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'He did not return till next morning. He had been kept to dinner and for the
night. There never had been such a wonderful man
as Mr. Stein.
He had in his pocket a letter for Cornelius ("the Johnnie who's going to get the sack,"
he explained, with a momentary drop in his elation), and he exhibited with glee a
silver ring, such as natives use, worn down
very thin and showing faint traces of chasing.
'This was his introduction to an old chap called Doramin--one of the principal men
out there--a big pot--who had been Mr. Stein's friend in that country where he had
all these adventures.
Mr. Stein called him "war-comrade." War-comrade was good.
Wasn't it? And didn't Mr. Stein speak English
wonderfully well?
Said he had learned it in Celebes--of all places!
That was awfully funny. Was it not?
He did speak with an accent--a twang--did I notice?
That chap Doramin had given him the ring. They had exchanged presents when they
parted for the last time.
Sort of promising eternal friendship. He called it fine--did I not?
They had to make a dash for dear life out of the country when that Mohammed--
Mohammed--What's-his-name had been killed.
I knew the story, of course. Seemed a beastly shame, didn't it?...
'He ran on like this, forgetting his plate, with a knife and fork in hand (he had found
me at tiffin), slightly flushed, and with his eyes darkened many shades, which was
with him a sign of excitement.
The ring was a sort of credential--("It's like something you read of in books," he
threw in appreciatively)--and Doramin would do his best for him.
Mr. Stein had been the means of saving that chap's life on some occasion; purely by
accident, Mr. Stein had said, but he--Jim-- had his own opinion about that.
Mr. Stein was just the man to look out for such accidents.
No matter. Accident or purpose, this would serve his
turn immensely.
Hoped to goodness the jolly old beggar had not gone off the hooks meantime.
Mr. Stein could not tell.
There had been no news for more than a year; they were kicking up no end of an
all-fired row amongst themselves, and the river was closed.
Jolly awkward, this; but, no fear; he would manage to find a crack to get in.
'He impressed, almost frightened, me with his elated rattle.
He was voluble like a youngster on the eve of a long holiday with a prospect of
delightful scrapes, and such an attitude of mind in a grown man and in this connection
had in it something phenomenal, a little mad, dangerous, unsafe.
I was on the point of entreating him to take things seriously when he dropped his
knife and fork (he had begun eating, or rather swallowing food, as it were,
unconsciously), and began a search all round his plate.
The ring! The ring!
Where the devil...Ah!
Here it was...He closed his big hand on it, and tried all his pockets one after
another. Jove! wouldn't do to lose the thing.
He meditated gravely over his fist.
Had it? Would hang the bally affair round his neck!
And he proceeded to do this immediately, producing a string (which looked like a bit
of a cotton shoe-lace) for the purpose.
There! That would do the trick!
It would be the deuce if...He seemed to catch sight of my face for the first time,
and it steadied him a little.
I probably didn't realise, he said with a naive gravity, how much importance he
attached to that token. It meant a friend; and it is a good thing
to have a friend.
He knew something about that.
He nodded at me expressively, but before my disclaiming gesture he leaned his head on
his hand and for a while sat silent, playing thoughtfully with the bread-crumbs
on the cloth..."Slam the door--that was
jolly well put," he cried, and jumping up, began to pace the room, reminding me by the
set of the shoulders, the turn of his head, the headlong and uneven stride, of that
night when he had paced thus, confessing,
explaining--what you will--but, in the last instance, living--living before me, under
his own little cloud, with all his unconscious subtlety which could draw
consolation from the very source of sorrow.
It was the same mood, the same and different, like a fickle companion that to-
day guiding you on the true path, with the same eyes, the same step, the same impulse,
to-morrow will lead you hopelessly astray.
His tread was assured, his straying, darkened eyes seemed to search the room for
something.
One of his footfalls somehow sounded louder than the other--the fault of his boots
probably--and gave a curious impression of an invisible halt in his gait.
One of his hands was rammed deep into his trousers' pocket, the other waved suddenly
above his head. "Slam the door!" he shouted.
"I've been waiting for that.
I'll show yet...I'll...I'm ready for any confounded thing...I've been dreaming of
it...Jove! Get out of this.
Jove!
This is luck at last...You wait. I'll ..."
'He tossed his head fearlessly, and I confess that for the first and last time in
our acquaintance I perceived myself unexpectedly to be thoroughly sick of him.
