PART I. THE MAN AND THE BRIG

Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger

THE RESCUE

A ROMANCE OF THE SHALLOWS

By Joseph Conrad

'Allas!' quod she, 'that ever this sholde happe! For wende I never,

by possibilitee, That swich a monstre or merveille mighte be!'--THE

FRANKELEYN'S TALE

TO FREDERIC COURTLAND PENFIELD LAST AMBASSADOR OF THE UNITED STATES OF

AMERICA TO THE LATE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE, THIS OLD TIME TALE IS GRATEFULLY

INSCRIBED IN MEMORY OF THE RESCUE OF CERTAIN DISTRESSED TRAVELLERS

EFFECTED BY HIM IN THE WORLD'S GREAT STORM OF THE YEAR 1914

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Of the three long novels of mine which suffered an interruption, “The

Rescue” was the one that had to wait the longest for the good pleasure

of the Fates. I am betraying no secret when I state here that it had

to wait precisely for twenty years. I laid it aside at the end of the

summer of 1898 and it was about the end of the summer of 1918 that I

took it up again with the firm determination to see the end of it and

helped by the sudden feeling that I might be equal to the task.

This does not mean that I turned to it with elation. I was well aware

and perhaps even too much aware of the dangers of such an adventure.

The amazingly sympathetic kindness which men of various temperaments,

diverse views and different literary tastes have been for years

displaying towards my work has done much for me, has done all--except

giving me that over-weening self-confidence which may assist an

adventurer sometimes but in the long run ends by leading him to the

gallows.

As the characteristic I want most to impress upon these short Author's

Notes prepared for my first Collected Edition is that of absolute

frankness, I hasten to declare that I founded my hopes not on my

supposed merits but on the continued goodwill of my readers. I may say

at once that my hopes have been justified out of all proportion to my

deserts. I met with the most considerate, most delicately expressed

criticism free from all antagonism and in its conclusions showing

an insight which in itself could not fail to move me deeply, but was

associated also with enough commendation to make me feel rich beyond the

dreams of avarice--I mean an artist's avarice which seeks its treasure

in the hearts of men and women.

No! Whatever the preliminary anxieties might have been this adventure

was not to end in sorrow. Once more Fortune favoured audacity; and yet

I have never forgotten the jocular translation of _Audaces fortuna juvat_

offered to me by my tutor when I was a small boy: “The Audacious get

bitten.” However he took care to mention that there were various kinds

of audacity. Oh, there are, there are! . . . There is, for instance, the

kind of audacity almost indistinguishable from impudence. . . . I

must believe that in this case I have not been impudent for I am not

conscious of having been bitten.

The truth is that when “The Rescue” was laid aside it was not laid aside

in despair. Several reasons contributed to this abandonment and, no

doubt, the first of them was the growing sense of general difficulty in

the handling of the subject. The contents and the course of the story I

had clearly in my mind. But as to the way of presenting the facts, and

perhaps in a certain measure as to the nature of the facts themselves,

I had many doubts. I mean the telling, representative facts, helpful

to carry on the idea, and, at the same time, of such a nature as not to

demand an elaborate creation of the atmosphere to the detriment of

the action. I did not see how I could avoid becoming wearisome in the

presentation of detail and in the pursuit of clearness. I saw the action

plainly enough. What I had lost for the moment was the sense of the

proper formula of expression, the only formula that would suit. This,

of course, weakened my confidence in the intrinsic worth and in the

possible interest of the story--that is in my invention. But I suspect

that all the trouble was, in reality, the doubt of my prose, the doubt

of its adequacy, of its power to master both the colours and the shades.

It is difficult to describe, exactly as I remember it, the complex state

of my feelings; but those of my readers who take an interest in artistic

perplexities will understand me best when I point out that I dropped

“The Rescue” not to give myself up to idleness, regrets, or dreaming,

but to begin “The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'” and to go on with it

without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of

“The Rescue” with any page of “The Nigger” will furnish an ocular

demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis

of my writing life. For it was a crisis undoubtedly. The laying aside of

a work so far advanced was a very awful decision to take. It was

wrung from me by a sudden conviction that _there_ only was the road of

salvation, the clear way out for an uneasy conscience. The finishing

of “The Nigger” brought to my troubled mind the comforting sense of

an accomplished task, and the first consciousness of a certain sort

of mastery which could accomplish something with the aid of propitious

stars. Why I did not return to “The Rescue” at once then, was not for

the reason that I had grown afraid of it. Being able now to assume a

firm attitude I said to myself deliberately: “That thing can wait.” At

the same time I was just as certain in my mind that “Youth,” a story

which I had then, so to speak, on the tip of my pen, could _not_ wait.

Neither could “Heart of Darkness” be put off; for the practical reason

that Mr. Wm. Blackwood having requested me to write something for the

No. M of his magazine I had to stir up at once the subject of that tale

which had been long lying quiescent in my mind, because, obviously, the

venerable Maga at her patriarchal age of 1000 numbers could not be kept

waiting. Then “Lord Jim,” with about seventeen pages already written at

odd times, put in his claim which was irresistible. Thus every stroke

of the pen was taking me further away from the abandoned “Rescue,” not

without some compunction on my part but with a gradually diminishing

resistance; till at last I let myself go as if recognising a superior

influence against which it was useless to contend.

The years passed and the pages grew in number, and the long reveries of

which they were the outcome stretched wide between me and the deserted

“Rescue” like the smooth hazy spaces of a dreamy sea. Yet I never

actually lost sight of that dark speck in the misty distance. It

had grown very small but it asserted itself with the appeal of old

associations. It seemed to me that it would be a base thing for me to

slip out of the world leaving it out there all alone, waiting for its

fate--that would never come?

Sentiment, pure sentiment as you see, prompted me in the last instance

to face the pains and hazards of that return. As I moved slowly towards

the abandoned body of the tale it loomed up big amongst the glittering

shallows of the coast, lonely but not forbidding. There was nothing

about it of a grim derelict. It had an air of expectant life. One after

another I made out the familiar faces watching my approach with faint

smiles of amused recognition. They had known well enough that I was

bound to come back to them. But their eyes met mine seriously as was

only to be expected since I, myself, felt very serious as I stood

amongst them again after years of absence. At once, without wasting

words, we went to work together on our renewed life; and every moment

I felt more strongly that They Who had Waited bore no grudge to the man

who however widely he may have wandered at times had played truant only

once in his life.

1920. J. C.

CONTENTS

PART I. THE MAN AND THE BRIG

PART II. THE SHORE OF REFUGE

PART III. THE CAPTURE

PART IV. THE GIFT OF THE SHALLOWS

PART V. THE POINT OF HONOUR AND THE POINT OF PASSION

PART VI. THE CLAIM OF LIFE AND THE TOLL OF DEATH

PART I. THE MAN AND THE BRIG

The shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the thousand

islands, big and little, which make up the Malay Archipelago has been

for centuries the scene of adventurous undertakings. The vices and the

virtues of four nations have been displayed in the conquest of that

region that even to this day has not been robbed of all the mystery

and romance of its past--and the race of men who had fought against

the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch and the English, has not been

changed by the unavoidable defeat. They have kept to this day their

love of liberty, their fanatical devotion to their chiefs, their

blind fidelity in friendship and hate--all their lawful and unlawful

instincts. Their country of land and water--for the sea was as much

their country as the earth of their islands--has fallen a prey to the

western race--the reward of superior strength if not of superior virtue.

To-morrow the advancing civilization will obliterate the marks of a long

struggle in the accomplishment of its inevitable victory.

The adventurers who began that struggle have left no descendants. The

ideas of the world changed too quickly for that. But even far into the

present century they have had successors. Almost in our own day we have

seen one of them--a true adventurer in his devotion to his impulse--a

man of high mind and of pure heart, lay the foundation of a flourishing

state on the ideas of pity and justice. He recognized chivalrously the

claims of the conquered; he was a disinterested adventurer, and the

reward of his noble instincts is in the veneration with which a strange

and faithful race cherish his memory.

Misunderstood and traduced in life, the glory of his achievement has

vindicated the purity of his motives. He belongs to history. But there

were others--obscure adventurers who had not his advantages of birth,

position, and intelligence; who had only his sympathy with the people of

forests and sea he understood and loved so well. They can not be said

to be forgotten since they have not been known at all. They were lost

in the common crowd of seamen-traders of the Archipelago, and if

they emerged from their obscurity it was only to be condemned as

law-breakers. Their lives were thrown away for a cause that had no right

to exist in the face of an irresistible and orderly progress--their

thoughtless lives guided by a simple feeling.

But the wasted lives, for the few who know, have tinged with romance the

region of shallow waters and forest-clad islands, that lies far east,

and still mysterious between the deep waters of two oceans.

I

Out of the level blue of a shallow sea Carimata raises a lofty

barrenness of grey and yellow tints, the drab eminence of its arid

heights. Separated by a narrow strip of water, Suroeton, to the west,

shows a curved and ridged outline resembling the backbone of a stooping

giant. And to the eastward a troop of insignificant islets stand

effaced, indistinct, with vague features that seem to melt into the

gathering shadows. The night following from the eastward the retreat of

the setting sun advanced slowly, swallowing the land and the sea; the

land broken, tormented and abrupt; the sea smooth and inviting with its

easy polish of continuous surface to wanderings facile and endless.

There was no wind, and a small brig that had lain all the afternoon a

few miles to the northward and westward of Carimata had hardly altered

its position half a mile during all these hours. The calm was absolute,

a dead, flat calm, the stillness of a dead sea and of a dead atmosphere.

As far as the eye could reach there was nothing but an impressive

immobility. Nothing moved on earth, on the waters, and above them in the

unbroken lustre of the sky. On the unruffled surface of the straits the

brig floated tranquil and upright as if bolted solidly, keel to keel,

with its own image reflected in the unframed and immense mirror of

the sea. To the south and east the double islands watched silently the

double ship that seemed fixed amongst them forever, a hopeless captive

of the calm, a helpless prisoner of the shallow sea.

Since midday, when the light and capricious airs of these seas had

abandoned the little brig to its lingering fate, her head had swung

slowly to the westward and the end of her slender and polished jib-boom,

projecting boldly beyond the graceful curve of the bow, pointed at the

setting sun, like a spear poised high in the hand of an enemy. Right

aft by the wheel the Malay quartermaster stood with his bare, brown feet

firmly planted on the wheel-grating, and holding the spokes at right

angles, in a solid grasp, as though the ship had been running before a

gale. He stood there perfectly motionless, as if petrified but ready

to tend the helm as soon as fate would permit the brig to gather way

through the oily sea.

