Tales of Unrest
Tales of UnrestAUTHOR'S NOTEKARAIN, A MEMORYTHE IDIOTSAN OUTPOST OF PROGRESSTHE RETURNTHE LAGOONCopyright
Tales of Unrest
Joseph Conrad
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Of the five stories in this volume, "The Lagoon," the last in
order, is the earliest in date. It is the first short story I ever
wrote and marks, in a manner of speaking, the end of my first
phase, the Malayan phase with its special subject and its verbal
suggestions. Conceived in the same mood which produced "Almayer's
Folly" and "An Outcast of the Islands," it is told in the same
breath (with what was left of it, that is, after the end of "An
Outcast"), seen with the same vision, rendered in the same
method—if such a thing as method did exist then in my conscious
relation to this new adventure of writing for print. I doubt it
very much. One does one's work first and theorises about it
afterwards. It is a very amusing and egotistical occupation of no
use whatever to any one and just as likely as not to lead to false
conclusions.Anybody can see that between the last paragraph of "An
Outcast" and the first of "The Lagoon" there has been no change of
pen, figuratively speaking. It happened also to be literally true.
It was the same pen: a common steel pen. Having been charged with a
certain lack of emotional faculty I am glad to be able to say that
on one occasion at least I did give way to a sentimental impulse. I
thought the pen had been a good pen and that it had done enough for
me, and so, with the idea of keeping it for a sort of memento on
which I could look later with tender eyes, I put it into my
waistcoat pocket. Afterwards it used to turn up in all sorts of
places—at the bottom of small drawers, among my studs in cardboard
boxes—till at last it found permanent rest in a large wooden bowl
containing some loose keys, bits of sealing wax, bits of string,
small broken chains, a few buttons, and similar minute wreckage
that washes out of a man's life into such receptacles. I would
catch sight of it from time to time with a distinct feeling of
satisfaction till, one day, I perceived with horror that there were
two old pens in there. How the other pen found its way into the
bowl instead of the fireplace or wastepaper basket I can't imagine,
but there the two were, lying side by side, both encrusted with ink
and completely undistinguishable from each other. It was very
distressing, but being determined not to share my sentiment between
two pens or run the risk of sentimentalising over a mere stranger,
I threw them both out of the window into a flower bed—which strikes
me now as a poetical grave for the remnants of one's
past.But the tale remained. It was first fixed in print in the
"Cornhill Magazine", being my first appearance in a serial of any
kind; and I have lived long enough to see it guyed most agreeably
by Mr. Max Beerbohm in a volume of parodies entitled "A Christmas
Garland," where I found myself in very good company. I was
immensely gratified. I began to believe in my public existence. I
have much to thank "The Lagoon" for.My next effort in short-story writing was a departure—I mean
a departure from the Malay Archipelago. Without premeditation,
without sorrow, without rejoicing, and almost without noticing it,
I stepped into the very different atmosphere of "An Outpost of
Progress." I found there a different moral attitude. I seemed able
to capture new reactions, new suggestions, and even new rhythms for
my paragraphs. For a moment I fancied myself a new man—a most
exciting illusion. It clung to me for some time, monstrous, half
conviction and half hope as to its body, with an iridescent tail of
dreams and with a changeable head like a plastic mask. It was only
later that I perceived that in common with the rest of men nothing
could deliver me from my fatal consistency. We cannot escape from
ourselves."An Outpost of Progress" is the lightest part of the loot I
carried off from Central Africa, the main portion being of course
"The Heart of Darkness." Other men have found a lot of quite
different things there and I have the comfortable conviction that
what I took would not have been of much use to anybody else. And it
must be said that it was but a very small amount of plunder. All of
it could go into one's breast pocket when folded neatly. As for the
