Bab Bab 38 · ‘It all begins, as I’ve told you, with the man called Brown,’ ran the

. ‘It all begins, as I’ve told you, with the man called Brown,’ ran the

opening sentence of Marlow’s narrative. ‘You who have knocked about the

Western Pacific must have heard of him. He was the show ruffian on the

Australian coast--not that he was often to be seen there, but because

he was always trotted out in the stories of lawless life a visitor from

home is treated to; and the mildest of these stories which were told

about him from Cape York to Eden Bay was more than enough to hang a man

if told in the right place. They never failed to let you know, too,

that he was supposed to be the son of a baronet. Be it as it may, it is

certain he had deserted from a home ship in the early gold-digging days,

and in a few years became talked about as the terror of this or that

group of islands in Polynesia. He would kidnap natives, he would strip

some lonely white trader to the very pyjamas he stood in, and after he

had robbed the poor devil, he would as likely as not invite him to fight

a duel with shot-guns on the beach--which would have been fair enough

as these things go, if the other man hadn’t been by that time already

half-dead with fright. Brown was a latter-day buccaneer, sorry enough,

like his more celebrated prototypes; but what distinguished him from

his contemporary brother ruffians, like Bully Hayes or the mellifluous

Pease, or that perfumed, Dundreary-whiskered, dandified scoundrel known

as Dirty Dick, was the arrogant temper of his misdeeds and a vehement

scorn for mankind at large and for his victims in particular. The

others were merely vulgar and greedy brutes, but he seemed moved by some

complex intention. He would rob a man as if only to demonstrate his poor

opinion of the creature, and he would bring to the shooting or maiming

of some quiet, unoffending stranger a savage and vengeful earnestness

fit to terrify the most reckless of desperadoes. In the days of his

greatest glory he owned an armed barque, manned by a mixed crew of

Kanakas and runaway whalers, and boasted, I don’t know with what truth,

of being financed on the quiet by a most respectable firm of copra

merchants. Later on he ran off--it was reported--with the wife of a

missionary, a very young girl from Clapham way, who had married the

mild, flat-footed fellow in a moment of enthusiasm, and, suddenly

transplanted to Melanesia, lost her bearings somehow. It was a dark

story. She was ill at the time he carried her off, and died on board his

ship. It is said--as the most wonderful part of the tale--that over her

body he gave way to an outburst of sombre and violent grief. His luck

left him, too, very soon after. He lost his ship on some rocks off

Malaita, and disappeared for a time as though he had gone down with her.

He is heard of next at Nuka-Hiva, where he bought an old French schooner

out of Government service. What creditable enterprise he might have had

in view when he made that purchase I can’t say, but it is evident that

what with High Commissioners, consuls, men-of-war, and international

control, the South Seas were getting too hot to hold gentlemen of his

kidney. Clearly he must have shifted the scene of his operations farther

west, because a year later he plays an incredibly audacious, but not a

very profitable part, in a serio-comic business in Manila Bay, in which

a peculating governor and an absconding treasurer are the principal

figures; thereafter he seems to have hung around the Philippines in his

rotten schooner battling with an adverse fortune, till at last, running

his appointed course, he sails into Jim’s history, a blind accomplice of

the Dark Powers.

‘His tale goes that when a Spanish patrol cutter captured him he was

simply trying to run a few guns for the insurgents. If so, then I can’t

understand what he was doing off the south coast of Mindanao. My belief,

however, is that he was blackmailing the native villages along the

coast. The principal thing is that the cutter, throwing a guard on

board, made him sail in company towards Zamboanga. On the way, for some

reason or other, both vessels had to call at one of these new Spanish

settlements--which never came to anything in the end--where there was

not only a civil official in charge on shore, but a good stout coasting

schooner lying at anchor in the little bay; and this craft, in every way

much better than his own, Brown made up his mind to steal.

‘He was down on his luck--as he told me himself. The world he had

bullied for twenty years with fierce, aggressive disdain, had yielded

him nothing in the way of material advantage except a small bag of

silver dollars, which was concealed in his cabin so that “the devil

himself couldn’t smell it out.” And that was all--absolutely all. He

was tired of his life, and not afraid of death. But this man, who would

stake his existence on a whim with a bitter and jeering recklessness,

stood in mortal fear of imprisonment. He had an unreasoning cold-sweat,

nerve-shaking, blood-to-water-turning sort of horror at the bare

possibility of being locked up--the sort of terror a superstitious man

would feel at the thought of being embraced by a spectre. Therefore the

civil official who came on board to make a preliminary investigation

into the capture, investigated arduously all day long, and only went

ashore after dark, muffled up in a cloak, and taking great care not to

let Brown’s little all clink in its bag. Afterwards, being a man of his

word, he contrived (the very next evening, I believe) to send off

the Government cutter on some urgent bit of special service. As her

commander could not spare a prize crew, he contented himself by taking

away before he left all the sails of Brown’s schooner to the very last

rag, and took good care to tow his two boats on to the beach a couple of

miles off.

