sombre universe. It was
gentle and destructive. Its languor seduced her soul into surrender.
Nothing existed and even all her memories vanished into space. She was
content that nothing should exist.

Lingard, aware all the time of their contact in the narrow stern sheets
of the boat, was startled by the pressure of the woman's head drooping
on his shoulder. He stiffened himself still more as though he had
tried on the approach of a danger to conceal his life in the breathless
rigidity of his body. The boat soared and descended slowly; a region
of foam and reefs stretched across her course hissing like a gigantic
cauldron; a strong gust of wind drove her straight at it for a moment
then passed on and abandoned her to the regular balancing of the swell.
The struggle of the rocks forever overwhelmed and emerging, with the sea
forever victorious and repulsed, fascinated the man. He watched it as he
would have watched something going on within himself while Mrs. Travers
slept sustained by his arm, pressed to his side, abandoned to his
support. The shoals guarding the Shore of Refuge had given him his first
glimpse of success--the solid support he needed for his action. The
Shallows were the shelter of his dreams; their voice had the power to
soothe and exalt his thoughts with the promise of freedom for his hopes.
Never had there been such a generous friendship. . . . A mass of white
foam whirling about a centre of intense blackness spun silently past the
side of the boat. . . . That woman he held like a captive on his arm had
also been given to him by the Shallows.

Suddenly his eyes caught on a distant sandbank the red gleam of Daman's
camp fire instantly eclipsed like the wink of a signalling lantern along
the level of the waters. It brought to his mind the existence of the two
men--those other captives. If the war canoe transporting them into the
lagoon had left the sands shortly after Hassim's retreat from Daman's
camp, Travers and d'Alcacer were by this time far away up the creek.
Every thought of action had become odious to Lingard since all he could
do in the world now was to hasten the moment of his separation from that
woman to whom he had confessed the whole secret of his life.

And she slept. She could sleep! He looked down at her as he would have
looked at the slumbering ignorance of a child, but the life within him
had the fierce beat of supreme moments. Near by, the eddies sighed along
the reefs, the water s