Authors: Joseph Conrad
Hassim was struck with wonder and amazement at the cool recklessness of
such a proceeding; and, after; in true Malay fashion, discussing with
his people for an hour or so the urgency of the case, he also landed,
but well escorted and armed, with the intention of going to see what
would happen.
The affair really was very simple, "such as"—Lingard would say—"such
as might have happened to anybody." He went ashore with the intention
to look for some stream where he could conveniently replenish his water
casks, this being really the motive which had induced him to enter the
bay.
While, with his men close by and surrounded by a mop-headed, sooty
crowd, he was showing a few cotton handkerchiefs, and trying to explain
by signs the object of his landing, a spear, lunged from behind, grazed
his neck. Probably the Papuan wanted only to ascertain whether such a
creature could be killed or hurt, and most likely firmly believed that
it could not; but one of Lingard's seamen at once retaliated by striking
at the experimenting savage with his parang—three such choppers brought
for the purpose of clearing the bush, if necessary, being all the
weapons the party from the brig possessed.
A deadly tumult ensued with such suddenness that Lingard, turning round
swiftly, saw his defender, already speared in three places, fall forward
at his feet. Wasub, who was there, and afterward told the story once a
week on an average, used to horrify his hearers by showing how the man
blinked his eyes quickly before he fell. Lingard was unarmed. To the
end of his life he remained incorrigibly reckless in that respect,
explaining that he was "much too quick tempered to carry firearms on the
chance of a row. And if put to it," he argued, "I can make shift to kill
a man with my fist anyhow; and then—don't ye see—you know what
you're doing and are not so apt to start a trouble from sheer temper or
funk—see?"
In this case he did his best to kill a man with a blow from the shoulder
and catching up another by the middle flung him at the naked, wild
crowd. "He hurled men about as the wind hurls broken boughs. He made a
broad way through our enemies!" related Wasub in his jerky voice. It is
more probable that Lingard's quick movements and the amazing aspect of
such a strange being caused the warriors to fall back before his rush.
Taking instant advantage of their surprise and fear, Lingard, followed
by his men, dashed along the kind of ruinous jetty leading to the
village which was erected as usual over the water. They darted into one
of the miserable huts built of rotten mats and bits of decayed canoes,
and in this shelter showing daylight through all its sides, they
had time to draw breath and realize that their position was not much
improved.
The women and children screaming had cleared out into the bush, while
at the shore end of the jetty the warriors capered and yelled, preparing
for a general attack. Lingard noticed with mortification that his
boat-keeper apparently had lost his head, for, instead of swimming off
to the ship to give the alarm, as he was perfectly able to do, the
man actually struck out for a small rock a hundred yards away and was
frantically trying to climb up its perpendicular side. The tide being
out, to jump into the horrible mud under the houses would have been
almost certain death. Nothing remained therefore—since the miserable
dwelling would not have withstood a vigorous kick, let alone a
siege—but to rush back on shore and regain possession of the boat. To
this Lingard made up his mind quickly and, arming himself with a crooked
stick he found under his hand, sallied forth at the head of his three
men. As he bounded along, far in advance, he had just time to perceive
clearly the desperate nature of the undertaking, when he heard two shots
fired to his right. The solid mass of black bodies and frizzly heads in
front of him wavered and broke up. They did not run away, however.
Lingard pursued his course, but now with that thrill of exultation which
even a faint prospect of success inspires in a sanguine man. He heard a
shout of many voices far off, then there was another report of a shot,
and a musket ball fired at long range spurted a tiny jet of sand between
him and his wild enemies. His next bound would have carried him into
their midst had they awaited his onset, but his uplifted arm found
nothing to strike. Black backs were leaping high or gliding horizontally
through the grass toward the edge of the bush.
He flung his stick at the nearest pair of black shoulders and stopped
short. The tall grasses swayed themselves into a rest, a chorus of yells
and piercing shrieks died out in a dismal howl, and all at once the
wooded shores and the blue bay seemed to fall under the spell of a
luminous stillness. The change was as startling as the awakening from a
dream. The sudden silence struck Lingard as amazing.
He broke it by lifting his voice in a stentorian shout, which arrested
the pursuit of his men. They retired reluctantly, glaring back angrily
at the wall of a jungle where not a single leaf stirred. The strangers,
whose opportune appearance had decided the issue of that adventure, did
not attempt to join in the pursuit but halted in a compact body on the
ground lately occupied by the savages.
