Chương Chương 43 · ‘Tamb’ Itam behind his chair was thunderstruck. The declaration produced

. ‘Tamb’ Itam behind his chair was thunderstruck. The declaration produced

an immense sensation. “Let them go because this is best in my knowledge

which has never deceived you,” Jim insisted. There was a silence. In

the darkness of the courtyard could be heard the subdued whispering,

shuffling noise of many people. Doramin raised his heavy head and said

that there was no more reading of hearts than touching the sky with the

hand, but--he consented. The others gave their opinion in turn. “It is

best,” “Let them go,” and so on. But most of them simply said that they

“believed Tuan Jim.”

‘In this simple form of assent to his will lies the whole gist of

the situation; their creed, his truth; and the testimony to that

faithfulness which made him in his own eyes the equal of the

impeccable men who never fall out of the ranks. Stein’s words,

“Romantic!--Romantic!” seem to ring over those distances that will never

give him up now to a world indifferent to his failings and his virtues,

and to that ardent and clinging affection that refuses him the dole of

tears in the bewilderment of a great grief and of eternal separation.

From the moment the sheer truthfulness of his last three years of life

carries the day against the ignorance, the fear, and the anger of men,

he appears no longer to me as I saw him last--a white speck catching all

the dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea--but greater

and more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, that remains even for

her who loved him best a cruel and insoluble mystery.

‘It is evident that he did not mistrust Brown; there was no reason to

doubt the story, whose truth seemed warranted by the rough frankness,

by a sort of virile sincerity in accepting the morality and the

consequences of his acts. But Jim did not know the almost inconceivable

egotism of the man which made him, when resisted and foiled in his will,

mad with the indignant and revengeful rage of a thwarted autocrat.

But if Jim did not mistrust Brown, he was evidently anxious that some

misunderstanding should not occur, ending perhaps in collision and

bloodshed. It was for this reason that directly the Malay chiefs had

gone he asked Jewel to get him something to eat, as he was going out of

the fort to take command in the town. On her remonstrating against this

on the score of his fatigue, he said that something might happen for

which he would never forgive himself. “I am responsible for every life

in the land,” he said. He was moody at first; she served him with her

own hands, taking the plates and dishes (of the dinner-service presented

him by Stein) from Tamb’ Itam. He brightened up after a while; told her

she would be again in command of the fort for another night. “There’s

no sleep for us, old girl,” he said, “while our people are in danger.”

Later on he said jokingly that she was the best man of them all. “If you

and Dain Waris had done what you wanted, not one of these poor devils

would be alive to-day.” “Are they very bad?” she asked, leaning over his

chair. “Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others,”

he said after some hesitation.

‘Tamb’ Itam followed his master to the landing-stage outside the fort.

The night was clear but without a moon, and the middle of the river was

dark, while the water under each bank reflected the light of many fires

“as on a night of Ramadan,” Tamb’ Itam said. War-boats drifted silently

in the dark lane or, anchored, floated motionless with a loud ripple.

That night there was much paddling in a canoe and walking at his

master’s heels for Tamb’ Itam: up and down the street they tramped,

where the fires were burning, inland on the outskirts of the town where

small parties of men kept guard in the fields. Tuan Jim gave his orders

and was obeyed. Last of all they went to the Rajah’s stockade, which a

detachment of Jim’s people manned on that night. The old Rajah had fled

early in the morning with most of his women to a small house he had

near a jungle village on a tributary stream. Kassim, left behind, had

attended the council with his air of diligent activity to explain away

the diplomacy of the day before. He was considerably cold-shouldered,

but managed to preserve his smiling, quiet alertness, and professed

himself highly delighted when Jim told him sternly that he proposed to

occupy the stockade on that night with his own men. After the council

broke up he was heard outside accosting this and that deputing chief,

and speaking in a loud, gratified tone of the Rajah’s property being

protected in the Rajah’s absence.

‘About ten or so Jim’s men marched in. The stockade commanded the mouth

of the creek, and Jim meant to remain there till Brown had passed below.

A small fire was lit on the flat, grassy point outside the wall of

stakes, and Tamb’ Itam placed a little folding-stool for his master. Jim

told him to try and sleep. Tamb’ Itam got a mat and lay down a little

way off; but he could not sleep, though he knew he had to go on an

important journey before the night was out. His master walked to and fro

before the fire with bowed head and with his hands behind his back. His

face was sad. Whenever his master approached him Tamb’ Itam pretended to

sleep, not wishing his master to know he had been watched. At last his

master stood still, looking down on him as he lay, and said softly, “It

is time.”

‘Tamb’ Itam arose directly and made his preparations. His mission was

to go down the river, preceding Brown’s boat by an hour or more, to tell

Dain Waris finally and formally that the whites were to be allowed to

pass out unmolested. Jim would not trust anybody else with that service.

Before starting, Tamb’ Itam, more as a matter of form (since his

position about Jim made him perfectly known), asked for a token.

“Because, Tuan,” he said, “the message is important, and these are thy

very words I carry.” His master first put his hand into one pocket, then

into another, and finally took off his forefinger Stein’s silver ring,

which he habitually wore, and gave it to Tamb’ Itam. When Tamb’ Itam

left on his mission, Brown’s camp on the knoll was dark but for a single

small glow shining through the branches of one of the trees the white

men had cut down.

‘Early in the evening Brown had received from Jim a folded piece of

paper on which was written, “You get the clear road. Start as soon

as your boat floats on the morning tide. Let your men be careful. The

bushes on both sides of the creek and the stockade at the mouth are full

of well-armed men. You would have no chance, but I don’t believe you

want bloodshed.” Brown read it, tore the paper into small pieces, and,

turning to Cornelius, who had brought it, said jeeringly, “Good-bye, my

excellent friend.” Cornelius had been in the fort, and had been sneaking

around Jim’s house during the afternoon. Jim chose him to carry the note

because he could speak English, was known to Brown, and was not likely

to be shot by some nervous mistake of one of the men as a Malay,

approaching in the dusk, perhaps might have been.

