Authors: Joseph Conrad
A heavy gulf thunderstorm was raging, when after a long passage and at
the end of a sultry calm day, wasted in drifting helplessly in sight
of his destination, Lingard, taking advantage of fitful gusts of wind,
approached the shores of Wajo. With characteristic audacity, he held on
his way, closing in with a coast to which he was a stranger, and on a
night that would have appalled any other man; while at every dazzling
flash, Hassim's native land seemed to leap nearer at the brig—and
disappear instantly as though it had crouched low for the next spring
out of an impenetrable darkness. During the long day of the calm, he had
obtained from the deck and from aloft, such good views of the coast,
and had noted the lay of the land and the position of the dangers so
carefully that, though at the precise moment when he gave the order to
let go the anchor, he had been for some time able to see no further
than if his head had been wrapped in a woollen blanket, yet the next
flickering bluish flash showed him the brig, anchored almost exactly
where he had judged her to be, off a narrow white beach near the mouth
of a river.
He could see on the shore a high cluster of bamboo huts perched upon
piles, a small grove of tall palms all bowed together before the blast
like stalks of grass, something that might have been a palisade
of pointed stakes near the water, and far off, a sombre background
resembling an immense wall—the forest-clad hills. Next moment, all this
vanished utterly from his sight, as if annihilated and, before he had
time to turn away, came back to view with a sudden crash, appearing
unscathed and motionless under hooked darts of flame, like some
legendary country of immortals, withstanding the wrath and fire of
Heaven.
Made uneasy by the nature of his holding ground, and fearing that in one
of the terrific off-shore gusts the brig would start her anchor, Lingard
remained on deck to watch over the safety of his vessel. With one hand
upon the lead-line which would give him instant warning of the brig
beginning to drag, he stood by the rail, most of the time deafened
and blinded, but also fascinated, by the repeated swift visions of an
unknown shore, a sight always so inspiring, as much perhaps by its vague
suggestion of danger as by the hopes of success it never fails to awaken
in the heart of a true adventurer. And its immutable aspect of profound
and still repose, seen thus under streams of fire and in the midst of a
violent uproar, made it appear inconceivably mysterious and amazing.
Between the squalls there were short moments of calm, while now and then
even the thunder would cease as if to draw breath. During one of those
intervals. Lingard, tired and sleepy, was beginning to doze where he
stood, when suddenly it occurred to him that, somewhere below, the sea
had spoken in a human voice. It had said, "Praise be to God—" and the
voice sounded small, clear, and confident, like the voice of a child
speaking in a cathedral. Lingard gave a start and thought—I've dreamed
this—and directly the sea said very close to him, "Give a rope."
The thunder growled wickedly, and Lingard, after shouting to the men on
deck, peered down at the water, until at last he made out floating close
alongside the upturned face of a man with staring eyes that gleamed at
him and then blinked quickly to a flash of lightning. By that time all
hands in the brig were wildly active and many ropes-ends had been thrown
over. Then together with a gust of wind, and, as if blown on board, a
man tumbled over the rail and fell all in a heap upon the deck. Before
any one had the time to pick him up, he leaped to his feet, causing the
people around him to step back hurriedly. A sinister blue glare showed
the bewildered faces and the petrified attitudes of men completely
deafened by the accompanying peal of thunder. After a time, as if to
beings plunged in the abyss of eternal silence, there came to their ears
an unfamiliar thin, far-away voice saying:
"I seek the white man."
"Here," cried Lingard. Then, when he had the stranger, dripping and
naked but for a soaked waistcloth, under the lamp of the cabin, he said,
"I don't know you."
"My name is Jaffir, and I come from Pata Hassim, who is my chief and
your friend. Do you know this?"
He held up a thick gold ring, set with a fairly good emerald.
"I have seen it before on the Rajah's finger," said Lingard, looking
very grave.
"It is the witness of the truth I speak—the message from Hassim
is—'Depart and forget!'"
"I don't forget," said Lingard, slowly. "I am not that kind of man. What
folly is this?"
