Gallions Reach (23 page)

“It's the nose, Colet. Only the nose. It's my gross selfishness. I'm so uncomfortable when in ignorance that even an unseen novelty anywhere near will make my nose twitch till I find it. That's what unwholesome curiosity does for a man. That's the result of being a dirt washer … but there's a lot in dirt. It tells you what the bedrock may be. Haven't you ever watched our Chinaman? Doesn't he ever make your soul curl up at the corners?”

“Johnny? He's only a shadow. There's nothing the matter with him. He never even speaks—only makes a guggle or two.”

“That's all he can do. If he wasn't so careful with the stuff I'd be afraid he'd drop some of his opium into the grub. But he loves that more than he hates us. I should like to see a section of the bedrock of that Chink under the microscope. Have you seen him putting little saucers of rice under one of the trees? A devil there he knows about, and we don't. He keep crackers, to frighten the goblins. A section of his faith would prove unusual, under polarised light. Or of yours, Colet, or of yours. A bit of the bottom of your mind, ground thin, would fascinate me all the evening, with a lens of high power.”

“But not me. Nothing there to give me an appetite. That predilection of yours for Beethoven—did you find it in the dirt?”

“Quite right. All my fault. I asked for it. Now we'll conclude our little inquiry into origins. When a fellow like you grows metaphysical I get lost. But you wouldn't. Mystics can see anything in a fog, just anything, if only it's thick enough. The thicker the better. But I loathe fogs. I can't see so well in a fog.”

“Well, perhaps it wouldn't be unfair to ask now whether we may look for gold here. Is there any?”

“That's better. And there is. But Colet, where does it come from? That's what beats me. I wish I was a mystic, or had second sight, or inspiration, or the devil's own luck. Anything to take me where science can't. The truth is, there's bright little signs of happiness everywhere in this country. They lure us on like the portrait of a charmer whose favours were all distributed long ago, though we don't know it. Oh, Colet, to think of it.”

They stooped to the stream, whirled the gravel in pans, and when neither perspiration nor another storm could saturate
them more would examine the pinch of yellow dust that was all their reward. The metal had a strange loveliness, under the lens. To Colet it did not seem inadequate. For Norrie was near, with his droll comments. There was the apparition of the forest about them, silent and still; you had to touch a leathery leaf of it, to make sure of it, when stretching the back after intent diligence with the stream. Colet would pause in the washing now and then, checked by the only movement, a visiting butterfly, designed and coloured like joy, a flicker of silent mirth in the face of the wild. The butterflies did not object to a close inspection when they settled on a damp hummock of white sand under his nose; if he touched them they merely circused a little, and then came to the same spot, made themselves comfortable, and laid out their wings for inspection again.

Norrie declined to eat, when they sat by a tree, at midday. If he spoke, it was captiously. Once or twice his companion looked at him, surprised by a word that was venomous. Here was a corner beyond the hubbub, in a light like glory, and Norrie addressing Heaven, for his want of luck, as though it were the face of a dirty urchin who had soiled his property. Anything the matter with him? His hands were hanging listless over his knees, and he was brooding. His hands seemed queer. The fingers were lemon-colour, and the nails blue. Then Norrie peered over at him, and his jaw was chattering.

Colet became solicitous.

“Anything wrong, old chap?”

“I wondered what was coming. We'll get back. I've got a touch of fever. Cold. It's damned cold.”

Norrie sank into his hammock, and remained, still and yellow, with his eyes shut, as though dead. The camp that evening suggested a depth in solitude which was more remote than Colet had ever known. The four Malays were apart, conferring together, unheard, almost merged in the wilderness. The Chinaman was nothing; his face always was expressionless and averted. And Norrie, in a sense, had left them. He was with Norrie, but Norrie was not with him. It was lucky he had got that dose of quinine into the poor old fellow before he became light-headed.

