“Jaffir is dead. This moment. I thought you would want to know.”
Lingard looked persistently at Carter, thinking that now Jaffir was dead there was no one left on the empty earth to speak to him a word of reproach; no one to know the greatness of his intentions, the bond of fidelity between him and Hassim and Immada, the depth of his affection for those people, the earnestness of his visions, and the unbounded trust that was his reward. By the mad scorn of Jorgenson flaming up against the life of men, all this was as if it had never been. It had become a secret locked up in his own breast forever.
“Tell Wasub to open one of the long-cloth bales in the hold, Mr. Carter, and give the crew a cotton sheet to bury him decently according to their faith. Let it be done to-night. They must have the boats, too. I suppose they will want to take him on the sandbank.”
“Yes, sir,” said Carter.
“Let them have what they want, spades, torches. . . . Wasub will chant the right words. Paradise is the lot of all True Believers. Do you understand me, Mr. Carter? Paradise! I wonder what it will be for him! Unless he gets messages to carry through the jungle, avoiding ambushes, swimming in storms and knowing no rest, he won't like it.”
Carter listened with an unmoved face. It seemed to him that the Captain had forgotten his presence.
“And all the time he will be sleeping on that sandbank,” Lingard began again, sitting in his old place under the gilt thunderbolts suspended over his head with his elbows on the table and his hands to his temples. “If they want a board to set up at the grave let them have a piece of an oak plank. It will stay there—till the next monsoon. Perhaps.”
Carter felt uncomfortable before that tense stare which just missed him and in that confined cabin seemed awful in its piercing and far-off expression. But as he had not been dismissed he did not like to go away.
“Everything will be done as you wish it, sir,” he said. “I suppose the yacht will be leaving the first thing to-morrow morning, sir.”
“If she doesn't we must give her a solid shot or two to liven her up—eh, Mr. Carter?”