rt of it went
to the purchase of the Emma.

The Emma was a battered and decrepit old schooner that, in the decline
of her existence, had been much ill-used by a paunchy white trader of
cunning and gluttonous aspect. This man boasted outrageously afterward
of the good price he had got "for that rotten old hooker of mine--you
know." The Emma left port mysteriously in company with the brig and
henceforth vanished from the seas forever. Lingard had her towed up the
creek and ran her aground upon that shore of the lagoon farthest from
Belarab's settlement. There had been at that time a great rise of
waters, which retiring soon after left the old craft cradled in the mud,
with her bows grounded high between the trunks of two big trees, and
leaning over a little as though after a hard life she had settled
wearily to an everlasting rest. There, a few months later, Jorgenson
found her when, called back into the life of men, he reappeared,
together with Lingard, in the Land of Refuge.

"She is better than a fort on shore," said Lingard, as side by side they
leant over the taffrail, looking across the lagoon on the houses and
palm groves of the settlement. "All the guns and powder I have got
together so far are stored in her. Good idea, wasn't it? There will
be, perhaps, no other such flood for years, and now they can't come
alongside unless right under the counter, and only one boat at a time.
I think you are perfectly safe here; you could keep off a whole fleet of
boats; she isn't easy to set fire to; the forest in front is better than
a wall. Well?"

Jorgenson assented in grunts. He looked at the desolate emptiness of the
decks, at the stripped spars, at the dead body of the dismantled little
vessel that would know the life of the seas no more. The gloom of the
forest fell on her, mournful like a winding sheet. The bushes of the
bank tapped their twigs on the bluff of her bows, and a pendent spike of
tiny brown blossoms swung to and fro over the ruins of her windlass.

Hassim's companions garrisoned the old hulk, and Jorgenson, left
in charge, prowled about from stem to stern, taciturn and anxiously
faithful to his trust. He had been received with astonishment,
respect--and awe. Belarab visited him often. Sometimes those whom he had
known in their prime years ago, during a struggle for faith and life,
would come to talk with the white man. Their voices were like the echoes
of stirring events, in the pale glamour of a youth