and bottles on the table. The cuddy looked cheerful, painted
white, with gold mouldings round the panels. Opposite the
curtained recess of the stern windows there was a sideboard with
a marble top, and, above it, a looking-glass in a gilt frame. The
semicircular couch round the stern had cushions of crimson plush.
The table was covered with a black Indian tablecloth embroidered
in vivid colours. Between the beams of the poop-deck were fitted
racks for muskets, the barrels of which glinted in the light.
There were twenty-four of them between the four beams. As many
sword-bayonets of an old pattern encircled the polished teakwood
of the rudder-casing with a double belt of brass and steel. All
the doors of the state-rooms had been taken off the hinges and
only curtains closed the doorways. They seemed to be made of
yellow Chinese silk, and fluttered all together, the four of
them, as the two men entered the cuddy.

Carter took in all at a glance, but his eyes were arrested by a
circular shield hung slanting above the brass hilts of the
bayonets. On its red field, in relief and brightly gilt, was
represented a sheaf of conventional thunderbolts darting down the
middle between the two capitals T. L. Lingard examined his guest
curiously. He saw a young man, but looking still more youthful,
with a boyish smooth face much sunburnt, twinkling blue eyes,
fair hair and a slight moustache. He noticed his arrested gaze.

"Ah, you're looking at that thing. It's a present from the
builder of this brig. The best man that ever launched a craft.
It's supposed to be the ship's name between my initials--flash of
lightning--d'you see? The brig's name is Lightning and mine is
Lingard."

"Very pretty thing that: shows the cabin off well," murmured
Carter, politely.

They drank, nodding at each other, and sat down.

"Now for the letter," said Lingard.

Carter passed it over the table and looked about, while Lingard
took the letter out of an open envelope, addressed to the
commander of any British ship in the Java Sea. The paper was
thick, had an embossed heading: "Schooner-yacht Hermit" and was
dated four days before. The message said that on a hazy night the
yacht had gone ashore upon some outlying shoals off the coast of
Borneo. The land was low. The opinion of the sailing-master was
that the vessel had gone ashore at the top of high water, spring
tides. The coast was completely deserted to all appearance.
During the four days they had been stranded there they had
sighted in the distance two small native vessels, which did not
approach. The owner concluded by asking any commander of a
homeward-bound ship to report the yacht's position in Anjer on
his way through Sunda Straits--or to any British or Dutch man-of-
war he might meet. The letter ended by anticipatory thanks, the
offer to pay any expenses in connection with the sending of
messages from Anjer, and the usual polite expressions.

Folding the paper slowly in the old creases, Lingard said--"I am
not going to Anjer--nor anywhere near."

"Any place will do, I fancy," said Carter.

"Not the place where I am bound to," answered Lingard, opening
the letter again and glancing at it uneasily. "He does not
describe very well the coast, and his latitude is very
uncertain," he went on. "I am not clear in my mind where exactly
you are stranded. And yet I know every inch of that land--over
there."

Carter cleared his throat and began to talk in his slow drawl. He
seemed to dole out facts, to disclose with sparing words the
features of the coast, but every word showed the minuteness of
his observation, the clear vision of a seaman able to master
quickly the aspect of a strange land and of a strange sea. He
presented, with concise lucidity, the picture of the tangle of
reefs and sandbanks, through which the yacht had miraculously
blundered in the dark before she took the ground.

"The weather seems clear enough at sea," he observed, finally,
and stopped to drink a long draught. Lingard, bending over the
table, had been listening with eager attention. Carter went on in
his curt and deliberate manner:

"I noticed some high trees on what I take to be the mainland to
the south--and whoever has business in that bight was smart
enough to whitewash two of them: one on the point, and another
farther in. Landmarks, I guess. . . . What's the matter,
Captain?"

Lingard had jumped to his feet, but Carter's exclamation caused
him to sit down again.

"Nothing, nothing . . . Tell me, how many men have you in that
yacht?"

"Twenty-three, besides the gentry, the owner, his wife and a
Spanish gentleman--a friend they picked up in Manila."

"So you were coming from Manila?"

"Aye. Bound for Batavia. The owner wishes to study the Dutch
colonial system. Wants to expose it, he says. One can't help
hearing a lot when keeping watch aft--you know how it is. Then we
are going to Ceylon to meet the mail-boat there. The owner is
going home as he came out, overland through Egypt. The yacht
would return round the Cape, of course."

"A lady?" said Lingard. "You say there is a lady on board. Are
you armed?"

"Not much," replied Carter, negligently. "There are a few muskets
and two sporting guns aft; that's about all--I fancy it's too
much, or not enough," he added with a faint smile.

Lingard looked at him narrowly.

"Did you come out from home in that craft?" he asked.

"Not I! I am not one of them regular yacht hands. I came out of
the hospital in Hongkong. I've been two years on the China
coast."

He stopped, then added in an explanatory murmur:

"Opium clippers--you know. Nothing of brass buttons about me. My
ship left me behind, and I was in want of work. I took this job
but I didn't want to go home particularly. It's slow work after
sailing with old Robinson in the Ly-e-moon. That was my ship.
Heard of her, Captain?"

"Yes, yes," said Lingard, hastily. "Look here, Mr. Carter, which
way was your chief officer trying for Singapore? Through the
Straits of Rhio?"

"I suppose so," answered Carter in a slightly surprised tone;
"why do you ask?"

"Just to know . . . What is it, Mr. Shaw?"

"There's a black cloud rising to the northward, sir, and we shall
get a breeze directly," said Shaw from the doorway.

He lingered there with his eyes fixed on the decanters.

"Will you have a glass?" said Lingard, leaving his seat. "I will
go up and have a look."

He went on deck. Shaw approached the table and began to help
himself, handling the bottles in profound silence and with
exaggerated caution, as if he had been measuring out of fragile
vessels a dose of some deadly poison. Carter, his hands in his
pockets, and leaning back, examined him from head to foot with a
cool stare. The mate of the brig raised the glass to his lips,
and glaring above the rim at the stranger, drained the contents
slowly.

"You have a fine nose for finding ships in the dark, Mister," he
said, distinctly, putting the glass on the table with extreme
gentleness.

"Eh? What's that? I sighted you just after sunset."

"And you knew where to look, too," said Shaw, staring hard.

"I looked to the westward where there was still some light, as
any sensible man would do," retorted the other a little
impatiently. "What are you trying to get at?"

"And you have a ready tongue to blow about yourself--haven't
you?"

"Never saw such a man in my life," declared Carter, with a return
of his nonchalant manner. "You seem to be troubled about
something."

"I don't like boats to come sneaking up from nowhere in
particular, alongside a ship when I am in charge of the deck. I
can keep a lookout as well as any man out of home ports, but I
hate to be circumvented by muffled oars and such ungentlemanlike
tricks. Yacht officer--indeed. These seas must be full of such
yachtsmen. I consider you played a mean trick on me. I told my
old man there was nothing in sight at sunset--and no more there
was. I believe you blundered upon us by chance--for all your
boasting about sunsets and bearings. Gammon! I know you came on
blindly on top of us, and with muffled oars, too. D'ye call that
decent?"

"If I did muffle the oars it was for a good reason. I wanted to
slip past a cove where some native craft were moored. That was
common prudence in such a small boat, and not armed--as I am. I
saw you right enough, but I had no intention to startle anybody.
Take my word for it."

"I wish you had gone somewhere else," growled Shaw. "I hate to be
put in the wrong through accident and untruthfulness--there!
Here's my old man calling me--"

He left the cabin hurriedly and soon afterward Lingard came down,
and sat again facing Carter across the table. His face was grave
but resolute.

"We shall get the breeze directly," he said.

"Then, sir," said Carter, getting up, "if you will give me back
that letter I shall go on cruising about here to speak some other
ship. I trust you will report us wherever you are going."

"I am going to the yacht and I shall keep the letter," answered
Lingard with decision. "I know exactly where she is, and I must
go to the rescue of those people. It's most fortunate you've
fallen in with me, Mr. Carter. Fortunate for them and fortunate
for me," he added in a lower tone.

"Yes," drawled Carter, reflectively. "There may be a tidy bit of
salvage money if you should get the vessel off, but I don't think
you can do much. I had better stay out here and try to speak some
gunboat--"

"You must come back to your ship with me," said Lingard,
authoritatively. "Never mind the gunboats."

"That wouldn't be carrying out my orders," argued Carter. "I've
got to speak a homeward-bound ship or a man-of-war--that's plain
enough. I am not anxious to knock about for days in an open boat,
but--let me fill my fresh-water breaker, Captain, and I will be
off."

"Nonsense," said Lingard, sharply. "You've got to come with me to
show the place and--and help. I'll take your boat in tow."

Carter did not seem convinced. Lingard laid a heavy hand on his
shoulder.

"Look here, young fellow. I am Tom Lingard and there's not a
white man among these islands, and very few natives, that have
not heard of me. My luck brought you into my ship--and now I've
got you, you must stay. You must!"

The last "must" burst out loud and sharp like a pistol-shot.
Carter stepped back.

"Do you mean you would keep me by force?" he asked, startled.

"Force," repeated Lingard. "It rests with you. I cannot let you
speak any vessel. Your yacht has gone ashore in a most
inconvenient place--for me; and with your boats sent off here and
there, you would bring every infernal gunboat buzzing to a spot
that was as quiet and retired as the heart of man could wish. You
stranding just on that spot of the whole coast was my bad luck.
And that I could not help. You coming upon me like this is my
good luck. And that I hold!"

He dropped his clenched fist, big and muscular, in the light of
the lamp on the black cloth, amongst the glitter of glasses, with
the strong fingers closed tight upon the firm flesh of the palm.
He left it there for a moment as if showing Carter that luck he
was going to hold. And he went on:

"Do you know into what hornet's nest your stupid people have
blundered? How much d'ye think their lives are worth, just now?
Not a brass farthing if the breeze fails me for another
twenty-four hours. You may well open your eyes. It is so! And it
may be too late now, while I am arguing with you here."

He tapped the table with his knuckles, and the glasses, waking
up, jingled a thin, plaintive finale to his speech. Carter stood
leaning against the sideboard. He was amazed by the unexpected
turn of the conversation; his jaw dropped slightly and his eyes
never swerved for a moment from Lingard's face. The silence in
the cabin lasted only a few seconds, but to Carter, who waited
breathlessly, it seemed very long. And all at once he heard in
it, for the first time, the cabin clock tick distinctly, in
pulsating beats, as though a little heart of metal behind the
dial had been started into sudden palpitation.

"A gunboat!" shouted Lingard, suddenly, as if he had seen only in
that moment, by the light of some vivid flash of thought, all the
difficulties of the situation. "If you don't go back with me
there will be nothing left for you to go back to--very soon. Your
gunboat won't find a single ship's rib or a single corpse left
for a landmark. That she won't. It isn't a gunboat skipper you
want. I am the man you want. You don't know your luck when you
see it, but I know mine, I do--and--look here- -"

He touched Carter's chest with his forefinger, and said with a
sudden gentleness of tone:

"I am a white man inside and out; I won't let inoffensive people-
-and a woman, too--come to harm if I can help it. And if I can't
help, nobody can. You understand--nobody! There's no time for it.
But I am like any other man that is worth his salt: I won't let
the end of an undertaking go by the board while there is a chance
to hold on--and it's like this--"

His voice was persuasive--almost caressing; he had hold now of a
coat button and tugged at it slightly as he went on in a
confidential manner:

"As it turns out, Mr. Carter, I would--in a manner of speaking--I
would as soon shoot you where you stand as let you go to raise an
alarm all over this sea about your confounded yacht. I have other
lives to consider--and friends-- and promises--and--and myself,
too. I shall keep you," he concluded, sharply.

Carter drew a long breath. On the deck above, the two men could
hear soft footfalls, short murmurs, indistinct words spoken near
the skylight. Shaw's voice rang out loudly in growling tones:

"Furl the royals, you tindal!"

"It's the queerest old go," muttered Carter, looking down on to
the floor. "You are a strange man. I suppose I must believe what
you say--unless you and that fat mate of yours are a couple of
escaped lunatics that got hold of a brig by some means. Why, that
chap up there wanted to pick a quarrel with me for coming aboard,
and now you threaten to shoot me rather than let me go. Not that
I care much about that; for some time or other you would get
hanged for it; and you don't look like a man that will end that
way. If what you say is only half true, I ought to get back to
the yacht as quick as ever I can. It strikes me that your coming
to them will be only a small mercy, anyhow--and I may be of some
use--But this is the queerest. . . . May I go in my boat?"

"As you like," said Lingard. "There's a rain squall coming."

"I am in charge and will get wet along of my chaps. Give us a
good long line, Captain."

"It's done already," said Lingard. "You seem a sensible sailorman
and can see that it would be useless to try and give me the
slip."

"For a man so ready to shoot, you seem very trustful," drawled
Carter. "If I cut adrift in a squall, I stand a pretty fair
chance not to see you again."

"You just try," said Lingard, drily. "I have eyes in this brig,
young man, that will see your boat when you couldn't see the
ship. You are of the kind I like, but if you monkey with me I
will find you--and when I find you I will run you down as surely
as I stand here."

Carter slapped his thigh and his eyes twinkled.

"By the Lord Harry!" he cried. "If it wasn't for the men with me,
I would try for sport. You are so cocksure about the lot you can
do, Captain. You would aggravate a saint into open mutiny."

His easy good humour had returned; but after a short burst of
laughter, he became serious.

"Never fear," he said, "I won't slip away. If there is to be any
throat-cutting--as you seem to hint--mine will be there, too, I
promise you, and. . . ."

He stretched his arms out, glanced at them, shook them a little.

"And this pair of arms to take care of it," he added, in his old,
careless drawl.

ut the master of the brig sitting with both his elbows on the
table, his face in his hands, had fallen unexpectedly into a
meditation so concentrated and so profound that he seemed neither
to hear, see, nor breathe. The sight of that man's complete
absorption in thought was to Carter almost more surprising than
any other occurrence of that night. Had his strange host vanished
suddenly from before his eyes, it could not have made him feel
more uncomfortably alone in that cabin where the pertinacious
clock kept ticking off the useless minutes of the calm before it
would, with the same steady beat, begin to measure the aimless
disturbance of the storm.

III

After waiting a moment, Carter went on deck. The sky, the sea,
the brig itself had disappeared in a darkness that had become
impenetrable, palpable, and stifling. An immense cloud had come
up running over the heavens, as if looking for the little craft,
and now hung over it, arrested. To the south there was a livid
trembling gleam, faint and sad, like a vanishing memory of
destroyed starlight. To the north, as if to prove the impossible,
an incredibly blacker patch outlined on the tremendous blackness
of the sky the heart of the coming squall. The glimmers in the
water had gone out and the invisible sea all around lay mute and
still as if it had died suddenly of fright.

Carter could see nothing. He felt about him people moving; he
heard them in the darkness whispering faintly as if they had been
exchanging secrets important or infamous. The night effaced even
words, and its mystery had captured everything and every sound--
had left nothing free but the unexpected that seemed to hover
about one, ready to stretch out its stealthy hand in a touch
sudden, familiar, and appalling. Even the careless disposition of
the young ex-officer of an opium-clipper was affected by the
ominous aspect of the hour. What was this vessel? What were those
people? What would happen to-morrow? To the yacht? To himself? He
felt suddenly without any additional reason but the darkness that
it was a poor show, anyhow, a dashed poor show for all hands. The
irrational conviction made him falter for a second where he stood
and he gripped the slide of the companionway hard.

Shaw's voice right close to his ear relieved and cleared his
troubled thoughts.

"Oh! it's you, Mister. Come up at last," said the mate of the
brig slowly. "It appears we've got to give you a tow now. Of all
the rum in-cidents, this beats all. A boat sneaks up from nowhere
and turns out to be a long-expected friend! For you are one of
them friends the skipper was going to meet somewhere here. Ain't
you now? Come! I know more than you may think. Are we off to--you
may just as well tell--off to--h'm ha . . . you know?"

"Yes. I know. Don't you?" articulated Carter, innocently.

Shaw remained very quiet for a minute.

"Where's my skipper?" he asked at last.

"I left him down below in a kind of trance. Where's my boat?"

"Your boat is hanging astern. And my opinion is that you are as
uncivil as I've proved you to be untruthful. Egzz-actly."

Carter stumbled toward the taffrail and in the first step he made
came full against somebody who glided away. It seemed to him that
such a night brings men to a lower level. He thought that he
might have been knocked on the head by anybody strong enough to
lift a crow-bar. He felt strangely irritated. He said loudly,
aiming his words at Shaw whom he supposed somewhere near:

"And my opinion is that you and your skipper will come to a
sudden bad end before--"

"I thought you were in your boat. Have you changed your mind?"
asked Lingard in his deep voice close to Carter's elbow.

Carter felt his way along the rail, till his hand found a line
that seemed, in the calm, to stream out of its own accord into
the darkness. He hailed his boat, and directly heard the wash of
water against her bows as she was hauled quickly under the
counter. Then he loomed up shapeless on the rail, and the next
moment disappeared as if he had fallen out of the universe.
Lingard heard him say:

"Catch hold of my leg, John." There were hollow sounds in the
boat; a voice growled, "All right."

"Keep clear of the counter," said Lingard, speaking in quiet
warning tones into the night. "The brig may get a lot of sternway
on her should this squall not strike her fairly."

"Aye, aye. I will mind," was the muttered answer from the water.

Lingard crossed over to the port side, and looked steadily at the
sooty mass of approaching vapours. After a moment he said curtly,
"Brace up for the port tack, Mr. Shaw," and remained silent, with
his face to the sea. A sound, sorrowful and startling like the
sigh of some immense creature, travelling across the starless
space, passed above the vertical and lofty spars of the
motionless brig.

It grew louder, then suddenly ceased for a moment, and the taut
rigging of the brig was heard vibrating its answer in a singing
note to this threatening murmur of the winds. A long and slow
undulation lifted the level of the waters, as if the sea had
drawn a deep breath of anxious suspense. The next minute an
immense disturbance leaped out of the darkness upon the sea,
kindling upon it a livid clearness of foam, and the first gust of
the squall boarded the brig in a stinging flick of rain and
spray. As if overwhelmed by the suddenness of the fierce onset,
the vessel remained for a second upright where she floated,
shaking with tremendous jerks from trucks to keel; while high up
in the night the invisible canvas was heard rattling and beating
about violently.

Then, with a quick double report, as of heavy guns, both topsails
filled at once and the brig fell over swiftly on her side. Shaw
was thrown headlong against the skylight, and Lingard, who had
encircled the weather rail with his arm, felt the vessel under
his feet dart forward smoothly, and the deck become less
slanting--the speed of the brig running off a little now, easing
the overturning strain of the wind upon the distended surfaces of
the sails. It was only the fineness of the little vessel's lines
and the perfect shape of her hull that saved the canvas, and
perhaps the spars, by enabling the ready craft to get way upon
herself with such lightning-like rapidity. Lingard drew a long
breath and yelled jubilantly at Shaw who was struggling up
against wind and rain to his commander's side.

"She'll do. Hold on everything."

Shaw tried to speak. He swallowed great mouthfuls of tepid water
which the wind drove down his throat. The brig seemed to sail
through undulating waves that passed swishing between the masts
and swept over the decks with the fierce rush and noise of a
cataract. From every spar and every rope a ragged sheet of water
streamed flicking to leeward. The overpowering deluge seemed to
last for an age; became unbearable--and, all at once, stopped. In
a couple of minutes the shower had run its length over the brig
and now could be seen like a straight grey wall, going away into
the night under the fierce whispering of dissolving clouds. The
wind eased. To the northward, low down in the darkness, three
stars appeared in a row, leaping in and out between the crests of
waves like the distant heads of swimmers in a running surf; and
the retreating edge of the cloud, perfectly straight from east to
west, slipped along the dome of the sky like an immense
hemispheric, iron shutter pivoting down smoothly as if operated
by some mighty engine. An inspiring and penetrating freshness
flowed together with the shimmer of light, through the augmented
glory of the heaven, a glory exalted, undimmed, and strangely
startling as if a new world had been created during the short
flight of the stormy cloud. It was a return to life, a return to
space; the earth coming out from under a pall to take its place
in the renewed and immense scintillation of the universe.

The brig, her yards slightly checked in, ran with an easy motion
under the topsails, jib and driver, pushing contemptuously aside
the turbulent crowd of noisy and agitated waves. As the craft
went swiftly ahead she unrolled behind her over the uneasy
darkness of the sea a broad ribbon of seething foam shot with
wispy gleams of dark discs escaping from under the rudder. Far
away astern, at the end of a line no thicker than a black thread,
which dipped now and then its long curve in the bursting froth, a
toy-like object could be made out, elongated and dark, racing
after the brig over the snowy whiteness of her wake.

Lingard walked aft, and, with both his hands on the taffrail,
looked eagerly for Carter's boat. The first glance satisfied
him that the yacht's gig was towing easily at the end of the long
scope of line, and he turned away to look ahead and to leeward
with a steady gaze. It was then half an hour past midnight and
Shaw, relieved by Wasub, had gone below. Before he went, he said
to Lingard, "I will be off, sir, if you're not going to make more
sail yet." "Not yet for a while," had answered Lingard in a
preoccupied manner; and Shaw departed aggrieved at such a neglect
of making the best of a good breeze.

On the main deck dark-skinned men, whose clothing clung to their
shivering limbs as if they had been overboard, had finished
recoiling the braces, and clearing the gear. The kassab, after
having hung the fore-topsail halyards in the becket, strutted
into the waist toward a row of men who stood idly with their
shoulders against the side of the long boat amidships. He passed
along looking up close at the stolid faces. Room was made for
him, and he took his place at the end.

"It was a great rain and a mighty wind, O men," he said,
dogmatically, "but no wind can ever hurt this ship. That I knew
while I stood minding the sail which is under my care."

A dull and inexpressive murmur was heard from the men. Over the
high weather rail, a topping wave flung into their eyes a handful
of heavy drops that stung like hail. There were low groans of
indignation. A man sighed. Another emitted a spasmodic laugh
through his chattering teeth. No one moved away. The little
kassab wiped his face and went on in his cracked voice, to the
accompaniment of the swishing sounds made by the seas that swept
regularly astern along the ship's side.

"Have you heard him shout at the wind--louder than the wind? I
have heard, being far forward. And before, too, in the many years
I served this white man I have heard him often cry magic words
that make all safe. Ya-wa! This is truth. Ask Wasub who is a
Haji, even as I am."

"I have seen white men's ships with their masts broken--also
wrecked like our own praus," remarked sadly a lean, lank fellow
who shivered beside the kassab, hanging his head and trying to
grasp his shoulder blades.

"True," admitted the kassab. "They are all the children of Satan
but to some more favour is shown. To obey such men on the sea or
in a fight is good. I saw him who is master here fight with wild
men who eat their enemies--far away to the eastward--and I dealt
blows by his side without fear; for the charms he, no doubt,
possesses protect his servants also. I am a believer and the
Stoned One can not touch my forehead. Yet the reward of victory
comes from the accursed. For six years have I sailed with that
white man; first as one who minds the rudder, for I am a man of
the sea, born in a prau, and am skilled in such work. And now,
because of my great knowledge of his desires, I have the care of
all things in this ship."

Several voices muttered, "True. True." They remained apathetic
and patient, in the rush of wind, under the repeated short
flights of sprays. The slight roll of the ship balanced them
stiffly all together where they stood propped against the big
boat. The breeze humming between the inclined masts enveloped
their dark and silent figures in the unceasing resonance of its
breath.

The brig's head had been laid so as to pass a little to windward
of the small islands of the Carimata group. They had been till
then hidden in the night, but now both men on the lookout
reported land ahead in one long cry. Lingard, standing to leeward
abreast of the wheel, watched the islet first seen. When it was
nearly abeam of the brig he gave his orders, and Wasub hurried
off to the main deck. The helm was put down, the yards on the
main came slowly square and the wet canvas of the main-topsail
clung suddenly to the mast after a single heavy flap. The
dazzling streak of the ship's wake vanished. The vessel lost her
way and began to dip her bows into the quick succession of the
running head seas. And at every slow plunge of the craft, the
song of the wind would swell louder amongst the waving spars,
with a wild and mournful note.

Just as the brig's boat had been swung out, ready for lowering,
the yacht's gig hauled up by its line appeared tossing and
splashing on the lee quarter. Carter stood up in the stern sheets
balancing himself cleverly to the disordered motion of his
cockleshell. He hailed the brig twice to know what was the
matter, not being able from below and in the darkness to make out
what that confused group of men on the poop were about. He got no
answer, though he could see the shape of a man standing by
himself aft, and apparently watching him. He was going to repeat
his hail for the third time when he heard the rattling of tackles
followed by a heavy splash, a burst of voices, scrambling hollow
sounds--and a dark mass detaching itself from the brig's side
swept past him on the crest of a passing wave. For less than a
second he could see on the shimmer of the night sky the shape of
a boat, the heads of men, the blades of oars pointing upward
while being got out hurriedly. Then all this sank out of sight,
reappeared once more far off and hardly discernible, before
vanishing for good.

"Why, they've lowered a boat!" exclaimed Carter, falling back in
his seat. He remembered that he had seen only a few hours ago
three native praus lurking amongst those very islands. For a
moment he had the idea of casting off to go in chase of that
boat, so as to find out. . . . Find out what? He gave up his idea
at once. What could he do?

The conviction that the yacht, and everything belonging to her,
were in some indefinite but very real danger, took afresh a
strong hold of him, and the persuasion that the master of the
brig was going there to help did not by any means assuage his
alarm. The fact only served to complicate his uneasiness with a
sense of mystery.

The white man who spoke as if that sea was all his own, or as if
people intruded upon his privacy by taking the liberty of getting
wrecked on a coast where he and his friends did some queer
business, seemed to him an undesirable helper. That the boat had
been lowered to communicate with the praus seen and avoided by
him in the evening he had no doubt. The thought had flashed on
him at once. It had an ugly look. Yet the best thing to do after
all was to hang on and get back to the yacht and warn them. . . .
Warn them against whom? The man had been perfectly open with him.
Warn them against what? It struck him that he hadn't the
slightest conception of what would happen, of what was even
likely to happen. That strange rescuer himself was bringing the
news of danger. Danger from the natives of course. And yet he was
in communication with those natives. That was evident. That boat
going off in the night. . . . Carter swore heartily to himself.
His perplexity became positive bodily pain as he sat, wet,
uncomfortable, and still, one hand on the tiller, thrown up and
down in headlong swings of his boat. And before his eyes,
towering high, the black hull of the brig also rose and fell,
setting her stern down in the sea, now and again, with a
tremendous and foaming splash. Not a sound from her reached
Carter's ears. She seemed an abandoned craft but for the outline
of a man's head and body still visible in a watchful attitude
above the taffrail.

Carter told his bowman to haul up closer and hailed:

"Brig ahoy. Anything wrong?"

He waited, listening. The shadowy man still watched. After some
time a curt "No" came back in answer.

"Are you going to keep hove-to long?" shouted Carter.

"Don't know. Not long. Drop your boat clear of the ship. Drop
clear. Do damage if you don't."

"Slack away, John!" said Carter in a resigned tone to the elderly
seaman in the bow. "Slack away and let us ride easy to the full
scope. They don't seem very talkative on board there."

Even while he was speaking the line ran out and the regular
undulations of the passing seas drove the boat away from the
brig. Carter turned a little in his seat to look at the land. It
loomed up dead to leeward like a lofty and irregular cone only a
mile or a mile and a half distant. The noise of the surf beating
upon its base was heard against the wind in measured detonations.
The fatigue of many days spent in the boat asserted itself above
the restlessness of Carter's thoughts and, gradually, he lost the
notion of the passing time without altogether losing the
consciousness of his situation.

In the intervals of that benumbed stupor--rather than sleep--he
was aware that the interrupted noise of the surf had grown into a
continuous great rumble, swelling periodically into a loud roar;
that the high islet appeared now bigger, and that a white fringe
of foam was visible at its feet. Still there was no stir or
movement of any kind on board the brig. He noticed that the wind
was moderating and the sea going down with it, and then dozed off
again for a minute. When next he opened his eyes with a start, it
was just in time to see with surprise a new star soar noiselessly
straight up from behind the land, take up its position in a
brilliant constellation--and go out suddenly. Two more followed,
ascending together, and after reaching about the same elevation,
expired side by side.

"Them's rockets, sir--ain't they?" said one of the men in a
muffled voice.

"Aye, rockets," grunted Carter. "And now, what's the next move?"
he muttered to himself dismally.

He got his answer in the fierce swishing whirr of a slender ray
of fire that, shooting violently upward from the sombre hull of
the brig, dissolved at once into a dull red shower of falling
sparks. Only one, white and brilliant, remained alone poised high
overhead, and after glowing vividly for a second, exploded with a
feeble report. Almost at the same time he saw the brig's head
fall off the wind, made out the yards swinging round to fill the
main topsail, and heard distinctly the thud of the first wave
thrown off by the advancing bows. The next minute the tow-line
got the strain and his boat started hurriedly after the brig with
a sudden jerk.

Leaning forward, wide awake and attentive, Carter steered. His
men sat one behind another with shoulders up, and arched backs,
dozing, uncomfortable but patient, upon the thwarts. The care
requisite to steer the boat properly in the track of the seething
and disturbed water left by the brig in her rapid course
prevented him from reflecting much upon the incertitude of the
future and upon his own unusual situation.

Now he was only exceedingly anxious to see the yacht again, and
it was with a feeling of very real satisfaction that he saw all
plain sail being made on the brig. Through the remaining hours of
the night he sat grasping the tiller and keeping his eyes on the
shadowy and high pyramid of canvas gliding steadily ahead of his
boat with a slight balancing movement from side to side.

IV

It was noon before the brig, piloted by Lingard through the deep
channels between the outer coral reefs, rounded within
pistol-shot a low hummock of sand which marked the end of a long
stretch of stony ledges that, being mostly awash, showed a black
head only, here and there amongst the hissing brown froth of the
yellow sea. As the brig drew clear of the sandy patch there
appeared, dead to windward and beyond a maze of broken water,
sandspits, and clusters of rocks, the black hull of the yacht
heeling over, high and motionless upon the great expanse of
glittering shallows. Her long, naked spars were inclined slightly
as if she had been sailing with a good breeze. There was to the
lookers-on aboard the brig something sad and disappointing in the
yacht's aspect as she lay perfectly still in an attitude that in
a seaman's mind is associated with the idea of rapid motion.

"Here she is!" said Shaw, who, clad in a spotless white suit,
came just then from forward where he had been busy with the
anchors. "She is well on, sir--isn't she? Looks like a mudflat to
me from here."

"Yes. It is a mudflat," said Lingard, slowly, raising the long
glass to his eye. "Haul the mainsail up, Mr. Shaw," he went on
while he took a steady look at the yacht. "We will have to work
in short tacks here."

