The Rescue

J >> Joseph Conrad >> The Rescue


"Good evening. . . Captain, sir?"

"Yes, I am the master--what's the matter? Adrift from your ship? Or
what?"

"Adrift? No! We left her four days ago, and have been pulling that gig
in a calm, nearly ever since. My men are done. So is the water. Lucky
thing I sighted you."

"You sighted me!" exclaimed Lingard. "When? What time?"

"Not in the dark, you may be sure. We've been knocking about amongst
some islands to the southward, breaking our hearts tugging at the oars
in one channel, then in another--trying to get clear. We got round an
islet--a barren thing, in shape like a loaf of sugar--and I caught sight
of a vessel a long way off. I took her bearing in a hurry and we buckled
to; but another of them currents must have had hold of us, for it was a
long time before we managed to clear that islet. I steered by the
stars, and, by the Lord Harry, I began to think I had missed you
somehow--because it must have been you I saw."

"Yes, it must have been. We had nothing in sight all day," assented
Lingard. "Where's your vessel?" he asked, eagerly.

"Hard and fast on middling soft mud--I should think about sixty miles
from here. We are the second boat sent off for assistance. We parted
company with the other on Tuesday. She must have passed to the northward
of you to-day. The chief officer is in her with orders to make for
Singapore. I am second, and was sent off toward the Straits here on the
chance of falling in with some ship. I have a letter from the owner. Our
gentry are tired of being stuck in the mud and wish for assistance."

"What assistance did you expect to find down here?"

"The letter will tell you that. May I ask, Captain, for a little water
for the chaps in my boat? And I myself would thank you for a drink.
We haven't had a mouthful since this afternoon. Our breaker leaked out
somehow."

"See to it, Mr. Shaw," said Lingard. "Come down the cabin, Mr.--"

"Carter is my name."

"Ah! Mr. Carter. Come down, come down," went on Lingard, leading the way
down the cabin stairs.

The steward had lighted the swinging lamp, and had put a decanter and
bottles on the table. The cuddy looked cheerful, painted white, with
gold mouldings round the panels. Opposite the curtained recess of the
stern windows there was a sideboard with a marble top, and, above it,
a looking-glass in a gilt frame. The semicircular couch round the stern
had cushions of crimson plush. The table was covered with a black
Indian tablecloth embroidered in vivid colours. Between the beams of the
poop-deck were fitted racks for muskets, the barrels of which glinted
in the light. There were twenty-four of them between the four beams. As
many sword-bayonets of an old pattern encircled the polished teakwood of
the rudder-casing with a double belt of brass and steel. All the doors
of the state-rooms had been taken off the hinges and only curtains
closed the doorways. They seemed to be made of yellow Chinese silk, and
fluttered all together, the four of them, as the two men entered the
cuddy.

Carter took in all at a glance, but his eyes were arrested by a circular
shield hung slanting above the brass hilts of the bayonets. On its
red field, in relief and brightly gilt, was represented a sheaf of
conventional thunderbolts darting down the middle between the two
capitals T. L. Lingard examined his guest curiously. He saw a young
man, but looking still more youthful, with a boyish smooth face much
sunburnt, twinkling blue eyes, fair hair and a slight moustache. He
noticed his arrested gaze.

"Ah, you're looking at that thing. It's a present from the builder of
this brig. The best man that ever launched a craft. It's supposed to be
the ship's name between my initials--flash of lightning--d'you see? The
brig's name is Lightning and mine is Lingard."

"Very pretty thing that: shows the cabin off well," murmured Carter,
politely.

They drank, nodding at each other, and sat down.

"Now for the letter," said Lingard.

Carter passed it over the table and looked about, while Lingard took
the letter out of an open envelope, addressed to the commander of any
British ship in the Java Sea. The paper was thick, had an embossed
heading: "Schooner-yacht Hermit" and was dated four days before. The
message said that on a hazy night the yacht had gone ashore upon some
outlying shoals off the coast of Borneo. The land was low. The opinion
of the sailing-master was that the vessel had gone ashore at the top
of high water, spring tides. The coast was completely deserted to all
appearance. During the four days they had been stranded there they
had sighted in the distance two small native vessels, which did
not approach. The owner concluded by asking any commander of a
homeward-bound ship to report the yacht's position in Anjer on his way
through Sunda Straits--or to any British or Dutch man-of-war he might
meet. The letter ended by anticipatory thanks, the offer to pay any
expenses in connection with the sending of messages from Anjer, and the
usual polite expressions.

Folding the paper slowly in the old creases, Lingard said--"I am not
going to Anjer--nor anywhere near."

