"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." Ha.s.sim 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 p.o.o.p 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," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 bra.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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 Ha.s.sim!" 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 Ha.s.sim," 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, Ha.s.sim! He will perish alone!"
"No," said Ha.s.sim. "Thy fear is as vain to-night as it was at sunrise.
He shall not perish alone."