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_ With the sublime indifference of a man who has had a glimpse
through the open doors of Paradise and is no longer careful of
mere life, Lingard had followed Belarab's anxious messengers. The
stockade was waking up in a subdued resonance of voices. Men were
getting up from the ground, fires were being rekindled. Draped
figures flitted in the mist amongst the buildings; and through
the mat wall of a bamboo house Lingard heard the feeble wailing
of a child. A day of mere life was beginning; but in the Chief's
great Council room several wax candles and a couple of cheap
European lamps kept the dawn at bay, while the morning mist which
could not be kept out made a faint reddish halo round every
flame.
Belarab was not only awake, but he even looked like a man who had
not slept for a long time. The creator of the Shore of Refuge,
the weary Ruler of the Settlement, with his scorn of the unrest
and folly of men, was angry with his white friend who was always
bringing his desires and his troubles to his very door. Belarab
did not want any one to die but neither did he want any one in
particular to live. What he was concerned about was to preserve
the mystery and the power of his melancholy hesitations. These
delicate things were menaced by Lingard's brusque movements, by
that passionate white man who believed in more than one God and
always seemed to doubt the power of Destiny. Belarab was
profoundly annoyed. He was also genuinely concerned, for he liked
Lingard. He liked him not only for his strength, which protected
his clear-minded scepticism from those dangers that beset all
rulers, but he liked him also for himself. That man of infinite
hesitations, born from a sort of mystic contempt for Allah's
creation, yet believed absolutely both in Lingard's power and in
his boldness. Absolutely. And yet, in the marvellous consistency
of his temperament, now that the moment had come, he dreaded to
put both power and fortitude to the test.
Lingard could not know that some little time before the first
break of dawn one of Belarab's spies in the Settlement had found
his way inside the stockade at a spot remote from the lagoon, and
that a very few moments after Lingard had left the Chief in
consequence of Jorgenson's rockets, Belarab was listening to an
amazing tale of Hassim and Immada's capture and of Tengga's
determination, very much strengthened by that fact, to obtain
possession of the Emma, either by force or by negotiation, or by
some crafty subterfuge in which the Rajah and his sister could be
made to play their part. In his mistrust of the universe, which
seemed almost to extend to the will of God himself, Belarab was
very much alarmed, for the material power of Daman's piratical
crowd was at Tengga's command; and who could tell whether this
Wajo Rajah would remain loyal in the circumstances? It was also
very characteristic of him whom the original settlers of the
Shore of Refuge called the Father of Safety, that he did not say
anything of this to Lingard, for he was afraid of rousing
Lingard's fierce energy which would even carry away himself and
all his people and put the peace of so many years to the sudden
hazard of a battle.
Therefore Belarab set himself to persuade Lingard on general
considerations to deliver the white men, who really belonged to
Daman, to that supreme Chief of the Illanuns and by this simple
proceeding detach him completely from Tengga. Why should he,
Belarab, go to war against half the Settlement on their account?
It was not necessary, it was not reasonable. It would be even in
a manner a sin to begin a strife in a community of True
Believers. Whereas with an offer like that in his hand he could
send an embassy to Tengga who would see there at once the
downfall of his purposes and the end of his hopes. At once! That
moment! . . . Afterward the question of a ransom could be
arranged with Daman in which he, Belarab, would mediate in the
fullness of his recovered power, without a rival and in the
sincerity of his heart. And then, if need be, he could put forth
all his power against the chief of the sea-vagabonds who would,
as a matter of fact, be negotiating under the shadow of the
sword.
Belarab talked, low-voiced and dignified, with now and then a
subtle intonation, a persuasive inflexion or a half-melancholy
smile in the course of the argument. What encouraged him most was
the changed aspect of his white friend. The fierce power of his
personality seemed to have turned into a dream. Lingard listened,
growing gradually inscrutable in his continued silence, but
remaining gentle in a sort of rapt patience as if lapped in the
wings of the Angel of Peace himself. Emboldened by that
transformation, Belarab's counsellors seated on the mats murmured
loudly their assent to the views of the Chief. Through the
thickening white mist of tropical lands, the light of the
tropical day filtered into the hall. One of the wise men got up
from the floor and with prudent fingers began extinguishing the
waxlights one by one. He hesitated to touch the lamps, the flames
of which looked yellow and cold. A puff of the morning breeze
entered the great room, faint and chill. Lingard, facing Belarab
in a wooden armchair, with slack limbs and in the divine
emptiness of a mind enchanted by a glimpse of Paradise, shuddered
profoundly.
