He flourished an arm recklessly, and Mrs. Travers noticed for the first time that he held a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Is that your news there?” she asked, significantly.  “It’s difficult to imagine that in this wilderness writing can have any significance.  And who on earth here could send you news on paper?  Will you let me see it?  Could I understand it?  Is it in English?  Come, King Tom, don’t look at me in this awful way.”

She got up suddenly, not in indignation, but as if at the end of her endurance.  The jewelled clasps, the gold embroideries, gleamed elusively amongst the folds of her draperies which emitted a mysterious rustle.

“I can’t stand this,” she cried.  “I can’t stand being looked at like this.  No woman could stand it.  No woman has ever been looked at like this.  What can you see?  Hatred I could understand.  What is it you think me capable of?”

“You are very extraordinary,” murmured Lingard, who had regained his self-possession before that outburst.

“Very well, and you are extraordinary, too.  That’s understood—­here we are both under that curse and having to face together whatever may turn up.  But who on earth could have sent you this writing?”

“Who?” repeated Lingard.  “Why, that young fellow that blundered on my brig in the dark, bringing a boatload of trouble alongside on that quiet night in Carimata Straits.  The darkest night I have ever known.  An accursed night.”

Mrs. Travers bit her lip, waited a little, then asked quietly: 

“What difficulty has he got into now?”

“Difficulty!” cried Lingard.  “He is immensely pleased with himself, the young fool.  You know, when you sent him to talk to me that evening you left the yacht, he came with a loaded pistol in his pocket.  And now he has gone and done it.”

“Done it?” repeated Mrs. Travers blankly.  “Done what?”

She snatched from Lingard’s unresisting palm the sheet of paper.  While she was smoothing it Lingard moved round and stood close at her elbow.  She ran quickly over the first lines, then her eyes steadied.  At the end she drew a quick breath and looked up at Lingard.  Their faces had never been so close together before and Mrs. Travers had a surprising second of a perfectly new sensation.  She looked away.—­“Do you understand what this news means?” he murmured.  Mrs. Travers let her hand fall by her side.  “Yes,” she said in a low tone.  “The compact is broken.”

Carter had begun his letter without any preliminaries: 

You cleared out in the middle of the night and took the lady away with you.  You left me no proper orders.  But as a sailorman I looked upon myself as left in charge of two ships while within half a mile on that sandbank there were more than a hundred piratical cut-throats watching me as closely as so many tigers about to leap.  Days went by without a word of you or the lady.  To leave the ships