"Any place will do, I fancy," said Carter.

"Not the place where I am bound to," answered Lingard, opening the
letter again and glancing at it uneasily. "He does not describe very
well the coast, and his latitude is very uncertain," he went on. "I
am not clear in my mind where exactly you are stranded. And yet I know
every inch of that land--over there."

Carter cleared his throat and began to talk in his slow drawl. He seemed
to dole out facts, to disclose with sparing words the features of the
coast, but every word showed the minuteness of his observation, the
clear vision of a seaman able to master quickly the aspect of a strange
land and of a strange sea. He presented, with concise lucidity, the
picture of the tangle of reefs and sandbanks, through which the yacht
had miraculously blundered in the dark before she took the ground.

"The weather seems clear enough at sea," he observed, finally, and
stopped to drink a long draught. Lingard, bending over the table, had
been listening with eager attention. Carter went on in his curt and
deliberate manner:

"I noticed some high trees on what I take to be the mainland to the
south--and whoever has business in that bight was smart enough to
whitewash two of them: one on the point, and another farther in.
Landmarks, I guess. . . . What's the matter, Captain?"

Lingard had jumped to his feet, but Carter's exclamation caused him to
sit down again.

"Nothing, nothing . . . Tell me, how many men have you in that yacht?"

"Twenty-three, besides the gentry, the owner, his wife and a Spanish
gentleman--a friend they picked up in Manila."

"So you were coming from Manila?"

"Aye. Bound for Batavia. The owner wishes to study the Dutch colonial
system. Wants to expose it, he says. One can't help hearing a lot when
keeping watch aft--you know how it is. Then we are going to Ceylon
to meet the mail-boat there. The owner is going home as he came out,
overland through Egypt. The yacht would return round the Cape, of
course."

"A lady?" said Lingard. "You say there is a lady on board. Are you
armed?"

"Not much," replied Carter, negligently. "There are a few muskets and
two sporting guns aft; that's about all--I fancy it's too much, or not
enough," he added with a faint smile.

Lingard looked at him narrowly.

"Did you come out from home in that craft?" he asked.

"Not I! I am not one of them regular yacht hands. I came out of the
hospital in Hongkong. I've been two years on the China coast."

He stopped, then added in an explanatory murmur:

"Opium clippers--you know. Nothing of brass buttons about me. My ship
left me behind, and I was in want of work. I took this job but I didn't
want to go home particularly. It's slow work after sailing with old
Robinson in the Ly-e-moon. That was my ship. Heard of her, Captain?"

"Yes, yes," said Lingard, hastily. "Look here, Mr. Carter, which way was
your chief officer trying for Singapore? Through the Straits of Rhio?"

"I suppose so," answered Carter in a slightly surprised tone; "why do
you ask?"

"Just to know . . . What is it, Mr. Shaw?"

"There's a black cloud rising to the northward, sir, and we shall get a
breeze directly," said Shaw from the doorway.

He lingered there with his eyes fixed on the decanters.

"Will you have a glass?" said Lingard, leaving his seat. "I will go up
and have a look."

He went on deck. Shaw approached the table and began to help himself,
handling the bottles in profound silence and with exaggerated caution,
as if he had been measuring out of fragile vessels a dose of some deadly
poison. Carter, his hands in his pockets, and leaning back, examined
him from head to foot with a cool stare. The mate of the brig raised the
glass to his lips, and glaring above the rim at the stranger, drained
the contents slowly.

"You have a fine nose for finding ships in the dark, Mister," he said,
distinctly, putting the glass on the table with extreme gentleness.

"Eh? What's that? I sighted you just after sunset."

"And you knew where to look, too," said Shaw, staring hard.

"I looked to the westward where there was still some light, as any
sensible man would do," retorted the other a little impatiently. "What
are you trying to get at?"

"And you have a ready tongue to blow about yourself--haven't you?"

"Never saw such a man in my life," declared Carter, with a return of his
nonchalant manner. "You seem to be troubled about something."

"I don't like boats to come sneaking up from nowhere in particular,
alongside a ship when I am in charge of the deck. I can keep a lookout
as well as any man out of home ports, but I hate to be circumvented by
muffled oars and such ungentlemanlike tricks. Yacht officer--indeed.
These seas must be full of such yachtsmen. I consider you played a mean
trick on me. I told my old man there was nothing in sight at sunset--and
no more there was. I believe you blundered upon us by chance--for all
your boasting about sunsets and bearings. Gammon! I know you came
on blindly on top of us, and with muffled oars, too. D'ye call that
decent?"

