gusts of fury which frightened him secretly.  His complexion had acquired a yellow tinge, while his heavy eyes had become bloodshot because of the smoke of the open wood fires during his three days’ detention inside Belarab’s stockade.  His eyes had been always very sensitive to outward conditions.  D’Alcacer’s fine black eyes were more enduring and his appearance did not differ very much from his ordinary appearance on board the yacht.  He had accepted with smiling thanks the offer of a thin blue flannel tunic from Jorgenson.  Those two men were much of the same build, though of course d’Alcacer, quietly alive and spiritually watchful, did not resemble Jorgenson, who, without being exactly macabre, behaved more like an indifferent but restless corpse.  Those two could not be said to have ever conversed together.  Conversation with Jorgenson was an impossible thing.  Even Lingard never attempted the feat.  He propounded questions to Jorgenson much as a magician would interrogate an evoked shade, or gave him curt directions as one would make use of some marvellous automaton.  And that was apparently the way in which Jorgenson preferred to be treated.  Lingard’s real company on board the Emma was d’Alcacer.  D’Alcacer had met Lingard on the easy terms of a man accustomed all his life to good society in which the very affectations must be carried on without effort.  Whether affectation, or nature, or inspired discretion, d’Alcacer never let the slightest curiosity pierce the smoothness of his level, grave courtesy lightened frequently by slight smiles which often had not much connection with the words he uttered, except that somehow they made them sound kindly and as it were tactful.  In their character, however, those words were strictly neutral.

The only time when Lingard had detected something of a deeper comprehension in d’Alcacer was the day after the long negotiations inside Belarab’s stockade for the temporary surrender of the prisoners.  That move had been suggested to him, exactly as Mrs. Travers had told her husband, by the rivalries of the parties and the state of public opinion in the Settlement deprived of the presence of the man who, theoretically at least, was the greatest power and the visible ruler of the Shore of Refuge.  Belarab still lingered at his father’s tomb.  Whether that man of the embittered and pacific heart had withdrawn there to meditate upon the unruliness of mankind and the thankless nature of his task; or whether he had gone there simply to bathe in a particularly clear pool which was a feature of the place, give himself up to the enjoyment of a certain fruit which grew in profusion there and indulge for a time in a scrupulous performance of religious exercises, his absence from the Settlement was a fact of the utmost gravity.  It is true that the prestige of a long-unquestioned rulership and the long-settled mental habits of the people had caused the captives to be taken straight to Belarab’s stockade as a matter of course.