The only other human being then visible on the brig's deck was the

person in charge: a white man of low stature, thick-set, with shaven

cheeks, a grizzled moustache, and a face tinted a scarlet hue by the

burning suns and by the sharp salt breezes of the seas. He had thrown

off his light jacket, and clad only in white trousers and a thin cotton

singlet, with his stout arms crossed on his breast--upon which they

showed like two thick lumps of raw flesh--he prowled about from side to

side of the half-poop. On his bare feet he wore a pair of straw sandals,

and his head was protected by an enormous pith hat--once white but now

very dirty--which gave to the whole man the aspect of a phenomenal

and animated mushroom. At times he would interrupt his uneasy shuffle

athwart the break of the poop, and stand motionless with a vague gaze

fixed on the image of the brig in the calm water. He could also see down

there his own head and shoulders leaning out over the rail and he would

stand long, as if interested by his own features, and mutter vague

curses on the calm which lay upon the ship like an immovable burden,

immense and burning.

At last, he sighed profoundly, nerved himself for a great effort, and

making a start away from the rail managed to drag his slippers as far

as the binnacle. There he stopped again, exhausted and bored. From under

the lifted glass panes of the cabin skylight near by came the feeble

chirp of a canary, which appeared to give him some satisfaction. He

listened, smiled faintly muttered “Dicky, poor Dick--” and fell back

into the immense silence of the world. His eyes closed, his head hung

low over the hot brass of the binnacle top. Suddenly he stood up with a

jerk and said sharply in a hoarse voice:

“You've been sleeping--you. Shift the helm. She has got stern way on

her.”

The Malay, without the least flinch of feature or pose, as if he had

been an inanimate object called suddenly into life by some hidden magic

of the words, spun the wheel rapidly, letting the spokes pass through

his hands; and when the motion had stopped with a grinding noise, caught

hold again and held on grimly. After a while, however, he turned his

head slowly over his shoulder, glanced at the sea, and said in an

obstinate tone:

“No catch wind--no get way.”

“No catch--no catch--that's all you know about it,” growled the

red-faced seaman. “By and by catch Ali--” he went on with sudden

condescension. “By and by catch, and then the helm will be the right

way. See?”

The stolid seacannie appeared to see, and for that matter to hear,

nothing. The white man looked at the impassive Malay with disgust,

then glanced around the horizon--then again at the helmsman and ordered

curtly:

“Shift the helm back again. Don't you feel the air from aft? You are

like a dummy standing there.”

The Malay revolved the spokes again with disdainful obedience, and the

red-faced man was moving forward grunting to himself, when through the

open skylight the hail “On deck there!” arrested him short, attentive,

and with a sudden change to amiability in the expression of his face.

“Yes, sir,” he said, bending his ear toward the opening. “What's the

matter up there?” asked a deep voice from below.

The red-faced man in a tone of surprise said:

“Sir?”

“I hear that rudder grinding hard up and hard down. What are you up to,

Shaw? Any wind?”

“Ye-es,” drawled Shaw, putting his head down the skylight and speaking

into the gloom of the cabin. “I thought there was a light air, and--but

it's gone now. Not a breath anywhere under the heavens.”

He withdrew his head and waited a while by the skylight, but heard

only the chirping of the indefatigable canary, a feeble twittering that

seemed to ooze through the drooping red blossoms of geraniums growing in

flower-pots under the glass panes. He strolled away a step or two before

the voice from down below called hurriedly:

“Hey, Shaw? Are you there?”

“Yes, Captain Lingard,” he answered, stepping back. “Have we drifted

anything this afternoon?”

“Not an inch, sir, not an inch. We might as well have been at anchor.”

“It's always so,” said the invisible Lingard. His voice changed its tone

as he moved in the cabin, and directly afterward burst out with a

clear intonation while his head appeared above the slide of the cabin

entrance:

“Always so! The currents don't begin till it's dark, when a man can't

see against what confounded thing he is being drifted, and then the

breeze will come. Dead on end, too, I don't doubt.”

Shaw moved his shoulders slightly. The Malay at the wheel, after making

a dive to see the time by the cabin clock through the skylight, rang a

double stroke on the small bell aft. Directly forward, on the main deck,

a shrill whistle arose long drawn, modulated, dying away softly. The

master of the brig stepped out of the companion upon the deck of his

vessel, glanced aloft at the yards laid dead square; then, from the

door-step, took a long, lingering look round the horizon.

He was about thirty-five, erect and supple. He moved freely, more like

a man accustomed to stride over plains and hills, than like one who from

his earliest youth had been used to counteract by sudden swayings of his

body the rise and roll of cramped decks of small craft, tossed by the

caprice of angry or playful seas.

He wore a grey flannel shirt, and his white trousers were held by a blue

silk scarf wound tightly round his narrow waist. He had come up only for

a moment, but finding the poop shaded by the main-topsail he remained

on deck bareheaded. The light chestnut hair curled close about his

well-shaped head, and the clipped beard glinted vividly when he passed

across a narrow strip of sunlight, as if every hair in it had been

a wavy and attenuated gold wire. His mouth was lost in the heavy

moustache; his nose was straight, short, slightly blunted at the end;

a broad band of deeper red stretched under the eyes, clung to the cheek

bones. The eyes gave the face its remarkable expression. The eyebrows,

darker than the hair, pencilled a straight line below the wide and

unwrinkled brow much whiter than the sunburnt face. The eyes, as if

glowing with the light of a hidden fire, had a red glint in their

greyness that gave a scrutinizing ardour to the steadiness of their

gaze.

That man, once so well known, and now so completely forgotten amongst

the charming and heartless shores of the shallow sea, had amongst his

fellows the nickname of “Red-Eyed Tom.” He was proud of his luck but not

of his good sense. He was proud of his brig, of the speed of his craft,

which was reckoned the swiftest country vessel in those seas, and proud

of what she represented.

She represented a run of luck on the Victorian goldfields; his sagacious

moderation; long days of planning, of loving care in building; the

great joy of his youth, the incomparable freedom of the seas; a perfect

because a wandering home; his independence, his love--and his anxiety.

He had often heard men say that Tom Lingard cared for nothing on earth

but for his brig--and in his thoughts he would smilingly correct the

statement by adding that he cared for nothing _living_ but the brig.

To him she was as full of life as the great world. He felt her live in

every motion, in every roll, in every sway of her tapering masts,

of those masts whose painted trucks move forever, to a seaman's

eye, against the clouds or against the stars. To him she was always

precious--like old love; always desirable--like a strange woman; always

tender--like a mother; always faithful--like the favourite daughter of a

man's heart.

For hours he would stand elbow on rail, his head in his hand and

listen--and listen in dreamy stillness to the cajoling and promising

whisper of the sea, that slipped past in vanishing bubbles along the

smooth black-painted sides of his craft. What passed in such moments

of thoughtful solitude through the mind of that child of generations of

fishermen from the coast of Devon, who like most of his class was

dead to the subtle voices, and blind to the mysterious aspects of the

world--the man ready for the obvious, no matter how startling, how

terrible or menacing, yet defenceless as a child before the shadowy

impulses of his own heart; what could have been the thoughts of such a

man, when once surrendered to a dreamy mood, it is difficult to say.

No doubt he, like most of us, would be uplifted at times by the awakened

lyrism of his heart into regions charming, empty, and dangerous. But

also, like most of us, he was unaware of his barren journeys above the

interesting cares of this earth. Yet from these, no doubt absurd and

wasted moments, there remained on the man's daily life a tinge as that

of a glowing and serene half-light. It softened the outlines of his

rugged nature; and these moments kept close the bond between him and his

brig.

He was aware that his little vessel could give him something not to be

had from anybody or anything in the world; something specially his own.

The dependence of that solid man of bone and muscle on that obedient

thing of wood and iron, acquired from that feeling the mysterious

dignity of love. She--the craft--had all the qualities of a living

thing: speed, obedience, trustworthiness, endurance, beauty, capacity

to do and to suffer--all but life. He--the man--was the inspirer of that

thing that to him seemed the most perfect of its kind. His will was

its will, his thought was its impulse, his breath was the breath of

its existence. He felt all this confusedly, without ever shaping this

feeling into the soundless formulas of thought. To him she was unique

and dear, this brig of three hundred and fourteen tons register--a

kingdom!

And now, bareheaded and burly, he walked the deck of his kingdom with a

regular stride. He stepped out from the hip, swinging his arms with

the free motion of a man starting out for a fifteen-mile walk into open

country; yet at every twelfth stride he had to turn about sharply and

pace back the distance to the taffrail.

Shaw, with his hands stuck in his waistband, had hooked himself with

both elbows to the rail, and gazed apparently at the deck between his

feet. In reality he was contemplating a little house with a tiny front

garden, lost in a maze of riverside streets in the east end of London.

The circumstance that he had not, as yet, been able to make the

acquaintance of his son--now aged eighteen months--worried him slightly,

and was the cause of that flight of his fancy into the murky atmosphere

of his home. But it was a placid flight followed by a quick return.

In less than two minutes he was back in the brig. “All there,” as his

saying was. He was proud of being always “all there.”

He was abrupt in manner and grumpy in speech with the seamen. To his

successive captains, he was outwardly as deferential as he knew how, and

as a rule inwardly hostile--so very few seemed to him of the “all there”

kind. Of Lingard, with whom he had only been a short time--having been

picked up in Madras Roads out of a home ship, which he had to leave

after a thumping row with the master--he generally approved, although he

recognized with regret that this man, like most others, had some absurd

fads; he defined them as “bottom-upwards notions.”

He was a man--as there were many--of no particular value to anybody but

himself, and of no account but as the chief mate of the brig, and the

only white man on board of her besides the captain. He felt himself

immeasurably superior to the Malay seamen whom he had to handle, and

treated them with lofty toleration, notwithstanding his opinion that at

a pinch those chaps would be found emphatically “not there.”

As soon as his mind came back from his home leave, he detached himself

from the rail and, walking forward, stood by the break of the poop,

looking along the port side of the main deck. Lingard on his own side

stopped in his walk and also gazed absentmindedly before him. In the

waist of the brig, in the narrow spars that were lashed on each side of

the hatchway, he could see a group of men squatting in a circle around a

wooden tray piled up with rice, which stood on the just swept deck.

The dark-faced, soft-eyed silent men, squatting on their hams, fed

decorously with an earnestness that did not exclude reserve.

Of the lot, only one or two wore sarongs, the others having

submitted--at least at sea--to the indignity of European trousers. Only

two sat on the spars. One, a man with a childlike, light yellow face,

smiling with fatuous imbecility under the wisps of straight coarse hair

dyed a mahogany tint, was the tindal of the crew--a kind of boatswain's

or serang's mate. The other, sitting beside him on the booms, was a

man nearly black, not much bigger than a large ape, and wearing on

his wrinkled face that look of comical truculence which is often

characteristic of men from the southwestern coast of Sumatra.

