ular, gave no sign of life, not even so much as a movement of the
eyes. Lingard settled her in the stern sheets and sat down by her side.
The ardent sunshine devoured all colours. The boat swam forward on the
glare heading for the strip of coral beach dazzling like a crescent of
metal raised to a white heat. They landed. Gravely, Jorgenson opened
above Mrs. Travers' head a big white cotton parasol and she advanced
between the two men, dazed, as if in a dream and having no other contact
with the earth but through the soles of her feet. Everything was still,
empty, incandescent, and fantastic. Then when the gate of the stockade
was thrown open she perceived an expectant and still multitude of bronze
figures draped in coloured stuffs. They crowded the patches of shade
under the three lofty forest trees left within the enclosure between the
sun-smitten empty spaces of hard-baked ground. The broad blades of the
spears decorated with crimson tufts of horsehair had a cool gleam under
the outspread boughs. To the left a group of buildings on piles with
long verandahs and immense roofs towered high in the air above the
heads of the crowd, and seemed to float in the glare, looking much less
substantial than their heavy shadows. Lingard, pointing to one of the
smallest, said in an undertone, "I lived there for a fortnight when I
first came to see Belarab"; and Mrs. Travers felt more than ever as if
walking in a dream when she perceived beyond the rails of its verandah
and visible from head to foot two figures in an armour of chain mail
with pointed steel helmets crested with white and black feathers and
guarding the closed door. A high bench draped in turkey cloth stood
in an open space of the great audience shed. Lingard led her up to it,
Jorgenson on her other side closed the parasol calmly, and when she sat
down between them the whole throng before her eyes sank to the ground
with one accord disclosing in the distance of the courtyard a lonely
figure leaning against the smooth trunk of a tree. A white cloth was
fastened round his head by a yellow cord. Its pointed ends fell on
his shoulders, framing a thin dark face with large eyes, a silk cloak
striped black and white fell to his feet, and in the distance he looked
aloof and mysterious in his erect and careless attitude suggesting
assurance and power.

Lingard, bending slightly, whispered into Mrs. Travers' ear that that
man, apart and dominating the scene, was Daman, the supre