The Rescue (22 page)

Carter whistled low.

"There's a pair of you I can't make out," he called back, hurrying over
the side.

Shaw took this opportunity to approach. Beginning with hesitation: "A
word with you, sir," the mate went on to say he was a respectable man.
He delivered himself in a ringing, unsteady voice. He was married, he
had children, he abhorred illegality. The light played about his obese
figure, he had flung his mushroom hat on the deck, he was not afraid to
speak the truth. The grey moustache stood out aggressively, his glances
were uneasy; he pressed his hands to his stomach convulsively, opened
his thick, short arms wide, wished it to be understood he had been
chief-officer of home ships, with a spotless character and he hoped
"quite up to his work." He was a peaceable man, none more; disposed
to stretch a point when it "came to a difference with niggers of some
kind—they had to be taught manners and reason" and he was not averse at
a pinch to—but here were white people—gentlemen, ladies, not to speak
of the crew. He had never spoken to a superior like this before,
and this was prudence, his conviction, a point of view, a point of
principle, a conscious superiority and a burst of resentment hoarded
through years against all the successive and unsatisfactory captains of
his existence. There never had been such an opportunity to show he could
not be put upon. He had one of them on a string and he was going to lead
him a dance. There was courage, too, in it, since he believed himself
fallen unawares into the clutches of a particularly desperate man and
beyond the reach of law.

A certain small amount of calculation entered the audacity of his
remonstrance. Perhaps—it flashed upon him—the yacht's gentry will hear
I stood up for them. This could conceivably be of advantage to a man
who wanted a lift in the world. "Owner of a yacht—badly scared—a
gentleman—money nothing to him." Thereupon Shaw declared with heat that
he couldn't be an accessory either after or before the fact. Those
that never went home—who had nothing to go to perhaps—he interjected,
hurriedly, could do as they liked. He couldn't. He had a wife, a
family, a little house—paid for—with difficulty. He followed the sea
respectably out and home, all regular, not vagabonding here and there,
chumming with the first nigger that came along and laying traps for his
betters.

One of the two flare bearers sighed at his elbow, and shifted his weight
to the other foot.

These two had been keeping so perfectly still that the movement was
as startling as if a statue had changed its pose. After looking at the
offender with cold malevolence, Shaw went on to speak of law-courts,
of trials, and of the liberty of the subject; then he pointed out the
certitude and the inconvenience of being found out, affecting for the
moment the dispassionateness of wisdom.

"There will be fifteen years in gaol at the end of this job for
everybody," said Shaw, "and I have a boy that don't know his father yet.
Fine things for him to learn when he grows up. The innocent are dead
certain here to catch it along with you. The missus will break her heart
unless she starves first. Home sold up."

He saw a mysterious iniquity in a dangerous relation to himself and
began to lose his head. What he really wanted was to have his
existence left intact, for his own cherishing and pride. It was a moral
aspiration, but in his alarm the native grossness of his nature came
clattering out like a devil out of a trap. He would blow the gaff,
split, give away the whole show, he would back up honest people, kiss
the book, say what he thought, let all the world know . . . and when he
paused to draw breath, all around him was silent and still. Before the
impetus of that respectable passion his words were scattered like chaff
driven by a gale and rushed headlong into the night of the Shallows. And
in the great obscurity, imperturbable, it heard him say he "washed his
hands of everything."

"And the brig?" asked Lingard, suddenly.

Shaw was checked. For a second the seaman in him instinctively admitted
the claim of the ship.

"The brig. The brig. She's right enough," he mumbled. He had nothing to
say against the brig—not he. She wasn't like the big ships he was used
to, but of her kind the best craft he ever. . . . And with a brusque
return upon himself, he protested that he had been decoyed on board
under false pretences. It was as bad as being shanghaied when in liquor.
It was—upon his soul. And into a craft next thing to a pirate! That
was the name for it or his own name was not Shaw. He said this glaring
owlishly. Lingard, perfectly still and mute, bore the blows without a
sign.