Why these vapourings?
He was stumping about the room flourishing his arm absurdly, and now and then feeling
on his breast for the ring under his clothes.
Where was the sense of such exaltation in a man appointed to be a trading-clerk, and in
a place where there was no trade--at that? Why hurl defiance at the universe?
This was not a proper frame of mind to approach any undertaking; an improper frame
of mind not only for him, I said, but for any man.
He stood still over me.
Did I think so? he asked, by no means subdued, and with a smile in which I seemed
to detect suddenly something insolent. But then I am twenty years his senior.
Youth is insolent; it is its right--its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and
all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence.
He went off into a far corner, and coming back, he, figuratively speaking, turned to
rend me.
I spoke like that because I--even I, who had been no end kind to him--even I
remembered--remembered--against him--what-- what had happened.
And what about others--the--the--world?
Where's the wonder he wanted to get out, meant to get out, meant to stay out--by
heavens! And I talked about proper frames of mind!
'"It is not I or the world who remember," I shouted.
"It is you--you, who remember."
'He did not flinch, and went on with heat, "Forget everything, everybody,
everybody."...His voice fell... "But you," he added.
'"Yes--me too--if it would help," I said, also in a low tone.
After this we remained silent and languid for a time as if exhausted.
Then he began again, composedly, and told me that Mr. Stein had instructed him to
wait for a month or so, to see whether it was possible for him to remain, before he
began building a new house for himself, so as to avoid "vain expense."
He did make use of funny expressions--Stein did.
"Vain expense" was good....Remain?
Why! of course. He would hang on.
Let him only get in--that's all; he would answer for it he would remain.
Never get out.
It was easy enough to remain. '"Don't be foolhardy," I said, rendered
uneasy by his threatening tone. "If you only live long enough you will want
to come back."
'"Come back to what?" he asked absently, with his eyes fixed upon the face of a
clock on the wall. 'I was silent for a while.
"Is it to be never, then?"
I said. "Never," he repeated dreamily without
looking at me, and then flew into sudden activity.
"Jove!
Two o'clock, and I sail at four!" 'It was true.
A brigantine of Stein's was leaving for the westward that afternoon, and he had been
instructed to take his passage in her, only no orders to delay the sailing had been
given.
I suppose Stein forgot. He made a rush to get his things while I
went aboard my ship, where he promised to call on his way to the outer roadstead.
He turned up accordingly in a great hurry and with a small leather valise in his
hand.
This wouldn't do, and I offered him an old tin trunk of mine supposed to be water-
tight, or at least damp-tight.
He effected the transfer by the simple process of shooting out the contents of his
valise as you would empty a sack of wheat.
I saw three books in the tumble; two small, in dark covers, and a thick green-and-gold
volume--a half-crown complete Shakespeare. "You read this?"
I asked.
"Yes. Best thing to cheer up a fellow," he said
hastily. I was struck by this appreciation, but
there was no time for Shakespearian talk.
A heavy revolver and two small boxes of cartridges were lying on the cuddy-table.
"Pray take this," I said. "It may help you to remain."
No sooner were these words out of my mouth than I perceived what grim meaning they
could bear. "May help you to get in," I corrected
myself remorsefully.
He however was not troubled by obscure meanings; he thanked me effusively and
bolted out, calling Good-bye over his shoulder.
I heard his voice through the ship's side urging his boatmen to give way, and looking
out of the stern-port I saw the boat rounding under the counter.
He sat in her leaning forward, exciting his men with voice and gestures; and as he had
kept the revolver in his hand and seemed to be presenting it at their heads, I shall
never forget the scared faces of the four
Javanese, and the frantic swing of their stroke which snatched that vision from
under my eyes.
Then turning away, the first thing I saw were the two boxes of cartridges on the
cuddy-table. He had forgotten to take them.
'I ordered my gig manned at once; but Jim's rowers, under the impression that their
lives hung on a thread while they had that madman in the boat, made such excellent
time that before I had traversed half the
distance between the two vessels I caught sight of him clambering over the rail, and
of his box being passed up.
All the brigantine's canvas was loose, her mainsail was set, and the windlass was just
beginning to clink as I stepped upon her deck: her master, a dapper little half-
caste of forty or so, in a blue flannel
suit, with lively eyes, his round face the colour of lemon-peel, and with a thin
little black moustache drooping on each side of his thick, dark lips, came forward
smirking.
