The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows Read online

  PART I. THE MAN AND THE BRIG

  The shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the thousandislands, big and little, which make up the Malay Archipelago has beenfor centuries the scene of adventurous undertakings. The vices and thevirtues of four nations have been displayed in the conquest of thatregion that even to this day has not been robbed of all the mysteryand romance of its past--and the race of men who had fought againstthe Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch and the English, has not beenchanged by the unavoidable defeat. They have kept to this day theirlove of liberty, their fanatical devotion to their chiefs, theirblind fidelity in friendship and hate--all their lawful and unlawfulinstincts. Their country of land and water--for the sea was as muchtheir country as the earth of their islands--has fallen a prey to thewestern race--the reward of superior strength if not of superior virtue.To-morrow the advancing civilization will obliterate the marks of a longstruggle in the accomplishment of its inevitable victory.

  The adventurers who began that struggle have left no descendants. Theideas of the world changed too quickly for that. But even far into thepresent century they have had successors. Almost in our own day we haveseen one of them--a true adventurer in his devotion to his impulse--aman of high mind and of pure heart, lay the foundation of a flourishingstate on the ideas of pity and justice. He recognized chivalrously theclaims of the conquered; he was a disinterested adventurer, and thereward of his noble instincts is in the veneration with which a strangeand faithful race cherish his memory.

  Misunderstood and traduced in life, the glory of his achievement hasvindicated the purity of his motives. He belongs to history. But therewere others--obscure adventurers who had not his advantages of birth,position, and intelligence; who had only his sympathy with the people offorests and sea he understood and loved so well. They can not be saidto be forgotten since they have not been known at all. They were lostin the common crowd of seamen-traders of the Archipelago, and ifthey emerged from their obscurity it was only to be condemned aslaw-breakers. Their lives were thrown away for a cause that had no rightto exist in the face of an irresistible and orderly progress--theirthoughtless lives guided by a simple feeling.

  But the wasted lives, for the few who know, have tinged with romance theregion of shallow waters and forest-clad islands, that lies far east,and still mysterious between the deep waters of two oceans.

  I

  Out of the level blue of a shallow sea Carimata raises a loftybarrenness of grey and yellow tints, the drab eminence of its aridheights. Separated by a narrow strip of water, Suroeton, to the west,shows a curved and ridged outline resembling the backbone of a stoopinggiant. And to the eastward a troop of insignificant islets standeffaced, indistinct, with vague features that seem to melt into thegathering shadows. The night following from the eastward the retreat ofthe setting sun advanced slowly, swallowing the land and the sea; theland broken, tormented and abrupt; the sea smooth and inviting with itseasy polish of continuous surface to wanderings facile and endless.

  There was no wind, and a small brig that had lain all the afternoon afew miles to the northward and westward of Carimata had hardly alteredits position half a mile during all these hours. The calm was absolute,a dead, flat calm, the stillness of a dead sea and of a dead atmosphere.As far as the eye could reach there was nothing but an impressiveimmobility. Nothing moved on earth, on the waters, and above them in theunbroken lustre of the sky. On the unruffled surface of the straits thebrig floated tranquil and upright as if bolted solidly, keel to keel,with its own image reflected in the unframed and immense mirror ofthe sea. To the south and east the double islands watched silently thedouble ship that seemed fixed amongst them forever, a hopeless captiveof the calm, a helpless prisoner of the shallow sea.

  Since midday, when the light and capricious airs of these seas hadabandoned the little brig to its lingering fate, her head had swungslowly to the westward and the end of her slender and polished jib-boom,projecting boldly beyond the graceful curve of the bow, pointed at thesetting sun, like a spear poised high in the hand of an enemy. Rightaft by the wheel the Malay quartermaster stood with his bare, brown feetfirmly planted on the wheel-grating, and holding the spokes at rightangles, in a solid grasp, as though the ship had been running before agale. He stood there perfectly motionless, as if petrified but readyto tend the helm as soon as fate would permit the brig to gather waythrough the oily sea.

