said Carter, steadily and low.

Lingard had the air of being awakened by a shout. A heavy and darkening
frown seemed to fall out of the night upon his forehead and swiftly
passed into the night again, and when it departed it left him so calm,
his glance so lucid, his mien so composed that it was difficult to
believe the man's heart had undergone within the last second the trial
of humiliation and of danger. He smiled sadly:

"Well, young man," he asked with a kind of good-humoured resignation,
"what is it you have there? A knife or a pistol?"

"A pistol," said Carter. "Are you surprised, Captain?" He spoke with
heat because a sense of regret was stealing slowly within him, as
stealthily, as irresistibly as the flowing tide. "Who began these
tricks?" He withdrew his hand, empty, and raised his voice. "You are up
to something I can't make out. You--you are not straight."

The flares held on high streamed right up without swaying, and in that
instant of profound calm the shadows on the brig's deck became as still
as the men.

"You think not?" said Lingard, thoughtfully.

Carter nodded. He resented the turn of the incident and the growing
impulse to surrender to that man.

"Mrs. Travers trusts me though," went on Lingard with gentle triumph as
if advancing an unanswerable argument.

"So she says," grunted Carter; "I warned her. She's a baby. They're all
as innocent as babies there. And you know it. And I know it. I've heard
of your kind. You would dump the lot of us overboard if it served your
turn. That's what I think."

"And that's all."

Carter nodded slightly and looked away. There was a silence. Lingard's
eyes travelled over the brig. The lighted part of the vessel appeared in
bright and wavering detail walled and canopied by the night. He felt a
light breath on his face. The air was stirring, but the Shallows, silent
and lost in the darkness, gave no sound of life.

This stillness oppressed Lingard. The world of his endeavours and his
hopes seemed dead, seemed gone. His desire existed homeless in the
obscurity that had devoured his corner of the sea, this stretch of the
coast, his certitude of success. And here in the midst of what was the
domain of his adventurous soul there was a lost youngster ready to shoot
him on suspicion of some extravagant treachery. Came ready to shoot!
That's good, too! He was too weary to laugh--and perhaps too sad. Also
the danger of the pistol-shot, which he believed real--th