________________________________________________
_ An ingeniously constructed framework of light posts and thin
laths occupied the greater part of the deck amidships of the
Emma. The four walls of that airy structure were made of muslin.
It was comparatively lofty. A door-like arrangement of light
battens filled with calico was further protected by a system of
curtains calculated to baffle the pursuit of mosquitoes that
haunted the shores of the lagoon in great singing clouds from
sunset till sunrise. A lot of fine mats covered the deck space
within the transparent shelter devised by Lingard and Jorgenson
to make Mrs. Travers' existence possible during the time when the
fate of the two men, and indeed probably of everybody else on
board the Emma, had to hang in the balance. Very soon Lingard's
unbidden and fatal guests had learned the trick of stepping in
and out of the place quickly. Mr. d'Alcacer performed the feat
without apparent haste, almost nonchalantly, yet as well as
anybody. It was generally conceded that he had never let a
mosquito in together with himself. Mr. Travers dodged in and out
without grace and was obviously much irritated at the necessity.
Mrs. Travers did it in a manner all her own, with marked
cleverness and an unconscious air. There was an improvised table
in there and some wicker armchairs which Jorgenson had produced
from somewhere in the depths of the ship. It was hard to say what
the inside of the Emma did not contain. It was crammed with all
sorts of goods like a general store. That old hulk was the
arsenal and the war-chest of Lingard's political action; she was
stocked with muskets and gunpowder, with bales of longcloth, of
cotton prints, of silks; with bags of rice and currency brass
guns. She contained everything necessary for dealing death and
distributing bribes, to act on the cupidity and upon the fears of
men, to march and to organize, to feed the friends and to combat
the enemies of the cause. She held wealth and power in her
flanks, that grounded ship that would swim no more, without masts
and with the best part of her deck cumbered by the two structures
of thin boards and of transparent muslin.
Within the latter lived the Europeans, visible in the daytime to
the few Malays on board as if through a white haze. In the
evening the lighting of the hurricane lamps inside turned them
into dark phantoms surrounded by a shining mist, against which
the insect world rushing in its millions out of the forest on the
bank was baffled mysteriously in its assault. Rigidly enclosed by
transparent walls, like captives of an enchanted cobweb, they
moved about, sat, gesticulated, conversed publicly during the
day; and at night when all the lanterns but one were
extinguished, their slumbering shapes covered all over by white
cotton sheets on the camp bedsteads, which were brought in every
evening, conveyed the gruesome suggestion of dead bodies reposing
on stretchers. The food, such as it was, was served within that
glorified mosquito net which everybody called the "Cage" without
any humorous intention. At meal times the party from the yacht
had the company of Lingard who attached to this ordeal a sense of
duty performed at the altar of civility and conciliation. He
could have no conception how much his presence added to the
exasperation of Mr. Travers because Mr. Travers' manner was too
intensely consistent to present any shades. It was determined by
an ineradicable conviction that he was a victim held to ransom on
some incomprehensible terms by an extraordinary and outrageous
bandit. This conviction, strung to the highest pitch, never left
him for a moment, being the object of indignant meditation to his
mind, and even clinging, as it were, to his very body. It lurked
in his eyes, in his gestures, in his ungracious mutters, and in
his sinister silences. The shock to his moral being had ended by
affecting Mr. Travers' physical machine. He was aware of hepatic
pains, suffered from accesses of somnolence and suppressed gusts
of fury which frightened him secretly. His complexion had
acquired a yellow tinge, while his heavy eyes had become
bloodshot because of the smoke of the open wood fires during his
three days' detention inside Belarab's stockade. His eyes had
been always very sensitive to outward conditions. D'Alcacer's
fine black eyes were more enduring and his appearance did not
differ very much from his ordinary appearance on board the yacht.
He had accepted with smiling thanks the offer of a thin blue
flannel tunic from Jorgenson. Those two men were much of the same
build, though of course d'Alcacer, quietly alive and spiritually
watchful, did not resemble Jorgenson, who, without being exactly
macabre, behaved more like an indifferent but restless corpse.
Those two could not be said to have ever conversed together.