story itself it is true enough in its essentials. The sustained
invention of a really telling lie demands a talent which I do not
possess."The Idiots" is such an obviously derivative piece of work
that it is impossible for me to say anything about it here. The
suggestion of it was not mental but visual: the actual idiots. It
was after an interval of long groping amongst vague impulses and
hesitations which ended in the production of "The Nigger" that I
turned to my third short story in the order of time, the first in
this volume: "Karain: A Memory."Reading it after many years "Karain" produced on me the
effect of something seen through a pair of glasses from a rather
advantageous position. In that story I had not gone back to the
Archipelago, I had only turned for another look at it. I admit that
I was absorbed by the distant view, so absorbed that I didn't
notice then that the motif of the story is almost identical with
the motif of "The Lagoon." However, the idea at the back is very
different; but the story is mainly made memorable to me by the fact
that it was my first contribution to "Blackwood's Magazine" and
that it led to my personal acquaintance with Mr. William Blackwood
whose guarded appreciation I felt nevertheless to be genuine, and
prized accordingly. "Karain" was begun on a sudden impulse only
three days after I wrote the last line of "The Nigger," and the
recollection of its difficulties is mixed up with the worries of
the unfinished "Return," the last pages of which I took up again at
the time; the only instance in my life when I made an attempt to
write with both hands at once as it were.Indeed my innermost feeling, now, is that "The Return" is a
left-handed production. Looking through that story lately I had the
material impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella
in the loud drumming of a heavy rain-shower. It was very
distracting. In the general uproar one could hear every individual
drop strike on the stout and distended silk. Mentally, the reading
rendered me dumb for the remainder of the day, not exactly with
astonishment but with a sort of dismal wonder. I don't want to talk
disrespectfully of any pages of mine. Psychologically there were no
doubt good reasons for my attempt; and it was worth while, if only
to see of what excesses I was capable in that sort of virtuosity.
In this connection I should like to confess my surprise on finding
that notwithstanding all its apparatus of analysis the story
consists for the most part of physical impressions; impressions of
sound and sight, railway station, streets, a trotting horse,
reflections in mirrors and so on, rendered as if for their own sake
and combined with a sublimated description of a desirable
middle-class town-residence which somehow manages to produce a
sinister effect. For the rest any kind word about "The Return" (and
there have been such words said at different times) awakens in me
the liveliest gratitude, for I know how much the writing of that
fantasy has cost me in sheer toil, in temper, and in
disillusion.
KARAIN, A MEMORY
IWe knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to
hold in our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I
believe, has any property now, and I hear that many, negligently,
have lost their lives; but I am sure that the few who survive are
not yet so dim-eyed as to miss in the befogged respectability of
their newspapers the intelligence of various native risings in the
Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the lines of those
short paragraphs—sunshine and the glitter of the sea. A strange
name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the smoky
atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating
perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of
bygone nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow
of a sombre cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense
forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open
water; a line of white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow
water foams on the reefs; and green islets scattered through the
calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished sea, like a
handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel.There are faces too—faces dark, truculent, and smiling; the
frank audacious faces of men barefooted, well armed and noiseless.
