The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows

PART IV. THE GIFT OF THE SHALLOWS

I

Lingard brought Mrs. Travers away from the yacht, going alone with her in the little boat. During the bustle of the embarkment, and till the last of the crew had left the schooner, he had remained towering and silent by her side. It was only when the murmuring and uneasy voices of the sailors going away in the boats had been completely lost in the distance that his voice was heard, grave in the silence, pronouncing the words—“Follow me.” She followed him; their footsteps rang hollow and loud on the empty deck. At the bottom of the steps he turned round and said very low:

“Take care.”

He got into the boat and held on. It seemed to him that she was intimidated by the darkness. She felt her arm gripped firmly—“I've got you,” he said. She stepped in, headlong, trusting herself blindly to his grip, and sank on the stern seat catching her breath a little. She heard a slight splash, and the indistinct side of the deserted yacht melted suddenly into the body of the night.

Rowing, he faced her, a hooded and cloaked shape, and above her head he had before his eyes the gleam of the stern lantern expiring slowly on the abandoned vessel. When it went out without a warning flicker he could see nothing of the stranded yacht's outline. She had vanished utterly like a dream; and the occurrences of the last twenty-four hours seemed also to be a part of a vanished dream. The hooded and cloaked figure was part of it, too. It spoke not; it moved not; it would vanish presently. Lingard tried to remember Mrs. Travers' features, even as she sat within two feet of him in the boat. He seemed to have taken from that vanished schooner not a woman but a memory—the tormenting recollection of a human being he would see no more.

At every stroke of the short sculls Mrs. Travers felt the boat leap forward with her. Lingard, to keep his direction, had to look over his shoulder frequently—“You will be safe in the brig,” he said. She was silent. A dream! A dream! He lay back vigorously; the water slapped loudly against the blunt bows. The ruddy glow thrown afar by the flares was reflected deep within the hood. The dream had a pale visage, the memory had living eyes.

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

“I expected it of you.” These were the first words he had heard her say since they had met for the third time.

“And I swore—before you, too—that I would never put my foot on board your craft.”

“It was good of you to—” she began.

“I forgot somehow,” he said, simply.

“I expected it of you,” she repeated. He gave three quick strokes before he asked very gently:

“What more do you expect?”

“Everything,” she said. He was rounding then the stern of the brig and had to look away. Then he turned to her.

“And you trust me to—” he exclaimed.

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

Above them a startled voice cried in Malay, “Captain coming.” The strange sound silenced her. Lingard laid in his sculls and she saw herself gliding under the high side of the brig. A dark, staring face appeared very near her eyes, black fingers caught the gunwale of the boat. She stood up swaying. “Take care,” said Lingard again, but this time, in the light, did not offer to help her. She went up alone and he followed her over the rail.

The quarter-deck was thronged by men of two races. Lingard and Mrs. Travers crossed it rapidly between the groups that moved out of the way on their passage. Lingard threw open the cabin door for her, but remained on deck to inquire about his boats. They had returned while he was on board the yacht, and the two men in charge of them came aft to make their reports. The boat sent north had seen nothing. The boat which had been directed to explore the banks and islets to the south had actually been in sight of Daman's praus. The man in charge reported that several fires were burning on the shore, the crews of the two praus being encamped on a sandbank. Cooking was going on. They had been near enough to hear the voices. There was a man keeping watch on the ridge; they knew this because they heard him shouting to the people below, by the fires. Lingard wanted to know how they had managed to remain unseen. “The night was our hiding place,” answered the man in his deep growling voice. He knew nothing of any white men being in Daman's camp. Why should there be? Rajah Hassim and the Lady, his sister, appeared unexpectedly near his boat in their canoe. Rajah Hassim had ordered him then in whispers to go back to the brig at once, and tell Tuan what he had observed. Rajah Hassim said also that he would return to the brig with more news very soon. He obeyed because the Rajah was to him a person of authority, “having the perfect knowledge of Tuan's mind as we all know.”—“Enough,” cried Lingard, suddenly.

The man looked up heavily for a moment, and retreated forward without another word. Lingard followed him with irritated eyes. A new power had come into the world, had possessed itself of human speech, had imparted to it a sinister irony of allusion. To be told that someone had “a perfect knowledge of his mind” startled him and made him wince. It made him aware that now he did not know his mind himself—that it seemed impossible for him ever to regain that knowledge. And the new power not only had cast its spell upon the words he had to hear, but also upon the facts that assailed him, upon the people he saw, upon the thoughts he had to guide, upon the feelings he had to bear. They remained what they had ever been—the visible surface of life open in the sun to the conquering tread of an unfettered will. Yesterday they could have been discerned clearly, mastered and despised; but now another power had come into the world, and had cast over them all the wavering gloom of a dark and inscrutable purpose.

II

Recovering himself with a slight start Lingard gave the order to extinguish all the lights in the brig. Now the transfer of the crew from the yacht had been effected there was every advantage in the darkness. He gave the order from instinct, it being the right thing to do in the circumstances. His thoughts were in the cabin of his brig, where there was a woman waiting. He put his hand over his eyes, collecting himself as if before a great mental effort. He could hear about him the excited murmurs of the white men whom in the morning he had so ardently desired to have safe in his keeping. He had them there now; but accident, ill-luck, a cursed folly, had tricked him out of the success of his plan. He would have to go in and talk to Mrs. Travers. The idea dismayed him. Of necessity he was not one of those men who have the mastery of expression. To liberate his soul was for him a gigantic undertaking, a matter of desperate effort, of doubtful success. “I must have it out with her,” he murmured to himself as though at the prospect of a struggle. He was uncertain of himself, of her; he was uncertain of everything and everybody; but he was very certain he wanted to look at her.

At the moment he turned to the door of the cabin both flares went out together and the black vault of the night upheld above the brig by the fierce flames fell behind him and buried the deck in sudden darkness. The buzz of strange voices instantly hummed louder with a startled note. “Hallo!”—“Can't see a mortal thing”—“Well, what next?”—insisted a voice—“I want to know what next?”

Lingard checked himself ready to open the door and waited absurdly for the answer as though in the hope of some suggestion. “What's up with you? Think yourself lucky,” said somebody.—“It's all very well—for to-night,” began the voice.—“What are you fashing yourself for?” remonstrated the other, reasonably, “we'll get home right enough.”—“I am not so sure; the second mate he says—” “Never mind what he says; that 'ere man who has got this brig will see us through. The owner's wife will talk to him—she will. Money can do a lot.” The two voices came nearer, and spoke more distinctly, close behind Lingard. “Suppose them blooming savages set fire to the yacht. What's to prevent them?”—“And suppose they do. This 'ere brig's good enough to get away in. Ain't she? Guns and all. We'll get home yet all right. What do you say, John?”

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

“D'you mean to say, John, you would go to the bottom as soon as you would go home? Come now!”—“To the bottom,” repeated the wan voice, composedly. “Aye! That's where we all are going to, in one way or another. The way don't matter.”

“Ough! You would give the blues to the funny man of a blooming circus. What would my missus say if I wasn't to turn up never at all?”—“She would get another man; there's always plenty of fools about.” A quiet and mirthless chuckle was heard in the pause of shocked silence. Lingard, with his hand on the door, remained still. Further off a growl burst out: “I do hate to be chucked in the dark aboard a strange ship. I wonder where they keep their fresh water. Can't get any sense out of them silly niggers. We don't seem to be more account here than a lot of cattle. Likely as not we'll have to berth on this blooming quarter-deck for God knows how long.” Then again very near Lingard the first voice said, deadened discreetly—“There's something curious about this here brig turning up sudden-like, ain't there? And that skipper of her—now? What kind of a man is he—anyhow?”

“Oh, he's one of them skippers going about loose. The brig's his own, I am thinking. He just goes about in her looking for what he may pick up honest or dishonest. My brother-in-law has served two commissions in these seas, and was telling me awful yarns about what's going on in them God-forsaken parts. Likely he lied, though. Them man-of-war's men are a holy terror for yarns. Bless you, what do I care who this skipper is? Let him do his best and don't trouble your head. You won't see him again in your life once we get clear.”

“And can he do anything for the owner?” asked the first voice again.—“Can he! We can do nothing—that's one thing certain. The owner may be lying clubbed to death this very minute for all we know. By all accounts these savages here are a crool murdering lot. Mind you, I am sorry for him as much as anybody.”—“Aye, aye,” muttered the other, approvingly.—“He may not have been ready, poor man,” began again the reasonable voice. Lingard heard a deep sigh.—“If there's anything as can be done for him, the owner's wife she's got to fix it up with this 'ere skipper. Under Providence he may serve her turn.”

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

“I am, under Providence, to serve your turn,” he said after standing very still for a while, with his eyes upon Mrs. Travers. The brig's swing-lamp lighted the cabin with an extraordinary brilliance. Mrs. Travers had thrown back her hood. The radiant brightness of the little place enfolded her so close, clung to her with such force that it might have been part of her very essence. There were no shadows on her face; it was fiercely lighted, hermetically closed, of impenetrable fairness.

