gone by. They nodded
their old heads. Do you remember?--they said. He remembered only too
well! He was like a man raised from the dead, for whom the fascinating
trust in the power of life is tainted by the black scepticism of the
grave.

Only at times the invincible belief in the reality of existence would
come back, insidious and inspiring. He squared his shoulders, held
himself straight, and walked with a firmer step. He felt a glow within
him and the quickened beat of his heart. Then he calculated in silent
excitement Lingard's chances of success, and he lived for a time with
the life of that other man who knew nothing of the black scepticism of
the grave. The chances were good, very good.

"I should like to see it through," Jorgenson muttered to himself
ardently; and his lustreless eyes would flash for a moment.

PART III. THE CAPTURE

I

"Some people," said Lingard, "go about the world with their eyes shut.
You are right. The sea is free to all of us. Some work on it, and some
play the fool on it--and I don't care. Only you may take it from me
that I will let no man's play interfere with my work. You want me to
understand you are a very great man--"

Mr. Travers smiled, coldly.

"Oh, yes," continued Lingard, "I understand that well enough. But
remember you are very far from home, while I, here, I am where I belong.
And I belong where I am. I am just Tom Lingard, no more, no less,
wherever I happen to be, and--you may ask--" A sweep of his hand along
the western horizon entrusted with perfect confidence the remainder of
his speech to the dumb testimony of the sea.

He had been on board the yacht for more than an hour, and nothing,
for him, had come of it but the birth of an unreasoning hate. To the
unconscious demand of these people's presence, of their ignorance, of
their faces, of their voices, of their eyes, he had nothing to give but
a resentment that had in it a germ of reckless violence. He could tell
them nothing because he had not the means. Their coming at this moment,
when he had wandered beyond that circle which race, memories, early
associations, all the essential conditions of one's origin, trace round
every man's life, deprived him in a manner of the power of speech. He
was confounded. It was like meeting exacting spectres in a desert.

He stared at the open sea, his arms crossed, with a reflective
fierceness. His very appearance made him utterly different from everyone
on board that ve