الفصل الفصل 27 · ‘Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it

. ‘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.’