The Rescue

Author's Note
Part I - The Man and the Brig
I
II
III
IV
Part II - The Shore of Refuge
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
Part III - The Capture
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
Part IV - The Gift of the Shallows
I
II
III
IV
V
Part V - The Point of Honour and the Point of Passion
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Part VI - The Claim of Life and the Toll of Death
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX

Of the three long novels of mine which suffered an interruption, "The
Rescue" was the one that had to wait the longest for the good pleasure
of the Fates. I am betraying no secret when I state here that it had
to wait precisely for twenty years. I laid it aside at the end of the
summer of 1898 and it was about the end of the summer of 1918 that I
took it up again with the firm determination to see the end of it and
helped by the sudden feeling that I might be equal to the task.

This does not mean that I turned to it with elation. I was well aware
and perhaps even too much aware of the dangers of such an adventure.
The amazingly sympathetic kindness which men of various temperaments,
diverse views and different literary tastes have been for years
displaying towards my work has done much for me, has done all—except
giving me that over-weening self-confidence which may assist an
adventurer sometimes but in the long run ends by leading him to the
gallows.

As the characteristic I want most to impress upon these short Author's
Notes prepared for my first Collected Edition is that of absolute
frankness, I hasten to declare that I founded my hopes not on my
supposed merits but on the continued goodwill of my readers. I may say
at once that my hopes have been justified out of all proportion to my
deserts. I met with the most considerate, most delicately expressed
criticism free from all antagonism and in its conclusions showing
an insight which in itself could not fail to move me deeply, but was
associated also with enough commendation to make me feel rich beyond the
dreams of avarice—I mean an artist's avarice which seeks its treasure
in the hearts of men and women.

No! Whatever the preliminary anxieties might have been this adventure
was not to end in sorrow. Once more Fortune favoured audacity; and yet
I have never forgotten the jocular translation of
Audaces fortuna juvat
offered to me by my tutor when I was a small boy: "The Audacious get
bitten." However he took care to mention that there were various kinds
of audacity. Oh, there are, there are! . . . There is, for instance, the
kind of audacity almost indistinguishable from impudence. . . . I
must believe that in this case I have not been impudent for I am not
conscious of having been bitten.

The truth is that when "The Rescue" was laid aside it was not laid aside
in despair. Several reasons contributed to this abandonment and, no
doubt, the first of them was the growing sense of general difficulty in
the handling of the subject. The contents and the course of the story I
had clearly in my mind. But as to the way of presenting the facts, and
perhaps in a certain measure as to the nature of the facts themselves,
I had many doubts. I mean the telling, representative facts, helpful
to carry on the idea, and, at the same time, of such a nature as not to
demand an elaborate creation of the atmosphere to the detriment of
the action. I did not see how I could avoid becoming wearisome in the
presentation of detail and in the pursuit of clearness. I saw the action
plainly enough. What I had lost for the moment was the sense of the
proper formula of expression, the only formula that would suit. This,
of course, weakened my confidence in the intrinsic worth and in the
possible interest of the story—that is in my invention. But I suspect
that all the trouble was, in reality, the doubt of my prose, the doubt
of its adequacy, of its power to master both the colours and the shades.

It is difficult to describe, exactly as I remember it, the complex state
of my feelings; but those of my readers who take an interest in artistic
perplexities will understand me best when I point out that I dropped
"The Rescue" not to give myself up to idleness, regrets, or dreaming,
but to begin "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'" and to go on with it
without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of
"The Rescue" with any page of "The Nigger" will furnish an ocular
demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis
of my writing life. For it was a crisis undoubtedly. The laying aside of
a work so far advanced was a very awful decision to take. It was
wrung from me by a sudden conviction that
there
only was the road of
salvation, the clear way out for an uneasy conscience. The finishing
of "The Nigger" brought to my troubled mind the comforting sense of
an accomplished task, and the first consciousness of a certain sort
of mastery which could accomplish something with the aid of propitious
stars. Why I did not return to "The Rescue" at once then, was not for
the reason that I had grown afraid of it. Being able now to assume a
firm attitude I said to myself deliberately: "That thing can wait." At
the same time I was just as certain in my mind that "Youth," a story
which I had then, so to speak, on the tip of my pen, could
not
wait.
Neither could "Heart of Darkness" be put off; for the practical reason
that Mr. Wm. Blackwood having requested me to write something for the
No. M of his magazine I had to stir up at once the subject of that tale
which had been long lying quiescent in my mind, because, obviously, the
venerable Maga at her patriarchal age of 1000 numbers could not be kept
waiting. Then "Lord Jim," with about seventeen pages already written at
odd times, put in his claim which was irresistible. Thus every stroke
of the pen was taking me further away from the abandoned "Rescue," not
without some compunction on my part but with a gradually diminishing
resistance; till at last I let myself go as if recognising a superior
influence against which it was useless to contend.