"If I did muffle the oars it was for a good reason. I wanted to slip
past a cove where some native craft were moored. That was common
prudence in such a small boat, and not armed--as I am. I saw you right
enough, but I had no intention to startle anybody. Take my word for it."

"I wish you had gone somewhere else," growled Shaw. "I hate to be put in
the wrong through accident and untruthfulness--there! Here's my old man
calling me--"

He left the cabin hurriedly and soon afterward Lingard came down,
and sat again facing Carter across the table. His face was grave but
resolute.

"We shall get the breeze directly," he said.

"Then, sir," said Carter, getting up, "if you will give me back that
letter I shall go on cruising about here to speak some other ship. I
trust you will report us wherever you are going."

"I am going to the yacht and I shall keep the letter," answered Lingard
with decision. "I know exactly where she is, and I must go to the rescue
of those people. It's most fortunate you've fallen in with me, Mr.
Carter. Fortunate for them and fortunate for me," he added in a lower
tone.

"Yes," drawled Carter, reflectively. "There may be a tidy bit of salvage
money if you should get the vessel off, but I don't think you can do
much. I had better stay out here and try to speak some gunboat--"

"You must come back to your ship with me," said Lingard,
authoritatively. "Never mind the gunboats."

"That wouldn't be carrying out my orders," argued Carter. "I've got to
speak a homeward-bound ship or a man-of-war--that's plain enough. I am
not anxious to knock about for days in an open boat, but--let me fill my
fresh-water breaker, Captain, and I will be off."

"Nonsense," said Lingard, sharply. "You've got to come with me to show
the place and--and help. I'll take your boat in tow."

Carter did not seem convinced. Lingard laid a heavy hand on his
shoulder.

"Look here, young fellow. I am Tom Lingard and there's not a white man
among these islands, and very few natives, that have not heard of me. My
luck brought you into my ship--and now I've got you, you must stay. You
must!"

The last "must" burst out loud and sharp like a pistol-shot. Carter
stepped back.

"Do you mean you would keep me by force?" he asked, startled.

"Force," repeated Lingard. "It rests with you. I cannot let you speak
any vessel. Your yacht has gone ashore in a most inconvenient place--for
me; and with your boats sent off here and there, you would bring every
infernal gunboat buzzing to a spot that was as quiet and retired as the
heart of man could wish. You stranding just on that spot of the whole
coast was my bad luck. And that I could not help. You coming upon me
like this is my good luck. And that I hold!"

He dropped his clenched fist, big and muscular, in the light of the
lamp on the black cloth, amongst the glitter of glasses, with the strong
fingers closed tight upon the firm flesh of the palm. He left it there
for a moment as if showing Carter that luck he was going to hold. And he
went on:

"Do you know into what hornet's nest your stupid people have blundered?
How much d'ye think their lives are worth, just now? Not a brass
farthing if the breeze fails me for another twenty-four hours. You may
well open your eyes. It is so! And it may be too late now, while I am
arguing with you here."

He tapped the table with his knuckles, and the glasses, waking up,
jingled a thin, plaintive finale to his speech. Carter stood leaning
against the sideboard. He was amazed by the unexpected turn of the
conversation; his jaw dropped slightly and his eyes never swerved for a
moment from Lingard's face. The silence in the cabin lasted only a few
seconds, but to Carter, who waited breathlessly, it seemed very long.
And all at once he heard in it, for the first time, the cabin clock tick
distinctly, in pulsating beats, as though a little heart of metal behind
the dial had been started into sudden palpitation.

"A gunboat!" shouted Lingard, suddenly, as if he had seen only in
that moment, by the light of some vivid flash of thought, all the
difficulties of the situation. "If you don't go back with me there will
be nothing left for you to go back to--very soon. Your gunboat won't
find a single ship's rib or a single corpse left for a landmark. That
she won't. It isn't a gunboat skipper you want. I am the man you
want. You don't know your luck when you see it, but I know mine, I
do--and--look here--"

He touched Carter's chest with his forefinger, and said with a sudden
gentleness of tone:

"I am a white man inside and out; I won't let inoffensive people--and a
woman, too--come to harm if I can help it. And if I can't help, nobody
can. You understand--nobody! There's no time for it. But I am like any
other man that is worth his salt: I won't let the end of an undertaking
go by the board while there is a chance to hold on--and it's like
this--"

His voice was persuasive--almost caressing; he had hold now of a coat
button and tugged at it slightly as he went on in a confidential manner:

"As it turns out, Mr. Carter, I would--in a manner of speaking--I would
as soon shoot you where you stand as let you go to raise an alarm
all over this sea about your confounded yacht. I have other lives to
consider--and friends--and promises--and--and myself, too. I shall keep
you," he concluded, sharply.