Lingard looked in unconscious ecstasy at this vision, so amazing that it seemed to have strayed into his existence from beyond the limits of the conceivable. It was impossible to guess her thoughts, to know her feelings, to understand her grief or her joy. But she knew all that was at the bottom of his heart. He had told her himself, impelled by a sudden thought, going to her in darkness, in desperation, in absurd hope, in incredible trust. He had told her what he had told no one on earth, except perhaps, at times, himself, but without words—less clearly. He had told her and she had listened in silence. She had listened leaning over the rail till at last her breath was on his forehead. He remembered this and had a moment of soaring pride and of unutterable dismay. He spoke, with an effort.

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

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

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

“Everything,” she repeated, paused, and added much lower, “It is the very least.” He seemed to lose himself in thought.

“It is extraordinary,” he reflected half aloud, “how I dislike that man.” She leaned forward a little.

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

“So am I—innocent. So is everybody in the world. Have you ever met a man or a woman that was not? They've got to take their chances all the same.”

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

“To you?”

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

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

She made an impatient movement and he saw her clench the hand that was lying on the table.

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

“Yes. Yes. It's what I was saying. Same thing,” he muttered with strange placidity. She looked at him searchingly. He had a large simplicity that filled one's vision. She found herself slowly invaded by this masterful figure. He was not mediocre. Whatever he might have been he was not mediocre. The glamour of a lawless life stretched over him like the sky over the sea down on all sides to an unbroken horizon. Within, he moved very lonely, dangerous and romantic. There was in him crime, sacrifice, tenderness, devotion, and the madness of a fixed idea. She thought with wonder that of all the men in the world he was indeed the one she knew the best and yet she could not foresee the speech or the act of the next minute. She said distinctly:

“You've given me your confidence. Now I want you to give me the life of these two men. The life of two men whom you do not know, whom to-morrow you will forget. It can be done. It must be done. You cannot refuse them to me.” She waited.

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

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

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

III

A slight change of expression which passed away almost directly showed that Lingard heard the passionate cry wrung from her by the distress of her mind. He made no sign. She perceived clearly the extreme difficulty of her position. The situation was dangerous; not so much the facts of it as the feeling of it. At times it appeared no more actual than a tradition; and she thought of herself as of some woman in a ballad, who has to beg for the lives of innocent captives. To save the lives of Mr. Travers and Mr. d'Alcacer was more than a duty. It was a necessity, it was an imperative need, it was an irresistible mission. Yet she had to reflect upon the horrors of a cruel and obscure death before she could feel for them the pity they deserved. It was when she looked at Lingard that her heart was wrung by an extremity of compassion. The others were pitiful, but he, the victim of his own extravagant impulses, appeared tragic, fascinating, and culpable. Lingard lifted his head. Whispers were heard at the door and Hassim followed by Immada entered the cabin.

Mrs. Travers looked at Lingard, because of all the faces in the cabin his was the only one that was intelligible to her. Hassim began to speak at once, and when he ceased Immada's deep sigh was heard in the sudden silence. Then Lingard looked at Mrs. Travers and said:

“The gentlemen are alive. Rajah Hassim here has seen them less than two hours ago, and so has the girl. They are alive and unharmed, so far. And now. . . .”

He paused. Mrs. Travers, leaning on her elbow, shaded her eyes under the glint of suspended thunderbolts.

“You must hate us,” she murmured.

“Hate you,” he repeated with, as she fancied, a tinge of disdain in his tone. “No. I hate myself.”

“Why yourself?” she asked, very low.

“For not knowing my mind,” he answered. “For not knowing my mind. For not knowing what it is that's got hold of me since—since this morning. I was angry then. . . . Nothing but very angry. . . .”

“And now?” she murmured.

“I am . . . unhappy,” he said. After a moment of silence which gave to Mrs. Travers the time to wonder how it was that this man had succeeded in penetrating into the very depths of her compassion, he hit the table such a blow that all the heavy muskets seemed to jump a little.

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

“I believed in you before you . . . before you gave me your confidence,” she began. “You could see that. Could you not?”

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

Hassim, lounging with his back against the closed door, kept his eye on him watchfully and Immada's dark and sorrowful eyes rested on the face of the white woman. Mrs. Travers felt as though she were engaged in a contest with them; in a struggle for the possession of that man's strength and of that man's devotion. When she looked up at Lingard she saw on his face—which should have been impassive or exalted, the face of a stern leader or the face of a pitiless dreamer—an expression of utter forgetfulness. He seemed to be tasting the delight of some profound and amazing sensation. And suddenly in the midst of her appeal to his generosity, in the middle of a phrase, Mrs. Travers faltered, becoming aware that she was the object of his contemplation.

“Do not! Do not look at that woman!” cried Immada. “O! Master—look away. . . .” Hassim threw one arm round the girl's neck. Her voice sank. “O! Master—look at us.” Hassim, drawing her to himself, covered her lips with his hand. She struggled a little like a snared bird and submitted, hiding her face on his shoulder, very quiet, sobbing without noise.

“What do they say to you?” asked Mrs. Travers with a faint and pained smile. “What can they say? It is intolerable to think that their words which have no meaning for me may go straight to your heart. . . .”

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

Mrs. Travers sighed.

“Yes, it is very hard to think that I who want to touch you cannot make myself understood as well as they. And yet I speak the language of your childhood, the language of the man for whom there is no hope but in your generosity.”

He shook his head. She gazed at him anxiously for a moment. “In your memories then,” she said and was surprised by the expression of profound sadness that over-spread his attentive face.

“Do you know what I remember?” he said. “Do you want to know?” She listened with slightly parted lips. “I will tell you. Poverty, hard work—and death,” he went on, very quietly. “And now I've told you, and you don't know. That's how it is between us. You talk to me—I talk to you—and we don't know.”

Her eyelids dropped.

“What can I find to say?” she went on. “What can I do? I mustn't give in. Think! Amongst your memories there must be some face—some voice—some name, if nothing more. I can not believe that there is nothing but bitterness.”

“There's no bitterness,” he murmured.

“O! Brother, my heart is faint with fear,” whispered Immada. Lingard turned swiftly to that whisper.

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

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

“They are to be saved. You have said it,” Lingard pronounced aloud, suddenly. He felt like a swimmer who, in the midst of superhuman efforts to reach the shore, perceives that the undertow is taking him to sea. He would go with the mysterious current; he would go swiftly—and see the end, the fulfilment both blissful and terrible.

With this state of exaltation in which he saw himself in some incomprehensible way always victorious, whatever might befall, there was mingled a tenacity of purpose. He could not sacrifice his intention, the intention of years, the intention of his life; he could no more part with it and exist than he could cut out his heart and live. The adventurer held fast to his adventure which made him in his own sight exactly what he was.

He considered the problem with cool audacity, backed by a belief in his own power. It was not these two men he had to save; he had to save himself! And looked upon in this way the situation appeared familiar.

Hassim had told him the two white men had been taken by their captors to Daman's camp. The young Rajah, leaving his sister in the canoe, had landed on the sand and had crept to the very edge of light thrown by the fires by which the Illanuns were cooking. Daman was sitting apart by a larger blaze. Two praus rode in shallow water near the sandbank; on the ridge, a sentry walked watching the lights of the brig; the camp was full of quiet whispers. Hassim returned to his canoe, then he and his sister, paddling cautiously round the anchored praus, in which women's voices could be heard, approached the other end of the camp. The light of the big blaze there fell on the water and the canoe skirted it without a splash, keeping in the night. Hassim, landing for the second time, crept again close to the fires. Each prau had, according to the customs of the Illanun rovers when on a raiding expedition, a smaller war-boat and these being light and manageable were hauled up on the sand not far from the big blaze; they sat high on the shelving shore throwing heavy shadows. Hassim crept up toward the largest of them and then standing on tiptoe could look at the camp across the gunwales. The confused talking of the men was like the buzz of insects in a forest. A child wailed on board one of the praus and a woman hailed the shore shrilly. Hassim unsheathed his kris and held it in his hand.

Very soon—he said—he saw the two white men walking amongst the fires. They waved their arms and talked together, stopping from time to time; they approached Daman; and the short man with the hair on his face addressed him earnestly and at great length. Daman sat cross-legged upon a little carpet with an open Koran on his knees and chanted the versets swaying to and fro with his eyes shut.

The Illanun chiefs reclining wrapped in cloaks on the ground raised themselves on their elbows to look at the whites. When the short white man finished speaking he gazed down at them for a while, then stamped his foot. He looked angry because no one understood him. Then suddenly he looked very sad; he covered his face with his hands; the tall man put his hand on the short man's shoulder and whispered into his ear. The dry wood of the fires crackled, the Illanuns slept, cooked, talked, but with their weapons at hand. An armed man or two came up to stare at the prisoners and then returned to their fire. The two whites sank down in the sand in front of Daman. Their clothes were soiled, there was sand in their hair. The tall man had lost his hat; the glass in the eye of the short man glittered very much; his back was muddy and one sleeve of his coat torn up to the elbow.