He put the glass down and moved away from the rail. For the next
hour he handled his little vessel in the intricate and narrow
channel with careless certitude, as if every stone, every grain
of sand upon the treacherous bottom had been plainly disclosed to
his sight. He handled her in the fitful and unsteady breeze with
a matter-of-fact audacity that made Shaw, forward at his station,
gasp in sheer alarm. When heading toward the inshore shoals the
brig was never put round till the quick, loud cries of the
leadsmen announced that there were no more than three feet of
water under her keel; and when standing toward the steep inner
edge of the long reef, where the lead was of no use, the helm
would be put down only when the cutwater touched the faint line
of the bordering foam. Lingard's love for his brig was a man's
love, and was so great that it could never be appeased unless he
called on her to put forth all her qualities and her power, to
repay his exacting affection by a faithfulness tried to the very
utmost limit of endurance. Every flutter of the sails flew down
from aloft along the taut leeches, to enter his heart in a sense
of acute delight; and the gentle murmur of water alongside,
which, continuous and soft, showed that in all her windings his
incomparable craft had never, even for an instant, ceased to
carry her way, was to him more precious and inspiring than the
soft whisper of tender words would have been to another man. It
was in such moments that he lived intensely, in a flush of strong
feeling that made him long to press his little vessel to his
breast. She was his perfect world full of trustful joy.

The people on board the yacht, who watched eagerly the first sail
they had seen since they had been ashore on that deserted part of
the coast, soon made her out, with some disappointment, to be a
small merchant brig beating up tack for tack along the inner edge
of the reef--probably with the intention to communicate and offer
assistance. The general opinion among the seafaring portion of
her crew was that little effective assistance could be expected
from a vessel of that description. Only the sailing-master of the
yacht remarked to the boatswain (who had the advantage of being
his first cousin): "This man is well acquainted here; you can see
that by the way he handles his brig. I shan't be sorry to have
somebody to stand by us. Can't tell when we will get off this
mud, George."

A long board, sailed very close, enabled the brig to fetch the
southern limit of discoloured water over the bank on which the
yacht had stranded. On the very edge of the muddy patch she was
put in stays for the last time. As soon as she had paid off on
the other tack, sail was shortened smartly, and the brig
commenced the stretch that was to bring her to her anchorage,
under her topsails, lower staysails and jib. There was then less
than a quarter of a mile of shallow water between her and the
yacht; but while that vessel had gone ashore with her head to the
eastward the brig was moving slowly in a west-northwest
direction, and consequently, sailed--so to speak--past the whole
length of the yacht. Lingard saw every soul in the schooner on
deck, watching his advent in a silence which was as unbroken and
perfect as that on board his own vessel.

A little man with a red face framed in white whiskers waved a
gold-laced cap above the rail in the waist of the yacht. Lingard
raised his arm in return. Further aft, under the white awnings,
he could see two men and a woman. One of the men and the lady
were in blue. The other man, who seemed very tall and stood with
his arm entwined round an awning stanchion above his head, was
clad in white. Lingard saw them plainly. They looked at the brig
through binoculars, turned their faces to one another, moved
their lips, seemed surprised. A large dog put his forepaws on the
rail, and, lifting up his big, black head, sent out three loud
and plaintive barks, then dropped down out of sight. A sudden
stir and an appearance of excitement amongst all hands on board
the yacht was caused by their perceiving that the boat towing
astern of the stranger was their own second gig.

Arms were outstretched with pointing fingers. Someone shouted out
a long sentence of which not a word could be made out; and then
the brig, having reached the western limit of the bank, began to
move diagonally away, increasing her distance from the yacht but
bringing her stern gradually into view. The people aft, Lingard
noticed, left their places and walked over to the taffrail so as
to keep him longer in sight.

When about a mile off the bank and nearly in line with the stern
of the yacht the brig's topsails fluttered and the yards came
down slowly on the caps; the fore and aft canvas ran down; and
for some time she floated quietly with folded wings upon the
transparent sheet of water, under the radiant silence of the sky.
Then her anchor went to the bottom with a rumbling noise
resembling the roll of distant thunder. In a moment her head
tended to the last puffs of the northerly airs and the ensign at
the peak stirred, unfurled itself slowly, collapsed, flew out
again, and finally hung down straight and still, as if weighted
with lead.

"Dead calm, sir," said Shaw to Lingard. "Dead calm again. We got
into this funny place in the nick of time, sir."

They stood for a while side by side, looking round upon the coast
and the sea. The brig had been brought up in the middle of a
broad belt of clear water. To the north rocky ledges showed in
black and white lines upon the slight swell setting in from
there. A small island stood out from the broken water like the
square tower of some submerged building. It was about two miles
distant from the brig. To the eastward the coast was low; a coast
of green forests fringed with dark mangroves. There was in its
sombre dullness a clearly defined opening, as if a small piece
had been cut out with a sharp knife. The water in it shone like a
patch of polished silver. Lingard pointed it out to Shaw.

"This is the entrance to the place where we are going," he said.

Shaw stared, round-eyed.

"I thought you came here on account of this here yacht," he
stammered, surprised.

"Ah. The yacht," said Lingard, musingly, keeping his eyes on the
break in the coast. "The yacht--" He stamped his foot suddenly.
"I would give all I am worth and throw in a few days of life into
the bargain if I could get her off and away before to-night."

He calmed down, and again stood gazing at the land. A little
within the entrance from behind the wall of forests an invisible
fire belched out steadily the black and heavy convolutions of
thick smoke, which stood out high, like a twisted and shivering
pillar against the clear blue of the sky.

"We must stop that game, Mr. Shaw," said Lingard, abruptly.

"Yes, sir. What game?" asked Shaw, looking round in wonder.

"This smoke," said Lingard, impatiently. "It's a signal."

"Certainly, sir--though I don't see how we can do it. It seems
far inland. A signal for what, sir?"

"It was not meant for us," said Lingard in an unexpectedly savage
tone. "Here, Shaw, make them put a blank charge into that
forecastle gun. Tell 'em to ram hard the wadding and grease the
mouth. We want to make a good noise. If old Jorgenson hears it,
that fire will be out before you have time to turn round twice. .
. . In a minute, Mr. Carter."

The yacht's boat had come alongside as soon as the brig had been
brought up, and Carter had been waiting to take Lingard on board
the yacht. They both walked now to the gangway. Shaw, following
his commander, stood by to take his last orders.

"Put all the boats in the water, Mr. Shaw," Lingard was saying,
with one foot on the rail, ready to leave his ship, "and mount
the four-pounder swivel in the longboat's bow. Cast off the sea
lashings of the guns, but don't run 'em out yet. Keep the
topsails loose and the jib ready for setting, I may want the
sails in a hurry. Now, Mr. Carter, I am ready for you."

"Shove off, boys," said Carter as soon as they were seated in the
boat. "Shove off, and give way for a last pull before you get a
long rest."

The men lay back on their oars, grunting. Their faces were drawn,
grey and streaked with the dried salt sprays. They had the
worried expression of men who had a long call made upon their
endurance. Carter, heavy-eyed and dull, steered for the yacht's
gangway. Lingard asked as they were crossing the brig's bows:

"Water enough alongside your craft, I suppose?"

"Yes. Eight to twelve feet," answered Carter, hoarsely. "Say,
Captain! Where's your show of cutthroats? Why! This sea is as
empty as a church on a week-day."

The booming report, nearly over his head, of the brig's
eighteen-pounder interrupted him. A round puff of white vapour,
spreading itself lazily, clung in fading shreds about the
foreyard. Lingard, turning half round in the stern sheets, looked
at the smoke on the shore. Carter remained silent, staring
sleepily at the yacht they were approaching. Lingard kept
watching the smoke so intensely that he almost forgot where he
was, till Carter's voice pronouncing sharply at his ear the words
"way enough," recalled him to himself.

They were in the shadow of the yacht and coming alongside her
ladder. The master of the brig looked upward into the face of a
gentleman, with long whiskers and a shaved chin, staring down at
him over the side through a single eyeglass. As he put his foot
on the bottom step he could see the shore smoke still ascending,
unceasing and thick; but even as he looked the very base of the
black pillar rose above the ragged line of tree-tops. The whole
thing floated clear away from the earth, and rolling itself into
an irregularly shaped mass, drifted out to seaward, travelling
slowly over the blue heavens, like a threatening and lonely
cloud.

PART II. THE SHORE OF REFUGE

I

The coast off which the little brig, floating upright above her
anchor, seemed to guard the high hull of the yacht has no
distinctive features. It is land without form. It stretches away
without cape or bluff, long and low--indefinitely; and when the
heavy gusts of the northeast monsoon drive the thick rain
slanting over the sea, it is seen faintly under the grey sky,
black and with a blurred outline like the straight edge of a
dissolving shore. In the long season of unclouded days, it
presents to view only a narrow band of earth that appears crushed
flat upon the vast level of waters by the weight of the sky,
whose immense dome rests on it in a line as fine and true as that
of the sea horizon itself.

Notwithstanding its nearness to the centres of European power,
this coast has been known for ages to the armed wanderers of
these seas as "The Shore of Refuge." It has no specific name on
the charts, and geography manuals don't mention it at all; but
the wreckage of many defeats unerringly drifts into its creeks.
Its approaches are extremely difficult for a stranger. Looked at
from seaward, the innumerable islets fringing what, on account of
its vast size, may be called the mainland, merge into a
background that presents not a single landmark to point the way
through the intricate channels. It may be said that in a belt of
sea twenty miles broad along that low shore there is much more
coral, mud, sand, and stones than actual sea water. It was
amongst the outlying shoals of this stretch that the yacht had
gone ashore and the events consequent upon her stranding took
place.

The diffused light of the short daybreak showed the open water to
the westward, sleeping, smooth and grey, under a faded heaven.
The straight coast threw a heavy belt of gloom along the shoals,
which, in the calm of expiring night, were unmarked by the
slightest ripple. In the faint dawn the low clumps of bushes on
the sandbanks appeared immense.

Two figures, noiseless like two shadows, moved slowly over the
beach of a rocky islet, and stopped side by side on the very edge
of the water. Behind them, between the mats from which they had
arisen, a small heap of black embers smouldered quietly. They
stood upright and perfectly still, but for the slight movement of
their heads from right to left and back again as they swept their
gaze through the grey emptiness of the waters where, about two
miles distant, the hull of the yacht loomed up to seaward, black
and shapeless, against the wan sky.

The two figures looked beyond without exchanging as much as a
murmur. The taller of the two grounded, at arm's length, the
stock of a gun with a long barrel; the hair of the other fell
down to its waist; and, near by, the leaves of creepers drooping
from the summit of the steep rock stirred no more than the
festooned stone. The faint light, disclosing here and there a
gleam of white sandbanks and the blurred hummocks of islets
scattered within the gloom of the coast, the profound silence,
the vast stillness all round, accentuated the loneliness of the
two human beings who, urged by a sleepless hope, had risen thus,
at break of day, to look afar upon the veiled face of the sea.

"Nothing!" said the man with a sigh, and as if awakening from a
long period of musing.

He was clad in a jacket of coarse blue cotton, of the kind a poor
fisherman might own, and he wore it wide open on a muscular chest
the colour and smoothness of bronze. From the twist of threadbare
sarong wound tightly on the hips protruded outward to the left
the ivory hilt, ringed with six bands of gold, of a weapon that
would not have disgraced a ruler. Silver glittered about the
flintlock and the hardwood stock of his gun. The red and gold
handkerchief folded round his head was of costly stuff, such as
is woven by high-born women in the households of chiefs, only the
gold threads were tarnished and the silk frayed in the folds. His
head was thrown back, the dropped eyelids narrowed the gleam of
his eyes. His face was hairless, the nose short with mobile
nostrils, and the smile of careless good-humour seemed to have
been permanently wrought, as if with a delicate tool, into the
slight hollows about the corners of rather full lips. His upright
figure had a negligent elegance. But in the careless face, in the
easy gestures of the whole man there was something attentive and
restrained.

After giving the offing a last searching glance, he turned and,
facing the rising sun, walked bare-footed on the elastic sand.
The trailed butt of his gun made a deep furrow. The embers had
ceased to smoulder. He looked down at them pensively for a while,
then called over his shoulder to the girl who had remained
behind, still scanning the sea:

"The fire is out, Immada."

At the sound of his voice the girl moved toward the mats. Her
black hair hung like a mantle. Her sarong, the kilt-like garment
which both sexes wear, had the national check of grey and red,
but she had not completed her attire by the belt, scarves, the
loose upper wrappings, and the head-covering of a woman. A black
silk jacket, like that of a man of rank, was buttoned over her
bust and fitted closely to her slender waist. The edge of a
stand-up collar, stiff with gold embroidery, rubbed her cheek.
She had no bracelets, no anklets, and although dressed
practically in man's clothes, had about her person no weapon of
any sort. Her arms hung down in exceedingly tight sleeves slit a
little way up from the wrist, gold-braided and with a row of
small gold buttons. She walked, brown and alert, all of a piece,
with short steps, the eyes lively in an impassive little face,
the arched mouth closed firmly; and her whole person breathed in
its rigid grace the fiery gravity of youth at the beginning of
the task of life--at the beginning of beliefs and hopes.

This was the day of Lingard's arrival upon the coast, but, as is
known, the brig, delayed by the calm, did not appear in sight of
the shallows till the morning was far advanced. Disappointed in
their hope to see the expected sail shining in the first rays of
the rising sun, the man and the woman, without attempting to
relight the fire, lounged on their sleeping mats. At their feet a
common canoe, hauled out of the water, was, for more security,
moored by a grass rope to the shaft of a long spear planted
firmly on the white beach, and the incoming tide lapped
monotonously against its stern.

The girl, twisting up her black hair, fastened it with slender
wooden pins. The man, reclining at full length, had made room on
his mat for the gun--as one would do for a friend--and, supported
on his elbow, looked toward the yacht with eyes whose fixed
dreaminess like a transparent veil would show the slow passage of
every gloomy thought by deepening gradually into a sombre stare.

"We have seen three sunrises on this islet, and no friend came
from the sea," he said without changing his attitude, with his
back toward the girl who sat on the other side of the cold
embers.

"Yes; and the moon is waning," she answered in a low voice. "The
moon is waning. Yet he promised to be here when the nights are
light and the water covers the sandbanks as far as the bushes."

"The traveller knows the time of his setting out, but not the
time of his return," observed the man, calmly.

The girl sighed.

"The nights of waiting are long," she murmured.

"And sometimes they are vain," said the man with the same
composure. "Perhaps he will never return."

"Why?" exclaimed the girl.

"The road is long and the heart may grow cold," was the answer in
a quiet voice. "If he does not return it is because he has
forgotten."

"Oh, Hassim, it is because he is dead," cried the girl,
indignantly.

The man, looking fixedly to seaward, smiled at the ardour of her
tone.

They were brother and sister, and though very much alike, the
family resemblance was lost in the more general traits common to
the whole race.

They were natives of Wajo and it is a common saying amongst the
Malay race that to be a successful traveller and trader a man
must have some Wajo blood in his veins. And with those people
trading, which means also travelling afar, is a romantic and an
honourable occupation. The trader must possess an adventurous
spirit and a keen understanding; he should have the fearlessness
of youth and the sagacity of age; he should be diplomatic and
courageous, so as to secure the favour of the great and inspire
fear in evil-doers.

These qualities naturally are not expected in a shopkeeper or a
Chinaman pedlar; they are considered indispensable only for a man
who, of noble birth and perhaps related to the ruler of his own
country, wanders over the seas in a craft of his own and with
many followers; carries from island to island important news as
well as merchandise; who may be trusted with secret messages and
valuable goods; a man who, in short, is as ready to intrigue and
fight as to buy and sell. Such is the ideal trader of Wajo.

Trading, thus understood, was the occupation of ambitious men who
played an occult but important part in all those national
risings, religious disturbances, and also in the organized
piratical movements on a large scale which, during the first half
of the last century, affected the fate of more than one native
dynasty and, for a few years at least, seriously endangered the
Dutch rule in the East. When, at the cost of much blood and gold,
a comparative peace had been imposed on the islands the same
occupation, though shorn of its glorious possibilities, remained
attractive for the most adventurous of a restless race. The
younger sons and relations of many a native ruler traversed the
seas of the Archipelago, visited the innumerable and little-known
islands, and the then practically unknown shores of New Guinea;
every spot where European trade had not penetrated--from Aru to
Atjeh, from Sumbawa to Palawan.

II

It was in the most unknown perhaps of such spots, a small bay on
the coast of New Guinea, that young Pata Hassim, the nephew of
one of the greatest chiefs of Wajo, met Lingard for the first
time.

He was a trader after the Wajo manner, and in a stout sea-going
prau armed with two guns and manned by young men who were related
to his family by blood or dependence, had come in there to buy
some birds of paradise skins for the old Sultan of Ternate; a
risky expedition undertaken not in the way of business but as a
matter of courtesy toward the aged Sultan who had entertained him
sumptuously in that dismal brick palace at Ternate for a month or
more.

While lying off the village, very much on his guard, waiting for
the skins and negotiating with the treacherous coast-savages who
are the go-betweens in that trade, Hassim saw one morning
Lingard's brig come to an anchor in the bay, and shortly
afterward observed a white man of great stature with a beard that
shone like gold, land from a boat and stroll on unarmed, though
followed by four Malays of the brig's crew, toward the native
village.

Hassim was struck with wonder and amazement at the cool
recklessness of such a proceeding; and, after; in true Malay
fashion, discussing with his people for an hour or so the urgency
of the case, he also landed, but well escorted and armed, with
the intention of going to see what would happen.

The affair really was very simple, "such as"--Lingard would
say--"such as might have happened to anybody." He went ashore
with the intention to look for some stream where he could
conveniently replenish his water casks, this being really the
motive which had induced him to enter the bay.

While, with his men close by and surrounded by a mop-headed,
sooty crowd, he was showing a few cotton handkerchiefs, and
trying to explain by signs the object of his landing, a spear,
lunged from behind, grazed his neck. Probably the Papuan wanted
only to ascertain whether such a creature could be killed or
hurt, and most likely firmly believed that it could not; but one
of Lingard's seamen at once retaliated by striking at the
experimenting savage with his parang--three such choppers brought
for the purpose of clearing the bush, if necessary, being all the
weapons the party from the brig possessed.

A deadly tumult ensued with such suddenness that Lingard, turning
round swiftly, saw his defender, already speared in three places,
fall forward at his feet. Wasub, who was there, and afterward
told the story once a week on an average, used to horrify his
hearers by showing how the man blinked his eyes quickly before he
fell. Lingard was unarmed. To the end of his life he remained
incorrigibly reckless in that respect, explaining that he was
"much too quick tempered to carry firearms on the chance of a
row. And if put to it," he argued, "I can make shift to kill a
man with my fist anyhow; and then--don't ye see--you know what
you're doing and are not so apt to start a trouble from sheer
temper or funk--see?"

In this case he did his best to kill a man with a blow from the
shoulder and catching up another by the middle flung him at the
naked, wild crowd. "He hurled men about as the wind hurls broken
boughs.

He made a broad way through our enemies!" related Wasub in his
jerky voice. It is more probable that Lingard's quick movements
and the amazing aspect of such a strange being caused the
warriors to fall back before his rush.

Taking instant advantage of their surprise and fear, Lingard,
followed by his men, dashed along the kind of ruinous jetty
leading to the village which was erected as usual over the water.
They darted into one of the miserable huts built of rotten mats
and bits of decayed canoes, and in this shelter showing daylight
through all its sides, they had time to draw breath and realize
that their position was not much improved.

The women and children screaming had cleared out into the bush,
while at the shore end of the jetty the warriors capered and
yelled, preparing for a general attack. Lingard noticed with
mortification that his boat-keeper apparently had lost his head,
for, instead of swimming off to the ship to give the alarm, as he
was perfectly able to do, the man actually struck out for a small
rock a hundred yards away and was frantically trying to climb up
its perpendicular side. The tide being out, to jump into the
horrible mud under the houses would have been almost certain
death. Nothing remained therefore--since the miserable dwelling
would not have withstood a vigorous kick, let alone a siege --but
to rush back on shore and regain possession of the boat. To this
Lingard made up his mind quickly and, arming himself with a
crooked stick he found under his hand, sallied forth at the head
of his three men. As he bounded along, far in advance, he had
just time to perceive clearly the desperate nature of the
undertaking, when he heard two shots fired to his right. The
solid mass of black bodies and frizzly heads in front of him
wavered and broke up. They did not run away, however.

Lingard pursued his course, but now with that thrill of
exultation which even a faint prospect of success inspires in a
sanguine man. He heard a shout of many voices far off, then there
was another report of a shot, and a musket ball fired at long
range spurted a tiny jet of sand between him and his wild
enemies. His next bound would have carried him into their midst
had they awaited his onset, but his uplifted arm found nothing to
strike. Black backs were leaping high or gliding horizontally
through the grass toward the edge of the bush.

He flung his stick at the nearest pair of black shoulders and
stopped short. The tall grasses swayed themselves into a rest, a
chorus of yells and piercing shrieks died out in a dismal howl,
and all at once the wooded shores and the blue bay seemed to fall
under the spell of a luminous stillness. The change was as
startling as the awakening from a dream. The sudden silence
struck Lingard as amazing.

He broke it by lifting his voice in a stentorian shout, which
arrested the pursuit of his men. They retired reluctantly,
glaring back angrily at the wall of a jungle where not a single
leaf stirred. The strangers, whose opportune appearance had
decided the issue of that adventure, did not attempt to join in
the pursuit but halted in a compact body on the ground lately
occupied by the savages.

Lingard and the young leader of the Wajo traders met in the
splendid light of noonday, and amidst the attentive silence of
their followers, on the very spot where the Malay seaman had lost
his life. Lingard, striding up from one side, thrust out his open
palm; Hassim responded at once to the frank gesture and they
exchanged their first hand-clasp over the prostrate body, as if
fate had already exacted the price of a death for the most
ominous of her gifts--the gift of friendship that sometimes
contains the whole good or evil of a life.

"I'll never forget this day," cried Lingard in a hearty tone; and
the other smiled quietly.

Then after a short pause--"Will you burn the village for
vengeance?" asked the Malay with a quick glance down at the dead
Lascar who, on his face and with stretched arms, seemed to cling
desperately to that earth of which he had known so little.

Lingard hesitated.

"No," he said, at last. "It would do good to no one."

"True," said Hassim, gently, "but was this man your debtor--a
slave?"

"Slave?" cried Lingard. "This is an English brig. Slave? No. A
free man like myself."

"Hai. He is indeed free now," muttered the Malay with another
glance downward. "But who will pay the bereaved for his life?"

"If there is anywhere a woman or child belonging to him, I--my
serang would know--I shall seek them out," cried Lingard,
remorsefully.

"You speak like a chief," said Hassim, "only our great men do not
go to battle with naked hands. O you white men! O the valour of
you white men!"

"It was folly, pure folly," protested Lingard, "and this poor
fellow has paid for it."

"He could not avoid his destiny," murmured the Malay. "It is in
my mind my trading is finished now in this place," he added,
cheerfully.

Lingard expressed his regret.

"It is no matter, it is no matter," assured the other
courteously, and after Lingard had given a pressing invitation
for Hassim and his two companions of high rank to visit the brig,
the two parties separated.

The evening was calm when the Malay craft left its berth near the
shore and was rowed slowly across the bay to Lingard's anchorage.
The end of a stout line was thrown on board, and that night the
white man's brig and the brown man's prau swung together to the
same anchor.

The sun setting to seaward shot its last rays between the
headlands, when the body of the killed Lascar, wrapped up
decently in a white sheet, according to Mohammedan usage, was
lowered gently below the still waters of the bay upon which his
curious glances, only a few hours before, had rested for the
first time. At the moment the dead man, released from slip-ropes,
disappeared without a ripple before the eyes of his shipmates,
the bright flash and the heavy report of the brig's bow gun were
succeeded by the muttering echoes of the encircling shores and by
the loud cries of sea birds that, wheeling in clouds, seemed to
scream after the departing seaman a wild and eternal good-bye.
The master of the brig, making his way aft with hanging head, was
followed by low murmurs of pleased surprise from his crew as well
as from the strangers who crowded the main deck. In such acts
performed simply, from conviction, what may be called the
romantic side of the man's nature came out; that responsive
sensitiveness to the shadowy appeals made by life and death,
which is the groundwork of a chivalrous character.

Lingard entertained his three visitors far into the night. A
sheep from the brig's sea stock was given to the men of the prau,
while in the cabin, Hassim and his two friends, sitting in a row
on the stern settee, looked very splendid with costly metals and
flawed jewels. The talk conducted with hearty friendship on
Lingard's part, and on the part of the Malays with the well-bred
air of discreet courtesy, which is natural to the better class of
that people, touched upon many subjects and, in the end, drifted
to politics.

"It is in my mind that you are a powerful man in your own
country," said Hassim, with a circular glance at the cuddy.

"My country is upon a far-away sea where the light breezes are as
strong as the winds of the rainy weather here," said Lingard; and
there were low exclamations of wonder. "I left it very young, and
I don't know about my power there where great men alone are as
numerous as the poor people in all your islands, Tuan Hassim. But
here," he continued, "here, which is also my country--being an
English craft and worthy of it, too--I am powerful enough. In
fact, I am Rajah here. This bit of my country is all my own."

The visitors were impressed, exchanged meaning glances, nodded at
each other.

"Good, good," said Hassim at last, with a smile. "You carry your
country and your power with you over the sea. A Rajah upon the
sea. Good!"

Lingard laughed thunderously while the others looked amused.

"Your country is very powerful--we know," began again Hassim
after a pause, "but is it stronger than the country of the Dutch
who steal our land?"

"Stronger?" cried Lingard. He opened a broad palm. "Stronger? We
could take them in our hand like this--" and he closed his
fingers triumphantly.

"And do you make them pay tribute for their land?" enquired
Hassim with eagerness.

"No," answered Lingard in a sobered tone; "this, Tuan Hassim, you
see, is not the custom of white men. We could, of course--but it
is not the custom."

"Is it not?" said the other with a sceptical smile. "They are
stronger than we are and they want tribute from us. And sometimes
they get it--even from Wajo where every man is free and wears a
kris."

There was a period of dead silence while Lingard looked
thoughtful and the Malays gazed stonily at nothing.

"But we burn our powder amongst ourselves," went on Hassim,
gently, "and blunt our weapons upon one another."

He sighed, paused, and then changing to an easy tone began to
urge Lingard to visit Wajo "for trade and to see friends," he
said, laying his hand on his breast and inclining his body
slightly.

"Aye. To trade with friends," cried Lingard with a laugh, "for
such a ship"--he waved his arm--"for such a vessel as this is
like a household where there are many behind the curtain. It is
as costly as a wife and children."

The guests rose and took their leave.

"You fired three shots for me, Panglima Hassim," said Lingard,
seriously, "and I have had three barrels of powder put on board
your prau; one for each shot. But we are not quits."

The Malay's eyes glittered with pleasure.

"This is indeed a friend's gift. Come to see me in my country!"

"I promise," said Lingard, "to see you--some day."

The calm surface of the bay reflected the glorious night sky, and
the brig with the prau riding astern seemed to be suspended
amongst the stars in a peace that was almost unearthly in the
perfection of its unstirring silence. The last hand-shakes were
exchanged on deck, and the Malays went aboard their own craft.
Next morning, when a breeze sprang up soon after sunrise, the
brig and the prau left the bay together. When clear of the land
Lingard made all sail and sheered alongside to say good-bye
before parting company--the brig, of course, sailing three feet
to the prau's one. Hassim stood on the high deck aft.

"Prosperous road," hailed Lingard.

"Remember the promise!" shouted the other. "And come soon!" he
went on, raising his voice as the brig forged past. "Come
soon--lest what perhaps is written should come to pass!"

The brig shot ahead.

"What?" yelled Lingard in a puzzled tone, "what's written?"

He listened. And floating over the water came faintly the words:

"No one knows!"

III

"My word! I couldn't help liking the chap," would shout Lingard
when telling the story; and looking around at the eyes that
glittered at him through the smoke of cheroots, this Brixham
trawler-boy, afterward a youth in colliers, deep-water man,
gold-digger, owner and commander of "the finest brig afloat,"
knew that by his listeners--seamen, traders, adventurers like
himself--this was accepted not as the expression of a feeling,
but as the highest commendation he could give his Malay friend.

"By heavens! I shall go to Wajo!" he cried, and a semicircle of
heads nodded grave approbation while a slightly ironical voice
said deliberately--"You are a made man, Tom, if you get on the
right side of that Rajah of yours."

"Go in--and look out for yourself," cried another with a laugh.

A little professional jealousy was unavoidable, Wajo, on account
of its chronic state of disturbance, being closed to the white
traders; but there was no real ill-will in the banter of these
men, who, rising with handshakes, dropped off one by one. Lingard
went straight aboard his vessel and, till morning, walked the
poop of the brig with measured steps. The riding lights of ships
twinkled all round him; the lights ashore twinkled in rows, the
stars twinkled above his head in a black sky; and reflected in
the black water of the roadstead twinkled far below his feet. And
all these innumerable and shining points were utterly lost in the
immense darkness. Once he heard faintly the rumbling chain of
some vessel coming to an anchor far away somewhere outside the
official limits of the harbour. A stranger to the port--thought
Lingard--one of us would have stood right in. Perhaps a ship from
home? And he felt strangely touched at the thought of that ship,
weary with months of wandering, and daring not to approach the
place of rest. At sunrise, while the big ship from the West, her
sides streaked with rust and grey with the salt of the sea, was
moving slowly in to take up a berth near the shore, Lingard left
the roadstead on his way to the eastward.

A heavy gulf thunderstorm was raging, when after a long passage
and at the end of a sultry calm day, wasted in drifting
helplessly in sight of his destination, Lingard, taking advantage
of fitful gusts of wind, approached the shores of Wajo. With
characteristic audacity, he held on his way, closing in with a
coast to which he was a stranger, and on a night that would have
appalled any other man; while at every dazzling flash, Hassim's
native land seemed to leap nearer at the brig--and disappear
instantly as though it had crouched low for the next spring out
of an impenetrable darkness. During the long day of the calm, he
had obtained from the deck and from aloft, such good views of the
coast, and had noted the lay of the land and the position of the
dangers so carefully that, though at the precise moment when he
gave the order to let go the anchor, he had been for some time
able to see no further than if his head had been wrapped in a
woollen blanket, yet the next flickering bluish flash showed him
the brig, anchored almost exactly where he had judged her to be,
off a narrow white beach near the mouth of a river.

He could see on the shore a high cluster of bamboo huts perched
upon piles, a small grove of tall palms all bowed together before
the blast like stalks of grass, something that might have been a
palisade of pointed stakes near the water, and far off, a sombre
background resembling an immense wall--the forest-clad hills.
Next moment, all this vanished utterly from his sight, as if
annihilated and, before he had time to turn away, came back to
view with a sudden crash, appearing unscathed and motionless
under hooked darts of flame, like some legendary country of
immortals, withstanding the wrath and fire of Heaven.

Made uneasy by the nature of his holding ground, and fearing that
in one of the terrific off-shore gusts the brig would start her
anchor, Lingard remained on deck to watch over the safety of his
vessel. With one hand upon the lead-line which would give him
instant warning of the brig beginning to drag, he stood by the
rail, most of the time deafened and blinded, but also fascinated,
by the repeated swift visions of an unknown shore, a sight always
so inspiring, as much perhaps by its vague suggestion of danger
as by the hopes of success it never fails to awaken in the heart
of a true adventurer. And its immutable aspect of profound and
still repose, seen thus under streams of fire and in the midst of
a violent uproar, made it appear inconceivably mysterious and
amazing.