Lingard and the young leader of the Wajo traders met in the splendid
light of noonday, and amidst the attentive silence of their followers,
on the very spot where the Malay seaman had lost his life. Lingard,
striding up from one side, thrust out his open palm; Hassim responded at
once to the frank gesture and they exchanged their first hand-clasp over
the prostrate body, as if fate had already exacted the price of a death
for the most ominous of her gifts—the gift of friendship that sometimes
contains the whole good or evil of a life.
"I'll never forget this day," cried Lingard in a hearty tone; and the
other smiled quietly.
Then after a short pause—"Will you burn the village for vengeance?"
asked the Malay with a quick glance down at the dead Lascar who, on his
face and with stretched arms, seemed to cling desperately to that earth
of which he had known so little.
Lingard hesitated.
"No," he said, at last. "It would do good to no one."
"True," said Hassim, gently, "but was this man your debtor—a slave?"
"Slave?" cried Lingard. "This is an English brig. Slave? No. A free man
like myself."
"Hai. He is indeed free now," muttered the Malay with another glance
downward. "But who will pay the bereaved for his life?"
"If there is anywhere a woman or child belonging to him, I—my serang
would know—I shall seek them out," cried Lingard, remorsefully.
"You speak like a chief," said Hassim, "only our great men do not go
to battle with naked hands. O you white men! O the valour of you white
men!"
"It was folly, pure folly," protested Lingard, "and this poor fellow has
paid for it."
"He could not avoid his destiny," murmured the Malay. "It is in my mind
my trading is finished now in this place," he added, cheerfully.
Lingard expressed his regret.
"It is no matter, it is no matter," assured the other courteously, and
after Lingard had given a pressing invitation for Hassim and his two
companions of high rank to visit the brig, the two parties separated.
The evening was calm when the Malay craft left its berth near the shore
and was rowed slowly across the bay to Lingard's anchorage. The end of a
stout line was thrown on board, and that night the white man's brig and
the brown man's prau swung together to the same anchor.
The sun setting to seaward shot its last rays between the headlands,
when the body of the killed Lascar, wrapped up decently in a white
sheet, according to Mohammedan usage, was lowered gently below the
still waters of the bay upon which his curious glances, only a few
hours before, had rested for the first time. At the moment the dead man,
released from slip-ropes, disappeared without a ripple before the eyes
of his shipmates, the bright flash and the heavy report of the brig's
bow gun were succeeded by the muttering echoes of the encircling shores
and by the loud cries of sea birds that, wheeling in clouds, seemed
to scream after the departing seaman a wild and eternal good-bye. The
master of the brig, making his way aft with hanging head, was followed
by low murmurs of pleased surprise from his crew as well as from the
strangers who crowded the main deck. In such acts performed simply, from
conviction, what may be called the romantic side of the man's nature
came out; that responsive sensitiveness to the shadowy appeals made by
life and death, which is the groundwork of a chivalrous character.
Lingard entertained his three visitors far into the night. A sheep from
the brig's sea stock was given to the men of the prau, while in the
cabin, Hassim and his two friends, sitting in a row on the stern settee,
looked very splendid with costly metals and flawed jewels. The talk
conducted with hearty friendship on Lingard's part, and on the part of
the Malays with the well-bred air of discreet courtesy, which is natural
to the better class of that people, touched upon many subjects and, in
the end, drifted to politics.
"It is in my mind that you are a powerful man in your own country," said
Hassim, with a circular glance at the cuddy.
"My country is upon a far-away sea where the light breezes are as strong
as the winds of the rainy weather here," said Lingard; and there were
low exclamations of wonder. "I left it very young, and I don't know
about my power there where great men alone are as numerous as the poor
people in all your islands, Tuan Hassim. But here," he continued, "here,
which is also my country—being an English craft and worthy of it,
too—I am powerful enough. In fact, I am Rajah here. This bit of my
country is all my own."
The visitors were impressed, exchanged meaning glances, nodded at each
other.
"Good, good," said Hassim at last, with a smile. "You carry your country
and your power with you over the sea. A Rajah upon the sea. Good!"
Lingard laughed thunderously while the others looked amused.
