The Rescue (13 page)

"Don't you worry about that," said Lingard, grasping Jorgenson's hand.
"She shall want for nothing. All I expect you to do is to look a little
after Belarab's morals when I am away. One more trip I must make, and
then we shall be ready to go ahead. I've foreseen every single thing.
Trust me!"

In this way did the restless shade of Captain H. C. Jorgenson recross
the water of oblivion to step back into the life of men.

For two years, Lingard, who had thrown himself body and soul into the
great enterprise, had lived in the long intoxication of slowly preparing
success. No thought of failure had crossed his mind, and no price
appeared too heavy to pay for such a magnificent achievement. It was
nothing less than bringing Hassim triumphantly back to that country
seen once at night under the low clouds and in the incessant tumult of
thunder. When at the conclusion of some long talk with Hassim, who for
the twentieth time perhaps had related the story of his wrongs and his
struggle, he lifted his big arm and shaking his fist above his head,
shouted: "We will stir them up. We will wake up the country!" he was,
without knowing it in the least, making a complete confession of the
idealism hidden under the simplicity of his strength. He would wake up
the country! That was the fundamental and unconscious emotion on which
were engrafted his need of action, the primitive sense of what was due
to justice, to gratitude, to friendship, the sentimental pity for the
hard lot of Immada—poor child—the proud conviction that of all the
men in the world, in his world, he alone had the means and the pluck "to
lift up the big end" of such an adventure.

Money was wanted and men were wanted, and he had obtained enough of both
in two years from that day when, pistols in his belt and a cabbage-leaf
hat on head, he had unexpectedly, and at early dawn, confronted in
perfect silence that mysterious Belarab, who himself was for a moment
too astounded for speech at the sight of a white face.

The sun had not yet cleared the forests of the interior, but a sky
already full of light arched over a dark oval lagoon, over wide fields
as yet full of shadows, that seemed slowly changing into the whiteness
of the morning mist. There were huts, fences, palisades, big houses
that, erected on lofty piles, were seen above the tops of clustered
fruit trees, as if suspended in the air.

Such was the aspect of Belarab's settlement when Lingard set his eyes
on it for the first time. There were all these things, a great number
of faces at the back of the spare and muffled-up figure confronting him,
and in the swiftly increasing light a complete stillness that made the
murmur of the word "Marhaba" (welcome), pronounced at last by the chief,
perfectly audible to every one of his followers. The bodyguards who
stood about him in black skull-caps and with long-shafted lances,
preserved an impassive aspect. Across open spaces men could be seen
running to the waterside. A group of women standing on a low knoll gazed
intently, and nothing of them but the heads showed above the unstirring
stalks of a maize field. Suddenly within a cluster of empty huts near
by the voice of an invisible hag was heard scolding with shrill fury an
invisible young girl:

"Strangers! You want to see the strangers? O devoid of all decency!
Must I so lame and old husk the rice alone? May evil befall thee and the
strangers! May they never find favour! May they be pursued with swords!
I am old. I am old. There is no good in strangers! O girl! May they
burn."

"Welcome," repeated Belarab, gravely, and looking straight into
Lingard's eyes.

Lingard spent six days that time in Belarab's settlement. Of these,
three were passed in observing each other without a question being asked
or a hint given as to the object in view. Lingard lounged on the fine
mats with which the chief had furnished a small bamboo house outside a
fortified enclosure, where a white flag with a green border fluttered on
a high and slender pole but still below the walls of long, high-roofed
buildings, raised forty feet or more on hard-wood posts.

Far away the inland forests were tinted a shimmering blue, like the
forests of a dream. On the seaward side the belt of great trunks and
matted undergrowth came to the western shore of the oval lagoon; and in
the pure freshness of the air the groups of brown houses reflected in
the water or seen above the waving green of the fields, the clumps of
palm trees, the fenced-in plantations, the groves of fruit trees, made
up a picture of sumptuous prosperity.

