IV
A Traveller visiting Wajo to-day may, if he deserves the confidence ofthe common people, hear the traditional account of the last civil war,together with the legend of a chief and his sister, whose mother hadbeen a great princess suspected of sorcery and on her death-bed hadcommunicated to these two the secrets of the art of magic. The chief'ssister especially, "with the aspect of a child and the fearlessness of agreat fighter," became skilled in casting spells. They were defeated bythe son of their uncle, because--will explain the narrator simply--"Thecourage of us Wajo people is so great that magic can do nothing againstit. I fought in that war. We had them with their backs to the sea."And then he will go on to relate in an awed tone how on a certain night"when there was such a thunderstorm as has been never heard of beforeor since" a ship, resembling the ships of white men, appeared off thecoast, "as though she had sailed down from the clouds. She moved," hewill affirm, "with her sails bellying against the wind; in size she waslike an island; the lightning played between her masts which were ashigh as the summits of mountains; a star burned low through the cloudsabove her. We knew it for a star at once because no flame of man'skindling could have endured the wind and rain of that night. It was sucha night that we on the watch hardly dared look upon the sea. The heavyrain was beating down our eyelids. And when day came, the ship wasnowhere to be seen, and in the stockade where the day before there werea hundred or more at our mercy, there was no one. The chief, Hassim, wasgone, and the lady who was a princess in the country--and nobody knowswhat became of them from that day to this. Sometimes traders from ourparts talk of having heard of them here, and heard of them there, butthese are the lies of men who go afar for gain. We who live in thecountry believe that the ship sailed back into the clouds whence theLady's magic made her come. Did we not see the ship with our own eyes?And as to Rajah Hassim and his sister, Mas Immada, some men say onething and some another, but God alone knows the truth."
Such is the traditional account of Lingard's visit to the shores ofBoni. And the truth is he came and went the same night; for, when thedawn broke on a cloudy sky the brig, under reefed canvas and smotheredin sprays, was storming along to the southward on her way out of theGulf. Lingard, watching over the rapid course of his vessel, lookedahead with anxious eyes and more than once asked himself with wonder,why, after all, was he thus pressing her under all the sail she couldcarry. His hair was blown about by the wind, his mind was full of careand the indistinct shapes of many new thoughts, and under his feet, theobedient brig dashed headlong from wave to wave.
Her owner and commander did not know where he was going. That adventurerhad only a confused notion of being on the threshold of a big adventure.There was something to be done, and he felt he would have to do it. Itwas expected of him. The seas expected it; the land expected it. Menalso. The story of war and of suffering; Jaffir's display of fidelity,the sight of Hassim and his sister, the night, the tempest, the coastunder streams of fire--all this made one inspiring manifestation of alife calling to him distinctly for interference. But what appealed tohim most was the silent, the complete, unquestioning, and apparentlyuncurious, trust of these people. They came away from death straightinto his arms as it were, and remained in them passive as thoughthere had been no such thing as doubt or hope or desire. This amazingunconcern seemed to put him under a heavy load of obligation.
He argued to himself that had not these defeated men expected everythingfrom him they could not have been so indifferent to his action. Theirdumb quietude stirred him more than the most ardent pleading. Not aword, not a whisper, not a questioning look even! They did not ask! Itflattered him. He was also rather glad of it, because if the unconsciouspart of him was perfectly certain of its action, he, himself, did notknow what to do with those bruised and battered beings a playful fatehad delivered suddenly into his hands.
He had received the fugitives personally, had helped some over the rail;in the darkness, slashed about by lightning, he had guessed that not oneof them was unwounded, and in the midst of tottering shapes he wonderedhow on earth they had managed to reach the long-boat that had broughtthem off. He caught unceremoniously in his arms the smallest of theseshapes and carried it into the cabin, then without looking at his lightburden ran up again on deck to get the brig under way. While shoutingout orders he was dimly aware of someone hovering near his elbow. It wasHassim.
"I am not ready for war," he explained, rapidly, over his shoulder,"and to-morrow there may be no wind." Afterward for a time he forgoteverybody and everything while he conned the brig through the fewoutlying dangers. But in half an hour, and running off with the wind onthe quarter, he was quite clear of the coast and breathed freely. Itwas only then that he approached two others on that poop where he wasaccustomed in moments of difficulty to commune alone with his craft.Hassim had called his sister out of the cabin; now and then Lingardcould see them with fierce distinctness, side by side, and with twinedarms, looking toward the mysterious country that seemed at every flashto leap away farther from the brig--unscathed and fading.