What was he muttering about? Nothing more to be done for him. The natives didn't seem to care; they only glanced casually at the lumpy hammock, and then forgot it. The day, the last of it, was in the tree-tops across the stream, and under that lane of upper gold was the unknown, and night already filling its hollows. The cicadas abruptly began their sunset ovation. They knew the signal; the signal was the light on the tree with a dead top. The gaunt antlers became flames, and the jungle instantly was a din, though it never stirred. There ought to be a movement, surely a leaf should shake, when pandemonium broke loose: buzzing of circular saws, hissing of steam, shrill whistling, the husky stridulating of dry membranes, the humming of wires, the verberating of notes inaudible; the exultant celebration of another life in a place not his. It was like triumph over mortal men.

Norrie called out, but when Colet went to him the sick man was moribund, with his eyes closed. The light died. The uproar in the woods instantly ceased. Night put out both day and the pæan. The darkness and the silence were the
same. Colet sat down on a packing box by the hammock, to wait. This was going to be a night of it. He touched Norrie's face; it was indifferent; it was hot and dry. What happened to men with malaria?

The silence stretched out into illimitable leagues of nothing, to a depth where it could never be stirred. The air became cooler, and he packed up Norrie. The Chinaman stretched on the floor. He was only a loose rag on the beams. The Malays were in their own hut. The fire was alive. Only the fire was alive. The hammock had not moved for a long time. All right? Norrie was still hot, anyhow. Colet took his seat again, and waited.

It was queer to watch the feet of the trees. The firelight shaped them. They moved in and out of the forest. Sometimes they vanished. They had retreated into the woods. When a lump collapsed in the fire the flames started again, and the feet of the trees moved in and out of the skirts of the darkness in a noiseless but massive dance.…

What was that? He must have been dreaming. Perhaps Norrie had called out. No; the hammock hadn't moved. Norrie was the same as before. The shadow of the Chink was still like a loose heap of rags. He had not stirred. There was only night, and a hush as though something were lying in wait. Queer. He grinned himself into confidence. This was a rum situation; like being a child at midnight lost in the Tower dungeons.

The fire had gone down since he saw it last. About time he made it up. Wanted some resolution to get up and do it, though. You had to move from where you were. What would happen if one moved? Would that set anything going? It felt as if some diabolical business was hanging about. Certainly he heard a sound. It was like the dominant prelude of a Handel march, the music Norrie had told him to listen for, one night. But it was a long way from the croak of a frog in the jungle to Handel. Good God!

Loud in the night he heard the blast of a trumpet. Just beyond the fire. That was no dream. The Chinaman was sitting up. Colet hesitated, rose, and went to peer aside from the hindering of the firelight. He would have felt better if he had known what was there. He could see only a shadow was out of its place beyond. He could make out two white marks like the branches of a tree. But a swamp was there. No tree there. Then he heard a whisper in Malay: “Gajah.”

So it was. The shadow was an elephant; what was plain was the gleam of the firelight on its tusks. A flame shifted in the fire, and the beast's ears then spread out; its trunk was curled over its head. The flame incensed that huge front. It squealed, and advanced a little, squashing and lumbering.

No good trying to shoot dead such a bulk at night. It would have the flimsy show flattened in a rush. He went over to the sick man, helplessly, but Norrie was not interested in anything on earth, not even wild elephants. Colet stood by the hammock while the brute raged and trampled about. He would have to stand there. That beast was trying to make up his mind to come on. Better keep quiet, out of sight, and chance it. Trying to make up its mind, and evidently doing it. Colet snatched up a flaming brand in desperation, and flung it at the uproar. It backed, but worked itself into a worse passion. This couldn't last.

The Chink had gone. There were no Malays. The burning sticks wouldn't last long. The beast began to threaten with agile little rushes. Surprisingly quick and light, yet the place shook. What could you do with a man in a hammock? Colet's eyes were on the huge and noisy shadow, and so he swore when the unseen Chinaman unexpectedly clutched his arm. The fellow was voluble, and had something in his hand. The Chink went to the fire, touched the object with a brand, and flung it at the invader. The spark leaped into a tangle of erratic explosions, and the elephant at once became a series of rapidly diminishing crashes in the forest. Colet began to
laugh, but stopped. He recognised that his laughter was pitched in too high a key. A blessed cracker—one of those the Chink used for keeping off devils. The Chinaman stood there with his head solemnly bent, listening to the sounds of an elephantine panic retreating out of hearing. Then he curled up again on the floor without a word.

