“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