第 四十 章 · ‘Brown’s object was to gain time by fooling with Kassim’s diplomacy. For

. ‘Brown’s object was to gain time by fooling with Kassim’s diplomacy. For

doing a real stroke of business he could not help thinking the white man

was the person to work with. He could not imagine such a chap (who must

be confoundedly clever after all to get hold of the natives like

that) refusing a help that would do away with the necessity for slow,

cautious, risky cheating, that imposed itself as the only possible

line of conduct for a single-handed man. He, Brown, would offer him

the power. No man could hesitate. Everything was in coming to a clear

understanding. Of course they would share. The idea of there being a

fort--all ready to his hand--a real fort, with artillery (he knew this

from Cornelius), excited him. Let him only once get in and . . . He

would impose modest conditions. Not too low, though. The man was no

fool, it seemed. They would work like brothers till . . . till the time

came for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all accounts. With grim

impatience of plunder he wished himself to be talking with the man now.

The land already seemed to be his to tear to pieces, squeeze, and throw

away. Meantime Kassim had to be fooled for the sake of food first--and

for a second string. But the principal thing was to get something to eat

from day to day. Besides, he was not averse to begin fighting on that

Rajah’s account, and teach a lesson to those people who had received him

with shots. The lust of battle was upon him.

‘I am sorry that I can’t give you this part of the story, which of

course I have mainly from Brown, in Brown’s own words. There was in the

broken, violent speech of that man, unveiling before me his thoughts

with the very hand of Death upon his throat, an undisguised ruthlessness

of purpose, a strange vengeful attitude towards his own past, and a

blind belief in the righteousness of his will against all mankind,

something of that feeling which could induce the leader of a horde of

wandering cut-throats to call himself proudly the Scourge of God.

No doubt the natural senseless ferocity which is the basis of such

a character was exasperated by failure, ill-luck, and the recent

privations, as well as by the desperate position in which he found

himself; but what was most remarkable of all was this, that while he

planned treacherous alliances, had already settled in his own mind the

fate of the white man, and intrigued in an overbearing, offhand manner

with Kassim, one could perceive that what he had really desired, almost

in spite of himself, was to play havoc with that jungle town which had

defied him, to see it strewn over with corpses and enveloped in flames.

Listening to his pitiless, panting voice, I could imagine how he must

have looked at it from the hillock, peopling it with images of murder

and rapine. The part nearest to the creek wore an abandoned aspect,

though as a matter of fact every house concealed a few armed men on the

alert. Suddenly beyond the stretch of waste ground, interspersed with

small patches of low dense bush, excavations, heaps of rubbish, with

trodden paths between, a man, solitary and looking very small, strolled

out into the deserted opening of the street between the shut-up, dark,

lifeless buildings at the end. Perhaps one of the inhabitants, who had

fled to the other bank of the river, coming back for some object of

domestic use. Evidently he supposed himself quite safe at that distance

from the hill on the other side of the creek. A light stockade, set up

hastily, was just round the turn of the street, full of his friends.

He moved leisurely. Brown saw him, and instantly called to his side the

Yankee deserter, who acted as a sort of second in command. This lanky,

loose-jointed fellow came forward, wooden-faced, trailing his rifle

lazily. When he understood what was wanted from him a homicidal and

conceited smile uncovered his teeth, making two deep folds down his

sallow, leathery cheeks. He prided himself on being a dead shot. He

dropped on one knee, and taking aim from a steady rest through the

unlopped branches of a felled tree, fired, and at once stood up to look.

The man, far away, turned his head to the report, made another step

forward, seemed to hesitate, and abruptly got down on his hands and

knees. In the silence that fell upon the sharp crack of the rifle, the

dead shot, keeping his eyes fixed upon the quarry, guessed that “this

there coon’s health would never be a source of anxiety to his friends

any more.” The man’s limbs were seen to move rapidly under his body

in an endeavour to run on all-fours. In that empty space arose a

multitudinous shout of dismay and surprise. The man sank flat, face

down, and moved no more. “That showed them what we could do,” said Brown

to me. “Struck the fear of sudden death into them. That was what we

wanted. They were two hundred to one, and this gave them something to

think over for the night. Not one of them had an idea of such a long

shot before. That beggar belonging to the Rajah scooted down-hill with

his eyes hanging out of his head.”

‘As he was telling me this he tried with a shaking hand to wipe the thin

foam on his blue lips. “Two hundred to one. Two hundred to one . . .

strike terror, . . . terror, terror, I tell you. . . .” His own eyes

were starting out of their sockets. He fell back, clawing the air with

skinny fingers, sat up again, bowed and hairy, glared at me sideways

like some man-beast of folk-lore, with open mouth in his miserable and

awful agony before he got his speech back after that fit. There are

sights one never forgets.

