Carter did not know whether to smile or to look horrified. In the end he did both, but as to saying anything he found it impossible. But Lingard did not expect an answer.
“I believe you are going to stay with me, Mr. Carter?”
“I told you, sir, I am your man if you want me.”
“The trouble is, Mr. Carter, that I am no longer the man to whom you spoke that night in Carimata.”
“Neither am I, sir, in a manner of speaking.”
Lingard, relaxing the tenseness of his stare, looked at the young man, thoughtfully.
“After all, it is the brig that will want you. She will never change. The finest craft afloat in these seas. She will carry me about as she did before, but . . .”
He unclasped his hands, made a sweeping gesture.
Carter gave all his naive sympathy to that man who had certainly rescued the white people but seemed to have lost his own soul in the attempt. Carter had heard something from Wasub. He had made out enough of this story from the old serang's pidgin English to know that the Captain's native friends, one of them a woman, had perished in a mysterious catastrophe. But the why of it, and how it came about, remained still quite incomprehensible to him. Of course, a man like the Captain would feel terribly cut up. . . .
“You will be soon yourself again, sir,” he said in the kindest possible tone.