The Rescue (50 page)

"What are you thinking of, Captain Lingard?" d'Alcacer asked in a low
voice. Lingard did not change his position.

"I am trying to keep it off," he said in the same tone.

"What? Trying to keep thought off?"

"Yes."

"Is this the time for such experiments?" asked d'Alcacer.

"Why not? It's my reprieve. Don't grudge it to me, Mr. d'Alcacer."

"Upon my word I don't. But isn't it dangerous?"

"You will have to take your chance."

D'Alcacer had a moment of internal struggle. He asked himself whether he
should tell Lingard that Mrs. Travers had come to the stockade with some
sort of message from Jorgenson. He had it on the tip of his tongue
to advise Lingard to go and see Mrs. Travers and ask her point blank
whether she had anything to tell him; but before he could make up
his mind the voices of invisible men high up in the tree were heard
reporting the thinning of the fog. This caused a stir to run along the
four sides of the stockade.

Lingard felt the draught of air in his face, the motionless mist began
to drive over the palisades and, suddenly, the lagoon came into view
with a great blinding glitter of its wrinkled surface and the faint
sound of its wash rising all along the shore. A multitude of hands went
up to shade the eager eyes, and exclamations of wonder burst out from
many men at the sight of a crowd of canoes of various sizes and kinds
lying close together with the effect as of an enormous raft, a little
way off the side of the Emma. The excited voices rose higher and higher.
There was no doubt about Tengga's being on the lagoon. But what was
Jorgenson about? The Emma lay as if abandoned by her keeper and her
crew, while the mob of mixed boats seemed to be meditating an attack.

For all his determination to keep thought off to the very last possible
moment, Lingard could not defend himself from a sense of wonder and
fear. What was Jorgenson about? For a moment Lingard expected the side
of the Emma to wreath itself in puffs of smoke, but an age seemed to
elapse without the sound of a shot reaching his ears.

The boats were afraid to close. They were hanging off, irresolute; but
why did Jorgenson not put an end to their hesitation by a volley or
two of musketry if only over their heads? Through the anguish of his
perplexity Lingard found himself returning to life, to mere life with
its sense of pain and mortality, like a man awakened from a dream by a
stab in the breast. What did this silence of the Emma mean? Could she
have been already carried in the fog? But that was unthinkable. Some
sounds of resistance must have been heard. No, the boats hung off
because they knew with what desperate defence they would meet; and
perhaps Jorgenson knew very well what he was doing by holding his fire
to the very last moment and letting the craven hearts grow cold with
the fear of a murderous discharge that would have to be faced. What was
certain was that this was the time for Belarab to open the great gate
and let his men go out, display his power, sweep through the further end
of the Settlement, destroy Tengga's defences, do away once for all with
the absurd rivalry of that intriguing amateur boat-builder. Lingard
turned eagerly toward Belarab but saw the Chief busy looking across the
lagoon through a long glass resting on the shoulder of a stooping slave.
He was motionless like a carving. Suddenly he let go the long glass
which some ready hands caught as it fell and said to Lingard:

"No fight."

"How do you know?" muttered Lingard, astounded.

"There are three empty sampans alongside the ladder," said Belarab in a
just audible voice. "There is bad talk there."

"Talk? I don't understand," said Lingard, slowly.

But Belarab had turned toward his three attendants in white robes,
with shaven polls under skull-caps of plaited grass, with prayer beads
hanging from their wrists, and an air of superior calm on their dark
faces: companions of his desperate days, men of blood once and now
imperturbable in their piety and wisdom of trusted counsellors.

"This white man is being betrayed," he murmured to them with the
greatest composure.