He turned out, notwithstanding his self- satisfied and cheery exterior, to be of a
careworn temperament.
In answer to a remark of mine (while Jim had gone below for a moment) he said, "Oh
yes. Patusan."
He was going to carry the gentleman to the mouth of the river, but would "never
ascend." His flowing English seemed to be derived
from a dictionary compiled by a lunatic.
Had Mr. Stein desired him to "ascend," he would have "reverentially"--(I think he
wanted to say respectfully--but devil only knows)--"reverentially made objects for the
safety of properties."
If disregarded, he would have presented "resignation to quit."
Twelve months ago he had made his last voyage there, and though Mr. Cornelius
"propitiated many offertories" to Mr. Rajah Allang and the "principal populations," on
conditions which made the trade "a snare
and ashes in the mouth," yet his ship had been fired upon from the woods by
"irresponsive parties" all the way down the river; which causing his crew "from
exposure to limb to remain silent in
hidings," the brigantine was nearly stranded on a sandbank at the bar, where
she "would have been perishable beyond the act of man."
The angry disgust at the recollection, the pride of his fluency, to which he turned an
attentive ear, struggled for the possession of his broad simple face.
He scowled and beamed at me, and watched with satisfaction the undeniable effect of
his phraseology.
Dark frowns ran swiftly over the placid sea, and the brigantine, with her fore-
topsail to the mast and her main-boom amidships, seemed bewildered amongst the
cat's-paws.
He told me further, gnashing his teeth, that the Rajah was a "laughable hyaena"
(can't imagine how he got hold of hyaenas); while somebody else was many times falser
than the "weapons of a crocodile."
Keeping one eye on the movements of his crew forward, he let loose his volubility--
comparing the place to a "cage of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence."
I fancy he meant impunity.
He had no intention, he cried, to "exhibit himself to be made attached purposefully to
robbery."
The long-drawn wails, giving the time for the pull of the men catting the anchor,
came to an end, and he lowered his voice. "Plenty too much enough of Patusan," he
concluded, with energy.
'I heard afterwards he had been so indiscreet as to get himself tied up by the
neck with a rattan halter to a post planted in the middle of a mud-hole before the
Rajah's house.
He spent the best part of a day and a whole night in that unwholesome situation, but
there is every reason to believe the thing had been meant as a sort of joke.
He brooded for a while over that horrid memory, I suppose, and then addressed in a
quarrelsome tone the man coming aft to the helm.
When he turned to me again it was to speak judicially, without passion.
He would take the gentleman to the mouth of the river at Batu Kring (Patusan town
"being situated internally," he remarked, "thirty miles").
But in his eyes, he continued--a tone of bored, weary conviction replacing his
previous voluble delivery--the gentleman was already "in the similitude of a
corpse."
"What? What do you say?"
I asked.
He assumed a startlingly ferocious demeanour, and imitated to perfection the
act of stabbing from behind.
"Already like the body of one deported," he explained, with the insufferably conceited
air of his kind after what they imagine a display of cleverness.
Behind him I perceived Jim smiling silently at me, and with a raised hand checking the
exclamation on my lips.
'Then, while the half-caste, bursting with importance, shouted his orders, while the
yards swung creaking and the heavy boom came surging over, Jim and I, alone as it
were, to leeward of the mainsail, clasped
each other's hands and exchanged the last hurried words.
My heart was freed from that dull resentment which had existed side by side
with interest in his fate.
The absurd chatter of the half-caste had given more reality to the miserable dangers
of his path than Stein's careful statements.
On that occasion the sort of formality that had been always present in our intercourse
vanished from our speech; I believe I called him "dear boy," and he tacked on the
words "old man" to some half-uttered
expression of gratitude, as though his risk set off against my years had made us more
equal in age and in feeling.
There was a moment of real and profound intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a
glimpse of some everlasting, of some saving truth.
He exerted himself to soothe me as though he had been the more mature of the two.
"All right, all right," he said, rapidly, and with feeling.
"I promise to take care of myself.
Yes; I won't take any risks. Not a single blessed risk.
Of course not. I mean to hang out.
Don't you worry.
Jove! I feel as if nothing could touch me.