Between the squalls there were short moments of calm, while now
and then even the thunder would cease as if to draw breath.
During one of those intervals. Lingard, tired and sleepy, was
beginning to doze where he stood, when suddenly it occurred to
him that, somewhere below, the sea had spoken in a human voice.
It had said, "Praise be to God--" and the voice sounded small,
clear, and confident, like the voice of a child speaking in a
cathedral. Lingard gave a start and thought--I've dreamed
this--and directly the sea said very close to him, "Give a rope."

The thunder growled wickedly, and Lingard, after shouting to the
men on deck, peered down at the water, until at last he made out
floating close alongside the upturned face of a man with staring
eyes that gleamed at him and then blinked quickly to a flash of
lightning. By that time all hands in the brig were wildly active
and many ropes-ends had been thrown over. Then together with a
gust of wind, and, as if blown on board, a man tumbled over the
rail and fell all in a heap upon the deck. Before any one had the
time to pick him up, he leaped to his feet, causing the people
around him to step back hurriedly. A sinister blue glare showed
the bewildered faces and the petrified attitudes of men
completely deafened by the accompanying peal of thunder. After a
time, as if to beings plunged in the abyss of eternal silence,
there came to their ears an unfamiliar thin, far-away voice
saying:

"I seek the white man."

"Here," cried Lingard. Then, when he had the stranger, dripping
and naked but for a soaked waistcloth, under the lamp of the
cabin, he said, "I don't know you."

"My name is Jaffir, and I come from Pata Hassim, who is my chief
and your friend. Do you know this?"

He held up a thick gold ring, set with a fairly good emerald.

"I have seen it before on the Rajah's finger," said Lingard,
looking very grave.

"It is the witness of the truth I speak--the message from Hassim
is--'Depart and forget!'"

"I don't forget," said Lingard, slowly. "I am not that kind of
man. What folly is this?"

It is unnecessary to give at full length the story told by
Jaffir. It appears that on his return home, after the meeting
with Lingard, Hassim found his relative dying and a strong party
formed to oppose his rightful successor. The old Rajah Tulla died
late at night and --as Jaffir put it--before the sun rose there
were already blows exchanged in the courtyard of the ruler's
dalam. This was the preliminary fight of a civil war, fostered by
foreign intrigues; a war of jungle and river, of assaulted
stockades and forest ambushes. In this contest, both parties--
according to Jaffir--displayed great courage, and one of them an
unswerving devotion to what, almost from the first, was a lost
cause. Before a month elapsed Hassim, though still chief of an
armed band, was already a fugitive. He kept up the struggle,
however, with some vague notion that Lingard's arrival would turn
the tide.

"For weeks we lived on wild rice; for days we fought with nothing
but water in our bellies," declaimed Jaffir in the tone of a true
fire-eater.

And then he went on to relate, how, driven steadily down to the
sea, Hassim, with a small band of followers, had been for days
holding the stockade by the waterside.

"But every night some men disappeared," confessed Jaffir. "They
were weary and hungry and they went to eat with their enemies.
We are only ten now--ten men and a woman with the heart of a man,
who are tonight starving, and to-morrow shall die swiftly. We saw
your ship afar all day; but you have come too late. And for fear
of treachery and lest harm should befall you--his friend--the
Rajah gave me the ring and I crept on my stomach over the sand,
and I swam in the night--and I, Jaffir, the best swimmer in Wajo,
and the slave of Hassim, tell you--his message to you is 'Depart
and forget'--and this is his gift--take!"

He caught hold suddenly of Lingard's hand, thrust roughly into it
the ring, and then for the first time looked round the cabin with
wondering but fearless eyes. They lingered over the semicircle of
bayonets and rested fondly on musket-racks. He grunted in
admiration.

"Ya-wa, this is strength!" he murmured as if to himself. "But it
has come too late."

"Perhaps not," cried Lingard.

"Too late," said Jaffir, "we are ten only, and at sunrise we go
out to die." He went to the cabin door and hesitated there with a
puzzled air, being unused to locks and door handles.

"What are you going to do?" asked Lingard.

"I shall swim back," replied Jaffir. "The message is spoken and
the night can not last forever."

"You can stop with me," said Lingard, looking at the man
searchingly.

"Hassim waits," was the curt answer.

'Did he tell you to return?" asked Lingard.

"No! What need?" said the other in a surprised tone.

Lingard seized his hand impulsively.

"If I had ten men like you!" he cried.

"We are ten, but they are twenty to one," said Jaffir, simply.

Lingard opened the door.

"Do you want anything that a man can give?" he asked.

The Malay had a moment of hesitation, and Lingard noticed the
sunken eyes, the prominent ribs, and the worn-out look of the
man.

"Speak out," he urged with a smile; "the bearer of a gift must
have a reward."

"A drink of water and a handful of rice for strength to reach the
shore," said Jaffir sturdily. "For over there"--he tossed his
head--"we had nothing to eat to-day."

"You shall have it--give it to you with my own hands," muttered
Lingard.

He did so, and thus lowered himself in Jaffir's estimation for a
time. While the messenger, squatting on the floor, ate without
haste but with considerable earnestness, Lingard thought out a
plan of action. In his ignorance as to the true state of affairs
in the country, to save Hassim from the immediate danger of his
position was all that he could reasonably attempt. To that end
Lingard proposed to swing out his long-boat and send her close
inshore to take off Hassim and his men. He knew enough of Malays
to feel sure that on such a night the besiegers, now certain of
success, and being, Jaffir said, in possession of everything that
could float, would not be very vigilant, especially on the sea
front of the stockade. The very fact of Jaffir having managed to
swim off undetected proved that much. The brig's boat could--when
the frequency of lightning abated--approach unseen close to the
beach, and the defeated party, either stealing out one by one or
making a rush in a body, would embark and be received in the
brig.

This plan was explained to Jaffir, who heard it without the
slightest mark of interest, being apparently too busy eating.
When the last grain of rice was gone, he stood up, took a long
pull at the water bottle, muttered: "I hear. Good. I will tell
Hassim," and tightening the rag round his loins, prepared to go.
"Give me time to swim ashore," he said, "and when the boat
starts, put another light beside the one that burns now like a
star above your vessel. We shall see and understand. And don't
send the boat till there is less lightning: a boat is bigger than
a man in the water. Tell the rowers to pull for the palm-grove
and cease when an oar, thrust down with a strong arm, touches the
bottom. Very soon they will hear our hail; but if no one comes
they must go away before daylight. A chief may prefer death to
life, and we who are left are all of true heart. Do you
understand, O big man?"

"The chap has plenty of sense," muttered Lingard to himself, and
when they stood side by side on the deck, he said: " But there
may be enemies on the beach, O Jaffir, and they also may shout to
deceive my men. So let your hail be Lightning! Will you
remember?"

For a time Jaffir seemed to be choking.

"Lit-ing! Is that right? I say--is that right, O strong man?"
Next moment he appeared upright and shadowy on the rail.

"Yes. That's right. Go now," said Lingard, and Jaffir leaped off,
becoming invisible long before he struck the water. Then there
was a splash; after a while a spluttering voice cried faintly,
"Lit-ing! Ah, ha!" and suddenly the next thunder-squall burst
upon the coast. In the crashing flares of light Lingard had again
and again the quick vision of a white beach, the inclined
palm-trees of the grove, the stockade by the sea, the forest far
away: a vast landscape mysterious and still--Hassim's native
country sleeping unmoved under the wrath and fire of Heaven.

IV

A Traveller visiting Wajo to-day may, if he deserves the
confidence of the common people, hear the traditional account of
the last civil war, together with the legend of a chief and his
sister, whose mother had been a great princess suspected of
sorcery and on her death-bed had communicated to these two the
secrets of the art of magic. The chief's sister especially, "with
the aspect of a child and the fearlessness of a great fighter,"
became skilled in casting spells. They were defeated by the son
of their uncle, because--will explain the narrator simply--"The
courage of us Wajo people is so great that magic can do nothing
against it. I fought in that war. We had them with their backs to
the sea." And then he will go on to relate in an awed tone how on
a certain night "when there was such a thunderstorm as has been
never heard of before or since" a ship, resembling the ships of
white men, appeared off the coast, "as though she had sailed down
from the clouds. She moved," he will affirm, "with her sails
bellying against the wind; in size she was like an island; the
lightning played between her masts which were as high as the
summits of mountains; a star burned low through the clouds above
her. We knew it for a star at once because no flame of man's
kindling could have endured the wind and rain of that night. It
was such a night that we on the watch hardly dared look upon the
sea. The heavy rain was beating down our eyelids. And when day
came, the ship was nowhere to be seen, and in the stockade where
the day before there were a hundred or more at our mercy, there
was no one. The chief, Hassim, was gone, and the lady who was a
princess in the country--and nobody knows what became of them
from that day to this. Sometimes traders from our parts talk of
having heard of them here, and heard of them there, but these are
the lies of men who go afar for gain. We who live in the country
believe that the ship sailed back into the clouds whence the
Lady's magic made her come. Did we not see the ship with our own
eyes? And as to Rajah Hassim and his sister, Mas Immada, some men
say one thing and some another, but God alone knows the truth."

Such is the traditional account of Lingard's visit to the shores
of Boni. And the truth is he came and went the same night; for,
when the dawn broke on a cloudy sky the brig, under reefed canvas
and smothered in sprays, was storming along to the southward on
her way out of the Gulf. Lingard, watching over the rapid course
of his vessel, looked ahead with anxious eyes and more than once
asked himself with wonder, why, after all, was he thus pressing
her under all the sail she could carry. His hair was blown about
by the wind, his mind was full of care and the indistinct shapes
of many new thoughts, and under his feet, the obedient brig
dashed headlong from wave to wave.

Her owner and commander did not know where he was going. That
adventurer had only a confused notion of being on the threshold
of a big adventure. There was something to be done, and he felt
he would have to do it. It was expected of him. The seas expected
it; the land expected it. Men also. The story of war and of
suffering; Jaffir's display of fidelity, the sight of Hassim and
his sister, the night, the tempest, the coast under streams of
fire--all this made one inspiring manifestation of a life calling
to him distinctly for interference. But what appealed to him most
was the silent, the complete, unquestioning, and apparently
uncurious, trust of these people. They came away from death
straight into his arms as it were, and remained in them passive
as though there had been no such thing as doubt or hope or
desire. This amazing unconcern seemed to put him under a heavy
load of obligation.

He argued to himself that had not these defeated men expected
everything from him they could not have been so indifferent to
his action. Their dumb quietude stirred him more than the most
ardent pleading. Not a word, not a whisper, not a questioning
look even! They did not ask! It flattered him. He was also
rather glad of it, because if the unconscious part of him was
perfectly certain of its action, he, himself, did not know what
to do with those bruised and battered beings a playful fate had
delivered suddenly into his hands.

He had received the fugitives personally, had helped some over
the rail; in the darkness, slashed about by lightning, he had
guessed that not one of them was unwounded, and in the midst of
tottering shapes he wondered how on earth they had managed to
reach the long-boat that had brought them off. He caught
unceremoniously in his arms the smallest of these shapes and
carried it into the cabin, then without looking at his light
burden ran up again on deck to get the brig under way. While
shouting out orders he was dimly aware of someone hovering near
his elbow. It was Hassim.

"I am not ready for war," he explained, rapidly, over his
shoulder, "and to-morrow there may be no wind." Afterward for a
time he forgot everybody and everything while he conned the brig
through the few outlying dangers. But in half an hour, and
running off with the wind on the quarter, he was quite clear of
the coast and breathed freely. It was only then that he
approached two others on that poop where he was accustomed in
moments of difficulty to commune alone with his craft. Hassim had
called his sister out of the cabin; now and then Lingard could
see them with fierce distinctness, side by side, and with twined
arms, looking toward the mysterious country that seemed at every
flash to leap away farther from the brig--unscathed and fading.

The thought uppermost in Lingard's mind was: "What on earth am I
going to do with them?" And no one seemed to care what he would
do. Jaffir with eight others quartered on the main hatch, looked
to each other's wounds and conversed interminably in low tones,
cheerful and quiet, like well-behaved children. Each of them had
saved his kris, but Lingard had to make a distribution of cotton
cloth out of his trade-goods. Whenever he passed by them, they
all looked after him gravely. Hassim and Immada lived in the
cuddy. The chief's sister took the air only in the evening and
those two could be heard every night, invisible and murmuring in
the shadows of the quarter-deck. Every Malay on board kept
respectfully away from them.

Lingard, on the poop, listened to the soft voices, rising and
falling, in a melancholy cadence; sometimes the woman cried out
as if in anger or in pain. He would stop short. The sound of a
deep sigh would float up to him on the stillness of the night.
Attentive stars surrounded the wandering brig and on all sides
their light fell through a vast silence upon a noiseless sea.
Lingard would begin again to pace the deck, muttering to himself.

"Belarab's the man for this job. His is the only place where I
can look for help, but I don't think I know enough to find it. I
wish I had old Jorgenson here--just for ten minutes."

This Jorgenson knew things that had happened a long time ago, and
lived amongst men efficient in meeting the accidents of the day,
but who did not care what would happen to-morrow and who had no
time to remember yesterday. Strictly speaking, he did not live
amongst them. He only appeared there from time to time. He lived
in the native quarter, with a native woman, in a native house
standing in the middle of a plot of fenced ground where grew
plantains, and furnished only with mats, cooking pots, a queer
fishing net on two sticks, and a small mahogany case with a lock
and a silver plate engraved with the words "Captain H. C.
Jorgenson. Barque Wild Rose."

It was like an inscription on a tomb. The Wild Rose was dead, and
so was Captain H. C. Jorgenson, and the sextant case was all that
was left of them. Old Jorgenson, gaunt and mute, would turn up at
meal times on board any trading vessel in the Roads, and the
stewards --Chinamen or mulattos--would sulkily put on an extra
plate without waiting for orders. When the seamen traders
foregathered noisily round a glittering cluster of bottles and
glasses on a lighted verandah, old Jorgenson would emerge up the
stairs as if from a dark sea, and, stepping up with a kind of
tottering jauntiness, would help himself in the first tumbler to
hand.

"I drink to you all. No--no chair."

He would stand silent over the talking group. His taciturnity was
as eloquent as the repeated warning of the slave of the feast.
His flesh had gone the way of all flesh, his spirit had sunk in
the turmoil of his past, but his immense and bony frame survived
as if made of iron. His hands trembled but his eyes were steady.
He was supposed to know details about the end of mysterious men
and of mysterious enterprises. He was an evident failure himself,
but he was believed to know secrets that would make the fortune
of any man; yet there was also a general impression that his
knowledge was not of that nature which would make it profitable
for a moderately prudent person.

This powerful skeleton, dressed in faded blue serge and without
any kind of linen, existed anyhow. Sometimes, if offered the job,
he piloted a home ship through the Straits of Rhio, after,
however, assuring the captain:

"You don't want a pilot; a man could go through with his eyes
shut. But if you want me, I'll come. Ten dollars."

Then, after seeing his charge clear of the last island of the
group he would go back thirty miles in a canoe, with two old
Malays who seemed to be in some way his followers. To travel
thirty miles at sea under the equatorial sun and in a cranky
dug-out where once down you must not move, is an achievement that
requires the endurance of a fakir and the virtue of a salamander.
Ten dollars was cheap and generally he was in demand. When times
were hard he would borrow five dollars from any of the
adventurers with the remark:

"I can't pay you back, very soon, but the girl must eat, and if
you want to know anything, I can tell you."

It was remarkable that nobody ever smiled at that "anything." The
usual thing was to say:

"Thank you, old man; when I am pushed for a bit of information
I'll come to you."

Jorgenson nodded then and would say: "Remember that unless you
young chaps are like we men who ranged about here years ago, what
I could tell you would be worse than poison."

It was from Jorgenson, who had his favourites with whom he was
less silent, that Lingard had heard of Darat-es-Salam, the "Shore
of Refuge." Jorgenson had, as he expressed it, "known the inside
of that country just after the high old times when the white-clad
Padris preached and fought all over Sumatra till the Dutch shook
in their shoes." Only he did not say "shook" and "shoes" but the
above paraphrase conveys well enough his contemptuous meaning.
Lingard tried now to remember and piece together the practical
bits of old Jorgenson's amazing tales; but all that had remained
with him was an approximate idea of the locality and a very
strong but confused notion of the dangerous nature of its
approaches. He hesitated, and the brig, answering in her
movements to the state of the man's mind, lingered on the road,
seemed to hesitate also, swinging this way and that on the days
of calm.

It was just because of that hesitation that a big New York ship,
loaded with oil in cases for Japan, and passing through the
Billiton passage, sighted one morning a very smart brig being
hove-to right in the fair-way and a little to the east of
Carimata. The lank skipper, in a frock-coat, and the big mate
with heavy moustaches, judged her almost too pretty for a
Britisher, and wondered at the man on board laying his topsail to
the mast for no reason that they could see. The big ship's sails
fanned her along, flapping in the light air, and when the brig
was last seen far astern she had still her mainyard aback as if
waiting for someone. But when, next day, a London tea-clipper
passed on the same track, she saw no pretty brig hesitating, all
white and still at the parting of the ways. All that night
Lingard had talked with Hassim while the stars streamed from east
to west like an immense river of sparks above their heads. Immada
listened, sometimes exclaiming low, sometimes holding her breath.
She clapped her hands once. A faint dawn appeared.

"You shall be treated like my father in the country," Hassim was
saying. A heavy dew dripped off the rigging and the darkened
sails were black on the pale azure of the sky. "You shall be the
father who advises for good-- "

"I shall be a steady friend, and as a friend I want to be
treated--no more," said Lingard. "Take back your ring."

"Why do you scorn my gift?" asked Hassim, with a sad and ironic
smile.

"Take it," said Lingard. "It is still mine. How can I forget
that, when facing death, you thought of my safety? There are many
dangers before us. We shall be often separated--to work better
for the same end. If ever you and Immada need help at once and I
am within reach, send me a message with this ring and if I am
alive I will not fail you." He looked around at the pale
daybreak. "I shall talk to Belarab straight--like we whites do. I
have never seen him, but I am a strong man. Belarab must help us
to reconquer your country and when our end is attained I won't
let him eat you up."

Hassim took the ring and inclined his head.

"It's time for us to be moving," said Lingard. He felt a slight
tug at his sleeve. He looked back and caught Immada in the act of
pressing her forehead to the grey flannel. "Don't, child!" he
said, softly.

The sun rose above the faint blue line of the Shore of Refuge.

The hesitation was over. The man and the vessel, working in
accord, had found their way to the faint blue shore. Before the
sun had descended half-way to its rest the brig was anchored
within a gunshot of the slimy mangroves, in a place where for a
hundred years or more no white man's vessel had been entrusted to
the hold of the bottom. The adventurers of two centuries ago had
no doubt known of that anchorage for they were very ignorant and
incomparably audacious. If it is true, as some say, that the
spirits of the dead haunt the places where the living have sinned
and toiled, then they might have seen a white long-boat, pulled
by eight oars and steered by a man sunburnt and bearded, a
cabbage-leaf hat on head, and pistols in his belt, skirting the
black mud, full of twisted roots, in search of a likely opening.

Creek after creek was passed and the boat crept on slowly like a
monstrous water-spider with a big body and eight slender legs. .
. . Did you follow with your ghostly eyes the quest of this
obscure adventurer of yesterday, you shades of forgotten
adventurers who, in leather jerkins and sweating under steel
helmets, attacked with long rapiers the palisades of the strange
heathen, or, musket on shoulder and match in cock, guarded timber
blockhouses built upon the banks of rivers that command good
trade? You, who, wearied with the toil of fighting, slept wrapped
in frieze mantles on the sand of quiet beaches, dreaming of
fabulous diamonds and of a far-off home.

"Here's an opening," said Lingard to Hassim, who sat at his side,
just as the sun was setting away to his left. "Here's an opening
big enough for a ship. It's the entrance we are looking for, I
believe. We shall pull all night up this creek if necessary and
it's the very devil if we don't come upon Belarab's lair before
daylight."

He shoved the tiller hard over and the boat, swerving sharply,
vanished from the coast.

And perhaps the ghosts of old adventurers nodded wisely their
ghostly heads and exchanged the ghost of a wistful smile.

V

"What's the matter with King Tom of late?" would ask someone
when, all the cards in a heap on the table, the traders lying
back in their chairs took a spell from a hard gamble.

"Tom has learned to hold his tongue, he must be up to some dam'
good thing," opined another; while a man with hooked features and
of German extraction who was supposed to be agent for a Dutch
crockery house--the famous "Sphinx" mark--broke in resentfully:

"Nefer mind him, shentlemens, he's matt, matt as a Marsh Hase.
Dree monats ago I call on board his prig to talk pizness. And he
says like dis--'Glear oudt.' 'Vat for?' I say. 'Glear oudt before
I shuck you oferboard.' Gott-for-dam! Iss dat the vay to talk
pizness? I vant sell him ein liddle case first chop grockery for
trade and--"

"Ha, ha, ha! I don't blame Tom," interrupted the owner of a
pearling schooner, who had come into the Roads for stores. "Why,
Mosey, there isn't a mangy cannibal left in the whole of New
Guinea that hasn't got a cup and saucer of your providing. You've
flooded the market, savee?"

Jorgenson stood by, a skeleton at the gaming table.

"Because you are a Dutch spy," he said, suddenly, in an awful
tone.

The agent of the Sphinx mark jumped up in a sudden fury.

"Vat? Vat? Shentlemens, you all know me!" Not a muscle moved in
the faces around. "Know me," he stammered with wet lips. "Vat,
funf year--berfegtly acquaint--grockery-- Verfluchte sponsher.
Ich? Spy. Vat for spy? Vordamte English pedlars!"

The door slammed. "Is that so?" asked a New England voice. "Why
don't you let daylight into him?"

"Oh, we can't do that here," murmured one of the players. "Your
deal, Trench, let us get on."

"Can't you?" drawled the New England voice. "You law-abiding,
get-a-summons, act-of--parliament lot of sons of Belial--can't
you? Now, look a-here, these Colt pistols I am selling--" He took
the pearler aside and could be heard talking earnestly in the
corner. "See--you load--and--see?" There were rapid clicks.
"Simple, isn't it? And if any trouble--say with your
divers"--CLICK, CLICK, CLICK--"Through and through--like a
sieve--warranted to cure the worst kind of cussedness in any
nigger. Yes, siree! A case of twenty-four or single specimens--as
you like. No? Shot-guns--rifles? No! Waal, I guess you're of no
use to me, but I could do a deal with that Tom--what d'ye call
him? Where d'ye catch him? Everywhere--eh? Waal--that's nowhere.
But I shall find him some day--yes, siree."

Jorgenson, utterly disregarded, looked down dreamily at the
falling cards. "Spy--I tell you," he muttered to himself. "If you
want to know anything, ask me."

When Lingard returned from Wajo--after an uncommonly long
absence--everyone remarked a great change. He was less talkative
and not so noisy, he was still hospitable but his hospitality was
less expansive, and the man who was never so happy as when
discussing impossibly wild projects with half a dozen congenial
spirits often showed a disinclination to meet his best friends.
In a word, he returned much less of a good fellow than he went
away. His visits to the Settlements were not less frequent, but
much shorter; and when there he was always in a hurry to be gone.

During two years the brig had, in her way, as hard a life of it
as the man. Swift and trim she flitted amongst the islands of
little known groups. She could be descried afar from lonely
headlands, a white speck travelling fast over the blue sea; the
apathetic keepers of rare lighthouses dotting the great highway
to the east came to know the cut of her topsails. They saw her
passing east, passing west. They had faint glimpses of her flying
with masts aslant in the mist of a rain-squall, or could observe
her at leisure, upright and with shivering sails, forging ahead
through a long day of unsteady airs. Men saw her battling with a
heavy monsoon in the Bay of Bengal, lying becalmed in the Java
Sea, or gliding out suddenly from behind a point of land,
graceful and silent in the clear moonlight. Her activity was the
subject of excited but low-toned conversations, which would be
interrupted when her master appeared.

"Here he is. Came in last night," whispered the gossiping group.

Lingard did not see the covert glances of respect tempered by
irony; he nodded and passed on.

"Hey, Tom! No time for a drink?" would shout someone.

He would shake his head without looking back--far away already.

Florid and burly he could be seen, for a day or two, getting out
of dusty gharries, striding in sunshine from the Occidental Bank
to the Harbour Office, crossing the Esplanade, disappearing down
a street of Chinese shops, while at his elbow and as tall as
himself, old Jorgenson paced along, lean and faded, obstinate and
disregarded, like a haunting spirit from the past eager to step
back into the life of men.

Lingard ignored this wreck of an adventurer, sticking to him
closer than his shadow, and the other did not try to attract
attention. He waited patiently at the doors of offices, would
vanish at tiffin time, would invariably turn up again in the
evening and then he kept his place till Lingard went aboard for
the night. The police peons on duty looked disdainfully at the
phantom of Captain H. C. Jorgenson, Barque Wild Rose, wandering
on the silent quay or standing still for hours at the edge of the
sombre roadstead speckled by the anchor lights of ships--an
adventurous soul longing to recross the waters of oblivion.

The sampan-men, sculling lazily homeward past the black hull of
the brig at anchor, could hear far into the night the drawl of
the New England voice escaping through the lifted panes of the
cabin skylight. Snatches of nasal sentences floated in the
stillness around the still craft.

"Yes, siree! Mexican war rifles--good as new--six in a case--my
people in Baltimore--that's so. Hundred and twenty rounds thrown
in for each specimen--marked to suit your re-quirements.
Suppose--musical instruments, this side up with care--how's that
for your taste? No, no! Cash down--my people in Balt--Shooting
sea-gulls you say? Waal! It's a risky business--see here--ten per
cent. discount--it's out of my own pocket--"

As time wore on, and nothing happened, at least nothing that one
could hear of, the excitement died out. Lingard's new attitude
was accepted as only "his way." There was nothing in it,
maintained some. Others dissented. A good deal of curiosity,
however, remained and the faint rumour of something big being in
preparation followed him into every harbour he went to, from
Rangoon to Hongkong.

He felt nowhere so much at home as when his brig was anchored on
the inner side of the great stretch of shoals. The centre of his
life had shifted about four hundred miles--from the Straits of
Malacca to the Shore of Refuge--and when there he felt himself
within the circle of another existence, governed by his impulse,
nearer his desire. Hassim and Immada would come down to the coast
and wait for him on the islet. He always left them with regret.

At the end of the first stage in each trip, Jorgenson waited for
him at the top of the boat-stairs and without a word fell into
step at his elbow. They seldom exchanged three words in a day;
but one evening about six months before Lingard's last trip, as
they were crossing the short bridge over the canal where native
craft lie moored in clusters, Jorgenson lengthened his stride and
came abreast. It was a moonlight night and nothing stirred on
earth but the shadows of high clouds. Lingard took off his hat
and drew in a long sigh in the tepid breeze. Jorgenson spoke
suddenly in a cautious tone: "The new Rajah Tulla smokes opium
and is sometimes dangerous to speak to. There is a lot of
discontent in Wajo amongst the big people."

"Good! Good!" whispered Lingard, excitedly, off his guard for
once. Then--"How the devil do you know anything about it?" he
asked.

Jorgenson pointed at the mass of praus, coasting boats, and
sampans that, jammed up together in the canal, lay covered with
mats and flooded by the cold moonlight with here and there a dim
lantern burning amongst the confusion of high sterns, spars,
masts and lowered sails.

"There!" he said, as they moved on, and their hatted and clothed
shadows fell heavily on the queer-shaped vessels that carry the
fortunes of brown men upon a shallow sea. "There! I can sit with
them, I can talk to them, I can come and go as I like. They know
me now--it's time-thirty-five years. Some of them give a plate of
rice and a bit of fish to the white man. That's all I get--after
thirty-five years--given up to them."

He was silent for a time.

"I was like you once," he added, and then laying his hand on
Lingard's sleeve, murmured--"Are you very deep in this thing?"

"To the very last cent," said Lingard, quietly, and looking
straight before him.

The glitter of the roadstead went out, and the masts of anchored
ships vanished in the invading shadow of a cloud.

"Drop it," whispered Jorgenson.

"I am in debt," said Lingard, slowly, and stood still.

"Drop it!"

"Never dropped anything in my life."

"Drop it!"

"By God, I won't!" cried Lingard, stamping his foot.

There was a pause.

"I was like you--once," repeated Jorgenson. "Five and thirty
years--never dropped anything. And what you can do is only
child's play to some jobs I have had on my hands--understand
that--great man as you are, Captain Lingard of the Lightning. . .
. You should have seen the Wild Rose," he added with a sudden
break in his voice.

Lingard leaned over the guard-rail of the pier. Jorgenson came
closer.

"I set fire to her with my own hands!" he said in a vibrating
tone and very low, as if making a monstrous confession.

"Poor devil," muttered Lingard, profoundly moved by the tragic
enormity of the act. "I suppose there was no way out?"

"I wasn't going to let her rot to pieces in some Dutch port,"
said Jorgenson, gloomily. "Did you ever hear of Dawson?"

"Something--I don't remember now--" muttered Lingard, who felt a
chill down his back at the idea of his own vessel decaying slowly
in some Dutch port. "He died--didn't he?" he asked, absently,
while he wondered whether he would have the pluck to set fire to
the brig--on an emergency.

"Cut his throat on the beach below Fort Rotterdam," said
Jorgenson. His gaunt figure wavered in the unsteady moonshine as
though made of mist. "Yes. He broke some trade regulation or
other and talked big about law-courts and legal trials to the
lieutenant of the Komet. 'Certainly,' says the hound.
'Jurisdiction of Macassar, I will take your schooner there.' Then
coming into the roads he tows her full tilt on a ledge of rocks
on the north side--smash! When she was half full of water he
takes his hat off to Dawson. 'There's the shore,' says he--'go
and get your legal trial, you -Englishman--'" He lifted a long
arm and shook his fist at the moon which dodged suddenly behind a
cloud. "All was lost. Poor Dawson walked the streets for months
barefooted and in rags. Then one day he begged a knife from some
charitable soul, went down to take a last look at the wreck,
and--"

"I don't interfere with the Dutch," interrupted Lingard,
impatiently. "I want Hassim to get back his own--"

"And suppose the Dutch want the things just so," returned
Jorgenson. "Anyway there is a devil in such work--drop it!"

"Look here," said Lingard, "I took these people off when they
were in their last ditch. That means something. I ought not to
have meddled and it would have been all over in a few hours. I
must have meant something when I interfered, whether I knew it or
not. I meant it then--and did not know it. Very well. I mean it
now--and do know it. When you save people from death you take a
share in their life. That's how I look at it."

Jorgenson shook his head.

"Foolishness!" he cried, then asked softly in a voice that
trembled with curiosity--"Where did you leave them?"

"With Belarab," breathed out Lingard. "You knew him in the old
days."

"I knew him, I knew his father," burst out the other in an
excited whisper. "Whom did I not know? I knew Sentot when he was
King of the South Shore of Java and the Dutch offered a price for
his head--enough to make any man's fortune. He slept twice on
board the Wild Rose when things had begun to go wrong with him. I
knew him, I knew all his chiefs, the priests, the fighting men,
the old regent who lost heart and went over to the Dutch, I
knew--" he stammered as if the words could not come out, gave it
up and sighed--"Belarab's father escaped with me," he began
again, quietly, "and joined the Padris in Sumatra. He rose to be
a great leader. Belarab was a youth then. Those were the times. I
ranged the coast--and laughed at the cruisers; I saw every battle
fought in the Battak country--and I saw the Dutch run; I was at
the taking of Singal and escaped. I was the white man who advised
the chiefs of Manangkabo. There was a lot about me in the Dutch
papers at the time. They said I was a Frenchman turned
Mohammedan--" he swore a great oath, and, reeling against the
guard-rail, panted, muttering curses on newspapers.