It is unnecessary to give at full length the story told by Jaffir. It
appears that on his return home, after the meeting with Lingard,
Hassim found his relative dying and a strong party formed to oppose
his rightful successor. The old Rajah Tulla died late at night and—as
Jaffir put it—before the sun rose there were already blows exchanged in
the courtyard of the ruler's dalam. This was the preliminary fight of a
civil war, fostered by foreign intrigues; a war of jungle and river,
of assaulted stockades and forest ambushes. In this contest, both
parties—according to Jaffir—displayed great courage, and one of them
an unswerving devotion to what, almost from the first, was a lost cause.
Before a month elapsed Hassim, though still chief of an armed band, was
already a fugitive. He kept up the struggle, however, with some vague
notion that Lingard's arrival would turn the tide.
"For weeks we lived on wild rice; for days we fought with nothing
but water in our bellies," declaimed Jaffir in the tone of a true
fire-eater.
And then he went on to relate, how, driven steadily down to the sea,
Hassim, with a small band of followers, had been for days holding the
stockade by the waterside.
"But every night some men disappeared," confessed Jaffir. "They were
weary and hungry and they went to eat with their enemies. We are only
ten now—ten men and a woman with the heart of a man, who are tonight
starving, and to-morrow shall die swiftly. We saw your ship afar all
day; but you have come too late. And for fear of treachery and lest harm
should befall you—his friend—the Rajah gave me the ring and I crept
on my stomach over the sand, and I swam in the night—and I, Jaffir, the
best swimmer in Wajo, and the slave of Hassim, tell you—his message to
you is 'Depart and forget'—and this is his gift—take!"
He caught hold suddenly of Lingard's hand, thrust roughly into it the
ring, and then for the first time looked round the cabin with wondering
but fearless eyes. They lingered over the semicircle of bayonets and
rested fondly on musket-racks. He grunted in admiration.
"Ya-wa, this is strength!" he murmured as if to himself. "But it has
come too late."
"Perhaps not," cried Lingard.
"Too late," said Jaffir, "we are ten only, and at sunrise we go out to
die." He went to the cabin door and hesitated there with a puzzled air,
being unused to locks and door handles.
"What are you going to do?" asked Lingard.
"I shall swim back," replied Jaffir. "The message is spoken and the
night can not last forever."
"You can stop with me," said Lingard, looking at the man searchingly.
"Hassim waits," was the curt answer.
"Did he tell you to return?" asked Lingard.
"No! What need?" said the other in a surprised tone.
Lingard seized his hand impulsively.
"If I had ten men like you!" he cried.
"We are ten, but they are twenty to one," said Jaffir, simply.
Lingard opened the door.
"Do you want anything that a man can give?" he asked.
The Malay had a moment of hesitation, and Lingard noticed the sunken
eyes, the prominent ribs, and the worn-out look of the man.
"Speak out," he urged with a smile; "the bearer of a gift must have a
reward."
"A drink of water and a handful of rice for strength to reach the
shore," said Jaffir sturdily. "For over there"—he tossed his head—"we
had nothing to eat to-day."
"You shall have it—give it to you with my own hands," muttered Lingard.
He did so, and thus lowered himself in Jaffir's estimation for a time.
While the messenger, squatting on the floor, ate without haste but with
considerable earnestness, Lingard thought out a plan of action. In his
ignorance as to the true state of affairs in the country, to save
Hassim from the immediate danger of his position was all that he could
reasonably attempt. To that end Lingard proposed to swing out his
long-boat and send her close inshore to take off Hassim and his men. He
knew enough of Malays to feel sure that on such a night the besiegers,
now certain of success, and being, Jaffir said, in possession of
everything that could float, would not be very vigilant, especially on
the sea front of the stockade. The very fact of Jaffir having managed
to swim off undetected proved that much. The brig's boat could—when the
frequency of lightning abated—approach unseen close to the beach, and
the defeated party, either stealing out one by one or making a rush in a
body, would embark and be received in the brig.
This plan was explained to Jaffir, who heard it without the slightest
mark of interest, being apparently too busy eating. When the last grain
of rice was gone, he stood up, took a long pull at the water bottle,
muttered: "I hear. Good. I will tell Hassim," and tightening the rag
round his loins, prepared to go. "Give me time to swim ashore," he said,
"and when the boat starts, put another light beside the one that burns
now like a star above your vessel. We shall see and understand. And
don't send the boat till there is less lightning: a boat is bigger than
a man in the water. Tell the rowers to pull for the palm-grove and cease
when an oar, thrust down with a strong arm, touches the bottom. Very
soon they will hear our hail; but if no one comes they must go away
before daylight. A chief may prefer death to life, and we who are left
are all of true heart. Do you understand, O big man?"
