ly for an
instant, because Daman turned away at once to shake hands with Lingard.
In the straight, ample folds of his robes he looked very slender facing
the robust white man.

"Great is your power," he said, in a pleasant voice. "The white men are
going to be delivered to you."

"Yes, they pass into my keeping," said Lingard, returning the other's
bright smile but otherwise looking grim enough with the frown which
had settled on his forehead at Daman's approach. He glanced over his
shoulder at a group of spearmen escorting the two captives who had come
down the steps from the hut. At the sight of Daman barring as it were
Lingard's way they had stopped at some distance and had closed round the
two white men. Daman also glanced dispassionately that way.

"They were my guests," he murmured. "Please God I shall come soon to ask
you for them . . . as a friend," he added after a slight pause.

"And please God you will not go away empty handed," said Lingard,
smoothing his brow. "After all you and I were not meant to meet only
to quarrel. Would you have preferred to see them pass into Tengga's
keeping?"

"Tengga is fat and full of wiles," said Daman, disdainfully, "a mere
shopkeeper smitten by a desire to be a chief. He is nothing. But you and
I are men that have real power. Yet there is a truth that you and I can
confess to each other. Men's hearts grow quickly discontented. Listen.
The leaders of men are carried forward in the hands of their followers;
and common men's minds are unsteady, their desires changeable, and
their thoughts not to be trusted. You are a great chief they say. Do not
forget that I am a chief, too, and a leader of armed men."

"I have heard of you, too," said Lingard in a composed voice.

Daman had cast his eyes down. Suddenly he opened them very wide with an
effect that startled Mrs. Travers.--"Yes. But do you see?" Mrs. Travers,
her hand resting lightly on Lingard's arm, had the sensation of acting
in a gorgeously got up play on the brilliantly lighted stage of an
exotic opera whose accompaniment was not music but the varied strains
of the all-pervading silence.--"Yes, I see," Lingard replied with a
surprisingly confidential intonation. "But power, too, is in the hands
of a great leader."

Mrs. Travers watched the faint movements of Daman's nostrils as though
the man were suffering from some powerful emotion, while under her
fingers Lingard's forearm in its white sleeve was as steady as a li