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She answered in hurried words, looking at him intently "In a big canoe with three men. I know everything. Lingard's away. I come to save you. I know. . . . Almayer told me." "Canoe! Almayer Lies. Told you You!" stammered Willems in a distracted manner. "Why you? Told what?" Words failed him.
Certainly not. Yet it was as clearly inconsistent with the common law, or the English constitution, to disfranchise those whose freeholds fell below any arbitrary standard fixed by the government, as it would have been to disfranchise all whose freeholds rose above that standard. Lingard says: "These compurgators or jurors were sometimes drawn by lot." 1 Lingard's History of England, p. 300.
There were, however, certain sides of Lingard's character for which Willems felt a qualified respect. The talkative seaman knew how to be silent on certain matters that to Willems were very interesting. Besides, Lingard was rich, and that in itself was enough to compel Willems' unwilling admiration.
"I feel stunned yet," said Lingard, looking Carter straight in the face, as if to watch the effect of that confession. "Were you very near that explosion?" asked the young man with sympathetic curiosity and seeking for some sign on Lingard's person. But there was nothing. Not a single hair of the Captain's head seemed to have been singed. "Near," muttered Lingard. "It might have been my head."
"Yes. But it did not work this time. And if I go and tell Jaffir why he will be able to tell his Rajah, O Wasub, since you say that he is going to die. . . . I wonder where they will meet," he muttered to himself. Once more Wasub raised his eyes to Lingard's face. "Paradise is the lot of all True Believers," he whispered, firm in his simple faith.
It was as if the secrets of the place had been betrayed. After all, it was perhaps a great folly to trust any white man, no matter how much he seemed estranged from his own people. Daman felt he might have been the victim of a plot. Lingard's brig appeared to him a formidable engine of war.
He tapped the table with his knuckles, and the glasses, waking up, jingled a thin, plaintive finale to his speech. Carter stood leaning against the sideboard. He was amazed by the unexpected turn of the conversation; his jaw dropped slightly and his eyes never swerved for a moment from Lingard's face.
All that ambitious person really wanted was to have a share in Lingard's wealth, in Lingard's power, in Lingard's friendship. A year before Tengga had once insinuated to Jorgenson, "In what way am I less worthy of being a friend than Belarab?" It was a distinct overture, a disclosure of the man's innermost mind. Jorgenson, of course, had met it with a profound silence.
It would not do to let it be seen that they had any hand in introducing a new element into the social and political life of Sambir. There was always a possibility of failure, and in that case Lingard's vengeance would be swift and certain. No risk should be run. They must wait.
Before he came, the weather had changed once more. It was now cold, and the cold had begun at once to tell upon the invalid. There are some natures to which cold, moral, spiritual, or physical, is lethal, and Lingard's was of the class.
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