feeling, but as the highest commendation he could give his Malay friend.

"By heavens! I shall go to Wajo!" he cried, and a semicircle of
heads nodded grave approbation while a slightly ironical voice said
deliberately--"You are a made man, Tom, if you get on the right side of
that Rajah of yours."

"Go in--and look out for yourself," cried another with a laugh.

A little professional jealousy was unavoidable, Wajo, on account of its
chronic state of disturbance, being closed to the white traders; but
there was no real ill-will in the banter of these men, who, rising with
handshakes, dropped off one by one. Lingard went straight aboard his
vessel and, till morning, walked the poop of the brig with measured
steps. The riding lights of ships twinkled all round him; the lights
ashore twinkled in rows, the stars twinkled above his head in a black
sky; and reflected in the black water of the roadstead twinkled far
below his feet. And all these innumerable and shining points were
utterly lost in the immense darkness. Once he heard faintly the rumbling
chain of some vessel coming to an anchor far away somewhere outside
the official limits of the harbour. A stranger to the port--thought
Lingard--one of us would have stood right in. Perhaps a ship from home?
And he felt strangely touched at the thought of that ship, weary with
months of wandering, and daring not to approach the place of rest. At
sunrise, while the big ship from the West, her sides streaked with rust
and grey with the salt of the sea, was moving slowly in to take up
a berth near the shore, Lingard left the roadstead on his way to the
eastward.

A heavy gulf thunderstorm was raging, when after a long passage and at