Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (647 page)

“Come and see me at noon at Cantelucci’s inn,” whispered Cosmo, to which the other breathed out a, “Certainly, Excellency,” feelingly before going up the steps.

Cosmo found himself presently sitting in a boat between two sbirri. The ancient fellow shoved off and shipped his oars. From the quay, high above, Bar-bone’s voice shouted to him, “The gendarmes will take charge of your boat for the rest of the night.” The old boatman’s only answer was a deep sigh, and in a very few strokes the quay with the sentry receded into the darkness. One of the sbirri remarked in a tone of satisfaction, “Our service will be over after we have given up the signore there.” The other said, “I hope the signore will consider we have been kept late on his account.” Cosmo, who was contemplating with immense distaste the prospect of being delivered up to the gendarmes, emitted a mirthless laugh, and after a while said m a cold tone: “Why waste your time in pulling to the other side of the harbour? Put me on board the near- est vessel. I’ll soon find my way to the quay from one tartane to another, and your service would be over at once.”

The fellow on his left assumed an astonishing seriousness: “Most of those tartanes have a dog on board. We could not expose an illustrious stranger to get bitten by one of these ugly brutes.”

But the other had no mind for grave mockery. In a harsh and overbearing tone he ordered the boatman to pull well into the middle of the harbour away from the moored craft.

It was like crossing a lake overshadowed by the hills with the breakwaters prolonging the shore to seaward. The old man raised and dipped his oars slowly, without a sound, and the long trails of starlight trembled on the ripples on each side of the boat. When they had progressed far enough to open the harbour entrance Cosmo detected between the end of the jetties far away — he was glancing casually about — a dark speck about the size of a man’s head, which ought not to have been there. The air was perfectly still and the stars thick on the horizon. It struck him at once that it could be nothing than either the English man-of-war’s boat or the boat of the dogana, since no others were allowed to move at night. His thoughts were, however, so busy with speculating as to what he had better do that he paid no more attention to that remarkable speck. He looked absently at the silver-haired boatman pulling an easy stroke and asked himself: Was it or was it not time to lose his hat overboard? How could he contrive to make it look plausible in this absurd calm? Then he reproached himself for reasoning as if those two low fellows (whose proximity had grown extremely irksome to him) had wits of preternatural sharpness. If he were to snatch it and fling it away they would probably con- elude that he was trying to make himself troublesome, or simply mad, or anything in the world rather than guess that he had in his hat something which he wanted to destroy. He undid quietly the clasp of his cloak and rested his hands on his knees. His guardians did not think it necessary now to hold his arms. In fact they did not seem to pay much attention to him. Cosmo asked himself for a moment whether he would stand up suddenly and jump into the water. Of course he knew that fully clothed and in his boots they would very soon get hold of him, but the object would have been attained. However, the prospect of being towed behind a boat to the custom-house quay by the collar of his coat and being led into the presence of the gendarmes looking like a drowned rat was so disagreeable that he rejected that plan.

By that time the boat had reached little more than half way across the harbour. The great body of the shipping was merged with the shore. The nearest vessels were a polacca brig and xebec lying at anchor. Both were shadowy, and the last, with her low spars, a mere low smudge on the dim sheen of the water. From time to time the aged boatman emitted a moan. The boat seemed hardly to move. Everything afloat was silent and dark. The crews of the coasters were ashore or asleep; and if there were any dogs on board any of them they too seemed plunged in the same slumber that lay over all things of the earth, and by contrast with which the stars of heaven looked intensely wakeful. In the midst of his perplexities Cosmo enjoyed the feeling of peace that had come to him directly his trouble had begun.

“We will be all night getting across,” growled suddenly the man on his left. . . I don’t know what

Barbone was thinking of to get this antiquity out of his bed.”

“I told him there was hardly any breath in my old body,” declared the boatman’s tranquil voice.

Apparently in order to speak he had to cease rowing, for he rested on his oars while he went on in the gravelike silence. “But he raged like a devil; and rather than let him wake up all the neighbours I came out. I may just as well die in the boat as in bed.”