"Well, Belarab has the job in hand," said Lingard, composedly.
"He is the chief man on the Shore of Refuge. There are others, of
course. He has sent messages north and south. We must have men."

"All the devils unchained," said Jorgenson. "You have done it and
now--look out--look out. . . ."

"Nothing can go wrong as far as I can see," argued Lingard. "They
all know what's to be done. I've got them in hand. You don't
think Belarab unsafe? Do you?"

"Haven't seen him for fifteen years--but the whole thing's
unsafe," growled Jorgenson.

"I tell you I've fixed it so that nothing can go wrong. It would
be better if I had a white man over there to look after things
generally. There is a good lot of stores and arms--and Belarab
would bear watching--no doubt. Are you in any want?" he added,
putting his hand in his pocket.

"No, there's plenty to eat in the house," answered Jorgenson,
curtly. "Drop it," he burst out. "It would be better for you to
jump overboard at once. Look at me. I came out a boy of eighteen.
I can speak English, I can speak Dutch, I can speak every cursed
lingo of these islands--I remember things that would make your
hair stand on end--but I have forgotten the language of my own
country. I've traded, I've fought, I never broke my word to white
or native. And, look at me. If it hadn't been for the girl I
would have died in a ditch ten years ago. Everything left
me--youth, money, strength, hope--the very sleep. But she stuck
by the wreck."

"That says a lot for her and something for you," said Lingard,
cheerily.

Jorgenson shook his head.

"That's the worst of all," he said with slow emphasis. "That's
the end. I came to them from the other side of the earth and they
took me and--see what they made of me."

"What place do you belong to?" asked Lingard.

"Tromso," groaned out Jorgenson; "I will never see snow again,"
he sobbed out, his face in his hands.

Lingard looked at him in silence.

"Would you come with me?" he said. "As I told you, I am in want
of a--"

"I would see you damned first!" broke out the other, savagely. "I
am an old white loafer, but you don't get me to meddle in their
infernal affairs. They have a devil of their own--"

"The thing simply can't fail. I've calculated every move. I've
guarded against everything. I am no fool."

"Yes--you are. Good-night."

"Well, good-bye," said Lingard, calmly.

He stepped into his boat, and Jorgenson walked up the jetty.
Lingard, clearing the yoke lines, heard him call out from a
distance:

"Drop it!"

"I sail before sunrise," he shouted in answer, and went on board.

When he came up from his cabin after an uneasy night, it was dark
yet. A lank figure strolled across the deck.

"Here I am," said Jorgenson, huskily. "Die there or here--all
one. But, if I die there, remember the girl must eat."

Lingard was one of the few who had seen Jorgenson's girl. She had
a wrinkled brown face, a lot of tangled grey hair, a few black
stumps of teeth, and had been married to him lately by an
enterprising young missionary from Bukit Timah. What her
appearance might have been once when Jorgenson gave for her three
hundred dollars and several brass guns, it was impossible to say.
All that was left of her youth was a pair of eyes, undimmed and
mournful, which, when she was alone, seemed to look stonily into
the past of two lives. When Jorgenson was near they followed his
movements with anxious pertinacity. And now within the sarong
thrown over the grey head they were dropping unseen tears while
Jorgenson's girl rocked herself to and fro, squatting alone in a
corner of the dark hut.

"Don't you worry about that," said Lingard, grasping Jorgenson's
hand. "She shall want for nothing. All I expect you to do is to
look a little after Belarab's morals when I am away. One more
trip I must make, and then we shall be ready to go ahead. I've
foreseen every single thing. Trust me!"

In this way did the restless shade of Captain H. C. Jorgenson
recross the water of oblivion to step back into the life of men.

VI

For two years, Lingard, who had thrown himself body and soul into
the great enterprise, had lived in the long intoxication of
slowly preparing success. No thought of failure had crossed his
mind, and no price appeared too heavy to pay for such a
magnificent achievement. It was nothing less than bringing Hassim
triumphantly back to that country seen once at night under the
low clouds and in the incessant tumult of thunder. When at the
conclusion of some long talk with Hassim, who for the twentieth
time perhaps had related the story of his wrongs and his
struggle, he lifted his big arm and shaking his fist above his
head, shouted: "We will stir them up. We will wake up the
country!" he was, without knowing it in the least, making a
complete confession of the idealism hidden under the simplicity
of his strength. He would wake up the country! That was the
fundamental and unconscious emotion on which were engrafted his
need of action, the primitive sense of what was due to justice,
to gratitude, to friendship, the sentimental pity for the hard
lot of Immada--poor child--the proud conviction that of all the
men in the world, in his world, he alone had the means and the
pluck "to lift up the big end" of such an adventure.

Money was wanted and men were wanted, and he had obtained enough
of both in two years from that day when, pistols in his belt and
a cabbage-leaf hat on head, he had unexpectedly, and at early
dawn, confronted in perfect silence that mysterious Belarab, who
himself was for a moment too astounded for speech at the sight of
a white face.

The sun had not yet cleared the forests of the interior, but a
sky already full of light arched over a dark oval lagoon, over
wide fields as yet full of shadows, that seemed slowly changing
into the whiteness of the morning mist. There were huts, fences,
palisades, big houses that, erected on lofty piles, were seen
above the tops of clustered fruit trees, as if suspended in the
air.

Such was the aspect of Belarab's settlement when Lingard set his
eyes on it for the first time. There were all these things, a
great number of faces at the back of the spare and muffled-up
figure confronting him, and in the swiftly increasing light a
complete stillness that made the murmur of the word "Marhaba"
(welcome), pronounced at last by the chief, perfectly audible to
every one of his followers. The bodyguards who stood about him in
black skull-caps and with long-shafted lances, preserved an
impassive aspect. Across open spaces men could be seen running to
the waterside. A group of women standing on a low knoll gazed
intently, and nothing of them but the heads showed above the
unstirring stalks of a maize field. Suddenly within a cluster of
empty huts near by the voice of an invisible hag was heard
scolding with shrill fury an invisible young girl:

"Strangers! You want to see the strangers? O devoid of all
decency! Must I so lame and old husk the rice alone? May evil
befall thee and the strangers! May they never find favour! May
they be pursued with swords! I am old. I am old. There is no good
in strangers! O girl! May they burn."

"Welcome," repeated Belarab, gravely, and looking straight into
Lingard's eyes.

Lingard spent six days that time in Belarab's settlement. Of
these, three were passed in observing each other without a
question being asked or a hint given as to the object in view.
Lingard lounged on the fine mats with which the chief had
furnished a small bamboo house outside a fortified enclosure,
where a white flag with a green border fluttered on a high and
slender pole but still below the walls of long, high-roofed
buildings, raised forty feet or more on hard-wood posts.

Far away the inland forests were tinted a shimmering blue, like
the forests of a dream. On the seaward side the belt of great
trunks and matted undergrowth came to the western shore of the
oval lagoon; and in the pure freshness of the air the groups of
brown houses reflected in the water or seen above the waving
green of the fields, the clumps of palm trees, the fenced-in
plantations, the groves of fruit trees, made up a picture of
sumptuous prosperity.

Above the buildings, the men, the women, the still sheet of water
and the great plain of crops glistening with dew, stretched the
exalted, the miraculous peace of a cloudless sky. And no road
seemed to lead into this country of splendour and stillness. One
could not believe the unquiet sea was so near, with its gifts and
its unending menace. Even during the months of storms, the great
clamour rising from the whitened expanse of the Shallows dwelt
high in the air in a vast murmur, now feeble now stronger, that
seemed to swing back and forth on the wind above the earth
without any one being able to tell whence it came. It was like
the solemn chant of a waterfall swelling and dying away above the
woods, the fields, above the roofs of houses and the heads of
men, above the secret peace of that hidden and flourishing
settlement of vanquished fanatics, fugitives, and outcasts.

Every afternoon Belarab, followed by an escort that stopped
outside the door, entered alone the house of his guest. He gave
the salutation, inquired after his health, conversed about
insignificant things with an inscrutable mien. But all the time
the steadfast gaze of his thoughtful eyes seemed to seek the
truth within that white face. In the cool of the evening, before
the sun had set, they talked together, passing and repassing
between the rugged pillars of the grove near the gate of the
stockade. The escort away in the oblique sunlight, followed with
their eyes the strolling figures appearing and vanishing behind
the trees. Many words were pronounced, but nothing was said that
would disclose the thoughts of the two men. They clasped hands
demonstratively before separating, and the heavy slam of the gate
was followed by the triple thud of the wooden bars dropped into
iron clamps.

On the third night, Lingard was awakened from a light sleep by
the sound of whispering outside. A black shadow obscured the
stars in the doorway, and a man entering suddenly, stood above
his couch while another could be seen squatting--a dark lump on
the threshold of the hut.

"Fear not. I am Belarab," said a cautious voice.

"I was not afraid," whispered Lingard. "It is the man coming in
the dark and without warning who is in danger."

"And did you not come to me without warning? I said 'welcome'--it
was as easy for me to say 'kill him.'"

"You were within reach of my arm. We would have died together,"
retorted Lingard, quietly.

The other clicked his tongue twice, and his indistinct shape
seemed to sink half-way through the floor.

"It was not written thus before we were born," he said, sitting
cross-legged near the mats, and in a deadened voice. "Therefore
you are my guest. Let the talk between us be straight like the
shaft of a spear and shorter than the remainder of this night.
What do you want?"

"First, your long life," answered Lingard, leaning forward toward
the gleam of a pair of eyes, "and then--your help."

VII

The faint murmur of the words spoken on that night lingered for a
long time in Lingard's ears, more persistent than the memory of
an uproar; he looked with a fixed gaze at the stars burning
peacefully in the square of the doorway, while after listening in
silence to all he had to say, Belarab, as if seduced by the
strength and audacity of the white man, opened his heart without
reserve. He talked of his youth surrounded by the fury of
fanaticism and war, of battles on the hills, of advances through
the forests, of men's unswerving piety, of their unextinguishable
hate. Not a single wandering cloud obscured the gentle splendour
of the rectangular patch of starlight framed in the opaque
blackness of the hut. Belarab murmured on of a succession of
reverses, of the ring of disasters narrowing round men's fading
hopes and undiminished courage. He whispered of defeat and
flight, of the days of despair, of the nights without sleep, of
unending pursuit, of the bewildered horror and sombre fury, of
their women and children killed in the stockade before the
besieged sallied forth to die.

"I have seen all this before I was in years a man," he cried,
low.

His voice vibrated. In the pause that succeeded they heard a
light sigh of the sleeping follower who, clasping his legs above
his ankles, rested his forehead on his knees.

"And there was amongst us," began Belarab again, "one white man
who remained to the end, who was faithful with his strength, with
his courage, with his wisdom. A great man. He had great riches
but a greater heart."

The memory of Jorgenson, emaciated and greyhaired, and trying to
borrow five dollars to get something to eat for the girl, passed
before Lingard suddenly upon the pacific glitter of the stars.

"He resembled you," pursued Belarab, abruptly. "We escaped with
him, and in his ship came here. It was a solitude. The forest
came near to the sheet of water, the rank grass waved upon the
heads of tall men. Telal, my father, died of weariness; we were
only a few, and we all nearly died of trouble and sadness--here.
On this spot! And no enemies could tell where we had gone. It was
the Shore of Refuge--and starvation."

He droned on in the night, with rising and falling inflections.
He told how his desperate companions wanted to go out and die
fighting on the sea against the ships from the west, the ships
with high sides and white sails; and how, unflinching and alone,
he kept them battling with the thorny bush, with the rank grass,
with the soaring and enormous trees. Lingard, leaning on his
elbow and staring through the door, recalled the image of the
wide fields outside, sleeping now, in an immensity of serenity
and starlight. This quiet and almost invisible talker had done it
all; in him was the origin, the creation, the fate; and in the
wonder of that thought the shadowy murmuring figure acquired a
gigantic greatness of significance, as if it had been the
embodiment of some natural force, of a force forever masterful
and undying.

"And even now my life is unsafe as if I were their enemy," said
Belarab, mournfully. "Eyes do not kill, nor angry words; and
curses have no power, else the Dutch would not grow fat living on
our land, and I would not be alive to-night. Do you understand?
Have you seen the men who fought in the old days? They have not
forgotten the times of war. I have given them homes and quiet
hearts and full bellies. I alone. And they curse my name in the
dark, in each other's ears--because they can never forget."

This man, whose talk had been of war and violence, discovered
unexpectedly a passionate craving for security and peace. No one
would understand him. Some of those who would not understand had
died. His white teeth gleamed cruelly in the dark. But there were
others he could not kill. The fools. He wanted the land and the
people in it to be forgotten as if they had been swallowed by the
sea. But they had neither wisdom nor patience. Could they not
wait? They chanted prayers five times every day, but they had not
the faith.

"Death comes to all--and to the believers the end of trouble. But
you white men who are too strong for us, you also die. You die.
And there is a Paradise as great as all earth and all Heaven
together, but not for you--not for you!"

Lingard, amazed, listened without a sound. The sleeper snored
faintly. Belarab continued very calm after this almost
involuntary outburst of a consoling belief. He explained that he
wanted somebody at his back, somebody strong and whom he could
trust, some outside force that would awe the unruly, that would
inspire their ignorance with fear, and make his rule secure. He
groped in the dark and seizing Lingard's arm above the elbow
pressed it with force--then let go. And Lingard understood why
his temerity had been so successful.

Then and there, in return for Lingard's open support, a few guns
and a little money, Belarab promised his help for the conquest of
Wajo. There was no doubt he could find men who would fight. He
could send messages to friends at a distance and there were also
many unquiet spirits in his own district ready for any adventure.
He spoke of these men with fierce contempt and an angry
tenderness, in mingled accents of envy and disdain. He was
wearied by their folly, by their recklessness, by their
impatience--and he seemed to resent these as if they had been
gifts of which he himself had been deprived by the fatality of
his wisdom. They would fight. When the time came Lingard had only
to speak, and a sign from him would send them to a vain
death--those men who could not wait for an opportunity on this
earth or for the eternal revenge of Heaven.

He ceased, and towered upright in the gloom.

"Awake!" he exclaimed, low, bending over the sleeping man.

Their black shapes, passing in turn, eclipsed for two successive
moments the glitter of the stars, and Lingard, who had not
stirred, remained alone. He lay back full length with an arm
thrown across his eyes.

When three days afterward he left Belarab's settlement, it was on
a calm morning of unclouded peace. All the boats of the brig came
up into the lagoon armed and manned to make more impressive the
solemn fact of a concluded alliance. A staring crowd watched his
imposing departure in profound silence and with an increased
sense of wonder at the mystery of his apparition. The progress of
the boats was smooth and slow while they crossed the wide lagoon.
Lingard looked back once. A great stillness had laid its hand
over the earth, the sky, and the men; upon the immobility of
landscape and people. Hassim and Immada, standing out clearly by
the side of the chief, raised their arms in a last salutation;
and the distant gesture appeared sad, futile, lost in space, like
a sign of distress made by castaways in the vain hope of an
impossible help.

He departed, he returned, he went away again, and each time those
two figures, lonely on some sandbank of the Shallows, made at him
the same futile sign of greeting or good-bye. Their arms at each
movement seemed to draw closer around his heart the bonds of a
protecting affection. He worked prosaically, earning money to pay
the cost of the romantic necessity that had invaded his life. And
the money ran like water out of his hands. The owner of the New
England voice remitted not a little of it to his people in
Baltimore. But import houses in the ports of the Far East had
their share. It paid for a fast prau which, commanded by Jaffir,
sailed into unfrequented bays and up unexplored rivers, carrying
secret messages, important news, generous bribes. A good part of
it went to the purchase of the Emma.

The Emma was a battered and decrepit old schooner that, in the
decline of her existence, had been much ill-used by a paunchy
white trader of cunning and gluttonous aspect. This man boasted
outrageously afterward of the good price he had got "for that
rotten old hooker of mine--you know." The Emma left port
mysteriously in company with the brig and henceforth vanished
from the seas forever. Lingard had her towed up the creek and ran
her aground upon that shore of the lagoon farthest from Belarab's
settlement. There had been at that time a great rise of waters,
which retiring soon after left the old craft cradled in the mud,
with her bows grounded high between the trunks of two big trees,
and leaning over a little as though after a hard life she had
settled wearily to an everlasting rest. There, a few months
later, Jorgenson found her when, called back into the life of
men, he reappeared, together with Lingard, in the Land of Refuge.

"She is better than a fort on shore," said Lingard, as side by
side they leant over the taffrail, looking across the lagoon on
the houses and palm groves of the settlement. "All the guns and
powder I have got together so far are stored in her. Good idea,
wasn't it? There will be, perhaps, no other such flood for years,
and now they can't come alongside unless right under the counter,
and only one boat at a time. I think you are perfectly safe here;
you could keep off a whole fleet of boats; she isn't easy to set
fire to; the forest in front is better than a wall. Well?"

Jorgenson assented in grunts. He looked at the desolate emptiness
of the decks, at the stripped spars, at the dead body of the
dismantled little vessel that would know the life of the seas no
more. The gloom of the forest fell on her, mournful like a
winding sheet. The bushes of the bank tapped their twigs on the
bluff of her bows, and a pendent spike of tiny brown blossoms
swung to and fro over the ruins of her windlass.

Hassim's companions garrisoned the old hulk, and Jorgenson, left
in charge, prowled about from stem to stern, taciturn and
anxiously faithful to his trust. He had been received with
astonishment, respect--and awe. Belarab visited him often.
Sometimes those whom he had known in their prime years ago,
during a struggle for faith and life, would come to talk with the
white man. Their voices were like the echoes of stirring events,
in the pale glamour of a youth gone by. They nodded their old
heads. Do you remember?--they said. He remembered only too well!
He was like a man raised from the dead, for whom the fascinating
trust in the power of life is tainted by the black scepticism of
the grave.

Only at times the invincible belief in the reality of existence
would come back, insidious and inspiring. He squared his
shoulders, held himself straight, and walked with a firmer step.
He felt a glow within him and the quickened beat of his heart.
Then he calculated in silent excitement Lingard's chances of
success, and he lived for a time with the life of that other man
who knew nothing of the black scepticism of the grave. The
chances were good, very good.

"I should like to see it through," Jorgenson muttered to himself
ardently; and his lustreless eyes would flash for a moment.

PART III. THE CAPTURE

I

"Some people," said Lingard, "go about the world with their eyes
shut. You are right. The sea is free to all of us. Some work on
it, and some play the fool on it--and I don't care. Only you may
take it from me that I will let no man's play interfere with my
work. You want me to understand you are a very great man--"

Mr. Travers smiled, coldly.

"Oh, yes," continued Lingard, "I understand that well enough. But
remember you are very far from home, while I, here, I am where I
belong. And I belong where I am. I am just Tom Lingard, no more,
no less, wherever I happen to be, and--you may ask--" A sweep of
his hand along the western horizon entrusted with perfect
confidence the remainder of his speech to the dumb testimony of
the sea.

He had been on board the yacht for more than an. hour, and
nothing, for him, had come of it but the birth of an unreasoning
hate. To the unconscious demand of these people's presence, of
their ignorance, of their faces, of their voices, of their eyes,
he had nothing to give but a resentment that had in it a germ of
reckless violence. He could tell them nothing because he had not
the means. Their coming at this moment, when he had wandered
beyond that circle which race, memories, early associations, all
the essential conditions of one's origin, trace round every man's
life, deprived him in a manner of the power of speech. He was
confounded. It was like meeting exacting spectres in a desert.

He stared at the open sea, his arms crossed, with a reflective
fierceness. His very appearance made him utterly different from
everyone on board that vessel. The grey shirt, the blue sash, one
rolled-up sleeve baring a sculptural forearm, the negligent
masterfulness of his tone and pose were very distasteful to Mr.
Travers, who, having made up his mind to wait for some kind of
official assistance, regarded the intrusion of that inexplicable
man with suspicion. From the moment Lingard came on board the
yacht, every eye in that vessel had been fixed upon him. Only
Carter, within earshot and leaning with his elbow upon the rail,
stared down at the deck as if overcome with drowsiness or lost in
thought.

Of the three other persons aft, Mr. Travers kept his hands in the
side pockets of his jacket and did not conceal his growing
disgust.

On the other side of the deck, a lady, in a long chair, had a
passive attitude that to Mr. d'Alcacer, standing near her, seemed
characteristic of the manner in which she accepted the
necessities of existence. Years before, as an attache of his
Embassy in London, he had found her an interesting hostess. She
was even more interesting now, since a chance meeting and Mr.
Travers' offer of a passage to Batavia had given him an
opportunity of studying the various shades of scorn which he
suspected to be the secret of her acquiescence in the shallowness
of events and the monotony of a worldly existence.

There were things that from the first he had not been able to
understand; for instance, why she should have married Mr.
Travers. It must have been from ambition. He could not help
feeling that such a successful mistake would explain completely
her scorn and also her acquiescence. The meeting in Manila had
been utterly unexpected to him, and he accounted for it to his
uncle, the Governor-General of the colony, by pointing out that
Englishmen, when worsted in the struggle of love or politics,
travel extensively, as if by encompassing a large portion of
earth's surface they hoped to gather fresh strength for a renewed
contest. As to himself, he judged--but did not say--that his
contest with fate was ended, though he also travelled, leaving
behind him in the capitals of Europe a story in which there was
nothing scandalous but the publicity of an excessive feeling, and
nothing more tragic than the early death of a woman whose
brilliant perfections were no better known to the great world
than the discreet and passionate devotion she had innocently
inspired.

The invitation to join the yacht was the culminating point of
many exchanged civilities, and was mainly prompted by Mr.
Travers' desire to have somebody to talk to. D'Alcacer had
accepted with the reckless indifference of a man to whom one
method of flight from a relentless enemy is as good as another.
Certainly the prospect of listening to long monologues on
commerce, administration, and politics did not promise much
alleviation to his sorrow; and he could not expect much else from
Mr. Travers, whose life and thought, ignorant of human passion,
were devoted to extracting the greatest possible amount of
personal advantage from human institutions. D'Alcacer found,
however, that he could attain a measure of forgetfulness--the
most precious thing for him now--in the society of Edith Travers.

She had awakened his curiosity, which he thought nothing and
nobody on earth could do any more.

These two talked of things indifferent and interesting, certainly
not connected with human institutions, and only very slightly
with human passions; but d'Alcacer could not help being made
aware of her latent capacity for sympathy developed in those who
are disenchanted with life or death. How far she was disenchanted
he did not know, and did not attempt to find out. This restraint
was imposed upon him by the chivalrous respect he had for the
secrets of women and by a conviction that deep feeling is often
impenetrably obscure, even to those it masters for their
inspiration or their ruin. He believed that even she herself
would never know; but his grave curiosity was satisfied by the
observation of her mental state, and he was not sorry that the
stranding of the yacht prolonged his opportunity.

Time passed on that mudbank as well as anywhere else, and it was
not from a multiplicity of events, but from the lapse of time
alone, that he expected relief. Yet in the sameness of days upon
the Shallows, time flowing ceaselessly, flowed imperceptibly;
and, since every man clings to his own, be it joy, be it grief,
he was pleased after the unrest of his wanderings to be able to
fancy the whole universe and even time itself apparently come to
a standstill; as if unwilling to take him away further from his
sorrow, which was fading indeed but undiminished, as things fade,
not in the distance but in the mist.

II

D'Alcacer was a man of nearly forty, lean and sallow, with hollow
eyes and a drooping brown moustache. His gaze was penetrating and
direct, his smile frequent and fleeting. He observed Lingard with
great interest. He was attracted by that elusive something--a
line, a fold, perhaps the form of the eye, the droop of an
eyelid, the curve of a cheek, that trifling trait which on no two
faces on earth is alike, that in each face is the very foundation
of expression, as if, all the rest being heredity, mystery, or
accident, it alone had been shaped consciously by the soul
within.

Now and then he bent slightly over the slow beat of a red fan in
the curve of the deck chair to say a few words to Mrs. Travers,
who answered him without looking up, without a modulation of tone
or a play of feature, as if she had spoken from behind the veil
of an immense indifference stretched between her and all men,
between her heart and the meaning of events, between her eyes and
the shallow sea which, like her gaze, appeared profound, forever
stilled, and seemed, far off in the distance of a faint horizon,
beyond the reach of eye, beyond the power of hand or voice, to
lose itself in the sky.

Mr. Travers stepped aside, and speaking to Carter, overwhelmed
him with reproaches.

"You misunderstood your instructions," murmured Mr. Travers
rapidly. "Why did you bring this man here? I am surprised--"

"Not half so much as I was last night," growled the young seaman,
without any reverence in his tone, very provoking to Mr. Travers.

"I perceive now you were totally unfit for the mission I
entrusted you with," went on the owner of the yacht.

"It's he who got hold of me," said Carter. "Haven't you heard him
yourself, sir?"

"Nonsense," whispered Mr. Travers, angrily. "Have you any idea
what his intentions may be?"

"I half believe," answered Carter, "that his intention was to
shoot me in his cabin last night if I--"

"That's not the point," interrupted Mr. Travers. "Have you any
opinion as to his motives in coming here?"

Carter raised his weary, bloodshot eyes in a face scarlet and
peeling as though it had been licked by a flame. "I know no more
than you do, sir. Last night when he had me in that cabin of his,
he said he would just as soon shoot me as let me go to look for
any other help. It looks as if he were desperately bent upon
getting a lot of salvage money out of a stranded yacht."

Mr. Travers turned away, and, for a moment, appeared immersed in
deep thought. This accident of stranding upon a deserted coast
was annoying as a loss of time. He tried to minimize it by
putting in order the notes collected during the year's travel in
the East. He had sent off for assistance; his sailing-master,
very crestfallen, made bold to say that the yacht would most
likely float at the next spring tides; d'Alcacer, a person of
undoubted nobility though of inferior principles, was better than
no company, in so far at least that he could play picquet.

Mr. Travers had made up his mind to wait. Then suddenly this
rough man, looking as if he had stepped out from an engraving in
a book about buccaneers, broke in upon his resignation with
mysterious allusions to danger, which sounded absurd yet were
disturbing; with dark and warning sentences that sounded like
disguised menaces.

Mr. Travers had a heavy and rather long chin which he shaved. His
eyes were blue, a chill, naive blue. He faced Lingard untouched
by travel, without a mark of weariness or exposure, with the air
of having been born invulnerable. He had a full, pale face; and
his complexion was perfectly colourless, yet amazingly fresh, as
if he had been reared in the shade.

He thought:

"I must put an end to this preposterous hectoring. I won't be
intimidated into paying for services I don't need."

Mr. Travers felt a strong disgust for the impudence of the
attempt; and all at once, incredibly, strangely, as though the
thing, like a contest with a rival or a friend, had been of
profound importance to his career, he felt inexplicably elated at
the thought of defeating the secret purposes of that man.

Lingard, unconscious of everything and everybody, contemplated
the sea. He had grown on it, he had lived with it; it had enticed
him away from home; on it his thoughts had expanded and his hand
had found work to do. It had suggested endeavour, it had made him
owner and commander of the finest brig afloat; it had lulled him
into a belief in himself, in his strength, in his luck--and
suddenly, by its complicity in a fatal accident, it had brought
him face to face with a difficulty that looked like the beginning
of disaster.

He had said all he dared to say--and he perceived that he was not
believed. This had not happened to him for years. It had never
happened. It bewildered him as if he had suddenly discovered that
he was no longer himself. He had come to them and had said: "I
mean well by you. I am Tom Lingard--" and they did not believe!
Before such scepticism he was helpless, because he had never
imagined it possible. He had said: "You are in the way of my
work. You are in the way of what I can not give up for any one;
but I will see you through all safe if you will only trust me--
me, Tom Lingard." And they would not believe him! It was
intolerable. He imagined himself sweeping their disbelief out of
his way. And why not? He did not know them, he did not care for
them, he did not even need to lift his hand against them! All he
had to do was to shut his eyes now for a day or two, and
afterward he could forget that he had ever seen them. It would be
easy. Let their disbelief vanish, their folly disappear, their
bodies perish. . . . It was that--or ruin!

III

Lingard's gaze, detaching itself from the silent sea, travelled
slowly over the silent figures clustering forward, over the faces
of the seamen attentive and surprised, over the faces never seen
before yet suggesting old days--his youth--other seas--the
distant shores of early memories. Mr. Travers gave a start also,
and the hand which had been busy with his left whisker went into
the pocket of his jacket, as though he had plucked out something
worth keeping. He made a quick step toward Lingard.

"I don't see my way to utilize your services," he said, with cold
finality.

Lingard, grasping his beard, looked down at him thoughtfully for
a short time.

"Perhaps it's just as well," he said, very slowly, "because I did
not offer my services. I've offered to take you on board my brig
for a few days, as your only chance of safety. And you asked me
what were my motives. My motives! If you don't see them they are
not for you to know."

And these men who, two hours before had never seen each other,
stood for a moment close together, antagonistic, as if they had
been life-long enemies, one short, dapper and glaring upward, the
other towering heavily, and looking down in contempt and anger.

Mr. d'Alcacer, without taking his eyes off them, bent low over
the deck chair.

"Have you ever seen a man dashing himself at a stone wall?" he
asked, confidentially.

"No," said Mrs. Travers, gazing straight before her above the
slow flutter of the fan. "No, I did not know it was ever done;
men burrow under or slip round quietly while they look the other
way."

"Ah! you define diplomacy," murmured d'Alcacer. "A little of it
here would do no harm. But our picturesque visitor has none of
it. I've a great liking for him."

"Already!" breathed out Mrs. Travers, with a smile that touched
her lips with its bright wing and was flown almost before it
could be seen.

"There is liking at first sight," affirmed d'Alcacer, "as well as
love at first sight--the coup de foudre--you know."

She looked up for a moment, and he went on, gravely: "I think it
is the truest, the most profound of sentiments. You do not love
because of what is in the other. You love because of something
that is in you--something alive--in yourself." He struck his
breast lightly with the tip of one finger. "A capacity in you.
And not everyone may have it--not everyone deserves to be touched
by fire from heaven."

"And die," she said.

He made a slight movement.

"Who can tell? That is as it may be. But it is always a
privilege, even if one must live a little after being burnt."

Through the silence between them, Mr. Travers' voice came
plainly, saying with irritation:

"I've told you already that I do not want you. I've sent a
messenger to the governor of the Straits. Don't be importunate."

Then Lingard, standing with his back to them, growled out
something which must have exasperated Mr. Travers, because his
voice was pitched higher:

"You are playing a dangerous game, I warn you. Sir John, as it
happens, is a personal friend of mine. He will send a cruiser--"
and Lingard interrupted recklessly loud:

"As long as she does not get here for the next ten days, I don't
care. Cruisers are scarce just now in the Straits; and to turn my
back on you is no hanging matter anyhow. I would risk that, and
more! Do you hear? And more!"

He stamped his foot heavily, Mr. Travers stepped back.

