He tapped the table with his knuckles, and the glasses, waking up, jingled a thin, plaintive finale to his speech. Carter stood leaning against the sideboard. He was amazed by the unexpected turn of the conversation; his jaw dropped slightly and his eyes never swerved for a moment from Lingard's face. The silence in the cabin lasted only a few seconds, but to Carter, who waited breathlessly, it seemed very long. And all at once he heard in it, for the first time, the cabin clock tick distinctly, in pulsating beats, as though a little heart of metal behind the dial had been started into sudden palpitation.
'A gunboat!' shouted Lingard, suddenly, as if he had seen only in that moment, by the light of some vivid flash of thought, all the difficulties of the situation. 'If you don't go back with me there will be nothing left for you to go back to—very soon. Your gunboat won't find a single ship's rib or a single corpse left for a landmark. That she won't. It isn't a gunboat skipper you want. I am the man you want. You don't know your luck when you see it, but I know mine, I do—and—look here—'
He touched Carter's chest with his forefinger, and said with a sudden gentleness of tone:
'I am a white man inside and out; I won't let inoffensive people—and a woman, too—come to harm if I can help it. And if I can't help, nobody can. You understand—nobody! There's no time for it. But I am like any other man that is worth his salt: I won't let the end of an undertaking go by the board while there is a chance to hold on—and it's like this—'
His voice was persuasive—almost caressing; he had hold now of a coat button and tugged at it slightly as he went on in a confidential manner:
'As it turns out, Mr. Carter, I would—in a manner of speaking—I would as soon shoot you where you stand as let you go to raise an alarm all over this sea about your confounded yacht. I have other lives to consider—and friends—and promises—and—and myself, too. I shall keep you,' he concluded, sharply.
Carter drew a long breath. On the deck above, the two men could hear soft footfalls, short murmurs, indistinct words spoken near the skylight. Shaw's voice rang out loudly in growling tones:
'Furl the royals, you tindal!'
'It's the queerest old go,' muttered Carter, looking down on to the floor. 'You are a strange man. I suppose I must believe what you say—unless you and that fat mate of yours are a couple of escaped lunatics that got hold of a brig by some means. Why, that chap up there wanted to pick a quarrel with me for coming aboard, and now you threaten to shoot me rather than let me go. Not that I care much about that; for some time or other you would get hanged for it; and you don't look like a man that will end that way. If what you say is only half true, I ought to get back to the yacht as quick as ever I can. It strikes me that your coming to them will be only a small mercy, anyhow—and I may be of some use—But this is the queerest. . . . May I go in my boat?'
'As you like,' said Lingard. 'There's a rain squall coming.'
'I am in charge and will get wet along of my chaps. Give us a good long line, Captain.'
'It's done already,' said Lingard. 'You seem a sensible sailorman and can see that it would be useless to try and give me the slip.'
'For a man so ready to shoot, you seem very trustful,' drawled Carter. 'If I cut adrift in a squall, I stand a pretty fair chance not to see you again.'
'You just try,' said Lingard, drily. 'I have eyes in this brig, young man, that will see your boat when you couldn't see the ship. You are of the kind I like, but if you monkey with me I will find you—and when I find you I will run you down as surely as I stand here.'
Carter slapped his thigh and his eyes twinkled.
'By the Lord Harry!' he cried. 'If it wasn't for the men with me, I would try for sport. You are so cocksure about the lot you can do, Captain. You would aggravate a saint into open mutiny.'
His easy good humour had returned; but after a short burst of laughter, he became serious.
'Never fear,' he said, 'I won't slip away. If there is to be any throat-cutting—as you seem to hint—mine will be there, too, I promise you, and. . . .'
He stretched his arms out, glanced at them, shook them a little.
'And this pair of arms to take care of it,' he added, in his old, careless drawl.
But the master of the brig sitting with both his elbows on the table, his face in his hands, had fallen unexpectedly into a meditation so concentrated and so profound that he seemed neither to hear, see, nor breathe. The sight of that man's complete absorption in thought was to Carter almost more surprising than any other occurrence of that night. Had his strange host vanished suddenly from before his eyes, it could not have made him feel more uncomfortably alone in that cabin where the pertinacious clock kept ticking off the useless minutes of the calm before it would, with the same steady beat, begin to measure the aimless disturbance of the storm.
III
After waiting a moment, Carter went on deck. The sky, the sea, the brig itself had disappeared in a darkness that had become impenetrable, palpable, and stifling. An immense cloud had come up running over the heavens, as if looking for the little craft, and now hung over it, arrested. To the south there was a livid trembling gleam, faint and sad, like a vanishing memory of destroyed starlight. To the north, as if to prove the impossible, an incredibly blacker patch outlined on the tremendous blackness of the sky the heart of the coming squall. The glimmers in the water had gone out and the invisible sea all around lay mute and still as if it had died suddenly of fright.
Carter could see nothing. He felt about him people moving; he heard them in the darkness whispering faintly as if they had been exchanging secrets important or infamous. The night effaced even words, and its mystery had captured everything and every sound—had left nothing free but the unexpected that seemed to hover about one, ready to stretch out its stealthy hand in a touch sudden, familiar, and appalling. Even the careless disposition of the young ex-officer of an opium-clipper was affected by the ominous aspect of the hour. What was this vessel? What were those people? What would happen to-morrow? To the yacht? To himself? He felt suddenly without any additional reason but the darkness that it was a poor show, anyhow, a dashed poor show for all hands. The irrational conviction made him falter for a second where he stood and he gripped the slide of the companionway hard.
Shaw's voice right close to his ear relieved and cleared his troubled thoughts.
'Oh! it's you, Mister. Come up at last,' said the mate of the brig slowly. 'It appears we've got to give you a tow now. Of all the rum incidents, this beats all. A boat sneaks up from nowhere and turns out to be a long-expected friend! For you are one of them friends the skipper was going to meet somewhere here. Ain't you now? Come! I