Carter drew a long breath. On the deck above, the two men could
hear soft footfalls, short murmurs, indistinct words spoken near the
skylight. Shaw's voice rang out loudly in growling tones:

"Furl the royals, you tindal!"

"It's the queerest old go," muttered Carter, looking down on to the
floor. "You are a strange man. I suppose I must believe what you
say--unless you and that fat mate of yours are a couple of escaped
lunatics that got hold of a brig by some means. Why, that chap up there
wanted to pick a quarrel with me for coming aboard, and now you threaten
to shoot me rather than let me go. Not that I care much about that; for
some time or other you would get hanged for it; and you don't look like
a man that will end that way. If what you say is only half true, I ought
to get back to the yacht as quick as ever I can. It strikes me that your
coming to them will be only a small mercy, anyhow--and I may be of some
use--But this is the queerest. . . . May I go in my boat?"

"As you like," said Lingard. "There's a rain squall coming."

"I am in charge and will get wet along of my chaps. Give us a good long
line, Captain."

"It's done already," said Lingard. "You seem a sensible sailorman and
can see that it would be useless to try and give me the slip."

"For a man so ready to shoot, you seem very trustful," drawled Carter.
"If I cut adrift in a squall, I stand a pretty fair chance not to see
you again."

"You just try," said Lingard, drily. "I have eyes in this brig, young
man, that will see your boat when you couldn't see the ship. You are of
the kind I like, but if you monkey with me I will find you--and when I
find you I will run you down as surely as I stand here."

Carter slapped his thigh and his eyes twinkled.

"By the Lord Harry!" he cried. "If it wasn't for the men with me, I
would try for sport. You are so cocksure about the lot you can do,
Captain. You would aggravate a saint into open mutiny."

His easy good humour had returned; but after a short burst of laughter,
he became serious.

"Never fear," he said, "I won't slip away. If there is to be any
throat-cutting--as you seem to hint--mine will be there, too, I promise
you, and. . . ."

He stretched his arms out, glanced at them, shook them a little.

"And this pair of arms to take care of it," he added, in his old,
careless drawl.

But the master of the brig sitting with both his elbows on the table,
his face in his hands, had fallen unexpectedly into a meditation so
concentrated and so profound that he seemed neither to hear, see, nor
breathe. The sight of that man's complete absorption in thought was to
Carter almost more surprising than any other occurrence of that night.
Had his strange host vanished suddenly from before his eyes, it could
not have made him feel more uncomfortably alone in that cabin where
the pertinacious clock kept ticking off the useless minutes of the calm
before it would, with the same steady beat, begin to measure the aimless
disturbance of the storm.



III

After waiting a moment, Carter went on deck. The sky, the sea, the
brig itself had disappeared in a darkness that had become impenetrable,
palpable, and stifling. An immense cloud had come up running over the
heavens, as if looking for the little craft, and now hung over it,
arrested. To the south there was a livid trembling gleam, faint and sad,
like a vanishing memory of destroyed starlight. To the north, as if
to prove the impossible, an incredibly blacker patch outlined on the
tremendous blackness of the sky the heart of the coming squall. The
glimmers in the water had gone out and the invisible sea all around lay
mute and still as if it had died suddenly of fright.

Carter could see nothing. He felt about him people moving; he heard
them in the darkness whispering faintly as if they had been exchanging
secrets important or infamous. The night effaced even words, and its
mystery had captured everything and every sound--had left nothing free
but the unexpected that seemed to hover about one, ready to stretch out
its stealthy hand in a touch sudden, familiar, and appalling. Even the
careless disposition of the young ex-officer of an opium-clipper was
affected by the ominous aspect of the hour. What was this vessel?
What were those people? What would happen to-morrow? To the yacht? To
himself? He felt suddenly without any additional reason but the darkness
that it was a poor show, anyhow, a dashed poor show for all hands. The
irrational conviction made him falter for a second where he stood and he
gripped the slide of the companionway hard.

Shaw's voice right close to his ear relieved and cleared his troubled
thoughts.

"Oh! it's you, Mister. Come up at last," said the mate of the brig
slowly. "It appears we've got to give you a tow now. Of all the rum
incidents, this beats all. A boat sneaks up from nowhere and turns
out to be a long-expected friend! For you are one of them friends the
skipper was going to meet somewhere here. Ain't you now? Come! I know
more than you may think. Are we off to--you may just as well tell--off
to--h'm ha . . . you know?"