"You will gain nothing by trying to frighten me," he said. "I
don't know who you are."

Every eye in the yacht was wide open. The men, crowded upon each
other, stared stupidly like a flock of sheep. Mr. Travers pulled
out a handkerchief and passed it over his forehead. The face of
the sailing-master who leaned against the main mast--as near as
he dared to approach the gentry--was shining and crimson between
white whiskers, like a glowing coal between two patches of snow.

D'Alcacer whispered:

"It is a quarrel, and the picturesque man is angry. He is hurt."

Mrs. Travers' fan rested on her knees, and she sat still as if
waiting to hear more.

"Do you think I ought to make an effort for peace?" asked
d'Alcacer.

She did not answer, and after waiting a little, he insisted:

"What is your opinion? Shall I try to mediate--as a neutral, as a
benevolent neutral? I like that man with the beard."

The interchange of angry phrases went on aloud, amidst general
consternation.

"I would turn my back on you only I am thinking of these poor
devils here," growled Lingard, furiously. "Did you ask them how
they feel about it?"

"I ask no one," spluttered Mr. Travers. "Everybody here depends
on my judgment."

"I am sorry for them then," pronounced Lingard with sudden
deliberation, and leaning forward with his arms crossed on his
breast.

At this Mr. Travers positively jumped, and forgot himself so far
as to shout:

"You are an impudent fellow. I have nothing more to say to you."

D'Alcacer, after muttering to himself, "This is getting serious,"
made a movement, and could not believe his ears when he heard
Mrs. Travers say rapidly with a kind of fervour:

"Don't go, pray; don't stop them. Oh! This is truth--this is
anger--something real at last."

D'Alcacer leaned back at once against the rail.

Then Mr. Travers, with one arm extended, repeated very loudly:

"Nothing more to say. Leave my ship at once!"

And directly the black dog, stretched at his wife's feet, muzzle
on paws and blinking yellow eyes, growled discontentedly at the
noise. Mrs. Travers laughed a faint, bright laugh, that seemed to
escape, to glide, to dart between her white teeth. D'Alcacer,
concealing his amazement, was looking down at her gravely: and
after a slight gasp, she said with little bursts of merriment
between every few words:

"No, but this is--such--such a fresh experience for me to
hear--to see something--genuine and human. Ah! ah! one would
think they had waited all their lives for this opportunity--ah!
ah! ah! All their lives--for this! ah! ah! ah!"

These strange words struck d'Alcacer as perfectly just, as
throwing an unexpected light. But after a smile, he said,
seriously:

"This reality may go too far. A man who looks so picturesque is
capable of anything. Allow me--" And he left her side, moving
toward Lingard, loose-limbed and gaunt, yet having in his whole
bearing, in his walk, in every leisurely movement, an air of
distinction and ceremony.

Lingard spun round with aggressive mien to the light touch on his
shoulder, but as soon as he took his eyes off Mr. Travers, his
anger fell, seemed to sink without a sound at his feet like a
rejected garment.

"Pardon me," said d'Alcacer, composedly. The slight wave of his
hand was hardly more than an indication, the beginning of a
conciliating gesture. "Pardon me; but this is a matter requiring
perfect confidence on both sides. Don Martin, here, who is a
person of importance. . . ."

"I've spoken my mind plainly. I have said as much as I dare. On
my word I have," declared Lingard with an air of good temper.

"Ah!" said d'Alcacer, reflectively, "then your reserve is a
matter of pledged faith--of--of honour?"

Lingard also appeared thoughtful for a moment.

"You may put it that way. And I owe nothing to a man who couldn't
see my hand when I put it out to him as I came aboard."

"You have so much the advantage of us here," replied d'Alcacer,
"that you may well be generous and forget that oversight; and
then just a little more confidence. . . ."

"My dear d'Alcacer, you are absurd," broke in Mr. Travers, in a
calm voice but with white lips. "I did not come out all this way
to shake hands promiscuously and receive confidences from the
first adventurer that comes along."

D'Alcacer stepped back with an almost imperceptible inclination
of the head at Lingard, who stood for a moment with twitching
face.

"I AM an adventurer," he burst out, "and if I hadn't been an
adventurer, I would have had to starve or work at home for such
people as you. If I weren't an adventurer, you would be most
likely lying dead on this deck with your cut throat gaping at the
sky."

Mr. Travers waved this speech away. But others also had heard.
Carter listened watchfully and something, some alarming notion
seemed to dawn all at once upon the thick little sailing-master,
who rushed on his short legs, and tugging at Carter's sleeve,
stammered desperately:

"What's he saying? Who's he? What's up? Are the natives
unfriendly? My book says--'Natives friendly all along this
coast!' My book says--"

Carter, who had glanced over the side, jerked his arm free.

"You go down into the pantry, where you belong, Skipper, and read
that bit about the natives over again," he said to his superior
officer, with savage contempt. "I'll be hanged if some of them
ain't coming aboard now to eat you--book and all. Get out of the
way, and let the gentlemen have the first chance of a row."

Then addressing Lingard, he drawled in his old way:

"That crazy mate of yours has sent your boat back, with a couple
of visitors in her, too."

Before he apprehended plainly the meaning of these words, Lingard
caught sight of two heads rising above the rail, the head of
Hassim and the head of Immada. Then their bodies ascended into
view as though these two beings had gradually emerged from the
Shallows. They stood for a moment on the platform looking down on
the deck as if about to step into the unknown, then descended and
walking aft entered the half-light under the awning shading the
luxurious surroundings, the complicated emotions of the, to them,
inconceivable existences.

Lingard without waiting a moment cried:

"What news, O Rajah?"

Hassim's eyes made the round of the schooner's decks. He had left
his gun in the boat and advanced empty handed, with a tranquil
assurance as if bearing a welcome offering in the faint smile of
his lips. Immada, half hidden behind his shoulder, followed
lightly, her elbows pressed close to her side. The thick fringe
of her eyelashes was dropped like a veil; she looked youthful and
brooding; she had an aspect of shy resolution.

They stopped within arm's length of the whites, and for some time
nobody said a word. Then Hassim gave Lingard a significant
glance, and uttered rapidly with a slight toss of the head that
indicated in a manner the whole of the yacht:

"I see no guns!"

"N--no!" said Lingard, looking suddenly confused. It had occurred
to him that for the first time in two years or more he had
forgotten, utterly forgotten, these people's existence.

Immada stood slight and rigid with downcast eyes. Hassim, at his
ease, scrutinized the faces, as if searching for elusive points
of similitude or for subtle shades of difference.

"What is this new intrusion?" asked Mr. Travers, angrily.

"These are the fisher-folk, sir," broke in the sailing-master,
"we've observed these three days past flitting about in a canoe;
but they never had the sense to answer our hail; and yet a bit of
fish for your breakfast--" He smiled obsequiously, and all at
once, without provocation, began to bellow:

"Hey! Johnnie! Hab got fish? Fish! One peecee fish! Eh? Savee?
Fish! Fish--" He gave it up suddenly to say in a deferential
tone--"Can't make them savages understand anything, sir," and
withdrew as if after a clever feat.

Hassim looked at Lingard.

"Why did the little white man make that outcry?" he asked,
anxiously.

"Their desire is to eat fish," said Lingard in an enraged tone.

Then before the air of extreme surprise which incontinently
appeared on the other's face, he could not restrain a short and
hopeless laugh.

"Eat fish," repeated Hassim, staring. "O you white people! O you
white people! Eat fish! Good! But why make that noise? And why
did you send them here without guns?" After a significant glance
down upon the slope of the deck caused by the vessel being on the
ground, he added with a slight nod at Lingard--"And without
knowledge?"

"You should not have come here, O Hassim," said Lingard, testily.
"Here no one understands. They take a rajah for a fisherman--"

"Ya-wa! A great mistake, for, truly, the chief of ten fugitives
without a country is much less than the headman of a fishing
village," observed Hassim, composedly. Immada sighed. "But you,
Tuan, at least know the truth," he went on with quiet irony; then
after a pause --"We came here because you had forgotten to look
toward us, who had waited, sleeping little at night, and in the
day watching with hot eyes the empty water at the foot of the sky
for you."

Immada murmured, without lifting her head:

"You never looked for us. Never, never once."

"There was too much trouble in my eyes," explained Lingard with
that patient gentleness of tone and face which, every time he
spoke to the young girl, seemed to disengage itself from his
whole person, enveloping his fierceness, softening his aspect,
such as the dreamy mist that in the early radiance of the morning
weaves a veil of tender charm about a rugged rock in mid-ocean.
"I must look now to the right and to the left as in a time of
sudden danger," he added after a moment and she whispered an
appalled "Why?" so low that its pain floated away in the silence
of attentive men, without response, unheard, ignored, like the
pain of an impalpable thought.

IV

D'Alcacer, standing back, surveyed them all with a profound and
alert attention. Lingard seemed unable to tear himself away from
the yacht, and remained, checked, as it were in the act of going,
like a man who has stopped to think out the last thing to say;
and that stillness of a body, forgotten by the labouring mind,
reminded Carter of that moment in the cabin, when alone he had
seen this man thus wrestling with his thought, motionless and
locked in the grip of his conscience.

Mr. Travers muttered audibly through his teeth:

"How long is this performance going to last? I have desired you
to go."

"Think of these poor devils," whispered Lingard, with a quick
glance at the crew huddled up near by.

"You are the kind of man I would be least disposed to trust--in
any case," said Mr. Travers, incisively, very low, and with an
inexplicable but very apparent satisfaction. "You are only
wasting your time here."

"You--You--" He stammered and stared. He chewed with growls some
insulting word and at last swallowed it with an effort. "My time
pays for your life," he said.

He became aware of a sudden stir, and saw that Mrs. Travers had
risen from her chair.

She walked impulsively toward the group on the quarter-deck,
making straight for Immada. Hassim had stepped aside and his
detached gaze of a Malay gentleman passed by her as if she had
been invisible.

She was tall, supple, moving freely. Her complexion was so
dazzling in the shade that it seemed to throw out a halo round
her head. Upon a smooth and wide brow an abundance of pale fair
hair, fine as silk, undulating like the sea, heavy like a helmet,
descended low without a trace of gloss, without a gleam in its
coils, as though it had never been touched by a ray of light; and
a throat white, smooth, palpitating with life, a round neck
modelled with strength and delicacy, supported gloriously that
radiant face and that pale mass of hair unkissed by sunshine.

She said with animation:

"Why, it's a girl!"

Mrs. Travers extorted from d'Alcacer a fresh tribute of
curiosity. A strong puff of wind fluttered the awnings and one of
the screens blowing out wide let in upon the quarter-deck the
rippling glitter of the Shallows, showing to d'Alcacer the
luminous vastness of the sea, with the line of the distant
horizon, dark like the edge of the encompassing night, drawn at
the height of Mrs. Travers' shoulder. . . . Where was it he had
seen her last--a long time before, on the other side of the
world? There was also the glitter of splendour around her then,
and an impression of luminous vastness. The encompassing night,
too, was there, the night that waits for its time to move forward
upon the glitter, the splendour, the men, the women.

He could not remember for the moment, but he became convinced
that of all the women he knew, she alone seemed to be made for
action. Every one of her movements had firmness, ease, the
meaning of a vital fact, the moral beauty of a fearless
expression. Her supple figure was not dishonoured by any
faltering of outlines under the plain dress of dark blue stuff
moulding her form with bold simplicity.

She had only very few steps to make, but before she had stopped,
confronting Immada, d'Alcacer remembered her suddenly as he had
seen her last, out West, far away, impossibly different, as if in
another universe, as if presented by the fantasy of a fevered
memory. He saw her in a luminous perspective of palatial drawing
rooms, in the restless eddy and flow of a human sea, at the foot
of walls high as cliffs, under lofty ceilings that like a
tropical sky flung light and heat upon the shallow glitter of
uniforms, of stars, of diamonds, of eyes sparkling in the weary
or impassive faces of the throng at an official reception.
Outside he had found the unavoidable darkness with its aspect of
patient waiting, a cloudy sky holding back the dawn of a London
morning. It was difficult to believe.

Lingard, who had been looking dangerously fierce, slapped his
thigh and showed signs of agitation.

"By heavens, I had forgotten all about you!" he pronounced in
dismay.

Mrs. Travers fixed her eyes on Immada. Fairhaired and white she
asserted herself before the girl of olive face and raven locks
with the maturity of perfection, with the superiority of the
flower over the leaf, of the phrase that contains a thought over
the cry that can only express an emotion. Immense spaces and
countless centuries stretched between them: and she looked at her
as when one looks into one's own heart with absorbed curiosity,
with still wonder, with an immense compassion. Lingard murmured,
warningly:

"Don't touch her."

Mrs. Travers looked at him.

"Do you think I could hurt her?" she asked, softly, and was so
startled to hear him mutter a gloomy "Perhaps," that she
hesitated before she smiled.

"Almost a child! And so pretty! What a delicate face," she said,
while another deep sigh of the sea breeze lifted and let fall the
screens, so that the sound, the wind, and the glitter seemed to
rush in together and bear her words away into space. "I had no
idea of anything so charmingly gentle," she went on in a voice
that without effort glowed, caressed, and had a magic power of
delight to the soul. "So young! And she lives here--does she? On
the sea--or where? Lives--" Then faintly, as if she had been in
the act of speaking, removed instantly to a great distance, she
was heard again: "How does she live?"

Lingard had hardly seen Edith Travers till then. He had seen no
one really but Mr. Travers. .He looked and listened with
something of the stupor of a new sensation.

Then he made a distinct effort to collect his thoughts and said
with a remnant of anger:

"What have you got to do with her? She knows war. Do you know
anything about it? And hunger, too, and thirst, and unhappiness;
things you have only heard about. She has been as near death as I
am to you--and what is all that to any of you here?"

"That child!" she said in slow wonder.

Immada turned upon Mrs. Travers her eyes black as coal, sparkling
and soft like a tropical night; and the glances of the two women,
their dissimilar and inquiring glances met, seemed to touch,
clasp, hold each other with the grip of an intimate contact. They
separated.

"What are they come for? Why did you show them the way to this
place?" asked Immada, faintly.

Lingard shook his head in denial.

"Poor girl," said Mrs. Travers. "Are they all so pretty?"

"Who-all?" mumbled Lingard. "There isn't an other one like her if
you were to ransack the islands all round the compass."

"Edith!" ejaculated Mr. Travers in a remonstrating, acrimonious
voice, and everyone gave him a look of vague surprise.

Then Mrs. Travers asked:

"Who is she?"

Lingard very red and grave declared curtly:

"A princess."

Immediately he looked round with suspicion. No one smiled.
D'Alcacer, courteous and nonchalant, lounged up close to Mrs.
Travers' elbow.

"If she is a princess, then this man is a knight," he murmured
with conviction. "A knight as I live! A descendant of the
immortal hidalgo errant upon the sea. It would be good for us to
have him for a friend. Seriously I think that you ought--"

The two stepped aside and spoke low and hurriedly.

"Yes, you ought--"

"How can I?" she interrupted, catching the meaning like a ball.

"By saying something."

"Is it really necessary?" she asked, doubtfully.

"It would do no harm," said d'Alcacer with sudden carelessness;
"a friend is always better than an enemy."

"Always?" she repeated, meaningly. "But what could I say?"

"Some words," he answered; "I should think any words in your
voice--"

"Mr. d'Alcacer!"

"Or you could perhaps look at him once or twice as though he were
not exactly a robber," he continued.

"Mr. d'Alcacer, are you afraid?"

"Extremely," he said, stooping to pick up the fan at her feet.
"That is the reason I am so anxious to conciliate. And you must
not forget that one of your queens once stepped on the cloak of
perhaps such a man."

Her eyes sparkled and she dropped them suddenly.

"I am not a queen," she said, coldly.

"Unfortunately not," he admitted; "but then the other was a woman
with no charm but her crown."

At that moment Lingard, to whom Hassim had been talking
earnestly, protested aloud:

"I never saw these people before."

Immada caught hold of her brother's arm. Mr. Travers said
harshly:

"Oblige me by taking these natives away."

"Never before," murmured Immada as if lost in ecstasy. D'Alcacer
glanced at Mrs. Travers and made a step forward.

"Could not the difficulty, whatever it is, be arranged, Captain?"
he said with careful politeness. "Observe that we are not only
men here--"

"Let them die!" cried Immada, triumphantly.

Though Lingard alone understood the meaning of these words, all
on board felt oppressed by the uneasy silence which followed her
cry.

"Ah! He is going. Now, Mrs. Travers," whispered d'Alcacer.

"I hope!" said Mrs. Travers, impulsively, and stopped as if
alarmed at the sound.

Lingard stood still.

"I hope," she began again, "that this poor girl will know happier
days--" She hesitated.

Lingard waited, attentive and serious.

"Under your care," she finished. "And I believe you meant to be
friendly to us."

"Thank you," said Lingard with dignity.

"You and d'Alcacer," observed Mr. Travers, austerely, "are
unnecessarily detaining this--ah--person, and--ah--friends--ah!"

"I had forgotten you--and now--what? One must--it is
hard--hard--" went on Lingard, disconnectedly, while he looked
into Mrs. Travers' violet eyes, and felt his mind overpowered and
troubled as if by the contemplation of vast distances. "I--you
don't know--I--you--cannot . . . Ha! It's all that man's doing,"
he burst out.

For a time, as if beside himself, he glared at Mrs. Travers, then
flung up one arm and strode off toward the gangway, where Hassim
and Immada waited for him, interested and patient. With a single
word "Come," he preceded them down into the boat. Not a sound was
heard on the yacht's deck, while these three disappeared one
after another below the rail as if they had descended into the
sea.

V

The afternoon dragged itself out in silence. Mrs. Travers sat
pensive and idle with her fan on her knees. D'Alcacer, who
thought the incident should have been treated in a conciliatory
spirit, attempted to communicate his view to his host, but that
gentleman, purposely misunderstanding his motive, overwhelmed him
with so many apologies and expressions of regret at the irksome
and perhaps inconvenient delay "which you suffer from through
your good-natured acceptance of our invitation" that the other
was obliged to refrain from pursuing the subject further.

"Even my regard for you, my dear d'Alcacer, could not induce me
to submit to such a bare-faced attempt at extortion," affirmed
Mr. Travers with uncompromising virtue. "The man wanted to force
his services upon me, and then put in a heavy claim for salvage.
That is the whole secret--you may depend on it. I detected him at
once, of course." The eye-glass glittered perspicuously. "He
underrated my intelligence; and what a violent scoundrel! The
existence of such a man in the time we live in is a scandal."

D'Alcacer retired, and, full of vague forebodings, tried in vain
for hours to interest himself in a book. Mr. Travers walked up
and down restlessly, trying to persuade himself that his
indignation was based on purely moral grounds. The glaring day,
like a mass of white-hot iron withdrawn from the fire, was losing
gradually its heat and its glare in a richer deepening of tone.
At the usual time two seamen, walking noiselessly aft in their
yachting shoes, rolled up in silence the quarter-deck screens;
and the coast, the shallows, the dark islets and the snowy
sandbanks uncovered thus day after day were seen once more in
their aspect of dumb watchfulness. The brig, swung end on in the
foreground, her squared yards crossing heavily the soaring
symmetry of the rigging, resembled a creature instinct with life,
with the power of springing into action lurking in the light
grace of its repose.

A pair of stewards in white jackets with brass buttons appeared
on deck and began to flit about without a sound, laying the table
for dinner on the flat top of the cabin skylight. The sun,
drifting away toward other lands, toward other seas, toward other
men; the sun, all red in a cloudless sky raked the yacht with a
parting salvo of crimson rays that shattered themselves into
sparks of fire upon the crystal and silver of the dinner-service,
put a short flame into the blades of knives, and spread a rosy
tint over the white of plates. A trail of purple, like a smear of
blood on a blue shield, lay over the sea.

On sitting down Mr. Travers alluded in a vexed tone to the
necessity of living on preserves, all the stock of fresh
provisions for the passage to Batavia having been already
consumed. It was distinctly unpleasant.

"I don't travel for my pleasure, however," he added; "and the
belief that the sacrifice of my time and comfort will be
productive of some good to the world at large would make up for
any amount of privations."

Mrs. Travers and d'Alcacer seemed unable to shake off a strong
aversion to talk, and the conversation, like an expiring breeze,
kept on dying out repeatedly after each languid gust. The large
silence of the horizon, the profound repose of all things
visible, enveloping the bodies and penetrating the souls with
their quieting influence, stilled thought as well as voice. For a
long time no one spoke. Behind the taciturnity of the masters the
servants hovered without noise.

Suddenly, Mr. Travers, as if concluding a train of thought,
muttered aloud:

"I own with regret I did in a measure lose my temper; but then
you will admit that the existence of such a man is a disgrace to
civilization."

This remark was not taken up and he returned for a time to the
nursing of his indignation, at the bottom of which, like a
monster in a fog, crept a bizarre feeling of rancour. He waved
away an offered dish.

"This coast," he began again, "has been placed under the sole
protection of Holland by the Treaty of 1820. The Treaty of 1820
creates special rights and obligations. . . ."

Both his hearers felt vividly the urgent necessity to hear no
more. D'Alcacer, uncomfortable on a campstool, sat stiff and
stared at the glass stopper of a carafe. Mrs. Travers turned a
little sideways and leaning on her elbow rested her head on the
palm of her hand like one thinking about matters of profound
import. Mr. Travers talked; he talked inflexibly, in a harsh
blank voice, as if reading a proclamation. The other two, as if
in a state of incomplete trance, had their ears assailed by
fragments of official verbiage.

"An international understanding--the duty to civilize--failed to
carry out--compact--Canning--" D'Alcacer became attentive for a
moment. "--not that this attempt, almost amusing in its
impudence, influences my opinion. I won't admit the possibility
of any violence being offered to people of our position. It is
the social aspect of such an incident I am desirous of
criticising."

Here d'Alcacer lost himself again in the recollection of Mrs.
Travers and Immada looking at each other--the beginning and the
end, the flower and the leaf, the phrase and the cry. Mr.
Travers' voice went on dogmatic and obstinate for a long time.
The end came with a certain vehemence.

"And if the inferior race must perish, it is a gain, a step
toward the perfecting of society which is the aim of progress."

He ceased. The sparks of sunset in crystal and silver had gone
out, and around the yacht the expanse of coast and Shallows
seemed to await, unmoved, the coming of utter darkness. The
dinner was over a long time ago and the patient stewards had been
waiting, stoical in the downpour of words like sentries under a
shower.

Mrs. Travers rose nervously and going aft began to gaze at the
coast. Behind her the sun, sunk already, seemed to force through
the mass of waters the glow of an unextinguishable fire, and
below her feet, on each side of the yacht, the lustrous sea, as
if reflecting the colour of her eyes, was tinged a sombre violet
hue.

D'Alcacer came up to her with quiet footsteps and for some time
they leaned side by side over the rail in silence. Then he
said--"How quiet it is!" and she seemed to perceive that the
quietness of that evening was more profound and more significant
than ever before. Almost without knowing it she murmured--"It's
like a dream." Another long silence ensued; the tranquillity of
the universe had such an August ampleness that the sounds
remained on the lips as if checked by the fear of profanation.
The sky was limpid like a diamond, and under the last gleams of
sunset the night was spreading its veil over the earth. There was
something precious and soothing in the beautifully serene end of
that expiring day, of the day vibrating, glittering and ardent,
and dying now in infinite peace, without a stir, without a
tremor, without a sigh--in the certitude of resurrection.

Then all at once the shadow deepened swiftly, the stars came out
in a crowd, scattering a rain of pale sparks upon the blackness
of the water, while the coast stretched low down, a dark belt
without a gleam. Above it the top-hamper of the brig loomed
indistinct and high.

Mrs. Travers spoke first.

"How unnaturally quiet! It is like a desert of land and water
without a living soul."

"One man at least dwells in it," said d'Alcacer, lightly, "and if
he is to be believed there are other men, full of evil
intentions."

"Do you think it is true?" Mrs. Travers asked.

Before answering d'Alcacer tried to see the expression of her
face but the obscurity was too profound already.

"How can one see a dark truth on such a dark night?" he said,
evasively. "But it is easy to believe in evil, here or anywhere
else."

She seemed to be lost in thought for a while.

"And that man himself?" she asked.

After some time d'Alcacer began to speak slowly. "Rough,
uncommon, decidedly uncommon of his kind. Not at all what Don
Martin thinks him to be. For the rest--mysterious to me. He is
YOUR countryman after all-- "

She seemed quite surprised by that view.

"Yes," she said, slowly. "But you know, I can not --what shall I
say?--imagine him at all. He has nothing in common with the
mankind I know. There is nothing to begin upon. How does such a
man live? What are his thoughts? His actions? His affections?
His--"

"His conventions," suggested d'Alcacer. "That would include
everything."

Mr. Travers appeared suddenly behind them with a glowing cigar in
his teeth. He took it between his fingers to declare with
persistent acrimony that no amount of "scoundrelly intimidation"
would prevent him from having his usual walk. There was about
three hundred yards to the southward of the yacht a sandbank
nearly a mile long, gleaming a silvery white in the darkness,
plumetted in the centre with a thicket of dry bushes that rustled
very loud in the slightest stir of the heavy night air. The day
after the stranding they had landed on it "to stretch their legs
a bit," as the sailing-master defined it, and every evening
since, as if exercising a privilege or performing a duty, the
three paced there for an hour backward and forward lost in dusky
immensity, threading at the edge of water the belt of damp sand,
smooth, level, elastic to the touch like living flesh and
sweating a little under the pressure of their feet.

This time d'Alcacer alone followed Mr. Travers. Mrs. Travers
heard them get into the yacht's smallest boat, and the
night-watchman, tugging at a pair of sculls, pulled them off to
the nearest point. Then the man returned. He came up the ladder
and she heard him say to someone on deck:

"Orders to go back in an hour."

His footsteps died out forward, and a somnolent, unbreathing
repose took possession of the stranded yacht.

VI

After a time this absolute silence which she almost could feel
pressing upon her on all sides induced in Mrs. Travers a state of
hallucination. She saw herself standing alone, at the end of
time, on the brink of days. All was unmoving as if the dawn would
never come, the stars would never fade, the sun would never rise
any more; all was mute, still, dead--as if the shadow of the
outer darkness, the shadow of the uninterrupted, of the
everlasting night that fills the universe, the shadow of the
night so profound and so vast that the blazing suns lost in it
are only like sparks, like pin-points of fire, the restless
shadow that like a suspicion of an evil truth darkens everything
upon the earth on its passage, had enveloped her, had stood
arrested as if to remain with her forever.

And there was such a finality in that illusion, such an accord
with the trend of her thought that when she murmured into the
darkness a faint "so be it" she seemed to have spoken one of
those sentences that resume and close a life.

As a young girl, often reproved for her romantic ideas, she had
dreams where the sincerity of a great passion appeared like the
ideal fulfilment and the only truth of life. Entering the world
she discovered that ideal to be unattainable because the world is
too prudent to be sincere. Then she hoped that she could find the
truth of life an ambition which she understood as a lifelong
devotion to some unselfish ideal. Mr. Travers' name was on men's
lips; he seemed capable of enthusiasm and of devotion; he
impressed her imagination by his impenetrability. She married
him, found him enthusiastically devoted to the nursing of his own
career, and had nothing to hope for now.

That her husband should be bewildered by the curious
misunderstanding which had taken place and also permanently
grieved by her disloyalty to his respectable ideals was only
natural. He was, however, perfectly satisfied with her beauty,
her brilliance, and her useful connections. She was admired, she
was envied; she was surrounded by splendour and adulation; the
days went on rapid, brilliant, uniform, without a glimpse of
sincerity or true passion, without a single true emotion --not
even that of a great sorrow. And swiftly and stealthily they had
led her on and on, to this evening, to this coast, to this sea,
to this moment of time and to this spot on the earth's surface
where she felt unerringly that the moving shadow of the unbroken
night had stood still to remain with her forever.

"So be it!" she murmured, resigned and defiant, at the mute and
smooth obscurity that hung before her eyes in a black curtain
without a fold; and as if in answer to that whisper a lantern was
run up to the foreyard-arm of the brig. She saw it ascend
swinging for a. short space, and suddenly remain motionless in
the air, piercing the dense night between the two vessels by its
glance of flame that strong and steady seemed, from afar, to fall
upon her alone.

Her thoughts, like a fascinated moth, went fluttering toward that
light--that man--that girl, who had known war, danger, seen death
near, had obtained evidently the devotion of that man. The
occurrences of the afternoon had been strange in themselves, but
what struck her artistic sense was the vigour of their
presentation. They outlined themselves before her memory with the
clear simplicity of some immortal legend. They were mysterious,
but she felt certain they were absolutely true. They embodied
artless and masterful feelings; such, no doubt, as had swayed
mankind in the simplicity of its youth. She envied, for a moment,
the lot of that humble and obscure sister. Nothing stood between
that girl and the truth of her sensations. She could be sincerely
courageous, and tender and passionate and--well--ferocious. Why
not ferocious? She could know the truth of terror--and of
affection, absolutely, without artificial trammels, without the
pain of restraint.

Thinking of what such life could be Mrs. Travers felt invaded by
that inexplicable exaltation which the consciousness of their
physical capacities so often gives to intellectual beings. She
glowed with a sudden persuasion that she also could be equal to
such an existence; and her heart was dilated with a momentary
longing to know the naked truth of things; the naked truth of
life and passion buried under the growth of centuries.

She glowed and, suddenly, she quivered with the shock of coming
to herself as if she had fallen down from a star. There was a
sound of rippling water and a shapeless mass glided out of the
dark void she confronted. A voice below her feet said:

"I made out your shape--on the sky." A cry of surprise expired on
her lips and she could only peer downward. Lingard, alone in the
brig's dinghy, with another stroke sent the light boat nearly
under the yacht's counter, laid his sculls in, and rose from the
thwart. His head and shoulders loomed up alongside and he had the
appearance of standing upon the sea. Involuntarily Mrs. Travers
made a movement of retreat.

"Stop," he said, anxiously, "don't speak loud. No one must know.
Where do your people think themselves, I wonder? In a dock at
home? And you--"

"My husband is not on board," she interrupted, hurriedly.

"I know."

She bent a little more over the rail.

"Then you are having us watched. Why?"

"Somebody must watch. Your people keep such a good
look-out--don't they? Yes. Ever since dark one of my boats has
been dodging astern here, in the deep water. I swore to myself I
would never see one of you, never speak to one of you here, that
I would be dumb, blind, deaf. And--here I am!"

Mrs. Travers' alarm and mistrust were replaced by an immense
curiosity, burning, yet quiet, too, as if before the inevitable
work of destiny. She looked downward at Lingard. His head was
bared, and, with one hand upon the ship's side, he seemed to be
thinking deeply.

"Because you had something more to tell us," Mrs. Travers
suggested, gently.

"Yes," he said in a low tone and without moving in the least.

"Will you come on board and wait?" she asked.

"Who? I!" He lifted his head so quickly as to startle her. "I
have nothing to say to him; and I'll never put my foot on board
this craft. I've been told to go. That's enough."

"He is accustomed to be addressed deferentially," she said after
a pause, "and you--"

"Who is he?" asked Lingard, simply.

