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_ 'It all begins, as I've told you, with the man called Brown,' ran
the opening sentence of Marlow's narrative. 'You who have
knocked about the Western Pacific must have heard of him. He was
the show ruffian on the Australian coast--not that he was often to
be seen there, but because he was always trotted out in the stories
of lawless life a visitor from home is treated to; and the mildest of
these stories which were told about him from Cape York to Eden
Bay was more than enough to hang a man if told in the right place.
They never failed to let you know, too, that he was supposed to be
the son of a baronet. Be it as it may, it is certain he had deserted
from a home ship in the early gold-digging days, and in a few years
became talked about as the terror of this or that group of islands in
Polynesia. He would kidnap natives, he would strip some lonely
white trader to the very pyjamas he stood in, and after he had
robbed the poor devil, he would as likely as not invite him to fight
a duel with shot-guns on the beach--which would have been fair
enough as these things go, if the other man hadn't been by that time
already half-dead with fright. Brown was a latter-day buccaneer,
sorry enough, like his more celebrated prototypes; but what distinguished
him from his contemporary brother ruffians, like Bully Hayes or the
mellifluous Pease, or that perfumed, Dundreary-whiskered, dandified
scoundrel known as Dirty Dick, was the arrogant temper of his misdeeds
and a vehement scorn for mankind at large and for his victims in
particular. The others were merely vulgar and greedy brutes, but he
seemed moved by some complex intention. He would rob a man as if only
to demonstrate his poor opinion of the creature, and he would bring to
the shooting or maiming of some quiet, unoffending stranger a savage
and vengeful earnestness fit to terrify the most reckless of
desperadoes. In the days of his greatest glory he owned an armed barque,
manned by a mixed crew of Kanakas and runaway whalers, and boasted, I
don't know with what truth, of being financed on the quiet by a most
respectable firm of copra merchants. Later on he ran off--it was
reported--with the wife of a missionary, a very young girl from
Clapham way, who had married the mild, flat-footed fellow in a
moment of enthusiasm, and, suddenly transplanted to Melanesia,
lost her bearings somehow. It was a dark story. She was ill at the
time he carried her off, and died on board his ship. It is said--as
the most wonderful put of the tale--that over her body he gave
way to an outburst of sombre and violent grief. His luck left him,
too, very soon after. He lost his ship on some rocks off Malaita,
and disappeared for a time as though he had gone down with her.
He is heard of next at Nuka-Hiva, where he bought an old French
schooner out of Government service. What creditable enterprise he
might have had in view when he made that purchase I can't say,
but it is evident that what with High Commissioners, consuls,
men-of-war, and international control, the South Seas were getting
too hot to hold gentlemen of his kidney. Clearly he must have shifted
the scene of his operations farther west, because a year later he
plays an incredibly audacious, but not a very profitable part, in a
serio-comic business in Manila Bay, in which a peculating governor
and an absconding treasurer are the principal figures; thereafter
he seems to have hung around the Philippines in his rotten schooner
battling with un adverse fortune, till at last, running his appointed
course, he sails into Jim's history, a blind accomplice of the Dark
Powers.
'His tale goes that when a Spanish patrol cutter captured him he
was simply trying to run a few guns for the insurgents. If so, then
I can't understand what he was doing off the south coast of Mindanao.
My belief, however, is that he was blackmailing the native villages
along the coast. The principal thing is that the cutter, throwing a
guard on board, made him sail in company towards Zamboanga. On the way,
for some reason or other, both vessels had to call at one of these new
Spanish settlements--which never came to anything in the end--where
there was not only a civil official in charge on shore, but a good
stout coasting schooner lying at anchor in the little bay; and this
craft, in every way much better than his own, Brown made up his mind
to steal.
'He was down on his luck--as he told me himself. The world he
had bullied for twenty years with fierce, aggressive disdain, had
yielded him nothing in the way of material advantage except a small
bag of silver dollars, which was concealed in his cabin so that "the
devil himself couldn't smell it out." And that was all--absolutely
all. He was tired of his life, and not afraid of death. But this man,
who would stake his existence on a whim with a bitter and jeering
recklessness, stood in mortal fear of imprisonment. He had an
unreasoning cold-sweat, nerve-shaking, blood-to-water-turning
sort of horror at the bare possibility of being locked up--the sort
of terror a superstitious man would feel at the thought of being
embraced by a spectre. Therefore the civil official who came on
board to make a preliminary investigation into the capture, investigated
arduously all day long, and only went ashore after dark, muffled up in
a cloak, and taking great care not to let Brown's little all clink in
its bag. Afterwards, being a man of his word, he contrived (the very
next evening, I believe) to send off the Government cutter on some
urgent bit of special service. As her commander could not spare a
prize crew, he contented himself by taking away before he left all the
sails of Brown's schooner to the very last rag, and took good care to
tow his two boats on to the beach a couple of miles off.
