Carter, alert, stepped back to keep his distance. Shaw stared from the side; his rubicund cheeks quivered, his round eyes seemed starting out of his head, and his mouth was open as though he had been ready to choke with pent-up curiosity, amazement, and indignation.
“No! Not in writing,” said Carter, steadily and low.
Lingard had the air of being awakened by a shout. A heavy and darkening frown seemed to fall out of the night upon his forehead and swiftly passed into the night again, and when it departed it left him so calm, his glance so lucid, his mien so composed that it was difficult to believe the man's heart had undergone within the last second the trial of humiliation and of danger. He smiled sadly:
“Well, young man,” he asked with a kind of good-humoured resignation, “what is it you have there? A knife or a pistol?”
“A pistol,” said Carter. “Are you surprised, Captain?” He spoke with heat because a sense of regret was stealing slowly within him, as stealthily, as irresistibly as the flowing tide. “Who began these tricks?” He withdrew his hand, empty, and raised his voice. “You are up to something I can't make out. You—you are not straight.”
The flares held on high streamed right up without swaying, and in that instant of profound calm the shadows on the brig's deck became as still as the men.
“You think not?” said Lingard, thoughtfully.
Carter nodded. He resented the turn of the incident and the growing impulse to surrender to that man.
“Mrs. Travers trusts me though,” went on Lingard with gentle triumph as if advancing an unanswerable argument.
“So she says,” grunted Carter; “I warned her. She's a baby. They're all as innocent as babies there. And you know it. And I know it. I've heard of your kind. You would dump the lot of us overboard if it served your turn. That's what I think.”