Conversation with Jorgenson was an impossible thing. Even Lingard
never attempted the feat. He propounded questions to Jorgenson
much as a magician would interrogate an evoked shade, or gave him
curt directions as one would make use of some marvellous
automaton. And that was apparently the way in which Jorgenson
preferred to be treated. Lingard's real company on board the Emma
was d'Alcacer. D'Alcacer had met Lingard on the easy terms of a
man accustomed all his life to good society in which the very
affectations must be carried on without effort. Whether
affectation, or nature, or inspired discretion, d'Alcacer never
let the slightest curiosity pierce the smoothness of his level,
grave courtesy lightened frequently by slight smiles which often
had not much connection with the words he uttered, except that
somehow they made them sound kindly and as it were tactful. In
their character, however, those words were strictly neutral.
The only time when Lingard had detected something of a deeper
comprehension in d'Alcacer was the day after the long
negotiations inside Belarab's stockade for the temporary
surrender of the prisoners. That move had been suggested to him,
exactly as Mrs. Travers had told her husband, by the rivalries of
the parties and the state of public opinion in the Settlement
deprived of the presence of the man who, theoretically at least,
was the greatest power and the visible ruler of the Shore of
Refuge. Belarab still lingered at his father's tomb. Whether that
man of the embittered and pacific heart had withdrawn there to
meditate upon the unruliness of mankind and the thankless nature
of his task; or whether he had gone there simply to bathe in a
particularly clear pool which was a feature of the place, give
himself up to the enjoyment of a certain fruit which grew in
profusion there and indulge for a time in a scrupulous
performance of religious exercises, his absence from the
Settlement was a fact of the utmost gravity. It is true that the
prestige of a long-unquestioned rulership and the long-settled
mental habits of the people had caused the captives to be taken
straight to Belarab's stockade as a matter of course. Belarab, at
a distance, could still outweigh the power on the spot of Tengga,
whose secret purposes were no better known, who was jovial,
talkative, outspoken and pugnacious; but who was not a professed
servant of God famed for many charities and a scrupulous
performance of pious practices, and who also had no father who
had achieved a local saintship. But Belarab, with his glamour of
asceticism and melancholy together with a reputation for severity
(for a man so pious would be naturally ruthless), was not on the
spot. The only favourable point in his absence was the fact that
he had taken with him his latest wife, the same lady whom
Jorgenson had mentioned in his letter to Lingard as anxious to
bring about battle, murder, and the looting of the yacht, not
because of inborn wickedness of heart but from a simple desire
for silks, jewels and other objects of personal adornment, quite
natural in a girl so young and elevated to such a high position.
Belarab had selected her to be the companion of his retirement
and Lingard was glad of it. He was not afraid of her influence
over Belarab. He knew his man. No words, no blandishments, no
sulks, scoldings, or whisperings of a favourite could affect
either the resolves or the irresolutions of that Arab whose
action ever seemed to hang in mystic suspense between the
contradictory speculations and judgments disputing the possession
of his will. It was not what Belarab would either suddenly do or
leisurely determine upon that Lingard was afraid of. The danger
was that in his taciturn hesitation, which had something
hopelessly godlike in its remote calmness, the man would do
nothing and leave his white friend face to face with unruly
impulses against which Lingard had no means of action but force
which he dared not use since it would mean the destruction of his
plans and the downfall of his hopes; and worse still would wear
an aspect of treachery to Hassim and Immada, those fugitives whom
he had snatched away from the jaws of death on a night of storm
and had promised to lead back in triumph to their own country he
had seen but once, sleeping unmoved under the wrath and fire of
heaven.
On the afternoon of the very day he had arrived with her on board
the Emma--to the infinite disgust of Jorgenson-- Lingard held
with Mrs. Travers (after she had had a couple of hours' rest) a
long, fiery, and perplexed conversation. From the nature of the
problem it could not be exhaustive; but toward the end of it they
were both feeling thoroughly exhausted. Mrs. Travers had no
longer to be instructed as to facts and possibilities. She was
aware of them only too well and it was not her part to advise or
argue. She was not called upon to decide or to plead. The
situation was far beyond that. But she was worn out with watching
the passionate conflict within the man who was both so
desperately reckless and so rigidly restrained in the very ardour
of his heart and the greatness of his soul. It was a spectacle
that made her forget the actual questions at issue. This was no
stage play; and yet she had caught herself looking at him with
bated breath as at a great actor on a darkened stage in some
simple and tremendous drama. He extorted from her a response to
the forces that seemed to tear at his single-minded brain, at his
guileless breast. He shook her with his own struggles, he
possessed her with his emotions and imposed his personality as if
its tragedy were the only thing worth considering in this matter.
