e Lingard's last trip, as they were crossing the
short bridge over the canal where native craft lie moored in clusters,
Jorgenson lengthened his stride and came abreast. It was a moonlight
night and nothing stirred on earth but the shadows of high clouds.
Lingard took off his hat and drew in a long sigh in the tepid breeze.
Jorgenson spoke suddenly in a cautious tone: "The new Rajah Tulla
smokes opium and is sometimes dangerous to speak to. There is a lot of
discontent in Wajo amongst the big people."

"Good! Good!" whispered Lingard, excitedly, off his guard for once.
Then--"How the devil do you know anything about it?" he asked.

Jorgenson pointed at the mass of praus, coasting boats, and sampans
that, jammed up together in the canal, lay covered with mats and flooded
by the cold moonlight with here and there a dim lantern burning amongst
the confusion of high sterns, spars, masts and lowered sails.

"There!" he said, as they moved on, and their hatted and clothed shadows
fell heavily on the queer-shaped vessels that carry the fortunes of
brown men upon a shallow sea. "There! I can sit with them, I can talk
to them, I can come and go as I like. They know me now--it's
time-thirty-five years. Some of them give a plate of rice and a bit of
fish to the white man. That's all I get--after thirty-five years--given
up to them."

He was silent for a time.

"I was like you once," he added, and then laying his hand on Lingard's
sleeve, murmured--"Are you very deep in this thing?"

"To the very last cent," said Lingard, quietly, and looking straight
before him.

The glitter of the roadstead went out, and the masts of anchored ships
vanished in the invading shadow of a cloud.

"Drop it," whispered Jorgenson.

"I am in debt," said Lingard, slowly, and stood still.

"Drop it!"

"Never dropped anything in my life."

"Drop it!"

"By God, I won't!" cried Lingard, stamping his foot.

There was a pause.

"I was like you--once," repeated Jorgenson. "Five and thirty
years--never dropped anything. And what you can do is only child's play
to some jobs I have had on my hands--understand that--great man as you
are, Captain Lingard of the Lightning. . . . You should have seen the
Wild Rose," he added with a sudden break in his voice.

Lingard leaned over the guard-rail of the pier. Jorgenson came closer.

"I set fire to her with my own hands!" he said in a vibrating tone and
very low, as if making a monstrous confession.