This was the kassab or store-keeper, the holder of a position of dignity

and ease. The kassab was the only one of the crew taking their evening

meal who noticed the presence on deck of their commander. He muttered

something to the tindal who directly cocked his old hat on one

side, which senseless action invested him with an altogether foolish

appearance. The others heard, but went on somnolently feeding with

spidery movements of their lean arms.

The sun was no more than a degree or so above the horizon, and from the

heated surface of the waters a slight low mist began to rise; a mist

thin, invisible to the human eye; yet strong enough to change the sun

into a mere glowing red disc, a disc vertical and hot, rolling down to

the edge of the horizontal and cold-looking disc of the shining sea.

Then the edges touched and the circular expanse of water took on

suddenly a tint, sombre, like a frown; deep, like the brooding

meditation of evil.

The falling sun seemed to be arrested for a moment in his descent by the

sleeping waters, while from it, to the motionless brig, shot out on

the polished and dark surface of the sea a track of light, straight and

shining, resplendent and direct; a path of gold and crimson and purple,

a path that seemed to lead dazzling and terrible from the earth straight

into heaven through the portals of a glorious death. It faded slowly.

The sea vanquished the light. At last only a vestige of the sun

remained, far off, like a red spark floating on the water. It lingered,

and all at once--without warning--went out as if extinguished by a

treacherous hand.

“Gone,” cried Lingard, who had watched intently yet missed the last

moment. “Gone! Look at the cabin clock, Shaw!”

“Nearly right, I think, sir. Three minutes past six.”

The helmsman struck four bells sharply. Another barefooted seacannie

glided on the far side of the poop to relieve the wheel, and the serang

of the brig came up the ladder to take charge of the deck from Shaw. He

came up to the compass, and stood waiting silently.

“The course is south by east when you get the wind, serang,” said Shaw,

distinctly.

“Sou' by eas',” repeated the elderly Malay with grave earnestness.

“Let me know when she begins to steer,” added Lingard.

“Ya, Tuan,” answered the man, glancing rapidly at the sky. “Wind

coming,” he muttered.

“I think so, too,” whispered Lingard as if to himself.

The shadows were gathering rapidly round the brig. A mulatto put his

head out of the companion and called out:

“Ready, sir.”

“Let's get a mouthful of something to eat, Shaw,” said Lingard. “I say,

just take a look around before coming below. It will be dark when we

come up again.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Shaw, taking up a long glass and putting it to

his eyes. “Blessed thing,” he went on in snatches while he worked the

tubes in and out, “I can't--never somehow--Ah! I've got it right at

last!”

He revolved slowly on his heels, keeping the end of the tube on the

sky-line. Then he shut the instrument with a click, and said decisively:

“Nothing in sight, sir.”

He followed his captain down below rubbing his hands cheerfully.

For a good while there was no sound on the poop of the brig. Then the

seacannie at the wheel spoke dreamily:

“Did the malim say there was no one on the sea?”

“Yes,” grunted the serang without looking at the man behind him.

“Between the islands there was a boat,” pronounced the man very softly.

The serang, his hands behind his back, his feet slightly apart, stood

very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand. His face, now

hardly visible, was as inexpressive as the door of a safe.

“Now, listen to me,” insisted the helmsman in a gentle tone.

The man in authority did not budge a hair's breadth. The seacannie bent

down a little from the height of the wheel grating.

“I saw a boat,” he murmured with something of the tender obstinacy of

a lover begging for a favour. “I saw a boat, O Haji Wasub! Ya! Haji

Wasub!”

The serang had been twice a pilgrim, and was not insensible to the sound

of his rightful title. There was a grim smile on his face.

“You saw a floating tree, O Sali,” he said, ironically.

“I am Sali, and my eyes are better than the bewitched brass thing that

pulls out to a great length,” said the pertinacious helmsman. “There was

a boat, just clear of the easternmost island. There was a boat, and

they in her could see the ship on the light of the west--unless they are

blind men lost on the sea. I have seen her. Have you seen her, too, O

Haji Wasub?”

“Am I a fat white man?” snapped the serang. “I was a man of the sea

before you were born, O Sali! The order is to keep silence and mind the

rudder, lest evil befall the ship.”

After these words he resumed his rigid aloofness. He stood, his legs

slightly apart, very stiff and straight, a little on one side of the

compass stand. His eyes travelled incessantly from the illuminated card

to the shadowy sails of the brig and back again, while his body was

motionless as if made of wood and built into the ship's frame. Thus,

with a forced and tense watchfulness, Haji Wasub, serang of the brig

Lightning, kept the captain's watch unwearied and wakeful, a slave to

duty.

In half an hour after sunset the darkness had taken complete possession

of earth and heavens. The islands had melted into the night. And on the

smooth water of the Straits, the little brig lying so still, seemed

to sleep profoundly, wrapped up in a scented mantle of star light and

silence.

II

It was half-past eight o'clock before Lingard came on deck again.

Shaw--now with a coat on--trotted up and down the poop leaving behind

him a smell of tobacco smoke. An irregularly glowing spark seemed to run

by itself in the darkness before the rounded form of his head. Above the

masts of the brig the dome of the clear heaven was full of lights that

flickered, as if some mighty breathings high up there had been swaying

about the flame of the stars. There was no sound along the brig's decks,

and the heavy shadows that lay on it had the aspect, in that silence,

of secret places concealing crouching forms that waited in perfect

stillness for some decisive event. Lingard struck a match to light his

cheroot, and his powerful face with narrowed eyes stood out for a moment

in the night and vanished suddenly. Then two shadowy forms and two red

sparks moved backward and forward on the poop. A larger, but a paler

and oval patch of light from the compass lamps lay on the brasses of

the wheel and on the breast of the Malay standing by the helm. Lingard's

voice, as if unable altogether to master the enormous silence of the

sea, sounded muffled, very calm--without the usual deep ring in it.

“Not much change, Shaw,” he said.

“No, sir, not much. I can just see the island--the big one--still in

the same place. It strikes me, sir, that, for calms, this here sea is a

devil of locality.”

He cut “locality” in two with an emphatic pause. It was a good word. He

was pleased with himself for thinking of it. He went on again:

“Now--since noon, this big island--”

“Carimata, Shaw,” interrupted Lingard.

“Aye, sir; Carimata--I mean. I must say--being a stranger hereabouts--I

haven't got the run of those--”

He was going to say “names” but checked himself and said,

“appellations,” instead, sounding every syllable lovingly.

“Having for these last fifteen years,” he continued, “sailed regularly

from London in East-Indiamen, I am more at home over there--in the Bay.”

He pointed into the night toward the northwest and stared as if he could

see from where he stood that Bay of Bengal where--as he affirmed--he

would be so much more at home.

“You'll soon get used--” muttered Lingard, swinging in his rapid walk

past his mate. Then he turned round, came back, and asked sharply.

“You said there was nothing afloat in sight before dark? Hey?”

“Not that I could see, sir. When I took the deck again at eight, I asked

that serang whether there was anything about; and I understood him to

say there was no more as when I went below at six. This is a lonely sea

at times--ain't it, sir? Now, one would think at this time of the year

the homeward-bounders from China would be pretty thick here.”

“Yes,” said Lingard, “we have met very few ships since we left Pedra

Branca over the stern. Yes; it has been a lonely sea. But for all that,

Shaw, this sea, if lonely, is not blind. Every island in it is an eye.

And now, since our squadron has left for the China waters--”

He did not finish his sentence. Shaw put his hands in his pockets, and

propped his back against the sky-light, comfortably.

“They say there is going to be a war with China,” he said in a gossiping

tone, “and the French are going along with us as they did in the Crimea

five years ago. It seems to me we're getting mighty good friends with

the French. I've not much of an opinion about that. What do you think,

Captain Lingard?”

“I have met their men-of-war in the Pacific,” said Lingard, slowly. “The

ships were fine and the fellows in them were civil enough to me--and

very curious about my business,” he added with a laugh. “However, I

wasn't there to make war on them. I had a rotten old cutter then, for

trade, Shaw,” he went on with animation.

“Had you, sir?” said Shaw without any enthusiasm. “Now give me a big

ship--a ship, I say, that one may--”

“And later on, some years ago,” interrupted Lingard, “I chummed with

a French skipper in Ampanam--being the only two white men in the whole

place. He was a good fellow, and free with his red wine. His English

was difficult to understand, but he could sing songs in his own language

about ah-moor--Ah-moor means love, in French--Shaw.”

“So it does, sir--so it does. When I was second mate of a Sunderland

barque, in forty-one, in the Mediterranean, I could pay out their lingo

as easy as you would a five-inch warp over a ship's side--”

“Yes, he was a proper man,” pursued Lingard, meditatively, as if for

himself only. “You could not find a better fellow for company ashore. He

had an affair with a Bali girl, who one evening threw a red blossom at

him from within a doorway, as we were going together to pay our respects

to the Rajah's nephew. He was a good-looking Frenchman, he was--but the

girl belonged to the Rajah's nephew, and it was a serious matter. The

old Rajah got angry and said the girl must die. I don't think the nephew

cared particularly to have her krissed; but the old fellow made a great

fuss and sent one of his own chief men to see the thing done--and the

girl had enemies--her own relations approved! We could do nothing. Mind,

Shaw, there was absolutely nothing else between them but that unlucky

flower which the Frenchman pinned to his coat--and afterward, when the

girl was dead, wore under his shirt, hung round his neck in a small box.

I suppose he had nothing else to put it into.”

“Would those savages kill a woman for that?” asked Shaw, incredulously.

“Aye! They are pretty moral there. That was the first time in my life

I nearly went to war on my own account, Shaw. We couldn't talk those

fellows over. We couldn't bribe them, though the Frenchman offered the

best he had, and I was ready to back him to the last dollar, to the last

rag of cotton, Shaw! No use--they were that blamed respectable. So, says

the Frenchman to me: 'My friend, if they won't take our gunpowder for a

gift let us burn it to give them lead.' I was armed as you see now;

six eight-pounders on the main deck and a long eighteen on the

forecastle--and I wanted to try 'em. You may believe me! However, the

Frenchman had nothing but a few old muskets; and the beggars got to

windward of us by fair words, till one morning a boat's crew from the

Frenchman's ship found the girl lying dead on the beach. That put an end

to our plans. She was out of her trouble anyhow, and no reasonable man

will fight for a dead woman. I was never vengeful, Shaw, and--after

all--she didn't throw that flower at me. But it broke the Frenchman up

altogether. He began to mope, did no business, and shortly afterward

sailed away. I cleared a good many pence out of that trip, I remember.”