They thronged the narrow length of our schooner's decks with their
ornamented and barbarous crowd, with the variegated colours of
checkered sarongs, red turbans, white jackets, embroideries; with
the gleam of scabbards, gold rings, charms, armlets, lance blades,
and jewelled handles of their weapons. They had an independent
bearing, resolute eyes, a restrained manner; and we seem yet to
hear their soft voices speaking of battles, travels, and escapes;
boasting with composure, joking quietly; sometimes in well-bred
murmurs extolling their own valour, our generosity; or celebrating
with loyal enthusiasm the virtues of their ruler. We remember the
faces, the eyes, the voices, we see again the gleam of silk and
metal; the murmuring stir of that crowd, brilliant, festive, and
martial; and we seem to feel the touch of friendly brown hands
that, after one short grasp, return to rest on a chased hilt. They
were Karain's people—a devoted following. Their movements hung on
his lips; they read their thoughts in his eyes; he murmured to them
nonchalantly of life and death, and they accepted his words humbly,
like gifts of fate. They were all free men, and when speaking to
him said, "Your slave." On his passage voices died out as though he
had walked guarded by silence; awed whispers followed him. They
called him their war-chief. He was the ruler of three villages on a
narrow plain; the master of an insignificant foothold on the
earth—of a conquered foothold that, shaped like a young moon, lay
ignored between the hills and the sea.From the deck of our schooner, anchored in the middle of the
bay, he indicated by a theatrical sweep of his arm along the jagged
outline of the hills the whole of his domain; and the ample
movement seemed to drive back its limits, augmenting it suddenly
into something so immense and vague that for a moment it appeared
to be bounded only by the sky. And really, looking at that place,
landlocked from the sea and shut off from the land by the
precipitous slopes of mountains, it was difficult to believe in the
existence of any neighbourhood. It was still, complete, unknown,
and full of a life that went on stealthily with a troubling effect
of solitude; of a life that seemed unaccountably empty of anything
that would stir the thought, touch the heart, give a hint of the
ominous sequence of days. It appeared to us a land without
memories, regrets, and hopes; a land where nothing could survive
the coming of the night, and where each sunrise, like a dazzling
act of special creation, was disconnected from the eve and the
morrow.Karain swept his hand over it. "All mine!" He struck the deck
with his long staff; the gold head flashed like a falling star;
very close behind him a silent old fellow in a richly embroidered
black jacket alone of all the Malays around did not follow the
masterful gesture with a look. He did not even lift his eyelids. He
bowed his head behind his master, and without stirring held hilt up
over his right shoulder a long blade in a silver scabbard. He was
there on duty, but without curiosity, and seemed weary, not with
age, but with the possession of a burdensome secret of existence.
Karain, heavy and proud, had a lofty pose and breathed calmly. It
was our first visit, and we looked about curiously.The bay was like a bottomless pit of intense light. The
circular sheet of water reflected a luminous sky, and the shores
enclosing it made an opaque ring of earth floating in an emptiness
of transparent blue. The hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily
on the sky: their summits seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as
of ascending vapour; their steep sides were streaked with the green
of narrow ravines; at their foot lay rice-fields, plantain-patches,
yellow sands. A torrent wound about like a dropped thread. Clumps
of fruit-trees marked the villages; slim palms put their nodding
heads together above the low houses; dried palm-leaf roofs shone
afar, like roofs of gold, behind the dark colonnades of
tree-trunks; figures passed vivid and vanishing; the smoke of fires
stood upright above the masses of flowering bushes; bamboo fences
glittered, running away in broken lines between the fields. A
sudden cry on the shore sounded plaintive in the distance, and
ceased abruptly, as if stifled in the downpour of sunshine. A puff
of breeze made a flash of darkness on the smooth water, touched our
faces, and became forgotten. Nothing moved. The sun blazed down
into a shadowless hollow of colours and stillness.It was the stage where, dressed splendidly for his part, he
strutted, incomparably dignified, made important by the power he
had to awaken an absurd expectation of something heroic going to
take place—a burst of action or song—upon the vibrating tone of a
wonderful sunshine. He was ornate and disturbing, for one could not
imagine what depth of horrible void such an elaborate front could
be worthy to hide. He was not masked—there was too much life in
him, and a mask is only a lifeless thing; but he presented himself
essentially as an actor, as a human being aggressively disguised.
His smallest acts were prepared and unexpected, his speeches grave,
his sentences ominous like hints and complicated like arabesques.
He was treated with a solemn respect accorded in the irreverent
West only to the monarchs of the stage, and he accepted the
profound homage with a sustained dignity seen nowhere else but
behind the footlights and in the condensed falseness of some
grossly tragic situation. It was almost impossible to remember who
he was—only a petty chief of a conveniently isolated corner of
Mindanao, where we could in comparative safety break the law
against the traffic in firearms and ammunition with the natives.
