Mr. Travers muttered audibly through his teeth: 

“How long is this performance going to last?  I have desired you to go.”

“Think of these poor devils,” whispered Lingard, with a quick glance at the crew huddled up near by.

“You are the kind of man I would be least disposed to trust—­in any case,” said Mr. Travers, incisively, very low, and with an inexplicable but very apparent satisfaction.  “You are only wasting your time here.”

“You—­You—­” He stammered and stared.  He chewed with growls some insulting word and at last swallowed it with an effort.  “My time pays for your life,” he said.

He became aware of a sudden stir, and saw that Mrs. Travers had risen from her chair.

She walked impulsively toward the group on the quarter-deck, making straight for Immada.  Hassim had stepped aside and his detached gaze of a Malay gentleman passed by her as if she had been invisible.

She was tall, supple, moving freely.  Her complexion was so dazzling in the shade that it seemed to throw out a halo round her head.  Upon a smooth and wide brow an abundance of pale fair hair, fine as silk, undulating like the sea, heavy like a helmet, descended low without a trace of gloss, without a gleam in its coils, as though it had never been touched by a ray of light; and a throat white, smooth, palpitating with life, a round neck modelled with strength and delicacy, supported gloriously that radiant face and that pale mass of hair unkissed by sunshine.

She said with animation: 

“Why, it’s a girl!”

Mrs. Travers extorted from d’Alcacer a fresh tribute of curiosity.  A strong puff of wind fluttered the awnings and one of the screens blowing out wide let in upon the quarter-deck the rippling glitter of the Shallows, showing to d’Alcacer the luminous vastness of the sea, with the line of the distant horizon, dark like the edge of the encompassing night, drawn at the height of Mrs. Travers’ shoulder. . . .  Where was it he had seen her last—­a long time before, on the other side of the world?  There was also the glitter of splendour around her then, and an impression of luminous vastness.  The encompassing night, too, was there, the night that waits for its time to move forward upon the glitter, the splendour, the men, the women.

He could not remember for the moment, but he became convinced that of all the women he knew, she alone seemed to be made for action.  Every one of her movements had firmness, ease, the meaning of a vital fact, the moral beauty of a fearless expression.  Her supple figure was not dishonoured by any faltering of outlines under the plain dress of dark blue stuff moulding her form with bold simplicity.