“Our boats back yet?” he asked Shaw, whom he saw prowling on the quarter-deck.

“No, sir, I wish they were.  I am waiting for them to go and turn in,” answered the mate in an aggrieved manner.

“Lower that lantern forward there,” cried Lingard, suddenly, in Malay.

“This trade isn’t fit for a decent man,” muttered Shaw to himself, and he moved away to lean on the rail, looking moodily to seaward.  After a while:  “There seems to be commotion on board that yacht,” he said.  “I see a lot of lights moving about her decks.  Anything wrong, do you think, sir?”

“No, I know what it is,” said Lingard in a tone of elation.  She has done it! he thought.

He returned to the cabin, put away Jorgenson’s letter and pulled out the drawer of the table.  It was full of cartridges.  He took a musket down, loaded it, then took another and another.  He hammered at the waddings with fierce joyousness.  The ramrods rang and jumped.  It seemed to him he was doing his share of some work in which that woman was playing her part faithfully.  “She has done it,” he repeated, mentally.  “She will sit in the cuddy.  She will sleep in my berth.  Well, I’m not ashamed of the brig.  By heavens—­no!  I shall keep away:  never come near them as I’ve promised.  Now there’s nothing more to say.  I’ve told her everything at once.  There’s nothing more.”

He felt a heaviness in his burning breast, in all his limbs as if the blood in his veins had become molten lead.

“I shall get the yacht off.  Three, four days—­no, a week.”

He found he couldn’t do it under a week.  It occurred to him he would see her every day till the yacht was afloat.  No, he wouldn’t intrude, but he was master and owner of the brig after all.  He didn’t mean to skulk like a whipped cur about his own decks.

“It’ll be ten days before the schooner is ready.  I’ll take every scrap of ballast out of her.  I’ll strip her—­I’ll take her lower masts out of her, by heavens!  I’ll make sure.  Then another week to fit out—­and—­goodbye.  Wish I had never seen them.  Good-bye—­forever.  Home’s the place for them.  Not for me.  On another coast she would not have listened.  Ah, but she is a woman—­every inch of her.  I shall shake hands.  Yes.  I shall take her hand—­just before she goes.  Why the devil not?  I am master here after all—­in this brig—­as good as any one—­by heavens, better than any one—­better than any one on earth.”

He heard Shaw walk smartly forward above his head hailing: 

“What’s that—­a boat?”

A voice answered indistinctly.

“One of my boats is back,” thought Lingard.  “News about Daman perhaps.  I don’t care if he kicks.  I wish he would.  I would soon show her I can fight as well as I can handle the brig.  Two praus.  Only two praus.  I wouldn’t mind if there were twenty.  I would sweep ’em off the sea—­I would blow ’em out of the water—­I would make the brig walk over them.  ‘Now,’ I’d say to her, ‘you who are not afraid, look how it’s done!’”