The Rescue (25 page)

"Do not! Do not look at that woman!" cried Immada. "O! Master—look
away. . . ." Hassim threw one arm round the girl's neck. Her voice sank.
"O! Master—look at us." Hassim, drawing her to himself, covered her
lips with his hand. She struggled a little like a snared bird and
submitted, hiding her face on his shoulder, very quiet, sobbing without
noise.

"What do they say to you?" asked Mrs. Travers with a faint and pained
smile. "What can they say? It is intolerable to think that their words
which have no meaning for me may go straight to your heart. . . ."

"Look away," whispered Lingard without making the slightest movement.

Mrs. Travers sighed.

"Yes, it is very hard to think that I who want to touch you cannot make
myself understood as well as they. And yet I speak the language of your
childhood, the language of the man for whom there is no hope but in your
generosity."

He shook his head. She gazed at him anxiously for a moment. "In your
memories then," she said and was surprised by the expression of profound
sadness that over-spread his attentive face.

"Do you know what I remember?" he said. "Do you want to know?" She
listened with slightly parted lips. "I will tell you. Poverty, hard
work—and death," he went on, very quietly. "And now I've told you, and
you don't know. That's how it is between us. You talk to me—I talk to
you—and we don't know."

Her eyelids dropped.

"What can I find to say?" she went on. "What can I do? I mustn't
give in. Think! Amongst your memories there must be some face—some
voice—some name, if nothing more. I can not believe that there is
nothing but bitterness."

"There's no bitterness," he murmured.

"O! Brother, my heart is faint with fear," whispered Immada. Lingard
turned swiftly to that whisper.

"Then, they are to be saved," exclaimed Mrs. Travers. "Ah, I knew. . . ."

"Bear thy fear in patience," said Hassim, rapidly, to his sister.

"They are to be saved. You have said it," Lingard pronounced aloud,
suddenly. He felt like a swimmer who, in the midst of superhuman efforts
to reach the shore, perceives that the undertow is taking him to sea. He
would go with the mysterious current; he would go swiftly—and see the
end, the fulfilment both blissful and terrible.

With this state of exaltation in which he saw himself in some
incomprehensible way always victorious, whatever might befall, there was
mingled a tenacity of purpose. He could not sacrifice his intention,
the intention of years, the intention of his life; he could no more
part with it and exist than he could cut out his heart and live. The
adventurer held fast to his adventure which made him in his own sight
exactly what he was.

He considered the problem with cool audacity, backed by a belief in
his own power. It was not these two men he had to save; he had to save
himself! And looked upon in this way the situation appeared familiar.

Hassim had told him the two white men had been taken by their captors
to Daman's camp. The young Rajah, leaving his sister in the canoe, had
landed on the sand and had crept to the very edge of light thrown by the
fires by which the Illanuns were cooking. Daman was sitting apart by a
larger blaze. Two praus rode in shallow water near the sandbank; on the
ridge, a sentry walked watching the lights of the brig; the camp was
full of quiet whispers. Hassim returned to his canoe, then he and his
sister, paddling cautiously round the anchored praus, in which women's
voices could be heard, approached the other end of the camp. The light
of the big blaze there fell on the water and the canoe skirted it
without a splash, keeping in the night. Hassim, landing for the second
time, crept again close to the fires. Each prau had, according to the
customs of the Illanun rovers when on a raiding expedition, a smaller
war-boat and these being light and manageable were hauled up on the sand
not far from the big blaze; they sat high on the shelving shore throwing
heavy shadows. Hassim crept up toward the largest of them and then
standing on tiptoe could look at the camp across the gunwales. The
confused talking of the men was like the buzz of insects in a forest.
A child wailed on board one of the praus and a woman hailed the shore
shrilly. Hassim unsheathed his kris and held it in his hand.

Very soon—he said—he saw the two white men walking amongst the fires.
They waved their arms and talked together, stopping from time to time;
they approached Daman; and the short man with the hair on his face
addressed him earnestly and at great length. Daman sat cross-legged upon
a little carpet with an open Koran on his knees and chanted the versets
swaying to and fro with his eyes shut.