Above the buildings, the men, the women, the still sheet of water and
the great plain of crops glistening with dew, stretched the exalted,
the miraculous peace of a cloudless sky. And no road seemed to lead
into this country of splendour and stillness. One could not believe the
unquiet sea was so near, with its gifts and its unending menace. Even
during the months of storms, the great clamour rising from the whitened
expanse of the Shallows dwelt high in the air in a vast murmur, now
feeble now stronger, that seemed to swing back and forth on the wind
above the earth without any one being able to tell whence it came. It
was like the solemn chant of a waterfall swelling and dying away above
the woods, the fields, above the roofs of houses and the heads of men,
above the secret peace of that hidden and flourishing settlement of
vanquished fanatics, fugitives, and outcasts.

Every afternoon Belarab, followed by an escort that stopped outside
the door, entered alone the house of his guest. He gave the salutation,
inquired after his health, conversed about insignificant things with an
inscrutable mien. But all the time the steadfast gaze of his thoughtful
eyes seemed to seek the truth within that white face. In the cool of
the evening, before the sun had set, they talked together, passing and
repassing between the rugged pillars of the grove near the gate of the
stockade. The escort away in the oblique sunlight, followed with their
eyes the strolling figures appearing and vanishing behind the trees.
Many words were pronounced, but nothing was said that would disclose
the thoughts of the two men. They clasped hands demonstratively before
separating, and the heavy slam of the gate was followed by the triple
thud of the wooden bars dropped into iron clamps.

On the third night, Lingard was awakened from a light sleep by the sound
of whispering outside. A black shadow obscured the stars in the doorway,
and a man entering suddenly, stood above his couch while another could
be seen squatting—a dark lump on the threshold of the hut.

"Fear not. I am Belarab," said a cautious voice.

"I was not afraid," whispered Lingard. "It is the man coming in the dark
and without warning who is in danger."

"And did you not come to me without warning? I said 'welcome'—it was as
easy for me to say 'kill him.'"

"You were within reach of my arm. We would have died together," retorted
Lingard, quietly.

The other clicked his tongue twice, and his indistinct shape seemed to
sink half-way through the floor.

"It was not written thus before we were born," he said, sitting
cross-legged near the mats, and in a deadened voice. "Therefore you are
my guest. Let the talk between us be straight like the shaft of a spear
and shorter than the remainder of this night. What do you want?"

"First, your long life," answered Lingard, leaning forward toward the
gleam of a pair of eyes, "and then—your help."

The faint murmur of the words spoken on that night lingered for a long
time in Lingard's ears, more persistent than the memory of an uproar; he
looked with a fixed gaze at the stars burning peacefully in the square
of the doorway, while after listening in silence to all he had to say,
Belarab, as if seduced by the strength and audacity of the white man,
opened his heart without reserve. He talked of his youth surrounded by
the fury of fanaticism and war, of battles on the hills, of
advances through the forests, of men's unswerving piety, of their
unextinguishable hate. Not a single wandering cloud obscured the gentle
splendour of the rectangular patch of starlight framed in the opaque
blackness of the hut. Belarab murmured on of a succession of reverses,
of the ring of disasters narrowing round men's fading hopes and
undiminished courage. He whispered of defeat and flight, of the days
of despair, of the nights without sleep, of unending pursuit, of the
bewildered horror and sombre fury, of their women and children killed in
the stockade before the besieged sallied forth to die.

"I have seen all this before I was in years a man," he cried, low.

His voice vibrated. In the pause that succeeded they heard a light sigh
of the sleeping follower who, clasping his legs above his ankles, rested
his forehead on his knees.

"And there was amongst us," began Belarab again, "one white man who
remained to the end, who was faithful with his strength, with his
courage, with his wisdom. A great man. He had great riches but a greater
heart."

The memory of Jorgenson, emaciated and grey-haired, and trying to borrow
five dollars to get something to eat for the girl, passed before Lingard
suddenly upon the pacific glitter of the stars.

"He resembled you," pursued Belarab, abruptly. "We escaped with him, and
in his ship came here. It was a solitude. The forest came near to the
sheet of water, the rank grass waved upon the heads of tall men. Telal,
my father, died of weariness; we were only a few, and we all nearly died
of trouble and sadness—here. On this spot! And no enemies could tell
where we had gone. It was the Shore of Refuge—and starvation."