These three words seemed to her to scatter her past in the
air--like smoke. They robbed all the multitude of mankind of
every vestige of importance. She was amazed to find that on this
night, in this place, there could be no adequate answer to the
searching naiveness of that question.

"I didn't ask for much," Lingard began again. "Did I? Only that
you all should come on board my brig for five days. That's all. .
. . Do I look like a liar? There are things I could not tell him.
I couldn't explain--I couldn't--not to him--to no man--to no man
in the world--"

His voice dropped.

"Not to myself," he ended as if in a dream.

"We have remained unmolested so long here," began Mrs. Travers a
little unsteadily, "that it makes it very difficult to believe in
danger, now. We saw no one all these days except those two people
who came for you. If you may not explain--"

"Of course, you can't be expected to see through a wall," broke
in Lingard. "This coast's like a wall, but I know what's on the
other side. . . . A yacht here, of all things that float! When I
set eyes on her I could fancy she hadn't been more than an hour
from home. Nothing but the look of her spars made me think of old
times. And then the faces of the chaps on board. I seemed to know
them all. It was like home coming to me when I wasn't thinking of
it. And I hated the sight of you all."

"If we are exposed to any peril," she said after a pause during
which she tried to penetrate the secret of passion hidden behind
that man's words, "it need not affect you. Our other boat is gone
to the Straits and effective help is sure to come very soon."

"Affect me! Is that precious watchman of yours coming aft? I
don't want anybody to know I came here again begging, even of
you. Is he coming aft? . . . Listen! I've stopped your other
boat."

His head and shoulders disappeared as though he had dived into a
denser layer of obscurity floating on the water. The watchman,
who had the intention to stretch himself in one of the deck
chairs, catching sight of the owner's wife, walked straight to
the lamp that hung under the ridge pole of the awning, and after
fumbling with it for a time went away forward with an indolent
gait.

"You dared!" Mrs. Travers whispered down in an intense tone; and
directly, Lingard's head emerged again below her with an upturned
face.

"It was dare--or give up. The help from the Straits would have
been too late anyhow if I hadn't the power to keep you safe; and
if I had the power I could see you through it--alone. I expected
to find a reasonable man to talk to. I ought to have known
better. You come from too far to understand these things. Well, I
dared; I've sent after your other boat a fellow who, with me at
his back, would try to stop the governor of the Straits himself.
He will do it. Perhaps it's done already. You have nothing to
hope for. But I am here. You said you believed I meant well--"

"Yes," she murmured.

"That's why I thought I would tell you everything. I had to begin
with this business about the boat. And what do you think of me
now? I've cut you off from the rest of the earth. You people
would disappear like a stone in the water. You left one foreign
port for another. Who's there to trouble about what became of
you? Who would know? Who could guess? It would be months before
they began to stir."

"I understand," she said, steadily, "we are helpless."

"And alone," he added.

After a pause she said in a deliberate, restrained voice:

"What does this mean? Plunder, captivity?"

"It would have meant death if I hadn't been here," he answered.

"But you have the power to--"

""Why, do you think, you are alive yet?" he cried. "Jorgenson has
been arguing with them on shore," he went on, more calmly, with a
swing of his arm toward where the night seemed darkest. "Do you
think he would have kept them back if they hadn't expected me
every day? His words would have been nothing without my fist."

She heard a dull blow struck on the side of the yacht and
concealed in the same darkness that wrapped the unconcern of the
earth and sea, the fury and the pain of hearts; she smiled above
his head, fascinated by the simplicity of images and expressions.

Lingard made a brusque movement, the lively little boat being
unsteady under his feet, and she spoke slowly, absently, as if
her thought had been lost in the vagueness of her sensations.

"And this--this--Jorgenson, you said? Who is he?"

"A man," he answered, "a man like myself."

"Like yourself?"

"Just like myself," he said with strange reluctance, as if
admitting a painful truth. "More sense, perhaps, but less luck.
Though, since your yacht has turned up here, I begin to think
that my luck is nothing much to boast of either."

"Is our presence here so fatal?"

"It may be death to some. It may be worse than death to me. And
it rests with you in a way. Think of that! I can never find such
another chance again. But that's nothing! A man who has saved my
life once and that I passed my word to would think I had thrown
him over. But that's nothing! Listen! As true as I stand here in
my boat talking to you, I believe the girl would die of grief."

"You love her," she said, softly.

"Like my own daughter," he cried, low.

Mrs. Travers said, "Oh!" faintly, and for a moment there was a
silence, then he began again:

"Look here. When I was a boy in a trawler, and looked at you
yacht people, in the Channel ports, you were as strange to me as
the Malays here are strange to you. I left home sixteen years ago
and fought my way all round the earth. I had the time to forget
where I began. What are you to me against these two? If I was to
die here on the spot would you care? No one would care at home.
No one in the whole world--but these two."

"What can I do?" she asked, and waited, leaning over.

He seemed to reflect, then lifting his head, spoke gently:

"Do you understand the danger you are in? Are you afraid?"

"I understand the expression you used, of course. Understand the
danger?" she went on. "No--decidedly no. And-- honestly--I am not
afraid."

"Aren't you?" he said in a disappointed voice. "Perhaps you don't
believe me? I believed you, though, when you said you were sure I
meant well. I trusted you enough to come here asking for your
help --telling you what no one knows."

"You mistake me," she said with impulsive earnestness. "This is
so extraordinarily unusual--sudden--outside my experience."

"Aye!" he murmured, "what would you know of danger and trouble?
You! But perhaps by thinking it over--"

"You want me to think myself into a fright!" Mrs. Travers laughed
lightly, and in the gloom of his thought this flash of joyous
sound was incongruous and almost terrible. Next moment the night
appeared brilliant as day, warm as sunshine; but when she ceased
the returning darkness gave him pain as if it had struck heavily
against his breast. "I don't think I could do that," she finished
in a serious tone.

"Couldn't you?" He hesitated, perplexed. "Things are bad enough
to make it no shame. I tell you," he said, rapidly, "and I am not
a timid man, I may not be able to do much if you people don't
help me."

"You want me to pretend I am alarmed?" she asked, quickly.

"Aye, to pretend--as well you may. It's a lot to ask of you--who
perhaps never had to make-believe a thing in your life--isn't
it?"

"It is," she said after a time.

The unexpected bitterness of her tone struck Lingard with dismay.

"Don't be offended," he entreated. "I've got to plan a way out of
this mess. It's no play either. Could you pretend?"

"Perhaps, if I tried very hard. But to what end?"

"You must all shift aboard the brig," he began, speaking quickly,
"and then we may get over this trouble without coming to blows.
Now, if you were to say that you wish it; that you feel unsafe in
the yacht--don't you see?"

"I see," she pronounced, thoughtfully.

"The brig is small but the cuddy is fit for a lady," went on
Lingard with animation.

"Has it not already sheltered a princess?" she commented, coolly.

"And I shall not intrude."

"This is an inducement."

"Nobody will dare to intrude. You needn't even see me."

"This is almost decisive, only--"

"I know my place."

"Only, I might not have the influence," she finished.

"That I can not believe," he said, roughly. "The long and the
short of it is you don't trust me because you think that only
people of your own condition speak the truth always."

"Evidently," she murmured.

"You say to yourself--here's a fellow deep in with pirates,
thieves, niggers--"

"To be sure--"

"A man I never saw the like before," went on Lingard, headlong,
"a--ruffian."

He checked himself, full of confusion. After a time he heard her
saying, calmly:

"You are like other men in this, that you get angry when you can
not have your way at once."

"I angry!" he exclaimed in deadened voice. "You do not
understand. I am thinking of you also--it is hard on me--"

"I mistrust not you, but my own power. You have produced an
unfortunate impression on Mr. Travers."

"Unfortunate impression! He treated me as if I had been a
long-shore loafer. Never mind that. He is your husband. Fear in
those you care for is hard to bear for any man. And so, he--"

"What Machiavellism!"

"Eh, what did you say?"

"I only wondered where you had observed that. On the sea?"

"Observed what?" he said, absently. Then pursuing his idea--"One
word from you ought to be enough."

"You think so?"

"I am sure of it. Why, even I, myself--"

"Of course," she interrupted. "But don't you think that after
parting with you on such--such--inimical terms, there would be a
difficulty in resuming relations?"

"A man like me would do anything for money--don't you see?"

After a pause she asked:

"And would you care for that argument to be used?"

"As long as you know better!"

His voice vibrated--she drew back disturbed, as if unexpectedly
he had touched her.

"What can there be at stake?" she began, wonderingly.

"A kingdom," said Lingard.

Mrs. Travers leaned far over the rail, staring, and their faces,
one above the other, came very close together.

"Not for yourself?" she whispered.

He felt the touch of her breath on his forehead and remained
still for a moment, perfectly still as if he did not intend to
move or speak any more.

"Those things," he began, suddenly, "come in your way, when you
don't think, and they get all round you before you know what you
mean to do. When I went into that bay in New Guinea I never
guessed where that course would take me to. I could tell you a
story. You would understand! You! You!"

He stammered, hesitated, and suddenly spoke, liberating the
visions of two years into the night where Mrs. Travers could
follow them as if outlined in words of fire.

VII

His tale was as startling as the discovery of a new world. She
was being taken along the boundary of an exciting existence, and
she looked into it through the guileless enthusiasm of the
narrator. The heroic quality of the feelings concealed what was
disproportionate and absurd in that gratitude, in that
friendship, in that inexplicable devotion. The headlong
fierceness of purpose invested his obscure design of conquest
with the proportions of a great enterprise. It was clear that no
vision of a subjugated world could have been more inspiring to
the most famous adventurer of history.

From time to time he interrupted himself to ask, confidently, as
if he had been speaking to an old friend, "What would you have
done?" and hurried on without pausing for approval.

It struck her that there was a great passion in all this, the
beauty of an implanted faculty of affection that had found
itself, its immediate need of an object and the way of expansion;
a tenderness expressed violently; a tenderness that could only be
satisfied by backing human beings against their own destiny.
Perhaps her hatred of convention, trammelling the frankness of
her own impulses, had rendered her more alert to perceive what is
intrinsically great and profound within the forms of human folly,
so simple and so infinitely varied according to the region of the
earth and to the moment of time.

What of it that the narrator was only a roving seaman; the
kingdom of the jungle, the men of the forest, the lives obscure!
That simple soul was possessed by the greatness of the idea;
there was nothing sordid in its flaming impulses. When she once
understood that, the story appealed to the audacity of her
thoughts, and she became so charmed with what she heard that she
forgot where she was. She forgot that she was personally close to
that tale which she saw detached, far away from her, truth or
fiction, presented in picturesque speech, real only by the
response of her emotion.

Lingard paused. In the cessation of the impassioned murmur she
began to reflect. And at first it was only an oppressive notion
of there being some significance that really mattered in this
man's story. That mattered to her. For the first time the shadow
of danger and death crossed her mind. Was that the significance?
Suddenly, in a flash of acute discernment, she saw herself
involved helplessly in that story, as one is involved in a
natural cataclysm.

He was speaking again. He had not been silent more than a minute.
It seemed to Mrs. Travers that years had elapsed, so different
now was the effect of his words. Her mind was agitated as if his
coming to speak and confide in her had been a tremendous
occurrence. It was a fact of her own existence; it was part of
the story also. This was the disturbing thought. She heard him
pronounce several names: Belarab, Daman, Tengga, Ningrat. These
belonged now to her life and she was appalled to find she was
unable to connect these names with any human appearance. They
stood out alone, as if written on the night; they took on a
symbolic shape; they imposed themselves upon her senses. She
whispered as if pondering: "Belarab, Daman, Ningrat," and these
barbarous sounds seemed to possess an exceptional energy, a fatal
aspect, the savour of madness.

"Not one of them but has a heavy score to settle with the whites.
What's that to me! I had somehow to get men who would fight. I
risked my life to get that lot. I made them promises which I
shall keep--or--! Can you see now why I dared to stop your boat?
I am in so deep that I care for no Sir John in the world. When I
look at the work ahead I care for nothing. I gave you one
chance--one good chance. That I had to do. No! I suppose I didn't
look enough of a gentleman. Yes! Yes! That's it. Yet I know what
a gentleman is. I lived with them for years. I chummed with them-
-yes--on gold-fields and in other places where a man has got to
show the stuff that's in him. Some of them write from home to me
here--such as you see me, because I--never mind! And I know what
a gentleman would do. Come! Wouldn't he treat a stranger fairly?
Wouldn't he remember that no man is a liar till you prove him so?
Wouldn't he keep his word wherever given? Well, I am going to do
that. Not a hair of your head shall be touched as long as I
live!"

She had regained much of her composure but at these words she
felt that staggering sense of utter insecurity which is given one
by the first tremor of an earthquake. It was followed by an
expectant stillness of sensations. She remained silent. He
thought she did not believe him.

"Come! What on earth do you think brought me here--to--to--talk
like this to you? There was Hassim--Rajah Tulla, I should
say--who was asking me this afternoon: 'What will you do now with
these, your people?' I believe he thinks yet I fetched you here
for some reason. You can't tell what crooked notion they will get
into their thick heads. It's enough to make one swear." He swore.
"My people! Are you? How much? Say--how much? You're no more mine
than I am yours. Would any of you fine folks at home face black
ruin to save a fishing smack's crew from getting drowned?"

Notwithstanding that sense of insecurity which lingered faintly
in her mind she had no image of death before her. She felt
intensely alive. She felt alive in a flush of strength, with an
impression of novelty as though life had been the gift of this
very moment. The danger hidden in the night gave no sign to
awaken her terror, but the workings of a human soul, simple and
violent, were laid bare before her and had the disturbing charm
of an unheard-of experience. She was listening to a man who
concealed nothing. She said, interrogatively:

"And yet you have come?"

"Yes," he answered, "to you--and for you only."

The flood tide running strong over the banks made a placid
trickling sound about the yacht's rudder.

"I would not be saved alone."

"Then you must bring them over yourself," he said in a sombre
tone. "There's the brig. You have me--my men--my guns. You know
what to do.

"I will try," she said.

"Very well. I am sorry for the poor devils forward there if you
fail. But of course you won't. Watch that light on the brig. I
had it hoisted on purpose. The trouble may be nearer than we
think. Two of my boats are gone scouting and if the news they
bring me is bad the light will be lowered. Think what that means.
And I've told you what I have told nobody. Think of my feelings
also. I told you because I--because I had to."

He gave a shove against the yacht's side and glided away from
under her eyes. A rippling sound died out.

She walked away from the rail. The lamp and the skylights shone
faintly along the dark stretch of the decks. This evening was
like the last--like all the evenings before.

"Is all this I have heard possible?" she asked herself. "No--but
it is true."

She sat down in a deck chair to think and found she could only
remember. She jumped up. She was sure somebody was hailing the
yacht faintly. Was that man hailing? She listened, and hearing
nothing was annoyed with herself for being haunted by a voice.

"He said he could trust me. Now, what is this danger? What is
danger?" she meditated.

Footsteps were coming from forward. The figure of the watchman
flitted vaguely over the gangway. He was whistling softly and
vanished. Hollow sounds in the boat were succeeded by a splash of
oars. The night swallowed these slight noises. Mrs. Travers sat
down again and found herself much calmer.

She had the faculty of being able to think her own thoughts--and
the courage. She could take no action of any kind till her
husband's return. Lingard's warnings were not what had impressed
her most. This man had presented his innermost self unclothed by
any subterfuge. There were in plain sight his desires, his
perplexities, affections, doubts, his violence, his folly; and
the existence they made up was lawless but not vile. She had too
much elevation of mind to look upon him from any other but a
strictly human standpoint. If he trusted her (how strange; why
should he? Was he wrong?) she accepted the trust with scrupulous
fairness. And when it dawned upon her that of all the men in the
world this unquestionably was the one she knew best, she had a
moment of wonder followed by an impression of profound sadness.
It seemed an unfortunate matter that concerned her alone.

Her thought was suspended while she listened attentively for the
return of the yacht's boat. She was dismayed at the task before
her. Not a sound broke the stillness and she felt as if she were
lost in empty space. Then suddenly someone amidships yawned
immensely and said: "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" A voice asked: "Ain't
they back yet?" A negative grunt answered.

Mrs. Travers found that Lingard was touching, because he could be
understood. How simple was life, she reflected. She was frank
with herself. She considered him apart from social organization.
She discovered he had no place in it. How delightful! Here was a
human being and the naked truth of things was not so very far
from her notwithstanding the growth of centuries. Then it
occurred to her that this man by his action stripped her at once
of her position, of her wealth, of her rank, of her past. "I am
helpless. What remains?" she asked herself. Nothing! Anybody
there might have suggested: "Your presence." She was too
artificial yet to think of her beauty; and yet the power of
personality is part of the naked truth of things.

She looked over her shoulder, and saw the light at the brig's
foreyard-arm burning with a strong, calm flame in the dust of
starlight suspended above the coast. She heard the heavy bump as
of a boat run headlong against the ladder. They were back! She
rose in sudden and extreme agitation. What should she say? How
much? How to begin? Why say anything? It would be absurd, like
talking seriously about a dream. She would not dare! In a moment
she was driven into a state of mind bordering on distraction. She
heard somebody run up the gangway steps. With the idea of gaining
time she walked rapidly aft to the taffrail. The light of the
brig faced her without a flicker, enormous amongst the suns
scattered in the immensity of the night.

She fixed her eyes on it. She thought: "I shan't tell him
anything. Impossible. No! I shall tell everything." She expected
every moment to hear her husband's voice and the suspense was
intolerable because she felt that then she must decide. Somebody
on deck was babbling excitedly. She devoutly hoped d'Alcacer
would speak first and thus put off the fatal moment. A voice said
roughly: "What's that?" And in the midst of her distress she
recognized Carter's voice, having noticed that young man who was
of a different stamp from the rest of the crew. She came to the
conclusion that the matter could be related jocularly, or--why
not pretend fear? At that moment the brig's yard-arm light she
was looking at trembled distinctly, and she was dumfounded as if
she had seen a commotion in the firmament. With her lips open for
a cry she saw it fall straight down several feet, flicker, and go
out. All perplexity passed from her mind. This first fact of the
danger gave her a thrill of quite a new emotion. Something had to
be done at once. For some remote reason she felt ashamed of her
hesitations.

She moved swiftly forward and under the lamp came face to face
with Carter who was coming aft. Both stopped, staring, the light
fell on their faces, and both were struck by each other's
expression. The four eyes shone wide.

"You have seen?" she asked, beginning to tremble.

"How do you know?" he said, at the same time, evidently
surprised.

Suddenly she saw that everybody was on deck.

"The light is down," she stammered.

"The gentlemen are lost," said Carter. Then he perceived she did
not seem to understand. "Kidnapped off the sandbank," he
continued, looking at her fixedly to see how she would take it.
She seemed calm. "Kidnapped like a pair of lambs! Not a squeak,"
he burst out with indignation. "But the sandbank is long and they
might have been at the other end. You were on deck, ma'am?" he
asked.

"Yes," she murmured. "In the chair here."

"We were all down below. I had to rest a little. When I came up
the watchman was asleep. He swears he wasn't, but I know better.
Nobody heard any noise, unless you did. But perhaps you were
asleep?" he asked, deferentially.

"Yes--no--I must have been," she said, faintly.

VIII

Lingard's soul was exalted by his talk with Mrs. Travers, by the
strain of incertitude and by extreme fatigue. On returning on
board he asked after Hassim and was told that the Rajah and his
sister had gone off in their canoe promising to return before
midnight. The boats sent to scout between the islets north and
south of the anchorage had not come back yet. He went into his
cabin and throwing himself on the couch closed his eyes thinking:
"I must sleep or I shall go mad."

At times he felt an unshaken confidence in Mrs. Travers--then he
remembered her face. Next moment the face would fade, he would
make an effort to hold on to the image, fail--and then become
convinced without the shadow of a doubt that he was utterly lost,
unless he let all these people be wiped off the face of the
earth.

"They all heard that man order me out of his ship," he thought,
and thereupon for a second or so he contemplated without
flinching the lurid image of a massacre. "And yet I had to tell
her that not a hair of her head shall be touched. Not a hair."

And irrationally at the recollection of these words there seemed
to be no trouble of any kind left in the world. Now and then,
however, there were black instants when from sheer weariness he
thought of nothing at all; and during one of these he fell
asleep, losing the consciousness of external things as suddenly
as if he had been felled by a blow on the head.

When he sat up, almost before he was properly awake, his first
alarmed conviction was that he had slept the night through. There
was a light in the cuddy and through the open door of his cabin
he saw distinctly Mrs. Travers pass out of view across the
lighted space.

"They did come on board after all," he thought--"how is it I
haven't been called!"

He darted into the cuddy. Nobody! Looking up at the clock in the
skylight he was vexed to see it had stopped till his ear caught
the faint beat of the mechanism. It was going then! He could not
have been asleep more than ten minutes. He had not been on board
more than twenty!

So it was only a deception; he had seen no one. And yet he
remembered the turn of the head, the line of the neck, the colour
of the hair, the movement of the passing figure. He returned
spiritlessly to his state-room muttering, "No more sleep for me
to-night," and came out directly, holding a few sheets of paper
covered with a high, angular handwriting.

This was Jorgenson's letter written three days before and
entrusted to Hassim. Lingard had read it already twice, but he
turned up the lamp a little higher and sat down to read it again.
On the red shield above his head the gilt sheaf of thunderbolts
darting between the initials of his name seemed to be aimed
straight at the nape of his neck as he sat with bared elbows
spread on the table, poring over the crumpled sheets. The letter
began:

Hassim and Immada are going out to-night to look for you. You are
behind your time and every passing day makes things worse.

Ten days ago three of Belarab's men, who had been collecting
turtles' eggs on the islets, came flying back with a story of a
ship stranded on the outer mudflats. Belarab at once forbade any
boat from leaving the lagoon. So far good. There was a great
excitement in the village. I judge it must be a schooner--
probably some fool of a trader. However, you will know all about
her when you read this. You may say I might have pulled out to
sea to have a look for myself. But besides Belarab's orders to
the contrary, which I would attend to for the sake of example,
all you are worth in this world, Tom, is here in the Emma, under
my feet, and I would not leave my charge even for half a day.
Hassim attended the council held every evening in the shed
outside Belarab's stockade. That holy man Ningrat was for looting
that vessel. Hassim reproved him saying that the vessel probably
was sent by you because no white men were known to come inside
the shoals. Belarab backed up Hassim. Ningrat was very angry and
reproached Belarab for keeping him, Ningrat, short of opium to
smoke. He began by calling him "O! son," and ended by shouting,
"O! you worse than an unbeliever!" There was a hullabaloo. The
followers of Tengga were ready to interfere and you know how it
is between Tengga and Belarab. Tengga always wanted to oust
Belarab, and his chances were getting pretty good before you
turned up and armed Belarab's bodyguard with muskets. However,
Hassim stopped that row, and no one was hurt that time. Next day,
which was Friday, Ningrat after reading the prayers in the mosque
talked to the people outside. He bleated and capered like an old
goat, prophesying misfortune, ruin, and extermination if these
whites were allowed to get away. He is mad but then they think
him a saint, and he had been fighting the Dutch for years in his
young days. Six of Belarab's guard marched down the village
street carrying muskets at full cock and the crowd cleared out.
Ningrat was spirited away by Tengga's men into their master's
stockade. If it was not for the fear of you turning up any moment
there would have been a party-fight that evening. I think it is a
pity Tengga is not chief of the land instead of Belarab. A brave
and foresighted man, however treacherous at heart, can always be
trusted to a certain extent. One can never get anything clear
from Belarab. Peace! Peace! You know his fad. And this fad makes
him act silly. The peace racket will get him into a row. It may
cost him his life in the end. However, Tengga does not feel
himself strong enough yet to act with his own followers only and
Belarab has, on my advice, disarmed all villagers. His men went
into the houses and took away by force all the firearms and as
many spears as they could lay hands on. The women screamed abuse
of course, but there was no resistance. A few men were seen
clearing out into the forest with their arms. Note this, for it
means there is another power beside Belarab's in the village: the
growing power of Tengga.

One morning--four days ago--I went to see Tengga. I found him by
the shore trimming a plank with a small hatchet while a slave
held an umbrella over his head. He is amusing himself in building
a boat just now. He threw his hatchet down to meet me and led me
by the hand to a shady spot. He told me frankly he had sent out
two good swimmers to observe the stranded vessel. These men stole
down the creek in a canoe and when on the sea coast swam from
sandbank to sandbank until they approached unobserved--I
think--to about fifty yards from that schooner What can that
craft be? I can't make it out. The men reported there were three
chiefs on board. One with a glittering eye, one a lean man in
white, and another without any hair on the face and dressed in a
different style. Could it be a woman? I don't know what to think.
I wish you were here. After a lot of chatter Tengga said: "Six
years ago I was ruler of a country and the Dutch drove me out.
The country was small but nothing is too small for them to take.
They pretended to give it back to my nephew--may he burn! I ran
away or they would have killed me. I am nothing here--but I
remember. These white people out there can not run away and they
are very few. There is perhaps a little to loot. I would give it
to my men who followed me in my calamity because I am their chief
and my father was the chief of their fathers." I pointed out the
imprudence of this. He said: "The dead do not show the way." To
this I remarked that the ignorant do not give information. Tengga
kept quiet for a while, then said: "We must not touch them
because their skin is like yours and to kill them would be wrong,
but at the bidding of you whites we may go and fight with people
of our own skin and our own faith--and that is good. I have
promised to Tuan Lingard twenty men and a prau to make war in
Wajo. The men are good and look at the prau; it is swift and
strong." I must say, Tom, the prau is the best craft of the kind
I have ever seen. I said you paid him well for the help. "And I
also would pay," says he, "if you let me have a few guns and a
little powder for my men. You and I shall share the loot of that
ship outside, and Tuan Lingard will not know. It is only a little
game. You have plenty of guns and powder under your care." He
meant in the Emma. On that I spoke out pretty straight and we got
rather warm until at last he gave me to understand that as he had
about forty followers of his own and I had only nine of Hassim's
chaps to defend the Emma with, he could very well go for me and
get the lot. "And then," says he, "I would be so strong that
everybody would be on my side." I discovered in the course of
further talk that there is a notion amongst many people that you
have come to grief in some way and won't show up here any more.
After this I saw the position was serious and I was in a hurry to
get back to the Emma, but pretending I did not care I smiled and
thanked Tengga for giving me warning of his intentions about me
and the Emma. At this he nearly choked himself with his betel
quid and fixing me with his little eyes, muttered: "Even a lizard
will give a fly the time to say its prayers." I turned my back on
him and was very thankful to get beyond the throw of a spear. I
haven't been out of the Emma since.

IX

The letter went on to enlarge on the intrigues of Tengga, the
wavering conduct of Belarab, and the state of the public mind. It
noted every gust of opinion and every event, with an earnestness
of belief in their importance befitting the chronicle of a crisis
in the history of an empire. The shade of Jorgenson had, indeed,
stepped back into the life of men. The old adventurer looked on
with a perfect understanding of the value of trifles, using his
eyes for that other man whose conscience would have the task to
unravel the tangle. Lingard lived through those days in the
Settlement and was thankful to Jorgenson; only as he lived not
from day to day but from sentence to sentence of the writing,
there was an effect of bewildering rapidity in the succession of
events that made him grunt with surprise sometimes or
growl--"What?" to himself angrily and turn back several lines or
a whole page more than once. Toward the end he had a heavy frown
of perplexity and fidgeted as he read:

--and I began to think I could keep things quiet till you came or
those wretched white people got their schooner off, when Sherif
Daman arrived from the north on the very day he was expected,
with two Illanun praus. He looks like an Arab. It was very
evident to me he can wind the two Illanun pangerans round his
little finger. The two praus are large and armed. They came up
the creek, flags and streamers flying, beating drums and gongs,
and entered the lagoon with their decks full of armed men
brandishing two-handed swords and sounding the war cry. It is a
fine force for you, only Belarab who is a perverse devil would
not receive Sherif Daman at once. So Daman went to see Tengga who
detained him a very long time. Leaving Tengga he came on board
the Emma, and I could see directly there was something up.

He began by asking me for the ammunition and weapons they are to
get from you, saying he was anxious to sail at once toward Wajo,
since it was agreed he was to precede you by a few days. I
replied that that was true enough but that I could not think of
giving him the powder and muskets till you came. He began to talk
about you and hinted that perhaps you will never come. "And no
matter," says he, "here is Rajah Hassim and the Lady Immada and
we would fight for them if no white man was left in the world.
Only we must have something to fight with." He pretended then to
forget me altogether and talked with Hassim while I sat
listening. He began to boast how well he got along the Bruni
coast. No Illanun prau had passed down that coast for years.

Immada wanted me to give the arms he was asking for. The girl is
beside herself with fear of something happening that would put a
stopper on the Wajo expedition. She has set her mind on getting
her country back. Hassim is very reserved but he is very anxious,
too. Daman got nothing from me, and that very evening the praus
were ordered by Belarab to leave the lagoon. He does not trust
the Illanuns--and small blame to him. Sherif Daman went like a
lamb. He has no powder for his guns. As the praus passed by the
Emma he shouted to me he was going to wait for you outside the
creek. Tengga has given him a man who would show him the place.
All this looks very queer to me.

Look out outside then. The praus are dodging amongst the islets.
Daman visits Tengga. Tengga called on me as a good friend to try
and persuade me to give Daman the arms and gunpowder he is so
anxious to get. Somehow or other they tried to get around
Belarab, who came to see me last night and hinted I had better do
so. He is anxious for these Illanuns to leave the neighbourhood.
He thinks that if they loot the schooner they will be off at
once. That's all he wants now. Immada has been to see Belarab's
women and stopped two nights in the stockade. Belarab's youngest
wife--he got married six weeks ago--is on the side of Tengga's
party because she thinks Belarab would get a share of the loot
and she got into her silly head there are jewels and silks in
that schooner. What between Tengga worrying him outside and the
women worrying him at home, Belarab had such a lively time of it
that he concluded he would go to pray at his father's tomb. So
for the last two days he has been away camping in that unhealthy
place. When he comes back he will be down with fever as sure as
fate and then he will be no good for anything. Tengga lights up
smoky fires often. Some signal to Daman. I go ashore with
Hassim's men and put them out. This is risking a fight every
time--for Tengga's men look very black at us. I don't know what
the next move may be. Hassim's as true as steel. Immada is very
unhappy. They will tell you many details I have no time to write.

The last page fluttered on the table out of Lingard's fingers. He
sat very still for a moment looking straight before him, then
went on deck.

"Our boats back yet?" he asked Shaw, whom he saw prowling on the
quarter-deck.

"No, sir, I wish they were. I am waiting for them to go and turn
in," answered the mate in an aggrieved manner.

"Lower that lantern forward there," cried Lingard, suddenly, in
Malay.

"This trade isn't fit for a decent man," muttered Shaw to
himself, and he moved away to lean on the rail, looking moodily
to seaward. After a while: "There seems to be commotion on board
that yacht," he said. "I see a lot of lights moving about her
decks. Anything wrong, do you think, sir?"

"No, I know what it is," said Lingard in a tone of elation. She
has done it! he thought.

