The Rescue

J >> Joseph Conrad >> The Rescue


"He was still in the water when all the world was darkened round him as
if the life of the sun had been blown out of it in a crash. A great wave
came along and washed him on shore, while pieces of wood, iron, and the
limbs of torn men were splashing round him in the water. He managed to
crawl out of the mud. Something had hit him while he was swimming and he
thought he would die. But life stirred in him. He had a message for you.
For a long time he went on crawling under the big trees on his hands
and knees, for there is no rest for a messenger till the message is
delivered. At last he found himself on the left bank of the creek.
And still he felt life stir in him. So he started to swim across, for if
you were in this world you were on the other side. While he swam he felt
his strength abandoning him. He managed to scramble on to a drifting log
and lay on it like one who is dead, till we pulled him into one of our
boats."

Wasub ceased. It seemed to Lingard that it was impossible for mortal
man to suffer more than he suffered in the succeeding moment of silence
crowded by the mute images as of universal destruction. He felt
himself gone to pieces as though the violent expression of Jorgenson's
intolerable mistrust of the life of men had shattered his soul, leaving
his body robbed of all power of resistance and of all fortitude, a prey
forever to infinite remorse and endless regrets.

"Leave me, Wasub," he said. "They are all dead--but I would sleep."

Wasub raised his dumb old eyes to the white man's face.

"Tuan, it is necessary that you should hear Jaffir," he said, patiently.

"Is he going to die?" asked Lingard in a low, cautious tone as though he
were afraid of the sound of his own voice.

"Who can tell?" Wasub's voice sounded more patient than ever. "There is
no wound on his body but, O Tuan, he does not wish to live."

"Abandoned by his God," muttered Lingard to himself.

Wasub waited a little before he went on, "And, Tuan, he has a message
for you."

"Of course. Well, I don't want to hear it."

"It is from those who will never speak to you again," Wasub persevered,
sadly. "It is a great trust. A Rajah's own words. It is difficult for
Jaffir to die. He keeps on muttering about a ring that was for you, and
that he let pass out of his care. It was a great talisman!"

"Yes. But it did not work this time. And if I go and tell Jaffir why he
will be able to tell his Rajah, O Wasub, since you say that he is going
to die. . . . I wonder where they will meet," he muttered to himself.

Once more Wasub raised his eyes to Lingard's face. "Paradise is the lot
of all True Believers," he whispered, firm in his simple faith.

The man who had been undone by a glimpse of Paradise exchanged a
profound look with the old Malay. Then he got up. On his passage to the
main hatchway the commander of the brig met no one on the decks, as if
all mankind had given him up except the old man who preceded him and
that other man dying in the deepening twilight, who was awaiting his
coming. Below, in the light of the hatchway, he saw a young Calash with
a broad yellow face and his wiry hair sticking up in stiff wisps through
the folds of his head-kerchief, holding an earthenware water-jar to the
lips of Jaffir extended on his back on a pile of mats.

A languid roll of the already glazed eyeballs, a mere stir of black
and white in the gathering dusk showed that the faithful messenger of
princes was aware of the presence of the man who had been so long known
to him and his people as the King of the Sea. Lingard knelt down close
to Jaffir's head, which rolled a little from side to side and then
became still, staring at a beam of the upper deck. Lingard bent his ear
to the dark lips. "Deliver your message" he said in a gentle tone.

"The Rajah wished to hold your hand once more," whispered Jaffir so
faintly that Lingard had to guess the words rather than hear them. "I
was to tell you," he went on--and stopped suddenly.

"What were you to tell me?"

"To forget everything," said Jaffir with a loud effort as if beginning a
long speech. After that he said nothing more till Lingard murmured, "And
the lady Immada?"

Jaffir collected all his strength. "She hoped no more," he uttered,
distinctly. "The order came to her while she mourned, veiled, apart. I
didn't even see her face."

Lingard swayed over the dying man so heavily that Wasub, standing near
by, hastened to catch him by the shoulder. Jaffir seemed unaware of
anything, and went on staring at the beam.

"Can you hear me, O Jaffir?" asked Lingard.

"I hear."

"I never had the ring. Who could bring it to me?"

"We gave it to the white woman--may Jehannum be her lot!"

"No! It shall be my lot," said Lingard with despairing force, while
Wasub raised both his hands in dismay. "For, listen, Jaffir, if she had
given the ring to me it would have been to one that was dumb, deaf, and
robbed of all courage."

