Chapter Chapter 24 · ‘The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight

. ‘The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight

and sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts

of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of bushes and creepers

clothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers,

with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing

a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the everlasting

sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea.

‘There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch

of the estuary. The river, which had been closed so long, was open then,

and Stein’s little schooner, in which I had my passage, worked her

way up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade from

“irresponsive parties.” Such a state of affairs belonged already to

ancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of the fishing

village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot. He talked to me

(the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his

talk was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called him Tuan

Jim, and the tone of his references was made remarkable by a strange

mixture of familiarity and awe. They, in the village, were under that

lord’s special protection, which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If

he had warned me that I would hear of him it was perfectly true. I was

hearing of him. There was already a story that the tide had turned

two hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river. The

talkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the

phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son and his

son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience,

who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them

the amazing fact.

‘Jim’s coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them, as to

many of us, the blessing came heralded by terrors. So many generations

had been released since the last white man had visited the river that

the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that

descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan

was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than

suspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What

would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part

of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the

anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out

was got ready. The women shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless

old hag cursed the stranger.

‘He sat in it, as I’ve told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded

revolver on his lap. He sat with precaution--than which there is nothing

more fatiguing--and thus entered the land he was destined to fill with

the fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to the white ribbon

of surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with

its labouring waves for ever rising, sinking, and vanishing to rise

again--the very image of struggling mankind--and faced the immovable

forests rooted deep in the soil, soaring towards the sunshine,

everlasting in the shadowy might of their tradition, like life itself.

And his opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride waiting

to be uncovered by the hand of the master. He too was the heir of a

shadowy and mighty tradition! He told me, however, that he had never in

his life felt so depressed and tired as in that canoe. All the movement

he dared to allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the

shell of half a cocoa-nut floating between his shoes, and bale some of

the water out with a carefully restrained action. He discovered how hard

the lid of a block-tin case was to sit upon. He had heroic health; but

several times during that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and

between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the

sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to

decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water’s edge was a

log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No

fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all

but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in

a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came

right down on the bank and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage.

Such was the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any

man ever achieved. Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime

his three paddlers were preparing to put into execution their plan of

delivering him up to the Rajah.

‘“I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I did doze

off for a time,” he said. The first thing he knew was his canoe coming

to the bank. He became instantaneously aware of the forest having been

left behind, of the first houses being visible higher up, of a stockade

on his left, and of his boatmen leaping out together upon a low point of

land and taking to their heels. Instinctively he leaped out after them.

At first he thought himself deserted for some inconceivable reason, but

he heard excited shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured

out, making towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed men

appeared on the river and came alongside his empty canoe, thus shutting

off his retreat.

‘“I was too startled to be quite cool--don’t you know? and if that

revolver had been loaded I would have shot somebody--perhaps two, three

bodies, and that would have been the end of me. But it wasn’t. . . .”

“Why not?” I asked. “Well, I couldn’t fight the whole population, and

I wasn’t coming to them as if I were afraid of my life,” he said, with

just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness in the glance he gave me.

I refrained from pointing out to him that they could not have known the

chambers were actually empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own way.

. . . “Anyhow it wasn’t,” he repeated good-humouredly, “and so I just

stood still and asked them what was the matter. That seemed to strike

them dumb. I saw some of these thieves going off with my box. That

long-legged old scoundrel Kassim (I’ll show him to you to-morrow)

ran out fussing to me about the Rajah wanting to see me. I said, ‘All

right.’ I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply walked in through

the gate and--and--here I am.” He laughed, and then with unexpected

emphasis, “And do you know what’s the best in it?” he asked. “I’ll tell

you. It’s the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place that

would have been the loser.”

‘He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I’ve

mentioned--after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm

between the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen

descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There

is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the

dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its

inconceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine, which--say what you

like--is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound:

misleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or sad. It robs all

forms of matter--which, after all, is our domain--of their substance,

and gives a sinister reality to shadows alone. And the shadows were

very real around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as though

nothing--not even the occult power of moonlight--could rob him of his

reality in my eyes. Perhaps, indeed, nothing could touch him since he

had survived the assault of the dark powers. All was silent, all was

still; even on the river the moonbeams slept as on a pool. It was the

moment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter

isolation of this lost corner of the earth. The houses crowding along

the wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the

water in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with

black masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures

pressing forward to drink in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and

there a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living

spark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose.

‘He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams go

out one by one, that he loved to see people go to sleep under his eyes,

confident in the security of to-morrow. “Peaceful here, eh?” he asked.

He was not eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in the words that

followed. “Look at these houses; there’s not one where I am not trusted.

Jove! I told you I would hang on. Ask any man, woman, or child . . .” He

paused. “Well, I am all right anyhow.”

‘I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end. I had been

sure of it, I added. He shook his head. “Were you?” He pressed my arm

lightly above the elbow. “Well, then--you were right.”

‘There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low

exclamation. “Jove!” he cried, “only think what it is to me.” Again he

pressed my arm. “And you asked me whether I thought of leaving. Good

God! I! want to leave! Especially now after what you told me of Mr.

Stein’s . . . Leave! Why! That’s what I was afraid of. It would have

been--it would have been harder than dying. No--on my word. Don’t

laugh. I must feel--every day, every time I open my eyes--that I am

trusted--that nobody has a right--don’t you know? Leave! For where? What

for? To get what?”

‘I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it was

Stein’s intention to present him at once with the house and the stock

of trading goods, on certain easy conditions which would make the

transaction perfectly regular and valid. He began to snort and plunge at

first. “Confound your delicacy!” I shouted. “It isn’t Stein at all. It’s

giving you what you had made for yourself. And in any case keep your

remarks for McNeil--when you meet him in the other world. I hope it

won’t happen soon. . . .” He had to give in to my arguments, because all

his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these

things that made him master had made him a captive, too. He looked with

an owner’s eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses,

at the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind,

at the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart; but it was

they that possessed him and made him their own to the innermost thought,

to the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath.

‘It was something to be proud of. I, too, was proud--for him, if not so

certain of the fabulous value of the bargain. It was wonderful. It was

not so much of his fearlessness that I thought. It is strange how little

account I took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be

at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he

had displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation,

his intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his

readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like

keen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a

dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness

in his stammerings. He had still his old trick of stubborn blushing. Now

and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how

deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the

certitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land

and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous

tenderness.’