Ha.s.sim took the ring and inclined his head.
"It"s time for us to be moving," said Lingard. He felt a slight tug at his sleeve. He looked back and caught Immada in the act of pressing her forehead to the grey flannel. "Don"t, child!" he said, softly.
The sun rose above the faint blue line of the Sh.o.r.e of Refuge.
The hesitation was over. The man and the vessel, working in accord, had found their way to the faint blue sh.o.r.e. Before the sun had descended half-way to its rest the brig was anch.o.r.ed within a gunshot of the slimy mangroves, in a place where for a hundred years or more no white man"s vessel had been entrusted to the hold of the bottom. The adventurers of two centuries ago had no doubt known of that anchorage for they were very ignorant and incomparably audacious. If it is true, as some say, that the spirits of the dead haunt the places where the living have sinned and toiled, then they might have seen a white long-boat, pulled by eight oars and steered by a man sunburnt and bearded, a cabbage-leaf hat on head, and pistols in his belt, skirting the black mud, full of twisted roots, in search of a likely opening.
Creek after creek was pa.s.sed and the boat crept on slowly like a monstrous water-spider with a big body and eight slender legs. . . . Did you follow with your ghostly eyes the quest of this obscure adventurer of yesterday, you shades of forgotten adventurers who, in leather jerkins and sweating under steel helmets, attacked with long rapiers the palisades of the strange heathen, or, musket on shoulder and match in c.o.c.k, guarded timber blockhouses built upon the banks of rivers that command good trade? You, who, wearied with the toil of fighting, slept wrapped in frieze mantles on the sand of quiet beaches, dreaming of fabulous diamonds and of a far-off home.
"Here"s an opening," said Lingard to Ha.s.sim, who sat at his side, just as the sun was setting away to his left. "Here"s an opening big enough for a ship. It"s the entrance we are looking for, I believe. We shall pull all night up this creek if necessary and it"s the very devil if we don"t come upon Belarab"s lair before daylight."
He shoved the tiller hard over and the boat, swerving sharply, vanished from the coast.
And perhaps the ghosts of old adventurers nodded wisely their ghostly heads and exchanged the ghost of a wistful smile.
V
"What"s the matter with King Tom of late?" would ask someone when, all the cards in a heap on the table, the traders lying back in their chairs took a spell from a hard gamble.
"Tom has learned to hold his tongue, he must be up to some dam" good thing," opined another; while a man with hooked features and of German extraction who was supposed to be agent for a Dutch crockery house--the famous "Sphinx" mark--broke in resentfully:
"Nefer mind him, shentlemens, he"s matt, matt as a Marsh Hase. Dree monats ago I call on board his prig to talk pizness. And he says like dis--"Glear oudt." "Vat for?" I say. "Glear oudt before I shuck you oferboard." Gott-for-dam! Iss dat the vay to talk pizness? I vant sell him ein liddle case first chop grockery for trade and--"
"Ha, ha, ha! I don"t blame Tom," interrupted the owner of a pearling schooner, who had come into the Roads for stores. "Why, Mosey, there isn"t a mangy cannibal left in the whole of New Guinea that hasn"t got a cup and saucer of your providing. You"ve flooded the market, savee?"
Jorgenson stood by, a skeleton at the gaming table.
"Because you are a Dutch spy," he said, suddenly, in an awful tone.
The agent of the Sphinx mark jumped up in a sudden fury.
"Vat? Vat? Shentlemens, you all know me!" Not a muscle moved in the faces around. "Know me," he stammered with wet lips. "Vat, funf year--berfegtly acquaint--grockery--Verfluchte sponsher. Ich? Spy. Vat for spy? Vordamte English pedlars!"
The door slammed. "Is that so?" asked a New England voice. "Why don"t you let daylight into him?"
"Oh, we can"t do that here," murmured one of the players. "Your deal, Trench, let us get on."
"Can"t you?" drawled the New England voice. "You law-abiding, get-a-summons, act-of--parliament lot of sons of Belial--can"t you?
Now, look a-here, these Colt pistols I am selling--" He took the pearler aside and could be heard talking earnestly in the corner. "See--you load--and--see?" There were rapid clicks. "Simple, isn"t it? And if any trouble--say with your divers"--_click, click, click_--"Through and through--like a sieve--warranted to cure the worst kind of cussedness in any n.i.g.g.e.r. Yes, siree! A case of twenty-four or single specimens--as you like. No? Shot-guns--rifles? No! Waal, I guess you"re of no use to me, but I could do a deal with that Tom--what d"ye call him? Where d"ye catch him? Everywhere--eh? Waal--that"s nowhere. But I shall find him some day--yes, siree."
Jorgenson, utterly disregarded, looked down dreamily at the falling cards. "Spy--I tell you," he muttered to himself. "If you want to know anything, ask me."
When Lingard returned from Wajo--after an uncommonly long absence--everyone remarked a great change. He was less talkative and not so noisy, he was still hospitable but his hospitality was less expansive, and the man who was never so happy as when discussing impossibly wild projects with half a dozen congenial spirits often showed a disinclination to meet his best friends. In a word, he returned much less of a good fellow than he went away. His visits to the Settlements were not less frequent, but much shorter; and when there he was always in a hurry to be gone.