With these words he seemed to come to the end of his memories of that

trip. Shaw stifled a yawn.

“Women are the cause of a lot of trouble,” he said, dispassionately.

“In the Morayshire, I remember, we had once a passenger--an old

gentleman--who was telling us a yarn about them old-time Greeks fighting

for ten years about some woman. The Turks kidnapped her, or something.

Anyway, they fought in Turkey; which I may well believe. Them Greeks and

Turks were always fighting. My father was master's mate on board one of

the three-deckers at the battle of Navarino--and that was when we went

to help those Greeks. But this affair about a woman was long before that

time.”

“I should think so,” muttered Lingard, hanging over the rail, and

watching the fleeting gleams that passed deep down in the water, along

the ship's bottom.

“Yes. Times are changed. They were unenlightened in those old days. My

grandfather was a preacher and, though my father served in the navy, I

don't hold with war. Sinful the old gentleman called it--and I think so,

too. Unless with Chinamen, or niggers, or such people as must be kept in

order and won't listen to reason; having not sense enough to know

what's good for them, when it's explained to them by their

betters--missionaries, and such like au-tho-ri-ties. But to fight ten

years. And for a woman!”

“I have read the tale in a book,” said Lingard, speaking down over the

side as if setting his words gently afloat upon the sea. “I have read

the tale. She was very beautiful.”

“That only makes it worse, sir--if anything. You may depend on it she

was no good. Those pagan times will never come back, thank God. Ten

years of murder and unrighteousness! And for a woman! Would anybody do

it now? Would you do it, sir? Would you--”

The sound of a bell struck sharply interrupted Shaw's discourse. High

aloft, some dry block sent out a screech, short and lamentable, like a

cry of pain. It pierced the quietness of the night to the very core, and

seemed to destroy the reserve which it had imposed upon the tones of the

two men, who spoke now loudly.

“Throw the cover over the binnacle,” said Lingard in his duty voice.

“The thing shines like a full moon. We mustn't show more lights than we

can help, when becalmed at night so near the land. No use in being seen

if you can't see yourself--is there? Bear that in mind, Mr. Shaw. There

may be some vagabonds prying about--”

“I thought all this was over and done for,” said Shaw, busying himself

with the cover, “since Sir Thomas Cochrane swept along the Borneo coast

with his squadron some years ago. He did a rare lot of fighting--didn't

he? We heard about it from the chaps of the sloop Diana that was

refitting in Calcutta when I was there in the Warwick Castle. They took

some king's town up a river hereabouts. The chaps were full of it.”

“Sir Thomas did good work,” answered Lingard, “but it will be a long

time before these seas are as safe as the English Channel is in peace

time. I spoke about that light more to get you in the way of things to

be attended to in these seas than for anything else. Did you notice how

few native craft we've sighted for all these days we have been drifting

about--one may say--in this sea?”

“I can't say I have attached any significance to the fact, sir.”

“It's a sign that something is up. Once set a rumour afloat in these

waters, and it will make its way from island to island, without any

breeze to drive it along.”

“Being myself a deep-water man sailing steadily out of home ports nearly

all my life,” said Shaw with great deliberation, “I cannot pretend to

see through the peculiarities of them out-of-the-way parts. But I can

keep a lookout in an ordinary way, and I have noticed that craft of any

kind seemed scarce, for the last few days: considering that we had land

aboard of us--one side or another--nearly every day.”

“You will get to know the peculiarities, as you call them, if you remain

any time with me,” remarked Lingard, negligently.

“I hope I shall give satisfaction, whether the time be long or short!”

said Shaw, accentuating the meaning of his words by the distinctness

of his utterance. “A man who has spent thirty-two years of his life on

saltwater can say no more. If being an officer of home ships for the

last fifteen years I don't understand the heathen ways of them there

savages, in matters of seamanship and duty, you will find me all there,

Captain Lingard.”

“Except, judging from what you said a little while ago--except in the

matter of fighting,” said Lingard, with a short laugh.

“Fighting! I am not aware that anybody wants to fight me. I am a

peaceable man, Captain Lingard, but when put to it, I could fight as

well as any of them flat-nosed chaps we have to make shift with, instead

of a proper crew of decent Christians. Fighting!” he went on with

unexpected pugnacity of tone, “Fighting! If anybody comes to fight me,

he will find me all there, I swear!”

“That's all right. That's all right,” said Lingard, stretching his arms

above his head and wriggling his shoulders. “My word! I do wish a breeze

would come to let us get away from here. I am rather in a hurry, Shaw.”

“Indeed, sir! Well, I never yet met a thorough seafaring man who was not

in a hurry when a con-demned spell of calm had him by the heels. When a

breeze comes . . . just listen to this, sir!”

“I hear it,” said Lingard. “Tide-rip, Shaw.”

“So I presume, sir. But what a fuss it makes. Seldom heard such a--”

On the sea, upon the furthest limits of vision, appeared an advancing

streak of seething foam, resembling a narrow white ribbon, drawn rapidly

along the level surface of the water by its two ends, which were lost in

the darkness. It reached the brig, passed under, stretching out on each

side; and on each side the water became noisy, breaking into numerous

and tiny wavelets, a mimicry of an immense agitation. Yet the vessel in

the midst of this sudden and loud disturbance remained as motionless and

steady as if she had been securely moored between the stone walls of a

safe dock. In a few moments the line of foam and ripple running swiftly

north passed at once beyond sight and earshot, leaving no trace on the

unconquerable calm.

“Now this is very curious--” began Shaw.

Lingard made a gesture to command silence. He seemed to listen yet, as

if the wash of the ripple could have had an echo which he expected to

hear. And a man's voice that was heard forward had something of the

impersonal ring of voices thrown back from hard and lofty cliffs upon

the empty distances of the sea. It spoke in Malay--faintly.

“What?” hailed Shaw. “What is it?”

Lingard put a restraining hand for a moment on his chief officer's

shoulder, and moved forward smartly. Shaw followed, puzzled. The rapid

exchange of incomprehensible words thrown backward and forward through

the shadows of the brig's main deck from his captain to the lookout man

and back again, made him feel sadly out of it, somehow.

Lingard had called out sharply--“What do you see?” The answer direct and

quick was--“I hear, Tuan. I hear oars.”

“Whereabouts?”

“The night is all around us. I hear them near.”

“Port or starboard?”

There was a short delay in answer this time. On the quarter-deck,

under the poop, bare feet shuffled. Somebody coughed. At last the voice

forward said doubtfully:

“Kanan.”

“Call the serang, Mr. Shaw,” said Lingard, calmly, “and have the hands

turned up. They are all lying about the decks. Look sharp now. There's

something near us. It's annoying to be caught like this,” he added in a

vexed tone.

He crossed over to the starboard side, and stood listening, one hand

grasping the royal back-stay, his ear turned to the sea, but he could

hear nothing from there. The quarter-deck was filled with subdued

sounds. Suddenly, a long, shrill whistle soared, reverberated loudly

amongst the flat surfaces of motionless sails, and gradually grew faint

as if the sound had escaped and gone away, running upon the water. Haji

Wasub was on deck and ready to carry out the white man's commands. Then

silence fell again on the brig, until Shaw spoke quietly.

“I am going forward now, sir, with the tindal. We're all at stations.”

“Aye, Mr. Shaw. Very good. Mind they don't board you--but I can hear

nothing. Not a sound. It can't be much.”

“The fellow has been dreaming, no doubt. I have good ears, too, and--”

He went forward and the end of his sentence was lost in an indistinct

growl. Lingard stood attentive. One by one the three seacannies off duty

appeared on the poop and busied themselves around a big chest that stood

by the side of the cabin companion. A rattle and clink of steel weapons

turned out on the deck was heard, but the men did not even whisper.

Lingard peered steadily into the night, then shook his head.

“Serang!” he called, half aloud.

The spare old man ran up the ladder so smartly that his bony feet did

not seem to touch the steps. He stood by his commander, his hands behind

his back; a figure indistinct but straight as an arrow.

“Who was looking out?” asked Lingard.

“Badroon, the Bugis,” said Wasub, in his crisp, jerky manner.

“I can hear nothing. Badroon heard the noise in his mind.”

“The night hides the boat.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Yes, Tuan. Small boat. Before sunset. By the land. Now coming

here--near. Badroon heard him.”

“Why didn't you report it, then?” asked Lingard, sharply.

“Malim spoke. He said: 'Nothing there,' while I could see. How could I

know what was in his mind or yours, Tuan?”

“Do you hear anything now?”

“No. They stopped now. Perhaps lost the ship--who knows? Perhaps

afraid--”

“Well!” muttered Lingard, moving his feet uneasily. “I believe you lie.

What kind of boat?”

“White men's boat. A four-men boat, I think. Small. Tuan, I hear him

now! There!”

He stretched his arm straight out, pointing abeam for a time, then his

arm fell slowly.

“Coming this way,” he added with decision.

From forward Shaw called out in a startled tone:

“Something on the water, sir! Broad on this bow!”

“All right!” called back Lingard.

A lump of blacker darkness floated into his view. From it came over the

water English words--deliberate, reaching him one by one; as if each had

made its own difficult way through the profound stillness of the night.

“What--ship--is--that--pray?”

“English brig,” answered Lingard, after a short moment of hesitation.

“A brig! I thought you were something bigger,” went on the voice from

the sea with a tinge of disappointment in its deliberate tone. “I am

coming alongside--if--you--please.”

“No! you don't!” called Lingard back, sharply. The leisurely drawl of

the invisible speaker seemed to him offensive, and woke up a hostile

feeling. “No! you don't if you care for your boat. Where do you spring

from? Who are you--anyhow? How many of you are there in that boat?”

After these emphatic questions there was an interval of silence. During

that time the shape of the boat became a little more distinct. She must

have carried some way on her yet, for she loomed up bigger and nearly

abreast of where Lingard stood, before the self-possessed voice was

heard again:

“I will show you.”

Then, after another short pause, the voice said, less loud but very

plain:

“Strike on the gunwale. Strike hard, John!” and suddenly a blue light

blazed out, illuminating with a livid flame a round patch in the

night. In the smoke and splutter of that ghastly halo appeared a white,

four-oared gig with five men sitting in her in a row. Their heads were

turned toward the brig with a strong expression of curiosity on their

faces, which, in this glare, brilliant and sinister, took on a deathlike

aspect and resembled the faces of interested corpses. Then the bowman

dropped into the water the light he held above his head and the

darkness, rushing back at the boat, swallowed it with a loud and angry

hiss.