It was impossible to say whether Jaffir had heard. He made no sound,
there was no change in his awful stare, but his prone body moved under
the cotton sheet as if to get further away from the white man. Lingard
got up slowly and making a sign to Wasub to remain where he was, went up
on deck without giving another glance to the dying man. Again it seemed
to him that he was pacing the quarter-deck of a deserted ship. The
mulatto steward, watching through the crack of the pantry door, saw the
Captain stagger into the cuddy and fling-to the door behind him with
a crash. For more than an hour nobody approached that closed door till
Carter coming down the companion stairs spoke without attempting to open
it.

"Are you there, sir?" The answer, "You may come in," comforted the young
man by its strong resonance. He went in.

"Well?"

"Jaffir is dead. This moment. I thought you would want to know."

Lingard looked persistently at Carter, thinking that now Jaffir was
dead there was no one left on the empty earth to speak to him a word of
reproach; no one to know the greatness of his intentions, the bond of
fidelity between him and Hassim and Immada, the depth of his affection
for those people, the earnestness of his visions, and the unbounded
trust that was his reward. By the mad scorn of Jorgenson flaming up
against the life of men, all this was as if it had never been. It had
become a secret locked up in his own breast forever.

"Tell Wasub to open one of the long-cloth bales in the hold, Mr. Carter,
and give the crew a cotton sheet to bury him decently according to their
faith. Let it be done to-night. They must have the boats, too. I suppose
they will want to take him on the sandbank."

"Yes, sir," said Carter.

"Let them have what they want, spades, torches. . . . Wasub will chant
the right words. Paradise is the lot of all True Believers. Do you
understand me, Mr. Carter? Paradise! I wonder what it will be for him!
Unless he gets messages to carry through the jungle, avoiding ambushes,
swimming in storms and knowing no rest, he won't like it."

Carter listened with an unmoved face. It seemed to him that the Captain
had forgotten his presence.

"And all the time he will be sleeping on that sandbank," Lingard began
again, sitting in his old place under the gilt thunderbolts suspended
over his head with his elbows on the table and his hands to his temples.
"If they want a board to set up at the grave let them have a piece of an
oak plank. It will stay there--till the next monsoon. Perhaps."

Carter felt uncomfortable before that tense stare which just missed
him and in that confined cabin seemed awful in its piercing and far-off
expression. But as he had not been dismissed he did not like to go away.

"Everything will be done as you wish it, sir," he said. "I suppose the
yacht will be leaving the first thing to-morrow morning, sir."

"If she doesn't we must give her a solid shot or two to liven her
up--eh, Mr. Carter?"

Carter did not know whether to smile or to look horrified. In the end he
did both, but as to saying anything he found it impossible. But Lingard
did not expect an answer.

"I believe you are going to stay with me, Mr. Carter?"

"I told you, sir, I am your man if you want me."

"The trouble is, Mr. Carter, that I am no longer the man to whom you
spoke that night in Carimata."

"Neither am I, sir, in a manner of speaking."

Lingard, relaxing the tenseness of his stare, looked at the young man,
thoughtfully.

"After all, it is the brig that will want you. She will never change.
The finest craft afloat in these seas. She will carry me about as she
did before, but . . ."

He unclasped his hands, made a sweeping gesture.

Carter gave all his naive sympathy to that man who had certainly rescued
the white people but seemed to have lost his own soul in the attempt.
Carter had heard something from Wasub. He had made out enough of this
story from the old serang's pidgin English to know that the Captain's
native friends, one of them a woman, had perished in a mysterious
catastrophe. But the why of it, and how it came about, remained still
quite incomprehensible to him. Of course, a man like the Captain would
feel terribly cut up. . . .

"You will be soon yourself again, sir," he said in the kindest possible
tone.

With the same simplicity Lingard shook his head. He was thinking of the
dead Jaffir with his last message delivered and untroubled now by all
these matters of the earth. He had been ordered to tell him to forget
everything. Lingard had an inward shudder. In the dismay of his heart he
might have believed his brig to lie under the very wing of the Angel of
Desolation--so oppressive, so final, and hopeless seemed the silence in
which he and Carter looked at each other, wistfully.

Lingard reached for a sheet of paper amongst several lying on the table,
took up a pen, hesitated a moment, and then wrote:

"Meet me at day-break on the sandbank."

He addressed the envelope to Mrs. Travers, Yacht Hermit, and pushed it
across the table.

