face through the leaves as he skirted the shore of the lagoon. But what
if Allah's call should come to him suddenly and he die as he ran!

He drew a long breath on the shore of the lagoon within about a hundred
yards from the stranded bows of the Emma. The tide was out and he
walked to the end of a submerged log and sent out a hail for a boat.
Jorgenson's voice answered. The sun had sunk behind the forest belt of
the coast. All was still as far as the eye could reach over the black
water. A slight breeze came along it and Jaffir on the brink, waiting
for a canoe, shivered a little.

At the same moment Carter, exhausted by thirty hours of uninterrupted
toil at the head of whites and Malays in getting the yacht afloat,
dropped into Mrs. Travers' deck chair, on board the Hermit, said to the
devoted Wasub: "Let a good watch be kept to-night, old man," glanced
contentedly at the setting sun and fell asleep.

III

There was in the bows of the Emma an elevated grating over the heel of
her bowsprit whence the eye could take in the whole range of her
deck and see every movement of her crew. It was a spot safe from
eaves-droppers, though, of course, exposed to view. The sun had just set
on the supreme content of Carter when Jorgenson and Jaffir sat down
side by side between the knightheads of the Emma and, public but
unapproachable, impressive and secret, began to converse in low tones.

Every Wajo fugitive who manned the hulk felt the approach of a decisive
moment. Their minds were made up and their hearts beat steadily. They
were all desperate men determined to fight and to die and troubling not
about the manner of living or dying. This was not the case with Mrs.
Travers who, having shut herself up in the deckhouse, was profoundly
troubled about those very things, though she, too, felt desperate enough
to welcome almost any solution.

Of all the people on board she alone did not know anything of that
conference. In her deep and aimless thinking she had only become aware
of the absence of the slightest sound on board the Emma. Not a rustle,
not a footfall. The public view of Jorgenson and Jaffir in deep
consultation had the effect of taking all wish to move from every man.

Twilight enveloped the two figures forward while they talked, looking in
the stillness of their pose like carved figures of European and Asiatic
contrasted in intimate contact. The deepening dusk had nearly effaced
them when at last they rose with