Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (447 page)

“I suppose you are fond of cards.”

“What would you expect?” asked Ricardo in a simple, philosophical tone. “It is likely I should not be?” Then, with sudden fire: “Fond of cards? Ay, passionately!”

The effect of this outburst was augmented by the quiet lowering of the eyelids, by a reserved pause as though this had been a confession of another kind of love. Schomberg cudgelled his brains for a new topic, but he could not find one. His usual scandalous gossip would not serve this turn. That desperado did not know anyone anywhere within a thousand miles. Schomberg was almost compelled to keep to the subject.

“I suppose you’ve always been so — from your early youth.”

Ricardo’s eyes remained cast down. His fingers toyed absently with the pack on the table.

“I don’t know that it was so early. I first got in the way of it playing for tobacco — in forecastles of ships, you know — common sailor games. We used to spend whole watches below at it, round a chest, under a slush lamp. We would hardly spare the time to get a bite of salt horse — neither eat nor sleep. We could hardly stand when the watches were mustered on deck. Talk of gambling!” He dropped the reminiscent tone to add the information, “I was bred to the sea from a boy, you know.”

Schomberg had fallen into a reverie, but without losing the sense of impending calamity. The next words he heard were:

“I got on all right at sea, too. Worked up to be mate. I was mate of a schooner — a yacht, you might call her — a special good berth too, in the Gulf of Mexico, a soft job that you don’t run across more than once in a lifetime. Yes, I was mate of her when I left the sea to follow him.”

Ricardo tossed up his chin to indicate the room above; from which Schomberg, his wits painfully aroused by this reminder of Mr. Jones’s existence, concluded that the latter had withdrawn into his bedroom. Ricardo, observing him from under lowered eyelids, went on:

“It so happened that we were shipmates.”

“Mr Jones, you mean? Is he a sailor too?”

Ricardo raised his eyelids at that.

“He’s no more Mr. Jones than you are,” he said with obvious pride. “He a sailor! That just shows your ignorance. But there! A foreigner can’t be expected to know any better. I am an Englishman, and I know a gentleman at sight. I should know one drunk, in the gutter, in jail, under the gallows. There’s a something — it isn’t exactly the appearance, it’s a — no use me trying to tell you. You ain’t an Englishman, and if you were, you wouldn’t need to be told.”

An unsuspected stream of loquacity had broken its dam somewhere deep within the man, had diluted his fiery blood and softened his pitiless fibre. Schomberg experienced mingled relief and apprehension, as if suddenly an enormous savage cat had begun to wind itself about his legs in inexplicable friendliness. No prudent man under such circumstances would dare to stir. Schomberg didn’t stir. Ricardo assumed an easy attitude, with an elbow on the table. Schomberg squared his shoulders afresh.

“I was employed, in that there yacht — schooner, whatever you call it — by ten gentlemen at once. That surprises you, eh? Yes, yes, ten. Leastwise there were nine of them gents good enough in their way, and one downright gentleman, and that was . . .”

Ricardo gave another upward jerk of his chin as much as to say: He! The only one.

“And no mistake,” he went on. “I spotted him from the first day. How? Why? Ay, you may ask. Hadn’t seen that many gentlemen in my life. Well, somehow I did. If you were an Englishman, you would — ”

“What was your yacht?” Schomberg interrupted as impatiently as he dared; for this harping on nationality jarred on his already tried nerves. “What was the game?”

“You have a headpiece on you! Game! ‘Xactly. That’s what it was — the sort of silliness gentlemen will get up among themselves to play at adventure. A treasure-hunting expedition. Each of them put down so much money, you understand, to buy the schooner. Their agent in the city engaged me and the skipper. The greatest secrecy and all that. I reckon he had a twinkle in his eye all the time — and no mistake. But that wasn’t our business. Let them bust their money as they like. The pity of it was that so little of it came our way. Just fair pay and no more. And damn any pay, much or little, anyhow — that’s what I say!”

He blinked his eyes greenishly in the dim light. The heat seemed to have stilled everything in the world but his voice. He swore at large, abundantly, in snarling undertones, it was impossible to say why, then calmed down as inexplicably, and went on, as a sailor yarns.