“Five of us,” said the composed voice out of the night that seemed now

darker than before. “Four hands and myself. We belong to a yacht--a

British yacht--”

“Come on board!” shouted Lingard. “Why didn't you speak at once? I

thought you might have been some masquerading Dutchmen from a dodging

gunboat.”

“Do I speak like a blamed Dutchman? Pull a stroke, boys--oars! Tend bow,

John.”

The boat came alongside with a gentle knock, and a man's shape began to

climb at once up the brig's side with a kind of ponderous agility. It

poised itself for a moment on the rail to say down into the boat--“Sheer

off a little, boys,” then jumped on deck with a thud, and said to Shaw

who was coming aft: “Good evening . . . Captain, sir?”

“No. On the poop!” growled Shaw.

“Come up here. Come up,” called Lingard, impatiently.

The Malays had left their stations and stood clustered by the mainmast

in a silent group. Not a word was spoken on the brig's decks, while the

stranger made his way to the waiting captain. Lingard saw approaching

him a short, dapper man, who touched his cap and repeated his greeting

in a cool drawl:

“Good evening. . . Captain, sir?”

“Yes, I am the master--what's the matter? Adrift from your ship? Or

what?”

“Adrift? No! We left her four days ago, and have been pulling that gig

in a calm, nearly ever since. My men are done. So is the water. Lucky

thing I sighted you.”

“You sighted me!” exclaimed Lingard. “When? What time?”

“Not in the dark, you may be sure. We've been knocking about amongst

some islands to the southward, breaking our hearts tugging at the oars

in one channel, then in another--trying to get clear. We got round an

islet--a barren thing, in shape like a loaf of sugar--and I caught sight

of a vessel a long way off. I took her bearing in a hurry and we buckled

to; but another of them currents must have had hold of us, for it was a

long time before we managed to clear that islet. I steered by the

stars, and, by the Lord Harry, I began to think I had missed you

somehow--because it must have been you I saw.”

“Yes, it must have been. We had nothing in sight all day,” assented

Lingard. “Where's your vessel?” he asked, eagerly.

“Hard and fast on middling soft mud--I should think about sixty miles

from here. We are the second boat sent off for assistance. We parted

company with the other on Tuesday. She must have passed to the northward

of you to-day. The chief officer is in her with orders to make for

Singapore. I am second, and was sent off toward the Straits here on the

chance of falling in with some ship. I have a letter from the owner. Our

gentry are tired of being stuck in the mud and wish for assistance.”

“What assistance did you expect to find down here?”

“The letter will tell you that. May I ask, Captain, for a little water

for the chaps in my boat? And I myself would thank you for a drink.

We haven't had a mouthful since this afternoon. Our breaker leaked out

somehow.”

“See to it, Mr. Shaw,” said Lingard. “Come down the cabin, Mr.--”

“Carter is my name.”

“Ah! Mr. Carter. Come down, come down,” went on Lingard, leading the way

down the cabin stairs.

The steward had lighted the swinging lamp, and had put a decanter and

bottles on the table. The cuddy looked cheerful, painted white, with

gold mouldings round the panels. Opposite the curtained recess of the

stern windows there was a sideboard with a marble top, and, above it,

a looking-glass in a gilt frame. The semicircular couch round the stern

had cushions of crimson plush. The table was covered with a black

Indian tablecloth embroidered in vivid colours. Between the beams of the

poop-deck were fitted racks for muskets, the barrels of which glinted

in the light. There were twenty-four of them between the four beams. As

many sword-bayonets of an old pattern encircled the polished teakwood of

the rudder-casing with a double belt of brass and steel. All the doors

of the state-rooms had been taken off the hinges and only curtains

closed the doorways. They seemed to be made of yellow Chinese silk, and

fluttered all together, the four of them, as the two men entered the

cuddy.

Carter took in all at a glance, but his eyes were arrested by a circular

shield hung slanting above the brass hilts of the bayonets. On its

red field, in relief and brightly gilt, was represented a sheaf of

conventional thunderbolts darting down the middle between the two

capitals T. L. Lingard examined his guest curiously. He saw a young

man, but looking still more youthful, with a boyish smooth face much

sunburnt, twinkling blue eyes, fair hair and a slight moustache. He

noticed his arrested gaze.

“Ah, you're looking at that thing. It's a present from the builder of

this brig. The best man that ever launched a craft. It's supposed to be

the ship's name between my initials--flash of lightning--d'you see? The

brig's name is Lightning and mine is Lingard.”

“Very pretty thing that: shows the cabin off well,” murmured Carter,

politely.

They drank, nodding at each other, and sat down.

“Now for the letter,” said Lingard.

Carter passed it over the table and looked about, while Lingard took

the letter out of an open envelope, addressed to the commander of any

British ship in the Java Sea. The paper was thick, had an embossed

heading: “Schooner-yacht Hermit” and was dated four days before. The

message said that on a hazy night the yacht had gone ashore upon some

outlying shoals off the coast of Borneo. The land was low. The opinion

of the sailing-master was that the vessel had gone ashore at the top

of high water, spring tides. The coast was completely deserted to all

appearance. During the four days they had been stranded there they

had sighted in the distance two small native vessels, which did

not approach. The owner concluded by asking any commander of a

homeward-bound ship to report the yacht's position in Anjer on his way

through Sunda Straits--or to any British or Dutch man-of-war he might

meet. The letter ended by anticipatory thanks, the offer to pay any

expenses in connection with the sending of messages from Anjer, and the

usual polite expressions.

Folding the paper slowly in the old creases, Lingard said--“I am not

going to Anjer--nor anywhere near.”

“Any place will do, I fancy,” said Carter.

“Not the place where I am bound to,” answered Lingard, opening the

letter again and glancing at it uneasily. “He does not describe very

well the coast, and his latitude is very uncertain,” he went on. “I

am not clear in my mind where exactly you are stranded. And yet I know

every inch of that land--over there.”

Carter cleared his throat and began to talk in his slow drawl. He seemed

to dole out facts, to disclose with sparing words the features of the

coast, but every word showed the minuteness of his observation, the

clear vision of a seaman able to master quickly the aspect of a strange

land and of a strange sea. He presented, with concise lucidity, the

picture of the tangle of reefs and sandbanks, through which the yacht

had miraculously blundered in the dark before she took the ground.

“The weather seems clear enough at sea,” he observed, finally, and

stopped to drink a long draught. Lingard, bending over the table, had

been listening with eager attention. Carter went on in his curt and

deliberate manner:

“I noticed some high trees on what I take to be the mainland to the

south--and whoever has business in that bight was smart enough to

whitewash two of them: one on the point, and another farther in.

Landmarks, I guess. . . . What's the matter, Captain?”

Lingard had jumped to his feet, but Carter's exclamation caused him to

sit down again.

“Nothing, nothing . . . Tell me, how many men have you in that yacht?”

“Twenty-three, besides the gentry, the owner, his wife and a Spanish

gentleman--a friend they picked up in Manila.”

“So you were coming from Manila?”

“Aye. Bound for Batavia. The owner wishes to study the Dutch colonial

system. Wants to expose it, he says. One can't help hearing a lot when

keeping watch aft--you know how it is. Then we are going to Ceylon

to meet the mail-boat there. The owner is going home as he came out,

overland through Egypt. The yacht would return round the Cape, of

course.”

“A lady?” said Lingard. “You say there is a lady on board. Are you

armed?”

“Not much,” replied Carter, negligently. “There are a few muskets and

two sporting guns aft; that's about all--I fancy it's too much, or not

enough,” he added with a faint smile.

Lingard looked at him narrowly.

“Did you come out from home in that craft?” he asked.

“Not I! I am not one of them regular yacht hands. I came out of the

hospital in Hongkong. I've been two years on the China coast.”

He stopped, then added in an explanatory murmur:

“Opium clippers--you know. Nothing of brass buttons about me. My ship

left me behind, and I was in want of work. I took this job but I didn't

want to go home particularly. It's slow work after sailing with old

Robinson in the Ly-e-moon. That was my ship. Heard of her, Captain?”

“Yes, yes,” said Lingard, hastily. “Look here, Mr. Carter, which way was

your chief officer trying for Singapore? Through the Straits of Rhio?”

“I suppose so,” answered Carter in a slightly surprised tone; “why do

you ask?”

“Just to know . . . What is it, Mr. Shaw?”

“There's a black cloud rising to the northward, sir, and we shall get a

breeze directly,” said Shaw from the doorway.

He lingered there with his eyes fixed on the decanters.

“Will you have a glass?” said Lingard, leaving his seat. “I will go up

and have a look.”

He went on deck. Shaw approached the table and began to help himself,

handling the bottles in profound silence and with exaggerated caution,

as if he had been measuring out of fragile vessels a dose of some deadly

poison. Carter, his hands in his pockets, and leaning back, examined

him from head to foot with a cool stare. The mate of the brig raised the

glass to his lips, and glaring above the rim at the stranger, drained

the contents slowly.

“You have a fine nose for finding ships in the dark, Mister,” he said,

distinctly, putting the glass on the table with extreme gentleness.

“Eh? What's that? I sighted you just after sunset.”

“And you knew where to look, too,” said Shaw, staring hard.

“I looked to the westward where there was still some light, as any

sensible man would do,” retorted the other a little impatiently. “What

are you trying to get at?”

“And you have a ready tongue to blow about yourself--haven't you?”

“Never saw such a man in my life,” declared Carter, with a return of his

nonchalant manner. “You seem to be troubled about something.”

“I don't like boats to come sneaking up from nowhere in particular,

alongside a ship when I am in charge of the deck. I can keep a lookout

as well as any man out of home ports, but I hate to be circumvented by

muffled oars and such ungentlemanlike tricks. Yacht officer--indeed.

These seas must be full of such yachtsmen. I consider you played a mean

trick on me. I told my old man there was nothing in sight at sunset--and

no more there was. I believe you blundered upon us by chance--for all

your boasting about sunsets and bearings. Gammon! I know you came

on blindly on top of us, and with muffled oars, too. D'ye call that

decent?”

“If I did muffle the oars it was for a good reason. I wanted to slip

past a cove where some native craft were moored. That was common

prudence in such a small boat, and not armed--as I am. I saw you right

enough, but I had no intention to startle anybody. Take my word for it.”

“I wish you had gone somewhere else,” growled Shaw. “I hate to be put in

the wrong through accident and untruthfulness--there! Here's my old man

calling me--”

He left the cabin hurriedly and soon afterward Lingard came down,

and sat again facing Carter across the table. His face was grave but

resolute.

“We shall get the breeze directly,” he said.

“Then, sir,” said Carter, getting up, “if you will give me back that

letter I shall go on cruising about here to speak some other ship. I

trust you will report us wherever you are going.”

