The Rescue

J >> Joseph Conrad >> The Rescue


This was the kassab or store-keeper, the holder of a position of dignity
and ease. The kassab was the only one of the crew taking their evening
meal who noticed the presence on deck of their commander. He muttered
something to the tindal who directly cocked his old hat on one
side, which senseless action invested him with an altogether foolish
appearance. The others heard, but went on somnolently feeding with
spidery movements of their lean arms.

The sun was no more than a degree or so above the horizon, and from the
heated surface of the waters a slight low mist began to rise; a mist
thin, invisible to the human eye; yet strong enough to change the sun
into a mere glowing red disc, a disc vertical and hot, rolling down to
the edge of the horizontal and cold-looking disc of the shining sea.
Then the edges touched and the circular expanse of water took on
suddenly a tint, sombre, like a frown; deep, like the brooding
meditation of evil.

The falling sun seemed to be arrested for a moment in his descent by the
sleeping waters, while from it, to the motionless brig, shot out on
the polished and dark surface of the sea a track of light, straight and
shining, resplendent and direct; a path of gold and crimson and purple,
a path that seemed to lead dazzling and terrible from the earth straight
into heaven through the portals of a glorious death. It faded slowly.
The sea vanquished the light. At last only a vestige of the sun
remained, far off, like a red spark floating on the water. It lingered,
and all at once--without warning--went out as if extinguished by a
treacherous hand.

"Gone," cried Lingard, who had watched intently yet missed the last
moment. "Gone! Look at the cabin clock, Shaw!"

"Nearly right, I think, sir. Three minutes past six."

The helmsman struck four bells sharply. Another barefooted seacannie
glided on the far side of the poop to relieve the wheel, and the serang
of the brig came up the ladder to take charge of the deck from Shaw. He
came up to the compass, and stood waiting silently.

"The course is south by east when you get the wind, serang," said Shaw,
distinctly.

"Sou' by eas'," repeated the elderly Malay with grave earnestness.

"Let me know when she begins to steer," added Lingard.

"Ya, Tuan," answered the man, glancing rapidly at the sky. "Wind
coming," he muttered.

"I think so, too," whispered Lingard as if to himself.

The shadows were gathering rapidly round the brig. A mulatto put his
head out of the companion and called out:

"Ready, sir."

"Let's get a mouthful of something to eat, Shaw," said Lingard. "I say,
just take a look around before coming below. It will be dark when we
come up again."

"Certainly, sir," said Shaw, taking up a long glass and putting it to
his eyes. "Blessed thing," he went on in snatches while he worked the
tubes in and out, "I can't--never somehow--Ah! I've got it right at
last!"

He revolved slowly on his heels, keeping the end of the tube on the
sky-line. Then he shut the instrument with a click, and said decisively:

"Nothing in sight, sir."

He followed his captain down below rubbing his hands cheerfully.

For a good while there was no sound on the poop of the brig. Then the
seacannie at the wheel spoke dreamily:

"Did the malim say there was no one on the sea?"

"Yes," grunted the serang without looking at the man behind him.

"Between the islands there was a boat," pronounced the man very softly.

The serang, his hands behind his back, his feet slightly apart, stood
very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand. His face, now
hardly visible, was as inexpressive as the door of a safe.

"Now, listen to me," insisted the helmsman in a gentle tone.

The man in authority did not budge a hair's breadth. The seacannie bent
down a little from the height of the wheel grating.

"I saw a boat," he murmured with something of the tender obstinacy of
a lover begging for a favour. "I saw a boat, O Haji Wasub! Ya! Haji
Wasub!"

The serang had been twice a pilgrim, and was not insensible to the sound
of his rightful title. There was a grim smile on his face.

"You saw a floating tree, O Sali," he said, ironically.

"I am Sali, and my eyes are better than the bewitched brass thing that
pulls out to a great length," said the pertinacious helmsman. "There was
a boat, just clear of the easternmost island. There was a boat, and
they in her could see the ship on the light of the west--unless they are
blind men lost on the sea. I have seen her. Have you seen her, too, O
Haji Wasub?"

"Am I a fat white man?" snapped the serang. "I was a man of the sea
before you were born, O Sali! The order is to keep silence and mind the
rudder, lest evil befall the ship."

After these words he resumed his rigid aloofness. He stood, his legs
slightly apart, very stiff and straight, a little on one side of the
compass stand. His eyes travelled incessantly from the illuminated card
to the shadowy sails of the brig and back again, while his body was
motionless as if made of wood and built into the ship's frame. Thus,
with a forced and tense watchfulness, Haji Wasub, serang of the brig
Lightning, kept the captain's watch unwearied and wakeful, a slave to
duty.