All this Hassim saw and then retreated undetected to that part of the shore where Immada waited for him, keeping the canoe afloat. The Illanuns, trusting to the sea, kept very bad watch on their prisoners, and had he been able to speak with them Hassim thought an escape could have been effected. But they could not have understood his signs and still less his words. He consulted with his sister. Immada murmured sadly; at their feet the ripple broke with a mournful sound no louder than their voices.

Hassim's loyalty was unshaken, but now it led him on not in the bright light of hopes but in the deepened shadow of doubt. He wanted to obtain information for his friend who was so powerful and who perhaps would know how to be constant. When followed by Immada he approached the camp again—this time openly—their appearance did not excite much surprise. It was well known to the Chiefs of the Illanuns that the Rajah for whom they were to fight—if God so willed—was upon the shoals looking out for the coming of the white man who had much wealth and a store of weapons and who was his servant. Daman, who alone understood the exact relation, welcomed them with impenetrable gravity. Hassim took his seat on the carpet at his right hand. A consultation was being held half-aloud in short and apparently careless sentences, with long intervals of silence between. Immada, nestling close to her brother, leaned one arm on his shoulder and listened with serious attention and with outward calm as became a princess of Wajo accustomed to consort with warriors and statesmen in moments of danger and in the hours of deliberation. Her heart was beating rapidly, and facing her the silent white men stared at these two known faces, as if across a gulf. Four Illanun chiefs sat in a row. Their ample cloaks fell from their shoulders, and lay behind them on the sand in which their four long lances were planted upright, each supporting a small oblong shield of wood, carved on the edges and stained a dull purple. Daman stretched out his arm and pointed at the prisoners. The faces of the white men were very quiet. Daman looked at them mutely and ardently, as if consumed by an unspeakable longing.

The Koran, in a silk cover, hung on his breast by a crimson cord. It rested over his heart and, just below, the plain buffalo-horn handle of a kris, stuck into the twist of his sarong, protruded ready to his hand. The clouds thickening over the camp made the darkness press heavily on the glow of scattered fires. “There is blood between me and the whites,” he pronounced, violently. The Illanun chiefs remained impassive. There was blood between them and all mankind. Hassim remarked dispassionately that there was one white man with whom it would be wise to remain friendly; and besides, was not Daman his friend already? Daman smiled with half-closed eyes. He was that white man's friend, not his slave. The Illanuns playing with their sword-handles grunted assent. Why, asked Daman, did these strange whites travel so far from their country? The great white man whom they all knew did not want them. No one wanted them. Evil would follow in their footsteps. They were such men as are sent by rulers to examine the aspects of far-off countries and talk of peace and make treaties. Such is the beginning of great sorrows. The Illanuns were far from their country, where no white man dared to come, and therefore they were free to seek their enemies upon the open waters. They had found these two who had come to see. He asked what they had come to see? Was there nothing to look at in their own country?

He talked in an ironic and subdued tone. The scattered heaps of embers glowed a deeper red; the big blaze of the chief's fire sank low and grew dim before he ceased. Straight-limbed figures rose, sank, moved, whispered on the beach. Here and there a spear-blade caught a red gleam above the black shape of a head.

“The Illanuns seek booty on the sea,” cried Daman. “Their fathers and the fathers of their fathers have done the same, being fearless like those who embrace death closely.”

A low laugh was heard. “We strike and go,” said an exulting voice. “We live and die with our weapons in our hands.” The Illanuns leaped to their feet. They stamped on the sand, flourishing naked blades over the heads of their prisoners. A tumult arose.

When it subsided Daman stood up in a cloak that wrapped him to his feet and spoke again giving advice.

The white men sat on the sand and turned their eyes from face to face as if trying to understand. It was agreed to send the prisoners into the lagoon where their fate would be decided by the ruler of the land. The Illanuns only wanted to plunder the ship. They did not care what became of the men. “But Daman cares,” remarked Hassim to Lingard, when relating what took place. “He cares, O Tuan!”

Hassim had learned also that the Settlement was in a state of unrest as if on the eve of war. Belarab with his followers was encamped by his father's tomb in the hollow beyond the cultivated fields. His stockade was shut up and no one appeared on the verandahs of the houses within. You could tell there were people inside only by the smoke of the cooking fires. Tengga's followers meantime swaggered about the Settlement behaving tyrannically to those who were peaceable. A great madness had descended upon the people, a madness strong as the madness of love, the madness of battle, the desire to spill blood. A strange fear also had made them wild. The big smoke seen that morning above the forests of the coast was some agreed signal from Tengga to Daman but what it meant Hassim had been unable to find out. He feared for Jorgenson's safety. He said that while one of the war-boats was being made ready to take the captives into the lagoon, he and his sister left the camp quietly and got away in their canoe. The flares of the brig, reflected in a faint loom upon the clouds, enabled them to make straight for the vessel across the banks. Before they had gone half way these flames went out and the darkness seemed denser than any he had known before. But it was no greater than the darkness of his mind—he added. He had looked upon the white men sitting unmoved and silent under the edge of swords; he had looked at Daman, he had heard bitter words spoken; he was looking now at his white friend—and the issue of events he could not see. One can see men's faces but their fate, which is written on their foreheads, one cannot see. He had no more to say, and what he had spoken was true in every word.

IV

Lingard repeated it all to Mrs. Travers. Her courage, her intelligence, the quickness of her apprehension, the colour of her eyes and the intrepidity of her glance evoked in him an admiring enthusiasm. She stood by his side! Every moment that fatal illusion clung closer to his soul—like a garment of light—like an armour of fire.

He was unwilling to face the facts. All his life—till that day—had been a wrestle with events in the daylight of this world, but now he could not bring his mind to the consideration of his position. It was Mrs. Travers who, after waiting awhile, forced on him the pain of thought by wanting to know what bearing Hassim's news had upon the situation.

Lingard had not the slightest doubt Daman wanted him to know what had been done with the prisoners. That is why Daman had welcomed Hassim, and let him hear the decision and had allowed him to leave the camp on the sandbank. There could be only one object in this; to let him, Lingard, know that the prisoners had been put out of his reach as long as he remained in his brig. Now this brig was his strength. To make him leave his brig was like removing his hand from his sword.

“Do you understand what I mean, Mrs. Travers?” he asked. “They are afraid of me because I know how to fight this brig. They fear the brig because when I am on board her, the brig and I are one. An armed man—don't you see? Without the brig I am disarmed, without me she can't strike. So Daman thinks. He does not know everything but he is not far off the truth. He says to himself that if I man the boats to go after these whites into the lagoon then his Illanuns will get the yacht for sure—and perhaps the brig as well. If I stop here with my brig he holds the two white men and can talk as big as he pleases. Belarab believes in me no doubt, but Daman trusts no man on earth. He simply does not know how to trust any one, because he is always plotting himself. He came to help me and as soon as he found I was not there he began to plot with Tengga. Now he has made a move—a clever move; a cleverer move than he thinks. Why? I'll tell you why. Because I, Tom Lingard, haven't a single white man aboard this brig I can trust. Not one. I only just discovered my mate's got the notion I am some kind of pirate. And all your yacht people think the same. It is as though you had brought a curse on me in your yacht. Nobody believes me. Good God! What have I come to! Even those two—look at them—I say look at them! By all the stars they doubt me! Me! . . .”

He pointed at Hassim and Immada. The girl seemed frightened. Hassim looked on calm and intelligent with inexhaustible patience. Lingard's voice fell suddenly.

“And by heavens they may be right. Who knows? You? Do you know? They have waited for years. Look. They are waiting with heavy hearts. Do you think that I don't care? Ought I to have kept it all in—told no one—no one—not even you? Are they waiting for what will never come now?”

Mrs. Travers rose and moved quickly round the table. “Can we give anything to this—this Daman or these other men? We could give them more than they could think of asking. I—my husband. . . .”

“Don't talk to me of your husband,” he said, roughly. “You don't know what you are doing.” She confronted the sombre anger of his eyes—“But I must,” she asserted with heat.—“Must,” he mused, noticing that she was only half a head less tall than himself. “Must! Oh, yes. Of course, you must. Must! Yes. But I don't want to hear. Give! What can you give? You may have all the treasures of the world for all I know. No! You can't give anything. . . .”

“I was thinking of your difficulty when I spoke,” she interrupted. His eyes wandered downward following the line of her shoulder.—“Of me—of me!” he repeated.

All this was said almost in whispers. The sound of slow footsteps was heard on deck above their heads. Lingard turned his face to the open skylight.

“On deck there! Any wind?”

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

“A steady little draught from the northward.”

Then after a pause added in a mutter:

“Pitch dark.”

“Aye, dark enough,” murmured Lingard. He must do something. Now. At once. The world was waiting. The world full of hopes and fear. What should he do? Instead of answering that question he traced the ungleaming coils of her twisted hair and became fascinated by a stray lock at her neck. What should he do? No one to leave his brig to. The voice that had answered his question was Carter's voice. “He is hanging about keeping his eye on me,” he said to Mrs. Travers. She shook her head and tried to smile. The man above coughed discreetly. “No,” said Lingard, “you must understand that you have nothing to give.”

