'The letter will tell you that. May I ask, Captain, for a little water for the chaps in my boat? And I myself would thank you for a drink. We haven't had a mouthful since this afternoon. Our breaker leaked out somehow.'
'See to it, Mr. Shaw,' said Lingard. 'Come down the cabin, Mr.—'
'Carter is my name.'
'Ah! Mr. Carter. Come down, come down,' went on Lingard, leading the way down the cabin stairs.
The steward had lighted the swinging lamp, and had put a decanter and bottles on the table. The cuddy looked cheerful, painted white, with gold mouldings round the panels. Opposite the curtained recess of the stern windows there was a sideboard with a marble top, and, above it, a looking-glass in a gilt frame. The semicircular couch round the stern had cushions of crimson plush. The table was covered with a black Indian tablecloth embroidered in vivid colours. Between the beams of the poop-deck were fitted racks for muskets, the barrels of which glinted in the light. There were twenty-four of them between the four beams. As many sword-bayonets of an old pattern encircled the polished teakwood of the rudder-casing with a double belt of brass and steel. All the doors of the state-rooms had been taken off the hinges and only curtains closed the doorways. They seemed to be made of yellow Chinese silk, and fluttered all together, the four of them, as the two men entered the cuddy.
Carter took in all at a glance, but his eyes were arrested by a circular shield hung slanting above the brass hilts of the bayonets. On its red field, in relief and brightly gilt, was represented a sheaf of conventional thunderbolts darting down the middle between the two capitals T. L. Lingard examined his guest curiously. He saw a young man, but looking still more youthful, with a boyish smooth face much sunburnt, twinkling blue eyes, fair hair and a slight moustache. He noticed his arrested gaze.
'Ah, you're looking at that thing. It's a present from the builder of this brig. The best man that ever launched a craft. It's supposed to be the ship's name between my initials—flash of lightning—d'you see? The brig's name is Lightning and mine is Lingard.'
'Very pretty thing that: shows the cabin off well,' murmured Carter, politely.
They drank, nodding at each other, and sat down.
'Now for the letter,' said Lingard.
Carter passed it over the table and looked about, while Lingard took the letter out of an open envelope, addressed to the commander of any British ship in the Java Sea. The paper was thick, had an embossed heading: 'Schooner-yacht Hermit' and was dated four days before. The message said that on a hazy night the yacht had gone ashore upon some outlying shoals off the coast of Borneo. The land was low. The opinion of the sailing-master was that the vessel had gone ashore at the top of high water, spring tides. The coast was completely deserted to all appearance. During the four days they had been stranded there they had sighted in the distance two small native vessels, which did not approach. The owner concluded by asking any commander of a homeward-bound ship to report the yacht's position in Anjer on his way through Sunda Straits—or to any British or Dutch man-of-war he might meet. The letter ended by anticipatory thanks, the offer to pay any expenses in connection with the sending of messages from Anjer, and the usual polite expressions.
Folding the paper slowly in the old creases, Lingard said—'I am not going to Anjer—nor anywhere near.'
'Any place will do, I fancy,' said Carter.
'Not the place where I am bound to,' answered Lingard, opening the letter again and glancing at it uneasily. 'He does not describe very well the coast, and his latitude is very uncertain,' he went on. 'I am not clear in my mind where exactly you are stranded. And yet I know every inch of that land—over there.'
Carter cleared his throat and began to talk in his slow drawl. He seemed to dole out facts, to disclose with sparing words the features of the coast, but every word showed the minuteness of his observation, the clear vision of a seaman able to master quickly the aspect of a strange land and of a strange sea. He presented, with concise lucidity, the picture of the tangle of reefs and sandbanks, through which the yacht had miraculously blundered in the dark before she took the ground.
'The weather seems clear enough at sea,' he observed, finally, and stopped to drink a long draught. Lingard, bending over the table, had been listening with eager attention. Carter went on in his curt and deliberate manner:
'I noticed some high trees on what I take to be the mainland to the south—and whoever has business in that bight was smart enough to whitewash two of them: one on the point, and another farther in. Landmarks, I guess. . . . What's the matter, Captain?'
Lingard had jumped to his feet, but Carter's exclamation caused him to sit down again.
'Nothing, nothing . . . Tell me, how many men have you in that yacht?'
'Twenty-three, besides the gentry, the owner, his wife and a Spanish gentleman—a friend they picked up in Manila.'
'So you were coming from Manila?'
'Aye. Bound for Batavia. The owner wishes to study the Dutch colonial system. Wants to expose it, he says. One can't help hearing a lot when keeping watch aft—you know how it is. Then we are going to Ceylon to meet the mail-boat there. The owner is going home as he came out, overland through Egypt. The yacht would return round the Cape, of course.'
'A lady?' said Lingard. 'You say there is a lady on board. Are you armed?'
'Not much,' replied Carter, negligently. 'There are a few muskets and two sporting guns aft; that's about all—I fancy it's too much, or not enough,' he added with a faint smile.
Lingard looked at him narrowly.
'Did you come out from home in that craft?' he asked.
'Not I! I am not one of them regular yacht hands. I came out of the hospital in Hongkong. I've been two years on the China coast.'
He stopped, then added in an explanatory murmur:
'Opium clippers—you know. Nothing of brass buttons about me. My ship left me behind, and I was in want of work. I took this job but I didn't want to go home particularly. It's slow work after sailing with old Robinson in the
