had
brought with him a black seaman's chest and left it there. Apart from
these objects and a small looking-glass worth about half a crown and
nailed to the wall there was nothing else in there whatever. What was
on Jorgenson's side of the deckhouse no one had seen, but from external
evidence one could infer the existence of a set of razors.

The erection of that primitive deckhouse was a matter of propriety
rather than of necessity. It was proper that the white men should have a
place to themselves on board, but Lingard was perfectly accurate when he
told Mrs. Travers that he had never slept there once. His practice was
to sleep on deck. As to Jorgenson, if he did sleep at all he slept very
little. It might have been said that he haunted rather than commanded
the Emma. His white form flitted here and there in the night or stood
for hours, silent, contemplating the sombre glimmer of the lagoon. Mr.
Travers' eyes accustomed gradually to the dusk of the place could
now distinguish more of his wife's person than the great mass of
honey-coloured hair. He saw her face, the dark eyebrows and her eyes
that seemed profoundly black in the half light. He said:

"You couldn't have done so here. There is neither lock nor bolt."

"Isn't there? I didn't notice. I would know how to protect myself
without locks and bolts."

"I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Travers in a sullen tone and fell
silent again surveying the woman in the chair. "Indulging your taste for
fancy dress," he went on with faint irony.

Mrs. Travers clasped her hands behind her head. The wide sleeves
slipping back bared her arms to her shoulders. She was wearing a Malay
thin cotton jacket, cut low in the neck without a collar and fastened
with wrought silver clasps from the throat downward. She had replaced
her yachting skirt by a blue check sarong embroidered with threads of
gold. Mr. Travers' eyes travelling slowly down attached themselves to
the gleaming instep of an agitated foot from which hung a light leather
sandal.

"I had no clothes with me but what I stood in," said Mrs. Travers. "I
found my yachting costume too heavy. It was intolerable. I was soaked
in dew when I arrived. So when these things were produced for my
inspection. . . ."

"By enchantment," muttered Mr. Travers in a tone too heavy for sarcasm.

"No. Out of that chest. There are very fine stuffs there."

"No doubt," said Mr. Travers. "The man wouldn't be above plundering the
natives. .