‘Furthermore, to draw the enemy’s fire and locate such parties as

might have been hiding in the bushes along the creek, Brown ordered the

Solomon Islander to go down to the boat and bring an oar, as you send a

spaniel after a stick into the water. This failed, and the fellow came

back without a single shot having been fired at him from anywhere.

“There’s nobody,” opined some of the men. It is “onnatural,” remarked

the Yankee. Kassim had gone, by that time, very much impressed, pleased

too, and also uneasy. Pursuing his tortuous policy, he had dispatched a

message to Dain Waris warning him to look out for the white men’s

ship, which, he had had information, was about to come up the river.

He minimised its strength and exhorted him to oppose its passage. This

double-dealing answered his purpose, which was to keep the Bugis forces

divided and to weaken them by fighting. On the other hand, he had in

the course of that day sent word to the assembled Bugis chiefs in town,

assuring them that he was trying to induce the invaders to retire; his

messages to the fort asked earnestly for powder for the Rajah’s men. It

was a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or

so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall.

The open intercourse between the hill and the palace unsettled all the

minds. It was already time for men to take sides, it began to be said.

There would soon be much bloodshed, and thereafter great trouble for

many people. The social fabric of orderly, peaceful life, when every man

was sure of to-morrow, the edifice raised by Jim’s hands, seemed on that

evening ready to collapse into a ruin reeking with blood. The poorer

folk were already taking to the bush or flying up the river. A good many

of the upper class judged it necessary to go and pay their court to the

Rajah. The Rajah’s youths jostled them rudely. Old Tunku Allang, almost

out of his mind with fear and indecision, either kept a sullen silence

or abused them violently for daring to come with empty hands: they

departed very much frightened; only old Doramin kept his countrymen

together and pursued his tactics inflexibly. Enthroned in a big chair

behind the improvised stockade, he issued his orders in a deep veiled

rumble, unmoved, like a deaf man, in the flying rumours.

‘Dusk fell, hiding first the body of the dead man, which had been left

lying with arms outstretched as if nailed to the ground, and then the

revolving sphere of the night rolled smoothly over Patusan and came to

a rest, showering the glitter of countless worlds upon the earth. Again,

in the exposed part of the town big fires blazed along the only street,

revealing from distance to distance upon their glares the falling

straight lines of roofs, the fragments of wattled walls jumbled in

confusion, here and there a whole hut elevated in the glow upon the

vertical black stripes of a group of high piles and all this line of

dwellings, revealed in patches by the swaying flames, seemed to flicker

tortuously away up-river into the gloom at the heart of the land. A

great silence, in which the looms of successive fires played without

noise, extended into the darkness at the foot of the hill; but the

other bank of the river, all dark save for a solitary bonfire at the

river-front before the fort, sent out into the air an increasing tremor

that might have been the stamping of a multitude of feet, the hum of

many voices, or the fall of an immensely distant waterfall. It was

then, Brown confessed to me, while, turning his back on his men, he sat

looking at it all, that notwithstanding his disdain, his ruthless faith

in himself, a feeling came over him that at last he had run his head

against a stone wall. Had his boat been afloat at the time, he believed

he would have tried to steal away, taking his chances of a long chase

down the river and of starvation at sea. It is very doubtful whether he

would have succeeded in getting away. However, he didn’t try this. For

another moment he had a passing thought of trying to rush the town,

but he perceived very well that in the end he would find himself in the

lighted street, where they would be shot down like dogs from the houses.

They were two hundred to one--he thought, while his men, huddling round

two heaps of smouldering embers, munched the last of the bananas and

roasted the few yams they owed to Kassim’s diplomacy. Cornelius sat

amongst them dozing sulkily.

‘Then one of the whites remembered that some tobacco had been left in

the boat, and, encouraged by the impunity of the Solomon Islander,

said he would go to fetch it. At this all the others shook off

their despondency. Brown applied to, said, “Go, and be d--d to you,”

scornfully. He didn’t think there was any danger in going to the creek

in the dark. The man threw a leg over the tree-trunk and disappeared. A

moment later he was heard clambering into the boat and then clambering

out. “I’ve got it,” he cried. A flash and a report at the very foot of

the hill followed. “I am hit,” yelled the man. “Look out, look out--I am

hit,” and instantly all the rifles went off. The hill squirted fire

and noise into the night like a little volcano, and when Brown and

the Yankee with curses and cuffs stopped the panic-stricken firing, a

profound, weary groan floated up from the creek, succeeded by a plaint

whose heartrending sadness was like some poison turning the blood

cold in the veins. Then a strong voice pronounced several distinct

incomprehensible words somewhere beyond the creek. “Let no one fire,”

shouted Brown. “What does it mean?” . . . “Do you hear on the hill?