The Illanun chiefs reclining wrapped in cloaks on the ground raised
themselves on their elbows to look at the whites. When the short white
man finished speaking he gazed down at them for a while, then stamped
his foot. He looked angry because no one understood him. Then suddenly
he looked very sad; he covered his face with his hands; the tall man put
his hand on the short man's shoulder and whispered into his ear. The dry
wood of the fires crackled, the Illanuns slept, cooked, talked, but
with their weapons at hand. An armed man or two came up to stare at the
prisoners and then returned to their fire. The two whites sank down in
the sand in front of Daman. Their clothes were soiled, there was sand in
their hair. The tall man had lost his hat; the glass in the eye of the
short man glittered very much; his back was muddy and one sleeve of his
coat torn up to the elbow.

All this Hassim saw and then retreated undetected to that part of
the shore where Immada waited for him, keeping the canoe afloat. The
Illanuns, trusting to the sea, kept very bad watch on their prisoners,
and had he been able to speak with them Hassim thought an escape could
have been effected. But they could not have understood his signs and
still less his words. He consulted with his sister. Immada murmured
sadly; at their feet the ripple broke with a mournful sound no louder
than their voices.

Hassim's loyalty was unshaken, but now it led him on not in the bright
light of hopes but in the deepened shadow of doubt. He wanted to obtain
information for his friend who was so powerful and who perhaps would
know how to be constant. When followed by Immada he approached the camp
again—this time openly—their appearance did not excite much surprise.
It was well known to the Chiefs of the Illanuns that the Rajah for whom
they were to fight—if God so willed—was upon the shoals looking out
for the coming of the white man who had much wealth and a store of
weapons and who was his servant. Daman, who alone understood the exact
relation, welcomed them with impenetrable gravity. Hassim took his
seat on the carpet at his right hand. A consultation was being held
half-aloud in short and apparently careless sentences, with long
intervals of silence between. Immada, nestling close to her brother,
leaned one arm on his shoulder and listened with serious attention and
with outward calm as became a princess of Wajo accustomed to consort
with warriors and statesmen in moments of danger and in the hours of
deliberation. Her heart was beating rapidly, and facing her the silent
white men stared at these two known faces, as if across a gulf.
Four Illanun chiefs sat in a row. Their ample cloaks fell from their
shoulders, and lay behind them on the sand in which their four long
lances were planted upright, each supporting a small oblong shield of
wood, carved on the edges and stained a dull purple. Daman stretched out
his arm and pointed at the prisoners. The faces of the white men were
very quiet. Daman looked at them mutely and ardently, as if consumed by
an unspeakable longing.

The Koran, in a silk cover, hung on his breast by a crimson cord. It
rested over his heart and, just below, the plain buffalo-horn handle of
a kris, stuck into the twist of his sarong, protruded ready to his hand.
The clouds thickening over the camp made the darkness press heavily on
the glow of scattered fires. "There is blood between me and the whites,"
he pronounced, violently. The Illanun chiefs remained impassive. There
was blood between them and all mankind. Hassim remarked dispassionately
that there was one white man with whom it would be wise to remain
friendly; and besides, was not Daman his friend already? Daman smiled
with half-closed eyes. He was that white man's friend, not his slave.
The Illanuns playing with their sword-handles grunted assent. Why, asked
Daman, did these strange whites travel so far from their country? The
great white man whom they all knew did not want them. No one wanted
them. Evil would follow in their footsteps. They were such men as are
sent by rulers to examine the aspects of far-off countries and talk of
peace and make treaties. Such is the beginning of great sorrows. The
Illanuns were far from their country, where no white man dared to come,
and therefore they were free to seek their enemies upon the open waters.
They had found these two who had come to see. He asked what they had
come to see? Was there nothing to look at in their own country?

He talked in an ironic and subdued tone. The scattered heaps of embers
glowed a deeper red; the big blaze of the chief's fire sank low and
grew dim before he ceased. Straight-limbed figures rose, sank, moved,
whispered on the beach. Here and there a spear-blade caught a red gleam
above the black shape of a head.

"The Illanuns seek booty on the sea," cried Daman. "Their fathers and
the fathers of their fathers have done the same, being fearless like
those who embrace death closely."