'But in Brown's crew there was a Solomon Islander, kidnapped
in his youth and devoted to Brown, who was the best man of the
whole gang. That fellow swam off to the coaster--five hundred
yards or so--with the end of a warp made up of all the running gear
unrove for the purpose. The water was smooth, and the bay dark,
"like the inside of a cow," as Brown described it. The Solomon
Islander clambered over the bulwarks with the end of the rope in
his teeth. The crew of the coaster--all Tagals--were ashore having
a jollification in the native village. The two shipkeepers left on board
woke up suddenly and saw the devil. It had glittering eyes and
leaped quick as lightning about the deck. They fell on their knees,
paralysed with fear, crossing themselves and mumbling prayers.
With a long knife he found in the caboose the Solomon Islander,
without interrupting their orisons, stabbed first one, then the other;
with the same knife he set to sawing patiently at the coir cable till
suddenly it parted under the blade with a splash. Then in the silence
of the bay he let out a cautious shout, and Brown's gang, who
meantime had been peering and straining their hopeful ears in the
darkness, began to pull gently at their end of the warp. In less than
five minutes the two schooners came together with a slight shock
and a creak of spars.
'Brown's crowd transferred themselves without losing an instant,
taking with them their firearms and a large supply of ammunition.
They were sixteen in all: two runaway blue-jackets, a lanky deserter
from a Yankee man-of-war, a couple of simple, blond Scandinavians,
a mulatto of sorts, one bland Chinaman who cooked--and the rest of the
nondescript spawn of the South Seas. None of them cared; Brown bent
them to his will, and Brown, indifferent to gallows, was running away
from the spectre of a Spanish prison. He didn't give them the time to
trans-ship enough provisions; the weather was calm, the air was
charged with dew, and when they cast off the ropes and set sail to a
faint off-shore draught there was no flutter in the damp canvas;
their old schooner seemed to detach itself gently from the stolen
craft and slip away silently, together with the black mass of the
coast, into the night.
'They got clear away. Brown related to me in detail their passage
down the Straits of Macassar. It is a harrowing and desperate story.
They were short of food and water; they boarded several native
craft and got a little from each. With a stolen ship Brown did not
dare to put into any port, of course. He had no money to buy
anything, no papers to show, and no lie plausible enough to get him
out again. An Arab barque, under the Dutch flag, surprised one
night at anchor off Poulo Laut, yielded a little dirty rice, a bunch
of bananas, and a cask of water; three days of squally, misty weather
from the north-east shot the schooner across the Java Sea. The
yellow muddy waves drenched that collection of hungry ruffians.
They sighted mail-boats moving on their appointed routes; passed
well-found home ships with rusty iron sides anchored in the shallow
sea waiting for a change of weather or the turn of the tide; an English
gunboat, white and trim, with two slim masts, crossed their bows
one day in the distance; and on another occasion a Dutch corvette,
black and heavily sparred, loomed up on their quarter, steaming
dead slow in the mist. They slipped through unseen or disregarded,
a wan, sallow-faced band of utter outcasts, enraged with hunger
and hunted by fear. Brown's idea was to make for Madagascar,
where he expected, on grounds not altogether illusory, to sell the
schooner in Tamatave, and no questions asked, or perhaps obtain
some more or less forged papers for her. Yet before he could face
the long passage across the Indian Ocean food was wanted--water
too.
'Perhaps he had heard of Patusan--or perhaps he just only happened to
see the name written in small letters on the chart--probably that of a
largish village up a river in a native state, perfectly defenceless,
far from the beaten tracks of the sea and from the ends of submarine
cables. He had done that kind of thing before--in the way of business;
and this now was an absolute necessity, a question of life and death--or
rather of liberty. Of liberty! He was sure to get provisions--bullocks--
rice--sweet-potatoes. The sorry gang licked their chops. A cargo of
produce for the schooner perhaps could be extorted--and, who knows?--some
real ringing coined money! Some of these chiefs and village headmen can
be made to part freely. He told me he would have roasted their toes
rather than be baulked. I believe him. His men believed him too. They
didn't cheer aloud, being a dumb pack, but made ready wolfishly.
