t off for
assistance; his sailing-master, very crestfallen, made bold to say that
the yacht would most likely float at the next spring tides; d'Alcacer,
a person of undoubted nobility though of inferior principles, was better
than no company, in so far at least that he could play picquet.

Mr. Travers had made up his mind to wait. Then suddenly this rough
man, looking as if he had stepped out from an engraving in a book about
buccaneers, broke in upon his resignation with mysterious allusions to
danger, which sounded absurd yet were disturbing; with dark and warning
sentences that sounded like disguised menaces.

Mr. Travers had a heavy and rather long chin which he shaved. His eyes
were blue, a chill, naive blue. He faced Lingard untouched by travel,
without a mark of weariness or exposure, with the air of having been
born invulnerable. He had a full, pale face; and his complexion was
perfectly colourless, yet amazingly fresh, as if he had been reared in
the shade.

He thought:

"I must put an end to this preposterous hectoring. I won't be
intimidated into paying for services I don't need."

Mr. Travers felt a strong disgust for the impudence of the attempt; and
all at once, incredibly, strangely, as though the thing, like a contest
with a rival or a friend, had been of profound importance to his career,
he felt inexplicably elated at the thought of defeating the secret
purposes of that man.

Lingard, unconscious of everything and everybody, contemplated the sea.
He had grown on it, he had lived with it; it had enticed him away from
home; on it his thoughts had expanded and his hand had found work to do.
It had suggested endeavour, it had made him owner and commander of the
finest brig afloat; it had lulled him into a belief in himself, in
his strength, in his luck--and suddenly, by its complicity in a fatal
accident, it had brought him face to face with a difficulty that looked
like the beginning of disaster.

He had said all he dared to say--and he perceived that he was not
believed. This had not happened to him for years. It had never happened.
It bewildered him as if he had suddenly discovered that he was no longer
himself. He had come to them and had said: "I mean well by you. I am
Tom Lingard--" and they did not believe! Before such scepticism he was
helpless, because he had never imagined it possible. He had said: "You
are in the way of my work. You are in the way of what I can not give up
for any one;