During two years the brig had, in her way, as hard a life of it as the man. Swift and trim she flitted amongst the islands of little known groups. She could be descried afar from lonely headlands, a white speck travelling fast over the blue sea; the apathetic keepers of rare lighthouses dotting the great highway to the east came to know the cut of her topsails. They saw her pa.s.sing east, pa.s.sing west. They had faint glimpses of her flying with masts aslant in the mist of a rain-squall, or could observe her at leisure, upright and with shivering sails, forging ahead through a long day of unsteady airs. Men saw her battling with a heavy monsoon in the Bay of Bengal, lying becalmed in the Java Sea, or gliding out suddenly from behind a point of land, graceful and silent in the clear moonlight. Her activity was the subject of excited but low-toned conversations, which would be interrupted when her master appeared.
"Here he is. Came in last night," whispered the gossiping group.
Lingard did not see the covert glances of respect tempered by irony; he nodded and pa.s.sed on.
"Hey, Tom! No time for a drink?" would shout someone.
He would shake his head without looking back--far away already.
Florid and burly he could be seen, for a day or two, getting out of dusty gharries, striding in sunshine from the Occidental Bank to the Harbour Office, crossing the Esplanade, disappearing down a street of Chinese shops, while at his elbow and as tall as himself, old Jorgenson paced along, lean and faded, obstinate and disregarded, like a haunting spirit from the past eager to step back into the life of men.
Lingard ignored this wreck of an adventurer, sticking to him closer than his shadow, and the other did not try to attract attention. He waited patiently at the doors of offices, would vanish at tiffin time, would invariably turn up again in the evening and then he kept his place till Lingard went aboard for the night. The police peons on duty looked disdainfully at the phantom of Captain H. C. Jorgenson, Barque Wild Rose, wandering on the silent quay or standing still for hours at the edge of the sombre roadstead speckled by the anchor lights of ships--an adventurous soul longing to recross the waters of oblivion.
The sampan-men, sculling lazily homeward past the black hull of the brig at anchor, could hear far into the night the drawl of the New England voice escaping through the lifted panes of the cabin skylight. s.n.a.t.c.hes of nasal sentences floated in the stillness around the still craft.
"Yes, siree! Mexican war rifles--good as new--six in a case--my people in Baltimore--that"s so. Hundred and twenty rounds thrown in for each specimen--marked to suit your requirements. Suppose--musical instruments, this side up with care--how"s that for your taste? No, no!
Cash down--my people in Balt--Shooting sea-gulls you say? Waal! It"s a risky business--see here--ten per cent. discount--it"s out of my own pocket--"
As time wore on, and nothing happened, at least nothing that one could hear of, the excitement died out. Lingard"s new att.i.tude was accepted as only "his way." There was nothing in it, maintained some. Others dissented. A good deal of curiosity, however, remained and the faint rumour of something big being in preparation followed him into every harbour he went to, from Rangoon to Hongkong.
He felt nowhere so much at home as when his brig was anch.o.r.ed on the inner side of the great stretch of shoals. The centre of his life had shifted about four hundred miles--from the Straits of Malacca to the Sh.o.r.e of Refuge--and when there he felt himself within the circle of another existence, governed by his impulse, nearer his desire. Ha.s.sim and Immada would come down to the coast and wait for him on the islet.
He always left them with regret.
At the end of the first stage in each trip, Jorgenson waited for him at the top of the boat-stairs and without a word fell into step at his elbow. They seldom exchanged three words in a day; but one evening about six months before Lingard"s last trip, as they were crossing the short bridge over the ca.n.a.l where native craft lie moored in cl.u.s.ters, Jorgenson lengthened his stride and came abreast. It was a moonlight night and nothing stirred on earth but the shadows of high clouds.
Lingard took off his hat and drew in a long sigh in the tepid breeze.
Jorgenson spoke suddenly in a cautious tone: "The new Rajah Tulla smokes opium and is sometimes dangerous to speak to. There is a lot of discontent in Wajo amongst the big people."
"Good! Good!" whispered Lingard, excitedly, off his guard for once.
Then--"How the devil do you know anything about it?" he asked.
Jorgenson pointed at the ma.s.s of praus, coasting boats, and sampans that, jammed up together in the ca.n.a.l, lay covered with mats and flooded by the cold moonlight with here and there a dim lantern burning amongst the confusion of high sterns, spars, masts and lowered sails.
"There!" he said, as they moved on, and their hatted and clothed shadows fell heavily on the queer-shaped vessels that carry the fortunes of brown men upon a shallow sea. "There! I can sit with them, I can talk to them, I can come and go as I like. They know me now--it"s time-thirty-five years. Some of them give a plate of rice and a bit of fish to the white man. That"s all I get--after thirty-five years--given up to them."
He was silent for a time.
"I was like you once," he added, and then laying his hand on Lingard"s sleeve, murmured--"Are you very deep in this thing?"
"To the very last cent," said Lingard, quietly, and looking straight before him.
The glitter of the roadstead went out, and the masts of anch.o.r.ed ships vanished in the invading shadow of a cloud.
"Drop it," whispered Jorgenson.
"I am in debt," said Lingard, slowly, and stood still.
"Drop it!"
"Never dropped anything in my life."
"Drop it!"