II

It was half-past eight o'clock before Lingard came on deck again.
Shaw--now with a coat on--trotted up and down the poop leaving behind
him a smell of tobacco smoke. An irregularly glowing spark seemed to run
by itself in the darkness before the rounded form of his head. Above the
masts of the brig the dome of the clear heaven was full of lights that
flickered, as if some mighty breathings high up there had been swaying
about the flame of the stars. There was no sound along the brig's decks,
and the heavy shadows that lay on it had the aspect, in that silence,
of secret places concealing crouching forms that waited in perfect
stillness for some decisive event. Lingard struck a match to light his
cheroot, and his powerful face with narrowed eyes stood out for a moment
in the night and vanished suddenly. Then two shadowy forms and two red
sparks moved backward and forward on the poop. A larger, but a paler
and oval patch of light from the compass lamps lay on the brasses of
the wheel and on the breast of the Malay standing by the helm. Lingard's
voice, as if unable altogether to master the enormous silence of the
sea, sounded muffled, very calm--without the usual deep ring in it.

"Not much change, Shaw," he said.

"No, sir, not much. I can just see the island--the big one--still in
the same place. It strikes me, sir, that, for calms, this here sea is a
devil of locality."

He cut "locality" in two with an emphatic pause. It was a good word. He