And yet what had she to do with all those obscure and barbarous
things? Obviously nothing. Unluckily she had been taken into the
confidence of that man's passionate perplexity, a confidence
provoked apparently by nothing but the power of her personality.
She was flattered, and even more, she was touched by it; she was
aware of something that resembled gratitude and provoked a sort
of emotional return as between equals who had secretly recognized
each other's value. Yet at the same time she regretted not having
been left in the dark; as much in the dark as Mr. Travers himself
or d'Alcacer, though as to the latter it was impossible to say
how much precise, unaccountable, intuitive knowledge was buried
under his unruffled manner.
D'Alcacer was the sort of man whom it would be much easier to
suspect of anything in the world than ignorance--or stupidity.
Naturally he couldn't know anything definite or even guess at the
bare outline of the facts but somehow he must have scented the
situation in those few days of contact with Lingard. He was an
acute and sympathetic observer in all his secret aloofness from
the life of men which was so very different from Jorgenson's
secret divorce from the passions of this earth. Mrs. Travers
would have liked to share with d'Alcacer the burden (for it was a
burden) of Lingard's story. After all, she had not provoked those
confidences, neither had that unexpected adventurer from the sea
laid on her an obligation of secrecy. No, not even by
implication. He had never said to her that she was the ONLY
person whom he wished to know that story.
No. What he had said was that she was the only person to whom he
COULD tell the tale himself, as if no one else on earth had the
power to draw it from him. That was the sense and nothing more.
Yes, it would have been a relief to tell d'Alcacer. It would have
been a relief to her feeling of being shut off from the world
alone with Lingard as if within the four walls of a romantic
palace and in an exotic atmosphere. Yes, that relief and also
another: that of sharing the responsibility with somebody fit to
understand. Yet she shrank from it, with unaccountable reserve,
as if by talking of Lingard with d'Alcacer she was bound to give
him an insight into herself. It was a vague uneasiness and yet so
persistent that she felt it, too, when she had to approach and
talk to Lingard under d'Alcacer's eyes. Not that Mr. d'Alcacer
would ever dream of staring or even casting glances. But was he
averting his eyes on purpose? That would be even more offensive.
"I am stupid," whispered Mrs. Travers to herself, with a complete
and reassuring conviction. Yet she waited motionless till the
footsteps of the two men stopped outside the deckhouse, then
separated and died away, before she went out on deck. She came
out on deck some time after her husband. As if in intended
contrast to the conflicts of men a great aspect of serenity lay
upon all visible things. Mr. Travers had gone inside the Cage in
which he really looked like a captive and thoroughly out of
place. D'Alcacer had gone in there, too, but he preserved--or was
it an illusion? --an air of independence. It was not that he put
it on. Like Mr. Travers he sat in a wicker armchair in very much
the same attitude as the other gentleman and also silent; but
there was somewhere a subtle difference which did away with the
notion of captivity. Moreover, d'Alcacer had that peculiar gift
of never looking out of place in any surroundings. Mrs. Travers,
in order to save her European boots for active service, had been
persuaded to use a pair of leather sandals also extracted from
that seaman's chest in the deckhouse. An additional fastening had
been put on them but she could not avoid making a delicate
clatter as she walked on the deck. No part of her costume made
her feel so exotic. It also forced her to alter her usual gait
and move with quick, short steps very much like Immada.
"I am robbing the girl of her clothes," she had thought to
herself, "besides other things." She knew by this time that a
girl of such high rank would never dream of wearing anything that
had been worn by somebody else.
