“A light! I tell you, Tuan, that the light of heaven is very near,” said Babalatchi, who had now obtained possession of the object of his solicitude, and grasping it strongly by its long barrel, grounded the stock at his feet.
“Perhaps it is near,” said Lingard, leaning both his elbows on the lower cross-piece of the primitive window and looking out. “It is very black outside yet,” he remarked carelessly.
Babalatchi fidgeted about.
“It is not good for you to sit where you may be seen,” he muttered.
“Why not?” asked Lingard.
“The white man sleeps, it is true,” explained Babalatchi, softly; “yet he may come out early, and he has arms.”
“Ah! he has arms?” said Lingard.
“Yes; a short gun that fires many times—like yours here. Abdulla had to give it to him.”
Lingard heard Babalatchi’s words, but made no movement. To the old adventurer the idea that fire arms could be dangerous in other hands than his own did not occur readily, and certainly not in connection with Willems. He was so busy with the thoughts about what he considered his own sacred duty, that he could not give any consideration to the probable actions of the man of whom he thought—as one may think of an executed criminal—with wondering indignation tempered by scornful pity. While he sat staring into the darkness, that every minute grew thinner before his pensive eyes, like a dispersing mist, Willems appeared to him as a figure belonging already wholly to the past—a figure that could come in no way into his life again. He had made up his mind, and the thing was as well as done. In his weary thoughts he had closed this fatal, inexplicable, and horrible episode in his life. The worst had happened. The coming days would see the retribution.
He had removed an enemy once or twice before, out of his path; he had paid off some very heavy scores a good many times. Captain Tom had been a good friend to many: but it was generally understood, from Honolulu round about to Diego Suarez, that Captain Tom’s enmity was rather more than any man single-handed could easily manage. He would not, as he said often, hurt a fly as long as the fly left him alone; yet a man does not live for years beyond the pale of civilized laws without evolving for himself some queer notions of justice. Nobody of those he knew had ever cared to point out to him the errors of his conceptions.