. . . It"s hanging astern, Mr. Almayer," he said, looking down again.
"Get into it, sir. The men are coming down by the painter."
By the time Almayer had clambered over into the stern sheets, four calashes were in the boat and the oars were being pa.s.sed over the taffrail. The mate was looking on. Suddenly he said--
"Is it dangerous work? Do you want any help? I would come . . ."
"Yes, yes!" cried Almayer. "Come along. Don"t lose a moment. Go and get your revolver. Hurry up! hurry up!"
Yet, notwithstanding his feverish anxiety to be off, he lolled back very quiet and unconcerned till the mate got in and, pa.s.sing over the thwarts, sat down by his side. Then he seemed to wake up, and called out--
"Let go--let go the painter!"
"Let go the painter--the painter!" yelled the bowman, jerking at it.
People on board also shouted "Let go!" to one another, till it occurred at last to somebody to cast off the rope; and the boat drifted rapidly away from the schooner in the sudden silencing of all voices.
Almayer steered. The mate sat by his side, pushing the cartridges into the chambers of his revolver. When the weapon was loaded he asked--
"What is it? Are you after somebody?"
"Yes," said Almayer, curtly, with his eyes fixed ahead on the river. "We must catch a dangerous man."
"I like a bit of a chase myself," declared the mate, and then, discouraged by Almayer"s aspect of severe thoughtfulness, said nothing more.
Nearly an hour pa.s.sed. The calashes stretched forward head first and lay back with their faces to the sky, alternately, in a regular swing that sent the boat flying through the water; and the two sitters, very upright in the stern sheets, swayed rhythmically a little at every stroke of the long oars plied vigorously.
The mate observed: "The tide is with us."
"The current always runs down in this river," said Almayer.
"Yes--I know," retorted the other; "but it runs faster on the ebb. Look by the land at the way we get over the ground! A five-knot current here, I should say."
"H"m!" growled Almayer. Then suddenly: "There is a pa.s.sage between two islands that will save us four miles. But at low water the two islands, in the dry season, are like one with only a mud ditch between them.
Still, it"s worth trying."
"Ticklish job that, on a falling tide," said the mate, coolly. "You know best whether there"s time to get through."
"I will try," said Almayer, watching the sh.o.r.e intently. "Look out now!"
He tugged hard at the starboard yoke-line.
"Lay in your oars!" shouted the mate.
The boat swept round and shot through the narrow opening of a creek that broadened out before the craft had time to lose its way.
"Out oars! . . . Just room enough," muttered the mate.
It was a sombre creek of black water speckled with the gold of scattered sunlight falling through the boughs that met overhead in a soaring, restless arc full of gentle whispers pa.s.sing, tremulous, aloft amongst the thick leaves. The creepers climbed up the trunks of serried trees that leaned over, looking insecure and undermined by floods which had eaten away the earth from under their roots. And the pungent, acrid smell of rotting leaves, of flowers, of blossoms and plants dying in that poisonous and cruel gloom, where they pined for sunshine in vain, seemed to lay heavy, to press upon the shiny and stagnant water in its tortuous windings amongst the everlasting and invincible shadows.
Almayer looked anxious. He steered badly. Several times the blades of the oars got foul of the bushes on one side or the other, checking the way of the gig. During one of those occurrences, while they were getting clear, one of the calashes said something to the others in a rapid whisper. They looked down at the water. So did the mate.
"Hallo!" he exclaimed. "Eh, Mr. Almayer! Look! The water is running out.
See there! We will be caught."
"Back! back! We must go back!" cried Almayer.
"Perhaps better go on."
"No; back! back!"
He pulled at the steering line, and ran the nose of the boat into the bank. Time was lost again in getting clear.
"Give way, men! give way!" urged the mate, anxiously.
The men pulled with set lips and dilated nostrils, breathing hard.
"Too late," said the mate, suddenly. "The oars touch the bottom already.
We are done."
The boat stuck. The men laid in the oars, and sat, panting, with crossed arms.
"Yes, we are caught," said Almayer, composedly. "That is unlucky!"
The water was falling round the boat. The mate watched the patches of mud coming to the surface. Then in a moment he laughed, and pointing his finger at the creek--
"Look!" he said; "the blamed river is running away from us. Here"s the last drop of water clearing out round that bend."
Almayer lifted his head. The water was gone, and he looked only at a curved track of mud--of mud soft and black, hiding fever, rottenness, and evil under its level and glazed surface.
"We are in for it till the evening," he said, with cheerful resignation.
"I did my best. Couldn"t help it."
"We must sleep the day away," said the mate. "There"s nothing to eat,"
he added, gloomily.
Almayer stretched himself in the stern sheets. The Malays curled down between thwarts.
"Well, I"m jiggered!" said the mate, starting up after a long pause.
"I was in a devil of a hurry to go and pa.s.s the day stuck in the mud.
Here"s a holiday for you! Well! well!"
They slept or sat unmoving and patient. As the sun mounted higher the breeze died out, and perfect stillness reigned in the empty creek. A troop of long-nosed monkeys appeared, and crowding on the outer boughs, contemplated the boat and the motionless men in it with grave and sorrowful intensity, disturbed now and then by irrational outbreaks of mad gesticulation. A little bird with sapphire breast balanced a slender twig across a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it to and fro like a gem dropped from the sky. His minute round eye stared at the strange and tranquil creatures in the boat. After a while he sent out a thin twitter that sounded impertinent and funny in the solemn silence of the great wilderness; in the great silence full of struggle and death.
CHAPTER THREE
On Lingard"s departure solitude and silence closed round Willems; the cruel solitude of one abandoned by men; the reproachful silence which surrounds an outcast ejected by his kind, the silence unbroken by the slightest whisper of hope; an immense and impenetrable silence that swallows up without echo the murmur of regret and the cry of revolt.
The bitter peace of the abandoned clearings entered his heart, in which nothing could live now but the memory and hate of his past. Not remorse.