rgenson recross
the water of oblivion to step back into the life of men.

VI

For two years, Lingard, who had thrown himself body and soul into the
great enterprise, had lived in the long intoxication of slowly preparing
success. No thought of failure had crossed his mind, and no price
appeared too heavy to pay for such a magnificent achievement. It was
nothing less than bringing Hassim triumphantly back to that country
seen once at night under the low clouds and in the incessant tumult of
thunder. When at the conclusion of some long talk with Hassim, who for
the twentieth time perhaps had related the story of his wrongs and his
struggle, he lifted his big arm and shaking his fist above his head,
shouted: "We will stir them up. We will wake up the country!" he was,
without knowing it in the least, making a complete confession of the
idealism hidden under the simplicity of his strength. He would wake up
the country! That was the fundamental and unconscious emotion on which
were engrafted his need of action, the primitive sense of what was due
to justice, to gratitude, to friendship, the sentimental pity for the
hard lot of Immada--poor child--the proud conviction that of all the
men in the world, in his world, he alone had the means and the pluck "to
lift up the big end" of such an adventure.

Money was wanted and men were wanted, and he had obtained enough of both
in two years from that day when, pistols in his belt and a cabbage-leaf
hat on head, he had unexpectedly, and at early dawn, confronted in
perfect silence that mysterious Belarab, who himself was for a moment
too astounded for speech at the sight of a white face.

The sun had not yet cleared the forests of the interior, but a sky
already full of light arched over a dark oval lagoon, over wide fields
as yet full of shadows, that seemed slowly changing into the whiteness
of the morning mist. There were huts, fences, palisades, big houses
that, erected on lofty piles, were seen above the tops of clustered
fruit trees, as if suspended in the air.

Such was the aspect of Belarab's settlement when Lingard set his eyes
on it for the first time. There were all these things, a great number
of faces at the back of the spare and muffled-up figure confronting him,
and in the swiftly increasing light a complete stillness that made the
murmur of the word "Marhaba" (welcome), pronounced at last by the chief,
perfectly audible to every one of his followers. The bodyg