"I found out that I can't trust my mate."
"Can't you?" drawled Carter. "I am not exactly surprised. I must say
_he_ does not snore but I believe it is because he is too crazy to
sleep. He waylaid me on the poop just now and said something about evil
communications corrupting good manners. Seems to me I've heard that
before. Queer thing to say. He tried to make it out somehow that if he
wasn't corrupt it wasn't your fault. As if this was any concern of mine.
He's as mad as he's fat--or else he puts it on." Carter laughed a little
and leaned his shoulders against a bulkhead.
Lingard gazed at the woman who expected so much from him and in the
light she seemed to shed he saw himself leading a column of armed boats
to the attack of the Settlement. He could burn the whole place to the
ground and drive every soul of them into the bush. He could! And
there was a surprise, a shock, a vague horror at the thought of the
destructive power of his will. He could give her ever so many lives. He
had seen her yesterday, and it seemed to him he had been all his life
waiting for her to make a sign. She was very still. He pondered a plan
of attack. He saw smoke and flame--and next moment he saw himself alone
amongst shapeless ruins with the whispers, with the sigh and moan of the
Shallows in his ears.
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