A strong voice shouted in the doorway without any ceremony and
with a sort of jeering accent:
"Tengga's boats are out in the mist."
Lingard half rose from his seat, Belarab himself could not
repress a start. Lingard's attitude was a listening one, but
after a moment of hesitation he ran out of the hall. The inside
of the stockade was beginning to buzz like a disturbed hive.
Outside Belarab's house Lingard slowed his pace. The mist still
hung. A great sustained murmur pervaded it and the blurred forms
of men were all moving outward from the centre toward the
palisades. Somewhere amongst the buildings a gong clanged.
D'Alcacer's raised voice was heard:
"What is happening?"
Lingard was passing then close to the prisoners' house. There was
a group of armed men below the verandah and above their heads he
saw Mrs. Travers by the side of d'Alcacer. The fire by which
Lingard had spent the night was extinguished, its embers
scattered, and the bench itself lay overturned. Mrs. Travers must
have run up on the verandah at the first alarm. She and d'Alcacer
up there seemed to dominate the tumult which was now subsiding.
Lingard noticed the scarf across Mrs. Travers' face. D'Alcacer
was bareheaded. He shouted again:
"What's the matter?"
"I am going to see," shouted Lingard back.
He resisted the impulse to join those two, dominate the tumult,
let it roll away from under his feet--the mere life of men, vain
like a dream and interfering with the tremendous sense of his own
existence. He resisted it, he could hardly have told why. Even
the sense of self-preservation had abandoned him. There was a
throng of people pressing close about him yet careful not to get
in his way. Surprise, concern, doubt were depicted on all those
faces; but there were some who observed that the great white man
making his way to the lagoon side of the stockade wore a fixed
smile. He asked at large:
"Can one see any distance over the water?"
One of Belarab's headmen who was nearest to him answered:
"The mist has thickened. If you see anything, Tuan, it will be
but a shadow of things."
The four sides of the stockade had been manned by that time.
Lingard, ascending the banquette, looked out and saw the lagoon
shrouded in white, without as much as a shadow on it, and so
still that not even the sound of water lapping the shore reached
his ears. He found himself in profound accord with this blind and
soundless peace.
"Has anything at all been seen?" he asked incredulously.
Four men were produced at once who had seen a dark mass of boats
moving in the light of the dawn. Others were sent for. He hardly
listened to them. His thought escaped him and he stood
motionless, looking out into the unstirring mist pervaded by the
perfect silence. Presently Belarab joined him, escorted by three
grave, swarthy men, himself dark-faced, stroking his short grey
beard with impenetrable composure. He said to Lingard, "Your
white man doesn't fight," to which Lingard answered, "There is
nothing to fight against. What your people have seen, Belarab,
were indeed but shadows on the water." Belarab murmured, "You
ought to have allowed me to make friends with Daman last night."
A faint uneasiness was stealing into Lingard's breast.
A moment later d'Alcacer came up, inconspicuously watched over by
two men with lances, and to his anxious inquiry Lingard said: "I
don't think there is anything going on. Listen how still
everything is. The only way of bringing the matter to a test
would be to persuade Belarab to let his men march out and make an
attack on Tengga's stronghold this moment. Then we would learn
something. But I couldn't persuade Belarab to march out into this
fog. Indeed, an expedition like this might end badly. I myself
don't believe that all Tengga's people are on the lagoon. . . .
Where is Mrs. Travers?"
The question made d'Alcacer start by its abruptness which
revealed the woman's possession of that man's mind. "She is with
Don Martin, who is better but feels very weak. If we are to be
given up, he will have to be carried out to his fate. I can
depict to myself the scene. Don Martin carried shoulder high
surrounded by those barbarians with spears, and Mrs. Travers with
myself walking on each side of the stretcher. Mrs. Travers has
declared to me her intention to go out with us."
"Oh, she has declared her intention," murmured Lingard,
absent-mindedly.
D'Alcacer felt himself completely abandoned by that man. And
within two paces of him he noticed the group of Belarab and his
three swarthy attendants in their white robes, preserving an air
of serene detachment. For the first time since the stranding on
the coast d'Alcacer's heart sank within him. "But perhaps," he
went on, "this Moor may not in the end insist on giving us up to
a cruel death, Captain Lingard."
