It was pitch dark in there.  He could see absolutely nothing and was oppressed by the profound stillness unstirred even by the sound of breathing.

“I am going on shore,” he began, breaking the black and deathlike silence enclosing him and the invisible woman.  “I wanted to say good-bye.”

“You are going on shore,” repeated Mrs. Travers.  Her voice was emotionless, blank, unringing.

“Yes, for a few hours, or for life,” Lingard said in measured tones.  “I may have to die with them or to die maybe for others.  For you, if I only knew how to manage it, I would want to live.  I am telling you this because it is dark.  If there had been a light in here I wouldn’t have come in.”

“I wish you had not,” uttered the same unringing woman’s voice.  “You are always coming to me with those lives and those deaths in your hand.”

“Yes, it’s too much for you,” was Lingard’s undertoned comment.  “You could be no other than true.  And you are innocent!  Don’t wish me life, but wish me luck, for you are innocent—­and you will have to take your chance.”

“All luck to you, King Tom,” he heard her say in the darkness in which he seemed now to perceive the gleam of her hair.  “I will take my chance.  And try not to come near me again for I am weary of you.”

“I can well believe it,” murmured Lingard, and stepped out of the cabin, shutting the door after him gently.  For half a minute, perhaps, the stillness continued, and then suddenly the chair fell over in the darkness.  Next moment Mrs. Travers’ head appeared in the light of the lamp left on the roof of the deckhouse.  Her bare arms grasped the door posts.

“Wait a moment,” she said, loudly, into the shadows of the deck.  She heard no footsteps, saw nothing moving except the vanishing white shape of the late Captain H. C. Jorgenson, who was indifferent to the life of men.  “Wait, King Tom!” she insisted, raising her voice; then, “I didn’t mean it.  Don’t believe me!” she cried, recklessly.

For the second time that night a woman’s voice startled the hearts of men on board the Emma.  All except the heart of old Jorgenson.  The Malays in the boat looked up from their thwarts.  D’Alcacer, sitting in the stern sheets beside Lingard, felt a sinking of his heart.

“What’s this?” he exclaimed.  “I heard your name on deck.  You are wanted, I think.”

“Shove off,” ordered Lingard, inflexibly, without even looking at d’Alcacer.  Mr. Travers was the only one who didn’t seem to be aware of anything.  A long time after the boat left the Emma’s side he leaned toward d’Alcacer.

“I have a most extraordinary feeling,” he said in a cautious undertone.  “I seem to be in the air—­I don’t know.  Are we on the water, d’Alcacer?  Are you quite sure?  But of course, we are on the water.”

“Yes,” said d’Alcacer, in the same tone.  “Crossing the Styx—­perhaps.”  He heard Mr. Travers utter an unmoved “Very likely,” which he did not expect.  Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat like a man of stone.