Your yacht has gone ashore in a most inconvenient place--for
me; and with your boats sent off here and there, you would bring every
infernal gunboat buzzing to a spot that was as quiet and retired as the
heart of man could wish. You stranding just on that spot of the whole
coast was my bad luck. And that I could not help. You coming upon me
like this is my good luck. And that I hold!"

He dropped his clenched fist, big and muscular, in the light of the
lamp on the black cloth, amongst the glitter of glasses, with the strong
fingers closed tight upon the firm flesh of the palm. He left it there
for a moment as if showing Carter that luck he was going to hold. And he
went on:

"Do you know into what hornet's nest your stupid people have blundered?
How much d'ye think their lives are worth, just now? Not a brass
farthing if the breeze fails me for another twenty-four hours. You may
well open your eyes. It is so! And it may be too late now, while I am
arguing with you here."

He tapped the table with his knuckles, and the glasses, waking up,
jingled a thin, plaintive finale to his speech. Carter stood leaning
against the sideboard. He was amazed by the unexpected turn of the
conversation; his jaw dropped slightly and his eyes never swerved for a
moment from Lingard's face. The silence in the cabin lasted only a few
seconds, but to Carter, who waited breathlessly, it seemed very long.
And all at once he heard in it, for the first time, the cabin clock tick
distinctly, in pulsating beats, as though a little heart of metal behind
the dial had been started into sudden palpitation.

"A gunboat!" shouted Lingard, suddenly, as if he had seen only in
that moment, by the light of some vivid flash of thought, all the
difficulties of the situation. "If you don't go back with me there will
be nothing left for you to go back to--very soon. Your gunboat won't
find a single ship's rib or a single corpse left for a landmark. That
she won't. It isn't a gunboat skipper you want. I am the man you
want. You don't know your luck when you see it, but I know mine, I
do--and--look here--"

He touched Carter's chest with his forefinger, and said with a sudden
gentleness of tone:

"I am a white man inside and out; I won't let inoffensive people--and a
woman, too--come to harm if I can help it. And if I can't help, nobody
can. You understand--nobody! There's no time for it. But I am like any
other man that is worth his salt: I won't let the e