Willems spun round sharply. Babalatchi stepped back.

"If she does it will be the worse for you," said Willems, in a menacing
voice. "It will be your doing, and I . . ."

Babalatchi spoke, from beyond the circle of light, with calm disdain.

"Hai--ya! I have heard before. If she goes--then I die. Good! Will that
bring her back do you think--Tuan? If it is my doing it shall be well
done, O white man! and--who knows--you will have to live without her."

Willems gasped and started back like a confident wayfarer who, pursuing
a path he thinks safe, should see just in time a bottomless chasm
under his feet. Babalatchi came into the light and approached Willems
sideways, with his head thrown back and a little on one side so as to
bring his only eye to bear full on the countenance of the tall white
man.

"You threaten me," said Willems, indistinctly.

"I, Tuan!" exclaimed Babalatchi, with a slight suspicion of irony in the
affected surprise of his tone. "I, Tuan? Who spoke of death? Was it
I? No! I spoke of life only. Only of life. Of a long life for a lonely
man!"

They stood with the fire between them, both silent, both aware, each
in his own way, of the importance of the passing minutes. Babalatchi's
fatalism gave him only an insignificant relief in his suspense, because
no fatalism can kill the thought of the future, the desire of success,
the pain of waiting for the disclosure of the immutable decrees of
Heaven. Fatalism is born of the fear of failure, for we all believe that
we carry success in our own hands, and we suspect that our hands are
weak. Babalatchi looked at Willems and congratulated himself upon his
ability to manage that white man. There was a pilot for Abdulla--a
victim to appease Lingard's anger in case of any mishap. He would take
good care to put him forward in everything. In any case let the white
men fight it out amongst themselves. They were fools. He hated them--the
strong fools--and knew that for his righteous wisdom was reserved the
safe triumph.

Willems measured dismally the depth of his degradation. He--a white man,
the admired of white men, was held by those miserable savages whose tool
he was about to become. He felt for them all the hate of his race, of
his morality, of his intelligence. He looked upon himself with dismay
and pity. She had him. He had heard of such things. He had heard of
women who . . . He would never believe such stories. . . . Yet they
were true. But his own capt