At the slight noise of Mrs. Travers' sandals d'Alcacer looked
over the back of his chair. But he turned his head away at once
and Mrs. Travers, leaning her elbow on the rail and resting her
head on the palm of her hand, looked across the calm surface of
the lagoon, idly.
She was turning her back on the Cage, the fore-part of the deck
and the edge of the nearest forest. That great erection of
enormous solid trunks, dark, rugged columns festooned with
writhing creepers and steeped in gloom, was so close to the bank
that by looking over the side of the ship she could see inverted
in the glassy belt of water its massive and black reflection on
the reflected sky that gave the impression of a clear blue abyss
seen through a transparent film. And when she raised her eyes the
same abysmal immobility seemed to reign over the whole sun-bathed
enlargement of that lagoon which was one of the secret places of
the earth. She felt strongly her isolation. She was so much the
only being of her kind moving within this mystery that even to
herself she looked like an apparition without rights and without
defence and that must end by surrendering to those forces which
seemed to her but the expression of the unconscious genius of the
place. Hers was the most complete loneliness, charged with a
catastrophic tension. It lay about her as though she had been set
apart within a magic circle. It cut off--but it did not protect.
The footsteps that she knew how to distinguish above all others
on that deck were heard suddenly behind her. She did not turn her
head.
Since that afternoon when the gentlemen, as Lingard called them,
had been brought on board, Mrs. Travers and Lingard had not
exchanged one significant word.
When Lingard had decided to proceed by way of negotiation she had
asked him on what he based his hope of success; and he had
answered her: "On my luck." What he really depended on was his
prestige; but even if he had been aware of such a word he would
not have used it, since it would have sounded like a boast. And,
besides, he did really believe in his luck. Nobody, either white
or brown, had ever doubted his word and that, of course, gave him
great assurance in entering upon the negotiation. But the
ultimate issue of it would be always a matter of luck. He said so
distinctly to Mrs. Travers at the moment of taking leave of her,
with Jorgenson already waiting for him in the boat that was to
take them across the lagoon to Belarab's stockade.
Startled by his decision (for it had come suddenly clinched by
the words "I believe I can do it"), Mrs. Travers had dropped her
hand into his strong open palm on which an expert in palmistry
could have distinguished other lines than the line of luck.
Lingard's hand closed on hers with a gentle pressure. She looked
at him, speechless. He waited for a moment, then in an
unconsciously tender voice he said: "Well, wish me luck then."
She remained silent. And he still holding her hand looked
surprised at her hesitation. It seemed to her that she could not
let him go, and she didn't know what to say till it occurred to
her to make use of the power she knew she had over him. She would
try it again. "I am coming with you," she declared with decision.
"You don't suppose I could remain here in suspense for hours,
perhaps."
He dropped her hand suddenly as if it had burnt him--"Oh, yes, of
course," he mumbled with an air of confusion. One of the men over
there was her husband! And nothing less could be expected from
such a woman. He had really nothing to say but she thought he
hesitated.--"Do you think my presence would spoil everything? I
assure you I am a lucky person, too, in a way. . . . As lucky as
you, at least," she had added in a murmur and with a smile which
provoked his responsive mutter--"Oh, yes, we are a lucky pair of
people."--"I count myself lucky in having found a man like you to
fight my--our battles," she said, warmly. "Suppose you had not
existed? . . . . You must let me come with you!" For the second
time before her expressed wish to stand by his side he bowed his
head. After all, if things came to the worst, she would be as
safe between him and Jorgenson as left alone on board the Emma
with a few Malay spearmen for all defence. For a moment Lingard
thought of picking up the pistols he had taken out of his belt
preparatory to joining Jorgenson in the boat, thinking it would
be better to go to a big talk completely unarmed. They were lying
on the rail but he didn't pick them up. Four shots didn't matter.
They could not matter if the world of his creation were to go to
pieces. He said nothing of that to Mrs. Travers but busied
himself in giving her the means to alter her personal appearance.
It was then that the sea-chest in the deckhouse was opened for
the first time before the interested Mrs. Travers who had
followed him inside. Lingard handed to her a Malay woman's light
cotton coat with jewelled clasps to put over her European dress.