"Yes. I know. Don't you?" articulated Carter, innocently.

Shaw remained very quiet for a minute.

"Where's my skipper?" he asked at last.

"I left him down below in a kind of trance. Where's my boat?"

"Your boat is hanging astern. And my opinion is that you are as uncivil
as I've proved you to be untruthful. Egzz-actly."

Carter stumbled toward the taffrail and in the first step he made came
full against somebody who glided away. It seemed to him that such a
night brings men to a lower level. He thought that he might have been
knocked on the head by anybody strong enough to lift a crow-bar. He felt
strangely irritated. He said loudly, aiming his words at Shaw whom he
supposed somewhere near:

"And my opinion is that you and your skipper will come to a sudden bad
end before--"

"I thought you were in your boat. Have you changed your mind?" asked
Lingard in his deep voice close to Carter's elbow.

Carter felt his way along the rail, till his hand found a line that
seemed, in the calm, to stream out of its own accord into the darkness.
He hailed his boat, and directly heard the wash of water against her
bows as she was hauled quickly under the counter. Then he loomed up
shapeless on the rail, and the next moment disappeared as if he had
fallen out of the universe. Lingard heard him say:

"Catch hold of my leg, John." There were hollow sounds in the boat; a
voice growled, "All right."

"Keep clear of the counter," said Lingard, speaking in quiet warning
tones into the night. "The brig may get a lot of sternway on her should
this squall not strike her fairly."

"Aye, aye. I will mind," was the muttered answer from the water.

Lingard crossed over to the port side, and looked steadily at the sooty
mass of approaching vapours. After a moment he said curtly, "Brace up
for the port tack, Mr. Shaw," and remained silent, with his face to
the sea. A sound, sorrowful and startling like the sigh of some immense
creature, travelling across the starless space, passed above the
vertical and lofty spars of the motionless brig.

It grew louder, then suddenly ceased for a moment, and the taut rigging
of the brig was heard vibrating its answer in a singing note to this
threatening murmur of the winds. A long and slow undulation lifted the
level of the waters, as if the sea had drawn a deep breath of anxious
suspense. The next minute an immense disturbance leaped out of the
darkness upon the sea, kindling upon it a livid clearness of foam, and
the first gust of the squall boarded the brig in a stinging flick of
rain and spray. As if overwhelmed by the suddenness of the fierce onset,
the vessel remained for a second upright where she floated, shaking with
tremendous jerks from trucks to keel; while high up in the night the
invisible canvas was heard rattling and beating about violently.

Then, with a quick double report, as of heavy guns, both topsails filled
at once and the brig fell over swiftly on her side. Shaw was thrown
headlong against the skylight, and Lingard, who had encircled the
weather rail with his arm, felt the vessel under his feet dart forward
smoothly, and the deck become less slanting--the speed of the brig
running off a little now, easing the overturning strain of the wind upon
the distended surfaces of the sails. It was only the fineness of the
little vessel's lines and the perfect shape of her hull that saved the
canvas, and perhaps the spars, by enabling the ready craft to get way
upon herself with such lightning-like rapidity. Lingard drew a long
breath and yelled jubilantly at Shaw who was struggling up against wind
and rain to his commander's side.

"She'll do. Hold on everything."

Shaw tried to speak. He swallowed great mouthfuls of tepid water
which the wind drove down his throat. The brig seemed to sail through
undulating waves that passed swishing between the masts and swept over
the decks with the fierce rush and noise of a cataract. From every spar
and every rope a ragged sheet of water streamed flicking to leeward. The
overpowering deluge seemed to last for an age; became unbearable--and,
all at once, stopped. In a couple of minutes the shower had run its
length over the brig and now could be seen like a straight grey wall,
going away into the night under the fierce whispering of dissolving
clouds. The wind eased. To the northward, low down in the darkness,
three stars appeared in a row, leaping in and out between the crests
of waves like the distant heads of swimmers in a running surf; and the
retreating edge of the cloud, perfectly straight from east to west,
slipped along the dome of the sky like an immense hemispheric, iron
shutter pivoting down smoothly as if operated by some mighty engine. An
inspiring and penetrating freshness flowed together with the shimmer
of light, through the augmented glory of the heaven, a glory exalted,
undimmed, and strangely startling as if a new world had been created
during the short flight of the stormy cloud. It was a return to life,
a return to space; the earth coming out from under a pall to take its
place in the renewed and immense scintillation of the universe.