Why! this is luck from the word Go. I wouldn't spoil such a magnificent
chance!"...A magnificent chance!
Well, it was magnificent, but chances are what men make them, and how was I to know?
As he had said, even I--even I remembered-- his--his misfortune against him.
It was true.
And the best thing for him was to go. 'My gig had dropped in the wake of the
brigantine, and I saw him aft detached upon the light of the westering sun, raising his
cap high above his head.
I heard an indistinct shout, "You--shall-- hear--of--me."
Of me, or from me, I don't know which. I think it must have been of me.
My eyes were too dazzled by the glitter of the sea below his feet to see him clearly;
I am fated never to see him clearly; but I can assure you no man could have appeared
less "in the similitude of a corpse," as that half-caste croaker had put it.
I could see the little wretch's face, the shape and colour of a ripe pumpkin, poked
out somewhere under Jim's elbow.
He, too, raised his arm as if for a downward thrust.
Absit omen!'
CHAPTER 24
'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight and sombre,
and faces a misty ocean.
Red trails are seen like cataracts of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of
bushes and creepers clothing the low cliffs.
Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers, with a view of jagged blue peaks
beyond the vast forests.
In the offing a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the
everlasting sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea.
'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch of the
estuary.
The river, which had been closed so long, was open then, and Stein's little schooner,
in which I had my passage, worked her way up in three tides without being exposed to
a fusillade from "irresponsive parties."
Such a state of affairs belonged already to ancient history, if I could believe the
elderly headman of the fishing village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot.
He talked to me (the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of
his talk was about the first white man he had ever seen.
He called him Tuan Jim, and the tone of his references was made remarkable by a strange
mixture of familiarity and awe.
They, in the village, were under that lord's special protection, which showed
that Jim bore no grudge. If he had warned me that I would hear of
him it was perfectly true.
I was hearing of him. There was already a story that the tide had
turned two hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river.
The talkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the
phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family.
His son and his son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience,
who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them the amazing
fact.
'Jim's coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them, as to many of us,
the blessing came heralded by terrors.
So many generations had been released since the last white man had visited the river
that the very tradition had been lost.
The appearance of the being that descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be
taken up to Patusan was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity
more than suspicious.
It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent.
What would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them?
The best part of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from
the anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out was got
ready.
The women shrieked with grief as it put off.
A fearless old hag cursed the stranger.
'He sat in it, as I've told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded revolver on his
lap.
He sat with precaution--than which there is nothing more fatiguing--and thus entered
the land he was destined to fill with the fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks
inland to the white ribbon of surf on the coast.
At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with its labouring waves for ever rising,
sinking, and vanishing to rise again--the very image of struggling mankind--and faced
the immovable forests rooted deep in the
soil, soaring towards the sunshine, everlasting in the shadowy might of their
tradition, like life itself.
And his opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride waiting to be
uncovered by the hand of the master. He too was the heir of a shadowy and mighty
tradition!
He told me, however, that he had never in his life felt so depressed and tired as in
that canoe.
All the movement he dared to allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after
the shell of half a cocoa-nut floating between his shoes, and bale some of the
water out with a carefully restrained action.
He discovered how hard the lid of a block- tin case was to sit upon.
He had heroic health; but several times during that journey he experienced fits of
giddiness, and between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the
sun was raising on his back.
For amusement he tried by looking ahead to decide whether the muddy object he saw
lying on the water's edge was a log of wood or an alligator.
Only very soon he had to give that up.
No fun in it. Always alligator.
One of them flopped into the river and all but capsized the canoe.
But this excitement was over directly.
Then in a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came
right down on the bank and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage.
Such was the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any man
ever achieved.
Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime his three paddlers were preparing
to put into execution their plan of delivering him up to the Rajah.
'"I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I did doze off for a
time," he said. The first thing he knew was his canoe
coming to the bank.
He became instantaneously aware of the forest having been left behind, of the
first houses being visible higher up, of a stockade on his left, and of his boatmen
leaping out together upon a low point of land and taking to their heels.
Instinctively he leaped out after them.
At first he thought himself deserted for some inconceivable reason, but he heard
excited shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured out, making towards
him.
At the same time a boat full of armed men appeared on the river and came alongside
his empty canoe, thus shutting off his retreat.
'"I was too startled to be quite cool-- don't you know? and if that revolver had
been loaded I would have shot somebody-- perhaps two, three bodies, and that would
have been the end of me.
