ingard with a nod towards the little
wicket-gate of Willems' enclosure.

"If you seek death, that is surely the way," answered Babalatchi in a
dispassionate voice, as if he had exhausted all the emotions. "He lives
there: he who destroyed your friends; who hastened Omar's death; who
plotted with Abdulla first against you, then against me. I have been
like a child. O shame! . . . But go, Tuan. Go there."

"I go where I like," said Lingard, emphatically, "and you may go to the
devil; I do not want you any more. The islands of these seas shall sink
before I, Rajah Laut, serve the will of any of your people. Tau? But I
tell you this: I do not care what you do with him after to-day. And I
say that because I am merciful."

"Tida! I do nothing," said Babalatchi, shaking his head with bitter
apathy. "I am in Abdulla's hand and care not, even as you do. No! no!"
he added, turning away, "I have learned much wisdom this morning. There
are no men anywhere. You whites are cruel to your friends and merciful
to your enemies--which is the work of fools."

He went away towards the riverside, and, without once looking back,
disappeared in the low bank of mist that lay over the water and the
shore. Lingard followed him with his eyes thoughtfully. After awhile he
roused himself and called out to his boatmen--

"Hai--ya there! After you have eaten rice, wait for me with your paddles
in your hands. You hear?"

"Ada, Tuan!" answered Ali through the smoke of the morning fire that was
spreading itself, low and gentle, over the courtyard--"we hear!"

Lingard opened slowly the little wicket-gate, made a few steps into
the empty enclosure, and stopped. He had felt about his head the short
breath of a puff of wind that passed him, made every leaf of the big
tree shiver--and died out in a hardly perceptible tremor of branches and
twigs. Instinctively he glanced upwards with a seaman's impulse. Above
him, under the grey motionless waste of a stormy sky, drifted low black
vapours, in stretching bars, in shapeless patches, in sinuous wisps and
tormented spirals. Over the courtyard and the house floated a round,
sombre, and lingering cloud, dragging behind a tail of tangled and filmy
streamers--like the dishevelled hair of a mourning woman.

CHAPTER THREE

"Beware!"

The tremulous effort and the broken, inadequate tone of the faint cry,
surprised Lingard more than the unexpected suddenness of the warning
conveyed, he did not know by wh