“And even now it’s nearly too late!  The road was plain, but I saw you on it and my heart failed me.  I was there like an empty man and I dared not face you.  You must forgive me.  No, I had no right to doubt you for a moment.  I feel as if I ought to go on my knees and beg your pardon for forgetting what you are, for daring to forget.”

“Why, King Tom, what is it?”

“It seems as if I had sinned,” she heard him say.  He seized her by the shoulders, turned her about, moved her forward a step or two.  His hands were heavy, his force irresistible, though he himself imagined he was handling her gently.  “Look straight before you,” he growled into her ear.  “Do you see anything?” Mrs. Travers, passive between the rigid arms, could see nothing but, far off, the massed, featureless shadows of the shore.

“No, I see nothing,” she said.

“You can’t be looking the right way,” she heard him behind her.  And now she felt her head between Lingard’s hands.  He moved it the least bit to the right.  “There!  See it?”

“No.  What am I to look for?”

“A gleam of light,” said Lingard, taking away his hands suddenly.  “A gleam that will grow into a blaze before our boat can get half way across the lagoon.”

Even as Lingard spoke Mrs. Travers caught sight of a red spark far away.  She had looked often enough at the Settlement, as on the face of a painting on a curtain, to have its configuration fixed in her mind, to know that it was on the beach at its end furthest from Belarab’s stockade.

“The brushwood is catching,” murmured Lingard in her ear.  “If they had some dry grass the whole pile would be blazing by now.”

“And this means. . . .”

“It means that the news has spread.  And it is before Tengga’s enclosure on his end of the beach.  That’s where all the brains of the Settlement are.  It means talk and excitement and plenty of crafty words.  Tengga’s fire!  I tell you, Mrs. Travers, that before half an hour has passed Daman will be there to make friends with the fat Tengga, who is ready to say to him, ’I told you so’.”

“I see,” murmured Mrs. Travers.  Lingard drew her gently to the rail.

“And now look over there at the other end of the beach where the shadows are heaviest.  That is Belarab’s fort, his houses, his treasure, his dependents.  That’s where the strength of the Settlement is.  I kept it up.  I made it last.  But what is it now?  It’s like a weapon in the hand of a dead man.  And yet it’s all we have to look to, if indeed there is still time.  I swear to you I wouldn’t dare land them in daylight for fear they should be slaughtered on the beach.”

“There is no time to lose,” whispered Mrs. Travers, and Lingard, too, spoke very low.

“No, not if I, too, am to keep what is my right.  It’s you who have said it.”

“Yes, I have said it,” she whispered, without lifting her head.  Lingard made a brusque movement at her elbow and bent his head close to her shoulder.