Bab Bab 12 · ‘All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach. The mist

. ‘All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach. The mist

of his feelings shifted between us, as if disturbed by his struggles,

and in the rifts of the immaterial veil he would appear to my staring

eyes distinct of form and pregnant with vague appeal like a symbolic

figure in a picture. The chill air of the night seemed to lie on my

limbs as heavy as a slab of marble.

‘“I see,” I murmured, more to prove to myself that I could break my

state of numbness than for any other reason.

‘“The Avondale picked us up just before sunset,” he remarked moodily.

“Steamed right straight for us. We had only to sit and wait.”

‘After a long interval, he said, “They told their story.” And again

there was that oppressive silence. “Then only I knew what it was I had

made up my mind to,” he added.

‘“You said nothing,” I whispered.

‘“What could I say?” he asked, in the same low tone. . . . “Shock

slight. Stopped the ship. Ascertained the damage. Took measures to get

the boats out without creating a panic. As the first boat was lowered

ship went down in a squall. Sank like lead. . . . What could be more

clear” . . . he hung his head . . . “and more awful?” His lips quivered

while he looked straight into my eyes. “I had jumped--hadn’t I?” he

asked, dismayed. “That’s what I had to live down. The story didn’t

matter.” . . . He clasped his hands for an instant, glanced right and

left into the gloom: “It was like cheating the dead,” he stammered.

‘“And there were no dead,” I said.

‘He went away from me at this. That is the only way I can describe it.

In a moment I saw his back close to the balustrade. He stood there for

some time, as if admiring the purity and the peace of the night. Some

flowering-shrub in the garden below spread its powerful scent through

the damp air. He returned to me with hasty steps.

‘“And that did not matter,” he said, as stubbornly as you please.

‘“Perhaps not,” I admitted. I began to have a notion he was too much for

me. After all, what did _I_ know?

‘“Dead or not dead, I could not get clear,” he said. “I had to live;

hadn’t I?”

‘“Well, yes--if you take it in that way,” I mumbled.

‘“I was glad, of course,” he threw out carelessly, with his mind fixed

on something else. “The exposure,” he pronounced slowly, and lifted

his head. “Do you know what was my first thought when I heard? I was

relieved. I was relieved to learn that those shouts--did I tell you I

had heard shouts? No? Well, I did. Shouts for help . . . blown along

with the drizzle. Imagination, I suppose. And yet I can hardly . . . How

stupid. . . . The others did not. I asked them afterwards. They all

said No. No? And I was hearing them even then! I might have known--but

I didn’t think--I only listened. Very faint screams--day after day. Then

that little half-caste chap here came up and spoke to me. ‘The

Patna . . . French gunboat . . . towed successfully to Aden . . .

Investigation . . . Marine Office . . . Sailors’ Home . . . arrangements

made for your board and lodging!’ I walked along with him, and I enjoyed

the silence. So there had been no shouting. Imagination. I had to

believe him. I could hear nothing any more. I wonder how long I could

have stood it. It was getting worse, too . . . I mean--louder.” ‘He fell

into thought.

‘“And I had heard nothing! Well--so be it. But the lights! The lights

did go! We did not see them. They were not there. If they had been, I

would have swam back--I would have gone back and shouted alongside--I

would have begged them to take me on board. . . . I would have had my

chance. . . . You doubt me? . . . How do you know how I felt? . . . What

right have you to doubt? . . . I very nearly did it as it was--do you

understand?” His voice fell. “There was not a glimmer--not a glimmer,”

he protested mournfully. “Don’t you understand that if there had been,

you would not have seen me here? You see me--and you doubt.”

‘I shook my head negatively. This question of the lights being lost

sight of when the boat could not have been more than a quarter of a mile

from the ship was a matter for much discussion. Jim stuck to it that

there was nothing to be seen after the first shower had cleared away;