In half an hour after sunset the darkness had taken complete possession
of earth and heavens. The islands had melted into the night. And on the
smooth water of the Straits, the little brig lying so still, seemed
to sleep profoundly, wrapped up in a scented mantle of star light and
silence.



II

It was half-past eight o'clock before Lingard came on deck again.
Shaw--now with a coat on--trotted up and down the poop leaving behind
him a smell of tobacco smoke. An irregularly glowing spark seemed to run
by itself in the darkness before the rounded form of his head. Above the
masts of the brig the dome of the clear heaven was full of lights that
flickered, as if some mighty breathings high up there had been swaying
about the flame of the stars. There was no sound along the brig's decks,
and the heavy shadows that lay on it had the aspect, in that silence,
of secret places concealing crouching forms that waited in perfect
stillness for some decisive event. Lingard struck a match to light his
cheroot, and his powerful face with narrowed eyes stood out for a moment
in the night and vanished suddenly. Then two shadowy forms and two red
sparks moved backward and forward on the poop. A larger, but a paler
and oval patch of light from the compass lamps lay on the brasses of
the wheel and on the breast of the Malay standing by the helm. Lingard's
voice, as if unable altogether to master the enormous silence of the
sea, sounded muffled, very calm--without the usual deep ring in it.

"Not much change, Shaw," he said.

"No, sir, not much. I can just see the island--the big one--still in
the same place. It strikes me, sir, that, for calms, this here sea is a
devil of locality."

He cut "locality" in two with an emphatic pause. It was a good word. He
was pleased with himself for thinking of it. He went on again:

"Now--since noon, this big island--"

"Carimata, Shaw," interrupted Lingard.

"Aye, sir; Carimata--I mean. I must say--being a stranger hereabouts--I
haven't got the run of those--"

He was going to say "names" but checked himself and said,
"appellations," instead, sounding every syllable lovingly.

"Having for these last fifteen years," he continued, "sailed regularly
from London in East-Indiamen, I am more at home over there--in the Bay."

He pointed into the night toward the northwest and stared as if he could
see from where he stood that Bay of Bengal where--as he affirmed--he
would be so much more at home.

"You'll soon get used--" muttered Lingard, swinging in his rapid walk
past his mate. Then he turned round, came back, and asked sharply.

"You said there was nothing afloat in sight before dark? Hey?"

"Not that I could see, sir. When I took the deck again at eight, I asked
that serang whether there was anything about; and I understood him to
say there was no more as when I went below at six. This is a lonely sea
at times--ain't it, sir? Now, one would think at this time of the year
the homeward-bounders from China would be pretty thick here."

"Yes," said Lingard, "we have met very few ships since we left Pedra
Branca over the stern. Yes; it has been a lonely sea. But for all that,
Shaw, this sea, if lonely, is not blind. Every island in it is an eye.
And now, since our squadron has left for the China waters--"

He did not finish his sentence. Shaw put his hands in his pockets, and
propped his back against the sky-light, comfortably.

"They say there is going to be a war with China," he said in a gossiping
tone, "and the French are going along with us as they did in the Crimea
five years ago. It seems to me we're getting mighty good friends with
the French. I've not much of an opinion about that. What do you think,
Captain Lingard?"

"I have met their men-of-war in the Pacific," said Lingard, slowly. "The
ships were fine and the fellows in them were civil enough to me--and
very curious about my business," he added with a laugh. "However, I
wasn't there to make war on them. I had a rotten old cutter then, for
trade, Shaw," he went on with animation.

"Had you, sir?" said Shaw without any enthusiasm. "Now give me a big
ship--a ship, I say, that one may--"

"And later on, some years ago," interrupted Lingard, "I chummed with
a French skipper in Ampanam--being the only two white men in the whole
place. He was a good fellow, and free with his red wine. His English
was difficult to understand, but he could sing songs in his own language
about ah-moor--Ah-moor means love, in French--Shaw."

