Джозеф Конрад - The Rescue - A Romance of the Shallows

"No, but this is—such—such a fresh experience for me to hear—to see something—genuine and human. Ah! ah! one would think they had waited all their lives for this opportunity—ah! ah! ah! All their lives—for this! ah! ah! ah!"

These strange words struck d'Alcacer as perfectly just, as throwing an unexpected light. But after a smile, he said, seriously:

"This reality may go too far. A man who looks so picturesque is capable of anything. Allow me—" And he left her side, moving toward Lingard, loose-limbed and gaunt, yet having in his whole bearing, in his walk, in every leisurely movement, an air of distinction and ceremony.

Lingard spun round with aggressive mien to the light touch on his shoulder, but as soon as he took his eyes off Mr. Travers, his anger fell, seemed to sink without a sound at his feet like a rejected garment.

"Pardon me," said d'Alcacer, composedly. The slight wave of his hand was hardly more than an indication, the beginning of a conciliating gesture. "Pardon me; but this is a matter requiring perfect confidence on both sides. Don Martin, here, who is a person of importance. . . ."

"I've spoken my mind plainly. I have said as much as I dare. On my word I have," declared Lingard with an air of good temper.

"Ah!" said d'Alcacer, reflectively, "then your reserve is a matter of pledged faith—of—of honour?"

Lingard also appeared thoughtful for a moment.

"You may put it that way. And I owe nothing to a man who couldn't see my hand when I put it out to him as I came aboard."

"You have so much the advantage of us here," replied d'Alcacer, "that you may well be generous and forget that oversight; and then just a little more confidence. . . ."

"My dear d'Alcacer, you are absurd," broke in Mr. Travers, in a calm voice but with white lips. "I did not come out all this way to shake hands promiscuously and receive confidences from the first adventurer that comes along."

D'Alcacer stepped back with an almost imperceptible inclination of the head at Lingard, who stood for a moment with twitching face.

"I am an adventurer," he burst out, "and if I hadn't been an adventurer, I would have had to starve or work at home for such people as you. If I weren't an adventurer, you would be most likely lying dead on this deck with your cut throat gaping at the sky."

Mr. Travers waved this speech away. But others also had heard. Carter listened watchfully and something, some alarming notion seemed to dawn all at once upon the thick little sailing-master, who rushed on his short legs, and tugging at Carter's sleeve, stammered desperately:

"What's he saying? Who's he? What's up? Are the natives unfriendly? My book says—'Natives friendly all along this coast!' My book says—"

Carter, who had glanced over the side, jerked his arm free.

"You go down into the pantry, where you belong, Skipper, and read that bit about the natives over again," he said to his superior officer, with savage contempt. "I'll be hanged if some of them ain't coming aboard now to eat you—book and all. Get out of the way, and let the gentlemen have the first chance of a row."

Then addressing Lingard, he drawled in his old way:

"That crazy mate of yours has sent your boat back, with a couple of visitors in her, too."

Before he apprehended plainly the meaning of these words, Lingard caught sight of two heads rising above the rail, the head of Hassim and the head of Immada. Then their bodies ascended into view as though these two beings had gradually emerged from the Shallows. They stood for a moment on the platform looking down on the deck as if about to step into the unknown, then descended and walking aft entered the half-light under the awning shading the luxurious surroundings, the complicated emotions of the, to them, inconceivable existences.

Lingard without waiting a moment cried:

"What news, O Rajah?"

Hassim's eyes made the round of the schooner's decks. He had left his gun in the boat and advanced empty handed, with a tranquil assurance as if bearing a welcome offering in the faint smile of his lips. Immada, half hidden behind his shoulder, followed lightly, her elbows pressed close to her side. The thick fringe of her eyelashes was dropped like a veil; she looked youthful and brooding; she had an aspect of shy resolution.

They stopped within arm's length of the whites, and for some time nobody said a word. Then Hassim gave Lingard a significant glance, and uttered rapidly with a slight toss of the head that indicated in a manner the whole of the yacht:

"I see no guns!"

"N—no!" said Lingard, looking suddenly confused. It had occurred to him that for the first time in two years or more he had forgotten, utterly forgotten, these people's existence.

Immada stood slight and rigid with downcast eyes. Hassim, at his ease, scrutinized the faces, as if searching for elusive points of similitude or for subtle shades of difference.

"What is this new intrusion?" asked Mr. Travers, angrily.

"These are the fisher-folk, sir," broke in the sailing-master, "we've observed these three days past flitting about in a canoe; but they never had the sense to answer our hail; and yet a bit of fish for your breakfast—" He smiled obsequiously, and all at once, without provocation, began to bellow:

"Hey! Johnnie! Hab got fish? Fish! One peecee fish! Eh? Savee? Fish! Fish—" He gave it up suddenly to say in a deferential tone—"Can't make them savages understand anything, sir," and withdrew as if after a clever feat.

Hassim looked at Lingard.

"Why did the little white man make that outcry?" he asked, anxiously.

"Their desire is to eat fish," said Lingard in an enraged tone.

Then before the air of extreme surprise which incontinently appeared on the other's face, he could not restrain a short and hopeless laugh.

"Eat fish," repeated Hassim, staring. "O you white people! O you white people! Eat fish! Good! But why make that noise? And why did you send them here without guns?" After a significant glance down upon the slope of the deck caused by the vessel being on the ground, he added with a slight nod at Lingard—"And without knowledge?"

"You should not have come here, O Hassim," said Lingard, testily. "Here no one understands. They take a rajah for a fisherman—"

"Ya-wa! A great mistake, for, truly, the chief of ten fugitives without a country is much less than the headman of a fishing village," observed Hassim, composedly. Immada sighed. "But you, Tuan, at least know the truth," he went on with quiet irony; then after a pause—"We came here because you had forgotten to look toward us, who had waited, sleeping little at night, and in the day watching with hot eyes the empty water at the foot of the sky for you."

Immada murmured, without lifting her head:

"You never looked for us. Never, never once."

"There was too much trouble in my eyes," explained Lingard with that patient gentleness of tone and face which, every time he spoke to the young girl, seemed to disengage itself from his whole person, enveloping his fierceness, softening his aspect, such as the dreamy mist that in the early radiance of the morning weaves a veil of tender charm about a rugged rock in mid-ocean. "I must look now to the right and to the left as in a time of sudden danger," he added after a moment and she whispered an appalled "Why?" so low that its pain floated away in the silence of attentive men, without response, unheard, ignored, like the pain of an impalpable thought.

D'Alcacer, standing back, surveyed them all with a profound and alert attention. Lingard seemed unable to tear himself away from the yacht, and remained, checked, as it were in the act of going, like a man who has stopped to think out the last thing to say; and that stillness of a body, forgotten by the labouring mind, reminded Carter of that moment in the cabin, when alone he had seen this man thus wrestling with his thought, motionless and locked in the grip of his conscience.