ng broad-faced fellows, wearing a sort of
uniform of check-patterned sarongs, black silk jackets and crimson
skull-caps set at a rakish angle, swaggered through the broken groups
and ranged themselves in two rows before the motionless Daman and his
Illanun chiefs in martial array. The members of the council who had
left their bench approached the white people with gentle smiles
and deferential movements of the hands. Their bearing was faintly
propitiatory; only the man in the big turban remained fanatically aloof,
keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

"I have done it," murmured Lingard to Mrs. Travers.--"Was it very
difficult?" she asked.--"No," he said, conscious in his heart that he
had strained to the fullest extent the prestige of his good name and
that habit of deference to his slightest wish established by the glamour
of his wealth and the fear of his personality in this great talk which
after all had done nothing except put off the decisive hour. He offered
Mrs. Travers his arm ready to lead her away, but at the last moment did
not move.

With an authoritative gesture Daman had parted the ranks of Belarab's
young followers with the red skullcaps and was seen advancing toward the
whites striking into an astonished silence all the scattered groups in
the courtyard. But the broken ranks had closed behind him. The Illanun
chiefs, for all their truculent aspect, were much too prudent to attempt
to move. They had not needed for that the faint warning murmur from
Daman. He advanced alone. The plain hilt of a sword protruded from the
open edges of his cloak. The parted edges disclosed also the butts of
two flintlock pistols. The Koran in a velvet case hung on his breast by
a red cord of silk. He was pious, magnificent, and warlike, with calm
movements and a straight glance from under the hem of the simple piece
of linen covering his head. He carried himself rigidly and his bearing
had a sort of solemn modesty. Lingard said hurriedly to Mrs. Travers
that the man had met white people before and that, should he attempt to
shake hands with her, she ought to offer her own covered with the end
of her scarf.--"Why?" she asked. "Propriety?"--"Yes, it will be better,"
said Lingard and the next moment Mrs. Travers felt her enveloped hand
pressed gently by slender dark fingers and felt extremely Oriental
herself when, with her face muffled to the eyes, she encountered the
lustrous black stare of the sea-robbers' leader. It was on