Both sbirri exclaimed indignantly against Barbone, but neither offered to take the sculls. With a painful groan the old man began to pull again. Cosmo asked: “What’s that dark thing between the heads of the jetties?” One of his captors, turning his head to look, said, “That must be the galley. I wish she would come this way. We would ask her for a tow.” The other man remarked sarcastically, “No fear, they are all snoozing in her except one perhaps to keep a lookout. It’s an easy life. . . . Voga, vecchio, voga.”

Cosmo thought suddenly that if by any chance the man-of-war boat happened to be pulling that way he would hail her without hesitation, and, surely, the officer in charge would not leave him in the hands of those villains without at least listening to his tale. Unluckily their way across the harbour did not take them near the man-of-war. The light at her mizzen peak seemed to Cosmo very far away; so that if it had not burned against the dark background of the land it would have seemed more distant than any star, and not half as brightly vigilant. He took his eyes from it and let them rest idly on the water ahead. The sbirro on his right hand emitted an immense yawn. This provided the other to mutter curses on the tediousness of all this affair. Cosmo had been too perplexed to feel bored.

Just then as if in antagonism to those offensive manifestations he felt very alert. Moreover, the moment when something would have to be done was approaching, a tension of all his senses accumulating in a sort of all-over impatience. While in that state, staring into the night, he caught sight of the man-of-war’s boat.

But was it? — well,it was something dark on the water, and as there was no other boat about ... It was small — well, far off and probably end on. . . . He had heard no sound of rowing . . . lying on her oars ... He could see nothing now . . well, here goes, on the chance.

Without stirring a limb he took a long breath and let out the shout of “Boat ahoy” with all the force of his lungs. The volume of tone astonished himself. It seemed to fill the whole of the harbour so effectually that he felt he needn’t shout again and he remained as still as a statue. The effect on his neighbours was that both gave a violent start, which set the boat rolling slightly, and in their bewilderment they bent forward to peer into his face with immense eyes. After a time one of them asked in an awestruck murmur, “What’s the matter, signore?” and seized his cloak. The other, Cosmo heard distinctly whisper to himself, “ That was a war cry,” while he also grabbed the cloak. The clasp being undone, it slipped off Cosmo’s shoulders and then they clung to his arms. It struck Cosmo as remarkable that the old boatman had not ceased his feeble rowing for a moment.

The shout had done Cosmo good. It reestablished his self-respect somehow and it sent the blood moving through his veins as if indeed it had been a war cry. He had shaken their nerves. If they had not remained perfectly motionless holding his arms there would have started a scrimmage in that boat which would certainly have ended in the water. But their grip was feeble. They did nothing, but, bending towards each other in front of Cosmo till their heads almost touched, watched his lips from which such an extraordinary shout had come. Cosmo stared stonily ahead as if unconscious of their existence, and again he had that strange illusion of a dark spot ahead of the boat. He thought, “That’s no illusion. What a fool I was. It must be a mooring buoy.” A couple of minutes elapsed before he thought again, “That old fellow will be right into it, presently.”

He didn’t consider it his business to utter a warning because the bump he expected happened almost immediately. He had misjudged the distance. Owing to the slow pace the impact was very slight, slighter even than Cosmo expected against such a heavy body as a mooring buoy would be. It was really more like a feeble hollow sound than a shock. Cosmo, who was prepared for it, was really the one that felt it at once, and the ancient boatman looked sharply over his shoulder. He uttered no sound and did not even attempt to rise from the thwart. He simply, as it seemed to Cosmo, let go the oars. The sbirri only became aware of something having happened after the hollow bump was repeated, and Cosmo had become aware that the object on the water was not a buoy but another boat not much bigger than theirs. Then they both exclaimed and in their surprise their grip relaxed. One of them cried in astonishment, “An empty boat.” It was indeed a surprising occurrence. With no particular purpose in his mind Cosmo stood up while one of the sbirri stood up either to catch hold of the boat or push it away, for the two boats were alongside each other by that time. A strange voice in the dark said very loud: “The man in the hat,” and as if by enchantment three figures appeared standing in a row. Cosmo had not even time to feel surprised. The two boats started knocking about considerably, and he felt himself seized by the collar and one arm and dragged away violently from between the two sbirri by the power of irresistible arms which as suddenly let him go as if he were an inanimate object, and he fell heavily in the bottom of the second boat almost before his legs were altogether clear of the other. During this violent translation his hat fell off his head without any scheming on his part.