The man on deck who seemed to have lingered by the skylight was heard saying quietly, “I am at hand if you want me, Mrs. Travers.” Hassim and Immada looked up. “You see,” exclaimed Lingard. “What did I tell you? He's keeping his eye on me! On board my own ship. Am I dreaming? Am I in a fever? Tell him to come down,” he said after a pause. Mrs. Travers did so and Lingard thought her voice very commanding and very sweet. “There's nothing in the world I love so much as this brig,” he went on. “Nothing in the world. If I lost her I would have no standing room on the earth for my feet. You don't understand this. You can't.”

Carter came in and shut the cabin door carefully. He looked with serenity at everyone in turn.

“All quiet?” asked Lingard.

“Quiet enough if you like to call it so,” he answered. “But if you only put your head outside the door you'll hear them all on the quarter-deck snoring against each other, as if there were no wives at home and no pirates at sea.”

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

“Can't you?” drawled Carter. “I am not exactly surprised. I must say he does not snore but I believe it is because he is too crazy to sleep. He waylaid me on the poop just now and said something about evil communications corrupting good manners. Seems to me I've heard that before. Queer thing to say. He tried to make it out somehow that if he wasn't corrupt it wasn't your fault. As if this was any concern of mine. He's as mad as he's fat—or else he puts it on.” Carter laughed a little and leaned his shoulders against a bulkhead.

Lingard gazed at the woman who expected so much from him and in the light she seemed to shed he saw himself leading a column of armed boats to the attack of the Settlement. He could burn the whole place to the ground and drive every soul of them into the bush. He could! And there was a surprise, a shock, a vague horror at the thought of the destructive power of his will. He could give her ever so many lives. He had seen her yesterday, and it seemed to him he had been all his life waiting for her to make a sign. She was very still. He pondered a plan of attack. He saw smoke and flame—and next moment he saw himself alone amongst shapeless ruins with the whispers, with the sigh and moan of the Shallows in his ears. He shuddered, and shaking his hand:

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

Then, before Mrs. Travers could guess the meaning of this outburst, he declared that as the two captives must be saved he would go alone into the lagoon. He could not think of using force. “You understand why,” he said to Mrs. Travers and she whispered a faint “Yes.” He would run the risk alone. His hope was in Belarab being able to see where his true interest lay. “If I can only get at him I would soon make him see,” he mused aloud. “Haven't I kept his power up for these two years past? And he knows it, too. He feels it.” Whether he would be allowed to reach Belarab was another matter. Lingard lost himself in deep thought. “He would not dare,” he burst out. Mrs. Travers listened with parted lips. Carter did not move a muscle of his youthful and self-possessed face; only when Lingard, turning suddenly, came up close to him and asked with a red flash of eyes and in a lowered voice, “Could you fight this brig?” something like a smile made a stir amongst the hairs of his little fair moustache.

“'Could I?” he said. “I could try, anyhow.” He paused, and added hardly above his breath, “For the lady—of course.”

Lingard seemed staggered as though he had been hit in the chest. “I was thinking of the brig,” he said, gently.

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

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

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

“I shall,” ejaculated Lingard. He left the cabin calling out “serang!” A thin cracked voice was heard immediately answering, “Tuan!” and the door slammed to.

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

“You do not—why?” she answered.

“I can't make him out. If he was another kind of man I would say he was drunk,” said Carter. “Why is he here at all—he, and this brig of his? Excuse my boldness—but have you promised him anything?”

“I—I promised!” exclaimed Mrs. Travers in a bitter tone which silenced Carter for a moment.

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

“Here! Take this,” said Lingard, who re-entered the cabin fumbling about his neck. Carter mechanically extended his hand.

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

“Powder magazine. Trap door under the table. The man who has this key commands the brig while I am away. The serang understands. You have her very life in your hand there.”

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

“I was just telling Mrs. Travers I didn't trust you—not altogether. . . .”

“I know all about it,” interrupted Lingard, contemptuously. “You carry a blamed pistol in your pocket to blow my brains out—don't you? What's that to me? I am thinking of the brig. I think I know your sort. You will do.”

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

“Don't be rash,” said Lingard, anxiously. “If you've got to fight use your head as well as your hands. If there's a breeze fight under way. If they should try to board in a calm, trust to the small arms to hold them off. Keep your head and—” He looked intensely into Carter's eyes; his lips worked without a sound as though he had been suddenly struck dumb. “Don't think about me. What's that to you who I am? Think of the ship,” he burst out. “Don't let her go!—Don't let her go!” The passion in his voice impressed his hearers who for a time preserved a profound silence.

“All right,” said Carter at last. “I will stick to your brig as though she were my own; but I would like to see clear through all this. Look here—you are going off somewhere? Alone, you said?”

“Yes. Alone.”

“Very well. Mind, then, that you don't come back with a crowd of those brown friends of yours—or by the Heavens above us I won't let you come within hail of your own ship. Am I to keep this key?”

“Captain Lingard,” said Mrs. Travers suddenly. “Would it not be better to tell him everything?”

“Tell him everything?” repeated Lingard. “Everything! Yesterday it might have been done. Only yesterday! Yesterday, did I say? Only six hours ago—only six hours ago I had something to tell. You heard it. And now it's gone. Tell him! There's nothing to tell any more.” He remained for a time with bowed head, while before him Mrs. Travers, who had begun a gesture of protest, dropped her arms suddenly. In a moment he looked up again.

“Keep the key,” he said, calmly, “and when the time comes step forward and take charge. I am satisfied.”

“I would like to see clear through all this though,” muttered Carter again. “And for how long are you leaving us, Captain?” Lingard made no answer. Carter waited awhile. “Come, sir,” he urged. “I ought to have some notion. What is it? Two, three days?” Lingard started.

“Days,” he repeated. “Ah, days. What is it you want to know? Two . . . three—what did the old fellow say—perhaps for life.” This was spoken so low that no one but Carter heard the last words.—“Do you mean it?” he murmured. Lingard nodded.—“Wait as long as you can—then go,” he said in the same hardly audible voice. “Go where?”—“Where you like, nearest port, any port.”—“Very good. That's something plain at any rate,” commented the young man with imperturbable good humour.

“I go, O Hassim!” began Lingard and the Malay made a slow inclination of the head which he did not raise again till Lingard had ceased speaking. He betrayed neither surprise nor any other emotion while Lingard in a few concise and sharp sentences made him acquainted with his purpose to bring about singlehanded the release of the prisoners. When Lingard had ended with the words: “And you must find a way to help me in the time of trouble, O Rajah Hassim,” he looked up and said:

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

He smiled at his white friend. There was something subtle in the smile and afterward an added firmness in the repose of the lips. Immada moved a step forward. She looked at Lingard with terror in her black and dilated eyes. She exclaimed in a voice whose vibration startled the hearts of all the hearers with an indefinable sense of alarm, “He will perish, Hassim! He will perish alone!”

“No,” said Hassim. “Thy fear is as vain to-night as it was at sunrise. He shall not perish alone.”

Her eyelids dropped slowly. From her veiled eyes the tears fell, vanishing in the silence. Lingard's forehead became furrowed by folds that seemed to contain an infinity of sombre thoughts. “Remember, O Hassim, that when I promised you to take you back to your country you promised me to be a friend to all white men. A friend to all whites who are of my people, forever.”

“My memory is good, O Tuan,” said Hassim; “I am not yet back in my country, but is not everyone the ruler of his own heart? Promises made by a man of noble birth live as long as the speaker endures.”

“Good-bye,” said Lingard to Mrs. Travers. “You will be safe here.” He looked all around the cabin. “I leave you,” he began again and stopped short. Mrs. Travers' hand, resting lightly on the edge of the table, began to tremble. “It's for you . . . Yes. For you alone . . . and it seems it can't be. . . .”

It seemed to him that he was saying good-bye to all the world, that he was taking a last leave of his own self. Mrs. Travers did not say a word, but Immada threw herself between them and cried:

“You are a cruel woman! You are driving him away from where his strength is. You put madness into his heart, O! Blind—without pity—without shame! . . .”

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

“What did she say to me?” faltered Mrs. Travers and again repeated in a voice that sounded hard, “What did she say?”

“Forgive her,” said Lingard. “Her fears are for me . . .”—“It's about your going?” Mrs. Travers interrupted, swiftly.

“Yes, it is—and you must forgive her.” He had turned away his eyes with something that resembled embarrassment but suddenly he was assailed by an irresistible longing to look again at that woman. At the moment of parting he clung to her with his glance as a man holds with his hands a priceless and disputed possession. The faint blush that overspread gradually Mrs. Travers' features gave her face an air of extraordinary and startling animation.

