Part 10 (2/2)
He had received the fugitives personally, had helped some over the rail; in the darkness, slashed about by lightning, he had guessed that not one of them was unwounded, and in the midst of tottering shapes he wondered how on earth they had managed to reach the long-boat that had brought them off. He caught unceremoniously in his arms the smallest of these shapes and carried it into the cabin, then without looking at his light burden ran up again on deck to get the brig under way. While shouting out orders he was dimly aware of someone hovering near his elbow. It was Ha.s.sim.
”I am not ready for war,” he explained, rapidly, over his shoulder, ”and to-morrow there may be no wind.” Afterward for a time he forgot everybody and everything while he conned the brig through the few outlying dangers. But in half an hour, and running off with the wind on the quarter, he was quite clear of the coast and breathed freely. It was only then that he approached two others on that p.o.o.p where he was accustomed in moments of difficulty to commune alone with his craft.
Ha.s.sim had called his sister out of the cabin; now and then Lingard could see them with fierce distinctness, side by side, and with twined arms, looking toward the mysterious country that seemed at every flash to leap away farther from the brig--unscathed and fading.
The thought uppermost in Lingard's mind was: ”What on earth am I going to do with them?” And no one seemed to care what he would do. Jaffir with eight others quartered on the main hatch, looked to each other's wounds and conversed interminably in low tones, cheerful and quiet, like well-behaved children. Each of them had saved his kris, but Lingard had to make a distribution of cotton cloth out of his trade-goods. Whenever he pa.s.sed by them, they all looked after him gravely. Ha.s.sim and Immada lived in the cuddy. The chief's sister took the air only in the evening and those two could be heard every night, invisible and murmuring in the shadows of the quarter-deck. Every Malay on board kept respectfully away from them.
Lingard, on the p.o.o.p, listened to the soft voices, rising and falling, in a melancholy cadence; sometimes the woman cried out as if in anger or in pain. He would stop short. The sound of a deep sigh would float up to him on the stillness of the night. Attentive stars surrounded the wandering brig and on all sides their light fell through a vast silence upon a noiseless sea. Lingard would begin again to pace the deck, muttering to himself.
”Belarab's the man for this job. His is the only place where I can look for help, but I don't think I know enough to find it. I wish I had old Jorgenson here--just for ten minutes.”
This Jorgenson knew things that had happened a long time ago, and lived amongst men efficient in meeting the accidents of the day, but who did not care what would happen to-morrow and who had no time to remember yesterday. Strictly speaking, he did not live amongst them. He only appeared there from time to time. He lived in the native quarter, with a native woman, in a native house standing in the middle of a plot of fenced ground where grew plantains, and furnished only with mats, cooking pots, a queer fis.h.i.+ng net on two sticks, and a small mahogany case with a lock and a silver plate engraved with the words ”Captain H.
C. Jorgenson. Barque Wild Rose.”
It was like an inscription on a tomb. The Wild Rose was dead, and so was Captain H. C. Jorgenson, and the s.e.xtant case was all that was left of them. Old Jorgenson, gaunt and mute, would turn up at meal times on board any trading vessel in the Roads, and the stewards--Chinamen or mulattos--would sulkily put on an extra plate without waiting for orders. When the seamen traders foregathered noisily round a glittering cl.u.s.ter of bottles and gla.s.ses on a lighted verandah, old Jorgenson would emerge up the stairs as if from a dark sea, and, stepping up with a kind of tottering jauntiness, would help himself in the first tumbler to hand.
”I drink to you all. No--no chair.”
He would stand silent over the talking group. His taciturnity was as eloquent as the repeated warning of the slave of the feast. His flesh had gone the way of all flesh, his spirit had sunk in the turmoil of his past, but his immense and bony frame survived as if made of iron. His hands trembled but his eyes were steady. He was supposed to know details about the end of mysterious men and of mysterious enterprises. He was an evident failure himself, but he was believed to know secrets that would make the fortune of any man; yet there was also a general impression that his knowledge was not of that nature which would make it profitable for a moderately prudent person.
