_ 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 greyhaired, 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.
He departed, he returned, he went away again, and each time those
two figures, lonely on some sandbank of the Shallows, made at him
the same futile sign of greeting or good-bye. Their arms at each
movement seemed to draw closer around his heart the bonds of a
protecting affection. He worked prosaically, earning money to pay
the cost of the romantic necessity that had invaded his life. And
the money ran like water out of his hands. The owner of the New
England voice remitted not a little of it to his people in
Baltimore. But import houses in the ports of the Far East had
their share. It paid for a fast prau which, commanded by Jaffir,
sailed into unfrequented bays and up unexplored rivers, carrying
secret messages, important news, generous bribes. A good part of
it went to the purchase of the Emma.
The Emma was a battered and decrepit old schooner that, in the
decline of her existence, had been much ill-used by a paunchy
white trader of cunning and gluttonous aspect. This man boasted
outrageously afterward of the good price he had got "for that
rotten old hooker of mine--you know." The Emma left port
mysteriously in company with the brig and henceforth vanished
from the seas forever. Lingard had her towed up the creek and ran
her aground upon that shore of the lagoon farthest from Belarab's
settlement. There had been at that time a great rise of waters,
which retiring soon after left the old craft cradled in the mud,
with her bows grounded high between the trunks of two big trees,
and leaning over a little as though after a hard life she had
settled wearily to an everlasting rest. There, a few months
later, Jorgenson found her when, called back into the life of
men, he reappeared, together with Lingard, in the Land of Refuge.
"She is better than a fort on shore," said Lingard, as side by
side they leant over the taffrail, looking across the lagoon on
the houses and palm groves of the settlement. "All the guns and
powder I have got together so far are stored in her. Good idea,
wasn't it? There will be, perhaps, no other such flood for years,
and now they can't come alongside unless right under the counter,
and only one boat at a time. I think you are perfectly safe here;
you could keep off a whole fleet of boats; she isn't easy to set
fire to; the forest in front is better than a wall. Well?"
Jorgenson assented in grunts. He looked at the desolate emptiness
of the decks, at the stripped spars, at the dead body of the
dismantled little vessel that would know the life of the seas no
more. The gloom of the forest fell on her, mournful like a
winding sheet. The bushes of the bank tapped their twigs on the
bluff of her bows, and a pendent spike of tiny brown blossoms
swung to and fro over the ruins of her windlass.
Hassim's companions garrisoned the old hulk, and Jorgenson, left
in charge, prowled about from stem to stern, taciturn and
anxiously faithful to his trust. He had been received with
astonishment, respect--and awe. Belarab visited him often.
Sometimes those whom he had known in their prime years ago,
during a struggle for faith and life, would come to talk with the
white man. Their voices were like the echoes of stirring events,
in the pale glamour of a youth gone by. They nodded their old
heads. Do you remember?--they said. He remembered only too well!
He was like a man raised from the dead, for whom the fascinating
trust in the power of life is tainted by the black scepticism of
the grave.
Only at times the invincible belief in the reality of existence
would come back, insidious and inspiring. He squared his
shoulders, held himself straight, and walked with a firmer step.
He felt a glow within him and the quickened beat of his heart.
Then he calculated in silent excitement Lingard's chances of
success, and he lived for a time with the life of that other man
who knew nothing of the black scepticism of the grave. The
chances were good, very good.
"I should like to see it through," Jorgenson muttered to himself
ardently; and his lustreless eyes would flash for a moment. _