He looked hard at Lingard while saying these words and saw the first sign of animation pass over that ravaged face.  He saw even its lips move slightly; but there was no sound, and Carter looked away again.

“Perhaps you would have done better by telling me everything; but you left me behind on my own to be your man here.  I put my hand to the work I could see before me.  I am a sailor.  There were two ships to look after.  And here they are both for you, fit to go or to stay, to fight or to run, as you choose.”  He watched with bated breath the effort Lingard had to make to utter the two words of the desired commendation: 

“Well done!”

“And I am your man still,” Carter added, impulsively, and hastened to look away from Lingard, who had tried to smile at him and had failed.  Carter didn’t know what to do next, remain in the cabin or leave that unsupported strong man to himself.  With a shyness completely foreign to his character and which he could not understand himself, he suggested in an engaging murmur and with an embarrassed assumption of his right to give advice: 

“Why not lie down for a bit, sir?  I can attend to anything that may turn up.  You seem done up, sir.”

He was facing Lingard, who stood on the other side of the table in a leaning forward attitude propped up on rigid arms and stared fixedly at him—­perhaps?  Carter felt on the verge of despair.  This couldn’t last.  He was relieved to see Lingard shake his head slightly.

“No, Mr. Carter.  I think I will go on deck,” said the Captain of the famous brig Lightning, while his eyes roamed all over the cabin.  Carter stood aside at once, but it was some little time before Lingard made a move.

The sun had sunk already, leaving that evening no trace of its glory on a sky clear as crystal and on the waters without a ripple.  All colour seemed to have gone out of the world.  The oncoming shadow rose as subtle as a perfume from the black coast lying athwart the eastern semicircle; and such was the silence within the horizon that one might have fancied oneself come to the end of time.  Black and toylike in the clear depths and the final stillness of the evening the brig and the schooner lay anchored in the middle of the main channel with their heads swung the same way.  Lingard, with his chin on his breast and his arms folded, moved slowly here and there about the poop.  Close and mute like his shadow, Carter, at his elbow, followed his movements.  He felt an anxious solicitude. . . .

It was a sentiment perfectly new to him.  He had never before felt this sort of solicitude about himself or any other man.  His personality was being developed by new experience, and as he was very simple he received the initiation with shyness and self-mistrust.  He had noticed with innocent alarm that Lingard had not looked either at the sky or over the sea, neither at his own ship nor the schooner astern; not along