It covered half of her yachting skirt. Mrs. Travers obeyed him
without comment. He pulled out a long and wide scarf of white
silk embroidered heavily on the edges and ends, and begged her to
put it over her head and arrange the ends so as to muffle her
face, leaving little more than her eyes exposed to view.--"We are
going amongst a lot of Mohammedans," he explained. --"I see. You
want me to look respectable," she jested.--"I assure you, Mrs.
Travers," he protested, earnestly, "that most of the people there
and certainly all the great men have never seen a white woman in
their lives. But perhaps you would like better one of those other
scarves? There are three in there."--"No, I like this one well
enough. They are all very gorgeous. I see that the Princess is to
be sent back to her land with all possible splendour. What a
thoughtful man you are, Captain Lingard. That child will be
touched by your generosity. . . . Will I do like this?"
"Yes," said Lingard, averting his eyes. Mrs. Travers followed him
into the boat where the Malays stared in silence while Jorgenson,
stiff and angular, gave no sign of life, not even so much as a
movement of the eyes. Lingard settled her in the stern sheets and
sat down by her side. The ardent sunshine devoured all colours.
The boat swam forward on the glare heading for the strip of coral
beach dazzling like a crescent of metal raised to a white heat.
They landed. Gravely, Jorgenson opened above Mrs. Travers' head a
big white cotton parasol and she advanced between the two men,
dazed, as if in a dream and having no other contact with the
earth but through the soles of her feet. Everything was still,
empty, incandescent, and fantastic. Then when the gate of the
stockade was thrown open she perceived an expectant and still
multitude of bronze figures draped in coloured stuffs. They
crowded the patches of shade under the three lofty forest trees
left within the enclosure between the sun-smitten empty spaces of
hard-baked ground. The broad blades of the spears decorated with
crimson tufts of horsehair had a cool gleam under the outspread
boughs. To the left a group of buildings on piles with long
verandahs and immense roofs towered high in the air above the
heads of the crowd, and seemed to float in the glare, looking
much less substantial than their heavy shadows. Lingard, pointing
to one of the smallest, said in an undertone, "I lived there for
a fortnight when I first came to see Belarab"; and Mrs. Travers
felt more than ever as if walking in a dream when she perceived
beyond the rails of its verandah and visible from head to foot
two figures in an armour of chain mail with pointed steel helmets
crested with white and black feathers and guarding the closed
door. A high bench draped in turkey cloth stood in an open space
of the great audience shed. Lingard led her up to it, Jorgenson
on her other side closed the parasol calmly, and when she sat
down between them the whole throng before her eyes sank to the
ground with one accord disclosing in the distance of the
courtyard a lonely figure leaning against the smooth trunk of a
tree. A white cloth was fastened round his head by a yellow cord.
Its pointed ends fell on his shoulders, framing a thin dark face
with large eyes, a silk cloak striped black and white fell to his
feet, and in the distance he looked aloof and mysterious in his
erect and careless attitude suggesting assurance and power.
Lingard, bending slightly, whispered into Mrs. Travers' ear that
that man, apart and dominating the scene, was Daman, the supreme
leader of the Illanuns, the one who had ordered the capture of
those gentlemen in order perhaps to force his hand. The two
barbarous, half-naked figures covered with ornaments and charms,
squatting at his feet with their heads enfolded in crimson and
gold handkerchiefs and with straight swords lying across their
knees, were the Pangerans who carried out the order, and had
brought the captives into the lagoon. But the two men in chain
armour on watch outside the door of the small house were
Belarab's two particular body-guards, who got themselves up in
that way only on very great occasions. They were the outward and
visible sign that the prisoners were in Belarab's keeping, and
this was good, so far. The pity was that the Great Chief himself
was not there. Then Lingard assumed a formal pose and Mrs.
Travers stared into the great courtyard and with rows and rows of
faces ranged on the ground at her feet felt a little giddy for a
moment.
Every movement had died in the crowd. Even the eyes were still
under the variegated mass of coloured headkerchiefs: while beyond
the open gate a noble palm tree looked intensely black against
the glitter of the lagoon and the pale incandescence of the sky.