“At first there were only nine of them adventurous sparks, then, just a day or two before the sailing date, he turned up. Heard of it somehow, somewhere — I would say from some woman, if I didn’t know him as I do. He would give any woman a ten-mile berth. He can’t stand them. Or maybe in a flash bar. Or maybe in one of them grand clubs in Pall Mall. Anyway, the agent netted him in all right — cash down, and only about four and twenty hours for him to get ready; but he didn’t miss his ship. Not he! You might have called it a pier-head jump — for a gentleman. I saw him come along. Know the West India Docks, eh?”

Schomberg did not know the West India Docks. Ricardo looked at him pensively for a while, and then continued, as if such ignorance had to be disregarded.

“Our tug was already alongside. Two loafers were carrying his dunnage behind him. I told the dockman at our moorings to keep all fast for a minute. The gangway was down already; but he made nothing of it. Up he jumps, one leap, swings his long legs over the rail, and there he is on board. They pass up his swell dunnage, and he puts his hand in his trousers pocket and throws all his small change on the wharf for them chaps to pick up. They were still promenading that wharf on all fours when we cast off. It was only then that he looked at me — quietly, you know; in a slow way. He wasn’t so thin then as he is now; but I noticed he wasn’t so young as he looked — not by a long chalk. He seemed to touch me inside somewhere. I went away pretty quick from there; I was wanted forward anyhow. I wasn’t frightened. What should I be frightened for? I only felt touched — on the very spot. But Jee-miny, if anybody had told me we should be partners before the year was out — well, I would have — ”

He swore a variety of strange oaths, some common, others quaintly horrible to Schomberg’s ears, and all mere innocent exclamations of wonder at the shifts and changes of human fortune. Schomberg moved slightly in his chair. But the admirer and partner of “plain Mr. Jones” seemed to have forgotten Schomberg’s existence for the moment. The stream of ingenuous blasphemy — some of it in bad Spanish — had run dry, and Martin Ricardo, connoisseur in gentlemen, sat dumb with a stony gaze as if still marvelling inwardly at the amazing elections, conjunctions, and associations of events which influence man’s pilgrimage on this earth.

At last Schomberg spoke tentatively:

“And so the — the gentleman, up there, talked you over into leaving a good berth?”

Ricardo started.

“Talked me over! Didn’t need to talk me over. Just beckoned to me, and that was enough. By that time we were in the Gulf of Mexico. One night we were lying at anchor, close to a dry sandbank — to this day I am not sure where it was — off the Colombian coast or thereabouts. We were to start digging the next morning, and all hands had turned in early, expecting a hard day with the shovels. Up he comes, and in his quiet, tired way of speaking — you can tell a gentleman by that as much as by anything else almost — up he comes behind me and says, just like that into my ear, in a manner: ‘Well, what do you think of our treasure hunt now?’

“I didn’t even turn my head; ‘xactly as I stood, I remained, and I spoke no louder than himself:

“‘If you want to know, sir, it’s nothing but just damned tom-foolery.’

“We had, of course, been having short talks together at one time or another during the passage. I dare say he had read me like a book. There ain’t much to me, except that I have never been tame, even when walking the pavement and cracking jokes and standing drinks to chums — ay, and to strangers, too. I would watch them lifting their elbows at my expense, or splitting their side at my fun — I can be funny when I like, you bet!”

A pause for self-complacent contemplation of his own fun and generosity checked the flow of Ricardo’s speech. Schomberg was concerned to keep within bounds the enlargement of his eyes, which he seemed to feel growing bigger in his head.

“Yes, yes,” he whispered hastily.

“I would watch them and think: ‘You boys don’t know who I am. If you did — !’ With girls, too. Once I was courting a girl. I used to kiss her behind the ear and say to myself: ‘If you only knew who’s kissing you, my dear, you would scream and bolt!’ Ha! ha! Not that I wanted to do them any harm; but I felt the power in myself. Now, here we sit, friendly like, and that’s all right. You aren’t in my way. But I am not friendly to you. I just don’t care. Some men do say that; but I really don’t. You are no more to me one way or another than that fly there. Just so. I’d squash you or leave you alone. I don’t care what I do.”

If real force of character consists in overcoming our sudden weaknesses, Schomberg displayed plenty of that quality. At the mention of the fly, he re-enforced the severe dignity of his attitude as one inflates a collapsing toy balloon with a great effort of breath. The easy-going, relaxed attitude of Ricardo was really appalling.