D'Alcacer, uncomprehending, watched the scene: the Man of Fate puzzled
and fierce like a disturbed lion, the white-robed Moors, the multitude
of half-naked barbarians, squatting by the guns, standing by the
loopholes in the immobility of an arranged display. He saw Mrs. Travers
on the verandah of the prisoners' house, an anxious figure with a white
scarf over her head. Mr. Travers was no doubt too weak after his fit of
fever to come outside. If it hadn't been for that, all the whites would
have been in sight of each other at the very moment of the catastrophe
which was to give them back to the claims of their life, at the cost
of other lives sent violently out of the world. D'Alcacer heard Lingard
asking loudly for the long glass and saw Belarab make a sign with his
hand, when he felt the earth receive a violent blow from underneath.
While he staggered to it the heavens split over his head with a crash in
the lick of a red tongue of flame; and a sudden dreadful gloom fell all
round the stunned d'Alcacer, who beheld with terror the morning sun,
robbed of its rays, glow dull and brown through the sombre murk which
had taken possession of the universe. The Emma had blown up; and when
the rain of shattered timbers and mangled corpses falling into the
lagoon had ceased, the cloud of smoke hanging motionless under the livid
sun cast its shadow afar on the Shore of Refuge where all strife had
come to an end.

A great wail of terror ascended from the Settlement and was succeeded
by a profound silence. People could be seen bolting in unreasoning panic
away from the houses and into the fields. On the lagoon the raft of
boats had broken up. Some of them were sinking, others paddling away in
all directions. What was left above water of the Emma had burst into a
clear flame under the shadow of the cloud, the great smoky cloud that
hung solid and unstirring above the tops of the forest, visible for
miles up and down the coast and over the Shallows.

The first person to recover inside the stockade was Belarab himself.
Mechanically he murmured the exclamation of wonder, "God is great," and
looked at Lingard. But Lingard was not looking at him. The shock of the
explosion had robbed him of speech and movement. He stared at the Emma
blazing in a distant and insignificant flame under the sinister shadow
of the cloud created by Jorgenson's mistrust and contempt for the
life of men. Belarab turned away. His opinion had changed. He regarded
Lingard no longer as a betrayed man but the effect was the same. He was
no longer a man of any importance. What Belarab really wanted now was
to see all the white people clear out of the lagoon as soon as possible.
Presently he ordered the gate to be thrown open and his armed men poured
out to take possession of the Settlement. Later Tengga's houses were
set on fire and Belarab, mounting a fiery pony, issued forth to make a
triumphal progress surrounded by a great crowd of headmen and guards.

That night the white people left the stockade in a cortege of torch
bearers. Mr. Travers had to be carried down to the beach, where two of
Belarab's war-boats awaited their distinguished passengers. Mrs. Travers
passed through the gate on d'Alcacer's arm. Her face was half veiled.
She moved through the throng of spectators displayed in the torchlight
looking straight before her. Belarab, standing in front of a group of
headmen, pretended not to see the white people as they went by. With
Lingard he shook hands, murmuring the usual formulas of friendship; and
when he heard the great white man say, "You shall never see me again,"
he felt immensely relieved. Belarab did not want to see that white man
again, but as he responded to the pressure of Lingard's hand he had a
grave smile.

"God alone knows the future," he said.

Lingard walked to the beach by himself, feeling a stranger to all men
and abandoned by the All-Knowing God. By that time the first boat with
Mr. and Mrs. Travers had already got away out of the blood-red light
thrown by the torches upon the water. D'Alcacer and Lingard followed
in the second. Presently the dark shade of the creek, walled in by the
impenetrable forest, closed round them and the splash of the paddles
echoed in the still, damp air.

"How do you think this awful accident happened?" asked d'Alcacer, who
had been sitting silent by Lingard's side.

"What is an accident?" said Lingard with a great effort. "Where did you
hear of such a thing? Accident! Don't disturb me, Mr. d'Alcacer. I have
just come back to life and it has closed on me colder and darker than
the grave itself. Let me get used . . . I can't bear the sound of a
human voice yet."

And now, stoical in the cold and darkness of his regained life, Lingard
had to listen to the voice of Wasub telling him Jaffir's story. The
old serang's face expressed a profound dejection and there was infinite
sadness in the flowing murmur of his words.