"Send this on board the schooner at once, Mr. Carter. Wait a moment.
When our boats shove off for the sandbank have the forecastle gun fired.
I want to know when that dead man has left the ship."

He sat alone, leaning his head on his hand, listening, listening
endlessly, for the report of the gun. Would it never come? When it came
at last muffled, distant, with a slight shock through the body of the
brig he remained still with his head leaning on his hand but with a
distinct conviction, with an almost physical certitude, that under the
cotton sheet shrouding the dead man something of himself, too, had left
the ship.



IX

In a roomy cabin, furnished and fitted with austere comfort, Mr. Travers
reposed at ease in a low bed-place under a snowy white sheet and a light
silk coverlet, his head sunk in a white pillow of extreme purity. A
faint scent of lavender hung about the fresh linen. Though lying on his
back like a person who is seriously ill Mr. Travers was conscious
of nothing worse than a great fatigue. Mr. Travers' restfulness had
something faintly triumphant in it. To find himself again on board
his yacht had soothed his vanity and had revived his sense of his own
importance. He contemplated it in a distant perspective, restored to its
proper surroundings and unaffected by an adventure too extraordinary to
trouble a superior mind or even to remain in one's memory for any length
of time. He was not responsible. Like many men ambitious of
directing the affairs of a nation, Mr. Travers disliked the sense of
responsibility. He would not have been above evading it in case of need,
but with perverse loftiness he really, in his heart, scorned it. That
was the reason why he was able to lie at rest and enjoy a sense of
returning vigour. But he did not care much to talk as yet, and that was
why the silence in the stateroom had lasted for hours. The bulkhead lamp
had a green silk shade. It was unnecessary to admit for a moment the
existence of impudence or ruffianism. A discreet knocking at the cabin
door sounded deferential.

Mrs. Travers got up to see what was wanted, and returned without
uttering a single word to the folding armchair by the side of the
bed-place, with an envelope in her hand which she tore open in the
greenish light. Mr. Travers remained incurious but his wife handed to
him an unfolded sheet of paper which he condescended to hold up to his
eyes. It contained only one line of writing. He let the paper fall on
the coverlet and went on reposing as before. It was a sick man's repose.
Mrs. Travers in the armchair, with her hands on the arm-rests, had a
great dignity of attitude.

"I intend to go," she declared after a time.

"You intend to go," repeated Mr. Travers in a feeble, deliberate voice.
"Really, it doesn't matter what you decide to do. All this is of so
little importance. It seems to me that there can be no possible object."

"Perhaps not," she admitted. "But don't you think that the uttermost
farthing should always be paid?"

Mr. Travers' head rolled over on the pillow and gave a covertly scared
look at that outspoken woman. But it rolled back again at once and the
whole man remained passive, the very embodiment of helpless exhaustion.
Mrs. Travers noticed this, and had the unexpected impression that Mr.
Travers was not so ill as he looked. "He's making the most of it. It's
a matter of diplomacy," she thought. She thought this without irony,
bitterness, or disgust. Only her heart sank a little lower and she felt
that she could not remain in the cabin with that man for the rest of the
evening. For all life--yes! But not for that evening.

"It's simply monstrous," murmured the man, who was either very
diplomatic or very exhausted, in a languid manner. "There is something
abnormal in you."

Mrs. Travers got up swiftly.

"One comes across monstrous things. But I assure you that of all the
monsters that wait on what you would call a normal existence the one I
dread most is tediousness. A merciless monster without teeth or claws.
Impotent. Horrible!"

She left the stateroom, vanishing out of it with noiseless resolution.
No power on earth could have kept her in there for another minute. On
deck she found a moonless night with a velvety tepid feeling in the air,
and in the sky a mass of blurred starlight, like the tarnished tinsel of
a worn-out, very old, very tedious firmament. The usual routine of the
yacht had been already resumed, the awnings had been stretched aft, a
solitary round lamp had been hung as usual under the main boom. Out of
the deep gloom behind it d'Alcacer, a long, loose figure, lounged in the
dim light across the deck. D'Alcacer had got promptly in touch with
the store of cigarettes he owed to the Governor General's generosity. A
large, pulsating spark glowed, illuminating redly the design of his
lips under the fine dark moustache, the tip of his nose, his lean chin.
D'Alcacer reproached himself for an unwonted light-heartedness which
had somehow taken possession of him. He had not experienced that sort of
feeling for years. Reprehensible as it was he did not want anything to
disturb it. But as he could not run away openly from Mrs. Travers he
advanced to meet her.