The thought uppermost in Lingard's mind was: "What on earth am I goingto do with them?" And no one seemed to care what he would do. Jaffirwith eight others quartered on the main hatch, looked to each other'swounds and conversed interminably in low tones, cheerful and quiet, likewell-behaved children. Each of them had saved his kris, but Lingard hadto make a distribution of cotton cloth out of his trade-goods. Wheneverhe passed by them, they all looked after him gravely. Hassim and Immadalived in the cuddy. The chief's sister took the air only in the eveningand those two could be heard every night, invisible and murmuring in theshadows of the quarter-deck. Every Malay on board kept respectfully awayfrom them.
Lingard, on the poop, listened to the soft voices, rising and falling,in a melancholy cadence; sometimes the woman cried out as if in anger orin pain. He would stop short. The sound of a deep sigh would float upto him on the stillness of the night. Attentive stars surrounded thewandering brig and on all sides their light fell through a vast silenceupon a noiseless sea. Lingard would begin again to pace the deck,muttering to himself.
"Belarab's the man for this job. His is the only place where I can lookfor help, but I don't think I know enough to find it. I wish I had oldJorgenson here--just for ten minutes."
This Jorgenson knew things that had happened a long time ago, and livedamongst men efficient in meeting the accidents of the day, but who didnot care what would happen to-morrow and who had no time to rememberyesterday. Strictly speaking, he did not live amongst them. He onlyappeared there from time to time. He lived in the native quarter, witha native woman, in a native house standing in the middle of a plotof fenced ground where grew plantains, and furnished only with mats,cooking pots, a queer fishing net on two sticks, and a small mahoganycase with a lock and a silver plate engraved with the words "Captain H.C. Jorgenson. Barque Wild Rose."
It was like an inscription on a tomb. The Wild Rose was dead, and so wasCaptain H. C. Jorgenson, and the sextant case was all that was leftof them. Old Jorgenson, gaunt and mute, would turn up at meal times onboard any trading vessel in the Roads, and the stewards--Chinamenor mulattos--would sulkily put on an extra plate without waiting fororders. When the seamen traders foregathered noisily round a glitteringcluster of bottles and glasses on a lighted verandah, old Jorgensonwould emerge up the stairs as if from a dark sea, and, stepping up witha kind of tottering jauntiness, would help himself in the first tumblerto hand.
"I drink to you all. No--no chair."
He would stand silent over the talking group. His taciturnity was aseloquent as the repeated warning of the slave of the feast. His fleshhad gone the way of all flesh, his spirit had sunk in the turmoil of hispast, but his immense and bony frame survived as if made of iron. Hishands trembled but his eyes were steady. He was supposed to know detailsabout the end of mysterious men and of mysterious enterprises. He was anevident failure himself, but he was believed to know secrets that wouldmake the fortune of any man; yet there was als
o a general impressionthat his knowledge was not of that nature which would make it profitablefor a moderately prudent person.
This powerful skeleton, dressed in faded blue serge and without any kindof linen, existed anyhow. Sometimes, if offered the job, he piloteda home ship through the Straits of Rhio, after, however, assuring thecaptain:
"You don't want a pilot; a man could go through with his eyes shut. Butif you want me, I'll come. Ten dollars."
Then, after seeing his charge clear of the last island of the group hewould go back thirty miles in a canoe, with two old Malays who seemedto be in some way his followers. To travel thirty miles at sea underthe equatorial sun and in a cranky dug-out where once down you must notmove, is an achievement that requires the endurance of a fakir and thevirtue of a salamander. Ten dollars was cheap and generally he was indemand. When times were hard he would borrow five dollars from any ofthe adventurers with the remark:
"I can't pay you back, very soon, but the girl must eat, and if you wantto know anything, I can tell you."
It was remarkable that nobody ever smiled at that "anything." The usualthing was to say:
"Thank you, old man; when I am pushed for a bit of information I'll cometo you."
Jorgenson nodded then and would say: "Remember that unless you youngchaps are like we men who ranged about here years ago, what I could tellyou would be worse than poison."
