on his hands and knees, for there is no rest for a messenger till the message is delivered.  At last he found himself on the left bank of the creek.  And still he felt life stir in him.  So he started to swim across, for if you were in this world you were on the other side.  While he swam he felt his strength abandoning him.  He managed to scramble on to a drifting log and lay on it like one who is dead, till we pulled him into one of our boats.”

Wasub ceased.  It seemed to Lingard that it was impossible for mortal man to suffer more than he suffered in the succeeding moment of silence crowded by the mute images as of universal destruction.  He felt himself gone to pieces as though the violent expression of Jorgenson’s intolerable mistrust of the life of men had shattered his soul, leaving his body robbed of all power of resistance and of all fortitude, a prey forever to infinite remorse and endless regrets.

“Leave me, Wasub,” he said.  “They are all dead—­but I would sleep.”

Wasub raised his dumb old eyes to the white man’s face.

“Tuan, it is necessary that you should hear Jaffir,” he said, patiently.

“Is he going to die?” asked Lingard in a low, cautious tone as though he were afraid of the sound of his own voice.

“Who can tell?” Wasub’s voice sounded more patient than ever.  “There is no wound on his body but, O Tuan, he does not wish to live.”

“Abandoned by his God,” muttered Lingard to himself.

Wasub waited a little before he went on, “And, Tuan, he has a message for you.”

“Of course.  Well, I don’t want to hear it.”

“It is from those who will never speak to you again,” Wasub persevered, sadly.  “It is a great trust.  A Rajah’s own words.  It is difficult for Jaffir to die.  He keeps on muttering about a ring that was for you, and that he let pass out of his care.  It was a great talisman!”

“Yes.  But it did not work this time.  And if I go and tell Jaffir why he will be able to tell his Rajah, O Wasub, since you say that he is going to die. . . .  I wonder where they will meet,” he muttered to himself.

Once more Wasub raised his eyes to Lingard’s face.  “Paradise is the lot of all True Believers,” he whispered, firm in his simple faith.

The man who had been undone by a glimpse of Paradise exchanged a profound look with the old Malay.  Then he got up.  On his passage to the main hatchway the commander of the brig met no one on the decks, as if all mankind had given him up except the old man who preceded him and that other man dying in the deepening twilight, who was awaiting his coming.  Below, in the light of the hatchway, he saw a young Calash with a broad yellow face and his wiry hair sticking up in stiff wisps through the folds of his head-kerchief, holding an earthenware water-jar to the lips of Jaffir extended on his back on a pile of mats.