"So it does, sir--so it does. When I was second mate of a Sunderland
barque, in forty-one, in the Mediterranean, I could pay out their lingo
as easy as you would a five-inch warp over a ship's side--"

"Yes, he was a proper man," pursued Lingard, meditatively, as if for
himself only. "You could not find a better fellow for company ashore. He
had an affair with a Bali girl, who one evening threw a red blossom at
him from within a doorway, as we were going together to pay our respects
to the Rajah's nephew. He was a good-looking Frenchman, he was--but the
girl belonged to the Rajah's nephew, and it was a serious matter. The
old Rajah got angry and said the girl must die. I don't think the nephew
cared particularly to have her krissed; but the old fellow made a great
fuss and sent one of his own chief men to see the thing done--and the
girl had enemies--her own relations approved! We could do nothing. Mind,
Shaw, there was absolutely nothing else between them but that unlucky
flower which the Frenchman pinned to his coat--and afterward, when the
girl was dead, wore under his shirt, hung round his neck in a small box.
I suppose he had nothing else to put it into."

"Would those savages kill a woman for that?" asked Shaw, incredulously.

"Aye! They are pretty moral there. That was the first time in my life
I nearly went to war on my own account, Shaw. We couldn't talk those
fellows over. We couldn't bribe them, though the Frenchman offered the
best he had, and I was ready to back him to the last dollar, to the last
rag of cotton, Shaw! No use--they were that blamed respectable. So, says
the Frenchman to me: 'My friend, if they won't take our gunpowder for a
gift let us burn it to give them lead.' I was armed as you see now;
six eight-pounders on the main deck and a long eighteen on the
forecastle--and I wanted to try 'em. You may believe me! However, the
Frenchman had nothing but a few old muskets; and the beggars got to
windward of us by fair words, till one morning a boat's crew from the
Frenchman's ship found the girl lying dead on the beach. That put an end
to our plans. She was out of her trouble anyhow, and no reasonable man
will fight for a dead woman. I was never vengeful, Shaw, and--after
all--she didn't throw that flower at me. But it broke the Frenchman up
altogether. He began to mope, did no business, and shortly afterward
sailed away. I cleared a good many pence out of that trip, I remember."

With these words he seemed to come to the end of his memories of that
trip. Shaw stifled a yawn.

"Women are the cause of a lot of trouble," he said, dispassionately.
"In the Morayshire, I remember, we had once a passenger--an old
gentleman--who was telling us a yarn about them old-time Greeks fighting
for ten years about some woman. The Turks kidnapped her, or something.
Anyway, they fought in Turkey; which I may well believe. Them Greeks and
Turks were always fighting. My father was master's mate on board one of
the three-deckers at the battle of Navarino--and that was when we went
to help those Greeks. But this affair about a woman was long before that
time."

"I should think so," muttered Lingard, hanging over the rail, and
watching the fleeting gleams that passed deep down in the water, along
the ship's bottom.

"Yes. Times are changed. They were unenlightened in those old days. My
grandfather was a preacher and, though my father served in the navy, I
don't hold with war. Sinful the old gentleman called it--and I think so,
too. Unless with Chinamen, or niggers, or such people as must be kept in
order and won't listen to reason; having not sense enough to know
what's good for them, when it's explained to them by their
betters--missionaries, and such like au-tho-ri-ties. But to fight ten
years. And for a woman!"

"I have read the tale in a book," said Lingard, speaking down over the
side as if setting his words gently afloat upon the sea. "I have read
the tale. She was very beautiful."

"That only makes it worse, sir--if anything. You may depend on it she
was no good. Those pagan times will never come back, thank God. Ten
years of murder and unrighteousness! And for a woman! Would anybody do
it now? Would you do it, sir? Would you--"

The sound of a bell struck sharply interrupted Shaw's discourse. High
aloft, some dry block sent out a screech, short and lamentable, like a
cry of pain. It pierced the quietness of the night to the very core, and
seemed to destroy the reserve which it had imposed upon the tones of the
two men, who spoke now loudly.

"Throw the cover over the binnacle," said Lingard in his duty voice.
"The thing shines like a full moon. We mustn't show more lights than we
can help, when becalmed at night so near the land. No use in being seen
if you can't see yourself--is there? Bear that in mind, Mr. Shaw. There
may be some vagabonds prying about--"

"I thought all this was over and done for," said Shaw, busying himself
with the cover, "since Sir Thomas Cochrane swept along the Borneo coast
with his squadron some years ago. He did a rare lot of fighting--didn't
he? We heard about it from the chaps of the sloop Diana that was
refitting in Calcutta when I was there in the Warwick Castle. They took
some king's town up a river hereabouts. The chaps were full of it."

"Sir Thomas did good work," answered Lingard, "but it will be a long
time before these seas are as safe as the English Channel is in peace
time. I spoke about that light more to get you in the way of things to
be attended to in these seas than for anything else. Did you notice how
few native craft we've sighted for all these days we have been drifting
about--one may say--in this sea?"

