The food, such as it was, was served within that glorified mosquito net
which everybody called the "Cage" without any humorous intention. At
meal times the party from the yacht had the company of Lingard who
attached to this ordeal a sense of duty performed at the altar of
civility and conciliation. He could have no conception how much his
presence added to the exasperation of Mr. Travers because Mr. Travers'
manner was too intensely consistent to present any shades. It was
determined by an ineradicable conviction that he was a victim held to
ransom on some incomprehensible terms by an extraordinary and outrageous
bandit. This conviction, strung to the highest pitch, never left him for
a moment, being the object of indignant meditation to his mind, and even
clinging, as it were, to his very body. It lurked in his eyes, in his
gestures, in his ungracious mutters, and in his sinister silences. The
shock to his moral being had ended by affecting Mr. Travers' physical
machine. He was aware of hepatic pains, suffered from accesses of
somnolence and suppressed gusts of fury which frightened him secretly.
His complexion had acquired a yellow tinge, while his heavy eyes had
become bloodshot because of the smoke of the open wood fires during
his three days' detention inside Belarab's stockade.
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