Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (573 page)

“It will help him to make up his mind,” muttered Jorgenson in his moustache, as if compelled by an obscure conviction. It was only then that he stirred slightly and turned away from the loom of the fires on the distant shore. Mrs. Travers heard his footsteps passing again along the side of the deckhouse — and this time never raised her head. That man was sleepless, mad, childish, and inflexible. He was impossible. He haunted the decks of that hulk aimlessly. . . .

It was, however, in pursuance of a very distinct aim that Jorgenson had gone forward again to seek Jaffir.

The first remark he had to offer to Jaffir’s consideration was that the only person in the world who had the remotest chance of reaching Belarab’s gate on that night was that tall white woman the Rajah Laut had brought on board, the wife of one of the captive white chiefs. Surprise made Jaffir exclaim, but he wasn’t prepared to deny that. It was possible that for many reasons, some quite simple and others very subtle, those sons of the Evil One belonging to Tengga and Daman would refrain from killing a white woman walking alone from the water’s edge to Belarab’s gate. Yes, it was just possible that she might walk unharmed.

“Especially if she carried a blazing torch,” muttered Jorgenson in his moustache. He told Jaffir that she was sitting now in the dark, mourning silently in the manner of white women. She had made a great outcry in the morning to be allowed to join the white men on shore. He, Jorgenson, had refused her the canoe. Ever since she had secluded herself in the deckhouse in great distress.

Jaffir listened to it all without particular sympathy. And when Jorgenson added, “It is in my mind, O Jaffir, to let her have her will now,” he answered by a “Yes, by Allah! let her go. What does it matter?” of the greatest unconcern, till Jorgenson added:

“Yes. And she may carry the ring to the Rajah Laut.”

Jorgenson saw Jaffir, the grim and impassive Jaffir, give a perceptible start. It seemed at first an impossible task to persuade Jaffir to part with the ring. The notion was too monstrous to enter his mind, to move his heart. But at last he surrendered in an awed whisper, “God is great. Perhaps it is her destiny.”

Being a Wajo man he did not regard women as untrustworthy or unequal to a task requiring courage and judgment. Once he got over the personal feeling he handed the ring to Jorgenson with only one reservation, “You know, Tuan, that she must on no account put it on her finger.”

“Let her hang it round her neck,” suggested Jorgenson, readily.

As Jorgenson moved toward the deckhouse it occurred to him that perhaps now that woman Tom Lingard had taken in tow might take it into her head to refuse to leave the Emma. This did not disturb him very much. All those people moved in the dark. He himself at that particular moment was moving in the dark. Beyond the simple wish to guide Lingard’s thought in the direction of Hassim and Immada, to help him to make up his mind at last to a ruthless fidelity to his purpose Jorgenson had no other aim. The existence of those whites had no meaning on earth. They were the sort of people that pass without leaving footprints. That woman would have to act in ignorance. And if she refused to go then in ignorance she would have to stay on board. He would tell her nothing.

As a matter of fact, he discovered that Mrs. Travers would simply have nothing to do with him. She would not listen to what he had to say. She desired him, a mere weary voice confined in the darkness of the deck cabin, to go away and trouble her no more. But the ghost of Jorgenson was not easily exorcised. He, too, was a mere voice in the outer darkness, inexorable, insisting that she should come out on deck and listen. At last he found the right words to say.

“It is something about Tom that I want to tell you. You wish him well, don’t you?”

After this she could not refuse to come out on deck, and once there she listened patiently to that white ghost muttering and mumbling above her drooping head.

“It seems to me, Captain Jorgenson,” she said after he had ceased, “that you are simply trifling with me. After your behaviour to me this morning, I can have nothing to say to you.”

“I have a canoe for you now,” mumbled Jorgenson.

“You have some new purpose in view now,” retorted Mrs. Travers with spirit. “But you won’t make it clear to me. What is it that you have in your mind?”

“Tom’s interest.”

“Are you really his friend?”

“He brought me here. You know it. He has talked a lot to you.”

“He did. But I ask myself whether you are capable of being anybody’s friend.”

“You ask yourself!” repeated Jorgenson, very quiet and morose. “If I am not his friend I should like to know who is.”

Mrs. Travers asked, quickly: “What’s all this about a ring? What ring?”

