The Rescue (42 page)

"No boat," he muttered.

"There must be a canoe. I know there is a canoe. I want it."

She stepped forward compelling, commanding, trying to concentrate in
her glance all her will power, the sense of her own right to dispose of
herself and her claim to be served to the last moment of her life. It
was as if she had done nothing. Jorgenson didn't flinch.

"Which of them are you after?" asked his blank, unringing voice.

She continued to look at him; her face had stiffened into a severe mask;
she managed to say distinctly:

"I suppose you have been asking yourself that question for some time,
Captain Jorgenson?"

"No. I am asking you now."

His face disclosed nothing to Mrs. Travers' bold and weary eyes.
"What could you do over there?" Jorgenson added as merciless, as
irrepressible, and sincere as though he were the embodiment of that
inner voice that speaks in all of us at times and, like Jorgenson, is
offensive and difficult to answer.

"Remember that I am not a shadow but a living woman still, Captain
Jorgenson. I can live and I can die. Send me over to share their fate."

"Sure you would like?" asked the roused Jorgenson in a voice that had an
unexpected living quality, a faint vibration which no man had known in
it for years. "There may be death in it," he mumbled, relapsing into
indifference.

"Who cares?" she said, recklessly. "All I want is to ask Tom a question
and hear his answer. That's what I would like. That's what I must have."

Along the hot and gloomy forest path, neglected, overgrown and strangled
in the fierce life of the jungle, there came a faint rustle of leaves.
Jaffir, the servant of princes, the messenger of great men, walked,
stooping, with a broad chopper in his hand. He was naked from the waist
upward, his shoulders and arms were scratched and bleeding. A multitude
of biting insects made a cloud about his head. He had lost his costly
and ancient head-kerchief, and when in a slightly wider space he stopped
in a listening attitude anybody would have taken him for a fugitive.

He waved his arms about, slapping his shoulders, the sides of his head,
his heaving flanks; then, motionless, listened again for a while. A
sound of firing, not so much made faint by distance as muffled by the
masses of foliage, reached his ears, dropping shots which he could have
counted if he had cared to. "There is fighting in the forest already,"
he thought. Then putting his head low in the tunnel of vegetation he
dashed forward out of the horrible cloud of flies, which he actually
managed for an instant to leave behind him. But it was not from the
cruelty of insects that he was flying, for no man could hope to drop
that escort, and Jaffir in his life of a faithful messenger had been
accustomed, if such an extravagant phrase may be used, to be eaten
alive. Bent nearly double he glided and dodged between the trees,
through the undergrowth, his brown body streaming with sweat, his firm
limbs gleaming like limbs of imperishable bronze through the mass
of green leaves that are forever born and forever dying. For all his
desperate haste he was no longer a fugitive; he was simply a man in a
tremendous hurry. His flight, which had begun with a bound and a rush
and a general display of great presence of mind, was a simple issue
from a critical situation. Issues from critical situations are generally
simple if one is quick enough to think of them in time. He became aware
very soon that the attempt to pursue him had been given up, but he had
taken the forest path and had kept up his pace because he had left his
Rajah and the lady Immada beset by enemies on the edge of the forest, as
good as captives to a party of Tengga's men.

Belarab's hesitation had proved too much even for Hassim's hereditary
patience in such matters. It is but becoming that weighty negotiations
should be spread over many days, that the same requests and arguments
should be repeated in the same words, at many successive interviews, and
receive the same evasive answers. Matters of state demand the dignity of
such a procedure as if time itself had to wait on the power and wisdom
of rulers. Such are the proceedings of embassies and the dignified
patience of envoys. But at this time of crisis Hassim's impatience
obtained the upper hand; and though he never departed from the tradition
of soft speech and restrained bearing while following with his sister in
the train of the pious Belarab, he had his moments of anger, of anxiety,
of despondency. His friendships, his future, his country's destinies
were at stake, while Belarab's camp wandered deviously over the back
country as if influenced by the vacillation of the ruler's thought, the
very image of uncertain fate.

