Authors: Joseph Conrad
"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.
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.