‘But in Brown’s crew there was a Solomon Islander, kidnapped in his

youth and devoted to Brown, who was the best man of the whole gang. That

fellow swam off to the coaster--five hundred yards or so--with the end

of a warp made up of all the running gear unrove for the purpose. The

water was smooth, and the bay dark, “like the inside of a cow,” as Brown

described it. The Solomon Islander clambered over the bulwarks with the

end of the rope in his teeth. The crew of the coaster--all Tagals--were

ashore having a jollification in the native village. The two shipkeepers

left on board woke up suddenly and saw the devil. It had glittering eyes

and leaped quick as lightning about the deck. They fell on their knees,

paralysed with fear, crossing themselves and mumbling prayers. With

a long knife he found in the caboose the Solomon Islander, without

interrupting their orisons, stabbed first one, then the other; with the

same knife he set to sawing patiently at the coir cable till suddenly it

parted under the blade with a splash. Then in the silence of the bay

he let out a cautious shout, and Brown’s gang, who meantime had been

peering and straining their hopeful ears in the darkness, began to

pull gently at their end of the warp. In less than five minutes the two

schooners came together with a slight shock and a creak of spars.

‘Brown’s crowd transferred themselves without losing an instant, taking

with them their firearms and a large supply of ammunition. They were

sixteen in all: two runaway blue-jackets, a lanky deserter from a Yankee

man-of-war, a couple of simple, blond Scandinavians, a mulatto of sorts,

one bland Chinaman who cooked--and the rest of the nondescript spawn

of the South Seas. None of them cared; Brown bent them to his will, and

Brown, indifferent to gallows, was running away from the spectre of

a Spanish prison. He didn’t give them the time to trans-ship enough

provisions; the weather was calm, the air was charged with dew, and when

they cast off the ropes and set sail to a faint off-shore draught there

was no flutter in the damp canvas; their old schooner seemed to detach

itself gently from the stolen craft and slip away silently, together

with the black mass of the coast, into the night.

‘They got clear away. Brown related to me in detail their passage down

the Straits of Macassar. It is a harrowing and desperate story. They

were short of food and water; they boarded several native craft and got

a little from each. With a stolen ship Brown did not dare to put into

any port, of course. He had no money to buy anything, no papers to show,

and no lie plausible enough to get him out again. An Arab barque, under

the Dutch flag, surprised one night at anchor off Poulo Laut, yielded a

little dirty rice, a bunch of bananas, and a cask of water; three days

of squally, misty weather from the north-east shot the schooner across

the Java Sea. The yellow muddy waves drenched that collection of hungry

ruffians. They sighted mail-boats moving on their appointed routes;

passed well-found home ships with rusty iron sides anchored in the

shallow sea waiting for a change of weather or the turn of the tide; an

English gunboat, white and trim, with two slim masts, crossed their bows

one day in the distance; and on another occasion a Dutch corvette, black

and heavily sparred, loomed up on their quarter, steaming dead slow

in the mist. They slipped through unseen or disregarded, a wan,

sallow-faced band of utter outcasts, enraged with hunger and hunted by

fear. Brown’s idea was to make for Madagascar, where he expected, on

grounds not altogether illusory, to sell the schooner in Tamatave, and

no questions asked, or perhaps obtain some more or less forged papers

for her. Yet before he could face the long passage across the Indian

Ocean food was wanted--water too.

‘Perhaps he had heard of Patusan--or perhaps he just only happened to

see the name written in small letters on the chart--probably that of a

largish village up a river in a native state, perfectly defenceless, far

from the beaten tracks of the sea and from the ends of submarine cables.

He had done that kind of thing before--in the way of business;

and this now was an absolute necessity, a question of life and

death--or rather of liberty. Of liberty! He was sure to get

provisions--bullocks--rice--sweet-potatoes. The sorry gang licked

their chops. A cargo of produce for the schooner perhaps could be

extorted--and, who knows?--some real ringing coined money! Some of these

chiefs and village headmen can be made to part freely. He told me he

would have roasted their toes rather than be baulked. I believe him. His

men believed him too. They didn’t cheer aloud, being a dumb pack, but

made ready wolfishly.