"I can't say I have attached any significance to the fact, sir."

"It's a sign that something is up. Once set a rumour afloat in these
waters, and it will make its way from island to island, without any
breeze to drive it along."

"Being myself a deep-water man sailing steadily out of home ports nearly
all my life," said Shaw with great deliberation, "I cannot pretend to
see through the peculiarities of them out-of-the-way parts. But I can
keep a lookout in an ordinary way, and I have noticed that craft of any
kind seemed scarce, for the last few days: considering that we had land
aboard of us--one side or another--nearly every day."

"You will get to know the peculiarities, as you call them, if you remain
any time with me," remarked Lingard, negligently.

"I hope I shall give satisfaction, whether the time be long or short!"
said Shaw, accentuating the meaning of his words by the distinctness
of his utterance. "A man who has spent thirty-two years of his life on
saltwater can say no more. If being an officer of home ships for the
last fifteen years I don't understand the heathen ways of them there
savages, in matters of seamanship and duty, you will find me all there,
Captain Lingard."

"Except, judging from what you said a little while ago--except in the
matter of fighting," said Lingard, with a short laugh.

"Fighting! I am not aware that anybody wants to fight me. I am a
peaceable man, Captain Lingard, but when put to it, I could fight as
well as any of them flat-nosed chaps we have to make shift with, instead
of a proper crew of decent Christians. Fighting!" he went on with
unexpected pugnacity of tone, "Fighting! If anybody comes to fight me,
he will find me all there, I swear!"

"That's all right. That's all right," said Lingard, stretching his arms
above his head and wriggling his shoulders. "My word! I do wish a breeze
would come to let us get away from here. I am rather in a hurry, Shaw."

"Indeed, sir! Well, I never yet met a thorough seafaring man who was not
in a hurry when a con-demned spell of calm had him by the heels. When a
breeze comes . . . just listen to this, sir!"

"I hear it," said Lingard. "Tide-rip, Shaw."

"So I presume, sir. But what a fuss it makes. Seldom heard such a--"

On the sea, upon the furthest limits of vision, appeared an advancing
streak of seething foam, resembling a narrow white ribbon, drawn rapidly
along the level surface of the water by its two ends, which were lost in
the darkness. It reached the brig, passed under, stretching out on each
side; and on each side the water became noisy, breaking into numerous
and tiny wavelets, a mimicry of an immense agitation. Yet the vessel in
the midst of this sudden and loud disturbance remained as motionless and
steady as if she had been securely moored between the stone walls of a
safe dock. In a few moments the line of foam and ripple running swiftly
north passed at once beyond sight and earshot, leaving no trace on the
unconquerable calm.

"Now this is very curious--" began Shaw.

Lingard made a gesture to command silence. He seemed to listen yet, as
if the wash of the ripple could have had an echo which he expected to
hear. And a man's voice that was heard forward had something of the
impersonal ring of voices thrown back from hard and lofty cliffs upon
the empty distances of the sea. It spoke in Malay--faintly.

"What?" hailed Shaw. "What is it?"

Lingard put a restraining hand for a moment on his chief officer's
shoulder, and moved forward smartly. Shaw followed, puzzled. The rapid
exchange of incomprehensible words thrown backward and forward through
the shadows of the brig's main deck from his captain to the lookout man
and back again, made him feel sadly out of it, somehow.

Lingard had called out sharply--"What do you see?" The answer direct and
quick was--"I hear, Tuan. I hear oars."

"Whereabouts?"

"The night is all around us. I hear them near."

"Port or starboard?"

There was a short delay in answer this time. On the quarter-deck,
under the poop, bare feet shuffled. Somebody coughed. At last the voice
forward said doubtfully:

"Kanan."

"Call the serang, Mr. Shaw," said Lingard, calmly, "and have the hands
turned up. They are all lying about the decks. Look sharp now. There's
something near us. It's annoying to be caught like this," he added in a
vexed tone.

He crossed over to the starboard side, and stood listening, one hand
grasping the royal back-stay, his ear turned to the sea, but he could
hear nothing from there. The quarter-deck was filled with subdued
sounds. Suddenly, a long, shrill whistle soared, reverberated loudly
amongst the flat surfaces of motionless sails, and gradually grew faint
as if the sound had escaped and gone away, running upon the water. Haji
Wasub was on deck and ready to carry out the white man's commands. Then
silence fell again on the brig, until Shaw spoke quietly.

