anished outside, as if devoured by
the hot blaze of light. The sun had risen on the Shore of Refuge.

When Mrs. Travers came out on deck herself it was as it were with a
boldly unveiled face, with wide-open and dry, sleepless eyes. Their
gaze, undismayed by the sunshine, sought the innermost heart of things
each day offered to the passion of her dread and of her impatience. The
lagoon, the beach, the colours and the shapes struck her more than ever
as a luminous painting on an immense cloth hiding the movements of an
inexplicable life. She shaded her eyes with her hand. There were figures
on the beach, moving dark dots on the white semicircle bounded by the
stockades, backed by roof ridges above the palm groves. Further back the
mass of carved white coral on the roof of the mosque shone like a white
day-star. Religion and politics--always politics! To the left, before
Tengga's enclosure, the loom of fire had changed into a pillar of smoke.
But there were some big trees over there and she couldn't tell whether
the night council had prolonged its sitting. Some vague forms were still
moving there and she could picture them to herself: Daman, the supreme
chief of sea-robbers, with a vengeful heart and the eyes of a gazelle;
Sentot, the sour fanatic with the big turban, that other saint with
a scanty loin cloth and ashes in his hair, and Tengga whom she could
imagine from hearsay, fat, good-tempered, crafty, but ready to spill
blood on his ambitious way and already bold enough to flaunt a yellow
state umbrella at the very gate of Belarab's stockade--so they said.

She saw, she imagined, she even admitted now the reality of those
things no longer a mere pageant marshalled for her vision with barbarous
splendour and savage emphasis. She questioned it no longer--but she did
not feel it in her soul any more than one feels the depth of the sea
under its peaceful glitter or the turmoil of its grey fury. Her eyes
ranged afar, unbelieving and fearful--and then all at once she became
aware of the empty Cage with its interior in disorder, the camp
bedsteads not taken away, a pillow lying on the deck, the dying flame
like a shred of dull yellow stuff inside the lamp left hanging over
the table. The whole struck her as squalid and as if already decayed,
a flimsy and idle phantasy. But Jorgenson, seated on the deck with his
back to it, was not idle. His occupation, too, seemed fantastic and so
truly childish that her heart sank at the ma