Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (798 page)

“A mule,” repeated the wine-seller, his eyes fixed on that quaint and snuffy figure. . . “No, señor officer!  Decidedly no mule is to be got in this poor place.”

The coxswain, who stood by with the true sailor’s air of unconcern in strange surroundings, struck in quietly —

“If your honour will believe me Shank’s pony’s the best for this job.  I would have to leave the beast somewhere, anyhow, since the captain has told me that half my way will be along paths fit only for goats.”

The diminutive man made a step forward, and speaking through the folds of the cloak which seemed to muffle a sarcastic intention —

“Si, señor.  They are too honest in this village to have a single mule amongst them for your worship’s service.  To that I can bear testimony.  In these times it’s only rogues or very clever men who can manage to have mules or any other four-footed beasts and the wherewithal to keep them.  But what this valiant mariner wants is a guide; and here, señor, behold my brother-in-law, Bernardino, wine-seller, and alcade of this most Christian and hospitable village, who will find you one.”

This, Mr. Byrne says in his relation, was the only thing to do.  A youth in a ragged coat and goat-skin breeches was produced after some more talk.  The English officer stood treat to the whole village, and while the peasants drank he and Cuba Tom took their departure accompanied by the guide.  The diminutive man in the cloak had disappeared.

Byrne went along with the coxswain out of the village.  He wanted to see him fairly on his way; and he would have gone a greater distance, if the seaman had not suggested respectfully the advisability of return so as not to keep the ship a moment longer than necessary so close in with the shore on such an unpromising looking morning.  A wild gloomy sky hung over their heads when they took leave of each other, and their surroundings of rank bushes and stony fields were dreary.

“In four days’ time,” were Byrne’s last words, “the ship will stand in and send a boat on shore if the weather permits.  If not you’ll have to make it out on shore the best you can till we come along to take you off.”

“Right you are, sir,” answered Tom, and strode on.  Byrne watched him step out on a narrow path.  In a thick pea-jacket with a pair of pistols in his belt, a cutlass by his side, and a stout cudgel in his hand, he looked a sturdy figure and well able to take care of himself.  He turned round for a moment to wave his hand, giving to Byrne one more view of his honest bronzed face with bushy whiskers.  The lad in goatskin breeches looking, Byrne says, like a faun or a young satyr leaping ahead, stopped to wait for him, and then went off at a bound.  Both disappeared.

Byrne turned back.  The hamlet was hidden in a fold of the ground, and the spot seemed the most lonely corner of the earth and as if accursed in its uninhabited desolate barrenness.  Before he had walked many yards, there appeared very suddenly from behind a bush the muffled up diminutive Spaniard.  Naturally Byrne stopped short.

The other made a mysterious gesture with a tiny hand peeping from under his cloak.  His hat hung very much at the side of his head.  “Señor,” he said without any preliminaries.  “Caution!  It is a positive fact that one-eyed Bernardino, my brother-in-law, has at this moment a mule in his stable.  And why he who is not clever has a mule there?  Because he is a rogue; a man without conscience.  Because I had to give up the macho to him to secure for myself a roof to sleep under and a mouthful of olla to keep my soul in this insignificant body of mine.  Yet, señor, it contains a heart many times bigger than the mean thing which beats in the breast of that brute connection of mine of which I am ashamed, though I opposed that marriage with all my power.  Well, the misguided woman suffered enough.  She had her purgatory on this earth — God rest her soul.”

Byrne says he was so astonished by the sudden appearance of that sprite-like being, and by the sardonic bitterness of the speech, that he was unable to disentangle the significant fact from what seemed but a piece of family history fired out at him without rhyme or reason.  Not at first.  He was confounded and at the same time he was impressed by the rapid forcible delivery, quite different from the frothy excited loquacity of an Italian.  So he stared while the homunculus letting his cloak fall about him, aspired an immense quantity of snuff out of the hollow of his palm.

“A mule,” exclaimed Byrne seizing at last the real aspect of the discourse.  “You say he has got a mule?  That’s queer!  Why did he refuse to let me have it?”

The diminutive Spaniard muffled himself up again with great dignity.

“Quien sabe,” he said coldly, with a shrug of his draped shoulders.  “He is a great politico in everything he does.  But one thing your worship may be certain of — that his intentions are always rascally.  This husband of my defunta sister ought to have been married a long time ago to the widow with the wooden legs.”