The silly fuss of that man seared his very soul. There was no end to
this plague of fools coming to him from the forgotten ends of the earth.
A fellow like that could not be told. No one could be told. Blind they
came and blind they would go out. He admitted reluctantly, but without
doubt, that as if pushed by a force from outside he would have to
try and save two of them. To this end he foresaw the probable need of
leaving his brig for a time. He would have to leave her with that man.
The mate. He had engaged him himself—to make his insurance valid—to be
able sometimes to speak—to have near him. Who would have believed such
a fool-man could exist on the face of the sea! Who? Leave the brig with
him. The brig!

Ever since sunset, the breeze kept off by the heat of the day had been
trying to re-establish in the darkness its sway over the Shoals. Its
approaches had been heard in the night, its patient murmurs, its foiled
sighs; but now a surprisingly heavy puff came in a free rush as if,
far away there to the northward, the last defence of the calm had
been victoriously carried. The flames borne down streamed bluishly,
horizontal and noisy at the end of tall sticks, like fluttering
pennants; and behold, the shadows on the deck went mad and jostled each
other as if trying to escape from a doomed craft, the darkness, held
up dome-like by the brilliant glare, seemed to tumble headlong upon the
brig in an overwhelming downfall, the men stood swaying as if ready
to fall under the ruins of a black and noiseless disaster. The blurred
outlines of the brig, the masts, the rigging, seemed to shudder in the
terror of coming extinction—and then the darkness leaped upward again,
the shadows returned to their places, the men were seen distinct,
swarthy, with calm faces, with glittering eyeballs. The destruction in
the breath had passed, was gone.

A discord of three voices raised together in a drawling wail trailed on
the sudden immobility of the air.

"Brig ahoy! Give us a rope!"

The first boat-load from the yacht emerged floating slowly into the
pool of purple light wavering round the brig on the black water. Two men
squeezed in the bows pulled uncomfortably; in the middle, on a heap of
seamen's canvas bags, another sat, insecure, propped with both arms,
stiff-legged, angularly helpless. The light from the poop brought
everything out in lurid detail, and the boat floating slowly toward the
brig had a suspicious and pitiful aspect. The shabby load lumbering
her looked somehow as if it had been stolen by those men who resembled
castaways. In the sternsheets Carter, standing up, steered with his leg.
He had a smile of youthful sarcasm.

"Here they are!" he cried to Lingard. "You've got your own way, Captain.
I thought I had better come myself with the first precious lot—"

"Pull around the stern. The brig's on the swing," interrupted Lingard.

"Aye, aye! We'll try not to smash the brig. We would be lost indeed
if—fend off there, John; fend off, old reliable, if you care a pin
for your salty hide. I like the old chap," he said, when he stood by
Lingard's side looking down at the boat which was being rapidly cleared
by whites and Malays working shoulder to shoulder in silence. "I like
him. He don't belong to that yachting lot either. They picked him up
on the road somewhere. Look at the old dog—carved out of a ship's
timber—as talkative as a fish—grim as a gutted wreck. That's the man
for me. All the others there are married, or going to be, or ought
to be, or sorry they ain't. Every man jack of them has a petticoat in
tow—dash me! Never heard in all my travels such a jabber about wives
and kids. Hurry up with your dunnage—below there! Aye! I had no
difficulty in getting them to clear out from the yacht. They never saw
a pair of gents stolen before—you understand. It upset all their little
notions of what a stranding means, hereabouts. Not that mine aren't
mixed a bit, too—and yet I've seen a thing or two."

His excitement was revealed in this boyish impulse to talk.

"Look," he said, pointing at the growing pile of bags and bedding on the
brig's quarter-deck. "Look. Don't they mean to sleep soft—and dream of
home—maybe. Home. Think of that, Captain. These chaps can't get clear
away from it. It isn't like you and me—"

Lingard made a movement.

"I ran away myself when so high. My old man's a Trinity pilot. That's a
job worth staying at home for. Mother writes sometimes, but they can't
miss me much. There's fourteen of us altogether—eight at home yet. No
fear of the old country ever getting undermanned—let die who must. Only
let it be a fair game, Captain. Let's have a fair show."