Often no more than the single word "Good" was all the answer vouchsafed
to Hassim's daily speeches. The lesser men, companions of the Chief,
treated him with deference; but Hassim could feel the opposition from
the women's side of the camp working against his cause in subservience
to the mere caprice of the new wife, a girl quite gentle and kind to her
dependents, but whose imagination had run away with her completely and
had made her greedy for the loot of the yacht from mere simplicity and
innocence. What could Hassim, that stranger, wandering and poor, offer
for her acceptance? Nothing. The wealth of his far-off country was but
an idle tale, the talk of an exile looking for help.

At night Hassim had to listen to the anguished doubts of Immada, the
only companion of his life, child of the same mother, brave as a man,
but in her fears a very woman. She whispered them to him far into the
night while the camp of the great Belarab was hushed in sleep and the
fires had sunk down to mere glowing embers. Hassim soothed her gravely.
But he, too, was a native of Wajo where men are more daring and quicker
of mind than other Malays. More energetic, too, and energy does not go
without an inner fire. Hassim lost patience and one evening he declared
to his sister Immada: "To-morrow we leave this ruler without a mind and
go back to our white friend."

Therefore next morning, letting the camp move on the direct road to
the settlement, Hassim and Immada took a course of their own. It was
a lonely path between the jungle and the clearings. They had two
attendants with them, Hassim's own men, men of Wajo; and so the lady
Immada, when she had a mind to, could be carried, after the manner of
the great ladies of Wajo who need not put foot to the ground unless they
like. The lady Immada, accustomed to the hardships that are the lot
of exiles, preferred to walk, but from time to time she let herself
be carried for a short distance out of regard for the feelings of her
attendants. The party made good time during the early hours, and Hassim
expected confidently to reach before evening the shore of the lagoon
at a spot very near the stranded Emma. At noon they rested in the shade
near a dark pool within the edge of the forest; and it was there that
Jaffir met them, much to his and their surprise. It was the occasion
of a long talk. Jaffir, squatting on his heels, discoursed in measured
tones. He had entranced listeners. The story of Carter's exploit amongst
the Shoals had not reached Belarab's camp. It was a great shock to
Hassim, but the sort of half smile with which he had been listening to
Jaffir never altered its character. It was the Princess Immada who cried
out in distress and wrung her hands. A deep silence fell.

Indeed, before the fatal magnitude of the fact it seemed even to those
Malays that there was nothing to say and Jaffir, lowering his head,
respected his Prince's consternation. Then, before that feeling could
pass away from that small group of people seated round a few smouldering
sticks, the noisy approach of a large party of men made them all leap
to their feet. Before they could make another movement they perceived
themselves discovered. The men were armed as if bound on some warlike
expedition. Amongst them Sentot, in his loin cloth and with unbound wild
locks, capered and swung his arms about like the lunatic he was. The
others' astonishment made them halt, but their attitude was obviously
hostile. In the rear a portly figure flanked by two attendants carrying
swords was approaching prudently. Rajah Hassim resumed quietly his seat
on the trunk of a fallen tree, Immada rested her hand lightly on her
brother's shoulder, and Jaffir, squatting down again, looked at the
ground with all his faculties and every muscle of his body tensely on
the alert.

"Tengga's fighters," he murmured, scornfully.

In the group somebody shouted, and was answered by shouts from afar.
There could be no thought of resistance. Hassim slipped the emerald
ring from his finger stealthily and Jaffir got hold of it by an almost
imperceptible movement. The Rajah did not even look at the trusty
messenger.

"Fail not to give it to the white man," he murmured. "Thy servant hears,
O Rajah. It's a charm of great power."

The shadows were growing to the westward. Everybody was silent, and
the shifting group of armed men seemed to have drifted closer. Immada,
drawing the end of a scarf across her face, confronted the advance
with only one eye exposed. On the flank of the armed men Sentot was
performing a slow dance but he, too, seemed to have gone dumb.

"Now go," breathed out Rajah Hassim, his gaze levelled into space
immovably.

