f light would shoot through the thick
blackness of inexplicable treachery, to show him clearly--if only for
a second--the man upon whom he would have to execute the verdict of
justice. Justice only! Nothing was further from his thoughts than such
an useless thing as revenge. Justice only. It was his duty that justice
should be done--and by his own hand. He did not like to think how. To
him, as to Babalatchi, it seemed that the night would be long enough for
the work he had to do. But he did not define to himself the nature
of the work, and he sat very still, and willingly dilatory, under the
fearsome oppression of his call. What was the good to think about it?
It was inevitable, and its time was near. Yet he could not command his
memories that came crowding round him in that evil-smelling hut, while
Babalatchi talked on in a flowing monotone, nothing of him moving but
the lips, in the artificially inanimated face. Lingard, like an anchored
ship that had broken her sheer, darted about here and there on the rapid
tide of his recollections. The subdued sound of soft words rang around
him, but his thoughts were lost, now in the contemplation of the past
sweetness and strife of Carimata days, now in the uneasy wonder at the
failure of his judgment; at the fatal blindness of accident that had
caused him, many years ago, to rescue a half-starved runaway from a
Dutch ship in Samarang roads. How he had liked the man: his assurance,
his push, his desire to get on, his conceited good-humour and his
selfish eloquence. He had liked his very faults--those faults that had
so many, to him, sympathetic sides.

And he had always dealt fairly by him from the very beginning; and
he would deal fairly by him now--to the very end. This last thought
darkened Lingard's features with a responsive and menacing frown. The
doer of justice sat with compressed lips and a heavy heart, while in the
calm darkness outside the silent world seemed to be waiting breathlessly
for that justice he held in his hand--in his strong hand:--ready to
strike--reluctant to move.

CHAPTER TWO

Babalatchi ceased speaking. Lingard shifted his feet a little, uncrossed
his arms, and shook his head slowly. The narrative of the events in
Sambir, related from the point of view of the astute statesman, the
sense of which had been caught here and there by his inattentive ears,
had been yet like a thread to guide him out of the sombre labyrinth of
his thoughts; and now he