He lifted his head suddenly; we had imagined for a moment that he had been dozing.

“Give me your protection—­or your strength!” he cried.  “A charm . . . a weapon!”

Again his chin fell on his breast.  We looked at him, then looked at one another with suspicious awe in our eyes, like men who come unexpectedly upon the scene of some mysterious disaster.  He had given himself up to us; he had thrust into our hands his errors and his torment, his life and his peace; and we did not know what to do with that problem from the outer darkness.  We three white men, looking at the Malay, could not find one word to the purpose amongst us—­if indeed there existed a word that could solve that problem.  We pondered, and our hearts sank.  We felt as though we three had been called to the very gate of Infernal Regions to judge, to decide the fate of a wanderer coming suddenly from a world of sunshine and illusions.

“By Jove, he seems to have a great idea of our power,” whispered Hollis, hopelessly.  And then again there was a silence, the feeble plash of water, the steady tick of chronometers.  Jackson, with bare arms crossed, leaned his shoulders against the bulkhead of the cabin.  He was bending his head under the deck beam; his fair beard spread out magnificently over his chest; he looked colossal, ineffectual, and mild.  There was something lugubrious in the aspect of the cabin; the air in it seemed to become slowly charged with the cruel chill of helplessness, with the pitiless anger of egoism against the incomprehensible form of an intruding pain.  We had no idea what to do; we began to resent bitterly the hard necessity to get rid of him.

Hollis mused, muttered suddenly with a short laugh, “Strength . . .  Protection . . .  Charm.”  He slipped off the table and left the cuddy without a look at us.  It seemed a base desertion.  Jackson and I exchanged indignant glances.  We could hear him rummaging in his pigeon-hole of a cabin.  Was the fellow actually going to bed?  Karain sighed.  It was intolerable!

Then Hollis reappeared, holding in both hands a small leather box.  He put it down gently on the table and looked at us with a queer gasp, we thought, as though he had from some cause become speechless for a moment, or were ethically uncertain about producing that box.  But in an instant the insolent and unerring wisdom of his youth gave him the needed courage.  He said, as he unlocked the box with a very small key, “Look as solemn as you can, you fellows.”

Probably we looked only surprised and stupid, for he glanced over his shoulder, and said angrily—­

“This is no play; I am going to do something for him.  Look serious.  Confound it! . . .  Can’t you lie a little . . . for a friend!”

Karain seemed to take no notice of us, but when Hollis threw open the lid of the box his eyes flew to it—­and so did ours.  The quilted crimson satin of the inside put a violent patch of colour into the sombre atmosphere; it was something positive to look at—­it was fascinating.