accustomed in moments of difficulty to commune alone with his craft.
Hassim had called his sister out of the cabin; now and then Lingard
could see them with fierce distinctness, side by side, and with twined
arms, looking toward the mysterious country that seemed at every flash
to leap away farther from the brig--unscathed and fading.

The thought uppermost in Lingard's mind was: "What on earth am I going
to do with them?" And no one seemed to care what he would do. Jaffir
with eight others quartered on the main hatch, looked to each other's
wounds and conversed interminably in low tones, cheerful and quiet, like
well-behaved children. Each of them had saved his kris, but Lingard had
to make a distribution of cotton cloth out of his trade-goods. Whenever
he passed by them, they all looked after him gravely. Hassim and Immada
lived in the cuddy. The chief's sister took the air only in the evening
and those two could be heard every night, invisible and murmuring in the
shadows of the quarter-deck. Every Malay on board kept respectfully away
from them.

Lingard, on the poop, listened to the soft voices, rising and falling,
in a melancholy cadence; sometimes the woman cried out as if in anger or
in pain. He would stop short. The sound of a deep sigh would float up
to him on the stillness of the night. Attentive stars surrounded the
wandering brig and on all sides their light fell through a vast silence
upon a noiseless sea. Lingard would begin again to pace the deck,
muttering to himself.

"Belarab's the man for this job. His is the only place where I can look
for help, but I don't think I know enough to find it. I wish I had old
Jorgenson here--just for ten minutes."