“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.