The high cliffs of trees around their hut so overhung that the sun never found them till near noon. It was like being at the bottom of a well. Daylight fell to the stream beside the hut as a few long shining rods which leaned on upper shadows and rested on the bottom of the rivulet. The hut was foundered in the forest. None of them ventured far from it alone. In the cool of the morning the calling of birds gave clear depth to the surrounding obscurity. One bird was a tolling bell, and another was a blacksmith at an anvil. There was another who was an idle boy learning to whistle, but who never got the phrase right. But he persevered. No bird was seen. Nothing ever moved there, except themselves.

The leisurely bird was still learning to whistle. It had nothing else to do. Nor had Colet, but to listen to it. Norrie mimicked the bird, and corrected it. A good effort, for Norrie.

“The little beggar always falls off the tune just before the end. I think I make a noise jolly well. Did you notice it?”

“I did.” Colet cheered the attempt, though his amusement was not quite assured. He was dubious. There was Norrie, but reduced to a framework. His face was not of the colour of life, so when he smiled it was anything but a smile. His sardonic nose was pinched, and with his light-grey eyes, understanding but bleak, and his rumpled grey hair, now too plentiful for his face, he suggested a crested predatory bird.

“My whistle was about as thin as me.”

“Let's have it again. We could do with a cheerful noise.”

“Don't shovel out any pity on me, Colet. After a bout of this sort we excite pity, but not enough for a shovel. I'll walk your legs off in a day or two. You won't lose me yet, so you needn't abandon yourself to hope.”

He made to pass Colet; but paused, rested his hand on Colet's shoulder, weighed on it perhaps rather too long, and went on. Old Norrie was strange; you couldn't tell then whether he was sentimental, or only gave way at the knees. He did that sort of thing. He simulated humanity, for a lark, or else he pretended that satire was the best he could do.

But as Norrie said, he soon had them going again. There were new activities. He began to lead them another dance. They left the hut for whoever might want it. Colet had got used to that floor of rough boughs with its roof of brown fronds. He knew the individual bits of the floor, the beam that rolled if you put your foot on it, the catchy knot by Norrie's hammock, the depression in which he preferred to spread his own sleeping mat. The only bare dry earth he had seen for three humid months was under that floor. Actually, the patch of ground under the hut was dusty; the dust was an experience when you crawled under for a knife which had slipped through. Their fire would go out to-day. Without a light there, and nobody near, that hut would be worse than the jungle. It would deepen the quietude. He turned, the end man, to see the abandoned camp for the last time. The bare thought of solitude in the old shanty gave Colet a presentiment of the horrors. One would want hardened nerves to face only oneself, in the wilderness.

The regions through which they travelled suggested that they were the first men to see it. They were under an earlier spell of the earth; it was not merely a new country. The sunlight was younger, and sounds were clearer and without fear. Its life, which was its forest, was haunting with its magnitude and extravagant outpouring. It was mute, except
at sunset and evening, when it praised the sun, the only god which had yet come to it. When day came, and just as day was departing, the creatures of the woods broke out with that racket which was the sudden release of the pent vehemence of spirits that were without name or shape.

The sun was well down towards the roof of the jungle when they emerged from the twilight of the woods. They were in an open space by a greater river. The men began to build another shelter. It was a relief to see the open sky. Here was full daylight, and the sight could range to distant prospects. Colet wondered how Norrie, still absurdly thin, and bleached by fever and the forest, had maintained so evenly that day's long hike; even the patient Malays showed they had had enough of it, and they were made of bronze. The Chinaman, of course, wasn't human. His own body felt as if every length of elastic in it had been stretched; pulled out and snapped all day long. Now he was at ease, fatigued but contented. Norrie was a wonder. He would have given stout Cortez enough for the day, and then have shown even a conquistadore, in an evening talk, that there were things he did not know as surprising as the prospect to be seen from a peak in Darien. But in these latter days good men were not conquerors, but navvies, or prospectors, or engineers, or chief mates. Nobody knew them but one or two pals.