"He wanted to give you up in the middle of the night, a few hours
ago," said Lingard, without even looking at d'Alcacer who raised
his hands a little and let them fall. Lingard sat down on the
breech of a heavy piece mounted on a naval carriage so as to
command the lagoon. He folded his arms on his breast. D'Alcacer
asked, gently:
"We have been reprieved then?"
"No," said Lingard. "It's I who was reprieved."
A long silence followed. Along the whole line of the manned
stockade the whisperings had ceased. The vibrations of the gong
had died out, too. Only the watchers perched in the highest
boughs of the big tree made a slight rustle amongst the leaves.
"What are you thinking of, Captain Lingard?" d'Alcacer asked in a
low voice. Lingard did not change his position.
"I am trying to keep it off," he said in the same tone.
"What? Trying to keep thought off?"
"Yes."
"Is this the time for such experiments?" asked d'Alcacer.
"Why not? It's my reprieve. Don't grudge it to me, Mr.
d'Alcacer."
"Upon my word I don't. But isn't it dangerous?"
"You will have to take your chance."
D'Alcacer had a moment of internal struggle. He asked himself
whether he should tell Lingard that Mrs. Travers had come to the
stockade with some sort of message from Jorgenson. He had it on
the tip of his tongue to advise Lingard to go and see Mrs.
Travers and ask her point blank whether she had anything to tell
him; but before he could make up his mind the voices of invisible
men high up in the tree were heard reporting the thinning of the
fog. This caused a stir to run along the four sides of the
stockade.
Lingard felt the draught of air in his face, the motionless mist
began to drive over the palisades and, suddenly, the lagoon came
into view with a great blinding glitter of its wrinkled surface
and the faint sound of its wash rising all along the shore. A
multitude of hands went up to shade the eager eyes, and
exclamations of wonder burst out from many men at the sight of a
crowd of canoes of various sizes and kinds lying close together
with the effect as of an enormous raft, a little way off the side
of the Emma. The excited voices rose higher and higher. There was
no doubt about Tengga's being on the lagoon. But what was
Jorgenson about? The Emma lay as if abandoned by her keeper and
her crew, while the mob of mixed boats seemed to be meditating an
attack.
For all his determination to keep thought off to the very last
possible moment, Lingard could not defend himself from a sense of
wonder and fear. What was Jorgenson about? For a moment Lingard
expected the side of the Emma to wreath itself in puffs of smoke,
but an age seemed to elapse without the sound of a shot reaching
his ears.
The boats were afraid to close. They were hanging off,
irresolute; but why did Jorgenson not put an end to their
hesitation by a volley or two of musketry if only over their
heads? Through the anguish of his perplexity Lingard found
himself returning to life, to mere life with its sense of pain
and mortality, like a man awakened from a dream by a stab in the
breast. What did this silence of the Emma mean? Could she have
been already carried in the fog? But that was unthinkable. Some
sounds of resistance must have been heard. No, the boats hung off
because they knew with what desperate defence they would meet;
and perhaps Jorgenson knew very well what he was doing by holding
his fire to the very last moment and letting the craven hearts
grow cold with the fear of a murderous discharge that would have
to be faced. What was certain was that this was the time for
Belarab to open the great gate and let his men go out, display
his power, sweep through the further end of the Settlement,
destroy Tengga's defences, do away once for all with the absurd
rivalry of that intriguing amateur boat-builder. Lingard turned
eagerly toward Belarab but saw the Chief busy looking across the
lagoon through a long glass resting on the shoulder of a stooping
slave. He was motionless like a carving. Suddenly he let go the
long glass which some ready hands caught as it fell and said to
Lingard:
"No fight."
"How do you know?" muttered Lingard, astounded,
"There are three empty sampans alongside the ladder," said
Belarab in a just audible voice. "There is bad talk there."
"Talk? I don't understand," said Lingard, slowly.
But Belarab had turned toward his three attendants in white
robes, with shaven polls under skull-caps of plaited grass, with
prayer beads hanging from their wrists, and an air of superior
calm on their dark faces: companions of his desperate days, men
of blood once and now imperturbable in their piety and wisdom of
trusted counsellors.
"This white man is being betrayed," he murmured to them with the
greatest composure.