Mrs. Travers gazing that way wondered at the absence of Hassim
and Immada. But the girl might have been somewhere within one of
the houses with the ladies of Belarab's stockade. Then suddenly
Mrs. Travers became aware that another bench had been brought out
and was already occupied by five men dressed in gorgeous silks,
and embroidered velvets, round-faced and grave. Their hands
reposed on their knees; but one amongst them clad in a white robe
and with a large nearly black turban on his head leaned forward a
little with his chin in his hand. His cheeks were sunken and his
eyes remained fixed on the ground as if to avoid looking at the
infidel woman.
She became aware suddenly of a soft murmur, and glancing at
Lingard she saw him in an attitude of impassive attention. The
momentous negotiations had begun, and it went on like this in low
undertones with long pauses and in the immobility of all the
attendants squatting on the ground, with the distant figure of
Daman far off in the shade towering over all the assembly. But in
him, too, Mrs. Travers could not detect the slightest movement
while the slightly modulated murmurs went on enveloping her in a
feeling of peace.
The fact that she couldn't understand anything of what was said
soothed her apprehensions. Sometimes a silence fell and Lingard
bending toward her would whisper, "It isn't so easy," and the
stillness would be so perfect that she would hear the flutter of
a pigeon's wing somewhere high up in the great overshadowing
trees. And suddenly one of the men before her without moving a
limb would begin another speech rendered more mysterious still by
the total absence of action or play of feature. Only the
watchfulness of the eyes which showed that the speaker was not
communing with himself made it clear that this was not a spoken
meditation but a flow of argument directed to Lingard who now and
then uttered a few words either with a grave or a smiling
expression. They were always followed by murmurs which seemed
mostly to her to convey assent; and then a reflective silence
would reign again and the immobility of the crowd would appear
more perfect than before.
When Lingard whispered to her that it was now his turn to make a
speech Mrs. Travers expected him to get up and assert himself by
some commanding gesture. But he did not. He remained seated, only
his voice had a vibrating quality though he obviously tried to
restrain it, and it travelled masterfully far into the silence.
He spoke for a long time while the sun climbing the unstained sky
shifted the diminished shadows of the trees, pouring on the heads
of men its heat through the thick and motionless foliage.
Whenever murmurs arose he would stop and glancing fearlessly at
the assembly, wait till they subsided. Once or twice, they rose
to a loud hum and Mrs. Travers could hear on the other side of
her Jorgenson muttering something in his moustache. Beyond the
rows of heads Daman under the tree had folded his arms on his
breast. The edge of the white cloth concealed his forehead and at
his feet the two Illanun chiefs, half naked and bedecked with
charms and ornaments of bright feathers, of shells, with
necklaces of teeth, claws, and shining beads, remained
cross-legged with their swords across their knees like two bronze
idols. Even the plumes of their head-dresses stirred not.
"Sudah! It is finished!" A movement passed along all the heads,
the seated bodies swayed to and fro. Lingard had ceased speaking.
He remained seated for a moment looking his audience all over and
when he stood up together with Mrs. Travers and Jorgenson the
whole assembly rose from the ground together and lost its ordered
formation. Some of Belarab's retainers, young broad-faced
fellows, wearing a sort of uniform of check-patterned sarongs,
black silk jackets and crimson skull-caps set at a rakish angle,
swaggered through the broken groups and ranged themselves in two
rows before the motionless Daman and his Illanun chiefs in
martial array. The members of the council who had left their
bench approached the white people with gentle smiles and
deferential movements of the hands. Their bearing was faintly
propitiatory; only the man in the big turban remained fanatically
aloof, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
"I have done it," murmured Lingard to Mrs. Travers. --"Was it
very difficult?" she asked.--"No," he said, conscious in his
heart that he had strained to the fullest extent the prestige of
his good name and that habit of deference to his slightest wish
established by the glamour of his wealth and the fear of his
personality in this great talk which after all had done nothing
except put off the decisive hour. He offered Mrs. Travers his arm
ready to lead her away, but at the last moment did not move.
