lead.’  I was armed as you see now; six eight-pounders on the main deck and a long eighteen on the forecastle—­and I wanted to try ’em.  You may believe me!  However, the Frenchman had nothing but a few old muskets; and the beggars got to windward of us by fair words, till one morning a boat’s crew from the Frenchman’s ship found the girl lying dead on the beach.  That put an end to our plans.  She was out of her trouble anyhow, and no reasonable man will fight for a dead woman.  I was never vengeful, Shaw, and—­after all—­she didn’t throw that flower at me.  But it broke the Frenchman up altogether.  He began to mope, did no business, and shortly afterward sailed away.  I cleared a good many pence out of that trip, I remember.”

With these words he seemed to come to the end of his memories of that trip.  Shaw stifled a yawn.

“Women are the cause of a lot of trouble,” he said, dispassionately.  “In the Morayshire, I remember, we had once a passenger—­an old gentleman—­who was telling us a yarn about them old-time Greeks fighting for ten years about some woman.  The Turks kidnapped her, or something.  Anyway, they fought in Turkey; which I may well believe.  Them Greeks and Turks were always fighting.  My father was master’s mate on board one of the three-deckers at the battle of Navarino—­and that was when we went to help those Greeks.  But this affair about a woman was long before that time.”

“I should think so,” muttered Lingard, hanging over the rail, and watching the fleeting gleams that passed deep down in the water, along the ship’s bottom.

“Yes.  Times are changed.  They were unenlightened in those old days.  My grandfather was a preacher and, though my father served in the navy, I don’t hold with war.  Sinful the old gentleman called it—­and I think so, too.  Unless with Chinamen, or niggers, or such people as must be kept in order and won’t listen to reason; having not sense enough to know what’s good for them, when it’s explained to them by their betters—­missionaries, and such like au-tho-ri-ties.  But to fight ten years.  And for a woman!”

“I have read the tale in a book,” said Lingard, speaking down over the side as if setting his words gently afloat upon the sea.  “I have read the tale.  She was very beautiful.”

“That only makes it worse, sir—­if anything.  You may depend on it she was no good.  Those pagan times will never come back, thank God.  Ten years of murder and unrighteousness!  And for a woman!  Would anybody do it now?  Would you do it, sir?  Would you—­”

The sound of a bell struck sharply interrupted Shaw’s discourse.  High aloft, some dry block sent out a screech, short and lamentable, like a cry of pain.  It pierced the quietness of the night to the very core, and seemed to destroy the reserve which it had imposed upon the tones of the two men, who spoke now loudly.

“Throw the cover over the binnacle,” said Lingard in his duty voice.  “The thing shines like a full moon.  We mustn’t show more lights than we can help, when becalmed at night so near the land.  No use in being seen if you can’t see yourself—­is there?  Bear that in mind, Mr. Shaw.  There may be some vagabonds prying about—­”