occupation, too, seemed fantastic and so truly childish that her heart sank at the man's utter absorption in it. Jorgenson had before him, stretched on the deck, several bits of rather thin and dirty-looking rope of different lengths from a couple of inches to about a foot. He had (an idiot might have amused himself in that way) set fire to the ends of them. They smouldered with amazing energy, emitting now and then a splutter, and in the calm air within the bulwarks sent up very slender, exactly parallel threads of smoke, each with a vanishing curl at the end; and the absorption with which Jorgenson gave himself up to that pastime was enough to shake all confidence in his sanity.
In one half-opened hand he was holding the watch. He was also provided with a scrap of paper and the stump of a pencil. Mrs. Travers was confident that he did not either hear or see her.
'Captain Jorgenson, you no doubt think. . . .'
He tried to wave her away with the stump of the pencil. He did not want to be interrupted in his strange occupation. He was playing very gravely indeed with those bits of string. 'I lighted them all together,' he murmured, keeping one eye on the dial of the watch. Just then the shortest piece of string went out, utterly consumed. Jorgenson made a hasty note and remained still while Mrs. Travers looked at him with stony eyes thinking that nothing in the world was any use. The other threads of smoke went on vanishing in spirals before the attentive Jorgenson.
'What are you doing?' asked Mrs. Travers, drearily.
'Timing match . . . precaution. . . .'
He had never in Mrs. Travers' experience been less spectral than then. He displayed a weakness of the flesh. He was impatient at her intrusion. He divided his attention between the threads of smoke and the face of the watch with such interest that the sudden reports of several guns breaking for the first time for days the stillness of the lagoon and the illusion of the painted scene failed to make him raise his head. He only jerked it sideways a little. Mrs. Travers stared at the wisps of white vapour floating above Belarab's stockade. The series of sharp detonations ceased and their combined echoes came back over the lagoon like a long-drawn and rushing sigh.
'What's this?' cried Mrs. Travers.
'Belarab's come home,' said Jorgenson.
The last thread of smoke disappeared and Jorgenson got up. He had lost all interest in the watch and thrust it carelessly into his pocket, together with the bit of paper and the stump of pencil. He had resumed his aloofness from the life of men, but approaching the bulwark he condescended to look toward Belarab's stockade.
'Yes, he is home,' he said very low.
'What's going to happen?' cried Mrs. Travers. 'What's to be done?' Jorgenson kept up his appearance of communing with himself.
'I know what to do,' he mumbled.
'You are lucky,' said Mrs. Travers, with intense bitterness.
It seemed to her that she was abandoned by all the world. The opposite shore of the lagoon had resumed its aspect of a painted scene that would never roll up to disclose the truth behind its blinding and soulless splendour. It seemed to her that she had said her last words to all of them: to d'Alcacer, to her husband, to Lingard himself—and that they had all gone behind the curtain forever out of her sight. Of all the white men Jorgenson alone was left, that man who had done with life so completely that his mere presence robbed it of all heat and mystery, leaving nothing but its terrible, its revolting insignificance. And Mrs. Travers was ready for revolt. She cried with suppressed passion:
'Are you aware, Captain Jorgenson, that I am alive?'
He turned his eyes on her, and for a moment she was daunted by their cold glassiness. But before they could drive her away, something like the gleam of a spark gave them an instant's animation.
'I want to go and join them. I want to go ashore,' she said, firmly. 'There!'
Her bare and extended arm pointed across the lagoon, and Jorgenson's resurrected eyes glided along the white limb and wandered off into space.
'No boat,' he muttered.
'There must be a canoe. I know there is a canoe. I want it.'
She stepped forward compelling, commanding, trying to concentrate in her glance all her will power, the sense of her own right to dispose of herself and her claim to be served to the last moment of her life. It was as if she had done nothing. Jorgenson didn't flinch.
'Which of them are you after?' asked his blank, unringing voice.
She continued to look at him; her face had stiffened into a severe mask; she managed to say distinctly:
'I suppose you have been asking yourself that question for some time, Captain Jorgenson?'
'No. I am asking you now.'
His face disclosed nothing to Mrs. Travers' bold and weary eyes. 'What could you do over there?' Jorgenson added as merciless, as irrepressible, and sincere as though he were the embodiment of that inner voice that speaks in all of us at times and, like Jorgenson, is offensive and difficult to answer.
'Remember that I am not a shadow but a living woman still, Captain Jorgenson. I can live and I can die. Send me over to share their fate.'
'Sure you would like?' asked the roused Jorgenson in a voice that had an unexpected living quality, a faint vibration which no man had known in it for years. 'There may be death in it,' he mumbled, relapsing into indifference.
'Who cares?' she said, recklessly. 'All I want is to ask Tom a question and hear his answer. That's what I would like. That's what I must have.'
II
Along the hot and gloomy forest path, neglected, overgrown and strangled in the fierce life of the jungle, there