“The danger you run?” she asked, eagerly. He repelled the suggestion by a slighting gesture of the hand.—“Nothing worth looking at twice. Don't give it a thought,” he said. “I've been in tighter places.” He clapped his hands and waited till he heard the cabin door open behind his back. “Steward, my pistols.” The mulatto in slippers, aproned to the chin, glided through the cabin with unseeing eyes as though for him no one there had existed. . . .—“Is it my heart that aches so?” Mrs. Travers asked herself, contemplating Lingard's motionless figure. “How long will this sensation of dull pain last? Will it last forever. . . .”—“How many changes of clothes shall I put up, sir?” asked the steward, while Lingard took the pistols from him and eased the hammers after putting on fresh caps.—“I will take nothing this time, steward.” He received in turn from the mulatto's hands a red silk handkerchief, a pocket book, a cigar-case. He knotted the handkerchief loosely round his throat; it was evident he was going through the routine of every departure for the shore; he even opened the cigar-case to see whether it had been filled.—“Hat, sir,” murmured the half-caste. Lingard flung it on his head.—“Take your orders from this lady, steward—till I come back. The cabin is hers—do you hear?” He sighed ready to go and seemed unable to lift a foot.—“I am coming with you,” declared Mrs. Travers suddenly in a tone of unalterable decision. He did not look at her; he did not even look up; he said nothing, till after Carter had cried: “You can't, Mrs. Travers!”—when without budging he whispered to himself:—“Of course.” Mrs. Travers had pulled already the hood of her cloak over her head and her face within the dark cloth had turned an intense and unearthly white, in which the violet of her eyes appeared unfathomably mysterious. Carter started forward.—“You don't know this man,” he almost shouted.

“I do know him,” she said, and before the reproachfully unbelieving attitude of the other she added, speaking slowly and with emphasis: “There is not, I verily believe, a single thought or act of his life that I don't know.”—“It's true—it's true,” muttered Lingard to himself. Carter threw up his arms with a groan. “Stand back,” said a voice that sounded to him like a growl of thunder, and he felt a grip on his hand which seemed to crush every bone. He jerked it away.—“Mrs. Travers! stay,” he cried. They had vanished through the open door and the sound of their footsteps had already died away. Carter turned about bewildered as if looking for help.—“Who is he, steward? Who in the name of all the mad devils is he?” he asked, wildly. He was confounded by the cold and philosophical tone of the answer:—“'Tain't my place to trouble about that, sir—nor yours I guess.”—“Isn't it!” shouted Carter. “Why, he has carried the lady off.” The steward was looking critically at the lamp and after a while screwed the light down.—“That's better,” he mumbled.—“Good God! What is a fellow to do?” continued Carter, looking at Hassim and Immada who were whispering together and gave him only an absent glance. He rushed on deck and was struck blind instantly by the night that seemed to have been lying in wait for him; he stumbled over something soft, kicked something hard, flung himself on the rail. “Come back,” he cried. “Come back. Captain! Mrs. Travers!—or let me come, too.”

He listened. The breeze blew cool against his cheek. A black bandage seemed to lie over his eyes. “Gone,” he groaned, utterly crushed. And suddenly he heard Mrs. Travers' voice remote in the depths of the night.—“Defend the brig,” it said, and these words, pronouncing themselves in the immensity of a lightless universe, thrilled every fibre of his body by the commanding sadness of their tone. “Defend, defend the brig.” . . . “I am damned if I do,” shouted Carter in despair. “Unless you come back! . . . Mrs. Travers!”

“. . . as though—I were—on board—myself,” went on the rising cadence of the voice, more distant now, a marvel of faint and imperious clearness.

Carter shouted no more; he tried to make out the boat for a time, and when, giving it up, he leaped down from the rail, the heavy obscurity of the brig's main deck was agitated like a sombre pool by his jump, swayed, eddied, seemed to break up. Blotches of darkness recoiled, drifted away, bare feet shuffled hastily, confused murmurs died out. “Lascars,” he muttered, “The crew is all agog.” Afterward he listened for a moment to the faintly tumultuous snores of the white men sleeping in rows, with their heads under the break of the poop. Somewhere about his feet, the yacht's black dog, invisible, and chained to a deck-ringbolt, whined, rattled the thin links, pattered with his claws in his distress at the unfamiliar surroundings, begging for the charity of human notice. Carter stooped impulsively, and was met by a startling lick in the face.—“Hallo, boy!” He thumped the thick curly sides, stroked the smooth head—“Good boy, Rover. Down. Lie down, dog. You don't know what to make of it—do you, boy?” The dog became still as death. “Well, neither do I,” muttered Carter. But such natures are helped by a cheerful contempt for the intricate and endless suggestions of thought. He told himself that he would soon see what was to come of it, and dismissed all speculation. Had he been a little older he would have felt that the situation was beyond his grasp; but he was too young to see it whole and in a manner detached from himself. All these inexplicable events filled him with deep concern—but then on the other hand he had the key of the magazine and he could not find it in his heart to dislike Lingard. He was positive about this at last, and to know that much after the discomfort of an inward conflict went a long way toward a solution. When he followed Shaw into the cabin he could not repress a sense of enjoyment or hide a faint and malicious smile.

“Gone away—did you say? And carried off the lady with him?” discoursed Shaw very loud in the doorway. “Did he? Well, I am not surprised. What can you expect from a man like that, who leaves his ship in an open roadstead without—I won't say orders—but without as much as a single word to his next in command? And at night at that! That just shows you the kind of man. Is this the way to treat a chief mate? I apprehend he was riled at the little al-ter-cation we had just before you came on board. I told him a truth or two—but—never mind. There's the law and that's enough for me. I am captain as long as he is out of the ship, and if his address before very long is not in one of Her Majesty's jails or other I au-tho-rize you to call me a Dutchman. You mark my words.”

He walked in masterfully, sat down and surveyed the cabin in a leisurely and autocratic manner; but suddenly his eyes became stony with amazement and indignation; he pointed a fat and trembling forefinger.

“Niggers,” he said, huskily. “In the cuddy! In the cuddy!” He appeared bereft of speech for a time.

Since he entered the cabin Hassim had been watching him in thoughtful and expectant silence. “I can't have it,” he continued with genuine feeling in his voice. “Damme! I've too much respect for myself.” He rose with heavy deliberation; his eyes bulged out in a severe and dignified stare. “Out you go!” he bellowed; suddenly, making a step forward.—“Great Scott! What are you up to, mister?” asked in a tone of dispassionate surprise the steward whose head appeared in the doorway. “These are the Captain's friends.” “Show me a man's friends and . . .” began Shaw, dogmatically, but abruptly passed into the tone of admonition. “You take your mug out of the way, bottle-washer. They ain't friends of mine. I ain't a vagabond. I know what's due to myself. Quit!” he hissed, fiercely. Hassim, with an alert movement, grasped the handle of his kris. Shaw puffed out his cheeks and frowned.—“Look out! He will stick you like a prize pig,” murmured Carter without moving a muscle. Shaw looked round helplessly.—“And you would enjoy the fun—wouldn't you?” he said with slow bitterness. Carter's distant non-committal smile quite overwhelmed him by its horrid frigidity. Extreme despondency replaced the proper feeling of racial pride in the primitive soul of the mate. “My God! What luck! What have I done to fall amongst that lot?” he groaned, sat down, and took his big grey head in his hands. Carter drew aside to make room for Immada, who, in obedience to a whisper from her brother, sought to leave the cabin. She passed out after an instant of hesitation, during which she looked up at Carter once. Her brother, motionless in a defensive attitude, protected her retreat. She disappeared; Hassim's grip on his weapon relaxed; he looked in turn at every object in the cabin as if to fix its position in his mind forever, and following his sister, walked out with noiseless footfalls.

They entered the same darkness which had received, enveloped, and hidden the troubled souls of Lingard and Edith, but to these two the light from which they had felt themselves driven away was now like the light of forbidden hopes; it had the awful and tranquil brightness that a light burning on the shore has for an exhausted swimmer about to give himself up to the fateful sea. They looked back; it had disappeared; Carter had shut the cabin door behind them to have it out with Shaw. He wanted to arrive at some kind of working compromise with the nominal commander, but the mate was so demoralized by the novelty of the assaults made upon his respectability that the young defender of the brig could get nothing from him except lamentations mingled with mild blasphemies. The brig slept, and along her quiet deck the voices raised in her cabin—Shaw's appeals and reproaches directed vociferously to heaven, together with Carter's inflexible drawl mingled into one deadened, modulated, and continuous murmur. The lockouts in the waist, motionless and peering into obscurity, one ear turned to the sea, were aware of that strange resonance like the ghost of a quarrel that seemed to hover at their backs. Wasub, after seeing Hassim and Immada into their canoe, prowled to and fro the whole length of the vessel vigilantly. There was not a star in the sky and no gleam on the water; there was no horizon, no outline, no shape for the eye to rest upon, nothing for the hand to grasp. An obscurity that seemed without limit in space and time had submerged the universe like a destroying flood.