The years passed and the pages grew in number, and the long reveries of
which they were the outcome stretched wide between me and the deserted
"Rescue" like the smooth hazy spaces of a dreamy sea. Yet I never
actually lost sight of that dark speck in the misty distance. It
had grown very small but it asserted itself with the appeal of old
associations. It seemed to me that it would be a base thing for me to
slip out of the world leaving it out there all alone, waiting for its
fate—that would never come?

Sentiment, pure sentiment as you see, prompted me in the last instance
to face the pains and hazards of that return. As I moved slowly towards
the abandoned body of the tale it loomed up big amongst the glittering
shallows of the coast, lonely but not forbidding. There was nothing
about it of a grim derelict. It had an air of expectant life. One after
another I made out the familiar faces watching my approach with faint
smiles of amused recognition. They had known well enough that I was
bound to come back to them. But their eyes met mine seriously as was
only to be expected since I, myself, felt very serious as I stood
amongst them again after years of absence. At once, without wasting
words, we went to work together on our renewed life; and every moment
I felt more strongly that They Who had Waited bore no grudge to the man
who however widely he may have wandered at times had played truant only
once in his life.

1920. J. C.

The shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the thousand
islands, big and little, which make up the Malay Archipelago has been
for centuries the scene of adventurous undertakings. The vices and the
virtues of four nations have been displayed in the conquest of that
region that even to this day has not been robbed of all the mystery
and romance of its past—and the race of men who had fought against
the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch and the English, has not been
changed by the unavoidable defeat. They have kept to this day their
love of liberty, their fanatical devotion to their chiefs, their
blind fidelity in friendship and hate—all their lawful and unlawful
instincts. Their country of land and water—for the sea was as much
their country as the earth of their islands—has fallen a prey to the
western race—the reward of superior strength if not of superior virtue.
To-morrow the advancing civilization will obliterate the marks of a long
struggle in the accomplishment of its inevitable victory.

The adventurers who began that struggle have left no descendants. The
ideas of the world changed too quickly for that. But even far into the
present century they have had successors. Almost in our own day we have
seen one of them—a true adventurer in his devotion to his impulse—a
man of high mind and of pure heart, lay the foundation of a flourishing
state on the ideas of pity and justice. He recognized chivalrously the
claims of the conquered; he was a disinterested adventurer, and the
reward of his noble instincts is in the veneration with which a strange
and faithful race cherish his memory.

Misunderstood and traduced in life, the glory of his achievement has
vindicated the purity of his motives. He belongs to history. But there
were others—obscure adventurers who had not his advantages of birth,
position, and intelligence; who had only his sympathy with the people of
forests and sea he understood and loved so well. They can not be said
to be forgotten since they have not been known at all. They were lost
in the common crowd of seamen-traders of the Archipelago, and if
they emerged from their obscurity it was only to be condemned as
law-breakers. Their lives were thrown away for a cause that had no right
to exist in the face of an irresistible and orderly progress—their
thoughtless lives guided by a simple feeling.

But the wasted lives, for the few who know, have tinged with romance the
region of shallow waters and forest-clad islands, that lies far east,
and still mysterious between the deep waters of two oceans.

Out of the level blue of a shallow sea Carimata raises a lofty
barrenness of grey and yellow tints, the drab eminence of its arid
heights. Separated by a narrow strip of water, Suroeton, to the west,
shows a curved and ridged outline resembling the backbone of a stooping
giant. And to the eastward a troop of insignificant islets stand
effaced, indistinct, with vague features that seem to melt into the
gathering shadows. The night following from the eastward the retreat of
the setting sun advanced slowly, swallowing the land and the sea; the
land broken, tormented and abrupt; the sea smooth and inviting with its
easy polish of continuous surface to wanderings facile and endless.