What would happen should one of the moribund Spanish gun-boats be
suddenly galvanized into a flicker of active life did not trouble
us, once we were inside the bay—so completely did it appear out of
the reach of a meddling world; and besides, in those days we were
imaginative enough to look with a kind of joyous equanimity on any
chance there was of being quietly hanged somewhere out of the way
of diplomatic remonstrance. As to Karain, nothing could happen to
him unless what happens to all—failure and death; but his quality
was to appear clothed in the illusion of unavoidable success. He
seemed too effective, too necessary there, too much of an essential
condition for the existence of his land and his people, to be
destroyed by anything short of an earthquake. He summed up his
race, his country, the elemental force of ardent life, of tropical
nature. He had its luxuriant strength, its fascination; and, like
it, he carried the seed of peril within.In many successive visits we came to know his stage well—the
purple semicircle of hills, the slim trees leaning over houses, the
yellow sands, the streaming green of ravines. All that had the
crude and blended colouring, the appropriateness almost excessive,
the suspicious immobility of a painted scene; and it enclosed so
perfectly the accomplished acting of his amazing pretences that the
rest of the world seemed shut out forever from the gorgeous
spectacle. There could be nothing outside. It was as if the earth
had gone on spinning, and had left that crumb of its surface alone
in space. He appeared utterly cut off from everything but the
sunshine, and that even seemed to be made for him alone. Once when
asked what was on the other side of the hills, he said, with a
meaning smile, "Friends and enemies—many enemies; else why should I
buy your rifles and powder?" He was always like this—word-perfect
in his part, playing up faithfully to the mysteries and certitudes
of his surroundings. "Friends and enemies"—nothing else. It was
impalpable and vast. The earth had indeed rolled away from under
his land, and he, with his handful of people, stood surrounded by a
silent tumult as of contending shades. Certainly no sound came from
outside. "Friends and enemies!" He might have added, "and
memories," at least as far as he himself was concerned; but he
neglected to make that point then. It made itself later on, though;
but it was after the daily performance—in the wings, so to speak,
and with the lights out. Meantime he filled the stage with
barbarous dignity. Some ten years ago he had led his people—a
scratch lot of wandering Bugis—to the conquest of the bay, and now
in his august care they had forgotten all the past, and had lost
all concern for the future. He gave them wisdom, advice, reward,
punishment, life or death, with the same serenity of attitude and
voice. He understood irrigation and the art of war—the qualities of
weapons and the craft of boat-building. He could conceal his heart;
had more endurance; he could swim longer, and steer a canoe better
than any of his people; he could shoot straighter, and negotiate
more tortuously than any man of his race I knew. He was an
adventurer of the sea, an outcast, a ruler—and my very good friend.
