or you, if I
only knew how to manage it, I would want to live. I am telling you this
because it is dark. If there had been a light in here I wouldn't have
come in."

"I wish you had not," uttered the same unringing woman's voice. "You are
always coming to me with those lives and those deaths in your hand."

"Yes, it's too much for you," was Lingard's undertoned comment. "You
could be no other than true. And you are innocent! Don't wish me life,
but wish me luck, for you are innocent--and you will have to take your
chance."

"All luck to you, King Tom," he heard her say in the darkness in which
he seemed now to perceive the gleam of her hair. "I will take my chance.
And try not to come near me again for I am weary of you."

"I can well believe it," murmured Lingard, and stepped out of the cabin,
shutting the door after him gently. For half a minute, perhaps, the
stillness continued, and then suddenly the chair fell over in the
darkness. Next moment Mrs. Travers' head appeared in the light of the
lamp left on the roof of the deckhouse. Her bare arms grasped the door
posts.

"Wait a moment," she said, loudly, into the shadows of the deck. She
heard no footsteps, saw nothing moving except the vanishing white shape
of the late Captain H. C. Jorgenson, who was indifferent to the life of
men. "Wait, King Tom!" she insisted, raising her voice; then, "I didn't
mean it. Don't believe me!" she cried, recklessly.

For the second time that night a woman's voice startled the hearts of
men on board the Emma. All except the heart of old Jorgenson. The Malays
in the boat looked up from their thwarts. D'Alcacer, sitting in the
stern sheets beside Lingard, felt a sinking of his heart.

"What's this?" he exclaimed. "I heard your name on deck. You are wanted,
I think."

"Shove off," ordered Lingard, inflexibly, without even looking at
d'Alcacer. Mr. Travers was the only one who didn't seem to be aware
of anything. A long time after the boat left the Emma's side he leaned
toward d'Alcacer.

"I have a most extraordinary feeling," he said in a cautious undertone.
"I seem to be in the air--I don't know. Are we on the water, d'Alcacer?
Are you quite sure? But of course, we are on the water."

"Yes," said d'Alcacer, in the same tone. "Crossing the Styx--perhaps."
He heard Mr. Travers utter an unmoved "Very likely," which he did not
expect. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat like a man of stone.

"Then your point of view has change