He droned on in the night, with rising and falling inflections. He told
how his desperate companions wanted to go out and die fighting on the
sea against the ships from the west, the ships with high sides and white
sails; and how, unflinching and alone, he kept them battling with the
thorny bush, with the rank grass, with the soaring and enormous trees.
Lingard, leaning on his elbow and staring through the door, recalled
the image of the wide fields outside, sleeping now, in an immensity of
serenity and starlight. This quiet and almost invisible talker had done
it all; in him was the origin, the creation, the fate; and in the
wonder of that thought the shadowy murmuring figure acquired a gigantic
greatness of significance, as if it had been the embodiment of some
natural force, of a force forever masterful and undying.

"And even now my life is unsafe as if I were their enemy," said Belarab,
mournfully. "Eyes do not kill, nor angry words; and curses have no
power, else the Dutch would not grow fat living on our land, and I would
not be alive to-night. Do you understand? Have you seen the men who
fought in the old days? They have not forgotten the times of war. I have
given them homes and quiet hearts and full bellies. I alone. And they
curse my name in the dark, in each other's ears—because they can never
forget."

This man, whose talk had been of war and violence, discovered
unexpectedly a passionate craving for security and peace. No one would
understand him. Some of those who would not understand had died. His
white teeth gleamed cruelly in the dark. But there were others he could
not kill. The fools. He wanted the land and the people in it to be
forgotten as if they had been swallowed by the sea. But they had neither
wisdom nor patience. Could they not wait? They chanted prayers five
times every day, but they had not the faith.

"Death comes to all—and to the believers the end of trouble. But you
white men who are too strong for us, you also die. You die. And there
is a Paradise as great as all earth and all Heaven together, but not for
you—not for you!"

Lingard, amazed, listened without a sound. The sleeper snored faintly.
Belarab continued very calm after this almost involuntary outburst of
a consoling belief. He explained that he wanted somebody at his back,
somebody strong and whom he could trust, some outside force that would
awe the unruly, that would inspire their ignorance with fear, and make
his rule secure. He groped in the dark and seizing Lingard's arm above
the elbow pressed it with force—then let go. And Lingard understood why
his temerity had been so successful.

Then and there, in return for Lingard's open support, a few guns and a
little money, Belarab promised his help for the conquest of Wajo. There
was no doubt he could find men who would fight. He could send messages
to friends at a distance and there were also many unquiet spirits in his
own district ready for any adventure. He spoke of these men with
fierce contempt and an angry tenderness, in mingled accents of envy and
disdain. He was wearied by their folly, by their recklessness, by their
impatience—and he seemed to resent these as if they had been gifts of
which he himself had been deprived by the fatality of his wisdom. They
would fight. When the time came Lingard had only to speak, and a sign
from him would send them to a vain death—those men who could not wait
for an opportunity on this earth or for the eternal revenge of Heaven.

He ceased, and towered upright in the gloom.

"Awake!" he exclaimed, low, bending over the sleeping man.

Their black shapes, passing in turn, eclipsed for two successive moments
the glitter of the stars, and Lingard, who had not stirred, remained
alone. He lay back full length with an arm thrown across his eyes.

When three days afterward he left Belarab's settlement, it was on a calm
morning of unclouded peace. All the boats of the brig came up into the
lagoon armed and manned to make more impressive the solemn fact of a
concluded alliance. A staring crowd watched his imposing departure in
profound silence and with an increased sense of wonder at the mystery of
his apparition. The progress of the boats was smooth and slow while they
crossed the wide lagoon. Lingard looked back once. A great stillness had
laid its hand over the earth, the sky, and the men; upon the immobility
of landscape and people. Hassim and Immada, standing out clearly by
the side of the chief, raised their arms in a last salutation; and the
distant gesture appeared sad, futile, lost in space, like a sign of
distress made by castaways in the vain hope of an impossible help.