It was from Jorgenson, who had his favourites with whom he was lesssilent, that Lingard had heard of Darat-es-Salam, the "Shore of Refuge."Jorgenson had, as he expressed it, "known the inside of that countryjust after the high old times when the white-clad Padris preached andfought all over Sumatra till the Dutch shook in their shoes." Only hedid not say "shook" and "shoes" but the above paraphrase conveys wellenough his contemptuous meaning. Lingard tried now to remember and piecetogether the practical bits of old Jorgenson's amazing tales; but allthat had remained with him was an approximate idea of the locality anda very strong but confused notion of the dangerous nature of itsapproaches. He hesitated, and the brig, answering in her movements tothe state of the man's mind, lingered on the road, seemed to hesitatealso, swinging this way and that on the days of calm.
It was just because of that hesitation that a big New York ship, loadedwith oil in cases for Japan, and passing through the Billiton passage,sighted one morning a very smart brig being hove-to right in thefair-way and a little to the east of Carimata. The lank skipper, in afrock-coat, and the big mate with heavy moustaches, judged her almosttoo pretty for a Britisher, and wondered at the man on board laying histopsail to the mast for no reason that they could see. The big ship'ssails fanned her along, flapping in the light air, and when the brig waslast seen far astern she had still her mainyard aback as if waiting forsomeone. But when, next day, a London tea-clipper passed on the sametrack, she saw no pretty brig hesitating, all white and still at theparting of the ways. All that night Lingard had talked with Hassim whilethe stars streamed from east to west like an immense river of sparksabove their heads. Immada listened, sometimes exclaiming low, sometimesholding her breath. She clapped her hands once. A faint dawn appeared.
"You shall be treated like my father in the country," Hassim was saying.A heavy dew dripped off the rigging and the darkened sails were blackon the pale azure of the sky. "You shall be the father who advises forgood--"
"I shall be a steady friend, and as a friend I want to be treated--nomore," said Lingard. "Take back your ring."
"Why do you scorn my gift?" asked Hassim, with a sad and ironic smile.
"Take it," said Lingard. "It is still mine. How can I forget that, whenfacing death, you thought of my safety? There are many dangers beforeus. We shall be often separated--to work better for the same end. Ifever you and Immada need help at once and I am within reach, send me amessage with this ring and if I am alive I will not fail you." He lookedaround at the pale daybreak. "I shall talk to Belarab straight--like wewhites do. I have never seen him, but I am a strong man. Belarab musthelp us to reconquer your country and when our end is attained I won'tlet him eat you up."
Hassim took the ring and inclined his head.
"It's time for us to be moving," said Lingard. He felt a slight tug athis sleeve. He looked back and caught Immada in the act of pressing herforehead to the grey flannel. "Don't, child!" he said, softly.
The sun rose above the faint blue line of the Shore of Refuge.
The hesitation was over. The man and the vessel, working in accord, hadfound their way to the faint blue shore. Before the sun had descendedhalf-way to its rest the brig was anchored within a gunshot of the slimymangroves, in a place where for a hundred years or more no white man'svessel had been entrusted to the hold of the bottom. The adventurersof two centuries ago had no doubt known of that anchorage for they werevery ignorant and incomparably audacious. If it is true, as some say,that the spirits of the dead haunt the places where the living havesinned and toiled, then they might have seen a white long-boat, pulledby eight oars and steered by a man sunburnt and bearded, a cabbage-leafhat on head, and pistols in his belt, skirting the black mud, full oftwisted roots, in search of a likely opening.
Creek after creek was passed and the boat crept on slowly like amonstrous water-spider with a big body and eight slender legs. . . . Didyou follow with your ghostly eyes the quest of this obscure adventurerof yesterday, you shades of forgotten adventurers who, in leatherjerkins and sweating under steel helmets, attacked with long rapiers thepalisades of the strange heathen, or, musket on shoulder and match incock, guarded timber blockhouses built upon the banks of rivers thatcommand good trade? You, who, wearied with the toil of fighting, sleptwrapped in frieze mantles on the sand of quiet beaches, dreaming offabulous diamonds and of a far-off home.
"Here's an opening," said Lingard to Hassim, who sat at his side, justas the sun was setting away to his left. "Here's an opening big enoughfor a ship. It's the entrance we are looking for, I believe. We shallpull all night up this creek if necessary and it's the very devil if wedon't come upon Belarab's lair before daylight."
He shoved the tiller hard over and the boat, swerving sharply, vanishedfrom the coast.
And perhaps the ghosts of old adventurers nodded wisely their ghostlyheads and exchanged the ghost of a wistful smile.