You were
on deck, ma'am?" he asked.
"Yes," she murmured. "In the chair here."
"We were all down below. I had to rest a little. When I came up the
watchman was asleep. He swears he wasn't, but I know better. Nobody
heard any noise, unless you did. But perhaps you were asleep?" he asked,
deferentially.
"Yes--no--I must have been," she said, faintly.
VIII
Lingard's soul was exalted by his talk with Mrs. Travers, by the strain
of incertitude and by extreme fatigue. On returning on board he asked
after Hassim and was told that the Rajah and his sister had gone off in
their canoe promising to return before midnight. The boats sent to scout
between the islets north and south of the anchorage had not come back
yet. He went into his cabin and throwing himself on the couch closed his
eyes thinking: "I must sleep or I shall go mad."
At times he felt an unshaken confidence in Mrs. Travers--then he
remembered her face. Next moment the face would fade, he would make an
effort to hold on to the image, fail--and then become convinced without
the shadow of a doubt that he was utterly lost, unless he let all these
people be wiped off the face of the earth.
"They all heard that man order me out of his ship," he thought, and
thereupon for a second or so he contemplated without flinching the lurid
image of a massacre.
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