“I am going to the yacht and I shall keep the letter,” answered Lingard

with decision. “I know exactly where she is, and I must go to the rescue

of those people. It's most fortunate you've fallen in with me, Mr.

Carter. Fortunate for them and fortunate for me,” he added in a lower

tone.

“Yes,” drawled Carter, reflectively. “There may be a tidy bit of salvage

money if you should get the vessel off, but I don't think you can do

much. I had better stay out here and try to speak some gunboat--”

“You must come back to your ship with me,” said Lingard,

authoritatively. “Never mind the gunboats.”

“That wouldn't be carrying out my orders,” argued Carter. “I've got to

speak a homeward-bound ship or a man-of-war--that's plain enough. I am

not anxious to knock about for days in an open boat, but--let me fill my

fresh-water breaker, Captain, and I will be off.”

“Nonsense,” said Lingard, sharply. “You've got to come with me to show

the place and--and help. I'll take your boat in tow.”

Carter did not seem convinced. Lingard laid a heavy hand on his

shoulder.

“Look here, young fellow. I am Tom Lingard and there's not a white man

among these islands, and very few natives, that have not heard of me. My

luck brought you into my ship--and now I've got you, you must stay. You

must!”

The last “must” burst out loud and sharp like a pistol-shot. Carter

stepped back.

“Do you mean you would keep me by force?” he asked, startled.

“Force,” repeated Lingard. “It rests with you. I cannot let you speak

any vessel. Your yacht has gone ashore in a most inconvenient place--for

me; and with your boats sent off here and there, you would bring every

infernal gunboat buzzing to a spot that was as quiet and retired as the

heart of man could wish. You stranding just on that spot of the whole

coast was my bad luck. And that I could not help. You coming upon me

like this is my good luck. And that I hold!”

He dropped his clenched fist, big and muscular, in the light of the

lamp on the black cloth, amongst the glitter of glasses, with the strong

fingers closed tight upon the firm flesh of the palm. He left it there

for a moment as if showing Carter that luck he was going to hold. And he

went on:

“Do you know into what hornet's nest your stupid people have blundered?

How much d'ye think their lives are worth, just now? Not a brass

farthing if the breeze fails me for another twenty-four hours. You may

well open your eyes. It is so! And it may be too late now, while I am

arguing with you here.”

He tapped the table with his knuckles, and the glasses, waking up,

jingled a thin, plaintive finale to his speech. Carter stood leaning

against the sideboard. He was amazed by the unexpected turn of the

conversation; his jaw dropped slightly and his eyes never swerved for a

moment from Lingard's face. The silence in the cabin lasted only a few

seconds, but to Carter, who waited breathlessly, it seemed very long.

And all at once he heard in it, for the first time, the cabin clock tick

distinctly, in pulsating beats, as though a little heart of metal behind

the dial had been started into sudden palpitation.

“A gunboat!” shouted Lingard, suddenly, as if he had seen only in

that moment, by the light of some vivid flash of thought, all the

difficulties of the situation. “If you don't go back with me there will

be nothing left for you to go back to--very soon. Your gunboat won't

find a single ship's rib or a single corpse left for a landmark. That

she won't. It isn't a gunboat skipper you want. I am the man you

want. You don't know your luck when you see it, but I know mine, I

do--and--look here--”

He touched Carter's chest with his forefinger, and said with a sudden

gentleness of tone:

“I am a white man inside and out; I won't let inoffensive people--and a

woman, too--come to harm if I can help it. And if I can't help, nobody

can. You understand--nobody! There's no time for it. But I am like any

other man that is worth his salt: I won't let the end of an undertaking

go by the board while there is a chance to hold on--and it's like

this--”

His voice was persuasive--almost caressing; he had hold now of a coat

button and tugged at it slightly as he went on in a confidential manner:

“As it turns out, Mr. Carter, I would--in a manner of speaking--I would

as soon shoot you where you stand as let you go to raise an alarm

all over this sea about your confounded yacht. I have other lives to

consider--and friends--and promises--and--and myself, too. I shall keep

you,” he concluded, sharply.

Carter drew a long breath. On the deck above, the two men could

hear soft footfalls, short murmurs, indistinct words spoken near the

skylight. Shaw's voice rang out loudly in growling tones:

“Furl the royals, you tindal!”

“It's the queerest old go,” muttered Carter, looking down on to the

floor. “You are a strange man. I suppose I must believe what you

say--unless you and that fat mate of yours are a couple of escaped

lunatics that got hold of a brig by some means. Why, that chap up there

wanted to pick a quarrel with me for coming aboard, and now you threaten

to shoot me rather than let me go. Not that I care much about that; for

some time or other you would get hanged for it; and you don't look like

a man that will end that way. If what you say is only half true, I ought

to get back to the yacht as quick as ever I can. It strikes me that your

coming to them will be only a small mercy, anyhow--and I may be of some

use--But this is the queerest. . . . May I go in my boat?”

“As you like,” said Lingard. “There's a rain squall coming.”

“I am in charge and will get wet along of my chaps. Give us a good long

line, Captain.”

“It's done already,” said Lingard. “You seem a sensible sailorman and

can see that it would be useless to try and give me the slip.”

“For a man so ready to shoot, you seem very trustful,” drawled Carter.

“If I cut adrift in a squall, I stand a pretty fair chance not to see

you again.”

“You just try,” said Lingard, drily. “I have eyes in this brig, young

man, that will see your boat when you couldn't see the ship. You are of

the kind I like, but if you monkey with me I will find you--and when I

find you I will run you down as surely as I stand here.”

Carter slapped his thigh and his eyes twinkled.

“By the Lord Harry!” he cried. “If it wasn't for the men with me, I

would try for sport. You are so cocksure about the lot you can do,

Captain. You would aggravate a saint into open mutiny.”

His easy good humour had returned; but after a short burst of laughter,

he became serious.

“Never fear,” he said, “I won't slip away. If there is to be any

throat-cutting--as you seem to hint--mine will be there, too, I promise

you, and. . . .”

He stretched his arms out, glanced at them, shook them a little.

“And this pair of arms to take care of it,” he added, in his old,

careless drawl.

But the master of the brig sitting with both his elbows on the table,

his face in his hands, had fallen unexpectedly into a meditation so

concentrated and so profound that he seemed neither to hear, see, nor

breathe. The sight of that man's complete absorption in thought was to

Carter almost more surprising than any other occurrence of that night.

Had his strange host vanished suddenly from before his eyes, it could

not have made him feel more uncomfortably alone in that cabin where

the pertinacious clock kept ticking off the useless minutes of the calm

before it would, with the same steady beat, begin to measure the aimless

disturbance of the storm.

III

After waiting a moment, Carter went on deck. The sky, the sea, the

brig itself had disappeared in a darkness that had become impenetrable,

palpable, and stifling. An immense cloud had come up running over the

heavens, as if looking for the little craft, and now hung over it,

arrested. To the south there was a livid trembling gleam, faint and sad,

like a vanishing memory of destroyed starlight. To the north, as if

to prove the impossible, an incredibly blacker patch outlined on the

tremendous blackness of the sky the heart of the coming squall. The

glimmers in the water had gone out and the invisible sea all around lay

mute and still as if it had died suddenly of fright.

Carter could see nothing. He felt about him people moving; he heard

them in the darkness whispering faintly as if they had been exchanging

secrets important or infamous. The night effaced even words, and its

mystery had captured everything and every sound--had left nothing free

but the unexpected that seemed to hover about one, ready to stretch out

its stealthy hand in a touch sudden, familiar, and appalling. Even the

careless disposition of the young ex-officer of an opium-clipper was

affected by the ominous aspect of the hour. What was this vessel?

What were those people? What would happen to-morrow? To the yacht? To

himself? He felt suddenly without any additional reason but the darkness

that it was a poor show, anyhow, a dashed poor show for all hands. The

irrational conviction made him falter for a second where he stood and he

gripped the slide of the companionway hard.

Shaw's voice right close to his ear relieved and cleared his troubled

thoughts.

“Oh! it's you, Mister. Come up at last,” said the mate of the brig

slowly. “It appears we've got to give you a tow now. Of all the rum

incidents, this beats all. A boat sneaks up from nowhere and turns

out to be a long-expected friend! For you are one of them friends the

skipper was going to meet somewhere here. Ain't you now? Come! I know

more than you may think. Are we off to--you may just as well tell--off

to--h'm ha . . . you know?”

“Yes. I know. Don't you?” articulated Carter, innocently.

Shaw remained very quiet for a minute.

“Where's my skipper?” he asked at last.

“I left him down below in a kind of trance. Where's my boat?”

“Your boat is hanging astern. And my opinion is that you are as uncivil

as I've proved you to be untruthful. Egzz-actly.”

Carter stumbled toward the taffrail and in the first step he made came

full against somebody who glided away. It seemed to him that such a

night brings men to a lower level. He thought that he might have been

knocked on the head by anybody strong enough to lift a crow-bar. He felt

strangely irritated. He said loudly, aiming his words at Shaw whom he

supposed somewhere near:

“And my opinion is that you and your skipper will come to a sudden bad

end before--”

“I thought you were in your boat. Have you changed your mind?” asked

Lingard in his deep voice close to Carter's elbow.

Carter felt his way along the rail, till his hand found a line that

seemed, in the calm, to stream out of its own accord into the darkness.

He hailed his boat, and directly heard the wash of water against her

bows as she was hauled quickly under the counter. Then he loomed up

shapeless on the rail, and the next moment disappeared as if he had

fallen out of the universe. Lingard heard him say:

“Catch hold of my leg, John.” There were hollow sounds in the boat; a

voice growled, “All right.”

“Keep clear of the counter,” said Lingard, speaking in quiet warning

tones into the night. “The brig may get a lot of sternway on her should

this squall not strike her fairly.”

“Aye, aye. I will mind,” was the muttered answer from the water.

Lingard crossed over to the port side, and looked steadily at the sooty

mass of approaching vapours. After a moment he said curtly, “Brace up

for the port tack, Mr. Shaw,” and remained silent, with his face to

the sea. A sound, sorrowful and startling like the sigh of some immense

creature, travelling across the starless space, passed above the

vertical and lofty spars of the motionless brig.

It grew louder, then suddenly ceased for a moment, and the taut rigging

of the brig was heard vibrating its answer in a singing note to this

threatening murmur of the winds. A long and slow undulation lifted the

level of the waters, as if the sea had drawn a deep breath of anxious

suspense. The next minute an immense disturbance leaped out of the

darkness upon the sea, kindling upon it a livid clearness of foam, and

the first gust of the squall boarded the brig in a stinging flick of

rain and spray. As if overwhelmed by the suddenness of the fierce onset,

the vessel remained for a second upright where she floated, shaking with

tremendous jerks from trucks to keel; while high up in the night the

invisible canvas was heard rattling and beating about violently.