  The only other human being then visible on the brig's deck was theperson in charge: a white man of low stature, thick-set, with shavencheeks, a grizzled moustache, and a face tinted a scarlet hue by theburning suns and by the sharp salt breezes of the seas. He had thrownoff his light jacket, and clad only in white trousers and a thin cottonsinglet, with his stout arms crossed on his breast--upon which theyshowed like two thick lumps of raw flesh--he prowled about from side toside of the half-poop. On his bare feet he wore a pair of straw sandals,and his head was protected by an enormous pith hat--once white but nowvery dirty--which gave to the whole man the aspect of a phenomenaland animated mushroom. At times he would interrupt his uneasy shuffleathwart the break of the poop, and stand motionless with a vague gazefixed on the image of the brig in the calm water. He could also see downthere his own head and shoulders leaning out over the rail and he wouldstand long, as if interested by his own features, and mutter vaguecurses on the calm which lay upon the ship like an immovable burden,immense and burning.

  At last, he sighed profoundly, nerved himself for a great effort, andmaking a start away from the rail managed to drag his slippers as faras the binnacle. There he stopped again, exhausted and bored. From underthe lifted glass panes of the cabin skylight near by came the feeblechirp of a canary, which appeared to give him some satisfaction. Helistened, smiled faintly muttered "Dicky, poor Dick--" and fell backinto the immense silence of the world. His eyes closed, his head hunglow over the hot brass of the binnacle top. Suddenly he stood up with ajerk and said sharply in a hoarse voice:

  "You've been sleeping--you. Shift the helm. She has got stern way onher."

  The Malay, without the least flinch of feature or pose, as if he hadbeen an inanimate object called suddenly into life by some hidden magicof the words, spun the wheel rapidly, letting the spokes pass throughhis hands; and when the motion had stopped with a grinding noise, caughthold again and held on grimly. After a while, however, he turned hishead slowly over his shoulder, glanced at the sea, and said in anobstinate tone:

  "No catch wind--no get way."

  "No catch--no catch--that's all you know about it," growled thered-faced seaman. "By and by catch Ali--" he went on with suddencondescension. "By and by catch, and then the helm will be the rightway. See?"

  The stolid seacannie appeared to see, and for that matter to hear,nothing. The white man looked at the impassive Malay with disgust,then glanced around the horizon--then again at the helmsman and orderedcurtly:

  "Shift the helm back again. Don't you feel the air from aft? You arelike a dummy standing there."

  The Malay revolved the spokes again with disdainful obedience, and thered-faced man was moving forward grunting to himself, when through theopen skylight the hail "On deck there!" arrested him short, attentive,and with a sudden change to amiability in the expression of his face.

  "Yes, sir," he said, bending his ear toward the opening. "What's thematter up there?" asked a deep voice from below.

  The red-faced man in a tone of surprise said:

  "Sir?"

  "I hear that rudder grinding hard up and hard down. What are you up to,Shaw? Any wind?"

  "Ye-es," drawled Shaw, putting his head down the skylight and speakinginto the gloom of the cabin. "I thought there was a light air, and--butit's gone now. Not a breath anywhere under the heavens."

  He withdrew his head and waited a while by the skylight, but heardonly the chirping of the indefatigable canary, a feeble twittering thatseemed to ooze through the drooping red blossoms of geraniums growing inflower-pots under the glass panes. He strolled away a
step or two beforethe voice from down below called hurriedly:

  "Hey, Shaw? Are you there?"

  "Yes, Captain Lingard," he answered, stepping back. "Have we driftedanything this afternoon?"

  "Not an inch, sir, not an inch. We might as well have been at anchor."

  "It's always so," said the invisible Lingard. His voice changed its toneas he moved in the cabin, and directly afterward burst out with aclear intonation while his head appeared above the slide of the cabinentrance:

  "Always so! The currents don't begin till it's dark, when a man can'tsee against what confounded thing he is being drifted, and then thebreeze will come. Dead on end, too, I don't doubt."