‘Cornelius didn’t go away after delivering the paper. Brown was sitting

up over a tiny fire; all the others were lying down. “I could tell you

something you would like to know,” Cornelius mumbled crossly. Brown paid

no attention. “You did not kill him,” went on the other, “and what do

you get for it? You might have had money from the Rajah, besides the

loot of all the Bugis houses, and now you get nothing.” “You had better

clear out from here,” growled Brown, without even looking at him. But

Cornelius let himself drop by his side and began to whisper very fast,

touching his elbow from time to time. What he had to say made Brown sit

up at first, with a curse. He had simply informed him of Dain Waris’s

armed party down the river. At first Brown saw himself completely sold

and betrayed, but a moment’s reflection convinced him that there could

be no treachery intended. He said nothing, and after a while Cornelius

remarked, in a tone of complete indifference, that there was another way

out of the river which he knew very well. “A good thing to know, too,”

said Brown, pricking up his ears; and Cornelius began to talk of

what went on in town and repeated all that had been said in council,

gossiping in an even undertone at Brown’s ear as you talk amongst

sleeping men you do not wish to wake. “He thinks he has made me

harmless, does he?” mumbled Brown very low. . . . “Yes. He is a fool. A

little child. He came here and robbed me,” droned on Cornelius, “and he

made all the people believe him. But if something happened that they did

not believe him any more, where would he be? And the Bugis Dain who

is waiting for you down the river there, captain, is the very man who

chased you up here when you first came.” Brown observed nonchalantly

that it would be just as well to avoid him, and with the same detached,

musing air Cornelius declared himself acquainted with a backwater broad

enough to take Brown’s boat past Waris’s camp. “You will have to be

quiet,” he said as an afterthought, “for in one place we pass close

behind his camp. Very close. They are camped ashore with their boats

hauled up.” “Oh, we know how to be as quiet as mice; never fear,” said

Brown. Cornelius stipulated that in case he were to pilot Brown out, his

canoe should be towed. “I’ll have to get back quick,” he explained.

‘It was two hours before the dawn when word was passed to the stockade

from outlying watchers that the white robbers were coming down to their

boat. In a very short time every armed man from one end of Patusan

to the other was on the alert, yet the banks of the river remained so

silent that but for the fires burning with sudden blurred flares the

town might have been asleep as if in peace-time. A heavy mist lay very

low on the water, making a sort of illusive grey light that showed

nothing. When Brown’s long-boat glided out of the creek into the

river, Jim was standing on the low point of land before the Rajah’s

stockade--on the very spot where for the first time he put his foot on

Patusan shore. A shadow loomed up, moving in the greyness, solitary,

very bulky, and yet constantly eluding the eye. A murmur of low talking

came out of it. Brown at the tiller heard Jim speak calmly: “A clear

road. You had better trust to the current while the fog lasts; but

this will lift presently.” “Yes, presently we shall see clear,” replied

Brown.

‘The thirty or forty men standing with muskets at ready outside the

stockade held their breath. The Bugis owner of the prau, whom I saw

on Stein’s verandah, and who was amongst them, told me that the boat,

shaving the low point close, seemed for a moment to grow big and hang

over it like a mountain. “If you think it worth your while to wait a

day outside,” called out Jim, “I’ll try to send you down something--a

bullock, some yams--what I can.” The shadow went on moving. “Yes. Do,”

said a voice, blank and muffled out of the fog. Not one of the many

attentive listeners understood what the words meant; and then Brown

and his men in their boat floated away, fading spectrally without the

slightest sound.

‘Thus Brown, invisible in the mist, goes out of Patusan elbow to elbow

with Cornelius in the stern-sheets of the long-boat. “Perhaps you shall

get a small bullock,” said Cornelius. “Oh yes. Bullock. Yam. You’ll get

it if he said so. He always speaks the truth. He stole everything I had.

I suppose you like a small bullock better than the loot of many houses.”

“I would advise you to hold your tongue, or somebody here may fling

you overboard into this damned fog,” said Brown. The boat seemed to be

standing still; nothing could be seen, not even the river alongside,

only the water-dust flew and trickled, condensed, down their beards and

faces. It was weird, Brown told me. Every individual man of them felt

as though he were adrift alone in a boat, haunted by an almost

imperceptible suspicion of sighing, muttering ghosts. “Throw me out,

would you? But I would know where I was,” mumbled Cornelius surlily.

“I’ve lived many years here.” “Not long enough to see through a fog like

this,” Brown said, lolling back with his arm swinging to and fro on the

useless tiller. “Yes. Long enough for that,” snarled Cornelius. “That’s

very useful,” commented Brown. “Am I to believe you could find that

backway you spoke of blindfold, like this?” Cornelius grunted. “Are you

too tired to row?” he asked after a silence. “No, by God!” shouted Brown

suddenly. “Out with your oars there.” There was a great knocking in

the fog, which after a while settled into a regular grind of invisible

sweeps against invisible thole-pins. Otherwise nothing was changed, and

but for the slight splash of a dipped blade it was like rowing a balloon

car in a cloud, said Brown. Thereafter Cornelius did not open his lips

except to ask querulously for somebody to bale out his canoe, which

was towing behind the long-boat. Gradually the fog whitened and became

luminous ahead. To the left Brown saw a darkness as though he had been

looking at the back of the departing night. All at once a big bough

covered with leaves appeared above his head, and ends of twigs, dripping

and still, curved slenderly close alongside. Cornelius, without a word,

took the tiller from his hand.’