A low laugh was heard. "We strike and go," said an exulting voice. "We
live and die with our weapons in our hands." The Illanuns leaped to
their feet. They stamped on the sand, flourishing naked blades over the
heads of their prisoners. A tumult arose.

When it subsided Daman stood up in a cloak that wrapped him to his feet
and spoke again giving advice.

The white men sat on the sand and turned their eyes from face to face
as if trying to understand. It was agreed to send the prisoners into the
lagoon where their fate would be decided by the ruler of the land. The
Illanuns only wanted to plunder the ship. They did not care what became
of the men. "But Daman cares," remarked Hassim to Lingard, when relating
what took place. "He cares, O Tuan!"

Hassim had learned also that the Settlement was in a state of unrest
as if on the eve of war. Belarab with his followers was encamped by his
father's tomb in the hollow beyond the cultivated fields. His stockade
was shut up and no one appeared on the verandahs of the houses within.
You could tell there were people inside only by the smoke of the cooking
fires. Tengga's followers meantime swaggered about the Settlement
behaving tyrannically to those who were peaceable. A great madness had
descended upon the people, a madness strong as the madness of love, the
madness of battle, the desire to spill blood. A strange fear also had
made them wild. The big smoke seen that morning above the forests of
the coast was some agreed signal from Tengga to Daman but what it meant
Hassim had been unable to find out. He feared for Jorgenson's safety.
He said that while one of the war-boats was being made ready to take the
captives into the lagoon, he and his sister left the camp quietly and
got away in their canoe. The flares of the brig, reflected in a faint
loom upon the clouds, enabled them to make straight for the vessel
across the banks. Before they had gone half way these flames went out
and the darkness seemed denser than any he had known before. But it was
no greater than the darkness of his mind—he added. He had looked upon
the white men sitting unmoved and silent under the edge of swords; he
had looked at Daman, he had heard bitter words spoken; he was looking
now at his white friend—and the issue of events he could not see. One
can see men's faces but their fate, which is written on their foreheads,
one cannot see. He had no more to say, and what he had spoken was true
in every word.

Lingard repeated it all to Mrs. Travers. Her courage, her intelligence,
the quickness of her apprehension, the colour of her eyes and the
intrepidity of her glance evoked in him an admiring enthusiasm. She
stood by his side! Every moment that fatal illusion clung closer to his
soul—like a garment of light—like an armour of fire.

He was unwilling to face the facts. All his life—till that day—had
been a wrestle with events in the daylight of this world, but now he
could not bring his mind to the consideration of his position. It
was Mrs. Travers who, after waiting awhile, forced on him the pain
of thought by wanting to know what bearing Hassim's news had upon the
situation.

Lingard had not the slightest doubt Daman wanted him to know what had
been done with the prisoners. That is why Daman had welcomed Hassim, and
let him hear the decision and had allowed him to leave the camp on the
sandbank. There could be only one object in this; to let him, Lingard,
know that the prisoners had been put out of his reach as long as he
remained in his brig. Now this brig was his strength. To make him leave
his brig was like removing his hand from his sword.

"Do you understand what I mean, Mrs. Travers?" he asked. "They are
afraid of me because I know how to fight this brig. They fear the
brig because when I am on board her, the brig and I are one. An armed
man—don't you see? Without the brig I am disarmed, without me she can't
strike. So Daman thinks. He does not know everything but he is not far
off the truth. He says to himself that if I man the boats to go after
these whites into the lagoon then his Illanuns will get the yacht for
sure—and perhaps the brig as well. If I stop here with my brig he holds
the two white men and can talk as big as he pleases. Belarab believes in
me no doubt, but Daman trusts no man on earth. He simply does not know
how to trust any one, because he is always plotting himself. He came to
help me and as soon as he found I was not there he began to plot with
Tengga. Now he has made a move—a clever move; a cleverer move than he
thinks. Why? I'll tell you why. Because I, Tom Lingard, haven't a single
white man aboard this brig I can trust. Not one. I only just discovered
my mate's got the notion I am some kind of pirate. And all your yacht
people think the same. It is as though you had brought a curse on me
in your yacht. Nobody believes me. Good God! What have I come to! Even
those two—look at them—I say look at them! By all the stars they doubt
me! Me! . . ."