For a second or more Jaffir did not stir, then with a sudden leap from
his squatting posture he flew through the air and struck the jungle in
a great commotion of leaves, vanishing instantly like a swimmer diving
from on high. A deep murmur of surprise arose in the armed party, a
spear was thrown, a shot was fired, three or four men dashed into the
forest, but they soon returned crestfallen with apologetic smiles; while
Jaffir, striking an old path that seemed to lead in the right direction,
ran on in solitude, raising a rustle of leaves, with a naked parang in
his hand and a cloud of flies about his head. The sun declining to the
westward threw shafts of light across his dark path. He ran at a springy
half-trot, his eyes watchful, his broad chest heaving, and carrying
the emerald ring on the forefinger of a clenched hand as though he were
afraid it should slip off, fly off, be torn from him by an invisible
force, or spirited away by some enchantment. Who could tell what
might happen? There were evil forces at work in the world, powerful
incantations, horrible apparitions. The messenger of princes and of
great men, charged with the supreme appeal of his master, was afraid
in the deepening shade of the forest. Evil presences might have been
lurking in that gloom. Still the sun had not set yet. He could see its
face through the leaves as he skirted the shore of the lagoon. But what
if Allah's call should come to him suddenly and he die as he ran!

He drew a long breath on the shore of the lagoon within about a hundred
yards from the stranded bows of the Emma. The tide was out and he
walked to the end of a submerged log and sent out a hail for a boat.
Jorgenson's voice answered. The sun had sunk behind the forest belt of
the coast. All was still as far as the eye could reach over the black
water. A slight breeze came along it and Jaffir on the brink, waiting
for a canoe, shivered a little.

At the same moment Carter, exhausted by thirty hours of uninterrupted
toil at the head of whites and Malays in getting the yacht afloat,
dropped into Mrs. Travers' deck chair, on board the Hermit, said to the
devoted Wasub: "Let a good watch be kept to-night, old man," glanced
contentedly at the setting sun and fell asleep.

There was in the bows of the Emma an elevated grating over the heel of
her bowsprit whence the eye could take in the whole range of her
deck and see every movement of her crew. It was a spot safe from
eaves-droppers, though, of course, exposed to view. The sun had just set
on the supreme content of Carter when Jorgenson and Jaffir sat down
side by side between the knightheads of the Emma and, public but
unapproachable, impressive and secret, began to converse in low tones.

Every Wajo fugitive who manned the hulk felt the approach of a decisive
moment. Their minds were made up and their hearts beat steadily. They
were all desperate men determined to fight and to die and troubling not
about the manner of living or dying. This was not the case with Mrs.
Travers who, having shut herself up in the deckhouse, was profoundly
troubled about those very things, though she, too, felt desperate enough
to welcome almost any solution.

Of all the people on board she alone did not know anything of that
conference. In her deep and aimless thinking she had only become aware
of the absence of the slightest sound on board the Emma. Not a rustle,
not a footfall. The public view of Jorgenson and Jaffir in deep
consultation had the effect of taking all wish to move from every man.

Twilight enveloped the two figures forward while they talked, looking in
the stillness of their pose like carved figures of European and Asiatic
contrasted in intimate contact. The deepening dusk had nearly effaced
them when at last they rose without warning, as it were, and thrilling
the heart of the beholders by the sudden movement. But they did not
separate at once. They lingered in their high place as if awaiting the
fall of complete darkness, a fit ending to their mysterious communion.
Jaffir had given Jorgenson the whole story of the ring, the symbol of a
friendship matured and confirmed on the night of defeat, on the night of
flight from a far-distant land sleeping unmoved under the wrath and fire
of heaven.

"Yes, Tuan," continued Jaffir, "it was first sent out to the white man,
on a night of mortal danger, a present to remember a friend by. I was
the bearer of it then even as I am now. Then, as now, it was given to me
and I was told to save myself and hand the ring over in confirmation of
my message. I did so and that white man seemed to still the very storm
to save my Rajah. He was not one to depart and forget him whom he had
once called his friend. My message was but a message of good-bye, but
the charm of the ring was strong enough to draw all the power of that
white man to the help of my master. Now I have no words to say. Rajah
Hassim asks for nothing. But what of that? By the mercy of Allah all
things are the same, the compassion of the Most High, the power of
the ring, the heart of the white man. Nothing is changed, only the
friendship is a little older and love has grown because of the shared
dangers and long companionship. Therefore, Tuan, I have no fear. But how
am I to get the ring to the Rajah Laut? Just hand it to him. The last
breath would be time enough if they were to spear me at his feet. But
alas! the bush is full of Tengga's men, the beach is open and I could
never even hope to reach the gate."