'The gentlemen are alive. Rajah Hassim here has seen them less than two hours ago, and so has the girl. They are alive and unharmed, so far. And now. . . .'
He paused. Mrs. Travers, leaning on her elbow, shaded her eyes under the glint of suspended thunderbolts.
'You must hate us,' she murmured.
'Hate you,' he repeated with, as she fancied, a tinge of disdain in his tone. 'No. I hate myself.'
'Why yourself?' she asked, very low.
'For not knowing my mind,' he answered. 'For not knowing my mind. For not knowing what it is that's got hold of me since—since this morning. I was angry then. . . . Nothing but very angry. . . .'
'And now?' she murmured.
'I am . . . unhappy,' he said. After a moment of silence which gave to Mrs. Travers the time to wonder how it was that this man had succeeded in penetrating into the very depths of her compassion, he hit the table such a blow that all the heavy muskets seemed to jump a little.
Mrs. Travers heard Hassim pronounce a few words earnestly, and a moan of distress from Immada.
'I believed in you before you . . . before you gave me your confidence,' she began. 'You could see that. Could you not?'
He looked at her fixedly. 'You are not the first that believed in me,' he said.
Hassim, lounging with his back against the closed door, kept his eye on him watchfully and Immada's dark and sorrowful eyes rested on the face of the white woman. Mrs. Travers felt as though she were engaged in a contest with them; in a struggle for the possession of that man's strength and of that man's devotion. When she looked up at Lingard she saw on his face—which should have been impassive or exalted, the face of a stern leader or the face of a pitiless dreamer—an expression of utter forgetfulness. He seemed to be tasting the delight of some profound and amazing sensation. And suddenly in the midst of her appeal to his generosity, in the middle of a phrase, Mrs. Travers faltered, becoming aware that she was the object of his contemplation.
'Do not! Do not look at that woman!' cried Immada. 'O! Master—look away. . . .' Hassim threw one arm round the girl's neck. Her voice sank. 'O! Master—look at us.' Hassim, drawing her to himself, covered her lips with his hand. She struggled a little like a snared bird and submitted, hiding her face on his shoulder, very quiet, sobbing without noise.
'What do they say to you?' asked Mrs. Travers with a faint and pained smile. 'What can they say? It is intolerable to think that their words which have no meaning for me may go straight to your heart. . . .'
'Look away,' whispered Lingard without making the slightest movement.
Mrs. Travers sighed.
'Yes, it is very hard to think that I who want to touch you cannot make myself understood as well as they. And yet I speak the language of your childhood, the language of the man for whom there is no hope but in your generosity.'
He shook his head. She gazed at him anxiously for a moment. 'In your memories then,' she said and was surprised by the expression of profound sadness that over-spread his attentive face.
'Do you know what I remember?' he said. 'Do you want to know?' She listened with slightly parted lips. 'I will tell you. Poverty, hard work—and death,' he went on, very quietly. 'And now I've told you, and you don't know. That's how it is between us. You talk to me—I talk to you—and we don't know.'
Her eyelids dropped.
'What can I find to say?' she went on. 'What can I do? I mustn't give in. Think! Amongst your memories there must be some face—some voice—some name, if nothing more. I can not believe that there is nothing but bitterness.'
'There's no bitterness,' he murmured.
'O! Brother, my heart is faint with fear,' whispered Immada. Lingard turned swiftly to that whisper.
'Then, they are to be saved,' exclaimed Mrs. Travers. 'Ah, I knew. . . .'
'Bear thy fear in patience,' said Hassim, rapidly, to his sister.
'They are to be saved. You have said it,' Lingard pronounced aloud, suddenly. He felt like a swimmer who, in the midst of superhuman efforts to reach the shore, perceives that the undertow is taking him to sea. He would go with the mysterious current; he would go swiftly—and see the end, the fulfilment both blissful and terrible.
With this state of exaltation in which he saw himself in some incomprehensible way always victorious, whatever might befall, there was mingled a tenacity of purpose. He could not sacrifice his intention, the intention of years, the intention of his life; he could no more part with it and exist than he could cut out his heart and live. The adventurer held fast to his adventure which made him in his own sight exactly what he was.
He considered the problem with cool audacity, backed by a belief in his own power. It was not these two men he had to save; he had to save himself! And looked upon in this way the situation appeared familiar.
Hassim had told him the two white men had been taken by their captors to Daman's camp. The young Rajah, leaving his sister in the canoe, had landed on the sand and had crept to the very edge of light thrown by the fires by which the Illanuns were cooking. Daman was sitting apart by a larger blaze. Two praus rode in shallow water near the sandbank; on the ridge, a sentry walked watching the lights of the brig; the camp was full of quiet whispers. Hassim returned to his canoe, then he and his sister, paddling cautiously round the anchored praus, in which women's voices could be heard, approached the other end of the camp. The light of the big blaze there fell on the water and the canoe skirted it without a splash, keeping in the night. Hassim, landing for the second time, crept again close to the fires. Each prau had, according to the customs of the Illanun rovers when on a raiding expedition, a smaller war-boat and these being light and manageable were hauled up on the sand not far from the big blaze; they sat high on the shelving shore throwing heavy shadows. Hassim crept up toward the largest of them and then standing on tiptoe could look at the camp across the gunwales. The confused talking of the men was like the buzz of insects in a forest. A child wailed on board one of the praus and a woman hailed the shore shrilly. Hassim unsheathed his kris and held it in his hand.