A lull of the breeze kept for a time the small boat in the neighbourhood of the brig. The hoisted sail, invisible, fluttered faintly, mysteriously, and the boat rising and falling bodily to the passage of each invisible undulation of the waters seemed to repose upon a living breast. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat up erect, expectant and silent. Mrs. Travers had drawn her cloak close around her body. Their glances plunged infinitely deep into a lightless void, and yet they were still so near the brig that the piteous whine of the dog, mingled with the angry rattling of the chain, reached their ears faintly, evoking obscure images of distress and fury. A sharp bark ending in a plaintive howl that seemed raised by the passage of phantoms invisible to men, rent the black stillness, as though the instinct of the brute inspired by the soul of night had voiced in a lamentable plaint the fear of the future, the anguish of lurking death, the terror of shadows. Not far from the brig's boat Hassim and Immada in their canoe, letting their paddles trail in the water, sat in a silent and invincible torpor as if the fitful puffs of wind had carried to their hearts the breath of a subtle poison that, very soon, would make them die.—“Have you seen the white woman's eyes?” cried the girl. She struck her palms together loudly and remained with her arms extended, with her hands clasped. “O Hassim! Have you seen her eyes shining under her eyebrows like rays of light darting under the arched boughs in a forest? They pierced me. I shuddered at the sound of her voice! I saw her walk behind him—and it seems to me that she does not live on earth—that all this is witchcraft.”

She lamented in the night. Hassim kept silent. He had no illusions and in any other man but Lingard he would have thought the proceeding no better than suicidal folly. For him Travers and d'Alcacer were two powerful Rajahs—probably relatives of the Ruler of the land of the English whom he knew to be a woman; but why they should come and interfere with the recovery of his own kingdom was an obscure problem. He was concerned for Lingard's safety. That the risk was incurred mostly for his sake—so that the prospects of the great enterprise should not be ruined by a quarrel over the lives of these whites—did not strike him so much as may be imagined. There was that in him which made such an action on Lingard's part appear all but unavoidable. Was he not Rajah Hassim and was not the other a man of strong heart, of strong arm, of proud courage, a man great enough to protect highborn princes—a friend? Immada's words called out a smile which, like the words, was lost in the darkness. “Forget your weariness,” he said, gently, “lest, O Sister, we should arrive too late.” The coming day would throw its light on some decisive event. Hassim thought of his own men who guarded the Emma and he wished to be where they could hear his voice. He regretted Jaffir was not there. Hassim was saddened by the absence from his side of that man who once had carried what he thought would be his last message to his friend. It had not been the last. He had lived to cherish new hopes and to face new troubles and, perchance, to frame another message yet, while death knocked with the hands of armed enemies at the gate. The breeze steadied; the succeeding swells swung the canoe smoothly up the unbroken ridges of water travelling apace along the land. They progressed slowly; but Immada's heart was more weary than her arms, and Hassim, dipping the blade of his paddle without a splash, peered right and left, trying to make out the shadowy forms of islets. A long way ahead of the canoe and holding the same course, the brig's dinghy ran with broad lug extended, making for that narrow and winding passage between the coast and the southern shoals, which led to the mouth of the creek connecting the lagoon with the sea.

Thus on that starless night the Shallows were peopled by uneasy souls. The thick veil of clouds stretched over them, cut them off from the rest of the universe. At times Mrs. Travers had in the darkness the impression of dizzy speed, and again it seemed to her that the boat was standing still, that everything in the world was standing still and only her fancy roamed free from all trammels. Lingard, perfectly motionless by her side, steered, shaping his course by the feel of the wind. Presently he perceived ahead a ghostly flicker of faint, livid light which the earth seemed to throw up against the uniform blackness of the sky. The dinghy was approaching the expanse of the Shallows. The confused clamour of broken water deepened its note.

“How long are we going to sail like this?” asked Mrs. Travers, gently. She did not recognize the voice that pronounced the word “Always” in answer to her question. It had the impersonal ring of a voice without a master. Her heart beat fast.

“Captain Lingard!” she cried.

“Yes. What?” he said, nervously, as if startled out of a dream.

“I asked you how long we were going to sail like this,” she repeated, distinctly.

“If the breeze holds we shall be in the lagoon soon after daybreak. That will be the right time, too. I shall leave you on board the hulk with Jorgenson.”

“And you? What will you do?” she asked. She had to wait for a while.

“I will do what I can,” she heard him say at last. There was another pause. “All I can,” he added.

The breeze dropped, the sail fluttered.

“I have perfect confidence in you,” she said. “But are you certain of success?”

“No.”

The futility of her question came home to Mrs. Travers. In a few hours of life she had been torn away from all her certitudes, flung into a world of improbabilities. This thought instead of augmenting her distress seemed to soothe her. What she experienced was not doubt and it was not fear. It was something else. It might have been only a great fatigue.

She heard a dull detonation as if in the depth of the sea. It was hardly more than a shock and a vibration. A roller had broken amongst the shoals; the livid clearness Lingard had seen ahead flashed and flickered in expanded white sheets much nearer to the boat now. And all this—the wan burst of light, the faint shock as of something remote and immense falling into ruins, was taking place outside the limits of her life which remained encircled by an impenetrable darkness and by an impenetrable silence. Puffs of wind blew about her head and expired; the sail collapsed, shivered audibly, stood full and still in turn; and again the sensation of vertiginous speed and of absolute immobility succeeding each other with increasing swiftness merged at last into a bizarre state of headlong motion and profound peace. The darkness enfolded her like the enervating caress of a sombre universe. It was gentle and destructive. Its languor seduced her soul into surrender. Nothing existed and even all her memories vanished into space. She was content that nothing should exist.

Lingard, aware all the time of their contact in the narrow stern sheets of the boat, was startled by the pressure of the woman's head drooping on his shoulder. He stiffened himself still more as though he had tried on the approach of a danger to conceal his life in the breathless rigidity of his body. The boat soared and descended slowly; a region of foam and reefs stretched across her course hissing like a gigantic cauldron; a strong gust of wind drove her straight at it for a moment then passed on and abandoned her to the regular balancing of the swell. The struggle of the rocks forever overwhelmed and emerging, with the sea forever victorious and repulsed, fascinated the man. He watched it as he would have watched something going on within himself while Mrs. Travers slept sustained by his arm, pressed to his side, abandoned to his support. The shoals guarding the Shore of Refuge had given him his first glimpse of success—the solid support he needed for his action. The Shallows were the shelter of his dreams; their voice had the power to soothe and exalt his thoughts with the promise of freedom for his hopes. Never had there been such a generous friendship. . . . A mass of white foam whirling about a centre of intense blackness spun silently past the side of the boat. . . . That woman he held like a captive on his arm had also been given to him by the Shallows.

Suddenly his eyes caught on a distant sandbank the red gleam of Daman's camp fire instantly eclipsed like the wink of a signalling lantern along the level of the waters. It brought to his mind the existence of the two men—those other captives. If the war canoe transporting them into the lagoon had left the sands shortly after Hassim's retreat from Daman's camp, Travers and d'Alcacer were by this time far away up the creek. Every thought of action had become odious to Lingard since all he could do in the world now was to hasten the moment of his separation from that woman to whom he had confessed the whole secret of his life.

And she slept. She could sleep! He looked down at her as he would have looked at the slumbering ignorance of a child, but the life within him had the fierce beat of supreme moments. Near by, the eddies sighed along the reefs, the water soughed amongst the stones, clung round the rocks with tragic murmurs that resembled promises, good-byes, or prayers. From the unfathomable distances of the night came the booming of the swell assaulting the seaward face of the Shallows. He felt the woman's nearness with such intensity that he heard nothing. . . . Then suddenly he thought of death.

“Wake up!” he shouted in her ear, swinging round in his seat. Mrs. Travers gasped; a splash of water flicked her over the eyes and she felt the separate drops run down her cheeks, she tasted them on her lips, tepid and bitter like tears. A swishing undulation tossed the boat on high followed by another and still another; and then the boat with the breeze abeam glided through still water, laying over at a steady angle.

“Clear of the reef now,” remarked Lingard in a tone of relief.

“Were we in any danger?” asked Mrs. Travers in a whisper.

“Well, the breeze dropped and we drifted in very close to the rocks,” he answered. “I had to rouse you. It wouldn't have done for you to wake up suddenly struggling in the water.”

So she had slept! It seemed to her incredible that she should have closed her eyes in this small boat, with the knowledge of their desperate errand, on so disturbed a sea. The man by her side leaned forward, extended his arm, and the boat going off before the wind went on faster on an even keel. A motionless black bank resting on the sea stretched infinitely right in their way in ominous stillness. She called Lingard's attention to it. “Look at this awful cloud.”

“This cloud is the coast and in a moment we shall be entering the creek,” he said, quietly. Mrs. Travers stared at it. Was it land—land! It seemed to her even less palpable than a cloud, a mere sinister immobility above the unrest of the sea, nursing in its depth the unrest of men who, to her mind, were no more real than fantastic shadows.