Then, with a quick double report, as of heavy guns, both topsails filled

at once and the brig fell over swiftly on her side. Shaw was thrown

headlong against the skylight, and Lingard, who had encircled the

weather rail with his arm, felt the vessel under his feet dart forward

smoothly, and the deck become less slanting--the speed of the brig

running off a little now, easing the overturning strain of the wind upon

the distended surfaces of the sails. It was only the fineness of the

little vessel's lines and the perfect shape of her hull that saved the

canvas, and perhaps the spars, by enabling the ready craft to get way

upon herself with such lightning-like rapidity. Lingard drew a long

breath and yelled jubilantly at Shaw who was struggling up against wind

and rain to his commander's side.

“She'll do. Hold on everything.”

Shaw tried to speak. He swallowed great mouthfuls of tepid water

which the wind drove down his throat. The brig seemed to sail through

undulating waves that passed swishing between the masts and swept over

the decks with the fierce rush and noise of a cataract. From every spar

and every rope a ragged sheet of water streamed flicking to leeward. The

overpowering deluge seemed to last for an age; became unbearable--and,

all at once, stopped. In a couple of minutes the shower had run its

length over the brig and now could be seen like a straight grey wall,

going away into the night under the fierce whispering of dissolving

clouds. The wind eased. To the northward, low down in the darkness,

three stars appeared in a row, leaping in and out between the crests

of waves like the distant heads of swimmers in a running surf; and the

retreating edge of the cloud, perfectly straight from east to west,

slipped along the dome of the sky like an immense hemispheric, iron

shutter pivoting down smoothly as if operated by some mighty engine. An

inspiring and penetrating freshness flowed together with the shimmer

of light, through the augmented glory of the heaven, a glory exalted,

undimmed, and strangely startling as if a new world had been created

during the short flight of the stormy cloud. It was a return to life,

a return to space; the earth coming out from under a pall to take its

place in the renewed and immense scintillation of the universe.

The brig, her yards slightly checked in, ran with an easy motion under

the topsails, jib and driver, pushing contemptuously aside the turbulent

crowd of noisy and agitated waves. As the craft went swiftly ahead she

unrolled behind her over the uneasy darkness of the sea a broad ribbon

of seething foam shot with wispy gleams of dark discs escaping from

under the rudder. Far away astern, at the end of a line no thicker than

a black thread, which dipped now and then its long curve in the bursting

froth, a toy-like object could be made out, elongated and dark, racing

after the brig over the snowy whiteness of her wake.

Lingard walked aft, and, with both his hands on the taffrail, looked

eagerly for Carter's boat. The first glance satisfied him that the

yacht's gig was towing easily at the end of the long scope of line, and

he turned away to look ahead and to leeward with a steady gaze. It was

then half an hour past midnight and Shaw, relieved by Wasub, had gone

below. Before he went, he said to Lingard, “I will be off, sir, if

you're not going to make more sail yet.” “Not yet for a while,” had

answered Lingard in a preoccupied manner; and Shaw departed aggrieved at

such a neglect of making the best of a good breeze.

On the main deck dark-skinned men, whose clothing clung to their

shivering limbs as if they had been overboard, had finished recoiling

the braces, and clearing the gear. The kassab, after having hung the

fore-topsail halyards in the becket, strutted into the waist toward a

row of men who stood idly with their shoulders against the side of the

long boat amidships. He passed along looking up close at the stolid

faces. Room was made for him, and he took his place at the end.

“It was a great rain and a mighty wind, O men,” he said, dogmatically,

“but no wind can ever hurt this ship. That I knew while I stood minding

the sail which is under my care.”

A dull and inexpressive murmur was heard from the men. Over the high

weather rail, a topping wave flung into their eyes a handful of heavy

drops that stung like hail. There were low groans of indignation. A man

sighed. Another emitted a spasmodic laugh through his chattering teeth.

No one moved away. The little kassab wiped his face and went on in his

cracked voice, to the accompaniment of the swishing sounds made by the

seas that swept regularly astern along the ship's side.

“Have you heard him shout at the wind--louder than the wind? I have

heard, being far forward. And before, too, in the many years I served

this white man I have heard him often cry magic words that make all

safe. Ya-wa! This is truth. Ask Wasub who is a Haji, even as I am.”

“I have seen white men's ships with their masts broken--also wrecked

like our own praus,” remarked sadly a lean, lank fellow who shivered

beside the kassab, hanging his head and trying to grasp his shoulder

blades.

“True,” admitted the kassab. “They are all the children of Satan but to

some more favour is shown. To obey such men on the sea or in a fight

is good. I saw him who is master here fight with wild men who eat their

enemies--far away to the eastward--and I dealt blows by his side without

fear; for the charms he, no doubt, possesses protect his servants also.

I am a believer and the Stoned One can not touch my forehead. Yet the

reward of victory comes from the accursed. For six years have I sailed

with that white man; first as one who minds the rudder, for I am a

man of the sea, born in a prau, and am skilled in such work. And now,

because of my great knowledge of his desires, I have the care of all

things in this ship.”

Several voices muttered, “True. True.” They remained apathetic and

patient, in the rush of wind, under the repeated short flights of

sprays. The slight roll of the ship balanced them stiffly all together

where they stood propped against the big boat. The breeze humming

between the inclined masts enveloped their dark and silent figures in

the unceasing resonance of its breath.

The brig's head had been laid so as to pass a little to windward of the

small islands of the Carimata group. They had been till then hidden in

the night, but now both men on the lookout reported land ahead in one

long cry. Lingard, standing to leeward abreast of the wheel, watched

the islet first seen. When it was nearly abeam of the brig he gave his

orders, and Wasub hurried off to the main deck. The helm was put down,

the yards on the main came slowly square and the wet canvas of the

main-topsail clung suddenly to the mast after a single heavy flap. The

dazzling streak of the ship's wake vanished. The vessel lost her way

and began to dip her bows into the quick succession of the running head

seas. And at every slow plunge of the craft, the song of the wind would

swell louder amongst the waving spars, with a wild and mournful note.

Just as the brig's boat had been swung out, ready for lowering, the

yacht's gig hauled up by its line appeared tossing and splashing on

the lee quarter. Carter stood up in the stern sheets balancing himself

cleverly to the disordered motion of his cockleshell. He hailed the brig

twice to know what was the matter, not being able from below and in the

darkness to make out what that confused group of men on the poop were

about. He got no answer, though he could see the shape of a man standing

by himself aft, and apparently watching him. He was going to repeat his

hail for the third time when he heard the rattling of tackles followed

by a heavy splash, a burst of voices, scrambling hollow sounds--and a

dark mass detaching itself from the brig's side swept past him on the

crest of a passing wave. For less than a second he could see on the

shimmer of the night sky the shape of a boat, the heads of men, the

blades of oars pointing upward while being got out hurriedly. Then

all this sank out of sight, reappeared once more far off and hardly

discernible, before vanishing for good.

“Why, they've lowered a boat!” exclaimed Carter, falling back in his

seat. He remembered that he had seen only a few hours ago three native

praus lurking amongst those very islands. For a moment he had the idea

of casting off to go in chase of that boat, so as to find out. . . .

Find out what? He gave up his idea at once. What could he do?

The conviction that the yacht, and everything belonging to her, were in

some indefinite but very real danger, took afresh a strong hold of him,

and the persuasion that the master of the brig was going there to

help did not by any means assuage his alarm. The fact only served to

complicate his uneasiness with a sense of mystery.

The white man who spoke as if that sea was all his own, or as if people

intruded upon his privacy by taking the liberty of getting wrecked on a

coast where he and his friends did some queer business, seemed to him an

undesirable helper. That the boat had been lowered to communicate with

the praus seen and avoided by him in the evening he had no doubt. The

thought had flashed on him at once. It had an ugly look. Yet the best

thing to do after all was to hang on and get back to the yacht and warn

them. . . . Warn them against whom? The man had been perfectly open with

him. Warn them against what? It struck him that he hadn't the slightest

conception of what would happen, of what was even likely to happen. That

strange rescuer himself was bringing the news of danger. Danger from the

natives of course. And yet he was in communication with those natives.

That was evident. That boat going off in the night. . . . Carter swore

heartily to himself. His perplexity became positive bodily pain as he

sat, wet, uncomfortable, and still, one hand on the tiller, thrown up

and down in headlong swings of his boat. And before his eyes, towering

high, the black hull of the brig also rose and fell, setting her stern

down in the sea, now and again, with a tremendous and foaming splash.

Not a sound from her reached Carter's ears. She seemed an abandoned

craft but for the outline of a man's head and body still visible in a

watchful attitude above the taffrail.

Carter told his bowman to haul up closer and hailed:

“Brig ahoy. Anything wrong?”

He waited, listening. The shadowy man still watched. After some time a

curt “No” came back in answer.

“Are you going to keep hove-to long?” shouted Carter.

“Don't know. Not long. Drop your boat clear of the ship. Drop clear. Do

damage if you don't.”

“Slack away, John!” said Carter in a resigned tone to the elderly seaman

in the bow. “Slack away and let us ride easy to the full scope. They

don't seem very talkative on board there.”

Even while he was speaking the line ran out and the regular undulations

of the passing seas drove the boat away from the brig. Carter turned

a little in his seat to look at the land. It loomed up dead to leeward

like a lofty and irregular cone only a mile or a mile and a half

distant. The noise of the surf beating upon its base was heard against

the wind in measured detonations. The fatigue of many days spent in the

boat asserted itself above the restlessness of Carter's thoughts and,

gradually, he lost the notion of the passing time without altogether

losing the consciousness of his situation.

In the intervals of that benumbed stupor--rather than sleep--he was

aware that the interrupted noise of the surf had grown into a continuous

great rumble, swelling periodically into a loud roar; that the high

islet appeared now bigger, and that a white fringe of foam was visible

at its feet. Still there was no stir or movement of any kind on board

the brig. He noticed that the wind was moderating and the sea going down

with it, and then dozed off again for a minute. When next he opened his

eyes with a start, it was just in time to see with surprise a new star

soar noiselessly straight up from behind the land, take up its position

in a brilliant constellation--and go out suddenly. Two more followed,

ascending together, and after reaching about the same elevation, expired

side by side.

“Them's rockets, sir--ain't they?” said one of the men in a muffled

voice.

“Aye, rockets,” grunted Carter. “And now, what's the next move?” he

muttered to himself dismally.

