Hassim took the ring and inclined his head.

“It’s time for us to be moving,” said Lingard.  He felt a slight tug at his sleeve.  He looked back and caught Immada in the act of pressing her forehead to the grey flannel.  “Don’t, child!” he said, softly.

The sun rose above the faint blue line of the Shore of Refuge.

The hesitation was over.  The man and the vessel, working in accord, had found their way to the faint blue shore.  Before the sun had descended half-way to its rest the brig was anchored within a gunshot of the slimy mangroves, in a place where for a hundred years or more no white man’s vessel had been entrusted to the hold of the bottom.  The adventurers of two centuries ago had no doubt known of that anchorage for they were very ignorant and incomparably audacious.  If it is true, as some say, that the spirits of the dead haunt the places where the living have sinned and toiled, then they might have seen a white long-boat, pulled by eight oars and steered by a man sunburnt and bearded, a cabbage-leaf hat on head, and pistols in his belt, skirting the black mud, full of twisted roots, in search of a likely opening.

Creek after creek was passed and the boat crept on slowly like a monstrous water-spider with a big body and eight slender legs. . . .  Did you follow with your ghostly eyes the quest of this obscure adventurer of yesterday, you shades of forgotten adventurers who, in leather jerkins and sweating under steel helmets, attacked with long rapiers the palisades of the strange heathen, or, musket on shoulder and match in cock, guarded timber blockhouses built upon the banks of rivers that command good trade?  You, who, wearied with the toil of fighting, slept wrapped in frieze mantles on the sand of quiet beaches, dreaming of fabulous diamonds and of a far-off home.

“Here’s an opening,” said Lingard to Hassim, who sat at his side, just as the sun was setting away to his left.  “Here’s an opening big enough for a ship.  It’s the entrance we are looking for, I believe.  We shall pull all night up this creek if necessary and it’s the very devil if we don’t come upon Belarab’s lair before daylight.”

He shoved the tiller hard over and the boat, swerving sharply, vanished from the coast.

And perhaps the ghosts of old adventurers nodded wisely their ghostly heads and exchanged the ghost of a wistful smile.

V

“What’s the matter with King Tom of late?” would ask someone when, all the cards in a heap on the table, the traders lying back in their chairs took a spell from a hard gamble.

“Tom has learned to hold his tongue, he must be up to some dam’ good thing,” opined another; while a man with hooked features and of German extraction who was supposed to be agent for a Dutch crockery house—­the famous “Sphinx” mark—­broke in resentfully: 

“Nefer mind him, shentlemens, he’s matt, matt as a Marsh Hase.  Dree monats ago I call on board his prig to talk pizness.  And he says like dis—­’Glear oudt.’  ‘Vat for?’ I say.  ’Glear oudt before I shuck you oferboard.’  Gott-for-dam!  Iss dat the vay to talk pizness?  I vant sell him ein liddle case first chop grockery for trade and—­”