  Shaw moved his shoulders slightly. The Malay at the wheel, after makinga dive to see the time by the cabin clock through the skylight, rang adouble stroke on the small bell aft. Directly forward, on the main deck,a shrill whistle arose long drawn, modulated, dying away softly. Themaster of the brig stepped out of the companion upon the deck of hisvessel, glanced aloft at the yards laid dead square; then, from thedoor-step, took a long, lingering look round the horizon.

  He was about thirty-five, erect and supple. He moved freely, more likea man accustomed to stride over plains and hills, than like one who fromhis earliest youth had been used to counteract by sudden swayings of hisbody the rise and roll of cramped decks of small craft, tossed by thecaprice of angry or playful seas.

  He wore a grey flannel shirt, and his white trousers were held by a bluesilk scarf wound tightly round his narrow waist. He had come up only fora moment, but finding the poop shaded by the main-topsail he remainedon deck bareheaded. The light chestnut hair curled close about hiswell-shaped head, and the clipped beard glinted vividly when he passedacross a narrow strip of sunlight, as if every hair in it had beena wavy and attenuated gold wire. His mouth was lost in the heavymoustache; his nose was straight, short, slightly blunted at the end;a broad band of deeper red stretched under the eyes, clung to the cheekbones. The eyes gave the face its remarkable expression. The eyebrows,darker than the hair, pencilled a straight line below the wide andunwrinkled brow much whiter than the sunburnt face. The eyes, as ifglowing with the light of a hidden fire, had a red glint in theirgreyness that gave a scrutinizing ardour to the steadiness of theirgaze.

  That man, once so well known, and now so completely forgotten amongstthe charming and heartless shores of the shallow sea, had amongst hisfellows the nickname of "Red-Eyed Tom." He was proud of his luck but notof his good sense. He was proud of his brig, of the speed of his craft,which was reckoned the swiftest country vessel in those seas, and proudof what she represented.

  She represented a run of luck on the Victorian goldfields; his sagaciousmoderation; long days of planning, of loving care in building; thegreat joy of his youth, the incomparable freedom of the seas; a perfectbecause a wandering home; his independence, his love--and his anxiety.He had often heard men say that Tom Lingard cared for nothing on earthbut for his brig--and in his thoughts he would smilingly correct thestatement by adding that he cared for nothing _living_ but the brig.

  To him she was as full of life as the great world. He felt her live inevery motion, in every roll, in every sway of her tapering masts,of those masts whose painted trucks move forever, to a seaman'seye, against the clouds or against the stars. To him she was alwaysprecious--like old love; always desirable--like a strange woman; alwaystender--like a mother; always faithful--like the favourite daughter of aman's heart.

  For hours he would stand elbow on rail, his head in his hand andlisten--and listen in dreamy stillness to the cajoling and promisingwhisper of the sea, that slipped past in vanishing bubbles along thesmooth black-painted sides of his craft. What passed in such momentsof thoughtful solitude through the mind of that child of generations offishermen from the coast of Devon, who like most of his class wasdead to the subtle voices, and blind to the mysterious aspects of theworld--the man ready for the obvious, no matter how startling, howterrible or menacing, yet defenceless as a child before the shadowyimpulses of his own heart; what could have been the thoughts of such aman, when once surrendered to a dreamy mood, it is difficult to say.

  No doubt he, like most of us, would be uplifted at times by the awakenedlyrism of his heart into regions charming, empty, and dangerous. Butalso, like most of us, he was unaware of his barren journeys above theinteresting cares of this earth. Yet from these, no doubt absurd andwasted moments, there remained on the man's daily life a tinge as thatof a glowing and serene half-light. It softened the outlines of hisrugged nature; and these moments kept close the bond between him and hisbrig.

  He was aware that his little vessel could give him something not to behad from anybody or anything in the world; something specially his own.The dependence of that solid man of bone and muscle on that obedientthing of wood and iron, acquired from that feeling the mysteriousdignity of love. She--the craft--had all the qualities of a livingthing: speed, obedience, trustworthiness, endurance, beauty, capacityto do and to suffer--all but life. He--the man--was the inspirer of thatthing that to him seemed the most perfect of its kind. His will wasits will, his thought was its impulse, his breath was the breath ofits existence. He felt all this confusedly, without ever shaping thisfeeling into the soundless formulas of thought. To him she was uniqueand dear, this brig of three hundred and fourteen tons register--akingdom!

