It was half-past eight o’clock before Lingard came on deck again.  Shaw—­now with a coat on—­trotted up and down the poop leaving behind him a smell of tobacco smoke.  An irregularly glowing spark seemed to run by itself in the darkness before the rounded form of his head.  Above the masts of the brig the dome of the clear heaven was full of lights that flickered, as if some mighty breathings high up there had been swaying about the flame of the stars.  There was no sound along the brig’s decks, and the heavy shadows that lay on it had the aspect, in that silence, of secret places concealing crouching forms that waited in perfect stillness for some decisive event.  Lingard struck a match to light his cheroot, and his powerful face with narrowed eyes stood out for a moment in the night and vanished suddenly.  Then two shadowy forms and two red sparks moved backward and forward on the poop.  A larger, but a paler and oval patch of light from the compass lamps lay on the brasses of the wheel and on the breast of the Malay standing by the helm.  Lingard’s voice, as if unable altogether to master the enormous silence of the sea, sounded muffled, very calm—­without the usual deep ring in it.

“Not much change, Shaw,” he said.

“No, sir, not much.  I can just see the island—­the big one—­still in the same place.  It strikes me, sir, that, for calms, this here sea is a devil of locality.”

He cut “locality” in two with an emphatic pause.  It was a good word.  He was pleased with himself for thinking of it.  He went on again: 

“Now—­since noon, this big island—­”

“Carimata, Shaw,” interrupted Lingard.

“Aye, sir; Carimata—­I mean.  I must say—­being a stranger hereabouts—­I haven’t got the run of those—­”

He was going to say “names” but checked himself and said, “appellations,” instead, sounding every syllable lovingly.

“Having for these last fifteen years,” he continued, “sailed regularly from London in East-Indiamen, I am more at home over there—­in the Bay.”

He pointed into the night toward the northwest and stared as if he could see from where he stood that Bay of Bengal where—­as he affirmed—­he would be so much more at home.

“You’ll soon get used—­” muttered Lingard, swinging in his rapid walk past his mate.  Then he turned round, came back, and asked sharply.

“You said there was nothing afloat in sight before dark?  Hey?”

“Not that I could see, sir.  When I took the deck again at eight, I asked that serang whether there was anything about; and I understood him to say there was no more as when I went below at six.  This is a lonely sea at times—­ain’t it, sir?  Now, one would think at this time of the year the homeward-bounders from China would be pretty thick here.”

“Yes,” said Lingard, “we have met very few ships since we left Pedra Branca over the stern.  Yes; it has been a lonely sea.  But for all that, Shaw, this sea, if lonely, is not blind.  Every island in it is an eye.  And now, since our squadron has left for the China waters—­”