D’Alcacer retired, and, full of vague forebodings, tried in vain for hours to interest himself in a book.  Mr. Travers walked up and down restlessly, trying to persuade himself that his indignation was based on purely moral grounds.  The glaring day, like a mass of white-hot iron withdrawn from the fire, was losing gradually its heat and its glare in a richer deepening of tone.  At the usual time two seamen, walking noiselessly aft in their yachting shoes, rolled up in silence the quarter-deck screens; and the coast, the shallows, the dark islets and the snowy sandbanks uncovered thus day after day were seen once more in their aspect of dumb watchfulness.  The brig, swung end on in the foreground, her squared yards crossing heavily the soaring symmetry of the rigging, resembled a creature instinct with life, with the power of springing into action lurking in the light grace of its repose.

A pair of stewards in white jackets with brass buttons appeared on deck and began to flit about without a sound, laying the table for dinner on the flat top of the cabin skylight.  The sun, drifting away toward other lands, toward other seas, toward other men; the sun, all red in a cloudless sky raked the yacht with a parting salvo of crimson rays that shattered themselves into sparks of fire upon the crystal and silver of the dinner-service, put a short flame into the blades of knives, and spread a rosy tint over the white of plates.  A trail of purple, like a smear of blood on a blue shield, lay over the sea.

On sitting down Mr. Travers alluded in a vexed tone to the necessity of living on preserves, all the stock of fresh provisions for the passage to Batavia having been already consumed.  It was distinctly unpleasant.

“I don’t travel for my pleasure, however,” he added; “and the belief that the sacrifice of my time and comfort will be productive of some good to the world at large would make up for any amount of privations.”

Mrs. Travers and d’Alcacer seemed unable to shake off a strong aversion to talk, and the conversation, like an expiring breeze, kept on dying out repeatedly after each languid gust.  The large silence of the horizon, the profound repose of all things visible, enveloping the bodies and penetrating the souls with their quieting influence, stilled thought as well as voice.  For a long time no one spoke.  Behind the taciturnity of the masters the servants hovered without noise.

Suddenly, Mr. Travers, as if concluding a train of thought, muttered aloud: 

“I own with regret I did in a measure lose my temper; but then you will admit that the existence of such a man is a disgrace to civilization.”

This remark was not taken up and he returned for a time to the nursing of his indignation, at the bottom of which, like a monster in a fog, crept a bizarre feeling of rancour.  He waved away an offered dish.

“This coast,” he began again, “has been placed under the sole protection of Holland by the Treaty of 1820.  The Treaty of 1820 creates special rights and obligations. . . .”