This powerful skeleton, dressed in faded blue serge and without any kind of linen, existed anyhow. Sometimes, if offered the job, he piloted a home s.h.i.+p through the Straits of Rhio, after, however, a.s.suring the captain:
”You don't want a pilot; a man could go through with his eyes shut. But if you want me, I'll come. Ten dollars.”
Then, after seeing his charge clear of the last island of the group he would go back thirty miles in a canoe, with two old Malays who seemed to be in some way his followers. To travel thirty miles at sea under the equatorial sun and in a cranky dug-out where once down you must not move, is an achievement that requires the endurance of a fakir and the virtue of a salamander. Ten dollars was cheap and generally he was in demand. When times were hard he would borrow five dollars from any of the adventurers with the remark:
”I can't pay you back, very soon, but the girl must eat, and if you want to know anything, I can tell you.”
It was remarkable that n.o.body ever smiled at that ”anything.” The usual thing was to say:
”Thank you, old man; when I am pushed for a bit of information I'll come to you.”
Jorgenson nodded then and would say: ”Remember that unless you young chaps are like we men who ranged about here years ago, what I could tell you would be worse than poison.”
It was from Jorgenson, who had his favourites with whom he was less silent, that Lingard had heard of Darat-es-Salam, the ”Sh.o.r.e of Refuge.”
Jorgenson had, as he expressed it, ”known the inside of that country just after the high old times when the white-clad Padris preached and fought all over Sumatra till the Dutch shook in their shoes.” Only he did not say ”shook” and ”shoes” but the above paraphrase conveys well enough his contemptuous meaning. Lingard tried now to remember and piece together the practical bits of old Jorgenson's amazing tales; but all that had remained with him was an approximate idea of the locality and a very strong but confused notion of the dangerous nature of its approaches. He hesitated, and the brig, answering in her movements to the state of the man's mind, lingered on the road, seemed to hesitate also, swinging this way and that on the days of calm.
It was just because of that hesitation that a big New York s.h.i.+p, loaded with oil in cases for j.a.pan, and pa.s.sing through the Billiton pa.s.sage, sighted one morning a very smart brig being hove-to right in the fair-way and a little to the east of Carimata. The lank skipper, in a frock-coat, and the big mate with heavy moustaches, judged her almost too pretty for a Britisher, and wondered at the man on board laying his topsail to the mast for no reason that they could see. The big s.h.i.+p's sails fanned her along, flapping in the light air, and when the brig was last seen far astern she had still her mainyard aback as if waiting for someone. But when, next day, a London tea-clipper pa.s.sed on the same track, she saw no pretty brig hesitating, all white and still at the parting of the ways. All that night Lingard had talked with Ha.s.sim while the stars streamed from east to west like an immense river of sparks above their heads. Immada listened, sometimes exclaiming low, sometimes holding her breath. She clapped her hands once. A faint dawn appeared.
”You shall be treated like my father in the country,” Ha.s.sim was saying.
A heavy dew dripped off the rigging and the darkened sails were black on the pale azure of the sky. ”You shall be the father who advises for good--”
”I shall be a steady friend, and as a friend I want to be treated--no more,” said Lingard. ”Take back your ring.”
”Why do you scorn my gift?” asked Ha.s.sim, with a sad and ironic smile.
”Take it,” said Lingard. ”It is still mine. How can I forget that, when facing death, you thought of my safety? There are many dangers before us. We shall be often separated--to work better for the same end. If ever you and Immada need help at once and I am within reach, send me a message with this ring and if I am alive I will not fail you.” He looked around at the pale daybreak. ”I shall talk to Belarab straight--like we whites do. I have never seen him, but I am a strong man. Belarab must help us to reconquer your country and when our end is attained I won't let him eat you up.”
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