V

What struck Mrs. Travers most, directly she set eyes on him, was the other-world aspect of Jorgenson. He had been buried out of sight so long that his tall, gaunt body, his unhurried, mechanical movements, his set face and his eyes with an empty gaze suggested an invincible indifference to all the possible surprises of the earth. That appearance of a resuscitated man who seemed to be commanded by a conjuring spell strolled along the decks of what was even to Mrs. Travers' eyes the mere corpse of a ship and turned on her a pair of deep-sunk, expressionless eyes with an almost unearthly detachment. Mrs. Travers had never been looked at before with that strange and pregnant abstraction. Yet she didn't dislike Jorgenson. In the early morning light, white from head to foot in a perfectly clean suit of clothes which seemed hardly to contain any limbs, freshly shaven (Jorgenson's sunken cheeks with their withered colouring always had a sort of gloss as though he had the habit of shaving every two hours or so), he looked as immaculate as though he had been indeed a pure spirit superior to the soiling contacts of the material earth. He was disturbing but he was not repulsive. He gave no sign of greeting.

Lingard addressed him at once.

“You have had a regular staircase built up the side of the hulk, Jorgenson,” he said. “It was very convenient for us to come aboard now, but in case of an attack don't you think . . .”

“I did think.” There was nothing so dispassionate in the world as the voice of Captain H. C. Jorgenson, ex Barque Wild Rose, since he had recrossed the Waters of Oblivion to step back into the life of men. “I did think, but since I don't want to make trouble. . . .”

“Oh, you don't want to make trouble,” interrupted Lingard.

“No. Don't believe in it. Do you, King Tom?”

“I may have to make trouble.”

“So you came up here in this small dinghy of yours like this to start making trouble, did you?”

“What's the matter with you? Don't you know me yet, Jorgenson?”

“I thought I knew you. How could I tell that a man like you would come along for a fight bringing a woman with him?”

“This lady is Mrs. Travers,” said Lingard. “The wife of one of the luckless gentlemen Daman got hold of last evening. . . . This is Jorgenson, the friend of whom I have been telling you, Mrs. Travers.”

Mrs. Travers smiled faintly. Her eyes roamed far and near and the strangeness of her surroundings, the overpowering curiosity, the conflict of interest and doubt gave her the aspect of one still new to life, presenting an innocent and naive attitude before the surprises of experience. She looked very guileless and youthful between those two men. Lingard gazed at her with that unconscious tenderness mingled with wonder, which some men manifest toward girlhood. There was nothing of a conqueror of kingdoms in his bearing. Jorgenson preserved his amazing abstraction which seemed neither to hear nor see anything. But, evidently, he kept a mysterious grip on events in the world of living men because he asked very naturally:

“How did she get away?”

“The lady wasn't on the sandbank,” explained Lingard, curtly.

“What sandbank?” muttered Jorgenson, perfunctorily. . . . “Is the yacht looted, Tom?”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Lingard.

“Ah, many dead?” inquired Jorgenson.

“I tell you there was nothing of the kind,” said Lingard, impatiently.

“What? No fight!” inquired Jorgenson again without the slightest sign of animation.

“No.”

“And you a fighting man.”

“Listen to me, Jorgenson. Things turned out so that before the time came for a fight it was already too late.” He turned to Mrs. Travers still looking about with anxious eyes and a faint smile on her lips. “While I was talking to you that evening from the boat it was already too late. No. There was never any time for it. I have told you all about myself, Mrs. Travers, and you know that I speak the truth when I say too late. If you had only been alone in that yacht going about the seas!”

“Yes,” she struck in, “but I was not alone.”

Lingard dropped his chin on his breast. Already a foretaste of noonday heat staled the sparkling freshness of the morning. The smile had vanished from Edith Travers' lips and her eyes rested on Lingard's bowed head with an expression no longer curious but which might have appeared enigmatic to Jorgenson if he had looked at her. But Jorgenson looked at nothing. He asked from the remoteness of his dead past, “What have you left outside, Tom? What is there now?”

“There's the yacht on the shoals, my brig at anchor, and about a hundred of the worst kind of Illanun vagabonds under three chiefs and with two war-praus moored to the edge of the bank. Maybe Daman is with them, too, out there.”

“No,” said Jorgenson, positively.

“He has come in,” cried Lingard. “He brought his prisoners in himself then.”

“Landed by torchlight,” uttered precisely the shade of Captain Jorgenson, late of the Barque Wild Rose. He swung his arm pointing across the lagoon and Mrs. Travers turned about in that direction.

All the scene was but a great light and a great solitude. Her gaze travelled over the lustrous, dark sheet of empty water to a shore bordered by a white beach empty, too, and showing no sign of human life. The human habitations were lost in the shade of the fruit trees, masked by the cultivated patches of Indian corn and the banana plantations. Near the shore the rigid lines of two stockaded forts could be distinguished flanking the beach, and between them with a great open space before it, the brown roof slope of an enormous long building that seemed suspended in the air had a great square flag fluttering above it. Something like a small white flame in the sky was the carved white coral finial on the gable of the mosque which had caught full the rays of the sun. A multitude of gay streamers, white and red, flew over the half-concealed roofs, over the brilliant fields and amongst the sombre palm groves. But it might have been a deserted settlement decorated and abandoned by its departed population. Lingard pointed to the stockade on the right.

“That's where your husband is,” he said to Mrs. Travers.

“Who is the other?” uttered Jorgenson's voice at their backs. He also was turned that way with his strange sightless gaze fixed beyond them into the void.

“A Spanish gentleman I believe you said, Mrs Travers,” observed Lingard.

“It is extremely difficult to believe that there is anybody there,” murmured Mrs. Travers.

“Did you see them both, Jorgenson?” asked Lingard.

“Made out nobody. Too far. Too dark.”

As a matter of fact Jorgenson had seen nothing, about an hour before daybreak, but the distant glare of torches while the loud shouts of an excited multitude had reached him across the water only like a faint and tempestuous murmur. Presently the lights went away processionally through the groves of trees into the armed stockades. The distant glare vanished in the fading darkness and the murmurs of the invisible crowd ceased suddenly as if carried off by the retreating shadow of the night. Daylight followed swiftly, disclosing to the sleepless Jorgenson the solitude of the shore and the ghostly outlines of the familiar forms of grouped trees and scattered human habitations. He had watched the varied colours come out in the dawn, the wide cultivated Settlement of many shades of green, framed far away by the fine black lines of the forest-edge that was its limit and its protection.

Mrs. Travers stood against the rail as motionless as a statue. Her face had lost all its mobility and her cheeks were dead white as if all the blood in her body had flowed back into her heart and had remained there. Her very lips had lost their colour. Lingard caught hold of her arm roughly.

“Don't, Mrs. Travers. Why are you terrifying yourself like this? If you don't believe what I say listen to me asking Jorgenson. . . .”

“Yes, ask me,” mumbled Jorgenson in his white moustache.

“Speak straight, Jorgenson. What do you think? Are the gentlemen alive?”

“Certainly,” said Jorgenson in a sort of disappointed tone as though he had expected a much more difficult question.

“Is their life in immediate danger?”

“Of course not,” said Jorgenson.

Lingard turned away from the oracle. “You have heard him, Mrs. Travers. You may believe every word he says. There isn't a thought or a purpose in that Settlement,” he continued, pointing at the dumb solitude of the lagoon, “that this man doesn't know as if they were his own.”

“I know. Ask me,” muttered Jorgenson, mechanically.

Mrs. Travers said nothing but made a slight movement and her whole rigid figure swayed dangerously. Lingard put his arm firmly round her waist and she did not seem aware of it till after she had turned her head and found Lingard's face very near her own. But his eyes full of concern looked so close into hers that she was obliged to shut them like a woman about to faint.

The effect this produced upon Lingard was such that she felt the tightening of his arm and as she opened her eyes again some of the colour returned to her face. She met the deepened expression of his solicitude with a look so steady, with a gaze that in spite of herself was so profoundly vivid that its clearness seemed to Lingard to throw all his past life into shade.—“I don't feel faint. It isn't that at all,” she declared in a perfectly calm voice. It seemed to Lingard as cold as ice.

“Very well,” he agreed with a resigned smile. “But you just catch hold of that rail, please, before I let you go.” She, too, forced a smile on her lips.

“What incredulity,” she remarked, and for a time made not the slightest movement. At last, as if making a concession, she rested the tips of her fingers on the rail. Lingard gradually removed his arm. “And pray don't look upon me as a conventional 'weak woman' person, the delicate lady of your own conception,” she said, facing Lingard, with her arm extended to the rail. “Make that effort please against your own conception of what a woman like me should be. I am perhaps as strong as you are, Captain Lingard. I mean it literally. In my body.”—“Don't you think I have seen that long ago?” she heard his deep voice protesting.—“And as to my courage,” Mrs. Travers continued, her expression charmingly undecided between frowns and smiles; “didn't I tell you only a few hours ago, only last evening, that I was not capable of thinking myself into a fright; you remember, when you were begging me to try something of the kind. Don't imagine that I would have been ashamed to try. But I couldn't have done it. No. Not even for the sake of somebody else's kingdom. Do you understand me?”

“God knows,” said the attentive Lingard after a time, with an unexpected sigh. “You people seem to be made of another stuff.”

“What has put that absurd notion into your head?”