and the others had affirmed the same thing to the officers of the

Avondale. Of course people shook their heads and smiled. One old skipper

who sat near me in court tickled my ear with his white beard to murmur,

“Of course they would lie.” As a matter of fact nobody lied; not even

the chief engineer with his story of the mast-head light dropping like a

match you throw down. Not consciously, at least. A man with his liver in

such a state might very well have seen a floating spark in the corner of

his eye when stealing a hurried glance over his shoulder. They had seen

no light of any sort though they were well within range, and they could

only explain this in one way: the ship had gone down. It was obvious

and comforting. The foreseen fact coming so swiftly had justified their

haste. No wonder they did not cast about for any other explanation. Yet

the true one was very simple, and as soon as Brierly suggested it the

court ceased to bother about the question. If you remember, the ship had

been stopped, and was lying with her head on the course steered through

the night, with her stern canted high and her bows brought low down in

the water through the filling of the fore-compartment. Being thus out of

trim, when the squall struck her a little on the quarter, she swung head

to wind as sharply as though she had been at anchor. By this change in

her position all her lights were in a very few moments shut off from

the boat to leeward. It may very well be that, had they been seen, they

would have had the effect of a mute appeal--that their glimmer lost in

the darkness of the cloud would have had the mysterious power of the

human glance that can awaken the feelings of remorse and pity. It would

have said, “I am here--still here” . . . and what more can the eye of

the most forsaken of human beings say? But she turned her back on them

as if in disdain of their fate: she had swung round, burdened, to glare

stubbornly at the new danger of the open sea which she so strangely

survived to end her days in a breaking-up yard, as if it had been her

recorded fate to die obscurely under the blows of many hammers. What

were the various ends their destiny provided for the pilgrims I am

unable to say; but the immediate future brought, at about nine o’clock

next morning, a French gunboat homeward bound from Reunion. The report

of her commander was public property. He had swept a little out of

his course to ascertain what was the matter with that steamer floating

dangerously by the head upon a still and hazy sea. There was an ensign,

union down, flying at her main gaff (the serang had the sense to make a

signal of distress at daylight); but the cooks were preparing the food

in the cooking-boxes forward as usual. The decks were packed as close

as a sheep-pen: there were people perched all along the rails, jammed on

the bridge in a solid mass; hundreds of eyes stared, and not a sound was

heard when the gunboat ranged abreast, as if all that multitude of lips

had been sealed by a spell.

‘The Frenchman hailed, could get no intelligible reply, and after

ascertaining through his binoculars that the crowd on deck did not look

plague-stricken, decided to send a boat. Two officers came on board,

listened to the serang, tried to talk with the Arab, couldn’t make head

or tail of it: but of course the nature of the emergency was obvious

enough. They were also very much struck by discovering a white man, dead

and curled up peacefully on the bridge. “Fort intrigues par ce cadavre,”

as I was informed a long time after by an elderly French lieutenant whom

I came across one afternoon in Sydney, by the merest chance, in a sort

of cafe, and who remembered the affair perfectly. Indeed this affair,

I may notice in passing, had an extraordinary power of defying the

shortness of memories and the length of time: it seemed to live, with

a sort of uncanny vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their

tongues. I’ve had the questionable pleasure of meeting it often, years

afterwards, thousands of miles away, emerging from the remotest possible

talk, coming to the surface of the most distant allusions. Has it not

turned up to-night between us? And I am the only seaman here. I am the

only one to whom it is a memory. And yet it has made its way out! But if

two men who, unknown to each other, knew of this affair met accidentally

on any spot of this earth, the thing would pop up between them as sure

as fate, before they parted. I had never seen that Frenchman before, and

at the end of an hour we had done with each other for life: he did not

seem particularly talkative either; he was a quiet, massive chap in a

creased uniform, sitting drowsily over a tumbler half full of some

dark liquid. His shoulder-straps were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved

cheeks were large and sallow; he looked like a man who would be given

to taking snuff--don’t you know? I won’t say he did; but the habit would

have fitted that kind of man. It all began by his handing me a number of

Home News, which I didn’t want, across the marble table. I said “Merci.”

We exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly, before

I knew how it had come about, we were in the midst of it, and he was

telling me how much they had been “intrigued by that corpse.” It turned

out he had been one of the boarding officers.

‘In the establishment where we sat one could get a variety of foreign

drinks which were kept for the visiting naval officers, and he took a

sip of the dark medical-looking stuff, which probably was nothing more

nasty than cassis a l’eau, and glancing with one eye into the tumbler,

shook his head slightly. “Impossible de comprendre--vous concevez,” he

said, with a curious mixture of unconcern and thoughtfulness. I could

very easily conceive how impossible it had been for them to understand.

Nobody in the gunboat knew enough English to get hold of the story as

told by the serang. There was a good deal of noise, too, round the two

officers. “They crowded upon us. There was a circle round that dead

man (autour de ce mort),” he described. “One had to attend to the most

pressing. These people were beginning to agitate themselves--Parbleu!

A mob like that--don’t you see?” he interjected with philosophic

indulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the

safest thing was to leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at.