  And now, bareheaded and burly, he walked the deck of his kingdom with aregular stride. He stepped out from the hip, swinging his arms withthe free motion of a man starting out for a fifteen-mile walk into opencountry; yet at every twelfth stride he had to turn about sharply andpace back the distance to the taffrail.

  Shaw, with his hands stuck in his waistband, had hooked himself withboth elbows to the rail, and gazed apparently at the deck between hisfeet. In reality he was contemplating a little house with a tiny frontgarden, lost in a maze of riverside streets in the east end of London.The circumstance that he had not, as yet, been able to make theacquaintance of his son--now aged eighteen months--worried him slightly,and was the cause of that flight of his fancy into the murky atmosphereof his home. But it was a placid flight followed by a quick return.In less than two minutes he was back in the brig. "All there," as hissaying was. He was proud of being always "all there."

  He was abrupt in manner and grumpy in speech with the seamen. To hissuccessive captains, he was outwardly as deferential as he knew how, andas a rule inwardly hostile--so very few seemed to him of the "all there"kind. Of Lingard, with whom he had only been a short time--having beenpicked up in Madras Roads out of a home ship, which he had to leaveafter a thumping row with the master--he generally approved, although herecognized with regret that this man, like most others, had some absurdfads; he defined them as "bottom-upwards notions."

  He was a man--as there were many--of no particular value to anybody buthimself, and of no account but as the chief mate of the brig, and theonly white man on board of her besides the captain. He felt himselfimmeasurably superior to the Malay seamen whom he had to handle, andtreated them with lofty toleration, notwithstanding his opinion that ata pinch those chaps would be found emphatically "not there."

  As soon as his mind came back from his home leave, he detached himselffrom the rail and, walking forward, stood by the break of the poop,looking along the port side of the main deck. Lingard on his own sidestopped in his walk and also gazed absentmindedly before him. In thewaist of the brig, in the narrow spars that were lashed on each side ofthe hatchway, he could see a group of men squatting in a circle around awooden tray piled up with rice, which stood on the just swept deck.The dark-faced, soft-eyed silent men, squatting on their hams, feddecorously with an earnestness that did not exclude reserve.

  Of the lot, only one or two wore sarongs, the others havingsubmitted--at least at sea--to the indignity of European trousers. Onlytwo sat on the spars. One, a man with a childlike, light yellow face,smiling with fatuous imbecility under the wisps of straight coarse hairdyed a mahogany tint, was the tindal
of the crew--a kind of boatswain'sor serang's mate. The other, sitting beside him on the booms, was aman nearly black, not much bigger than a large ape, and wearing onhis wrinkled face that look of comical truculence which is oftencharacteristic of men from the southwestern coast of Sumatra.

  This was the kassab or store-keeper, the holder of a position of dignityand ease. The kassab was the only one of the crew taking their eveningmeal who noticed the presence on deck of their commander. He mutteredsomething to the tindal who directly cocked his old hat on oneside, which senseless action invested him with an altogether foolishappearance. The others heard, but went on somnolently feeding withspidery movements of their lean arms.

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

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

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

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

  The helmsman struck four bells sharply. Another barefooted seacannieglided on the far side of the poop to relieve the wheel, and the serangof the brig came up the ladder to take charge of the deck from Shaw. Hecame 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. "Windcoming," he muttered.

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

  The shadows were gathering rapidly round the brig. A mulatto put hishead 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 wecome up again."

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

  He revolved slowly on his heels, keeping the end of the tube on thesky-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 theseacannie 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, stoodvery straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand. His face, nowhardly 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 bentdown a little from the height of the wheel grating.

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

  The serang had been twice a pilgrim, and was not insensible to the soundof 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 thatpulls out to a great length," said the pertinacious helmsman. "There wasa boat, just clear of the easternmost island. There was a boat, andthey in her could see the ship on the light of the west--unless they areblind men lost on the sea. I have seen her. Have you seen her, too, OHaji Wasub?"

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

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

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