He returned to the cabin, put away Jorgenson's letter and pulled
out the drawer of the table. It was full of cartridges. He took a
musket down, loaded it, then took another and another. He
hammered at the waddings with fierce joyousness. The ramrods rang
and jumped. It seemed to him he was doing his share of some work
in which that woman was playing her part faithfully. "She has
done it," he repeated, mentally. "She will sit in the cuddy. She
will sleep in my berth. Well, I'm not ashamed of the brig. By
heavens--no! I shall keep away: never come near them as I've
promised. Now there's nothing more to say. I've told her
everything at once. There's nothing more."

He felt a heaviness in his burning breast, in all his limbs as if
the blood in his veins had become molten lead.

"I shall get the yacht off. Three, four days--no, a week."

He found he couldn't do it under a week. It occurred to him he
would see her every day till the yacht was afloat. No, he
wouldn't intrude, but he was master and owner of the brig after
all. He didn't mean to skulk like a whipped cur about his own
decks.

"It'll be ten days before the schooner is ready. I'll take every
scrap of ballast out of her. I'll strip her--I'll take her lower
masts out of her, by heavens! I'll make sure. Then another week
to fit out--and--goodbye. Wish I had never seen them.
Good-bye--forever. Home's the place for them. Not for me. On
another coast she would not have listened. Ah, but she is a
woman--every inch of her. I shall shake hands. Yes. I shall take
her hand--just before she goes. Why the devil not? I am master
here after all--in this brig--as good as any one--by heavens,
better than any one--better than any one on earth."

He heard Shaw walk smartly forward above his head hailing:

"What's that--a boat?"

A voice answered indistinctly.

"One of my boats is back," thought Lingard. "News about Daman
perhaps. I don't care if he kicks. I wish he would. I would soon
show her I can fight as well as I can handle the brig. Two praus.
Only two praus. I wouldn't mind if there were twenty. I would
sweep 'em off the sea--I would blow 'em out of the water--I would
make the brig walk over them. 'Now,' I'd say to her, 'you who are
not afraid, look how it's done!'"

He felt light. He had the sensation of being whirled high in the
midst of an uproar and as powerless as a feather in a hurricane.
He shuddered profoundly. His arms hung down, and he stood before
the table staring like a man overcome by some fatal intelligence.

Shaw, going into the waist to receive what he thought was one of
the brig's boats, came against Carter making his way aft
hurriedly.

"Hullo! Is it you again?" he said, swiftly, barring the way.

"I come from the yacht," began Carter with some impatience.

"Where else could you come from?" said Shaw. "And what might you
want now?"

"I want to see your skipper."

"Well, you can't," declared Shaw, viciously. "He's turned in for
the night."

"He expects me," said Carter, stamping his foot. "I've got to
tell him what happened."

"Don't you fret yourself, young man," said Shaw in a superior
manner; "he knows all about it."

They stood suddenly silent in the dark. Carter seemed at a loss
what to do. Shaw, though surprised by it, enjoyed the effect he
had produced.

"Damn me, if I did not think so," murmured Carter to himself;
then drawling coolly asked--"And perhaps you know, too?"

"What do you think? Think I am a dummy here? I ain't mate of this
brig for nothing."

"No, you are not," said Carter with a certain bitterness of tone.
"People do all kinds of queer things for a living, and I am not
particular myself, but I would think twice before taking your
billet."

"What? What do you in-si-nu-ate. My billet? You ain't fit for it,
you yacht-swabbing brass-buttoned imposter."

"What's this? Any of our boats back?" asked Lingard from the
poop. "Let the seacannie in charge come to me at once."

"There's only a message from the yacht," began Shaw,
deliberately.

"Yacht! Get the deck lamps along here in the waist! See the
ladder lowered. Bear a hand, serang! Mr. Shaw! Burn the flare up
aft. Two of them! Give light to the yacht's boats that will be
coming alongside. Steward! Where's that steward? Turn him out
then."

Bare feet began to patter all round Carter. Shadows glided
swiftly.

"Are these flares coming? Where's the quartermaster on duty?"
shouted Lingard in English and Malay. "This way, come here! Put
it on a rocket stick--can't you? Hold over the side--thus! Stand
by with the lines for the boats forward there. Mr. Shaw--we want
more light!"

"Aye, aye, sir," called out Shaw, but he did not move, as if
dazed by the vehemence of his commander.

"That's what we want," muttered Carter under his breath.
"Imposter! What do you call yourself?" he said half aloud to
Shaw.

The ruddy glare of the flares disclosed Lingard from head to
foot, standing at the break of the poop. His head was bare, his
face, crudely lighted, had a fierce and changing expression in
the sway of flames.

"What can be his game?" thought Carter, impressed by the powerful
and wild aspect of that figure. "He's changed somehow since I saw
him first," he reflected. It struck him the change was serious,
not exactly for the worse, perhaps--and yet. . . . Lingard smiled
at him from the poop.

Carter went up the steps and without pausing informed him of what
had happened.

"Mrs. Travers told me to go to you at once. She's very upset as
you may guess," he drawled, looking Lingard hard in the face.
Lingard knitted his eyebrows. "The hands, too, are scared,"
Carter went on. "They fancy the savages, or whatever they may be
who stole the owner, are going to board the yacht every minute. I
don't think so myself but--"

"Quite right--most unlikely," muttered Lingard.

"Aye, I daresay you know all about it," continued Carter, coolly,
"the men are startled and no mistake, but I can't blame them very
much. There isn't enough even of carving knives aboard to go
round. One old signal gun! A poor show for better men than they."

"There's no mistake I suppose about this affair?" asked Lingard.

"Well, unless the gentlemen are having a lark with us at hide and
seek. The man says he waited ten minutes at the point, then
pulled slowly along the bank looking out, expecting to see them
walking back. He made the trunk of a tree apparently stranded on
the sand and as he was sculling past he says a man jumped up from
behind that log, flung a stick at him and went off running. He
backed water at once and began to shout, 'Are you there, sir?' No
one answered. He could hear the bushes rustle and some strange
noises like whisperings. It was very dark. After calling out
several times, and waiting on his oars, he got frightened and
pulled back to the yacht. That is clear enough. The only doubt in
my mind is if they are alive or not. I didn't let on to Mrs.
Travers. That's a kind of thing you keep to yourself, of course."

"I don't think they are dead," said Lingard, slowly, and as if
thinking of something else.

"Oh! If you say so it's all right," said Carter with
deliberation.

"What?" asked Lingard, absently; "fling a stick, did they? Fling
a spear!"

"That's it!" assented Carter, "but I didn't say anything. I only
wondered if the same kind of stick hadn't been flung at the
owner, that's all. But I suppose you know your business best,
Captain."

Lingard, grasping his whole beard, reflected profoundly, erect
and with bowed head in the glare of the flares.

"I suppose you think it's my doing?" he asked, sharply, without
looking up.

Carter surveyed him with a candidly curious gaze. "Well, Captain,
Mrs. Travers did let on a bit to me about our chief-officer's
boat. You've stopped it, haven't you? How she got to know God
only knows. She was sorry she spoke, too, but it wasn't so much
of news to me as she thought. I can put two and two together,
sometimes. Those rockets, last night, eh? I wished I had bitten
my tongue out before I told you about our first gig. But I was
taken unawares. Wasn't I? I put it to you: wasn't I? And so I
told her when she asked me what passed between you and me on
board this brig, not twenty-four hours ago. Things look different
now, all of a sudden. Enough to scare a woman, but she is the
best man of them all on board. The others are fairly off the
chump because it's a bit dark and something has happened they
ain't used to. But she has something on her mind. I can't make
her out!" He paused, wriggled his shoulders slightly--"No more
than I can make you out," he added.

"That's your trouble, is it?" said Lingard, slowly.

"Aye, Captain. Is it all clear to you? Stopping boats, kidnapping
gentlemen. That's fun in a way, only--I am a youngster to
you--but is it all clear to you? Old Robinson wasn't particular,
you know, and he--"

"Clearer than daylight," cried Lingard, hotly. "I can't give
up--"

He checked himself. Carter waited. The flare bearers stood rigid,
turning their faces away from the flame, and in the play of
gleams at its foot the mast near by, like a lofty column,
ascended in the great darkness. A lot of ropes ran up slanting
into a dark void and were lost to sight, but high aloft a brace
block gleamed white, the end of a yard-arm could be seen
suspended in the air and as if glowing with its own light. The
sky had clouded over the brig without a breath of wind.

"Give up," repeated Carter with an uneasy shuffle of feet.

"Nobody," finished Lingard. "I can't. It's as clear as daylight.
I can't! No! Nothing!"

He stared straight out afar, and after looking at him Carter felt
moved by a bit of youthful intuition to murmur, "That's bad," in
a tone that almost in spite of himself hinted at the dawning of a
befogged compassion.

He had a sense of confusion within him, the sense of mystery
without. He had never experienced anything like it all the time
when serving with old Robinson in the Ly-e-moon. And yet he had
seen and taken part in some queer doings that were not clear to
him at the time. They were secret but they suggested something
comprehensible. This affair did not. It had somehow a subtlety
that affected him. He was uneasy as if there had been a breath of
magic on events and men giving to this complication of a yachting
voyage a significance impossible to perceive, but felt in the
words, in the gestures, in the events, which made them all
strangely, obscurely startling.

He was not one who could keep track of his sensations, and
besides he had not the leisure. He had to answer Lingard's
questions about the people of the yacht. No, he couldn't say Mrs.
Travers was what you may call frightened. She seemed to have
something in her mind. Oh, yes! The chaps were in a funk. Would
they fight? Anybody would fight when driven to it, funk or no
funk. That was his experience. Naturally one liked to have
something better than a handspike to do it with. Still-- In the
pause Carter seemed to weigh with composure the chances of men
with handspikes.

"What do you want to fight us for?" he asked, suddenly.

Lingard started.

"I don't," he said; "I wouldn't be asking you."

"There's no saying what you would do, Captain," replied Carter;
"it isn't twenty-four hours since you wanted to shoot me."

"I only said I would, rather than let you go raising trouble for
me," explained Lingard.

"One night isn't like another," mumbled Carter, "but how am I to
know? It seems to me you are making trouble for yourself as fast
as you can."

"Well, supposing I am," said Lingard with sudden gloominess.
"Would your men fight if I armed them properly?"

"What--for you or for themselves?" asked Carter.

"For the woman," burst out Lingard. "You forget there's a woman
on board. I don't care THAT for their carcases."

Carter pondered conscientiously.

"Not to-night," he said at last. "There's one or two good men
amongst them, but the rest are struck all of a heap. Not
to-night. Give them time to get steady a bit if you want them to
fight."

He gave facts and opinions with a mixture of loyalty and
mistrust. His own state puzzled him exceedingly. He couldn't make
out anything, he did not know what to believe and yet he had an
impulsive desire, an inspired desire to help the man. At times it
appeared a necessity --at others policy; between whiles a great
folly, which perhaps did not matter because he suspected himself
of being helpless anyway. Then he had moments of anger. In those
moments he would feel in his pocket the butt of a loaded pistol.
He had provided himself with the weapon, when directed by Mrs.
Travers to go on board the brig.

"If he wants to interfere with me, I'll let drive at him and take
my chance of getting away," he had explained hurriedly.

He remembered how startled Mrs. Travers looked. Of course, a
woman like that--not used to hear such talk. Therefore it was no
use listening to her, except for good manners' sake. Once bit
twice shy. He had no mind to be kidnapped, not he, nor bullied
either.

"I can't let him nab me, too. You will want me now, Mrs.
Travers," he had said; "and I promise you not to fire off the old
thing unless he jolly well forces me to."

He was youthfully wise in his resolution not to give way to her
entreaties, though her extraordinary agitation did stagger him
for a moment. When the boat was already on its way to the brig,
he remembered her calling out after him:

"You must not! You don't understand."

Her voice coming faintly in the darkness moved him, it resembled
so much a cry of distress.

"Give way, boys, give way," he urged his men.

He was wise, resolute, and he was also youthful enough to almost
wish it should "come to it." And with foresight he even
instructed the boat's crew to keep the gig just abaft the main
rigging of the brig.

"When you see me drop into her all of a sudden, shove off and
pull for dear life."

Somehow just then he was not so anxious for a shot, but he held
on with a determined mental grasp to his fine resolution, lest it
should slip away from him and perish in a sea of doubts.

"Hadn't I better get back to the yacht?" he asked, gently.

Getting no answer he went on with deliberation:

"Mrs. Travers ordered me to say that no matter how this came
about she is ready to trust you. She is waiting for some kind of
answer, I suppose."

"Ready to trust me," repeated Lingard. His eyes lit up fiercely.

Every sway of flares tossed slightly to and fro the massy shadows
of the main deck, where here and there the figure of a man could
be seen standing very still with a dusky face and glittering
eyeballs.

Carter stole his hand warily into his breast pocket:

"Well, Captain," he said. He was not going to be bullied, let the
owner's wife trust whom she liked.

"Have you got anything in writing for me there?" asked Lingard,
advancing a pace, exultingly.

Carter, alert, stepped back to keep his distance. Shaw stared
from the side; his rubicund cheeks quivered, his round eyes
seemed starting out of his head, and his mouth was open as though
he had been ready to choke with pent-up curiosity, amazement, and
indignation.

"No! Not in writing," said Carter, steadily and low.

Lingard had the air of being awakened by a shout. A heavy and
darkening frown seemed to fall out of the night upon his forehead
and swiftly passed into the night again, and when it departed it
left him so calm, his glance so lucid, his mien so composed that
it was difficult to believe the man's heart had undergone within
the last second the trial of humiliation and of danger. He smiled
sadly:

"Well, young man," he asked with a kind of good-humoured
resignation, "what is it you have there? A knife or a pistol?"

"A pistol," said Carter. "Are you surprised, Captain?" He spoke
with heat because a sense of regret was stealing slowly within
him, as stealthily, as irresistibly as the flowing tide. "Who
began these tricks?" He withdrew his hand, empty, and raised his
voice. "You are up to something I can't make out. You--you are
not straight."

The flares held on high streamed right up without swaying, and in
that instant of profound calm the shadows on the brig's deck
became as still as the men.

"You think not?" said Lingard, thoughtfully.

Carter nodded. He resented the turn of the incident and the
growing impulse to surrender to that man.

"Mrs. Travers trusts me though," went on Lingard with gentle
triumph as if advancing an unanswerable argument.

"So she says," grunted Carter; "I warned her. She's a baby.
They're all as innocent as babies there. And you know it. And I
know it. I've heard of your kind. You would dump the lot of us
overboard if it served your turn. That's what I think."

"And that's all."

Carter nodded slightly and looked away. There was a silence.
Lingard's eyes travelled over the brig. The lighted part of the
vessel appeared in bright and wavering detail walled and canopied
by the night. He felt a light breath on his face. The air was
stirring, but the Shallows, silent and lost in the darkness, gave
no sound of life.

This stillness oppressed Lingard. The world of his endeavours and
his hopes seemed dead, seemed gone. His desire existed homeless
in the obscurity that had devoured his corner of the sea, this
stretch of the coast, his certitude of success. And here in the
midst of what was the domain of his adventurous soul there was a
lost youngster ready to shoot him on suspicion of some
extravagant treachery. Came ready to shoot! That's good, too! He
was too weary to laugh--and perhaps too sad. Also the danger of
the pistol-shot, which he believed real--the young are
rash--irritated him. The night and the spot were full of
contradictions. It was impossible to say who in this shadowy
warfare was to be an enemy, and who were the allies. So close
were the contacts issuing from this complication of a yachting
voyage, that he seemed to have them all within his breast.

"Shoot me! He is quite up to that trick--damn him. Yet I would
trust him sooner than any man in that yacht."

Such were his thoughts while he looked at Carter, who was biting
his lips, in the vexation of the long silence. When they spoke
again to each other they talked soberly, with a sense of relief,
as if they had come into cool air from an overheated room and
when Carter, dismissed, went into his boat, he had practically
agreed to the line of action traced by Lingard for the crew of
the yacht. He had agreed as if in implicit confidence. It was one
of the absurdities of the situation which had to be accepted and
could never be understood.

"Do I talk straight now?" had asked Lingard.

"It seems straight enough," assented Carter with an air of
reserve; "I will work with you so far anyhow."

"Mrs. Travers trusts me," remarked Lingard again.

"By the Lord Harry!" cried Carter, giving way suddenly to some
latent conviction. "I was warning her against you. Say, Captain,
you are a devil of a man. How did you manage it?"

"I trusted her," said Lingard.

"Did you?" cried the amazed Carter. "When? How? Where--"

"You know too much already," retorted Lingard, quietly. "Waste no
time. I will be after you."

Carter whistled low.

"There's a pair of you I can't make out," he called back,
hurrying over the side.

Shaw took this opportunity to approach. Beginning with
hesitation: "A word with you, sir," the mate went on to say he
was a respectable man. He delivered himself in a ringing,
unsteady voice. He was married, he had children, he abhorred
illegality. The light played about his obese figure, he had flung
his mushroom hat on the deck, he was not afraid to speak the
truth. The grey moustache stood out aggressively, his glances
were uneasy; he pressed his hands to his stomach convulsively,
opened his thick, short arms wide, wished it to be understood he
had been chief-officer of home ships, with a spotless character
and he hoped "quite up to his work." He was a peaceable man, none
more; disposed to stretch a point when it "came to a difference
with niggers of some kind--they had to be taught manners and
reason" and he was not averse at a pinch to--but here were white
people--gentlemen, ladies, not to speak of the crew. He had never
spoken to a superior like this before, and this was prudence, his
conviction, a point of view, a point of principle, a conscious
superiority and a burst of resentment hoarded through years
against all the successive and unsatisfactory captains of his
existence. There never had been such an opportunity to show he
could not be put upon. He had one of them on a string and he was
going to lead him a dance. There was courage, too, in it, since
he believed himself fallen unawares into the clutches of a
particularly desperate man and beyond the reach of law.

A certain small amount of calculation entered the audacity of his
remonstrance. Perhaps--it flashed upon him--the yacht's gentry
will hear I stood up for them. This could conceivably be of
advantage to a man who wanted a lift in the world. "Owner of a
yacht--badly scared--a gentleman--money nothing to him."
Thereupon Shaw declared with heat that he couldn't be an
accessory either after or before the fact. Those that never went
home--who had nothing to go to perhaps--he interjected,
hurriedly, could do as they liked. He couldn't. He had a wife, a
family, a little house--paid for--with difficulty. He followed
the sea respectably out and home, all regular, not vagabonding
here and there, chumming with the first nigger that came along
and laying traps for his betters.

One of the two flare bearers sighed at his elbow, and shifted his
weight to the other foot.

These two had been keeping so perfectly still that the movement
was as startling as if a statue had changed its pose. After
looking at the offender with cold malevolence, Shaw went on to
speak of law-courts, of trials, and of the liberty of the
subject; then he pointed out the certitude and the inconvenience
of being found out, affecting for the moment the
dispassionateness of wisdom.

"There will be fifteen years in gaol at the end of this job for
everybody," said Shaw, "and I have a boy that don't know his
father yet. Fine things for him to learn when he grows up. The
innocent are dead certain here to catch it along with you. The
missus will break her heart unless she starves first. Home sold
up."

He saw a mysterious iniquity in a dangerous relation to himself
and began to lose his head. What he really wanted was to have his
existence left intact, for his own cherishing and pride. It was a
moral aspiration, but in his alarm the native grossness of his
nature came clattering out like a devil out of a trap. He would
blow the gaff, split, give away the whole show, he would back up
honest people, kiss the book, say what he thought, let all the
world know . . . and when he paused to draw breath, all around
him was silent and still. Before the impetus of that respectable
passion his words were scattered like chaff driven by a gale and
rushed headlong into the night of the Shallows. And in the great
obscurity, imperturbable, it heard him say he "washed his hands
of everything."

"And the brig?" asked Lingard, suddenly.

Shaw was checked. For a second the seaman in him instinctively
admitted the claim of the ship.

"The brig. The brig. She's right enough," he mumbled. He had
nothing to say against the brig--not he. She wasn't like the big
ships he was used to, but of her kind the best craft he ever. . .
. And with a brusque return upon himself, he protested that he
had been decoyed on board under false pretences. It was as bad as
being shanghaied when in liquor. It was--upon his soul. And into
a craft next thing to a pirate! That was the name for it or his
own name was not Shaw. He said this glaring owlishly. Lingard,
perfectly still and mute, bore the blows without a sign.

The silly fuss of that man seared his very soul. There was no end
to this plague of fools coming to him from the forgotten ends of
the earth. A fellow like that could not be told. No one could be
told. Blind they came and blind they would go out. He admitted
reluctantly, but without doubt, that as if pushed by a force from
outside he would have to try and save two of them. To this end he
foresaw the probable need of leaving his brig for a time. He
would have to leave her with that man. The mate. He had engaged
him himself--to make his insurance valid--to be able sometimes to
speak--to have near him. Who would have believed such a fool-man
could exist on the face of the sea! Who? Leave the brig with him.
The brig!

Ever since sunset, the breeze kept off by the heat of the day had
been trying to re-establish in the darkness its sway over the
Shoals. Its approaches had been heard in the night, its patient
murmurs, its foiled sighs; but now a surprisingly heavy puff came
in a free rush as if, far away there to the northward, the last
defence of the calm had been victoriously carried. The flames
borne down streamed bluishly, horizontal and noisy at the end of
tall sticks, like fluttering pennants; and behold, the shadows on
the deck went mad and jostled each other as if trying to escape
from a doomed craft, the darkness, held up dome-like by the
brilliant glare, seemed to tumble headlong upon the brig in an
overwhelming downfall, the men stood swaying as if ready to fall
under the ruins of a black and noiseless disaster. The blurred
outlines of the brig, the masts, the rigging, seemed to shudder
in the terror of coming extinction--and then the darkness leaped
upward again, the shadows returned to their places, the men were
seen distinct, swarthy, with calm faces, with glittering
eyeballs. The destruction in the breath had passed, was gone.

A discord of three voices raised together in a drawling wail
trailed on the sudden immobility of the air.

"Brig ahoy! Give us a rope!"

The first boat-load from the yacht emerged floating slowly into
the pool of purple light wavering round the brig on the black
water. Two men squeezed in the bows pulled uncomfortably; in the
middle, on a heap of seamen's canvas bags, another sat, insecure,
propped with both arms, stiff-legged, angularly helpless. The
light from the poop brought everything out in lurid detail, and
the boat floating slowly toward the brig had a suspicious and
pitiful aspect. The shabby load lumbering her looked somehow as
if it had been stolen by those men who resembled castaways. In
the sternsheets Carter, standing up, steered with his leg. He had
a smile of youthful sarcasm.

"Here they are!" he cried to Lingard. "You've got your own way,
Captain. I thought I had better come myself with the first
precious lot--"

"Pull around the stern. The brig's on the swing," interrupted
Lingard.

"Aye, aye! We'll try not to smash the brig. We would be lost
indeed if--fend off there, John; fend off, old reliable, if you
care a pin for your salty hide. I like the old chap," he said,
when he stood by Lingard's side looking down at the boat which
was being rapidly cleared by whites and Malays working shoulder
to shoulder in silence. "I like him. He don't belong to that
yachting lot either. They picked him up on the road somewhere.
Look at the old dog--carved out of a ship's timber--as talkative
as a fish--grim as a gutted wreck. That's the man for me. All the
others there are married, or going to be, or ought to be, or
sorry they ain't. Every man jack of them has a petticoat in tow--
dash me! Never heard in all my travels such a jabber about wives
and kids. Hurry up with your dunnage--below there! Aye! I had no
difficulty in getting them to clear out from the yacht. They
never saw a pair of gents stolen before--you understand. It upset
all their little notions of what a stranding means, hereabouts.
Not that mine aren't mixed a bit, too--and yet I've seen a thing
or two."

His excitement was revealed in this boyish impulse to talk.

"Look," he said, pointing at the growing pile of bags and bedding
on the brig's quarter-deck. "Look. Don't they mean to sleep
soft--and dream of home--maybe. Home. Think of that, Captain.
These chaps can't get clear away from it. It isn't like you and
me--"

Lingard made a movement.

"I ran away myself when so high. My old man's a Trinity pilot.
That's a job worth staying at home for. Mother writes sometimes,
but they can't miss me much. There's fourteen of us
altogether--eight at home yet. No fear of the old country ever
getting undermanned--let die who must. Only let it be a fair
game, Captain. Let's have a fair show."

Lingard assured him briefly he should have it. That was the very
reason he wanted the yacht's crew in the brig, he added. Then
quiet and grave he inquired whether that pistol was still in
Carter's pocket.

"Never mind that," said the young man, hurriedly. "Remember who
began. To be shot at wouldn't rile me so much--it's being
threatened, don't you see, that was heavy on my chest. Last night
is very far off though--and I will be hanged if I know what I
meant exactly when I took the old thing from its nail. There.
More I can't say till all's settled one way or another. Will that
do?"

Flushing brick red, he suspended his judgment and stayed his hand
with the generosity of youth.

. . . . . . .

Apparently it suited Lingard to be reprieved in that form. He
bowed his head slowly. It would do. To leave his life to that
youngster's ignorance seemed to redress the balance of his mind
against a lot of secret intentions. It was distasteful and bitter
as an expiation should be. He also held a life in his hand; a
life, and many deaths besides, but these were like one single
feather in the scales of his conscience. That he should feel so
was unavoidable because his strength would at no price permit
itself to be wasted. It would not be--and there was an end of it.
All he could do was to throw in another risk into the sea of
risks. Thus was he enabled to recognize that a drop of water in
the ocean makes a great difference. His very desire, unconquered,
but exiled, had left the place where he could constantly hear its
voice. He saw it, he saw himself, the past, the future, he saw it
all, shifting and indistinct like those shapes the strained eye
of a wanderer outlines in darker strokes upon the face of the
night.

X

When Lingard went to his boat to follow Carter, who had gone back
to the yacht, Wasub, mast and sail on shoulder, preceded him down
the ladder. The old man leaped in smartly and busied himself in
getting the dinghy ready for his commander.

In that little boat Lingard was accustomed to traverse the
Shallows alone. She had a short mast and a lug-sail, carried two
easily, floated in a few inches of water. In her he was
independent of a crew, and, if the wind failed, could make his
way with a pair of sculls taking short cuts over shoal places.
There were so many islets and sandbanks that in case of sudden
bad weather there was always a lee to be found, and when he
wished to land he could pull her up a beach, striding ahead,
painter in hand, like a giant child dragging a toy boat. When the
brig was anchored within the Shallows it was in her that he
visited the lagoon. Once, when caught by a sudden freshening of
the sea-breeze, he had waded up a shelving bank carrying her on
his head and for two days they had rested together on the sand,
while around them the shallow waters raged lividly, and across
three miles of foam the brig would time after time dissolve in
the mist and re-appear distinct, nodding her tall spars that
seemed to touch a weeping sky of lamentable greyness.

Whenever he came into the lagoon tugging with bare arms,
Jorgenson, who would be watching the entrance of the creek ever
since a muffled detonation of a gun to seaward had warned him of
the brig's arrival on the Shore of Refuge, would mutter to
himself--"Here's Tom coming in his nutshell." And indeed she was
in shape somewhat like half a nutshell and also in the colour of
her dark varnished planks. The man's shoulders and head rose high
above her gunwales; loaded with Lingard's heavy frame she would
climb sturdily the steep ridges, slide squatting into the hollows
of the sea, or, now and then, take a sedate leap over a short
wave. Her behaviour had a stout trustworthiness about it, and she
reminded one of a surefooted mountain-pony carrying over
difficult ground a rider much bigger than himself.

Wasub wiped the thwarts, ranged the mast and sail along the side,
shipped the rowlocks. Lingard looked down at his old servant's
spare shoulders upon which the light from above fell unsteady but
vivid. Wasub worked for the comfort of his commander and his
singleminded absorption in that task flashed upon Lingard the
consolation of an act of friendliness. The elderly Malay at last
lifted his head with a deferential murmur; his wrinkled old face
with half a dozen wiry hairs pendulous at each corner of the dark
lips expressed a kind of weary satisfaction, and the slightly
oblique worn eyes stole a discreet upward glance containing a
hint of some remote meaning. Lingard found himself compelled by
the justice of that obscure claim to murmur as he stepped into
the boat:

"These are times of danger."

He sat down and took up the sculls. Wasub held on to the gunwale
as to a last hope of a further confidence. He had served in the
brig five years. Lingard remembered that very well. This aged
figure had been intimately associated with the brig's life and
with his own, appearing silently ready for every incident and
emergency in an unquestioning expectation of orders; symbolic of
blind trust in his strength, of an unlimited obedience to his
will. Was it unlimited?

"We shall require courage and fidelity," added Lingard, in a
tentative tone.

"There are those who know me," snapped the old man, readily, as
if the words had been waiting for a long time. "Observe, Tuan. I
have filled with fresh water the little breaker in the bows."

"I know you, too," said Lingard.

"And the wind--and the sea," ejaculated the serang, jerkily.
"These also are faithful to the strong. By Allah! I who am a
pilgrim and have listened to words of wisdom in many places, I
tell you, Tuan, there is strength in the knowledge of what is
hidden in things without life, as well as in the living men.
Will Tuan be gone long?"

"I come back in a short time--together with the rest of the
whites from over there. This is the beginning of many stratagems.
Wasub! Daman, the son of a dog, has suddenly made prisoners two
of my own people. My face is made black."

"Tse! Tse! What ferocity is that! One should not offer shame to a
friend or to a friend's brother lest revenge come sweeping like a
flood. Yet can an Illanun chief be other than tyrannical? My old
eyes have seen much but they never saw a tiger change its
stripes. Ya-wa! The tiger can not. This is the wisdom of us
ignorant Malay men. The wisdom of white Tuans is great. They
think that by the power of many speeches the tiger may--" He
broke off and in a crisp, busy tone said: "The rudder dwells
safely under the aftermost seat should Tuan be pleased to sail
the boat. This breeze will not die away before sunrise." Again
his voice changed as if two different souls had been flitting in
and out of his body. "No, no, kill the tiger and then the stripes
may be counted without fear--one by one, thus."

He pointed a frail brown finger and, abruptly, made a mirthless
dry sound as if a rattle had been sprung in his throat.

"The wretches are many," said Lingard.

"Nay, Tuan. They follow their great men even as we in the brig
follow you. That is right."

Lingard reflected for a moment.

"My men will follow me then," he said.

"They are poor calashes without sense," commented Wasub with
pitying superiority. "Some with no more comprehension than men of
the bush freshly caught. There is Sali, the foolish son of my
sister and by your great favour appointed to mind the tiller of
this ship. His stupidity is extreme, but his eyes are
good--nearly as good as mine that by praying and much exercise
can see far into the night."

Lingard laughed low and then looked earnestly at the serang.
Above their heads a man shook a flare over the side and a thin
shower of sparks floated downward and expired before touching the
water.

"So you can see in the night, O serang! Well, then, look and
speak. Speak! Fight--or no fight? Weapons or words? Which folly?
Well, what do you see?"

"A darkness, a darkness," whispered Wasub at last in a frightened
tone. "There are nights--" He shook his head and muttered. "Look.
The tide has turned. Ya, Tuan. The tide has turned."

