Mrs. Travers’ hand remained firmly closed on the ring.  “Yes, that will do,” she murmured, hastily.  “I’ll be back in a moment.  Get everything ready.”  With those words she disappeared inside the deckhouse and presently threads of light appeared in the interstices of the boards.  Mrs. Travers had lighted a candle in there.  She was busy hanging that ring round her neck.  She was going.  Yes—­taking the risk for Tom’s sake.

“Nobody can resist that man,” Jorgenson muttered to himself with increasing moroseness. “I couldn’t.”

IV

Jorgenson, after seeing the canoe leave the ship’s side, ceased to live intellectually.  There was no need for more thinking, for any display of mental ingenuity.  He had done with it all.  All his notions were perfectly fixed and he could go over them in the same ghostly way in which he haunted the deck of the Emma.  At the sight of the ring Lingard would return to Hassim and Immada, now captives, too, though Jorgenson certainly did not think them in any serious danger.  What had happened really was that Tengga was now holding hostages, and those Jorgenson looked upon as Lingard’s own people.  They were his.  He had gone in with them deep, very deep.  They had a hold and a claim on King Tom just as many years ago people of that very race had had a hold and a claim on him, Jorgenson.  Only Tom was a much bigger man.  A very big man.  Nevertheless, Jorgenson didn’t see why he should escape his own fate—­Jorgenson’s fate—­to be absorbed, captured, made their own either in failure or in success.  It was an unavoidable fatality and Jorgenson felt certain that the ring would compel Lingard to face it without flinching.  What he really wanted Lingard to do was to cease to take the slightest interest in those whites—­who were the sort of people that left no footprints.

Perhaps at first sight, sending that woman to Lingard was not the best way toward that end.  Jorgenson, however, had a distinct impression in which his morning talk with Mrs. Travers had only confirmed him, that those two had quarrelled for good.  As, indeed, was unavoidable.  What did Tom Lingard want with any woman?  The only woman in Jorgenson’s life had come in by way of exchange for a lot of cotton stuffs and several brass guns.  This fact could not but affect Jorgenson’s judgment since obviously in this case such a transaction was impossible.  Therefore the case was not serious.  It didn’t exist.  What did exist was Lingard’s relation to the Wajo exiles, a great and warlike adventure such as no rover in those seas had ever attempted.

That Tengga was much more ready to negotiate than to fight, the old adventurer had not the slightest doubt.  How Lingard would deal with him was not a concern of Jorgenson’s.  That would be easy enough.  Nothing prevented Lingard from going to see Tengga and talking to him with authority.  All that ambitious person really wanted was to have a share in Lingard’s wealth, in Lingard’s power, in Lingard’s friendship.  A year before Tengga had once insinuated to Jorgenson, “In what way am I less worthy of being a friend than Belarab?”