Lingard assured him briefly he should have it. That was the very reason
he wanted the yacht's crew in the brig, he added. Then quiet and grave
he inquired whether that pistol was still in Carter's pocket.

"Never mind that," said the young man, hurriedly. "Remember who began.
To be shot at wouldn't rile me so much—it's being threatened, don't you
see, that was heavy on my chest. Last night is very far off though—and
I will be hanged if I know what I meant exactly when I took the old
thing from its nail. There. More I can't say till all's settled one way
or another. Will that do?"

Flushing brick red, he suspended his judgment and stayed his hand with
the generosity of youth.

Apparently it suited Lingard to be reprieved in that form. He bowed
his head slowly. It would do. To leave his life to that youngster's
ignorance seemed to redress the balance of his mind against a lot of
secret intentions. It was distasteful and bitter as an expiation should
be. He also held a life in his hand; a life, and many deaths besides,
but these were like one single feather in the scales of his conscience.
That he should feel so was unavoidable because his strength would at no
price permit itself to be wasted. It would not be—and there was an
end of it. All he could do was to throw in another risk into the sea
of risks. Thus was he enabled to recognize that a drop of water in
the ocean makes a great difference. His very desire, unconquered, but
exiled, had left the place where he could constantly hear its voice. He
saw it, he saw himself, the past, the future, he saw it all, shifting
and indistinct like those shapes the strained eye of a wanderer outlines
in darker strokes upon the face of the night.

When Lingard went to his boat to follow Carter, who had gone back to the
yacht, Wasub, mast and sail on shoulder, preceded him down the ladder.
The old man leaped in smartly and busied himself in getting the dinghy
ready for his commander.

In that little boat Lingard was accustomed to traverse the Shallows
alone. She had a short mast and a lug-sail, carried two easily, floated
in a few inches of water. In her he was independent of a crew, and, if
the wind failed, could make his way with a pair of sculls taking short
cuts over shoal places. There were so many islets and sandbanks that in
case of sudden bad weather there was always a lee to be found, and when
he wished to land he could pull her up a beach, striding ahead, painter
in hand, like a giant child dragging a toy boat. When the brig was
anchored within the Shallows it was in her that he visited the lagoon.
Once, when caught by a sudden freshening of the sea-breeze, he had waded
up a shelving bank carrying her on his head and for two days they had
rested together on the sand, while around them the shallow waters raged
lividly, and across three miles of foam the brig would time after time
dissolve in the mist and re-appear distinct, nodding her tall spars that
seemed to touch a weeping sky of lamentable greyness.

Whenever he came into the lagoon tugging with bare arms, Jorgenson,
who would be watching the entrance of the creek ever since a muffled
detonation of a gun to seaward had warned him of the brig's arrival on
the Shore of Refuge, would mutter to himself—"Here's Tom coming in his
nutshell." And indeed she was in shape somewhat like half a nutshell and
also in the colour of her dark varnished planks. The man's shoulders and
head rose high above her gunwales; loaded with Lingard's heavy frame she
would climb sturdily the steep ridges, slide squatting into the hollows
of the sea, or, now and then, take a sedate leap over a short wave. Her
behaviour had a stout trustworthiness about it, and she reminded one of
a surefooted mountain-pony carrying over difficult ground a rider much
bigger than himself.

Wasub wiped the thwarts, ranged the mast and sail along the side,
shipped the rowlocks. Lingard looked down at his old servant's spare
shoulders upon which the light from above fell unsteady but vivid. Wasub
worked for the comfort of his commander and his singleminded absorption
in that task flashed upon Lingard the consolation of an act of
friendliness. The elderly Malay at last lifted his head with a
deferential murmur; his wrinkled old face with half a dozen wiry hairs
pendulous at each corner of the dark lips expressed a kind of weary
satisfaction, and the slightly oblique worn eyes stole a discreet upward
glance containing a hint of some remote meaning. Lingard found himself
compelled by the justice of that obscure claim to murmur as he stepped
into the boat:

"These are times of danger."