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Updated: June 1, 2025
Jorgenson was all right, but his ineradicable habit of muttering in his moustache about "throwing a lighted match amongst the powder barrels" had inspired Lingard with a certain amount of mistrust. And, moreover, he did not want to go away from Mrs. Travers. It was the only correct inspiration on Carter's part to send Jaffir with his report to Lingard.
He knew enough of Malays to feel sure that on such a night the besiegers, now certain of success, and being, Jaffir said, in possession of everything that could float, would not be very vigilant, especially on the sea front of the stockade. The very fact of Jaffir having managed to swim off undetected proved that much.
"Hassim waits," was the curt answer. "Did he tell you to return?" asked Lingard. "No! What need?" said the other in a surprised tone. Lingard seized his hand impulsively. "If I had ten men like you!" he cried. "We are ten, but they are twenty to one," said Jaffir, simply. Lingard opened the door. "Do you want anything that a man can give?" he asked.
His pent-up anxiety burst through his lips. "It is in my mind, Tuan, that death has not been so near them since that night when you came sailing in a black cloud and took us all out of the stockade." Lingard said nothing but there was in Jaffir a faith in that white man which was not easily shaken. "How are you going to save them this time, O Rajah Laut?" he asked, simply.
And the money ran like water out of his hands. The owner of the New England voice remitted not a little of it to his people in Baltimore. But import houses in the ports of the Far East had their share. It paid for a fast prau which, commanded by Jaffir, sailed into unfrequented bays and up unexplored rivers, carrying secret messages, important news, generous bribes.
Of all the people on board she alone did not know anything of that conference. In her deep and aimless thinking she had only become aware of the absence of the slightest sound on board the Emma. Not a rustle, not a footfall. The public view of Jorgenson and Jaffir in deep consultation had the effect of taking all wish to move from every man.
He is very ready to come and indeed, Tuan, he means to come on board here before very long." "Yes, with fifty war-canoes filled with the ferocious rabble of the Shore of Refuge," Jaffir was heard commenting, sarcastically, over the rail; and a sinister muttered "It may be so," ascended alongside from the black water.
Over there the man with the torch, the other paddler, and Jaffir himself impelling with a gentle motion of his paddle the canoe toward the shore, had the glistening eyeballs and the tense faces of silent excitement. The ruddy glare smote Mrs. Travers' closed eyelids but she didn't open her eyes till she felt the canoe touch the strand. The two men leaped instantly out of it. Mrs.
"And if it draws fire on us," Jaffir had commented to Jorgenson, "well, then, we shall see whose fate it is to die on this night." "Yes," had muttered Jorgenson. "We shall see." Jorgenson saw at last the small light of the torch against the blackness of the stockade. He strained his hearing for a possible volley of musketry fire but no sound came to him over the broad surface of the lagoon.
And for fear of treachery and lest harm should befall you his friend the Rajah gave me the ring and I crept on my stomach over the sand, and I swam in the night and I, Jaffir, the best swimmer in Wajo, and the slave of Hassim, tell you his message to you is 'Depart and forget' and this is his gift take!"
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