Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (771 page)

However, the evening passed off all right.  Luckily, there is a degree of bliss too intense for elation.  Jasper was quiet and concentrated silently in watching Freya.  As we went on board our respective ships I offered to give his brig a tow out next morning.  I did it on purpose to get him away at the earliest possible moment.  So in the first cold light of the dawn we passed by the gunboat lying black and still without a sound in her at the mouth of the glassy cove.  But with tropical swiftness the sun had climbed twice its diameter above the horizon before we had rounded the reef and got abreast of the point.  On the biggest boulder there stood Freya, all in white and, in her helmet, like a feminine and martial statue with a rosy face, as I could see very well with my glasses.  She fluttered an expressive handkerchief, and Jasper, running up the main rigging of the white and warlike brig, waved his hat in response.  Shortly afterwards we parted, I to the northward and Jasper heading east with a light wind on the quarter, for Banjermassin and two other ports, I believe it was, that trip.

This peaceful occasion was the last on which I saw all these people assembled together; the charmingly fresh and resolute Freya, the innocently round-eyed old Nelson, Jasper, keen, long limbed, lean faced, admirably self-contained, in his manner, because inconceivably happy under the eyes of his Freya; all three tall, fair, and blue-eyed in varied shades, and amongst them the swarthy, arrogant, black-haired Dutchman, shorter nearly by a head, and so much thicker than any of them that he seemed to be a creature capable of inflating itself, a grotesque specimen of mankind from some other planet.

The contrast struck me all at once as we stood in the lighted verandah, after rising from the dinner-table.  I was fascinated by it for the rest of the evening, and I remember the impression of something funny and ill-omened at the same time in it to this day.

CHAPTER III

A few weeks later, coming early one morning into Singapore, from a journey to the southward, I saw the brig lying at anchor in all her usual symmetry and splendour of aspect as though she had been taken out of a glass case and put delicately into the water that very moment.

She was well out in the roadstead, but I steamed in and took up my habitual berth close in front of the town.  Before we had finished breakfast a quarter-master came to tell me that Captain Allen’s boat was coming our way.

His smart gig dashed alongside, and in two bounds he was up our accommodation-ladder and shaking me by the hand with his nervous grip, his eyes snapping inquisitively, for he supposed I had called at the Seven Isles group on my way.  I reached into my pocket for a nicely folded little note, which he grabbed out of my hand without ceremony and carried off on the bridge to read by himself.  After a decent interval I followed him up there, and found him pacing to and fro; for the nature of his emotions made him restless even in his most thoughtful moments.

He shook his head at me triumphantly.

“Well, my dear boy,” he said, “I shall be counting the days now.”

I understood what he meant.  I knew that those young people had settled already on a runaway match without official preliminaries.  This was really a logical decision.  Old Nelson (or Nielsen) would never have agreed to give up Freya peaceably to this compromising Jasper.  Heavens!  What would the Dutch authorities say to such a match!  It sounds too ridiculous for words.  But there’s nothing in the world more selfishly hard than a timorous man in a fright about his “little estate,” as old Nelson used to call it in apologetic accents.  A heart permeated by a particular sort of funk is proof against sense, feeling, and ridicule.  It’s a flint.

Jasper would have made his request all the same and then taken his own way; but it was Freya who decided that nothing should be said, on the ground that, “Papa would only worry himself to distraction.”  He was capable of making himself ill, and then she wouldn’t have the heart to leave him.  Here you have the sanity of feminine outlook and the frankness of feminine reasoning.  And for the rest, Miss Freya could read “poor dear papa” in the way a woman reads a man — like an open book.  His daughter once gone, old Nelson would not worry himself.  He would raise a great outcry, and make no end of lamentable fuss, but that’s not the same thing.  The real agonies of indecision, the anguish of conflicting feelings would be spared to him.  And as he was too unassuming to rage, he would, after a period of lamentation, devote himself to his “little estate,” and to keeping on good terms with the authorities.

Time would do the rest.  And Freya thought she could afford to wait, while ruling over her own home in the beautiful brig and over the man who loved her.  This was the life for her who had learned to walk on a ship’s deck.  She was a ship-child, a sea-girl if ever there was one.  And of course she loved Jasper and trusted him; but there was a shade of anxiety in her pride.  It is very fine and romantic to possess for your very own a finely tempered and trusty sword-blade, but whether it is the best weapon to counter with the common cudgel-play of Fate — that’s another question.

