________________________________________________
_ 'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers.
Yes, it was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed,
and a strange contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men,
and each gun went up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild
pig rooting its way in the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest
shook their heads. There was something occult in all this, no doubt;
for what is the strength of ropes and of men's arms? There is a
rebellious soul in things which must be overcome by powerful
charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very respectable householder
of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one evening. However, Sura was
a professional sorcerer also, who attended all the rice sowings and
reapings for miles around for the purpose of subduing the stubborn
souls of things. This occupation he seemed to think a most arduous one,
and perhaps the souls of things are more stubborn than the souls of men.
As to the simple folk of outlying villages, they believed and said
(as the most natural thing in the world) that Jim had carried the guns
up the hill on his back--two at a time.
'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim
with an exasperated little laugh, "What can you do with such silly
beggars? They will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the
greater the lie the more they seem to like it." You could trace the
subtle influence of his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of
his captivity. The earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at
last I said, "My dear fellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this." He
looked at me quite startled. "Well, no! I suppose not," he said, and
burst into a Homeric peal of laughter. "Well, anyhow the guns were
there, and went off all together at sunrise. Jove! You should have
seen the splinters fly," he cried. By his side Dain Waris, listening
with a quiet smile, dropped his eyelids and shuffled his feet a little.
It appears that the success in mounting the guns had given Jim's
people such a feeling of confidence that he ventured to leave the
battery under charge of two elderly Bugis who had seen some fighting
in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and the storming party
who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours they began
creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the wet
grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed
signal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he
watched the swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work
and the climbing, he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how
afraid he was he would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before
the time came for the advance. "It was the slowest half-hour in my
life," he declared. Gradually the silent stockade came out on the
sky above him. Men scattered all down the slope were crouching
amongst the dark stones and dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying
flattened by his side. "We looked at each other," Jim said, resting
a gentle hand on his friend's shoulder. "He smiled at me as cheery
as you please, and I dared not stir my lips for fear I would break
out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word, it's true! I had been streaming
with perspiration when we took cover--so you may imagine . . ."
He declared, and I believe him, that he had no fears as to the result.
He was only anxious as to his ability to repress these shivers. He
didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to the top of
that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could be no
going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him
alone! His bare word. . . .
'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed
upon me. "As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret
it yet," he said. "Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--
worse luck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for
anything and everything. I could have no idea! Why, only the
other day an old fool he had never seen in his life came from some
village miles away to find out if he should divorce his wife. Fact.
Solemn word. That's the sort of thing. . . He wouldn't have
believed it. Would I? Squatted on the verandah chewing betel-nut,
sighing and spitting all over the place for more than an hour, and
as glum as an undertaker before he came out with that dashed
conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as it looks.
What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old
though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots.
Been living together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell.
A long, long time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a
little, when she was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour.
Suddenly in her old age she goes and lends three brass pots to her
sister's son's wife, and begins to abuse him every day in a loud
voice. His enemies jeered at him; his face was utterly blackened.
Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up about it. Impossible to fathom a
story like that; told him to go home, and promised to come along
myself and settle it all. It's all very well to grin, but it was
the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the forest, another
day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at the rights of
the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy in the thing.
Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other, and one
half of the village was ready to go for the other half with anything
that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of attending
to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of course--and
pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not. Could
settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little
finger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not
sure to this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried
him. And the talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail
to it. Rather storm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much!
Child's play to that other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well,
yes; a funny set out, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough
to be his grandfather. But from another point of view it was no
joke. His word decided everything--ever since the smashing of
Sherif Ali. An awful responsibility," he repeated. "No, really--
joking apart, had it been three lives instead of three rotten brass
pots it would have been the same. . . ."
'Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was
in truth immense. It had led him from strife to peace, and through
death into the innermost life of the people; but the gloom of the
land spread out under the sunshine preserved its appearance of
inscrutable, of secular repose. The sound of his fresh young voice--
it's extraordinary how very few signs of wear he showed--floated
lightly, and passed away over the unchanged face of the forests like
the sound of the big guns on that cold dewy morning when he had
no other concern on earth but the proper control of the chills in his
body. With the first slant of sun-rays along these immovable tree-tops
the summit of one hill wreathed itself, with heavy reports, in
white clouds of smoke, and the other burst into an amazing noise
of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of surprise, of dismay. Jim and
Dain Waris were the first to lay their hands on the stakes. The
popular story has it that Jim with a touch of one finger had thrown
down the gate. He was, of course, anxious to disclaim this achievement.
The whole stockade--he would insist on explaining to you--was a poor
affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the inaccessible position); and,
anyway, the thing had been already knocked to pieces and only hung
together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it like a little fool
and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn't been for Dain Waris,
a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him with his spear
to a baulk of timber like one of Stein's beetles. The third man in,
it seems, had been Tamb' Itam, Jim's own servant. This was a Malay
from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and had been
forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the state boats.
He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and finding a
precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis settlers,
had attached himself to Jim's person. His complexion was very dark,
his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There was
something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his "white
lord." He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow. On state
occasions he would tread on his master's heels, one hand on the haft
of his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his
truculent brooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his
establishment, and all Patusan respected and courted him as a person
of much influence. At the taking of the stockade he had distinguished
himself greatly by the methodical ferocity of his fighting. The
storming party had come on so quick--Jim said--that notwithstanding
the panic of the garrison, there was a "hot five minutes hand-to-hand
inside that stockade, till some bally ass set fire to the shelters of
boughs and dry grass, and we all had to clear out for dear life."
'The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin, waiting immovably in
his chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading
slowly above his big head, received the news with a deep grunt.
When informed that his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he,
without another sound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants
hurried to his help, and, held up reverently, he shuffled with
great dignity into a bit of shade, where he laid himself down to
sleep, covered entirely with a piece of white sheeting. In Patusan
the excitement was intense. Jim told me that from the hill,
turning his back on the stockade with its embers, black ashes, and
half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the open spaces
between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly with a
seething rush of people and get empty in a moment. His ears caught
feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild
shouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot of
streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst
the brown ridges of roofs. "You must have enjoyed it," I murmured,
feeling the stir of sympathetic emotion.
' "It was . . . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging
his arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had
seen him bare the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the
brooding forests, to the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy
curves upon the banks of a stream whose current seemed to sleep.
"Immense!" he repeated for a third time, speaking in a whisper,
for himself alone.
'Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon
his words, the conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind
trust of men, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the
solitude of his achievement. All this, as I've warned you, gets dwarfed
in the telling. I can't with mere words convey to you the impression
of his total and utter isolation. I know, of course, he was in every
sense alone of his kind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his
nature had brought him in such close touch with his surroundings
that this isolation seemed only the effect of his power. His loneliness
added to his stature. There was nothing within sight to compare
him with, as though he had been one of those exceptional men who
can be only measured by the greatness of their fame; and his fame,
remember, was the greatest thing around for many a day's journey.
You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long weary way through
the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its voice. Its voice
was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we all know--not
blatant--not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness and
gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth
of every passing day. It shared something of the nature of that
silence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths,
heard continuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching--tinged
with wonder and mystery on the lips of whispering men.' _
Read next: CHAPTER 28
Read previous: CHAPTER 26
Table of content of Lord Jim
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