'Luck served him as to weather. A few days of calm would have
brought unmentionable horrors on board that schooner, but with
the help of land and sea breezes, in less than a week after clearing
the Sunda Straits, he anchored off the Batu Kring mouth within a
pistol-shot of the fishing village.
'Fourteen of them packed into the schooner's long-boat (which
was big, having been used for cargo-work) and started up the river,
while two remained in charge of the schooner with food enough to
keep starvation off for ten days. The tide and wind helped, and early
one afternoon the big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its
way before the sea breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen
assorted scarecrows glaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the
breech-blocks of cheap rifles. Brown calculated upon the terrifying
surprise of his appearance. They sailed in with the last of the flood;
the Rajah's stockade gave no sign; the first houses on both sides of
the stream seemed deserted. A few canoes were seen up the reach
in full flight. Brown was astonished at the size of the place. A
profound silence reigned. The wind dropped between the houses;
two oars were got out and the boat held on up-stream, the idea
being to effect a lodgment in the centre of the town before the
inhabitants could think of resistance.
'It seems, however, that the headman of the fishing village at
Batu Kring had managed to send off a timely warning. When the
long-boat came abreast of the mosque (which Doramin had built:
a structure with gables and roof finials of carved coral) the open
space before it was full of people. A shout went up, and was followed
by a clash of gongs all up the river. From a point above two little
brass 6-pounders were discharged, and the round-shot came skipping
down the empty reach, spurting glittering jets of water in the
sunshine. In front of the mosque a shouting lot of men began firing
in volleys that whipped athwart the current of the river; an irregular,
rolling fusillade was opened on the boat from both banks, and
Brown's men replied with a wild, rapid fire. The oars had been got in.
'The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quickly in that
river, and the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in smoke, began
to drift back stern foremost. Along both shores the smoke thickened
also, lying below the roofs in a level streak as you may see a long
cloud cutting the slope of a mountain. A tumult of war-cries, the
vibrating clang of gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage,
crashes of volley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat
confounded but steady at the tiller, working himself into a fury of
hate and rage against those people who dared to defend themselves.
Two of his men had been wounded, and he saw his retreat cut off
below the town by some boats that had put off from Tunku Allang's
stockade. There were six of them, full of men. While he was thus
beset he perceived the entrance of the narrow creek (the same which
Jim had jumped at low water). It was then brim full. Steering the
long-boat in, they landed, and, to make a long story short, they
established themselves on a little knoll about 900 yards from the
stockade, which, in fact, they commanded from that position. The
slopes of the knoll were bare, but there were a few trees on the
summit. They went to work cutting these down for a breastwork,
and were fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah's boats
remained in the river with curious neutrality. When the sun set the
glue of many brushwood blazes lighted on the river-front, and
between the double line of houses on the land side threw into black
relief the roofs, the groups of slender palms, the heavy clumps of
fruit trees. Brown ordered the grass round his position to be fired;
a low ring of thin flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled
rapidly down the slopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush
caught with a tall, vicious roar. The conflagration made a clear zone
of fire for the rifles of the small party, and expired smouldering on
the edge of the forests and along the muddy bank of the creek. A
strip of jungle luxuriating in a damp hollow between the knoll and
the Rajah's stockade stopped it on that side with a great crackling
and detonations of bursting bamboo stems. The sky was sombre,
velvety, and swarming with stars. The blackened ground smoked
quietly with low creeping wisps, till a little breeze came on and blew
everything away. Brown expected an attack to be delivered as soon
as the tide had flowed enough again to enable the war-boats which
had cut off his retreat to enter the creek. At any rate he was sure
there would be an attempt to carry off his long-boat, which lay
below the hill, a dark high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet mud-flat.
But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the river. Over the
stockade and the Rajah's buildings Brown saw their lights on the water.
They seemed to be anchored across the stream. Other lights afloat were
moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to side. There
were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of houses
up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others
isolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs,
black piles as far as he could see. It was an immense place. The
fourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised
their chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to
extend up-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. They
did not speak to each other. Now and then they would hear a loud yell,
or a single shot rang out, fired very far somewhere. But round their
position everything was still, dark, silent. They seemed to be
forgotten, as if the excitement keeping awake all the population had
nothing to do with them, as if they had been dead already.' _
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