He was not exactly frightened but he was excusably flustered. One is not kidnapped like this without any preliminaries every day. He was painfully aware of being in the way of his new captors. He was kicked in the ribs and his legs were trodden upon. He heard blows being struck against hard substances which he knew were human skulls because of the abortive yells ending in groans. There was a determination and ferocity in this attack combined with the least possible amount of noise. All he could hear were the heavy blows and the hard breathing of the assailants. Then came a sort of helpless splash. “Somebody will get drowned,” he thought.

He made haste to pull himself forward from under the feet of the combatants. Luckily for his ribs they were bare, which also added to the quietness of that astonishing development. Once in the bows he sat up, and by that time everything was over. Three shadowy forms were standing in a row in the boat, motionless, like labourers who had accomplished a notable task. The boat out of which he had been dragged was floating within a yard or two, apparently empty. The whole affair, which could not have lasted more than a minute, seemed to Cosmo to have been absolutely instantaneous. Not a sound came from the shipping along the quays, not even from the brig and the xebec which were the nearest. A sense of final stillness such as follows, for instance, the explosion of a mine and resembles the annihilation of all one’s perceptive faculties took possession of Cosmo for a moment. Presently he heard a very earnest but low voice cautioning the silent world: “If you dare make a noise I will come back and kill you.” It was perfectly impersonal; it had no direction, no particular destination. Cosmo, who heard the words distinctly, could connect no image of a human being with them. He was roused at last when, dropping his hand on the gunwale, he felt human fingers under it. He snatched his hand away as if burnt and only then looked over. The white hair of the old boatman seemed to rest on the water right against the boat’s side. He was holding on silently, even in this position displaying the meek patience of his venerable age — and Cosmo contemplated him in silence. A voice, not at all impersonal this time, said from the stern sheets, “Get out your oars.”

“There is a man in the water here,” said Cosmo, wondering at his own voice being heard in those fantastic conditions. It produced, however, the desired effect, and almost as soon as he had spoken Cosmo had to help a bearded sailor, who was a complete stranger to him, to haul theold man inside the boat. He was nogreat weight to get over the gunwale, but they had to handle him as if he had been drowned. He never attempted to help himself. The other men in the boat took an interest in the proceedings.

“Is he dead?” came a subdued inquiry from aft.

“He is very old and feeble,” explained Cosmo in an undertone. Somebody swore long but softly, ending with the remark: “Here’s a complication.”

“That scoundrel Barbone dragged out a dying man,” began Cosmo impulsively.

“ Va bene, va bene . • . Bundle him in and come aft, signore.”

Cosmo, obeying this injunction, found himself sitting in the stern sheets by the side of a man whose first act was to put his hand lightly upon his shoulder in a way that conveyed a sort of gentle exultation. The discovery that the man was Attilio was too startling for comment at the first moment. The next it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

“It seems as if nothing could keep us apart,” said that extraordinary man in a low voice. He took his hand off Cosmo’s shoulder and directed the two rowers — who, Cosmo surmised, were the whisperers of the tower — to pull under the bows of the brig. “We must hide from those custom-house fellows,” he said. “I fancy the galley is coming along.”

No other word was uttered till one of the men got hold of the brig’s cable and the boat came to a rest with her side against the stem of that vessel, when Cosmo, who now could himself hear the faint noise of rowing* asked Attilio in a whisper: “Are they after you?”

“If they are after anything,” answered the other coolly, “they are after a very fine voice. What made you give that shout? “

“I had to behave like a frightened mouse before those sbirriy on account of those papers you left with me, and I felt that I must assert myself.” Cosmo gave this psychological explanation grimly. He changed his tone to add that, fancying he had seen the shape of the English man-of-war’s boat, the temptation to hail her had been irresistible.