“That’s so,” he went on. “I am that sort of fellow. You wouldn’t think it, would you? No. You have to be told. So I am telling you, and I dare say you only half believe it. But you can’t say to yourself that I am drunk, stare at me as you may. I haven’t had anything stronger than a glass of iced water all day. Takes a real gentleman to see through a fellow. Oh, yes — he spotted me. I told you we had a few talks at sea about one thing or another. And I used to watch him down the skylight, playing cards in the cuddy with the others. They had to pass the time away somehow. By the same token he caught me at it once, and it was then that I told him I was fond of cards — and generally lucky in gambling, too. Yes, he had sized me up. Why not? A gentleman’s just like any other man — and something more.”

It flashed through Schomberg’s mind: that these two were indeed well matched in their enormous dissimilarity, identical souls in different disguises.

“Says he to me” — Ricardo started again in a gossiping manner — ’I’m packed up. It’s about time to go, Martin.’

“It was the first time he called me Martin. Says I:

“‘Is that it, sir?’

“‘You didn’t think I was after that sort of treasure, did you? I wanted to clear out from home quietly. It’s a pretty expensive way of getting a passage across, but it has served my turn.’

“I let him know very soon that I was game for anything, from pitch and toss to wilful murder, in his company.

“‘Wilful murder?’ says he in his quiet way. ‘What the deuce is that? What are you talking about? People do get killed sometimes when they get in one’s way, but that’s self-defence — you understand?’

“I told him I did. And then I said I would run below for a minute, to ram a few of my things into a sailor’s bag I had. I’ve never cared for a lot of dunnage; I believed in going about flying light when I was at sea. I came back and found him strolling up and down the deck, as if he were taking a breath of fresh air before turning in, like any other evening.

“‘Ready?’

“‘Yes, sir.’

“He didn’t even look at me. We had had a boat in the water astern ever since we came to anchor in the afternoon. He throws the stump of his cigar overboard.

“‘Can you get the captain out on deck?’ he asks.

“That was the last thing in the world I should have thought of doing. I lost my tongue for a moment.

“‘I can try,’ says I.

“‘Well, then, I am going below. You get him up and keep him with you till I come back on deck. Mind! Don’t let him go below till I return.’

“I could not help asking why he told me to rouse a sleeping man, when we wanted everybody on board to sleep sweetly till we got clear of the schooner. He laughs a little and says that I didn’t see all the bearings of this business.

“‘Mind,’ he says, ‘don’t let him leave you till you see me come up again.’ He puts his eyes close to mine. ‘Keep him with you at all costs.’

“‘And that means?’ says I.

“‘All costs to him — by every possible or impossible means. I don’t want to be interrupted in my business down below. He would give me lots of trouble. I take you with me to save myself trouble in various circumstances; and you’ve got to enter on your work right away.’

“‘Just so, sir,’ says I; and he slips down the companion.

“With a gentleman you know at once where you are; but it was a ticklish job. The skipper was nothing to me one way or another, any more than you are at this moment, Mr. Schomberg. You may light your cigar or blow your brains out this minute, and I don’t care a hang which you do, both or neither. To bring the skipper up was easy enough. I had only to stamp on the deck a few times over his head. I stamped hard. But how to keep him up when he got there?

“‘Anything the matter; Mr. Ricardo?’ I heard his voice behind me.

“There he was, and I hadn’t thought of anything to say to him; so I didn’t turn round. The moonlight was brighter than many a day I could remember in the North Sea.

“‘Why did you call me? What are you staring at out there, Mr. Ricardo?’

“He was deceived by my keeping my back to him. I wasn’t staring at anything, but his mistake gave me a notion.

“‘I am staring at something that looks like a canoe over there,’ I said very slowly.

“The skipper got concerned at once. It wasn’t any danger from the inhabitants, whoever they were.

“‘Oh, hang it!’ says he. ‘That’s very unfortunate.’ He had hoped that the schooner being on the coast would not get known so very soon. ‘Dashed awkward, with the business we’ve got in hand, to have a lot of niggers watching operations. But are you certain this is a canoe?’

“‘It may be a drift-log,’ I said; ‘but I thought you had better have a look with your own eyes. You may make it out better than I can.’

“His eyes weren’t anything as good as mine. But he says: