"
"Nothing of importance," he said courteously. Mrs. Travers moved forward
and he stepped to one side. Inside the Cage two Malay hands were hanging
round lanterns, the light of which fell on Mr. Travers' bowed head as he
sat in his chair.
When they were all assembled for the evening meal Jorgenson strolled up
from nowhere in particular as his habit was, and speaking through the
muslin announced that Captain Lingard begged to be excused from joining
the company that evening. Then he strolled away. From that moment till
they got up from the table and the camp bedsteads were brought in not
twenty words passed between the members of the party within the net. The
strangeness of their situation made all attempts to exchange ideas very
arduous; and apart from that each had thoughts which it was distinctly
useless to communicate to the others. Mr. Travers had abandoned himself
to his sense of injury. He did not so much brood as rage inwardly in
a dull, dispirited way. The impossibility of asserting himself in any
manner galled his very soul. D'Alcacer was extremely puzzled. Detached
in a sense from the life of men perhaps as much even as Jorgenson
himself, he took yet a reasonable interest in the course of events and
had not lost all his sense of self-preservation. Without being able to
appreciate the exact values of the situation he was not one of those men
who are ever completely in the dark in any given set of circumstances.
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