Chapter VII: Part III: The Capture (3)

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.