"The chap has plenty of sense," muttered Lingard to himself, and when
they stood side by side on the deck, he said: "But there may be enemies
on the beach, O Jaffir, and they also may shout to deceive my men. So
let your hail be Lightning! Will you remember?"
For a time Jaffir seemed to be choking.
"Lit-ing! Is that right? I say—is that right, O strong man?" Next
moment he appeared upright and shadowy on the rail.
"Yes. That's right. Go now," said Lingard, and Jaffir leaped off,
becoming invisible long before he struck the water. Then there was a
splash; after a while a spluttering voice cried faintly, "Lit-ing! Ah,
ha!" and suddenly the next thunder-squall burst upon the coast. In the
crashing flares of light Lingard had again and again the quick vision of
a white beach, the inclined palm-trees of the grove, the stockade by
the sea, the forest far away: a vast landscape mysterious and
still—Hassim's native country sleeping unmoved under the wrath and fire
of Heaven.
A Traveller visiting Wajo to-day may, if he deserves the confidence of
the common people, hear the traditional account of the last civil war,
together with the legend of a chief and his sister, whose mother had
been a great princess suspected of sorcery and on her death-bed had
communicated to these two the secrets of the art of magic. The chief's
sister especially, "with the aspect of a child and the fearlessness of a
great fighter," became skilled in casting spells. They were defeated by
the son of their uncle, because—will explain the narrator simply—"The
courage of us Wajo people is so great that magic can do nothing against
it. I fought in that war. We had them with their backs to the sea."
And then he will go on to relate in an awed tone how on a certain night
"when there was such a thunderstorm as has been never heard of before
or since" a ship, resembling the ships of white men, appeared off the
coast, "as though she had sailed down from the clouds. She moved," he
will affirm, "with her sails bellying against the wind; in size she was
like an island; the lightning played between her masts which were as
high as the summits of mountains; a star burned low through the clouds
above her. We knew it for a star at once because no flame of man's
kindling could have endured the wind and rain of that night. It was such
a night that we on the watch hardly dared look upon the sea. The heavy
rain was beating down our eyelids. And when day came, the ship was
nowhere to be seen, and in the stockade where the day before there were
a hundred or more at our mercy, there was no one. The chief, Hassim, was
gone, and the lady who was a princess in the country—and nobody knows
what became of them from that day to this. Sometimes traders from our
parts talk of having heard of them here, and heard of them there, but
these are the lies of men who go afar for gain. We who live in the
country believe that the ship sailed back into the clouds whence the
Lady's magic made her come. Did we not see the ship with our own eyes?
And as to Rajah Hassim and his sister, Mas Immada, some men say one
thing and some another, but God alone knows the truth."
Such is the traditional account of Lingard's visit to the shores of
Boni. And the truth is he came and went the same night; for, when the
dawn broke on a cloudy sky the brig, under reefed canvas and smothered
in sprays, was storming along to the southward on her way out of the
Gulf. Lingard, watching over the rapid course of his vessel, looked
ahead with anxious eyes and more than once asked himself with wonder,
why, after all, was he thus pressing her under all the sail she could
carry. His hair was blown about by the wind, his mind was full of care
and the indistinct shapes of many new thoughts, and under his feet, the
obedient brig dashed headlong from wave to wave.
Her owner and commander did not know where he was going. That adventurer
had only a confused notion of being on the threshold of a big adventure.
There was something to be done, and he felt he would have to do it. It
was expected of him. The seas expected it; the land expected it. Men
also. The story of war and of suffering; Jaffir's display of fidelity,
the sight of Hassim and his sister, the night, the tempest, the coast
under streams of fire—all this made one inspiring manifestation of a
life calling to him distinctly for interference. But what appealed to
him most was the silent, the complete, unquestioning, and apparently
uncurious, trust of these people. They came away from death straight
into his arms as it were, and remained in them passive as though
there had been no such thing as doubt or hope or desire. This amazing
unconcern seemed to put him under a heavy load of obligation.