till after Carter had cried:  “You can’t, Mrs. Travers!”—­when without budging he whispered to himself:—­“Of course.”  Mrs. Travers had pulled already the hood of her cloak over her head and her face within the dark cloth had turned an intense and unearthly white, in which the violet of her eyes appeared unfathomably mysterious.  Carter started forward.—­“You don’t know this man,” he almost shouted.

“I do know him,” she said, and before the reproachfully unbelieving attitude of the other she added, speaking slowly and with emphasis:  “There is not, I verily believe, a single thought or act of his life that I don’t know.”—­“It’s true—­it’s true,” muttered Lingard to himself.  Carter threw up his arms with a groan.  “Stand back,” said a voice that sounded to him like a growl of thunder, and he felt a grip on his hand which seemed to crush every bone.  He jerked it away.—­“Mrs. Travers! stay,” he cried.  They had vanished through the open door and the sound of their footsteps had already died away.  Carter turned about bewildered as if looking for help.—­“Who is he, steward?  Who in the name of all the mad devils is he?” he asked, wildly.  He was confounded by the cold and philosophical tone of the answer:—­“’Tain’t my place to trouble about that, sir—­nor yours I guess.”—­“Isn’t it!” shouted Carter.  “Why, he has carried the lady off.”  The steward was looking critically at the lamp and after a while screwed the light down.—­“That’s better,” he mumbled.—­“Good God!  What is a fellow to do?” continued Carter, looking at Hassim and Immada who were whispering together and gave him only an absent glance.  He rushed on deck and was struck blind instantly by the night that seemed to have been lying in wait for him; he stumbled over something soft, kicked something hard, flung himself on the rail.  “Come back,” he cried.  “Come back.  Captain!  Mrs. Travers!—­or let me come, too.”

He listened.  The breeze blew cool against his cheek.  A black bandage seemed to lie over his eyes.  “Gone,” he groaned, utterly crushed.  And suddenly he heard Mrs. Travers’ voice remote in the depths of the night.—­“Defend the brig,” it said, and these words, pronouncing themselves in the immensity of a lightless universe, thrilled every fibre of his body by the commanding sadness of their tone.  “Defend, defend the brig.” . . .  “I am damned if I do,” shouted Carter in despair.  “Unless you come back! . . .  Mrs. Travers!”

“. . . as though—­I were—­on board—­myself,” went on the rising cadence of the voice, more distant now, a marvel of faint and imperious clearness.

Carter shouted no more; he tried to make out the boat for a time, and when, giving it up, he leaped down from the rail, the heavy obscurity of the brig’s main deck was agitated like a sombre pool by his jump, swayed, eddied, seemed to break up.  Blotches of darkness recoiled, drifted away, bare feet shuffled hastily, confused murmurs died out.  “Lascars,” he muttered, “The crew is all agog.”