uld do a deal with that Tom--what d'ye call him? Where d'ye
catch him? Everywhere--eh? Waal--that's nowhere. But I shall find him
some day--yes, siree."

Jorgenson, utterly disregarded, looked down dreamily at the falling
cards. "Spy--I tell you," he muttered to himself. "If you want to know
anything, ask me."

When Lingard returned from Wajo--after an uncommonly long
absence--everyone remarked a great change. He was less talkative and
not so noisy, he was still hospitable but his hospitality was less
expansive, and the man who was never so happy as when discussing
impossibly wild projects with half a dozen congenial spirits often
showed a disinclination to meet his best friends. In a word, he
returned much less of a good fellow than he went away. His visits to the
Settlements were not less frequent, but much shorter; and when there he
was always in a hurry to be gone.

During two years the brig had, in her way, as hard a life of it as the
man. Swift and trim she flitted amongst the islands of little known
groups. She could be descried afar from lonely headlands, a white
speck travelling fast over the blue sea; the apathetic keepers of rare
lighthouses dotting the great highway to the east came to know the cut
of her topsails. They saw her passing east, passing west. They had faint
glimpses of her flying with masts aslant in the mist of a rain-squall,
or could observe her at leisure, upright and with shivering sails,
forging ahead through a long day of unsteady airs. Men saw her battling
with a heavy monsoon in the Bay of Bengal, lying becalmed in the Java
Sea, or gliding out suddenly from behind a point of land, graceful and
silent in the clear moonlight. Her activity was the subject of excited
but low-toned conversations, which would be interrupted when her master
appeared.

"Here he is. Came in last night," whispered the gossiping group.

Lingard did not see the covert glances of respect tempered by irony; he
nodded and passed on.

"Hey, Tom! No time for a drink?" would shout someone.

He would shake his head without looking back--far away already.

Florid and burly he could be seen, for a day or two, getting out of
dusty gharries, striding in sunshine from the Occidental Bank to the
Harbour Office, crossing the Esplanade, disappearing down a street of
Chinese shops, while at his elbow and as tall as himself, old Jorgenson
paced along, lean and faded, obstinate and disregarded, like a haunting
spirit from t