“I see.  But remember that, whatever your motives, your worship countenanced him in this lie.”

The bright unhappy eyes on each side of a predatory nose confronted Byrne without wincing, while with that testiness which lurks so often at the bottom of Spanish dignity —

“No doubt the señor officer would not lose an ounce of blood if I were stuck under the fifth rib,” he retorted.  “But what of this poor sinner here?”  Then changing his tone.  “Señor, by the necessities of the times I live here in exile, a Castilian and an old Christian, existing miserably in the midst of these brute Asturians, and dependent on the worst of them all, who has less conscience and scruples than a wolf.  And being a man of intelligence I govern myself accordingly.  Yet I can hardly contain my scorn.  You have heard the way I spoke.  A caballero of parts like your worship might have guessed that there was a cat in there.”

“What cat?” said Byrne uneasily.  “Oh, I see.  Something suspicious.  No, señor.  I guessed nothing.  My nation are not good guessers at that sort of thing; and, therefore, I ask you plainly whether that wine-seller has spoken the truth in other particulars?”

“There are certainly no Frenchmen anywhere about,” said the little man with a return to his indifferent manner.

“Or robbers — ladrones?”

“Ladrones en grande — no!  Assuredly not,” was the answer in a cold philosophical tone.  “What is there left for them to do after the French?  And nobody travels in these times.  But who can say!  Opportunity makes the robber.  Still that mariner of yours has a fierce aspect, and with the son of a cat rats will have no play.  But there is a saying, too, that where honey is there will soon be flies.”

This oracular discourse exasperated Byrne.  “In the name of God,” he cried, “tell me plainly if you think my man is reasonably safe on his journey.”

The homunculus, undergoing one of his rapid changes, seized the officer’s arm.  The grip of his little hand was astonishing.

“Señor!  Bernardino had taken notice of him.  What more do you want?  And listen — men have disappeared on this road — on a certain portion of this road, when Bernardino kept a meson, an inn, and I, his brother-in-law, had coaches and mules for hire.  Now there are no travellers, no coaches.  The French have ruined me.  Bernardino has retired here for reasons of his own after my sister died.  They were three to torment the life out of her, he and Erminia and Lucilla, two aunts of his — all affiliated to the devil.  And now he has robbed me of my last mule.  You are an armed man.  Demand the macho from him, with a pistol to his head, señor — it is not his, I tell you — and ride after your man who is so precious to you.  And then you shall both be safe, for no two travellers have been ever known to disappear together in these days.  As to the beast, I, its owner, I confide it to your honour.”

They were staring hard at each other, and Byrne nearly burst into a laugh at the ingenuity and transparency of the little man’s plot to regain possession of his mule.  But he had no difficulty to keep a straight face because he felt deep within himself a strange inclination to do that very extraordinary thing.  He did not laugh, but his lip quivered; at which the diminutive Spaniard, detaching his black glittering eyes from Byrne’s face, turned his back on him brusquely with a gesture and a fling of the cloak which somehow expressed contempt, bitterness, and discouragement all at once.  He turned away and stood still, his hat aslant, muffled up to the ears.  But he was not offended to the point of refusing the silver duro which Byrne offered him with a non-committal speech as if nothing extraordinary had passed between them.

“I must make haste on board now,” said Byrne, then.

“Vaya usted con Dios,” muttered the gnome.  And this interview ended with a sarcastic low sweep of the hat which was replaced at the same perilous angle as before.

Directly the boat had been hoisted the ship’s sails were filled on the off-shore tack, and Byrne imparted the whole story to his captain, who was but a very few years older than himself.  There was some amused indignation at it — but while they laughed they looked gravely at each other.  A Spanish dwarf trying to beguile an officer of his majesty’s navy into stealing a mule for him — that was too funny, too ridiculous, too incredible.  Those were the exclamations of the captain.  He couldn’t get over the grotesqueness of it.

“Incredible.  That’s just it,” murmured Byrne at last in a significant tone.

