Part 16 (1/2)
”What news, O Rajah?”
Ha.s.sim's eyes made the round of the schooner's decks. He had left his gun in the boat and advanced empty handed, with a tranquil a.s.surance as if bearing a welcome offering in the faint smile of his lips. Immada, half hidden behind his shoulder, followed lightly, her elbows pressed close to her side. The thick fringe of her eyelashes was dropped like a veil; she looked youthful and brooding; she had an aspect of shy resolution.
They stopped within arm's length of the whites, and for some time n.o.body said a word. Then Ha.s.sim gave Lingard a significant glance, and uttered rapidly with a slight toss of the head that indicated in a manner the whole of the yacht:
”I see no guns!”
”N--no!” said Lingard, looking suddenly confused. It had occurred to him that for the first time in two years or more he had forgotten, utterly forgotten, these people's existence.
Immada stood slight and rigid with downcast eyes. Ha.s.sim, at his ease, scrutinized the faces, as if searching for elusive points of similitude or for subtle shades of difference.
”What is this new intrusion?” asked Mr. Travers, angrily.
”These are the fisher-folk, sir,” broke in the sailing-master, ”we've observed these three days past flitting about in a canoe; but they never had the sense to answer our hail; and yet a bit of fish for your breakfast--” He smiled obsequiously, and all at once, without provocation, began to bellow:
”Hey! Johnnie! Hab got fish? Fis.h.!.+ One peecee fis.h.!.+ Eh? Savee? Fis.h.!.+
Fish--” He gave it up suddenly to say in a deferential tone--”Can't make them savages understand anything, sir,” and withdrew as if after a clever feat.
Ha.s.sim looked at Lingard.
”Why did the little white man make that outcry?” he asked, anxiously.
”Their desire is to eat fish,” said Lingard in an enraged tone.
Then before the air of extreme surprise which incontinently appeared on the other's face, he could not restrain a short and hopeless laugh.
”Eat fish,” repeated Ha.s.sim, staring. ”O you white people! O you white people! Eat fis.h.!.+ Good! But why make that noise? And why did you send them here without guns?” After a significant glance down upon the slope of the deck caused by the vessel being on the ground, he added with a slight nod at Lingard--”And without knowledge?”
”You should not have come here, O Ha.s.sim,” said Lingard, testily. ”Here no one understands. They take a rajah for a fisherman--”
”Ya-wa! A great mistake, for, truly, the chief of ten fugitives without a country is much less than the headman of a fis.h.i.+ng village,” observed Ha.s.sim, composedly. Immada sighed. ”But you, Tuan, at least know the truth,” he went on with quiet irony; then after a pause--”We came here because you had forgotten to look toward us, who had waited, sleeping little at night, and in the day watching with hot eyes the empty water at the foot of the sky for you.”
Immada murmured, without lifting her head:
”You never looked for us. Never, never once.”
”There was too much trouble in my eyes,” explained Lingard with that patient gentleness of tone and face which, every time he spoke to the young girl, seemed to disengage itself from his whole person, enveloping his fierceness, softening his aspect, such as the dreamy mist that in the early radiance of the morning weaves a veil of tender charm about a rugged rock in mid-ocean. ”I must look now to the right and to the left as in a time of sudden danger,” he added after a moment and she whispered an appalled ”Why?” so low that its pain floated away in the silence of attentive men, without response, unheard, ignored, like the pain of an impalpable thought.
IV
D'Alcacer, standing back, surveyed them all with a profound and alert attention. Lingard seemed unable to tear himself away from the yacht, and remained, checked, as it were in the act of going, like a man who has stopped to think out the last thing to say; and that stillness of a body, forgotten by the labouring mind, reminded Carter of that moment in the cabin, when alone he had seen this man thus wrestling with his thought, motionless and locked in the grip of his conscience.
Mr. Travers muttered audibly through his teeth:
”How long is this performance going to last? I have desired you to go.”
”Think of these poor devils,” whispered Lingard, with a quick glance at the crew huddled up near by.
”You are the kind of man I would be least disposed to trust--in any case,” said Mr. Travers, incisively, very low, and with an inexplicable but very apparent satisfaction. ”You are only wasting your time here.”