They got two hawsers on board promptly (en toute hale) and took the

Patna in tow--stern foremost at that--which, under the circumstances,

was not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of the water to

be of any great use for steering, and this manoeuvre eased the strain on

the bulkhead, whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded

the greatest care (exigeait les plus grands menagements). I could not

help thinking that my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of

these arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active,

and he was seamanlike too, in a way, though as he sat there, with his

thick fingers clasped lightly on his stomach, he reminded you of one

of those snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are poured the

sins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations, on whose faces

the placid and simple expression is like a veil thrown over the mystery

of pain and distress. He ought to have had a threadbare black soutane

buttoned smoothly up to his ample chin, instead of a frock-coat with

shoulder-straps and brass buttons. His broad bosom heaved regularly

while he went on telling me that it had been the very devil of a job,

as doubtless (sans doute) I could figure to myself in my quality of a

seaman (en votre qualite de marin). At the end of the period he inclined

his body slightly towards me, and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the

air to escape with a gentle hiss. “Luckily,” he continued, “the sea was

level like this table, and there was no more wind than there is here.”

. . . The place struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy, and very hot;

my face burned as though I had been young enough to be embarrassed and

blushing. They had directed their course, he pursued, to the nearest

English port “naturellement,” where their responsibility ceased, “Dieu

merci.” . . . He blew out his flat cheeks a little. . . . “Because,

mind you (notez bien), all the time of towing we had two quartermasters

stationed with axes by the hawsers, to cut us clear of our tow in case

she . . .” He fluttered downwards his heavy eyelids, making his meaning

as plain as possible. . . . “What would you! One does what one can

(on fait ce qu’on peut),” and for a moment he managed to invest

his ponderous immobility with an air of resignation. “Two

quartermasters--thirty hours--always there. Two!” he repeated, lifting

up his right hand a little, and exhibiting two fingers. This was

absolutely the first gesture I saw him make. It gave me the opportunity

to “note” a starred scar on the back of his hand--effect of a gunshot

clearly; and, as if my sight had been made more acute by this discovery,

I perceived also the seam of an old wound, beginning a little below the

temple and going out of sight under the short grey hair at the side of

his head--the graze of a spear or the cut of a sabre. He clasped his

hands on his stomach again. “I remained on board that--that--my memory

is going (s’en va). Ah! Patt-na. C’est bien ca. Patt-na. Merci. It is

droll how one forgets. I stayed on that ship thirty hours. . . .”

‘“You did!” I exclaimed. Still gazing at his hands, he pursed his lips a

little, but this time made no hissing sound. “It was judged proper,” he

said, lifting his eyebrows dispassionately, “that one of the officers

should remain to keep an eye open (pour ouvrir l’oeil)” . . . he sighed

idly . . . “and for communicating by signals with the towing ship--do

you see?--and so on. For the rest, it was my opinion too. We made our

boats ready to drop over--and I also on that ship took measures. . . .

Enfin! One has done one’s possible. It was a delicate position. Thirty

hours! They prepared me some food. As for the wine--go and whistle for

it--not a drop.” In some extraordinary way, without any marked change in

his inert attitude and in the placid expression of his face, he managed

to convey the idea of profound disgust. “I--you know--when it comes to

eating without my glass of wine--I am nowhere.”

‘I was afraid he would enlarge upon the grievance, for though he didn’t

stir a limb or twitch a feature, he made one aware how much he was

irritated by the recollection. But he seemed to forget all about it.

They delivered their charge to the “port authorities,” as he expressed

it. He was struck by the calmness with which it had been received. “One

might have thought they had such a droll find (drole de trouvaille)

brought them every day. You are extraordinary--you others,” he

commented, with his back propped against the wall, and looking himself

as incapable of an emotional display as a sack of meal. There happened

to be a man-of-war and an Indian Marine steamer in the harbour at the

time, and he did not conceal his admiration of the efficient manner in

which the boats of these two ships cleared the Patna of her passengers.

Indeed his torpid demeanour concealed nothing: it had that mysterious,

almost miraculous, power of producing striking effects by means

impossible of detection which is the last word of the highest art.

“Twenty-five minutes--watch in hand--twenty-five, no more.” . . . He

unclasped and clasped again his fingers without removing his hands from

his stomach, and made it infinitely more effective than if he had thrown

up his arms to heaven in amazement. . . . “All that lot (tout ce monde)

on shore--with their little affairs--nobody left but a guard of

seamen (marins de l’Etat) and that interesting corpse (cet interessant

cadavre). Twenty-five minutes.” . . . With downcast eyes and his head

tilted slightly on one side he seemed to roll knowingly on his tongue

the savour of a smart bit of work. He persuaded one without any further

demonstration that his approval was eminently worth having, and resuming

his hardly interrupted immobility, he went on to inform me that, being

under orders to make the best of their way to Toulon, they left in

two hours’ time, “so that (de sorte que) there are many things in this

incident of my life (dans cet episode de ma vie) which have remained

obscure.”’