oughed amongst the stones, clung round the rocks
with tragic murmurs that resembled promises, good-byes, or prayers. From
the unfathomable distances of the night came the booming of the swell
assaulting the seaward face of the Shallows. He felt the woman's
nearness with such intensity that he heard nothing. . . . Then suddenly
he thought of death.

"Wake up!" he shouted in her ear, swinging round in his seat. Mrs.
Travers gasped; a splash of water flicked her over the eyes and she felt
the separate drops run down her cheeks, she tasted them on her lips,
tepid and bitter like tears. A swishing undulation tossed the boat on
high followed by another and still another; and then the boat with the
breeze abeam glided through still water, laying over at a steady angle.

"Clear of the reef now," remarked Lingard in a tone of relief.

"Were we in any danger?" asked Mrs. Travers in a whisper.

"Well, the breeze dropped and we drifted in very close to the rocks," he
answered. "I had to rouse you. It wouldn't have done for you to wake up
suddenly struggling in the water."

So she had slept! It seemed to her incredible that she should have
closed her eyes in this small boat, with the knowledge of their
desperate errand, on so disturbed a sea. The man by her side leaned
forward, extended his arm, and the boat going off before the wind went
on faster on an even keel. A motionless black bank resting on the sea
stretched infinitely right in their way in ominous stillness. She called
Lingard's attention to it. "Look at this awful cloud."

"This cloud is the coast and in a moment we shall be entering the
creek," he said, quietly. Mrs. Travers stared at it. Was it land--land!
It seemed to her even less palpable than a cloud, a mere sinister
immobility above the unrest of the sea, nursing in its depth the unrest
of men who, to her mind, were no more real than fantastic shadows.

V

What struck Mrs. Travers most, directly she set eyes on him, was the
other-world aspect of Jorgenson. He had been buried out of sight so long
that his tall, gaunt body, his unhurried, mechanical movements, his
set face and his eyes with an empty gaze suggested an invincible
indifference to all the possible surprises of the earth. That appearance
of a resuscitated man who seemed to be commanded by a conjuring spell
strolled along the decks of what was even to Mrs. Travers' eyes the mere
corpse of a ship and turned on her a pair of deep-sunk, expression