"I am going forward now, sir, with the tindal. We're all at stations."

"Aye, Mr. Shaw. Very good. Mind they don't board you--but I can hear
nothing. Not a sound. It can't be much."

"The fellow has been dreaming, no doubt. I have good ears, too, and--"

He went forward and the end of his sentence was lost in an indistinct
growl. Lingard stood attentive. One by one the three seacannies off duty
appeared on the poop and busied themselves around a big chest that stood
by the side of the cabin companion. A rattle and clink of steel weapons
turned out on the deck was heard, but the men did not even whisper.
Lingard peered steadily into the night, then shook his head.

"Serang!" he called, half aloud.

The spare old man ran up the ladder so smartly that his bony feet did
not seem to touch the steps. He stood by his commander, his hands behind
his back; a figure indistinct but straight as an arrow.

"Who was looking out?" asked Lingard.

"Badroon, the Bugis," said Wasub, in his crisp, jerky manner.

"I can hear nothing. Badroon heard the noise in his mind."

"The night hides the boat."

"Have you seen it?"

"Yes, Tuan. Small boat. Before sunset. By the land. Now coming
here--near. Badroon heard him."

"Why didn't you report it, then?" asked Lingard, sharply.

"Malim spoke. He said: 'Nothing there,' while I could see. How could I
know what was in his mind or yours, Tuan?"

"Do you hear anything now?"

"No. They stopped now. Perhaps lost the ship--who knows? Perhaps
afraid--"

"Well!" muttered Lingard, moving his feet uneasily. "I believe you lie.
What kind of boat?"

"White men's boat. A four-men boat, I think. Small. Tuan, I hear him
now! There!"

He stretched his arm straight out, pointing abeam for a time, then his
arm fell slowly.

"Coming this way," he added with decision.

From forward Shaw called out in a startled tone:

"Something on the water, sir! Broad on this bow!"

"All right!" called back Lingard.

A lump of blacker darkness floated into his view. From it came over the
water English words--deliberate, reaching him one by one; as if each had
made its own difficult way through the profound stillness of the night.

"What--ship--is--that--pray?"

"English brig," answered Lingard, after a short moment of hesitation.

"A brig! I thought you were something bigger," went on the voice from
the sea with a tinge of disappointment in its deliberate tone. "I am
coming alongside--if--you--please."

"No! you don't!" called Lingard back, sharply. The leisurely drawl of
the invisible speaker seemed to him offensive, and woke up a hostile
feeling. "No! you don't if you care for your boat. Where do you spring
from? Who are you--anyhow? How many of you are there in that boat?"

After these emphatic questions there was an interval of silence. During
that time the shape of the boat became a little more distinct. She must
have carried some way on her yet, for she loomed up bigger and nearly
abreast of where Lingard stood, before the self-possessed voice was
heard again:

"I will show you."

Then, after another short pause, the voice said, less loud but very
plain:

"Strike on the gunwale. Strike hard, John!" and suddenly a blue light
blazed out, illuminating with a livid flame a round patch in the
night. In the smoke and splutter of that ghastly halo appeared a white,
four-oared gig with five men sitting in her in a row. Their heads were
turned toward the brig with a strong expression of curiosity on their
faces, which, in this glare, brilliant and sinister, took on a deathlike
aspect and resembled the faces of interested corpses. Then the bowman
dropped into the water the light he held above his head and the
darkness, rushing back at the boat, swallowed it with a loud and angry
hiss.

"Five of us," said the composed voice out of the night that seemed now
darker than before. "Four hands and myself. We belong to a yacht--a
British yacht--"

"Come on board!" shouted Lingard. "Why didn't you speak at once? I
thought you might have been some masquerading Dutchmen from a dodging
gunboat."

"Do I speak like a blamed Dutchman? Pull a stroke, boys--oars! Tend bow,
John."

The boat came alongside with a gentle knock, and a man's shape began to
climb at once up the brig's side with a kind of ponderous agility. It
poised itself for a moment on the rail to say down into the boat--"Sheer
off a little, boys," then jumped on deck with a thud, and said to Shaw
who was coming aft: "Good evening . . . Captain, sir?"

"No. On the poop!" growled Shaw.

"Come up here. Come up," called Lingard, impatiently.

The Malays had left their stations and stood clustered by the mainmast
in a silent group. Not a word was spoken on the brig's decks, while the
stranger made his way to the waiting captain. Lingard saw approaching
him a short, dapper man, who touched his cap and repeated his greeting
in a cool drawl: