ard. "He is immensely pleased with himself, the
young fool. You know, when you sent him to talk to me that evening you
left the yacht, he came with a loaded pistol in his pocket. And now he
has gone and done it."

"Done it?" repeated Mrs. Travers blankly. "Done what?"

She snatched from Lingard's unresisting palm the sheet of paper. While
she was smoothing it Lingard moved round and stood close at her elbow.
She ran quickly over the first lines, then her eyes steadied. At the end
she drew a quick breath and looked up at Lingard. Their faces had never
been so close together before and Mrs. Travers had a surprising second
of a perfectly new sensation. She looked away.--"Do you understand what
this news means?" he murmured. Mrs. Travers let her hand fall by her
side. "Yes," she said in a low tone. "The compact is broken."

Carter had begun his letter without any preliminaries:

You cleared out in the middle of the night and took the lady away with
you. You left me no proper orders. But as a sailorman I looked upon
myself as left in charge of two ships while within half a mile on that
sandbank there were more than a hundred piratical cut-throats watching
me as closely as so many tigers about to leap. Days went by without a
word of you or the lady. To leave the ships outside and go inland to
look for you was not to be thought of with all those pirates within
springing distance. Put yourself in my place. Can't you imagine my
anxiety, my sleepless nights? Each night worse than the night before.
And still no word from you. I couldn't sit still and worry my head off
about things I couldn't understand. I am a sailorman. My first duty was
to the ships. I had to put an end to this impossible situation and I
hope you will agree that I have done it in a seamanlike way. One misty
morning I moved the brig nearer the sandbank and directly the mist
cleared I opened fire on the praus of those savages which were anchored
in the channel. We aimed wide at first to give those vagabonds that
were on board a chance to clear out and join their friends camped on the
sands. I didn't want to kill people. Then we got the long gun to bear
and in about an hour we had the bottom knocked out of the two praus. The
savages on the bank howled and screamed at every shot. They are mighty
angry but I don't care for their anger now, for by sinking their praus
I have made them as harmless as a flock of lambs. They needn't starve on
their sandbank because the