They exchanged a long stare.  “It’s as clear as daylight,” affirmed the captain impatiently, because in his heart he was not certain.  And Tom the best seaman in the ship for one, the good-humouredly deferential friend of his boyhood for the other, was becoming endowed with a compelling fascination, like a symbolic figure of loyalty appealing to their feelings and their conscience, so that they could not detach their thoughts from his safety.  Several times they went up on deck, only to look at the coast, as if it could tell them something of his fate.  It stretched away, lengthening in the distance, mute, naked, and savage, veiled now and then by the slanting cold shafts of rain.  The westerly swell rolled its interminable angry lines of foam and big dark clouds flew over the ship in a sinister procession.

“I wish to goodness you had done what your little friend in the yellow hat wanted you to do,” said the commander of the sloop late in the afternoon with visible exasperation.

“Do you, sir?” answered Byrne, bitter with positive anguish.  “I wonder what you would have said afterwards?  Why!  I might have been kicked out of the service for looting a mule from a nation in alliance with His Majesty.  Or I might have been battered to a pulp with flails and pitch-forks — a pretty tale to get abroad about one of your officers — while trying to steal a mule.  Or chased ignominiously to the boat — for you would not have expected me to shoot down unoffending people for the sake of a mangy mule. . . And yet,” he added in a low voice, “I almost wish myself I had done it.”

Before dark those two young men had worked themselves up into a highly complex psychological state of scornful scepticism and alarmed credulity.  It tormented them exceedingly; and the thought that it would have to last for six days at least, and possibly be prolonged further for an indefinite time, was not to be borne.  The ship was therefore put on the inshore tack at dark.  All through the gusty dark night she went towards the land to look for her man, at times lying over in the heavy puffs, at others rolling idle in the swell, nearly stationary, as if she too had a mind of her own to swing perplexed between cool reason and warm impulse.

Then just at daybreak a boat put off from her and went on tossed by the seas towards the shallow cove where, with considerable difficulty, an officer in a thick coat and a round hat managed to land on a strip of shingle.

“It was my wish,” writes Mr. Byrne, “a wish of which my captain approved, to land secretly if possible.  I did not want to be seen either by my aggrieved friend in the yellow hat, whose motives were not clear, or by the one-eyed wine-seller, who may or may not have been affiliated to the devil, or indeed by any other dweller in that primitive village.  But unfortunately the cove was the only possible landing place for miles; and from the steepness of the ravine I couldn’t make a circuit to avoid the houses.”

“Fortunately,” he goes on, “all the people were yet in their beds.  It was barely daylight when I found myself walking on the thick layer of sodden leaves filling the only street.  No soul was stirring abroad, no dog barked.  The silence was profound, and I had concluded with some wonder that apparently no dogs were kept in the hamlet, when I heard a low snarl, and from a noisome alley between two hovels emerged a vile cur with its tail between its legs.  He slunk off silently showing me his teeth as he ran before me, and he disappeared so suddenly that he might have been the unclean incarnation of the Evil One.  There was, too, something so weird in the manner of its coming and vanishing, that my spirits, already by no means very high, became further depressed by the revolting sight of this creature as if by an unlucky presage.”

He got away from the coast unobserved, as far as he knew, then struggled manfully to the west against wind and rain, on a barren dark upland, under a sky of ashes.  Far away the harsh and desolate mountains raising their scarped and denuded ridges seemed to wait for him menacingly.  The evening found him fairly near to them, but, in sailor language, uncertain of his position, hungry, wet, and tired out by a day of steady tramping over broken ground during which he had seen very few people, and had been unable to obtain the slightest intelligence of Tom Corbin’s passage.  “On! on! I must push on,” he had been saying to himself through the hours of solitary effort, spurred more by incertitude than by any definite fear or definite hope.

The lowering daylight died out quickly, leaving him faced by a broken bridge.  He descended into the ravine, forded a narrow stream by the last gleam of rapid water, and clambering out on the other side was met by the night which fell like a bandage over his eyes.  The wind sweeping in the darkness the broadside of the sierra worried his ears by a continuous roaring noise as of a maddened sea.  He suspected that he had lost the road.  Even in daylight, with its ruts and mud-holes and ledges of outcropping stone, it was difficult to distinguish from the dreary waste of the moor interspersed with boulders and clumps of naked bushes.  But, as he says, “he steered his course by the feel of the wind,” his hat rammed low on his brow, his head down, stopping now and again from mere weariness of mind rather than of body — as if not his strength but his resolution were being overtaxed by the strain of endeavour half suspected to be vain, and by the unrest of his feelings.