"I do hope you have nothing to tell me," he said with whimsical
earnestness.

"I? No! Have you?"

He assured her he had not, and proffered a request. "Don't let us tell
each other anything, Mrs. Travers. Don't let us think of anything. I
believe it will be the best way to get over the evening." There was real
anxiety in his jesting tone.

"Very well," Mrs. Travers assented, seriously. "But in that case we had
better not remain together." She asked, then, d'Alcacer to go below and
sit with Mr. Travers who didn't like to be left alone. "Though he, too,
doesn't seem to want to be told anything," she added, parenthetically,
and went on: "But I must ask you something else, Mr. d'Alcacer. I
propose to sit down in this chair and go to sleep--if I can. Will you
promise to call me about five o'clock? I prefer not to speak to any one
on deck, and, moreover, I can trust you."

He bowed in silence and went away slowly. Mrs. Travers, turning her
head, perceived a steady light at the brig's yard-arm, very bright among
the tarnished stars. She walked aft and looked over the taffrail. It was
exactly like that other night. She half expected to hear presently the
low, rippling sound of an advancing boat. But the universe remained
without a sound. When she at last dropped into the deck chair she was
absolutely at the end of her power of thinking. "I suppose that's
how the condemned manage to get some sleep on the night before the
execution," she said to herself a moment before her eyelids closed as if
under a leaden hand.

She woke up, with her face wet with tears, out of a vivid dream of
Lingard in chain-mail armour and vaguely recalling a Crusader, but
bare-headed and walking away from her in the depths of an impossible
landscape. She hurried on to catch up with him but a throng of
barbarians with enormous turbans came between them at the last moment
and she lost sight of him forever in the flurry of a ghastly sand-storm.
What frightened her most was that she had not been able to see his face.
It was then that she began to cry over her hard fate. When she woke up
the tears were still rolling down her cheeks and she perceived in the
light of the deck-lamp d'Alcacer arrested a little way off.

"Did you have to speak to me?" she asked.

"No," said d'Alcacer. "You didn't give me time. When I came as far as
this I fancied I heard you sobbing. It must have been a delusion."

"Oh, no. My face is wet yet. It was a dream. I suppose it is five
o'clock. Thank you for being so punctual. I have something to do before
sunrise."

D'Alcacer moved nearer. "I know. You have decided to keep an appointment
on the sandbank. Your husband didn't utter twenty words in all these
hours but he managed to tell me that piece of news."

"I shouldn't have thought," she murmured, vaguely.

"He wanted me to understand that it had no importance," stated d'Alcacer
in a very serious tone.

"Yes. He knows what he is talking about," said Mrs. Travers in such
a bitter tone as to disconcert d'Alcacer for a moment. "I don't see a
single soul about the decks," Mrs. Travers continued, almost directly.

"The very watchmen are asleep," said d'Alcacer.

"There is nothing secret in this expedition, but I prefer not to call
any one. Perhaps you wouldn't mind pulling me off yourself in our small
boat."

It seemed to her that d'Alcacer showed some hesitation. She added: "It
has no importance, you know."

He bowed his assent and preceded her down the side in silence. When she
entered the boat he had the sculls ready and directly she sat down he
shoved off. It was so dark yet that but for the brig's yard-arm light he
could not have kept his direction. He pulled a very deliberate stroke,
looking over his shoulder frequently. It was Mrs. Travers who saw first
the faint gleam of the uncovered sandspit on the black, quiet water.

"A little more to the left," she said. "No, the other way. . . ."
D'Alcacer obeyed her directions but his stroke grew even slower than
before. She spoke again. "Don't you think that the uttermost farthing
should always be paid, Mr. d'Alcacer?"

D'Alcacer glanced over his shoulder, then: "It would be the only
honourable way. But it may be hard. Too hard for our common fearful
hearts."

"I am prepared for anything."

He ceased pulling for a moment . . . "Anything that may be found on
a sandbank," Mrs. Travers went on. "On an arid, insignificant, and
deserted sandbank."

D'Alcacer gave two strokes and ceased again.

"There is room for a whole world of suffering on a sandbank, for all the
bitterness and resentment a human soul may be made to feel."

"Yes, I suppose you would know," she whispered while he gave a stroke or
two and again glanced over his shoulder. She murmured the words:

"Bitterness, resentment," and a moment afterward became aware of the
keel of the boat running up on the sand. But she didn't move, and
d'Alcacer, too, remained seated on the thwart with the blades of his
sculls raised as if ready to drop them and back the dinghy out into deep
water at the first sign.