With an authoritative gesture Daman had parted the ranks of
Belarab's young followers with the red skullcaps and was seen
advancing toward the whites striking into an astonished silence
all the scattered groups in the courtyard. But the broken ranks
had closed behind him. The Illanun chiefs, for all their
truculent aspect, were much too prudent to attempt to move. They
had not needed for that the faint warning murmur from Daman. He
advanced alone. The plain hilt of a sword protruded from the open
edges of his cloak. The parted edges disclosed also the butts of
two flintlock pistols. The Koran in a velvet case hung on his
breast by a red cord of silk. He was pious, magnificent, and
warlike, with calm movements and a straight glance from under the
hem of the simple piece of linen covering his head. He carried
himself rigidly and his bearing had a sort of solemn modesty.
Lingard said hurriedly to Mrs. Travers that the man had met white
people before and that, should he attempt to shake hands with
her, she ought to offer her own covered with the end of her
scarf.--"Why?" she asked. "Propriety?"--"Yes, it will be better,"
said Lingard and the next moment Mrs. Travers felt her enveloped
hand pressed gently by slender dark fingers and felt extremely
Oriental herself when, with her face muffled to the eyes, she
encountered the lustrous black stare of the sea-robbers' leader.
It was only for an instant, because Daman turned away at once to
shake hands with Lingard. In the straight, ample folds of his
robes he looked very slender facing the robust white man.
"Great is your power," he said, in a pleasant voice. "The white
men are going to be delivered to you."
"Yes, they pass into my keeping," said Lingard, returning the
other's bright smile but otherwise looking grim enough with the
frown which had settled on his forehead at Daman's approach. He
glanced over his shoulder at a group of spearmen escorting the
two captives who had come down the steps from the hut. At the
sight of Daman barring as it were Lingard's way they had stopped
at some distance and had closed round the two white men. Daman
also glanced dispassionately that way.
"They were my guests," he murmured. "Please God I shall come soon
to ask you for them . . . as a friend," he added after a slight
pause.
"And please God you will not go away empty handed," said Lingard,
smoothing his brow. "After all you and I were not meant to meet
only to quarrel. Would you have preferred to see them pass into
Tengga's keeping?"
"Tengga is fat and full of wiles," said Daman, disdainfully, "a
mere shopkeeper smitten by a desire to be a chief. He is nothing.
But you and I are men that have real power. Yet there is a truth
that you and I can confess to each other. Men's hearts grow
quickly discontented. Listen. The leaders of men are carried
forward in the hands of their followers; and common men's minds
are unsteady, their desires changeable, and their thoughts not to
be trusted. You are a great chief they say. Do not forget that I
am a chief, too, and a leader of armed men."
"I have heard of you, too," said Lingard in a composed voice.
Daman had cast his eyes down. Suddenly he opened them very wide
with an effect that startled Mrs. Travers.--"Yes. But do you
see?" Mrs. Travers, her hand resting lightly on Lingard's arm,
had the sensation of acting in a gorgeously got up play on the
brilliantly lighted stage of an exotic opera whose accompaniment
was not music but the varied strains of the all-pervading
silence.--"Yes, I see," Lingard replied with a surprisingly
confidential intonation. "But power, too, is in the hands of a
great leader."
Mrs. Travers watched the faint movements of Daman's nostrils as
though the man were suffering from some powerful emotion, while
under her fingers Lingard's forearm in its white sleeve was as
steady as a limb of marble. Without looking at him she seemed to
feel that with one movement he could crush that nervous figure in
which lived the breath of the great desert haunted by his nomad,
camel-riding ancestors.--"Power is in the hand of God," he said,
all animation dying out of his face, and paused to wait for
Lingard's "Very true," then continued with a fine smile, "but He
apportions it according to His will for His own purposes, even to
those that are not of the Faith."
"Such being the will of God you should harbour no bitterness
against them in your heart."
The low exclamation, "Against those!" and a slight dismissing
gesture of a meagre dark hand out of the folds of the cloak were
almost understandable to Mrs. Travers in the perfection of their
melancholy contempt, and gave Lingard a further insight into the
character of the ally secured to him by the diplomacy of Belarab.
He was only half reassured by this assumption of superior
detachment. He trusted to the man's self-interest more; for Daman
no doubt looked to the reconquered kingdom for the reward of
dignity and ease. His father and grandfather (the men of whom
Jorgenson had written as having been hanged for an example twelve
years before) had been friends of Sultans, advisers of Rulers,
wealthy financiers of the great raiding expeditions of the past.