He got his answer in the fierce swishing whirr of a slender ray of

fire that, shooting violently upward from the sombre hull of the brig,

dissolved at once into a dull red shower of falling sparks. Only one,

white and brilliant, remained alone poised high overhead, and after

glowing vividly for a second, exploded with a feeble report. Almost at

the same time he saw the brig's head fall off the wind, made out the

yards swinging round to fill the main topsail, and heard distinctly the

thud of the first wave thrown off by the advancing bows. The next minute

the tow-line got the strain and his boat started hurriedly after the

brig with a sudden jerk.

Leaning forward, wide awake and attentive, Carter steered. His men

sat one behind another with shoulders up, and arched backs, dozing,

uncomfortable but patient, upon the thwarts. The care requisite to steer

the boat properly in the track of the seething and disturbed water left

by the brig in her rapid course prevented him from reflecting much upon

the incertitude of the future and upon his own unusual situation.

Now he was only exceedingly anxious to see the yacht again, and it was

with a feeling of very real satisfaction that he saw all plain sail

being made on the brig. Through the remaining hours of the night he sat

grasping the tiller and keeping his eyes on the shadowy and high pyramid

of canvas gliding steadily ahead of his boat with a slight balancing

movement from side to side.

IV

It was noon before the brig, piloted by Lingard through the deep

channels between the outer coral reefs, rounded within pistol-shot a low

hummock of sand which marked the end of a long stretch of stony ledges

that, being mostly awash, showed a black head only, here and there

amongst the hissing brown froth of the yellow sea. As the brig drew

clear of the sandy patch there appeared, dead to windward and beyond a

maze of broken water, sandspits, and clusters of rocks, the black hull

of the yacht heeling over, high and motionless upon the great expanse of

glittering shallows. Her long, naked spars were inclined slightly as

if she had been sailing with a good breeze. There was to the lookers-on

aboard the brig something sad and disappointing in the yacht's aspect

as she lay perfectly still in an attitude that in a seaman's mind is

associated with the idea of rapid motion.

“Here she is!” said Shaw, who, clad in a spotless white suit, came just

then from forward where he had been busy with the anchors. “She is well

on, sir--isn't she? Looks like a mudflat to me from here.”

“Yes. It is a mudflat,” said Lingard, slowly, raising the long glass to

his eye. “Haul the mainsail up, Mr. Shaw,” he went on while he took a

steady look at the yacht. “We will have to work in short tacks here.”

He put the glass down and moved away from the rail. For the next hour

he handled his little vessel in the intricate and narrow channel with

careless certitude, as if every stone, every grain of sand upon the

treacherous bottom had been plainly disclosed to his sight. He handled

her in the fitful and unsteady breeze with a matter-of-fact audacity

that made Shaw, forward at his station, gasp in sheer alarm. When

heading toward the inshore shoals the brig was never put round till the

quick, loud cries of the leadsmen announced that there were no more than

three feet of water under her keel; and when standing toward the steep

inner edge of the long reef, where the lead was of no use, the helm

would be put down only when the cutwater touched the faint line of the

bordering foam. Lingard's love for his brig was a man's love, and was

so great that it could never be appeased unless he called on her to put

forth all her qualities and her power, to repay his exacting affection

by a faithfulness tried to the very utmost limit of endurance. Every

flutter of the sails flew down from aloft along the taut leeches, to

enter his heart in a sense of acute delight; and the gentle murmur of

water alongside, which, continuous and soft, showed that in all her

windings his incomparable craft had never, even for an instant, ceased

to carry her way, was to him more precious and inspiring than the soft

whisper of tender words would have been to another man. It was in such

moments that he lived intensely, in a flush of strong feeling that made

him long to press his little vessel to his breast. She was his perfect

world full of trustful joy.

The people on board the yacht, who watched eagerly the first sail they

had seen since they had been ashore on that deserted part of the coast,

soon made her out, with some disappointment, to be a small merchant brig

beating up tack for tack along the inner edge of the reef--probably with

the intention to communicate and offer assistance. The general opinion

among the seafaring portion of her crew was that little effective

assistance could be expected from a vessel of that description. Only

the sailing-master of the yacht remarked to the boatswain (who had the

advantage of being his first cousin): “This man is well acquainted here;

you can see that by the way he handles his brig. I shan't be sorry to

have somebody to stand by us. Can't tell when we will get off this mud,

George.”

A long board, sailed very close, enabled the brig to fetch the southern

limit of discoloured water over the bank on which the yacht had

stranded. On the very edge of the muddy patch she was put in stays for

the last time. As soon as she had paid off on the other tack, sail was

shortened smartly, and the brig commenced the stretch that was to bring

her to her anchorage, under her topsails, lower staysails and jib. There

was then less than a quarter of a mile of shallow water between her and

the yacht; but while that vessel had gone ashore with her head to the

eastward the brig was moving slowly in a west-northwest direction, and

consequently, sailed--so to speak--past the whole length of the yacht.

Lingard saw every soul in the schooner on deck, watching his advent in

a silence which was as unbroken and perfect as that on board his own

vessel.

A little man with a red face framed in white whiskers waved a gold-laced

cap above the rail in the waist of the yacht. Lingard raised his arm in

return. Further aft, under the white awnings, he could see two men and

a woman. One of the men and the lady were in blue. The other man,

who seemed very tall and stood with his arm entwined round an awning

stanchion above his head, was clad in white. Lingard saw them plainly.

They looked at the brig through binoculars, turned their faces to

one another, moved their lips, seemed surprised. A large dog put his

forepaws on the rail, and, lifting up his big, black head, sent out

three loud and plaintive barks, then dropped down out of sight. A sudden

stir and an appearance of excitement amongst all hands on board the

yacht was caused by their perceiving that the boat towing astern of the

stranger was their own second gig.

Arms were outstretched with pointing fingers. Someone shouted out a

long sentence of which not a word could be made out; and then the brig,

having reached the western limit of the bank, began to move diagonally

away, increasing her distance from the yacht but bringing her stern

gradually into view. The people aft, Lingard noticed, left their places

and walked over to the taffrail so as to keep him longer in sight.

When about a mile off the bank and nearly in line with the stern of the

yacht the brig's topsails fluttered and the yards came down slowly

on the caps; the fore and aft canvas ran down; and for some time she

floated quietly with folded wings upon the transparent sheet of water,

under the radiant silence of the sky. Then her anchor went to the bottom

with a rumbling noise resembling the roll of distant thunder. In a

moment her head tended to the last puffs of the northerly airs and the

ensign at the peak stirred, unfurled itself slowly, collapsed, flew out

again, and finally hung down straight and still, as if weighted with

lead.

“Dead calm, sir,” said Shaw to Lingard. “Dead calm again. We got into

this funny place in the nick of time, sir.”

They stood for a while side by side, looking round upon the coast and

the sea. The brig had been brought up in the middle of a broad belt of

clear water. To the north rocky ledges showed in black and white lines

upon the slight swell setting in from there. A small island stood out

from the broken water like the square tower of some submerged building.

It was about two miles distant from the brig. To the eastward the coast

was low; a coast of green forests fringed with dark mangroves. There was

in its sombre dullness a clearly defined opening, as if a small piece

had been cut out with a sharp knife. The water in it shone like a patch

of polished silver. Lingard pointed it out to Shaw.

“This is the entrance to the place where we are going,” he said.

Shaw stared, round-eyed.

“I thought you came here on account of this here yacht,” he stammered,

surprised.

“Ah. The yacht,” said Lingard, musingly, keeping his eyes on the break

in the coast. “The yacht--” He stamped his foot suddenly. “I would give

all I am worth and throw in a few days of life into the bargain if I

could get her off and away before to-night.”

He calmed down, and again stood gazing at the land. A little within the

entrance from behind the wall of forests an invisible fire belched out

steadily the black and heavy convolutions of thick smoke, which stood

out high, like a twisted and shivering pillar against the clear blue of

the sky.

“We must stop that game, Mr. Shaw,” said Lingard, abruptly.

“Yes, sir. What game?” asked Shaw, looking round in wonder.

“This smoke,” said Lingard, impatiently. “It's a signal.”

“Certainly, sir--though I don't see how we can do it. It seems far

inland. A signal for what, sir?”

“It was not meant for us,” said Lingard in an unexpectedly savage tone.

“Here, Shaw, make them put a blank charge into that forecastle gun. Tell

'em to ram hard the wadding and grease the mouth. We want to make a good

noise. If old Jorgenson hears it, that fire will be out before you have

time to turn round twice. . . . In a minute, Mr. Carter.”

The yacht's boat had come alongside as soon as the brig had been brought

up, and Carter had been waiting to take Lingard on board the yacht. They

both walked now to the gangway. Shaw, following his commander, stood by

to take his last orders.

“Put all the boats in the water, Mr. Shaw,” Lingard was saying, with one

foot on the rail, ready to leave his ship, “and mount the four-pounder

swivel in the longboat's bow. Cast off the sea lashings of the guns,

but don't run 'em out yet. Keep the topsails loose and the jib ready for

setting, I may want the sails in a hurry. Now, Mr. Carter, I am ready

for you.”

“Shove off, boys,” said Carter as soon as they were seated in the boat.

“Shove off, and give way for a last pull before you get a long rest.”

The men lay back on their oars, grunting. Their faces were drawn, grey

and streaked with the dried salt sprays. They had the worried expression

of men who had a long call made upon their endurance. Carter, heavy-eyed

and dull, steered for the yacht's gangway. Lingard asked as they were

crossing the brig's bows:

“Water enough alongside your craft, I suppose?”

“Yes. Eight to twelve feet,” answered Carter, hoarsely. “Say, Captain!

Where's your show of cutthroats? Why! This sea is as empty as a church

on a week-day.”

The booming report, nearly over his head, of the brig's eighteen-pounder

interrupted him. A round puff of white vapour, spreading itself lazily,

clung in fading shreds about the foreyard. Lingard, turning half round

in the stern sheets, looked at the smoke on the shore. Carter remained

silent, staring sleepily at the yacht they were approaching. Lingard

kept watching the smoke so intensely that he almost forgot where he

was, till Carter's voice pronouncing sharply at his ear the words “way

enough,” recalled him to himself.

They were in the shadow of the yacht and coming alongside her ladder.

The master of the brig looked upward into the face of a gentleman,

with long whiskers and a shaved chin, staring down at him over the side

through a single eyeglass. As he put his foot on the bottom step he

could see the shore smoke still ascending, unceasing and thick; but even

as he looked the very base of the black pillar rose above the ragged

line of tree-tops. The whole thing floated clear away from the earth,

and rolling itself into an irregularly shaped mass, drifted out to

seaward, travelling slowly over the blue heavens, like a threatening and

lonely cloud.