She knew that she had the more substance of the two — you needn’t try any cheap jokes, I am not talking of their weights.  She was just a little anxious while he was away, and she had me who, being a tried confidant, took the liberty to whisper frequently “The sooner the better.”  But there was a peculiar vein of obstinacy in Miss Freya, and her reason for delay was characteristic.  “Not before my twenty-first birthday; so that there shall be no mistake in people’s minds as to me being old enough to know what I am doing.”

Jasper’s feelings were in such subjection that he had never even remonstrated against the decree.  She was just splendid, whatever she did or said, and there was an end of it for him.  I believe that he was subtle enough to be even flattered at bottom — at times.  And then to console him he had the brig which seemed pervaded by the spirit of Freya, since whatever he did on board was always done under the supreme sanction of his love.

“Yes.  I’ll soon begin to count the days,” he repeated.  “Eleven months more.  I’ll have to crowd three trips into that.”

“Mind you don’t come to grief trying to do too much,” I admonished him.  But he dismissed my caution with a laugh and an elated gesture.  Pooh!  Nothing, nothing could happen to the brig, he cried, as if the flame of his heart could light up the dark nights of uncharted seas, and the image of Freya serve for an unerring beacon amongst hidden shoals; as if the winds had to wait on his future, the stars fight for it in their courses; as if the magic of his passion had the power to float a ship on a drop of dew or sail her through the eye of a needle — simply because it was her magnificent lot to be the servant of a love so full of grace as to make all the ways of the earth safe, resplendent, and easy.

“I suppose,” I said, after he had finished laughing at my innocent enough remark, “I suppose you will be off to-day.”

That was what he meant to do.  He had not gone at daylight only because he expected me to come in.

“And only fancy what has happened yesterday,” he went on.  “My mate left me suddenly.  Had to.  And as there’s nobody to be found at a short notice I am going to take Schultz with me.  The notorious Schultz!  Why don’t you jump out of your skin?  I tell you I went and unearthed Schultz late last evening, after no end of trouble.  ‘I am your man, captain,’ he says, in that wonderful voice of his, ‘but I am sorry to confess I have practically no clothes to my back.  I have had to sell all my wardrobe to get a little food from day to day.’  What a voice that man has got.  Talk about moving stones!  But people seem to get used to it.  I had never seen him before, and, upon my word, I felt suddenly tears rising to my eyes.  Luckily it was dusk.  He was sitting very quiet under a tree in a native compound as thin as a lath, and when I peered down at him all he had on was an old cotton singlet and a pair of ragged pyjamas.  I bought him six white suits and two pairs of canvas shoes.  Can’t clear the ship without a mate.  Must have somebody.  I am going on shore presently to sign him on, and I shall take him with me as I go back on board to get under way.  Now, I am a lunatic — am I not?  Mad, of course.  Come on!  Lay it on thick.  Let yourself go.  I like to see you get excited.”

He so evidently expected me to scold that I took especial pleasure in exaggerating the calmness of my attitude.

“The worst that can be brought up against Schultz,” I began, folding my arms and speaking dispassionately, “is an awkward habit of stealing the stores of every ship he has ever been in.  He will do it.  That’s really all that’s wrong.  I don’t credit absolutely that story Captain Robinson tells of Schultz conspiring in Chantabun with some ruffians in a Chinese junk to steal the anchor off the starboard bow of the Bohemian Girl schooner.  Robinson’s story is too ingenious altogether.  That other tale of the engineers of the Nan-Shan finding Schultz at midnight in the engine-room busy hammering at the brass bearings to carry them off for sale on shore seems to me more authentic.  Apart from this little weakness, let me tell you that Schultz is a smarter sailor than many who never took a drop of drink in their lives, and perhaps no worse morally than some men you and I know who have never stolen the value of a penny.  He may not be a desirable person to have on board one’s ship, but since you have no choice he may be made to do, I believe.  The important thing is to understand his psychology.  Don’t give him any money till you have done with him.  Not a cent, if he begs ever so.  For as sure as Fate the moment you give him any money he will begin to steal.  Just remember that.”

