distinguished flanking the beach, and between them with a great open
space before it, the brown roof slope of an enormous long building that
seemed suspended in the air had a great square flag fluttering above it.
Something like a small white flame in the sky was the carved white coral
finial on the gable of the mosque which had caught full the rays of
the sun. A multitude of gay streamers, white and red, flew over the
half-concealed roofs, over the brilliant fields and amongst the sombre
palm groves. But it might have been a deserted settlement decorated and
abandoned by its departed population. Lingard pointed to the stockade on
the right.

"That's where your husband is," he said to Mrs. Travers.

"Who is the other?" uttered Jorgenson's voice at their backs. He also
was turned that way with his strange sightless gaze fixed beyond them
into the void.

"A Spanish gentleman I believe you said, Mrs Travers," observed Lingard.

"It is extremely difficult to believe that there is anybody there,"
murmured Mrs. Travers.

"Did you see them both, Jorgenson?" asked Lingard.

"Made out nobody. Too far. Too dark."

As a matter of fact Jorgenson had seen nothing, about an hour before
daybreak, but the distant glare of torches while the loud shouts of an
excited multitude had reached him across the water only like a faint
and tempestuous murmur. Presently the lights went away processionally
through the groves of trees into the armed stockades. The distant glare
vanished in the fading darkness and the murmurs of the invisible crowd
ceased suddenly as if carried off by the retreating shadow of the night.
Daylight followed swiftly, disclosing to the sleepless Jorgenson the
solitude of the shore and the ghostly outlines of the familiar forms of
grouped trees and scattered human habitations. He had watched the varied
colours come out in the dawn, the wide cultivated Settlement of
many shades of green, framed far away by the fine black lines of the
forest-edge that was its limit and its protection.

Mrs. Travers stood against the rail as motionless as a statue. Her face
had lost all its mobility and her cheeks were dead white as if all the
blood in her body had flowed back into her heart and had remained there.
Her very lips had lost their colour. Lingard caught hold of her arm
roughly.

"Don't, Mrs. Travers. Why are you terrifying yourself like this? If you
don't believe what I say listen to me asking Jorgenson. . . ."

"Ye