Lingard looked downward where the water could be seen, gliding
past the ship's side, moving smoothly, streaked with lines of
froth, across the illumined circle thrown round the brig by the
lights on her poop. Air bubbles sparkled, lines of darkness,
ripples of glitter appeared, glided, went astern without a
splash, without a trickle, without a plaint, without a break. The
unchecked gentleness of the flow captured the eye by a subtle
spell, fastened insidiously upon the mind a disturbing sense of
the irretrievable. The ebbing of the sea athwart the lonely sheen
of flames resembled the eternal ebb-tide of time; and when at
last Lingard looked up, the knowledge of that noiseless passage
of the waters produced on his mind a bewildering effect. For a
moment the speck of light lost in vast obscurity the brig, the
boat, the hidden coast, the Shallows, the very walls and roof of
darkness--the seen and the unseen alike seemed to be gliding
smoothly onward through the enormous gloom of space. Then, with a
great mental effort, he brought everything to a sudden
standstill; and only the froth and bubbles went on streaming past
ceaselessly, unchecked by the power of his will.

"The tide has turned--you say, serang? Has it--? Well, perhaps it
has, perhaps it has," he finished, muttering to himself.

"Truly it has. Can not Tuan see it run under his own eyes?" said
Wasub with an alarmed earnestness. "Look. Now it is in my mind
that a prau coming from amongst the southern islands, if steered
cunningly in the free set of the current, would approach the bows
of this, our brig, drifting silently as a shape without a
substance."

"And board suddenly--is that it?" said Lingard.

"Daman is crafty and the Illanuns are very bloodthirsty. Night is
nothing to them. They are certainly valorous. Are they not born
in the midst of fighting and are they not inspired by the evil of
their hearts even before they can speak? And their chiefs would
be leading them while you, Tuan, are going from us even now--"

"You don't want me to go?" asked Lingard.

For a time Wasub listened attentively to the profound silence.

"Can we fight without a leader?" he began again. "It is the
belief in victory that gives courage. And what would poor
calashes do, sons of peasants and fishermen, freshly
caught--without knowledge? They believe in your strength--and in
your power--or else--Will those whites that came so suddenly
avenge you? They are here like fish within the stakes. Ya-wa! Who
will bring the news and who will come to find the truth and
perchance to carry off your body? You go alone, Tuan!"

"There must be no fighting. It would be a calamity," insisted
Lingard. "There is blood that must not be spilt."

"Hear, Tuan!" exclaimed Wasub with heat. "The waters are running
out now." He punctuated his speech by slight jerks at the dinghy.
"The waters go and at the appointed time they shall return. And
if between their going and coming the blood of all the men in the
world were poured into it, the sea would not rise higher at the
full by the breadth of my finger nail."

"But the world would not be the same. You do not see that,
serang. Give the boat a good shove."

"Directly," said the old Malay and his face became impassive.
"Tuan knows when it is best to go, and death sometimes retreats
before a firm tread like a startled snake. Tuan should take a
follower with him, not a silly youth, but one who has lived--who
has a steady heart--who would walk close behind watchfully --and
quietly. Yes. Quietly and with quick eyes--like mine-- perhaps
with a weapon--I know how to strike."

Lingard looked at the wrinkled visage very near his own and into
the peering old eyes. They shone strangely. A tense eagerness was
expressed in the squatting figure leaning out toward him. On the
other side, within reach of his arm, the night stood like a wall
-discouraging--opaque--impenetrable. No help would avail. The
darkness he had to combat was too impalpable to be cleft by a
blow--too dense to be pierced by the eye; yet as if by some
enchantment in the words that made this vain offer of fidelity,
it became less overpowering to his sight, less crushing to his
thought. He had a moment of pride which soothed his heart for the
space of two beats. His unreasonable and misjudged heart,
shrinking before the menace of failure, expanded freely with a
sense of generous gratitude. In the threatening dimness of his
emotions this man's offer made a point of clearness, the glimmer
of a torch held aloft in the night. It was priceless, no doubt,
but ineffectual; too small, too far, too solitary. It did not
dispel the mysterious obscurity that had descended upon his
fortunes so that his eyes could no longer see the work of his
hands. The sadness of defeat pervaded the world.

"And what could you do, O Wasub?" he said.

"I could always call out--'Take care, Tuan.'"

"And then for these charm-words of mine. Hey? Turn danger aside?
What? But perchance you would die all the same. Treachery is a
strong magic, too--as you said."

"Yes, indeed! The order might come to your servant. But I--Wasub-
-the son of a free man, a follower of Rajahs, a fugitive, a
slave, a pilgrim--diver for pearls, serang of white men's ships,
I have had too many masters. Too many. You are the last." After a
silence he said in an almost indifferent voice: "If you go, Tuan,
let us go together."

For a time Lingard made no sound.

"No use," he said at last. "No use, serang. One life is enough to
pay for a man's folly--and you have a household."

"I have two--Tuan; but it is a long time since I sat on the
ladder of a house to talk at ease with neighbours. Yes. Two
households; one in--" Lingard smiled faintly. "Tuan, let me
follow you."

"No. You have said it, serang--I am alone. That is true, and
alone I shall go on this very night. But first I must bring all
the white people here. Push."

"Ready, Tuan? Look out!"

Wasub's body swung over the sea with extended arms. Lingard
caught up the sculls, and as the dinghy darted away from the
brig's side he had a complete view of the lighted poop--Shaw
leaning massively over the taffrail in sulky dejection, the flare
bearers erect and rigid, the heads along the rail, the eyes
staring after him above the bulwarks. The fore-end of the brig
was wrapped in a lurid and sombre mistiness; the sullen mingling
of darkness and of light; her masts pointing straight up could be
tracked by torn gleams and vanished above as if the trucks had
been tall enough to pierce the heavy mass of vapours motionless
overhead. She was beautifully precious. His loving eyes saw her
floating at rest in a wavering halo, between an invisible sky and
an invisible sea, like a miraculous craft suspended in the air.
He turned his head away as if the sight had been too much for him
at the moment of separation, and, as soon as his little boat had
passed beyond the limit of the light thrown upon the water, he
perceived very low in the black void of the west the stern
lantern of the yacht shining feebly like a star about to set,
unattainable, infinitely remote--belonging to another universe.

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 crosslegged 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, bottlewasher. 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.

PART V. THE POINT OF HONOUR AND THE POINT OF PASSION

I

"May I come in?"

"Yes," said a voice within. "The door is open." It had a wooden
latch. Mr. Travers lifted it while the voice of his wife
continued as he entered. "Did you imagine I had locked myself in?
Did you ever know me lock myself in?"

Mr. Travers closed the door behind him. "No, it has never come to
that," he said in a tone that was not conciliatory. In that place
which was a room in a wooden hut and had a square opening without
glass but with a half-closed shutter he could not distinguish his
wife very well at once. She was sitting in an armchair and what
he could see best was her fair hair all loose over the back of
the chair. There was a moment of silence. The measured footsteps
of two men pacing athwart the quarter-deck of the dead ship Emma
commanded by the derelict shade of Jorgenson could be heard
outside.

Jorgenson, on taking up his dead command, had a house of thin
boards built on the after deck for his own accommodation and that
of Lingard during his flying visits to the Shore of Refuge. A
narrow passage divided it in two and Lingard's side was furnished
with a camp bedstead, a rough desk, and a rattan armchair. On one
of his visits Lingard had brought with him a black seaman's chest
and left it there. Apart from these objects and a small
looking-glass worth about half a crown and nailed to the wall
there was nothing else in there whatever. What was on Jorgenson's
side of the deckhouse no one had seen, but from external evidence
one could infer the existence of a set of razors.

The erection of that primitive deckhouse was a matter of
propriety rather than of necessity. It was proper that the white
men should have a place to themselves on board, but Lingard was
perfectly accurate when he told Mrs. Travers that he had never
slept there once. His practice was to sleep on deck. As to
Jorgenson, if he did sleep at all he slept very little. It might
have been said that he haunted rather than commanded the Emma.
His white form flitted here and there in the night or stood for
hours, silent, contemplating the sombre glimmer of the lagoon.
Mr. Travers' eyes accustomed gradually to the dusk of the place
could now distinguish more of his wife's person than the great
mass of honey-coloured hair. He saw her face, the dark eyebrows
and her eyes that seemed profoundly black in the half light. He
said:

"You couldn't have done so here. There is neither lock nor bolt."

"Isn't there? I didn't notice. I would know how to protect myself
without locks and bolts."

"I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Travers in a sullen tone and
fell silent again surveying the woman in the chair. "Indulging
your taste for fancy dress," he went on with faint irony.

Mrs. Travers clasped her hands behind her head. The wide sleeves
slipping back bared her arms to her shoulders. She was wearing a
Malay thin cotton jacket, cut low in the neck without a collar
and fastened with wrought silver clasps from the throat downward.
She had replaced her yachting skirt by a blue check sarong
embroidered with threads of gold. Mr. Travers' eyes travelling
slowly down attached themselves to the gleaming instep of an
agitated foot from which hung a light leather sandal.

"I had no clothes with me but what I stood in," said Mrs.
Travers. "I found my yachting costume too heavy. It was
intolerable. I was soaked in dew when I arrived. So when these
things were produced for my inspection. . . ."

"By enchantment," muttered Mr. Travers in a tone too heavy for
sarcasm.

"No. Out of that chest. There are very fine stuffs there."

"No doubt," said Mr. Travers. "The man wouldn't be above
plundering the natives. . . ." He sat down heavily on the chest.
"A most appropriate costume for this farce," he continued. "But
do you mean to wear it in open daylight about the decks?"

"Indeed I do," said Mrs. Travers. "D'Alcacer has seen me already
and he didn't seem shocked."

"You should," said Mr. Travers, "try to get yourself presented
with some bangles for your ankles so that you may jingle as you
walk."

"Bangles are not necessities," said Mrs. Travers in a weary tone
and with the fixed upward look of a person unwilling to
relinquish her dream. Mr. Travers dropped the subject to ask:

"And how long is this farce going to last?"

Mrs. Travers unclasped her hands, lowered her glance, and changed
her whole pose in a moment.

"What do you mean by farce? What farce?"

"The one which is being played at my expense."

"You believe that?"

"Not only believe. I feel deeply that it is so. At my expense.
It's a most sinister thing," Mr. Travers pursued, still with
downcast eyes and in an unforgiving tone. "I must tell you that
when I saw you in that courtyard in a crowd of natives and
leaning on that man's arm, it gave me quite a shock."

"Did I, too, look sinister?" said Mrs. Travers, turning her head
slightly toward her husband. "And yet I assure you that I was
glad, profoundly glad, to see you safe from danger for a time at
least. To gain time is everything. . . ."

"I ask myself," Mr. Travers meditated aloud, "was I ever in
danger? Am I safe now? I don't know. I can't tell. No! All this
seems an abominable farce."

There was that in his tone which made his wife continue to look
at him with awakened interest. It was obvious that he suffered
from a distress which was not the effect of fear; and Mrs.
Travers' face expressed real concern till he added in a freezing
manner: "The question, however, is as to your discretion."

She leaned back again in the chair and let her hands rest quietly
in her lap. "Would you have preferred me to remain outside, in
the yacht, in the near neighbourhood of these wild men who
captured you? Or do you think that they, too, were got up to
carry on a farce?"

"Most decidedly." Mr. Travers raised his head, though of course
not his voice. "You ought to have remained in the yacht amongst
white men, your servants, the sailing-master, the crew whose duty
it was to. . . . Who would have been ready to die for you."

"I wonder why they should have--and why I should have asked them
for that sacrifice. However, I have no doubt they would have
died. Or would you have preferred me to take up my quarters on
board that man's brig? We were all fairly safe there. The real
reason why I insisted on coming in here was to be nearer to
you--to see for myself what could be or was being done. . . . But
really if you want me to explain my motives then I may just as
well say nothing. I couldn't remain outside for days without
news, in a state of horrible doubt. We couldn't even tell whether
you and d'Alcacer were still alive till we arrived here. You
might have been actually murdered on the sandbank, after Rajah
Hassim and that girl had gone away; or killed while going up the
river. And I wanted to know at once, as soon as possible. It was
a matter of impulse. I went off in what I stood in without
delaying a moment."

"Yes," said Mr. Travers. "And without even thinking of having a
few things put up for me in a bag. No doubt you were in a state
of excitement. Unless you took such a tragic view that it seemed
to you hardly worth while to bother about my clothes."

"It was absolutely the impulse of the moment. I could have done
nothing else. Won't you give me credit for it?"

Mr. Travers raised his eyes again to his wife's face. He saw it
calm, her attitude reposeful. Till then his tone had been
resentful, dull, without sarcasm. But now he became slightly
pompous.

"No. As a matter of fact, as a matter of experience, I can't
credit you with the possession of feelings appropriate to your
origin, social position, and the ideas of the class to which you
belong. It was the heaviest disappointment of my life. I had made
up my mind not to mention it as long as I lived. This, however,
seems an occasion which you have provoked yourself. It isn't at
all a solemn occasion. I don't look upon it as solemn at all.
It's very disagreeable and humiliating. But it has presented
itself. You have never taken a serious interest in the activities
of my life which of course are its distinction and its value. And
why you should be carried away suddenly by a feeling toward the
mere man I don't understand."

"Therefore you don't approve," Mrs. Travers commented in an even
tone. "But I assure you, you may safely. My feeling was of the
most conventional nature, exactly as if the whole world were
looking on. After all, we are husband and wife. It's eminently
fitting that I should be concerned about your fate. Even the man
you distrust and dislike so much (the warmest feeling, let me
tell you, that I ever saw you display) even that man found my
conduct perfectly proper. His own word. Proper. So eminently
proper that it altogether silenced his objections."

Mr. Travers shifted uneasily on his seat.

"It's my belief, Edith, that if you had been a man you would have
led a most irregular life. You would have been a frank
adventurer. I mean morally. It has been a great grief to me. You
have a scorn in you for the serious side of life, for the ideas
and the ambitions of the social sphere to which you belong."

He stopped because his wife had clasped again her hands behind
her head and was no longer looking at him.

"It's perfectly obvious," he began again. "We have been living
amongst most distinguished men and women and your attitude to
them has been always so--so negative! You would never recognize
the importance of achievements, of acquired positions. I don't
remember you ever admiring frankly any political or social
success. I ask myself what after all you could possibly have
expected from life."

"I could never have expected to hear such a speech from you. As
to what I did expect! . . . I must have been very stupid."

"No, you are anything but that," declared Mr. Travers,
conscientiously. "It isn't stupidity." He hesitated for a moment.
"It's a kind of wilfulness, I think. I preferred not to think
about this grievous difference in our points of view, which, you
will admit, I could not have possibly foreseen before we. . . ."

A sort of solemn embarrassment had come over Mr. Travers. Mrs.
Travers, leaning her chin on the palm of her hand, stared at the
bare matchboard side of the hut.

"Do you charge me with profound girlish duplicity?" she asked,
very softly.

The inside of the deckhouse was full of stagnant heat perfumed by
a slight scent which seemed to emanate from the loose mass of
Mrs. Travers' hair. Mr. Travers evaded the direct question which
struck him as lacking fineness even to the point of impropriety.

"I must suppose that I was not in the calm possession of my
insight and judgment in those days," he said. "I --I was not in a
critical state of mind at the time," he admitted further; but
even after going so far he did not look up at his wife and
therefore missed something like the ghost of a smile on Mrs.
Travers' lips. That smile was tinged with scepticism which was
too deep-seated for anything but the faintest expression.
Therefore she said nothing, and Mr. Travers went on as if
thinking aloud:

"Your conduct was, of course, above reproach; but you made for
yourself a detestable reputation of mental superiority, expressed
ironically. You inspired mistrust in the best people. You were
never popular."

"I was bored," murmured Mrs. Travers in a reminiscent tone and
with her chin resting in the hollow of her hand.

Mr. Travers got up from the seaman's chest as unexpectedly as if
he had been stung by a wasp, but, of course, with a much slower
and more solemn motion.

"The matter with you, Edith, is that at heart you are perfectly
primitive." Mrs. Travers stood up, too, with a supple, leisurely
movement, and raising her hands to her hair turned half away with
a pensive remark:

"Imperfectly civilized."

"Imperfectly disciplined," corrected Mr. Travers after a moment
of dreary meditation.

She let her arms fall and turned her head.

"No, don't say that," she protested with strange earnestness. "I
am the most severely disciplined person in the world. I am
tempted to say that my discipline has stopped at nothing short of
killing myself. I suppose you can hardly understand what I mean."

Mr. Travers made a slight grimace at the floor.

"I shall not try," he said. "It sounds like something that a
barbarian, hating the delicate complexities and the restraints of
a nobler life, might have said. From you it strikes me as wilful
bad taste. . . . I have often wondered at your tastes. You have
always liked extreme opinions, exotic costumes, lawless
characters, romantic personalities--like d'Alcacer . . ."

"Poor Mr. d'Alcacer," murmured Mrs. Travers.

"A man without any ideas of duty or usefulness," said Mr.
Travers, acidly. "What are you pitying him for?"

"Why! For finding himself in this position out of mere
good-nature. He had nothing to expect from joining our voyage, no
advantage for his political ambitions or anything of the kind. I
suppose you asked him on board to break our tete-a-tete which
must have grown wearisome to you."

"I am never bored," declared Mr. Travers. "D'Alcacer seemed glad
to come. And, being a Spaniard, the horrible waste of time cannot
matter to him in the least."

"Waste of time!" repeated Mrs. Travers, indignantly.

"He may yet have to pay for his good nature with his life."

Mr. Travers could not conceal a movement of anger.

"Ah! I forgot those assumptions," he said between his clenched
teeth. "He is a mere Spaniard. He takes this farcical conspiracy
with perfect nonchalance. Decayed races have their own
philosophy."

"He takes it with a dignity of his own."

"I don't know what you call his dignity. I should call it lack of
self-respect."

"Why? Because he is quiet and courteous, and reserves his
judgment. And allow me to tell you, Martin, that you are not
taking our troubles very well."

"You can't expect from me all those foreign affectations. I am
not in the habit of compromising with my feelings."

Mrs. Travers turned completely round and faced her husband. "You
sulk," she said. . . . Mr. Travers jerked his head back a little
as if to let the word go past.--"I am outraged," he declared.
Mrs. Travers recognized there something like real suffering.--"I
assure you," she said, seriously (for she was accessible to
pity), "I assure you that this strange Lingard has no idea of
your importance. He doesn't know anything of your social and
political position and still less of your great ambitions." Mr.
Travers listened with some attention.--"Couldn't you have
enlightened him?" he asked.--"It would have been no use; his mind
is fixed upon his own position and upon his own sense of power.
He is a man of the lower classes. . . ."--"He is a brute," said
Mr. Travers, obstinately, and for a moment those two looked
straight into each other's eyes.--"Oh," said Mrs. Travers,
slowly, "you are determined not to compromise with your
feelings!" An undertone of scorn crept into her voice. "But
shall I tell you what I think? I think," and she advanced her
head slightly toward the pale, unshaven face that confronted her
dark eyes, "I think that for all your blind scorn you judge the
man well enough to feel that you can indulge your indignation
with perfect safety. Do you hear? With perfect safety!" Directly
she had spoken she regretted these words. Really it was
unreasonable to take Mr. Travers' tricks of character more
passionately on this spot of the Eastern Archipelago full of
obscure plots and warring motives than in the more artificial
atmosphere of the town. After all what she wanted was simply to
save his life, not to make him understand anything. Mr. Travers
opened his mouth and without uttering a word shut it again. His
wife turned toward the looking-glass nailed to the wall. She
heard his voice behind her.

"Edith, where's the truth in all this?"

She detected the anguish of a slow mind with an instinctive dread
of obscure places wherein new discoveries can be made. She looked
over her shoulder to say:

"It's on the surface, I assure you. Altogether on the surface."

She turned again to the looking-glass where her own face met her
with dark eyes and a fair mist of hair above the smooth forehead;
but her words had produced no soothing effect.

"But what does it mean?" cried Mr. Travers. "Why doesn't the
fellow apologize? Why are we kept here? Are we being kept here?
Why don't we get away? Why doesn't he take me back on board my
yacht? What does he want from me? How did he procure our release
from these people on shore who he says intended to cut our
throats? Why did they give us up to him instead?"

Mrs. Travers began to twist her hair on her head.

"Matters of high policy and of local politics. Conflict of
personal interests, mistrust between the parties, intrigues of
individuals--you ought to know how that sort of thing works. His
diplomacy made use of all that. The first thing to do was not to
liberate you but to get you into his keeping. He is a very great
man here and let me tell you that your safety depends on his
dexterity in the use of his prestige rather than on his power
which he cannot use. If you would let him talk to you I am sure
he would tell you as much as it is possible for him to disclose."

"I don't want to be told about any of his rascalities. But
haven't you been taken into his confidence?"

"Completely," admitted Mrs. Travers, peering into the small
looking-glass.

"What is the influence you brought to bear upon this man? It
looks to me as if our fate were in your hands."

"Your fate is not in my hands. It is not even in his hands. There
is a moral situation here which must be solved."

"Ethics of blackmail," commented Mr. Travers with unexpected
sarcasm. It flashed through his wife's mind that perhaps she
didn't know him so well as she had supposed. It was as if the
polished and solemn crust of hard proprieties had cracked
slightly, here and there, under the strain, disclosing the mere
wrongheadedness of a common mortal. But it was only manner that
had cracked a little; the marvellous stupidity of his conceit
remained the same. She thought that this discussion was perfectly
useless, and as she finished putting up her hair she said: "I
think we had better go on deck now."

"You propose to go out on deck like this?" muttered Mr. Travers
with downcast eyes.

"Like this? Certainly. It's no longer a novelty. Who is going to
be shocked?"

Mr. Travers made no reply. What she had said of his attitude was
very true. He sulked at the enormous offensiveness of men,
things, and events; of words and even of glances which he seemed
to feel physically resting on his skin like a pain, like a
degrading contact. He managed not to wince. But he sulked. His
wife continued, "And let me tell you that those clothes are fit
for a princess--I mean they are of the quality, material and
style custom prescribes for the highest in the land, a
far-distant land where I am informed women rule as much as the
men. In fact they were meant to be presented to an actual
princess in due course. They were selected with the greatest care
for that child Immada. Captain Lingard. . . ."

Mr. Travers made an inarticulate noise partaking of a groan and a
grunt.

"Well, I must call him by some name and this I thought would be
the least offensive for you to hear. After all, the man exists.
But he is known also on a certain portion of the earth's surface
as King Tom. D'Alcacer is greatly taken by that name. It seems to
him wonderfully well adapted to the man, in its familiarity and
deference. And if you prefer. . . ."

"I would prefer to hear nothing," said Mr. Travers, distinctly.
"Not a single word. Not even from you, till I am a free agent
again. But words don't touch me. Nothing can touch me; neither
your sinister warnings nor the moods of levity which you think
proper to display before a man whose life, according to you,
hangs on a thread."

"I never forget it for a moment," said Mrs. Travers. "And I not
only know that it does but I also know the strength of the
thread. It is a wonderful thread. You may say if you like it has
been spun by the same fate which made you what you are."

Mr. Travers felt awfully offended. He had never heard anybody,
let alone his own self, addressed in such terms. The tone seemed
to question his very quality. He reflected with shocked amazement
that he had lived with that woman for eight years! And he said to
her gloomily:

"You talk like a pagan."

It was a very strong condemnation which apparently Mrs. Travers
had failed to hear for she pursued with animation:

"But really, you can't expect me to meditate on it all the time
or shut myself up here and mourn the circumstances from morning
to night. It would be morbid. Let us go on deck."

"And you look simply heathenish in this costume," Mr. Travers
went on as though he had not been interrupted, and with an accent
of deliberate disgust.

Her heart was heavy but everything he said seemed to force the
tone of levity on to her lips. "As long as I don't look like a
guy," she remarked, negligently, and then caught the direction of
his lurid stare which as a matter of fact was fastened on her
bare feet. She checked herself, "Oh, yes, if you prefer it I will
put on my stockings. But you know I must be very careful of them.
It's the only pair I have here. I have washed them this morning
in that bathroom which is built over the stern. They are now
drying over the rail just outside. Perhaps you will be good
enough to pass them to me when you go on deck."

Mr. Travers spun round and went on deck without a word. As soon
as she was alone Mrs. Travers pressed her hands to her temples, a
gesture of distress which relieved her by its sincerity. The
measured footsteps of two men came to her plainly from the deck,
rhythmic and double with a suggestion of tranquil and friendly
intercourse. She distinguished particularly the footfalls of the
man whose life's orbit was most remote from her own. And yet the
orbits had cut! A few days ago she could not have even conceived
of his existence, and now he was the man whose footsteps, it
seemed to her, her ears could single unerringly in the tramp of a
crowd. It was, indeed, a fabulous thing. In the half light of her
over-heated shelter she let an irresolute, frightened smile pass
off her lips before she, too, went on deck.

II

An ingeniously constructed framework of light posts and thin
laths occupied the greater part of the deck amidships of the
Emma. The four walls of that airy structure were made of muslin.
It was comparatively lofty. A door-like arrangement of light
battens filled with calico was further protected by a system of
curtains calculated to baffle the pursuit of mosquitoes that
haunted the shores of the lagoon in great singing clouds from
sunset till sunrise. A lot of fine mats covered the deck space
within the transparent shelter devised by Lingard and Jorgenson
to make Mrs. Travers' existence possible during the time when the
fate of the two men, and indeed probably of everybody else on
board the Emma, had to hang in the balance. Very soon Lingard's
unbidden and fatal guests had learned the trick of stepping in
and out of the place quickly. Mr. d'Alcacer performed the feat
without apparent haste, almost nonchalantly, yet as well as
anybody. It was generally conceded that he had never let a
mosquito in together with himself. Mr. Travers dodged in and out
without grace and was obviously much irritated at the necessity.
Mrs. Travers did it in a manner all her own, with marked
cleverness and an unconscious air. There was an improvised table
in there and some wicker armchairs which Jorgenson had produced
from somewhere in the depths of the ship. It was hard to say what
the inside of the Emma did not contain. It was crammed with all
sorts of goods like a general store. That old hulk was the
arsenal and the war-chest of Lingard's political action; she was
stocked with muskets and gunpowder, with bales of longcloth, of
cotton prints, of silks; with bags of rice and currency brass
guns. She contained everything necessary for dealing death and
distributing bribes, to act on the cupidity and upon the fears of
men, to march and to organize, to feed the friends and to combat
the enemies of the cause. She held wealth and power in her
flanks, that grounded ship that would swim no more, without masts
and with the best part of her deck cumbered by the two structures
of thin boards and of transparent muslin.

Within the latter lived the Europeans, visible in the daytime to
the few Malays on board as if through a white haze. In the
evening the lighting of the hurricane lamps inside turned them
into dark phantoms surrounded by a shining mist, against which
the insect world rushing in its millions out of the forest on the
bank was baffled mysteriously in its assault. Rigidly enclosed by
transparent walls, like captives of an enchanted cobweb, they
moved about, sat, gesticulated, conversed publicly during the
day; and at night when all the lanterns but one were
extinguished, their slumbering shapes covered all over by white
cotton sheets on the camp bedsteads, which were brought in every
evening, conveyed the gruesome suggestion of dead bodies reposing
on stretchers. The food, such as it was, was served within that
glorified mosquito net which everybody called the "Cage" without
any humorous intention. At meal times the party from the yacht
had the company of Lingard who attached to this ordeal a sense of
duty performed at the altar of civility and conciliation. He
could have no conception how much his presence added to the
exasperation of Mr. Travers because Mr. Travers' manner was too
intensely consistent to present any shades. It was determined by
an ineradicable conviction that he was a victim held to ransom on
some incomprehensible terms by an extraordinary and outrageous
bandit. This conviction, strung to the highest pitch, never left
him for a moment, being the object of indignant meditation to his
mind, and even clinging, as it were, to his very body. It lurked
in his eyes, in his gestures, in his ungracious mutters, and in
his sinister silences. The shock to his moral being had ended by
affecting Mr. Travers' physical machine. He was aware of hepatic
pains, suffered from accesses of somnolence and suppressed gusts
of fury which frightened him secretly. His complexion had
acquired a yellow tinge, while his heavy eyes had become
bloodshot because of the smoke of the open wood fires during his
three days' detention inside Belarab's stockade. His eyes had
been always very sensitive to outward conditions. D'Alcacer's
fine black eyes were more enduring and his appearance did not
differ very much from his ordinary appearance on board the yacht.
He had accepted with smiling thanks the offer of a thin blue
flannel tunic from Jorgenson. Those two men were much of the same
build, though of course d'Alcacer, quietly alive and spiritually
watchful, did not resemble Jorgenson, who, without being exactly
macabre, behaved more like an indifferent but restless corpse.
Those two could not be said to have ever conversed together.
Conversation with Jorgenson was an impossible thing. Even Lingard
never attempted the feat. He propounded questions to Jorgenson
much as a magician would interrogate an evoked shade, or gave him
curt directions as one would make use of some marvellous
automaton. And that was apparently the way in which Jorgenson
preferred to be treated. Lingard's real company on board the Emma
was d'Alcacer. D'Alcacer had met Lingard on the easy terms of a
man accustomed all his life to good society in which the very
affectations must be carried on without effort. Whether
affectation, or nature, or inspired discretion, d'Alcacer never
let the slightest curiosity pierce the smoothness of his level,
grave courtesy lightened frequently by slight smiles which often
had not much connection with the words he uttered, except that
somehow they made them sound kindly and as it were tactful. In
their character, however, those words were strictly neutral.

The only time when Lingard had detected something of a deeper
comprehension in d'Alcacer was the day after the long
negotiations inside Belarab's stockade for the temporary
surrender of the prisoners. That move had been suggested to him,
exactly as Mrs. Travers had told her husband, by the rivalries of
the parties and the state of public opinion in the Settlement
deprived of the presence of the man who, theoretically at least,
was the greatest power and the visible ruler of the Shore of
Refuge. Belarab still lingered at his father's tomb. Whether that
man of the embittered and pacific heart had withdrawn there to
meditate upon the unruliness of mankind and the thankless nature
of his task; or whether he had gone there simply to bathe in a
particularly clear pool which was a feature of the place, give
himself up to the enjoyment of a certain fruit which grew in
profusion there and indulge for a time in a scrupulous
performance of religious exercises, his absence from the
Settlement was a fact of the utmost gravity. It is true that the
prestige of a long-unquestioned rulership and the long-settled
mental habits of the people had caused the captives to be taken
straight to Belarab's stockade as a matter of course. Belarab, at
a distance, could still outweigh the power on the spot of Tengga,
whose secret purposes were no better known, who was jovial,
talkative, outspoken and pugnacious; but who was not a professed
servant of God famed for many charities and a scrupulous
performance of pious practices, and who also had no father who
had achieved a local saintship. But Belarab, with his glamour of
asceticism and melancholy together with a reputation for severity
(for a man so pious would be naturally ruthless), was not on the
spot. The only favourable point in his absence was the fact that
he had taken with him his latest wife, the same lady whom
Jorgenson had mentioned in his letter to Lingard as anxious to
bring about battle, murder, and the looting of the yacht, not
because of inborn wickedness of heart but from a simple desire
for silks, jewels and other objects of personal adornment, quite
natural in a girl so young and elevated to such a high position.
Belarab had selected her to be the companion of his retirement
and Lingard was glad of it. He was not afraid of her influence
over Belarab. He knew his man. No words, no blandishments, no
sulks, scoldings, or whisperings of a favourite could affect
either the resolves or the irresolutions of that Arab whose
action ever seemed to hang in mystic suspense between the
c