I enjoyed Jasper’s incredulous surprise.

“The devil he will!” he cried.  “What on earth for?  Aren’t you trying to pull my leg, old boy?”

“No.  I’m not.  You must understand Schultz’s psychology.  He’s neither a loafer nor a cadger.  He’s not likely to wander about looking for somebody to stand him drinks.  But suppose he goes on shore with five dollars, or fifty for that matter, in his pocket?  After the third or fourth glass he becomes fuddled and charitable.  He either drops his money all over the place, or else distributes the lot around; gives it to any one who will take it.  Then it occurs to him that the night is young yet, and that he may require a good many more drinks for himself and his friends before morning.  So he starts off cheerfully for his ship.  His legs never get affected nor his head either in the usual way.  He gets aboard and simply grabs the first thing that seems to him suitable — the cabin lamp, a coil of rope, a bag of biscuits, a drum of oil — and converts it into money without thinking twice about it.  This is the process and no other.  You have only to look out that he doesn’t get a start.  That’s all.”

“Confound his psychology,” muttered Jasper.  “But a man with a voice like his is fit to talk to the angels.  Is he incurable do you think?”

I said that I thought so.  Nobody had prosecuted him yet, but no one would employ him any longer.  His end would be, I feared, to starve in some hole or other.

“Ah, well,” reflected Jasper.  “The Bonito isn’t trading to any ports of civilisation.  That’ll make it easier for him to keep straight.”

That was true.  The brig’s business was on uncivilised coasts, with obscure rajahs dwelling in nearly unknown bays; with native settlements up mysterious rivers opening their sombre, forest-lined estuaries among a welter of pale green reefs and dazzling sand-banks, in lonely straits of calm blue water all aglitter with sunshine.  Alone, far from the beaten tracks, she glided, all white, round dark, frowning headlands, stole out, silent like a ghost, from behind points of land stretching out all black in the moonlight; or lay hove-to, like a sleeping sea-bird, under the shadow of some nameless mountain waiting for a signal.  She would be glimpsed suddenly on misty, squally days dashing disdainfully aside the short aggressive waves of the Java Sea; or be seen far, far away, a tiny dazzling white speck flying across the brooding purple masses of thunderclouds piled up on the horizon.  Sometimes, on the rare mail tracks, where civilisation brushes against wild mystery, when the naive passengers crowding along the rail exclaimed, pointing at her with interest: “Oh, here’s a yacht!” the Dutch captain, with a hostile glance, would grunt contemptuously: “Yacht!  No!  That’s only English Jasper.  A pedlar — ”

“A good seaman you say,” ejaculated Jasper, still in the matter of the hopeless Schultz with the wonderfully touching voice.

“First rate.  Ask any one.  Quite worth having — only impossible,” I declared.

“He shall have his chance to reform in the brig,” said Jasper, with a laugh.  “There will be no temptations either to drink or steal where I am going to this time.”

I didn’t press him for anything more definite on that point.  In fact, intimate as we were, I had a pretty clear notion of the general run of his business.

But as we are going ashore in his gig he asked suddenly: “By the way, do you know where Heemskirk is?”

I eyed him covertly, and was reassured.  He had asked the question, not as a lover, but as a trader.  I told him that I had heard in Palembang that the Neptun was on duty down about Flores and Sumbawa.  Quite out of his way.  He expressed his satisfaction.

“You know,” he went on, “that fellow, when he gets on the Borneo coast, amuses himself by knocking down my beacons.  I have had to put up a few to help me in and out of the rivers.  Early this year a Celebes trader becalmed in a prau was watching him at it.  He steamed the gunboat full tilt at two of them, one after another, smashing them to pieces, and then lowered a boat on purpose to pull out a third, which I had a lot of trouble six months ago to stick up in the middle of a mudflat for a tide mark.  Did you ever hear of anything more provoking — eh?”

“I wouldn’t quarrel with the beggar,” I observed casually, yet disliking that piece of news strongly.  “It isn’t worth while.”

“I quarrel?” cried Jasper.  “I don’t want to quarrel.  I don’t want to hurt a single hair of his ugly head.  My dear fellow, when I think of Freya’s twenty-first birthday, all the world’s my friend, Heemskirk included.  It’s a nasty, spiteful amusement, all the same.”