"Here's Rajah Hassim coming, Jorgenson. I had an idea he would perhaps
stay outside." Mrs. Travers heard Lingard's voice at her back and the
answering grunt of Jorgenson. She raised deliberately the long glass to
her eye, pointing it at the shore.
She distinguished plainly now the colours in the flutter of the
streamers above the brown roofs of the large Settlement, the stir of
palm groves, the black shadows inland and the dazzling white beach of
coral sand all ablaze in its formidable mystery. She swept the whole
range of the view and was going to lower the glass when from behind
the massive angle of the stockade there stepped out into the brilliant
immobility of the landscape a man in a long white gown and with an
enormous black turban surmounting a dark face. Slow and grave he
paced the beach ominously in the sunshine, an enigmatical figure in an
Oriental tale with something weird and menacing in its sudden emergence
and lonely progress.
With an involuntary gasp Mrs. Travers lowered the glass. All at once
behind her back she heard a low musical voice beginning to pour out
incomprehensible words in a tone of passionate pleading. Hassim and
Immada had come on board and had approached Lingard. Yes! It was
intolerable to feel that this flow of soft speech which had no meaning
for her could make its way straight into that man's heart.
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