“Tom’s property. He has had it for years.”

“And he gave it to you? Doesn’t he care for it?”

“Don’t know. It’s just a thing.”

“But it has a meaning as between you and him. Is that so?”

“Yes. It has. He will know what it means.”

“What does it mean?”

“I am too much his friend not to hold my tongue.”

“What! To me!”

“And who are you?” was Jorgenson’s unexpected remark. “He has told you too much already.”

“Perhaps he has,” whispered Mrs. Travers, as if to herself. “And you want that ring to be taken to him?” she asked, in a louder tone.

“Yes. At once. For his good.”

“Are you certain it is for his good? Why can’t you. . . .”

She checked herself. That man was hopeless. He would never tell anything and there was no means of compelling him. He was invulnerable, unapproachable. . . . He was dead.

“Just give it to him,” mumbled Jorgenson as though pursuing a mere fixed idea. “Just slip it quietly into his hand. He will understand.”

“What is it? Advice, warning, signal for action?”

“It may be anything,” uttered Jorgenson, morosely, but as it were in a mollified tone. “It’s meant for his good.”

“Oh, if I only could trust that man!” mused Mrs. Travers, half aloud.

Jorgenson’s slight noise in the throat might have been taken for an expression of sympathy. But he remained silent.

“Really, this is most extraordinary!” cried Mrs. Travers, suddenly aroused. “Why did you come to me? Why should it be my task? Why should you want me specially to take it to him?”

“I will tell you why,” said Jorgenson’s blank voice. “It’s because there is no one on board this hulk that can hope to get alive inside that stockade. This morning you told me yourself that you were ready to die — for Tom — or with Tom. Well, risk it then. You are the only one that has half a chance to get through — and Tom, maybe, is waiting.”

“The only one,” repeated Mrs. Travers with an abrupt movement forward and an extended hand before which Jorgenson stepped back a pace. “Risk it! Certainly! Where’s that mysterious ring?”

“I have got it in my pocket,” said Jorgenson, readily; yet nearly half a minute elapsed before Mrs. Travers felt the characteristic shape being pressed into her half-open palm. “Don’t let anybody see it,” Jorgenson admonished her in a murmur. “Hide it somewhere about you. Why not hang it round your neck?”

Mrs. Travers’ hand remained firmly closed on the ring. “Yes, that will do,” she murmured, hastily. “I’ll be back in a moment. Get everything ready.” With those words she disappeared inside the deckhouse and presently threads of light appeared in the interstices of the boards. Mrs. Travers had lighted a candle in there. She was busy hanging that ring round her neck. She was going. Yes — taking the risk for Tom’s sake.

“Nobody can resist that man,” Jorgenson muttered to himself with increasing moroseness. “I couldn’t.”

IV

Jorgenson, after seeing the canoe leave the ship’s side, ceased to live intellectually. There was no need for more thinking, for any display of mental ingenuity. He had done with it all. All his notions were perfectly fixed and he could go over them in the same ghostly way in which he haunted the deck of the Emma. At the sight of the ring Lingard would return to Hassim and Immada, now captives, too, though Jorgenson certainly did not think them in any serious danger. What had happened really was that Tengga was now holding hostages, and those Jorgenson looked upon as Lingard’s own people. They were his. He had gone in with them deep, very deep. They had a hold and a claim on King Tom just as many years ago people of that very race had had a hold and a claim on him, Jorgenson. Only Tom was a much bigger man. A very big man. Nevertheless, Jorgenson didn’t see why he should escape his own fate — Jorgenson’s fate — to be absorbed, captured, made their own either in failure or in success. It was an unavoidable fatality and Jorgenson felt certain that the ring would compel Lingard to face it without flinching. What he really wanted Lingard to do was to cease to take the slightest interest in those whites — who were the sort of people that left no footprints.

Perhaps at first sight, sending that woman to Lingard was not the best way toward that end. Jorgenson, however, had a distinct impression in which his morning talk with Mrs. Travers had only confirmed him, that those two had quarrelled for good. As, indeed, was unavoidable. What did Tom Lingard want with any woman? The only woman in Jorgenson’s life had come in by way of exchange for a lot of cotton stuffs and several brass guns. This fact could not but affect Jorgenson’s judgment since obviously in this case such a transaction was impossible. Therefore the case was not serious. It didn’t exist. What did exist was Lingard’s relation to the Wajo exiles, a great and warlike adventure such as no rover in those seas had ever attempted.

