How limp he was! Directly he felt himself in the air he relaxed every muscle in a most wonderful manner. His four hoofs knocked together in a bunch, his head hung down, and his tail remained pendent in a nerveless and absolute immobility. He reminded me vividly of the pathetic little sheep which hangs on the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. I had no idea that anything in the shape of a horse could be so limp as that, either living or dead. His wild mane hung down lumpily, a mere ma.s.s of inanimate horsehair; his aggressive ears had collapsed, but as he went swaying slowly across the front of the bridge I noticed an astute gleam in his dreamy, half-closed eye. A trustworthy quartermaster, his glance anxious and his mouth on the broad grin, was easing over the derrick watchfully. I superintended, greatly interested.
"So! That will do."
The derrick-head stopped. The kalashes lined the rail. The rope of the halter hung perpendicular and motionless like a bell-pull in front of Almayer. Everything was very still. I suggested amicably that he should catch hold of the rope and mind what he was about. He extended a provokingly casual and superior hand.
"Look out, then! Lower away!"
Almayer gathered in the rope intelligently enough, but when the pony"s hoofs touched the wharf he gave way all at once to a most foolish optimism. Without pausing, without thinking, almost without looking, he disengaged the hook suddenly from the sling, and the cargo-chain, after hitting the pony"s quarters, swung back against the ship"s side with a noisy, rattling slap. I suppose I must have blinked. I know I missed something, because the next thing I saw was Almayer lying flat on his back on the jetty. He was alone.
Astonishment deprived me of speech long enough to give Almayer time to pick himself up in a leisurely and painful manner. The kalashes lining the rail all had their mouths open. The mist flew in the light breeze, and it had come over quite thick enough to hide the sh.o.r.e completely.
"How on earth did you manage to let him get away?" I asked, scandalized.
Almayer looked into the smarting palm of his right hand, but did not answer my inquiry.
"Where do you think he will get to?" I cried. "Are there any fences anywhere in this fog? Can he bolt into the forest? What"s to be done now?"
Almayer shrugged his shoulders.
"Some of my men are sure to be about. They will get hold of him sooner or later."
"Sooner or later! That"s all very fine, but what about my canvas sling?--he"s carried it off. I want it now, at once, to land two Celebes cows."
Since Dongola we had on board a pair of the pretty little island cattle in addition to the pony. Tied up on the other side of the fore-deck they had been whisking their tails into the other door of the galley. These cows were not for Almayer, however; they were invoiced to Abdullah bin Selim, his enemy. Almayer"s disregard of my requirements was complete.
"If I were you I would try to find out where he"s gone," I insisted.
"Hadn"t you better call your men together or something? He will throw himself down and cut his knees. He may even break a leg, you know."
But Almayer, plunged in abstracted thought, did not seem to want that pony any more. Amazed at this sudden indifference, I turned all hands out on sh.o.r.e to hunt for him on my own account, or, at any rate, to hunt for the canvas sling which he had round his body. The whole crew of the steamer, with the exception of firemen and engineers, rushed up the jetty, past the thoughtful Almayer, and vanished from my sight. The white fog swallowed them up; and again there was a deep silence that seemed to extend for miles up and down the stream. Still taciturn, Almayer started to climb on board, and I went down from the bridge to meet him on the after-deck.
"Would you mind telling the captain that I want to see him very particularly?" he asked me, in a low tone, letting his eyes stray all over the place.
"Very well. I will go and see."
With the door of his cabin wide open, Captain C----, just back from the bath-room, big and broad-chested, was brushing his thick, damp, iron-gray hair with two large brushes.
"Mr. Almayer told me he wanted to see you very particularly, sir."
Saying these words, I smiled. I don"t know why I smiled, except that it seemed absolutely impossible to mention Almayer"s name without a smile of a sort. It had not to be necessarily a mirthful smile. Turning his head toward me, Captain C---- smiled, too, rather joylessly.
"The pony got away from him--eh?"
"Yes, sir. He did."
"Where is he?"
"Goodness only knows."
"No. I mean Almayer. Let him come along."
The captain"s stateroom opening straight on deck under the bridge, I had only to beckon from the doorway to Almayer, who had remained aft, with downcast eyes, on the very spot where I had left him. He strolled up moodily, shook hands, and at once asked permission to shut the cabin door.
"I have a pretty story to tell you," were the last words I heard.
The bitterness of tone was remarkable.
I went away from the door, of course. For the moment I had no crew on board; only the Chinaman carpenter, with a canvas bag hung round his neck and a hammer in his hand, roamed about the empty decks, knocking out the wedges of the hatches and dropping them into the bag conscientiously. Having nothing to do I joined our two engineers at the door of the engine-room. It was near breakfast-time.
"He"s turned up early, hasn"t he?" commented the second engineer, and smiled indifferently. He was an abstemious man, with a good digestion and a placid, reasonable view of life even when hungry.
"Yes," I said. "Shut up with the old man. Some very particular business."
"He will spin him a d.a.m.ned endless yarn," observed the chief engineer.
He smiled rather sourly. He was dyspeptic, and suffered from gnawing hunger in the morning. The second smiled broadly, a smile that made two vertical folds on his shaven cheeks. And I smiled, too, but I was not exactly amused. In that man, whose name apparently could not be uttered anywhere in the Malay Archipelago without a smile, there was nothing amusing whatever. That morning he breakfasted with us silently, looking mostly into his cup. I informed him that my men came upon his pony capering in the fog on the very brink of the eight-foot-deep well in which he kept his store of guttah. The cover was off, with no one near by, and the whole of my crew just missed going heels over head into that beastly hole. Jurumudi Itam, our best quartermaster, deft at fine needlework, he who mended the ship"s flags and sewed b.u.t.tons on our coats, was disabled by a kick on the shoulder.
Both remorse and grat.i.tude seemed foreign to Almayer"s character.
He mumbled:
"Do you mean that pirate fellow?"
"What pirate fellow? The man has been in the ship eleven years," I said, indignantly.
"It"s his looks," Almayer muttered, for all apology.
The sun had eaten up the fog. From where we sat under the after-awning we could see in the distance the pony tied up, in front of Almayer"s house, to a post of the veranda. We were silent for a long time. All at once Almayer, alluding evidently to the subject of his conversation in the captain"s cabin, exclaimed anxiously across the table:
"I really don"t know what I can do now!"
Captain C---- only raised his eyebrows at him, and got up from his chair. We dispersed to our duties, but Almayer, half dressed as he was in his cretonne pajamas and the thin cotton singlet, remained on board, lingering near the gangway, as though he could not make up his mind whether to go home or stay with us for good.
Our Chinamen boys gave him side glances as they went to and fro; and Ah Sing, our chief steward, the handsomest and most sympathetic of Chinamen, catching my eye, nodded knowingly at his burly back. In the course of the morning I approached him for a moment.
"Well, Mr. Almayer," I addressed him, easily, "you haven"t started on your letters yet."
We had brought him his mail, and he had held the bundle in his hand ever since we got up from breakfast. He glanced at it when I spoke, and for a moment it looked as if he were on the point of opening his fingers and letting the whole lot fall overboard. I believe he was tempted to do so.
I shall never forget that man afraid of his letters.
"Have you been long out from Europe?" he asked me.
"Not very. Not quite eight months," I told him. "I left a ship in Samarang with a hurt back, and have been in the hospital in Singapore some weeks."
He sighed.
"Trade is very bad here."
"Indeed!"