He felt nowhere so much at home as when his brig was anchored on the inner side of the great stretch of shoals.  The centre of his life had shifted about four hundred miles—­from the Straits of Malacca to the Shore of Refuge—­and when there he felt himself within the circle of another existence, governed by his impulse, nearer his desire.  Hassim and Immada would come down to the coast and wait for him on the islet.  He always left them with regret.

At the end of the first stage in each trip, Jorgenson waited for him at the top of the boat-stairs and without a word fell into step at his elbow.  They seldom exchanged three words in a day; but one evening about six months before Lingard’s last trip, as they were crossing the short bridge over the canal where native craft lie moored in clusters, Jorgenson lengthened his stride and came abreast.  It was a moonlight night and nothing stirred on earth but the shadows of high clouds.  Lingard took off his hat and drew in a long sigh in the tepid breeze.  Jorgenson spoke suddenly in a cautious tone:  “The new Rajah Tulla smokes opium and is sometimes dangerous to speak to.  There is a lot of discontent in Wajo amongst the big people.”

“Good!  Good!” whispered Lingard, excitedly, off his guard for once.  Then—­“How the devil do you know anything about it?” he asked.

Jorgenson pointed at the mass of praus, coasting boats, and sampans that, jammed up together in the canal, lay covered with mats and flooded by the cold moonlight with here and there a dim lantern burning amongst the confusion of high sterns, spars, masts and lowered sails.

“There!” he said, as they moved on, and their hatted and clothed shadows fell heavily on the queer-shaped vessels that carry the fortunes of brown men upon a shallow sea.  “There!  I can sit with them, I can talk to them, I can come and go as I like.  They know me now—­it’s time-thirty-five years.  Some of them give a plate of rice and a bit of fish to the white man.  That’s all I get—­after thirty-five years—­given up to them.”

He was silent for a time.

“I was like you once,” he added, and then laying his hand on Lingard’s sleeve, murmured—­“Are you very deep in this thing?”

“To the very last cent,” said Lingard, quietly, and looking straight before him.

The glitter of the roadstead went out, and the masts of anchored ships vanished in the invading shadow of a cloud.

“Drop it,” whispered Jorgenson.

“I am in debt,” said Lingard, slowly, and stood still.

“Drop it!”

“Never dropped anything in my life.”

“Drop it!”

“By God, I won’t!” cried Lingard, stamping his foot.

There was a pause.

“I was like you—­once,” repeated Jorgenson.  “Five and thirty years—­never dropped anything.  And what you can do is only child’s play to some jobs I have had on my hands—­understand that—­great man as you are, Captain Lingard of the Lightning. . . .  You should have seen the Wild Rose,” he added with a sudden break in his voice.