‘Luck served him as to weather. A few days of calm would have brought

unmentionable horrors on board that schooner, but with the help of land

and sea breezes, in less than a week after clearing the Sunda Straits,

he anchored off the Batu Kring mouth within a pistol-shot of the fishing

village.

‘Fourteen of them packed into the schooner’s long-boat (which was big,

having been used for cargo-work) and started up the river, while two

remained in charge of the schooner with food enough to keep starvation

off for ten days. The tide and wind helped, and early one afternoon the

big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way before the sea

breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen assorted scarecrows

glaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the breech-blocks of cheap rifles.

Brown calculated upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They

sailed in with the last of the flood; the Rajah’s stockade gave no sign;

the first houses on both sides of the stream seemed deserted. A few

canoes were seen up the reach in full flight. Brown was astonished at

the size of the place. A profound silence reigned. The wind dropped

between the houses; two oars were got out and the boat held on

up-stream, the idea being to effect a lodgment in the centre of the town

before the inhabitants could think of resistance.

‘It seems, however, that the headman of the fishing village at Batu

Kring had managed to send off a timely warning. When the long-boat came

abreast of the mosque (which Doramin had built: a structure with gables

and roof finials of carved coral) the open space before it was full of

people. A shout went up, and was followed by a clash of gongs all up the

river. From a point above two little brass 6-pounders were discharged,

and the round-shot came skipping down the empty reach, spurting

glittering jets of water in the sunshine. In front of the mosque a

shouting lot of men began firing in volleys that whipped athwart the

current of the river; an irregular, rolling fusillade was opened on the

boat from both banks, and Brown’s men replied with a wild, rapid fire.

The oars had been got in.

‘The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quickly in that river,

and the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in smoke, began to drift back

stern foremost. Along both shores the smoke thickened also, lying below

the roofs in a level streak as you may see a long cloud cutting the

slope of a mountain. A tumult of war-cries, the vibrating clang

of gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage, crashes of

volley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat confounded but

steady at the tiller, working himself into a fury of hate and rage

against those people who dared to defend themselves. Two of his men

had been wounded, and he saw his retreat cut off below the town by some

boats that had put off from Tunku Allang’s stockade. There were six of

them, full of men. While he was thus beset he perceived the entrance of

the narrow creek (the same which Jim had jumped at low water). It was

then brim full. Steering the long-boat in, they landed, and, to make a

long story short, they established themselves on a little knoll about

900 yards from the stockade, which, in fact, they commanded from that

position. The slopes of the knoll were bare, but there were a few trees

on the summit. They went to work cutting these down for a breastwork,

and were fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah’s boats

remained in the river with curious neutrality. When the sun set the glue

of many brushwood blazes lighted on the river-front, and between the

double line of houses on the land side threw into black relief the

roofs, the groups of slender palms, the heavy clumps of fruit trees.

Brown ordered the grass round his position to be fired; a low ring of

thin flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled rapidly down the

slopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush caught with a tall,

vicious roar. The conflagration made a clear zone of fire for the rifles

of the small party, and expired smouldering on the edge of the forests

and along the muddy bank of the creek. A strip of jungle luxuriating in

a damp hollow between the knoll and the Rajah’s stockade stopped it

on that side with a great crackling and detonations of bursting bamboo

stems. The sky was sombre, velvety, and swarming with stars. The

blackened ground smoked quietly with low creeping wisps, till a little

breeze came on and blew everything away. Brown expected an attack to

be delivered as soon as the tide had flowed enough again to enable the

war-boats which had cut off his retreat to enter the creek. At any rate

he was sure there would be an attempt to carry off his long-boat,

which lay below the hill, a dark high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet

mud-flat. But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the river.

Over the stockade and the Rajah’s buildings Brown saw their lights on

the water. They seemed to be anchored across the stream. Other lights

afloat were moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to

side. There were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of

houses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others

isolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs,

black piles as far as he could see. It was an immense place. The

fourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised

their chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend

up-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. They did not

speak to each other. Now and then they would hear a loud yell, or a

single shot rang out, fired very far somewhere. But round their position

everything was still, dark, silent. They seemed to be forgotten, as if

the excitement keeping awake all the population had nothing to do with

them, as if they had been dead already.’