“That was a night!” he muttered, looking straight at Mrs. Travers.  He had been looking at her all the time.  His glance had held her under a spell, but for a whole interminable minute he had not been aware of her at all.  At the murmur of his words she made a slight movement and he saw her again.—­“What night?” she whispered, timidly, like an intruder.  She was astonished to see him smile.—­“Not like this one,” he said.  “You made me notice how quiet and still it was.  Yes.  Listen how still it is.”

Both moved their heads slightly and seemed to lend an ear.  There was not a murmur, sigh, rustle, splash, or footfall.  No whispers, no tremors, not a sound of any kind.  They might have been alone on board the Emma, abandoned even by the ghost of Captain Jorgenson departed to rejoin the Barque Wild Rose on the shore of the Cimmerian sea.—­“It’s like the stillness of the end,” said Mrs. Travers in a low, equable voice.—­“Yes, but that, too, is false,” said Lingard in the same tone.—­“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Travers began, hurriedly, after a short silence.  “But don’t use that word.  Don’t use it, King Tom!  It frightens me by its mere sound.”

Lingard made no sign.  His thoughts were back with Hassim and Immada.  The young chief and his sister had gone up country on a voluntary mission to persuade Belarab to return to his stockade and to take up again the direction of affairs.  They carried urgent messages from Lingard, who for Belarab was the very embodiment of truth and force, that unquestioned force which had permitted Belarab to indulge in all his melancholy hesitations.  But those two young people had also some personal prestige.  They were Lingard’s heart’s friends.  They were like his children.  But beside that, their high birth, their warlike story, their wanderings, adventures, and prospects had given them a glamour of their own.

V

The very day that Travers and d’Alcacer had come on board the Emma Hassim and Immada had departed on their mission; for Lingard, of course, could not think of leaving the white people alone with Jorgenson.  Jorgenson was all right, but his ineradicable habit of muttering in his moustache about “throwing a lighted match amongst the powder barrels” had inspired Lingard with a certain amount of mistrust.  And, moreover, he did not want to go away from Mrs. Travers.

It was the only correct inspiration on Carter’s part to send Jaffir with his report to Lingard.  That stout-hearted fighter, swimmer, and devoted follower of the princely misfortunes of Hassim and Immada, had looked upon his mission to catch the chief officer of the yacht (which he had received from Lingard in Carimata) as a trifling job.  It took him a little longer than he expected but he had got back to the brig just in time to be sent on to Lingard with Carter’s letter after a couple of hours’ rest.  He had the story of all the happenings from Wasub before he left and though his face preserved its grave impassivity, in his heart he did not like it at all.