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Updated: June 11, 2025
What a thoughtful man you are, Captain Lingard. That child will be touched by your generosity. . . . Will I do like this?" "Yes," said Lingard, averting his eyes. Mrs. Travers followed him into the boat where the Malays stared in silence while Jorgenson, stiff and angular, gave no sign of life, not even so much as a movement of the eyes.
"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.
Nobody, either white or brown, had ever doubted his word and that, of course, gave him great assurance in entering upon the negotiation. But the ultimate issue of it would be always a matter of luck. He said so distinctly to Mrs. Travers at the moment of taking leave of her, with Jorgenson already waiting for him in the boat that was to take them across the lagoon to Belarab's stockade.
"I tell you there was nothing of the kind," said Lingard, impatiently. "What? No fight!" inquired Jorgenson again without the slightest sign of animation. "No." "And you a fighting man." "Listen to me, Jorgenson. Things turned out so that before the time came for a fight it was already too late." He turned to Mrs. Travers still looking about with anxious eyes and a faint smile on her lips.
The Wild Rose was dead, and so was Captain H. C. Jorgenson, and the sextant case was all that was left of them. Old Jorgenson, gaunt and mute, would turn up at meal times on board any trading vessel in the Roads, and the stewards Chinamen or mulattos would sulkily put on an extra plate without waiting for orders.
It was a spot safe from eaves-droppers, though, of course, exposed to view. The sun had just set on the supreme content of Carter when Jorgenson and Jaffir sat down side by side between the knightheads of the Emma and, public but unapproachable, impressive and secret, began to converse in low tones. Every Wajo fugitive who manned the hulk felt the approach of a decisive moment.
"Yes, ask me," mumbled Jorgenson in his white moustache. "Speak straight, Jorgenson. What do you think? Are the gentlemen alive?" "Certainly," said Jorgenson in a sort of disappointed tone as though he had expected a much more difficult question. "Is their life in immediate danger?" "Of course not," said Jorgenson. Lingard turned away from the oracle. "You have heard him, Mrs. Travers.
Already a foretaste of noonday heat staled the sparkling freshness of the morning. The smile had vanished from Edith Travers' lips and her eyes rested on Lingard's bowed head with an expression no longer curious but which might have appeared enigmatic to Jorgenson if he had looked at her. But Jorgenson looked at nothing.
Lingard gazed at her with that unconscious tenderness mingled with wonder, which some men manifest toward girlhood. There was nothing of a conqueror of kingdoms in his bearing. Jorgenson preserved his amazing abstraction which seemed neither to hear nor see anything.
She, too, like Jorgenson, was tired of thinking. She abandoned herself to the silence of that night full of roused passions and deadly purposes. She abandoned herself to an illusory feeling; to the impression that she was really resting. For the first time in many days she could taste the relief of being alone. The men with her were less than nothing.
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