"Yes, by Allah! They were all there: that tyrannical Tengga, noisy
like a fool; the Rajah Hassim, a ruler without a country; Daman, the
wandering chief, and the three Pangerans of the sea-robbers. They came
on board boldly, for Tuan Jorgenson had given them permission, and their
talk was that you, Tuan, were a willing captive in Belarab's stockade.
They said they had waited all night for a message of peace from you or
from Belarab. But there was nothing, and with the first sign of day they
put out on the lagoon to make friends with Tuan Jorgenson; for, they
said, you, Tuan, were as if you had not been, possessing no more power
than a dead man, the mere slave of these strange white people, and
Belarab's prisoner. Thus Tengga talked. God had taken from him all
wisdom and all fear. And then he must have thought he was safe while
Rajah Hassim and the lady Immada were on board. I tell you they sat
there in the midst of your enemies, captive! The lady Immada, with her
face covered, mourned to herself. The Rajah Hassim made a sign to Jaffir
and Jaffir came to stand by his side and talked to his lord. The main
hatch was open and many of the Illanuns crowded there to look down at
the goods that were inside the ship. They had never seen so much loot in
their lives. Jaffir and his lord could hear plainly Tuan Jorgenson and
Tengga talking together. Tengga discoursed loudly and his words were the
words of a doomed man, for he was asking Tuan Jorgenson to give up the
arms and everything that was on board the Emma to himself and to Daman.
And then, he said, 'We shall fight Belarab and make friends with these
strange white people by behaving generously to them and letting them
sail away unharmed to their own country. We don't want them here. You,
Tuan Jorgenson, are the only white man I care for.' They heard Tuan
Jorgenson say to Tengga: 'Now you have told me everything there is
in your mind you had better go ashore with your friends and return
to-morrow.' And Tengga asked: 'Why! would you fight me to-morrow rather
than live many days in peace with me?' and he laughed and slapped his
thigh. And Tuan Jorgenson answered:

"'No, I won't fight you. But even a spider will give the fly time to say
its prayers.'

"Tuan Jorgenson's voice sounded very strange and louder than ever
anybody had heard it before. O Rajah Laut, Jaffir and the white man had
been waiting, too, all night for some sign from you; a shot fired or a
signal-fire, lighted to strengthen their hearts. There had been nothing.
Rajah Hassim, whispering, ordered Jaffir to take the first opportunity
to leap overboard and take to you his message of friendship and
good-bye. Did the Rajah and Jaffir know what was coming? Who can tell?
But what else could they see than calamity for all Wajo men, whatever
Tuan Jorgenson had made up his mind to do? Jaffir prepared to obey his
lord, and yet with so many enemies' boats in the water he did not think
he would ever reach the shore; and as to yourself he was not at all sure
that you were still alive. But he said nothing of this to his Rajah.
Nobody was looking their way. Jaffir pressed his lord's hand to his
breast and waited his opportunity. The fog began to blow away and
presently everything was disclosed to the sight. Jorgenson was on his
feet, he was holding a lighted cigar between his fingers. Tengga was
sitting in front of him on one of the chairs the white people had used.
His followers were pressing round him, with Daman and Sentot, who were
muttering incantations; and even the Pangerans had moved closer to the
hatchway. Jaffir's opportunity had come but he lingered by the side
of his Rajah. In the clear air the sun shone with great force. Tuan
Jorgenson looked once more toward Belarab's stockade, O Rajah Laut! But
there was nothing there, not even a flag displayed that had not been
there before. Jaffir looked that way, too, and as he turned his head he
saw Tuan Jorgenson, in the midst of twenty spear-blades that could in an
instant have been driven into his breast, put the cigar in his mouth and
jump down the hatchway. At that moment Rajah Hassim gave Jaffir a push
toward the side and Jaffir leaped overboard.

"He was still in the water when all the world was darkened round him as
if the life of the sun had been blown out of it in a crash. A great wave
came along and washed him on shore, while pieces of wood, iron, and the
limbs of torn men were splashing round him in the water. He managed to
crawl out of the mud. Something had hit him while he was swimming and he
thought he would die. But life stirred in him. He had a message for you.
For a long time he went on crawling under the big trees on his hands
and knees, for there is no rest for a messenger till the message is
delivered. At last he found himself on the left bank of the creek.
And still he felt life stir in him. So he started to swim across, for if
you were in this world you were on the other side. While he swam he felt
his strength abandoning him. He managed to scramble on to a drifting log
and lay on it like one who is dead, till we pulled him into one of our
boats."