The sky had clouded over the brig without a breath of wind.
"Give up," repeated Carter with an uneasy shuffle of feet.
"Nobody," finished Lingard. "I can't. It's as clear as daylight. I
can't! No! Nothing!"
He stared straight out afar, and after looking at him Carter felt moved
by a bit of youthful intuition to murmur, "That's bad," in a tone
that almost in spite of himself hinted at the dawning of a befogged
compassion.
He had a sense of confusion within him, the sense of mystery without.
He had never experienced anything like it all the time when serving with
old Robinson in the Ly-e-moon. And yet he had seen and taken part in
some queer doings that were not clear to him at the time. They were
secret but they suggested something comprehensible. This affair did not.
It had somehow a subtlety that affected him. He was uneasy as if there
had been a breath of magic on events and men giving to this complication
of a yachting voyage a significance impossible to perceive, but felt
in the words, in the gestures, in the events, which made them all
strangely, obscurely startling.
He was not one who could keep track of his sensations, and besides he
had not the leisure. He had to answer Lingard's questions about the
people of the yacht. No, he couldn't say Mrs. Travers was what you may
call frightened.
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