That Tengga was much more ready to negotiate than to fight, the old adventurer had not the slightest doubt. How Lingard would deal with him was not a concern of Jorgenson’s. That would be easy enough. Nothing prevented Lingard from going to see Tengga and talking to him with authority. All that ambitious person really wanted was to have a share in Lingard’s wealth, in Lingard’s power, in Lingard’s friendship. A year before Tengga had once insinuated to Jorgenson, “In what way am I less worthy of being a friend than Belarab?”

It was a distinct overture, a disclosure of the man’s innermost mind. Jorgenson, of course, had met it with a profound silence. His task was not diplomacy but the care of stores.

After the effort of connected mental processes in order to bring about Mrs. Travers’ departure he was anxious to dismiss the whole matter from his mind. The last thought he gave to it was severely practical. It occurred to him that it would be advisable to attract in some way or other Lingard’s attention to the lagoon. In the language of the sea a single rocket is properly a signal of distress, but, in the circumstances, a group of three sent up simultaneously would convey a warning. He gave his orders and watched the rockets go up finely with a trail of red sparks, a bursting of white stars high up in the air, and three loud reports in quick succession. Then he resumed his pacing of the whole length of the hulk, confident that after this Tom would guess that something was up and set a close watch over the lagoon. No doubt these mysterious rockets would have a disturbing effect on Tengga and his friends and cause a great excitement in the Settlement; but for that Jorgenson did not care. The Settlement was already in such a turmoil that a little more excitement did not matter. What Jorgenson did not expect, however, was the sound of a musket-shot fired from the jungle facing the bows of the Emma. It caused him to stop dead short. He had heard distinctly the bullet strike the curve of the bow forward. “Some hot-headed ass fired that,” he said to himself, contemptuously. It simply disclosed to him the fact that he was already besieged on the shore side and set at rest his doubts as to the length Tengga was prepared to go. Any length! Of course there was still time for Tom to put everything right with six words, unless . . . Jorgenson smiled, grimly, in the dark and resumed his tireless pacing.

What amused him was to observe the fire which had been burning night and day before Tengga’s residence suddenly extinguished. He pictured to himself the wild rush with bamboo buckets to the lagoon shore, the confusion, the hurry and jostling in a great hissing of water midst clouds of steam. The image of the fat Tengga’s consternation appealed to Jorgenson’s sense of humour for about five seconds. Then he took up the binoculars from the roof of the deckhouse.

The bursting of the three white stars over the lagoon had given him a momentary glimpse of the black speck of the canoe taking over Mrs. Travers. He couldn’t find it again with the glass, it was too dark; but the part of the shore for which it was steered would be somewhere near the angle of Belarab’s stockade nearest to the beach. This Jorgenson could make out in the faint rosy glare of fires burning inside. Jorgenson was certain that Lingard was looking toward the Emma through the most convenient loophole he could find.

As obviously Mrs. Travers could not have paddled herself across, two men were taking her over; and for the steersman she had Jaffir. Though he had assented to Jorgenson’s plan Jaffir was anxious to accompany the ring as near as possible to its destination. Nothing but dire necessity had induced him to part with the talisman. Crouching in the stern and flourishing his paddle from side to side he glared at the back of the canvas deck-chair which had been placed in the middle for Mrs. Travers. Wrapped up in the darkness she reclined in it with her eyes closed, faintly aware of the ring hung low on her breast. As the canoe was rather large it was moving very slowly. The two men dipped their paddles without a splash: and surrendering herself passively, in a temporary relaxation of all her limbs, to this adventure Mrs. Travers had no sense of motion at all. She, too, like Jorgenson, was tired of thinking. She abandoned herself to the silence of that night full of roused passions and deadly purposes. She abandoned herself to an illusory feeling; to the impression that she was really resting. For the first time in many days she could taste the relief of being alone. The men with her were less than nothing. She could not speak to them; she could not understand them; the canoe might have been moving by enchantment — if it did move at all. Like a half-conscious sleeper she was on the verge of saying to herself, “What a strange dream I am having.”