“I didn't mean better or worse. And I wouldn't say it isn't good stuff either. What I meant to say is that it's different. One feels it. And here we are.”

“Yes, here we are,” repeated Mrs. Travers. “And as to this moment of emotion, what provoked it is not a concern for anybody or anything outside myself. I felt no terror. I cannot even fix my fears upon any distinct image. You think I am shamelessly heartless in telling you this.”

Lingard made no sign. It didn't occur to him to make a sign. He simply hung on Mrs. Travers' words as it were only for the sake of the sound.—“I am simply frank with you,” she continued. “What do I know of savagery, violence, murder? I have never seen a dead body in my life. The light, the silence, the mysterious emptiness of this place have suddenly affected my imagination, I suppose. What is the meaning of this wonderful peace in which we stand—you and I alone?”

Lingard shook his head. He saw the narrow gleam of the woman's teeth between the parted lips of her smile, as if all the ardour of her conviction had been dissolved at the end of her speech into wistful recognition of their partnership before things outside their knowledge. And he was warmed by something a little helpless in that smile. Within three feet of them the shade of Jorgenson, very gaunt and neat, stared into space.

“Yes. You are strong,” said Lingard. “But a whole long night sitting in a small boat! I wonder you are not too stiff to stand.”

“I am not stiff in the least,” she interrupted, still smiling. “I am really a very strong woman,” she added, earnestly. “Whatever happens you may reckon on that fact.”

Lingard gave her an admiring glance. But the shade of Jorgenson, perhaps catching in its remoteness the sound of the word woman, was suddenly moved to begin scolding with all the liberty of a ghost, in a flow of passionless indignation.

“Woman! That's what I say. That's just about the last touch—that you, Tom Lingard, red-eyed Tom, King Tom, and all those fine names, that you should leave your weapons twenty miles behind you, your men, your guns, your brig that is your strength, and come along here with your mouth full of fight, bare-handed and with a woman in tow.—Well—well!”

“Don't forget, Jorgenson, that the lady hears you,” remonstrated Lingard in a vexed tone. . . . “He doesn't mean to be rude,” he remarked to Mrs. Travers quite loud, as if indeed Jorgenson were but an immaterial and feelingless illusion. “He has forgotten.”

“The woman is not in the least offended. I ask for nothing better than to be taken on that footing.”

“Forgot nothing!” mumbled Jorgenson with a sort of ghostly assertiveness and as it were for his own satisfaction. “What's the world coming to?”

“It was I who insisted on coming with Captain Lingard,” said Mrs. Travers, treating Jorgenson to a fascinating sweetness of tone.

“That's what I say! What is the world coming to? Hasn't King Tom a mind of his own? What has come over him? He's mad! Leaving his brig with a hundred and twenty born and bred pirates of the worst kind in two praus on the other side of a sandbank. Did you insist on that, too? Has he put himself in the hands of a strange woman?”

Jorgenson seemed to be asking those questions of himself. Mrs. Travers observed the empty stare, the self-communing voice, his unearthly lack of animation. Somehow it made it very easy to speak the whole truth to him.

“No,” she said, “it is I who am altogether in his hands.”

Nobody would have guessed that Jorgenson had heard a single word of that emphatic declaration if he had not addressed himself to Lingard with the question neither more nor less abstracted than all his other speeches.

“Why then did you bring her along?”

“You don't understand. It was only right and proper. One of the gentlemen is the lady's husband.”

“Oh, yes,” muttered Jorgenson. “Who's the other?”

“You have been told. A friend.”

“Poor Mr. d'Alcacer,” said Mrs. Travers. “What bad luck for him to have accepted our invitation. But he is really a mere acquaintance.”

“I hardly noticed him,” observed Lingard, gloomily. “He was talking to you over the back of your chair when I came aboard the yacht as if he had been a very good friend.”

“We always understood each other very well,” said Mrs. Travers, picking up from the rail the long glass that was lying there. “I always liked him, the frankness of his mind, and his great loyalty.”

“What did he do?” asked Lingard.

“He loved,” said Mrs. Travers, lightly. “But that's an old story.” She raised the glass to her eyes, one arm extended fully to sustain the long tube, and Lingard forgot d'Alcacer in admiring the firmness of her pose and the absolute steadiness of the heavy glass. She was as firm as a rock after all those emotions and all that fatigue.

Mrs. Travers directed the glass instinctively toward the entrance of the lagoon. The smooth water there shone like a piece of silver in the dark frame of the forest. A black speck swept across the field of her vision. It was some time before she could find it again and then she saw, apparently so near as to be within reach of the voice, a small canoe with two people in it. She saw the wet paddles rising and dipping with a flash in the sunlight. She made out plainly the face of Immada, who seemed to be looking straight into the big end of the telescope. The chief and his sister, after resting under the bank for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, had entered the lagoon and were making straight for the hulk. They were already near enough to be perfectly distinguishable to the naked eye if there had been anybody on board to glance that way. But nobody was even thinking of them. They might not have existed except perhaps in the memory of old Jorgenson. But that was mostly busy with all the mysterious secrets of his late tomb.

Mrs. Travers lowered the glass suddenly. Lingard came out from a sort of trance and said:

“Mr. d'Alcacer. Loved! Why shouldn't he?”

Mrs. Travers looked frankly into Lingard's gloomy eyes. “It isn't that alone, of course,” she said. “First of all he knew how to love and then. . . . You don't know how artificial and barren certain kinds of life can be. But Mr. d'Alcacer's life was not that. His devotion was worth having.”

“You seem to know a lot about him,'” said Lingard, enviously. “Why do you smile?” She continued to smile at him for a little while. The long brass tube over her shoulder shone like gold against the pale fairness of her bare head.—“At a thought,” she answered, preserving the low tone of the conversation into which they had fallen as if their words could have disturbed the self-absorption of Captain H. C. Jorgenson. “At the thought that for all my long acquaintance with Mr. d'Alcacer I don't know half as much about him as I know about you.”

“Ah, that's impossible,” contradicted Lingard. “Spaniard or no Spaniard, he is one of your kind.”

“Tarred with the same brush,” murmured Mrs. Travers, with only a half-amused irony. But Lingard continued:

“He was trying to make it up between me and your husband, wasn't he? I was too angry to pay much attention, but I liked him well enough. What pleased me most was the way in which he gave it up. That was done like a gentleman. Do you understand what I mean, Mrs. Travers?”

“I quite understand.”

“Yes, you would,” he commented, simply. “But just then I was too angry to talk to anybody. And so I cleared out on board my own ship and stayed there, not knowing what to do and wishing you all at the bottom of the sea. Don't mistake me, Mrs. Travers; it's you, the people aft, that I wished at the bottom of the sea. I had nothing against the poor devils on board, They would have trusted me quick enough. So I fumed there till—till. . . .”

“Till nine o'clock or a little after,” suggested Mrs. Travers, impenetrably.

“No. Till I remembered you,” said Lingard with the utmost innocence.

“Do you mean to say that you forgot my existence so completely till then? You had spoken to me on board the yacht, you know.”

“Did I? I thought I did. What did I say?”

“You told me not to touch a dusky princess,” answered Mrs. Travers with a short laugh. Then with a visible change of mood as if she had suddenly out of a light heart been recalled to the sense of the true situation: “But indeed I meant no harm to this figure of your dream. And, look over there. She is pursuing you.” Lingard glanced toward the north shore and suppressed an exclamation of remorse. For the second time he discovered that he had forgotten the existence of Hassim and Immada. The canoe was now near enough for its occupants to distinguish plainly the heads of three people above the low bulwark of the Emma. Immada let her paddle trail suddenly in the water, with the exclamation, “I see the white woman there.” Her brother looked over his shoulder and the canoe floated, arrested as if by the sudden power of a spell.—“They are no dream to me,” muttered Lingard, sturdily. Mrs. Travers turned abruptly away to look at the further shore. It was still and empty to the naked eye and seemed to quiver in the sunshine like an immense painted curtain lowered upon the unknown.

“Here's Rajah Hassim coming, Jorgenson. I had an idea he would perhaps stay outside.” Mrs. Travers heard Lingard's voice at her back and the answering grunt of Jorgenson. She raised deliberately the long glass to her eye, pointing it at the shore.

She distinguished plainly now the colours in the flutter of the streamers above the brown roofs of the large Settlement, the stir of palm groves, the black shadows inland and the dazzling white beach of coral sand all ablaze in its formidable mystery. She swept the whole range of the view and was going to lower the glass when from behind the massive angle of the stockade there stepped out into the brilliant immobility of the landscape a man in a long white gown and with an enormous black turban surmounting a dark face. Slow and grave he paced the beach ominously in the sunshine, an enigmatical figure in an Oriental tale with something weird and menacing in its sudden emergence and lonely progress.

With an involuntary gasp Mrs. Travers lowered the glass. All at once behind her back she heard a low musical voice beginning to pour out incomprehensible words in a tone of passionate pleading. Hassim and Immada had come on board and had approached Lingard. Yes! It was intolerable to feel that this flow of soft speech which had no meaning for her could make its way straight into that man's heart.