"Your country is very powerful—we know," began again Hassim after a
pause, "but is it stronger than the country of the Dutch who steal our
land?"
"Stronger?" cried Lingard. He opened a broad palm. "Stronger? We
could take them in our hand like this—" and he closed his fingers
triumphantly.
"And do you make them pay tribute for their land?" enquired Hassim with
eagerness.
"No," answered Lingard in a sobered tone; "this, Tuan Hassim, you see,
is not the custom of white men. We could, of course—but it is not the
custom."
"Is it not?" said the other with a sceptical smile. "They are stronger
than we are and they want tribute from us. And sometimes they get
it—even from Wajo where every man is free and wears a kris."
There was a period of dead silence while Lingard looked thoughtful and
the Malays gazed stonily at nothing.
"But we burn our powder amongst ourselves," went on Hassim, gently, "and
blunt our weapons upon one another."
He sighed, paused, and then changing to an easy tone began to urge
Lingard to visit Wajo "for trade and to see friends," he said, laying
his hand on his breast and inclining his body slightly.
"Aye. To trade with friends," cried Lingard with a laugh, "for such a
ship"—he waved his arm—"for such a vessel as this is like a household
where there are many behind the curtain. It is as costly as a wife and
children."
The guests rose and took their leave.
"You fired three shots for me, Panglima Hassim," said Lingard,
seriously, "and I have had three barrels of powder put on board your
prau; one for each shot. But we are not quits."
The Malay's eyes glittered with pleasure.
"This is indeed a friend's gift. Come to see me in my country!"
"I promise," said Lingard, "to see you—some day."
The calm surface of the bay reflected the glorious night sky, and the
brig with the prau riding astern seemed to be suspended amongst the
stars in a peace that was almost unearthly in the perfection of its
unstirring silence. The last hand-shakes were exchanged on deck, and the
Malays went aboard their own craft. Next morning, when a breeze sprang
up soon after sunrise, the brig and the prau left the bay together. When
clear of the land Lingard made all sail and sheered alongside to say
good-bye before parting company—the brig, of course, sailing three feet
to the prau's one. Hassim stood on the high deck aft.
"Prosperous road," hailed Lingard.
"Remember the promise!" shouted the other. "And come soon!" he went on,
raising his voice as the brig forged past. "Come soon—lest what perhaps
is written should come to pass!"
The brig shot ahead.
"What?" yelled Lingard in a puzzled tone, "what's written?"
He listened. And floating over the water came faintly the words:
"No one knows!"
"My word! I couldn't help liking the chap," would shout Lingard when
telling the story; and looking around at the eyes that glittered at him
through the smoke of cheroots, this Brixham trawler-boy, afterward a
youth in colliers, deep-water man, gold-digger, owner and commander of
"the finest brig afloat," knew that by his listeners—seamen, traders,
adventurers like himself—this was accepted not as the expression of a
feeling, but as the highest commendation he could give his Malay friend.
"By heavens! I shall go to Wajo!" he cried, and a semicircle of
heads nodded grave approbation while a slightly ironical voice said
deliberately—"You are a made man, Tom, if you get on the right side of
that Rajah of yours."
"Go in—and look out for yourself," cried another with a laugh.
A little professional jealousy was unavoidable, Wajo, on account of its
chronic state of disturbance, being closed to the white traders; but
there was no real ill-will in the banter of these men, who, rising with
handshakes, dropped off one by one. Lingard went straight aboard his
vessel and, till morning, walked the poop of the brig with measured
steps. The riding lights of ships twinkled all round him; the lights
ashore twinkled in rows, the stars twinkled above his head in a black
sky; and reflected in the black water of the roadstead twinkled far
below his feet. And all these innumerable and shining points were
utterly lost in the immense darkness. Once he heard faintly the rumbling
chain of some vessel coming to an anchor far away somewhere outside
the official limits of the harbour. A stranger to the port—thought
Lingard—one of us would have stood right in. Perhaps a ship from home?
And he felt strangely touched at the thought of that ship, weary with
months of wandering, and daring not to approach the place of rest. At
sunrise, while the big ship from the West, her sides streaked with rust
and grey with the salt of the sea, was moving slowly in to take up
a berth near the shore, Lingard left the roadstead on his way to the
eastward.