She heard a dull detonation as if in the depth of the sea.  It was hardly more than a shock and a vibration.  A roller had broken amongst the shoals; the livid clearness Lingard had seen ahead flashed and flickered in expanded white sheets much nearer to the boat now.  And all this—­the wan burst of light, the faint shock as of something remote and immense falling into ruins, was taking place outside the limits of her life which remained encircled by an impenetrable darkness and by an impenetrable silence.  Puffs of wind blew about her head and expired; the sail collapsed, shivered audibly, stood full and still in turn; and again the sensation of vertiginous speed and of absolute immobility succeeding each other with increasing swiftness merged at last into a bizarre state of headlong motion and profound peace.  The darkness enfolded her like the enervating caress of a sombre universe.  It was gentle and destructive.  Its languor seduced her soul into surrender.  Nothing existed and even all her memories vanished into space.  She was content that nothing should exist.

Lingard, aware all the time of their contact in the narrow stern sheets of the boat, was startled by the pressure of the woman’s head drooping on his shoulder.  He stiffened himself still more as though he had tried on the approach of a danger to conceal his life in the breathless rigidity of his body.  The boat soared and descended slowly; a region of foam and reefs stretched across her course hissing like a gigantic cauldron; a strong gust of wind drove her straight at it for a moment then passed on and abandoned her to the regular balancing of the swell.  The struggle of the rocks forever overwhelmed and emerging, with the sea forever victorious and repulsed, fascinated the man.  He watched it as he would have watched something going on within himself while Mrs. Travers slept sustained by his arm, pressed to his side, abandoned to his support.  The shoals guarding the Shore of Refuge had given him his first glimpse of success—­the solid support he needed for his action.  The Shallows were the shelter of his dreams; their voice had the power to soothe and exalt his thoughts with the promise of freedom for his hopes.  Never had there been such a generous friendship. . . .  A mass of white foam whirling about a centre of intense blackness spun silently past the side of the boat. . . .  That woman he held like a captive on his arm had also been given to him by the Shallows.

Suddenly his eyes caught on a distant sandbank the red gleam of Daman’s camp fire instantly eclipsed like the wink of a signalling lantern along the level of the waters.  It brought to his mind the existence of the two men—­those other captives.  If the war canoe transporting them into the lagoon had left the sands shortly after Hassim’s retreat from Daman’s camp, Travers and d’Alcacer were by this time far away up the creek.  Every thought of action had become odious to Lingard since all he could do in the world now was to hasten the moment of his separation from that woman to whom he had confessed the whole secret of his life.