The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (16 page)

             
"My God, sir," he bored in, "you mean your father had some of the same kind of weird experiences you've had?"

             
I don't know to this day why the brigadier, ordinarily the touchiest of men, was so offbeat this evening. But he didn't either dummy up or leave. Maybe, just maybe, he was getting so fed up with Williams he didn't want to let the young fellow down. Anyway, those of us who knew him leaned forward. Of course, Mason Williams did too. He hated Ffellowes but never enough to miss a story, which is, I suppose, an indication that he isn't completely mindless.

             
"If you care to hear this particular account, gentlemen," began Ffellowes, "you will have to take it second-hand, as it were. I wasn't there myself, and all I know comes from my father. However he was there, and I may say that will strongly resent (here he did not quite look at Williams) any imputation that he spoke to me anything but the absolute truth." There was silence. Total. Williams had lost too many encounters.

             
Said Ffellowes, "The whole thing started off the west coast of Sumatra. My father had been doing a spell of service with old Brooke of Sarawak, the second of the so-called White Rajahs, C.V. that would be. Anyway, Dad was on
vacation, leave, or what have you. The Brookes, to whom he'd been 'seconded
'
, as the saying goes, from the Indian Army, were most generous to those who served them. And my father wanted to see a few new areas and get about a bit
.
This was in the fall of 1881, mind you, when things were different
.

             
"So there he was, coming down the Sumatran coast, in one of Brooke's own private trading
prahus
, captained by old
Dato
Burung, picked crew and all that, when the storm hit
.

             
"It was a bad one, that storm, but he had a largish craft, as those things went, a big
p
rau
m
ayang
, a sort of merchant ship of those waters. No engine, of course, but a sturdy craft, sixty feet long, well capable of taking all the local weathers, save perhaps for a real typhoon, which this was not
.
They all battened down to ride out the storm. They had no trouble.

             
"Surely enough, the next morning was calm and clear. And off the lee side, within sight of the green west Sumatran coast, was a wreck. It wasn't much, but the remnants of another
prau
, a
prau
bedang
, the local light craft used for fishing, smuggling, and what have you. Ordinarily, this much smaller vessel would have carried two modified lateen sails, or local variants, but now both masts were gone, snapped off at the deck, obviously by the previous night's storm. The fragile hulk was wallowing in the deep milky swells, which were the only trace of the earlier wind.

             
"My father's ship bore down on her. He had given no orders, but a ship in trouble in these waters was fair game for anyone. Occasionally, hapless folk were even rescued. Dad stood on the quarter-deck in his whites, and that was quite enough to make sure there would be no throat cutting. Forbidding anything else would have been silly. Next to him stood his personal servant, old Umpa. This latter was a renegade Moro from the
Sulus
, but a wonderful man. He was at least sixty, but as lean and wiry as a boy. Whatever
my father did was all right with him, and anything anyone else did was wrong, just so long as my father opposed it, mind you.

             
"To his surprise, as the bigger craft wore, to come up under the wreck's lee, a hand was raised. Beaten down though the little craft had been, there was someone still left alive. Dad's vessel launched a rowing boat, and in no time the sole survivor of the wreck was helped up to the poop and placed before him. To his further amazement, it was not a Sudanese fisherman who confronted him, but a Caucasian.

             
"The man was dressed quite decently, in tropical whites, and even had the remnants of a celluloid collar. Aside from the obvious ravages of the sea, it was plain that some time must have passed since the other had known any amenities of civilization. His whites, now faded, were torn at the knees, badly stained with green slime and ripped at various places. His shoes were in an equally parlous condition, almost without soles. Yet, the man still had an air about him. He was tall, a youngish man, sallow and aquiline in feature, was tall, a youngish man, sallow and aquiline in feature, with a hawk nose. Despite his rags, he bore himself as a person of consequence. His beard was only a day or two grown,
'A
t your service,' said my father, as this curious piece of human flotsam stared at him. 'Can I be of some service?'

             
"The answer was peculiar. 'Never yet, sir, have I failed in a commission. I should not like this occasion to be the first. With your permission, we will go below.' With that, this orphan of the gale fell flat on his face, so quickly that not even my father or the ship's captain could catch him as he slumped.

             
"They bent, both of them, quickly enough when the man fell. As my father reached down to take his head, the grey eyes opened.

             
" 'At all costs, watch for
Matilda Briggs
,' said the unknown, in low and quite even tones. The lids shut and the man passed into total and complete unconsciousness. It was
obvious to my father that he had only been sustaining himself by an intense effort of will. What the last piece of nonsense meant was certainly obscure. Who on earth was
Matilda Briggs
, and why should she be sought? As they carried the man below to my father's cabin, he had decided the chap was simply delirious. On the other hand, he was obviously a man of education, and his precise speech betrayed the university graduate. One can be excused of snobbery at this point
.
There were not so many of this type about in the backwaters of the world in those days, you know, despite what Kipling may have written on the subject
.
Most educated Englishmen in Southeast Asia had jobs and rather
strictured
ones at that. The casual drifter or 'remittance man' was a later type than one found in the
1880's
, and had to wait for Willie Maugham to portray him.