But it wasn't...." "Why not?"
I asked.
"Well, I couldn't fight the whole population, and I wasn't coming to them as
if I were afraid of my life," he said, with just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness
in the glance he gave me.
I refrained from pointing out to him that they could not have known the chambers were
actually empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own
way....
"Anyhow it wasn't," he repeated good- humouredly, "and so I just stood still and
asked them what was the matter. That seemed to strike them dumb.
I saw some of these thieves going off with my box.
That long-legged old scoundrel Kassim (I'll show him to you to-morrow) ran out fussing
to me about the Rajah wanting to see me.
I said, 'All right.' I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply
walked in through the gate and--and--here I am."
He laughed, and then with unexpected emphasis, "And do you know what's the best
in it?" he asked. "I'll tell you.
It's the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place that would have been
the loser."
'He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I've mentioned--after we had
watched the moon float away above the chasm between the hills like an ascending spirit
out of a grave; its sheen descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight.
There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness
of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
It is to our sunshine, which--say what you like--is all we have to live by, what the
echo is to the sound: misleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or
sad.
It robs all forms of matter--which, after all, is our domain--of their substance, and
gives a sinister reality to shadows alone.
And the shadows were very real around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as
though nothing--not even the occult power of moonlight--could rob him of his reality
in my eyes.
Perhaps, indeed, nothing could touch him since he had survived the assault of the
dark powers. All was silent, all was still; even on the
river the moonbeams slept as on a pool.
It was the moment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter
isolation of this lost corner of the earth.
The houses crowding along the wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping
into the water in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with
black masses of shadow, were like a
spectral herd of shapeless creatures pressing forward to drink in a spectral and
lifeless stream.
Here and there a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living
spark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose.
'He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams go out one by one,
that he loved to see people go to sleep under his eyes, confident in the security
of to-morrow.
"Peaceful here, eh?" he asked. He was not eloquent, but there was a deep
meaning in the words that followed. "Look at these houses; there's not one
where I am not trusted.
Jove! I told you I would hang on.
Ask any man, woman, or child ..." He paused.
"Well, I am all right anyhow."
'I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end.
I had been sure of it, I added. He shook his head.
"Were you?"
He pressed my arm lightly above the elbow. "Well, then--you were right."
'There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low exclamation.
"Jove!" he cried, "only think what it is to me."
Again he pressed my arm. "And you asked me whether I thought of
leaving.
Good God! I! want to leave!
Especially now after what you told me of Mr. Stein's...Leave!
Why!
That's what I was afraid of. It would have been--it would have been
harder than dying. No--on my word.
Don't laugh.
I must feel--every day, every time I open my eyes--that I am trusted--that nobody has
a right--don't you know? Leave!
For where?
What for? To get what?"
'I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it was Stein's
intention to present him at once with the house and the stock of trading goods, on
certain easy conditions which would make
the transaction perfectly regular and valid.
He began to snort and plunge at first. "Confound your delicacy!"
I shouted.
"It isn't Stein at all. It's giving you what you had made for
yourself.
And in any case keep your remarks for McNeil--when you meet him in the other
world. I hope it won't happen soon...."
He had to give in to my arguments, because all his conquests, the trust, the fame, the
friendships, the love--all these things that made him master had made him a
captive, too.
He looked with an owner's eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the
houses, at the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind, at
the secrets of the land, at the pride of
his own heart; but it was they that possessed him and made him their own to the
innermost thought, to the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath.
'It was something to be proud of.
I, too, was proud--for him, if not so certain of the fabulous value of the
bargain. It was wonderful.
It was not so much of his fearlessness that I thought.
It is strange how little account I took of it: as if it had been something too
conventional to be at the root of the matter.
No.
I was more struck by the other gifts he had displayed.
He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation, his intellectual alertness in
that field of thought.
There was his readiness, too! Amazing.
And all this had come to him in a manner like keen scent to a well-bred hound.
He was not eloquent, but there was a dignity in this constitutional reticence,
there was a high seriousness in his stammerings.
He had still his old trick of stubborn blushing.
Now and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how deeply,
how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the certitude of
rehabilitation.
That is why he seemed to love the land and the people with a sort of fierce egoism,
with a contemptuous tenderness.'