Mrs. Travers made no sign, but she asked, abruptly: "Mr. d'Alcacer, do
you think I shall ever come back?"

Her tone seemed to him to lack sincerity. But who could tell what
this abruptness covered--sincere fear or mere vanity? He asked himself
whether she was playing a part for his benefit, or only for herself.

"I don't think you quite understand the situation, Mrs. Travers. I
don't think you have a clear idea, either of his simplicity or of his
visionary's pride."

She thought, contemptuously, that there were other things which
d'Alcacer didn't know and surrendered to a sudden temptation to
enlighten him a little.

"You forget his capacity for passion and that his simplicity doesn't
know its own strength."

There was no mistaking the sincerity of that murmur. "She has felt it,"
d'Alcacer said to himself with absolute certitude. He wondered when,
where, how, on what occasion? Mrs. Travers stood up in the stern sheets
suddenly and d'Alcacer leaped on the sand to help her out of the boat.

"Hadn't I better hang about here to take you back again?" he suggested,
as he let go her hand.

"You mustn't!" she exclaimed, anxiously. "You must return to the yacht.
There will be plenty of light in another hour. I will come to this spot
and wave my handkerchief when I want to be taken off."

At their feet the shallow water slept profoundly, the ghostly gleam of
the sands baffled the eye by its lack of form. Far off, the growth of
bushes in the centre raised a massive black bulk against the stars to
the southward. Mrs. Travers lingered for a moment near the boat as if
afraid of the strange solitude of this lonely sandbank and of this lone
sea that seemed to fill the whole encircling universe of remote stars
and limitless shadows. "There is nobody here," she whispered to herself.

"He is somewhere about waiting for you, or I don't know the man,"
affirmed d'Alcacer in an undertone. He gave a vigorous shove which sent
the little boat into the water.

D'Alcacer was perfectly right. Lingard had come up on deck long before
Mrs. Travers woke up with her face wet with tears. The burial party had
returned hours before and the crew of the brig were plunged in
sleep, except for two watchmen, who at Lingard's appearance retreated
noiselessly from the poop. Lingard, leaning on the rail, fell into
a sombre reverie of his past. Reproachful spectres crowded the air,
animated and vocal, not in the articulate language of mortals but
assailing him with faint sobs, deep sighs, and fateful gestures. When he
came to himself and turned about they vanished, all but one dark shape
without sound or movement. Lingard looked at it with secret horror.

"Who's that?" he asked in a troubled voice.

The shadow moved closer: "It's only me, sir," said Carter, who had left
orders to be called directly the Captain was seen on deck.

"Oh, yes, I might have known," mumbled Lingard in some confusion. He
requested Carter to have a boat manned and when after a time the young
man told him that it was ready, he said "All right!" and remained
leaning on his elbow.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Carter after a longish silence, "but are
you going some distance?"

"No, I only want to be put ashore on the sandbank."

Carter was relieved to hear this, but also surprised. "There is nothing
living there, sir," he said.

"I wonder," muttered Lingard.

"But I am certain," Carter insisted. "The last of the women and children
belonging to those cut-throats were taken off by the sampans which
brought you and the yacht-party out."

He walked at Lingard's elbow to the gangway and listened to his orders.

"Directly there is enough light to see flags by, make a signal to the
schooner to heave short on her cable and loose her sails. If there
is any hanging back give them a blank gun, Mr. Carter. I will have no
shilly-shallying. If she doesn't go at the word, by heavens, I will
drive her out. I am still master here--for another day."

The overwhelming sense of immensity, of disturbing emptiness, which
affects those who walk on the sands in the midst of the sea, intimidated
Mrs. Travers. The world resembled a limitless flat shadow which was
motionless and elusive. Then against the southern stars she saw a human
form that isolated and lone appeared to her immense: the shape of a
giant outlined amongst the constellations. As it approached her
it shrank to common proportions, got clear of the stars, lost its
awesomeness, and became menacing in its ominous and silent advance. Mrs.
Travers hastened to speak.

"You have asked for me. I am come. I trust you will have no reason to
regret my obedience."

He walked up quite close to her, bent down slightly to peer into her
face. The first of the tropical dawn put its characteristic cold sheen
into the sky above the Shore of Refuge.

Mrs. Travers did not turn away her head.

"Are you looking for a change in me? No. You won't see it. Now I know
that I couldn't change even if I wanted to. I am made of clay that is
too hard."