A lull of the breeze kept for a time the small boat in the neighbourhood of the brig.  The hoisted sail, invisible, fluttered faintly, mysteriously, and the boat rising and falling bodily to the passage of each invisible undulation of the waters seemed to repose upon a living breast.  Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat up erect, expectant and silent.  Mrs. Travers had drawn her cloak close around her body.  Their glances plunged infinitely deep into a lightless void, and yet they were still so near the brig that the piteous whine of the dog, mingled with the angry rattling of the chain, reached their ears faintly, evoking obscure images of distress and fury.  A sharp bark ending in a plaintive howl that seemed raised by the passage of phantoms invisible to men, rent the black stillness, as though the instinct of the brute inspired by the soul of night had voiced in a lamentable plaint the fear of the future, the anguish of lurking death, the terror of shadows.  Not far from the brig’s boat Hassim and Immada in their canoe, letting their paddles trail in the water, sat in a silent and invincible torpor as if the fitful puffs of wind had carried to their hearts the breath of a subtle poison that, very soon, would make them die.—­“Have you seen the white woman’s eyes?” cried the girl.  She struck her palms together loudly and remained with her arms extended, with her hands clasped.  “O Hassim!  Have you seen her eyes shining under her eyebrows like rays of light darting under the arched boughs in a forest?  They pierced me.  I shuddered at the sound of her voice!  I saw her walk behind him—­and it seems to me that she does not live on earth—­that all this is witchcraft.”

She lamented in the night.  Hassim kept silent.  He had no illusions and in any other man but Lingard he would have thought the proceeding no better than suicidal folly.  For him Travers and d’Alcacer were two powerful Rajahs—­probably relatives of the Ruler of the land of the English whom he knew to be a woman; but why they should come and interfere with the recovery of his own kingdom was an obscure problem.  He was concerned for Lingard’s safety.  That the risk was incurred mostly for his sake—­so that the prospects of the great enterprise should not be ruined by a quarrel over the lives of these whites—­did not strike him so much as may be imagined.  There was that in him which made such an action on Lingard’s part appear all but unavoidable.  Was he not Rajah Hassim and was not the other a man of strong heart, of strong arm, of proud courage, a man great enough to protect highborn princes—­a friend?  Immada’s words called out a smile which, like the words, was lost in the darkness.  “Forget your weariness,” he said, gently, “lest, O Sister, we should arrive too late.”  The coming day would throw its light on some decisive event.  Hassim thought of his own men who guarded the Emma and he wished to be where they could hear his voice.  He regretted Jaffir was not there.