             
"Well, my father took his mystery man below; the crew looted the remnants of the little
prau
(and found nothing, I may say, including any evidence of anyone else; they told the skipper that the mad Orang
Blanda
must have taken her out alone); and the White Rajah's ship set sail and continued on her way down the Sumatran coast
.

             
"Dad looked after the chap as best he could. Westerners, Europeans, if you like, though my father would have jibbed at the phrase since he thought that sort of thing began at Calais, did this sort of thing without much thinking then. There were so few of them, you see, surrounded by the great mysterious mass of Asia. Outside the British fief, as the Old Man said, one felt
A.C.I
., or Asia Closing In. No doubt the feeling of the average
G.I
. in Viet Nam a few years ago. I know what they meant, having spent enough time out in those regions.

             
"First, the chap was, as I have said, a lean, tough-looking creature. As he lay there on my father's bed in the stern cabin, even in utter exhaustion and repose, his sharp features were set in commanding lines. His clothes, or rather their remains, which the native servants stripped off at my
father's orders, revealed nothing whatsoever of their owner's past. Yet, as the ragged coat was pulled off the tattered shirt, something fell to the cabin deck with a tinkle and a glitter. My father picked it up at once and found himself holding a man's heavy gold ring, set with an immense sapphire of the purest water. Was this the unknown's? Had he stolen it? No papers, and my father made it plain that he felt no compunction in looking for them, were on the castaway's person. Save for the ring, and his rags, he appeared to own nothing.

             
"For a day, as the
prau
ran slowly down the coast, my father nursed the stranger as tenderly as a woman could have done. There was no fever, but the man's life had almost run out, nonetheless. It was simple exhaustion carried to the nth degree. Whatever the derelict had been
doing, he had almost, as you chaps say, 'burned himself out' in the doing of it
.
Dad sponged and swabbed him, changed his personal linen and directed the servants he had with him, as they all fought for the man's life. The ship's cook, an inspired
Buginese
, wrought mightily with the stores at his command, and nourishing soups were forced down the patient's lips, even though he lay in total unconsciousness.

             
"On the second day, my father was sitting by the man's bed, turning over in his hand the sapphire ring, when he was startled to hear a voice. Looking up, he saw that the patient was regarding both him and also what he held.

             
" 'I once refused an emerald of rather more value.' was the unknown's comment
.
'I can assure you, for whatever my assurances are worth, that the object that you hold is indeed my personal property and not the loot of some native temple.' The man turned his head and looked out the nearest of the cabin ports within reach. Through it, one could discern the green shoreline in the near distance. He turned back to my father and smiled, though in a curiously icy way.

             
" 'The object you hold, sir, is a recompense for some small services, of the reigning family currently responsible for the archipelago which we appear to be skirting. I should be vastly obliged for its return since it has some small sentimental value.'

             
"Having no reason to do otherwise, Dad instantly surrendered the ring.

             
" 'My thanks,' was the languid comment. 'I assume that I also have you to thank for my treatment on board this somewhat piratical vessel?'

             
"The question was delivered in such an insolent tone that my father rose to his feet, ready to justify himself at length. He was waved back to his cushion by a commanding arm. After a pause, the unknown spoke.

             
" 'As an Englishman, and presumably a patriot, I have some small need of your assistance.' The face seemed to brood for a moment before the man spoke again; then he stared in a glacial way directly at my father, running his gaze from top to toe before speaking again. His words appeared addressed to himself, a sort of soliloquy.

             
" 'Hmm, English, an officer, probably
Sandhurst
.
Woolwich gives one rather less flexibility on leave, or else extended service; speaks fluent Malay; seconded to some petty ruler as a guide into civilization, perhaps; at any rate, tolerably familiar with the local scene.'

             
"At
this cold-blooded and quite accurate appraisal (my family has indeed sent its males to
Sandhurst
for some time), my father continued to sit, waiting for the next comment from his bizarre guest.

             
" 'Sir,' said the other, sitting up as he spoke, and fixing my father with a steely glare, 'you are in a position to assist all of humanity. I flatter myself that never have I engaged in a problem of more importance, and, furthermore, one with no precedents whatsoever. Aside from one vaguely analogous
occurence
in Recife, in '77, we are breaking fresh ground.'

             
"As he delivered this cryptic series of remarks, the man clapped, yes, actually clapped his hands, while his eyes,
always piercing, lit up with glee, or some similar emotion. My father decided on the spot that the chap was deranged, if not under the influence of one of those subtle illnesses in which the East abounds. But he was brought back at once by the next question, delivered in the same piercing, almost strident, voice.

             
" 'What is our latitude, sir? How far south have we been taken since I was picked up?' Such was the immense authority conveyed by the strange voyager's personality, that my father had no thought of not answering. Since he himself took the sights with a sextant every dawn, he was able to give an accurate reply at once. The other lay back, obviously in thought
.