It was hatred that had turned Daman into a self-made outcast,
till Belarab's diplomacy had drawn him out from some obscure and
uneasy retreat.
In a few words Lingard assured Daman of the complete safety of
his followers as long as they themselves made no attempt to get
possession of the stranded yacht. Lingard understood very well
that the capture of Travers and d'Alcacer was the result of a
sudden fear, a move directed by Daman to secure his own safety.
The sight of the stranded yacht shook his confidence completely.
It was as if the secrets of the place had been betrayed. After
all, it was perhaps a great folly to trust any white man, no
matter how much he seemed estranged from his own people. Daman
felt he might have been the victim of a plot. Lingard's brig
appeared to him a formidable engine of war. He did not know what
to think and the motive for getting hold of the two white men was
really the wish to secure hostages. Distrusting the fierce
impulses of his followers he had hastened to put them into
Belarab's keeping. But everything in the Settlement seemed to him
suspicious: Belarab's absence, Jorgenson's refusal to make over
at once the promised supply of arms and ammunition. And now that
white man had by the power of his speech got them away from
Belarab's people. So much influence filled Daman with wonder and
awe. A recluse for many years in the most obscure corner of the
Archipelago he felt himself surrounded by intrigues. But the
alliance was a great thing, too. He did not want to quarrel. He
was quite willing for the time being to accept Lingard's
assurance that no harm should befall his people encamped on the
sandbanks. Attentive and slight, he seemed to let Lingard's
deliberate words sink into him. The force of that unarmed big man
seemed overwhelming. He bowed his head slowly.
"Allah is our refuge," he murmured, accepting the inevitable.
He delighted Mrs. Travers not as a living being but like a clever
sketch in colours, a vivid rendering of an artist's vision of
some soul, delicate and fierce. His bright half-smile was
extraordinary, sharp like clear steel, painfully penetrating.
Glancing right and left Mrs. Travers saw the whole courtyard
smitten by the desolating fury of sunshine and peopled with
shadows, their forms and colours fading in the violence of the
light. The very brown tones of roof and wall dazzled the eye.
Then Daman stepped aside. He was no longer smiling and Mrs.
Travers advanced with her hand on Lingard's arm through a heat so
potent that it seemed to have a taste, a feel, a smell of its
own. She moved on as if floating in it with Lingard's support.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"They are following us all right," he answered. Lingard was so
certain that the prisoners would be delivered to him on the beach
that he never glanced back till, after reaching the boat, he and
Mrs. Travers turned about.
The group of spearmen parted right and left, and Mr. Travers and
d'Alcacer walked forward alone looking unreal and odd like their
own day-ghosts. Mr. Travers gave no sign of being aware of his
wife's presence. It was certainly a shock to him. But d'Alcacer
advanced smiling, as if the beach were a drawing. room.
With a very few paddlers the heavy old European-built boat moved
slowly over the water that seemed as pale and blazing as the sky
above. Jorgenson had perched himself in the bow. The other four
white people sat in the stern sheets, the ex-prisoners side by
side in the middle. Lingard spoke suddenly.
"I want you both to understand that the trouble is not over yet.
Nothing is finished. You are out on my bare word."
While Lingard was speaking Mr. Travers turned his face away but
d'Alcacer listened courteously. Not another word was spoken for
the rest of the way. The two gentlemen went up the ship's side
first. Lingard remained to help Mrs. Travers at the foot of the
ladder. She pressed his hand strongly and looking down at his
upturned face:
"This was a wonderful success," she said.
For a time the character of his fascinated gaze did not change.
It was as if she had said nothing. Then he whispered, admiringly,
"You understand everything."
She moved her eyes away and had to disengage her hand to which he
clung for a moment, giddy, like a man falling out of the world. _
Read next: PART V. THE POINT OF HONOUR AND THE POINT OF PASSION: CHAPTER III
Read previous: PART V. THE POINT OF HONOUR AND THE POINT OF PASSION: CHAPTER I
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