Do you hear? Do you hear?” repeated the voice three times. Cornelius

translated, and then prompted the answer. “Speak,” cried Brown, “we

hear.” Then the voice, declaiming in the sonorous inflated tone of a

herald, and shifting continually on the edge of the vague waste-land,

proclaimed that between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan

and the white men on the hill and those with them, there would be no

faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace. A bush rustled; a haphazard

volley rang out. “Dam’ foolishness,” muttered the Yankee, vexedly

grounding the butt. Cornelius translated. The wounded man below

the hill, after crying out twice, “Take me up! take me up!” went on

complaining in moans. While he had kept on the blackened earth of the

slope, and afterwards crouching in the boat, he had been safe enough.

It seems that in his joy at finding the tobacco he forgot himself and

jumped out on her off-side, as it were. The white boat, lying high and

dry, showed him up; the creek was no more than seven yards wide in that

place, and there happened to be a man crouching in the bush on the other

bank.

‘He was a Bugis of Tondano only lately come to Patusan, and a relation

of the man shot in the afternoon. That famous long shot had indeed

appalled the beholders. The man in utter security had been struck down,

in full view of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they

seemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a bitter rage.

That relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was then with Doramin in the

stockade only a few feet away. You who know these chaps must admit that

the fellow showed an unusual pluck by volunteering to carry the message,

alone, in the dark. Creeping across the open ground, he had deviated

to the left and found himself opposite the boat. He was startled when

Brown’s man shouted. He came to a sitting position with his gun to his

shoulder, and when the other jumped out, exposing himself, he pulled the

trigger and lodged three jagged slugs point-blank into the poor wretch’s

stomach. Then, lying flat on his face, he gave himself up for dead,

while a thin hail of lead chopped and swished the bushes close on his

right hand; afterwards he delivered his speech shouting, bent double,

dodging all the time in cover. With the last word he leaped sideways,

lay close for a while, and afterwards got back to the houses unharmed,

having achieved on that night such a renown as his children will not

willingly allow to die.

‘And on the hill the forlorn band let the two little heaps of embers

go out under their bowed heads. They sat dejected on the ground with

compressed lips and downcast eyes, listening to their comrade below. He

was a strong man and died hard, with moans now loud, now sinking to a

strange confidential note of pain. Sometimes he shrieked, and again,

after a period of silence, he could be heard muttering deliriously a

long and unintelligible complaint. Never for a moment did he cease.

‘“What’s the good?” Brown had said unmoved once, seeing the Yankee, who

had been swearing under his breath, prepare to go down. “That’s so,”

assented the deserter, reluctantly desisting. “There’s no encouragement

for wounded men here. Only his noise is calculated to make all the

others think too much of the hereafter, cap’n.” “Water!” cried the

wounded man in an extraordinarily clear vigorous voice, and then went

off moaning feebly. “Ay, water. Water will do it,” muttered the other to

himself, resignedly. “Plenty by-and-by. The tide is flowing.”

‘At last the tide flowed, silencing the plaint and the cries of pain,

and the dawn was near when Brown, sitting with his chin in the palm of

his hand before Patusan, as one might stare at the unscalable side of a

mountain, heard the brief ringing bark of a brass 6-pounder far away

in town somewhere. “What’s this?” he asked of Cornelius, who hung about

him. Cornelius listened. A muffled roaring shout rolled down-river over

the town; a big drum began to throb, and others responded, pulsating and

droning. Tiny scattered lights began to twinkle in the dark half of the

town, while the part lighted by the loom of fires hummed with a deep and

prolonged murmur. “He has come,” said Cornelius. “What? Already? Are

you sure?” Brown asked. “Yes! yes! Sure. Listen to the noise.” “What

are they making that row about?” pursued Brown. “For joy,” snorted

Cornelius; “he is a very great man, but all the same, he knows no more

than a child, and so they make a great noise to please him, because they

know no better.” “Look here,” said Brown, “how is one to get at him?”

“He shall come to talk to you,” Cornelius declared. “What do you mean?

Come down here strolling as it were?” Cornelius nodded vigorously in the

dark. “Yes. He will come straight here and talk to you. He is just like

a fool. You shall see what a fool he is.” Brown was incredulous. “You

shall see; you shall see,” repeated Cornelius. “He is not afraid--not

afraid of anything. He will come and order you to leave his people

alone. Everybody must leave his people alone. He is like a little child.

He will come to you straight.” Alas! he knew Jim well--that “mean little

skunk,” as Brown called him to me. “Yes, certainly,” he pursued with

ardour, “and then, captain, you tell that tall man with a gun to shoot

him. Just you kill him, and you will frighten everybody so much that

you can do anything you like with them afterwards--get what you like--go

away when you like. Ha! ha! ha! Fine . . .” He almost danced with

impatience and eagerness; and Brown, looking over his shoulder at him,

could see, shown up by the pitiless dawn, his men drenched with dew,

sitting amongst the cold ashes and the litter of the camp, haggard,

cowed, and in rags.’