D'Alcacer, uncomprehending, watched the scene: the Man of Fate
puzzled and fierce like a disturbed lion, the white-robed Moors,
the multitude of half-naked barbarians, squatting by the guns,
standing by the loopholes in the immobility of an arranged
display. He saw Mrs. Travers on the verandah of the prisoners'
house, an anxious figure with a white scarf over her head. Mr.
Travers was no doubt too weak after his fit of fever to come
outside. If it hadn't been for that, all the whites would have
been in sight of each other at the very moment of the catastrophe
which was to give them back to the claims of their life, at the
cost of other lives sent violently out of the world. D'Alcacer
heard Lingard asking loudly for the long glass and saw Belarab
make a sign with his hand, when he felt the earth receive a
violent blow from underneath. While he staggered to it the
heavens split over his head with a crash in the lick of a red
tongue of flame; and a sudden dreadful gloom fell all round the
stunned d'Alcacer, who beheld with terror the morning sun, robbed
of its rays, glow dull and brown through the sombre murk which
had taken possession of the universe. The Emma had blown up; and
when the rain of shattered timbers and mangled corpses falling
into the lagoon had ceased, the cloud of smoke hanging motionless
under the livid sun cast its shadow afar on the Shore of Refuge
where all strife had come to an end.
A great wail of terror ascended from the Settlement and was
succeeded by a profound silence. People could be seen bolting in
unreasoning panic away from the houses and into the fields. On
the lagoon the raft of boats had broken up. Some of them were
sinking, others paddling away in all directions. What was left
above water of the Emma had burst into a clear flame under the
shadow of the cloud, the great smoky cloud that hung solid and
unstirring above the tops of the forest, visible for miles up and
down the coast and over the Shallows.
The first person to recover inside the stockade was Belarab
himself. Mechanically he murmured the exclamation of wonder, "God
is great," and looked at Lingard. But Lingard was not looking at
him. The shock of the explosion had robbed him of speech and
movement. He stared at the Emma blazing in a distant and
insignificant flame under the sinister shadow of the cloud
created by Jorgenson's mistrust and contempt for the life of men.
Belarab turned away. His opinion had changed. He regarded Lingard
no longer as a betrayed man but the effect was the same. He was
no longer a man of any importance. What Belarab really wanted now
was to see all the white people clear out of the lagoon as soon
as possible. Presently he ordered the gate to be thrown open and
his armed men poured out to take possession of the Settlement.
Later Tengga's houses were set on fire and Belarab, mounting a
fiery pony, issued forth to make a triumphal progress surrounded
by a great crowd of headmen and guards.
That night the white people left the stockade in a cortege of
torch bearers. Mr. Travers had to be carried down to the beach,
where two of Belarab's war-boats awaited their distinguished
passengers. Mrs. Travers passed through the gate on d'Alcacer's
arm. Her face was half veiled. She moved through the throng of
spectators displayed in the torchlight looking straight before
her. Belarab, standing in front of a group of headmen, pretended
not to see the white people as they went by. With Lingard he
shook hands, murmuring the usual formulas of friendship; and when
he heard the great white man say, "You shall never see me again,"
he felt immensely relieved. Belarab did not want to see that
white man again, but as he responded to the pressure of Lingard's
hand he had a grave smile.
"God alone knows the future," he said.
Lingard walked to the beach by himself, feeling a stranger to all
men and abandoned by the All-Knowing God. By that time the first
boat with Mr. and Mrs. Travers had already got away out of the
blood-red light thrown by the torches upon the water. D'Alcacer
and Lingard followed in the second. Presently the dark shade of
the creek, walled in by the impenetrable forest, closed round
them and the splash of the paddles echoed in the still, damp air.
"How do you think this awful accident happened?" asked d'Alcacer,
who had been sitting silent by Lingard's side.
"What is an accident?" said Lingard with a great effort. "Where
did you hear of such a thing? Accident! Don't disturb me, Mr.
d'Alcacer. I have just come back to life and it has closed on me
colder and darker than the grave itself. Let me get used . . . I
can't bear the sound of a human voice yet." _
Read next: PART VI. THE CLAIM OF LIFE AND THE TOLL OF DEATH: CHAPTER VIII
Read previous: PART VI. THE CLAIM OF LIFE AND THE TOLL OF DEATH: CHAPTER VI
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