I wish him a quick death in a stand-up fight, a death in sunshine;
for he had known remorse and power, and no man can demand more from
life. Day after day he appeared before us, incomparably faithful to
the illusions of the stage, and at sunset the night descended upon
him quickly, like a falling curtain. The seamed hills became black
shadows towering high upon a clear sky; above them the glittering
confusion of stars resembled a mad turmoil stilled by a gesture;
sounds ceased, men slept, forms vanished—and the reality of the
universe alone remained—a marvellous thing of darkness and
glimmers.IIBut it was at night that he talked openly, forgetting the
exactions of his stage. In the daytime there were affairs to be
discussed in state. There were at first between him and me his own
splendour, my shabby suspicions, and the scenic landscape that
intruded upon the reality of our lives by its motionless fantasy of
outline and colour. His followers thronged round him; above his
head the broad blades of their spears made a spiked halo of iron
points, and they hedged him from humanity by the shimmer of silks,
the gleam of weapons, the excited and respectful hum of eager
voices. Before sunset he would take leave with ceremony, and go off
sitting under a red umbrella, and escorted by a score of boats. All
the paddles flashed and struck together with a mighty splash that
reverberated loudly in the monumental amphitheatre of hills. A
broad stream of dazzling foam trailed behind the flotilla. The
canoes appeared very black on the white hiss of water; turbaned
heads swayed back and forth; a multitude of arms in crimson and
yellow rose and fell with one movement; the spearmen upright in the
bows of canoes had variegated sarongs and gleaming shoulders like
bronze statues; the muttered strophes of the paddlers' song ended
periodically in a plaintive shout. They diminished in the distance;
the song ceased; they swarmed on the beach in the long shadows of
the western hills. The sunlight lingered on the purple crests, and
we could see him leading the way to his stockade, a burly
bareheaded figure walking far in advance of a straggling cortege,
and swinging regularly an ebony staff taller than himself. The
darkness deepened fast; torches gleamed fitfully, passing behind
bushes; a long hail or two trailed in the silence of the evening;
and at last the night stretched its smooth veil over the shore, the
lights, and the voices.Then, just as we were thinking of repose, the watchmen of the
schooner would hail a splash of paddles away in the starlit gloom
of the bay; a voice would respond in cautious tones, and our
serang, putting his head down the open skylight, would inform us
without surprise, "That Rajah, he coming. He here now." Karain
appeared noiselessly in the doorway of the little cabin. He was
simplicity itself then; all in white; muffled about his head; for
arms only a kriss with a plain buffalo-horn handle, which he would
politely conceal within a fold of his sarong before stepping over
the threshold. The old sword-bearer's face, the worn-out and
mournful face so covered with wrinkles that it seemed to look out
through the meshes of a fine dark net, could be seen close above
his shoulders. Karain never moved without that attendant, who stood
or squatted close at his back. He had a dislike of an open space
behind him. It was more than a dislike—it resembled fear, a nervous
preoccupation of what went on where he could not see. This, in view
of the evident and fierce loyalty that surrounded him, was
inexplicable. He was there alone in the midst of devoted men; he
was safe from neighbourly ambushes, from fraternal ambitions; and
yet more than one of our visitors had assured us that their ruler
could not bear to be alone. They said, "Even when he eats and
sleeps there is always one on the watch near him who has strength
and weapons." There was indeed always one near him, though our
informants had no conception of that watcher's strength and
weapons, which were both shadowy and terrible. We knew, but only
later on, when we had heard the story. Meantime we noticed that,
even during the most important interviews, Karain would often give
a start, and interrupting his discourse, would sweep his arm back
with a sudden movement, to feel whether the old fellow was there.
The old fellow, impenetrable and weary, was always there. He shared
his food, his repose, and his thoughts; he knew his plans, guarded
his secrets; and, impassive behind his master's agitation, without
stirring the least bit, murmured above his head in a soothing tone
some words difficult to catch.It was only on board the schooner, when surrounded by white
faces, by unfamiliar sights and sounds, that Karain seemed to
forget the strange obsession that wound like a black thread through
the gorgeous pomp of his public life. At night we treated him in a
free and easy manner, which just stopped short of slapping him on
the back, for there are liberties one must not take with a Malay.
He said himself that on such occasions he was only a private
gentleman coming to see other gentlemen whom he supposed as well
born as himself. I fancy that to the last he believed us to be
emissaries of Government, darkly official persons furthering by our
illegal traffic some dark scheme of high statecraft. Our denials
and protestations were unavailing. He only smiled with discreet
politeness and inquired about the Queen. Every visit began with
that inquiry; he was insatiable of details; he was fascinated by
the holder of a sceptre the shadow of which, stretching from the
westward over the earth and over the seas, passed far beyond his
own hand's-breadth of conquered land. He multiplied questions; he
could never know enough of the Monarch of whom he spoke with wonder
and chivalrous respect—with a kind of affectionate awe! Afterwards,
when we had learned that he was the son of a woman who had many
years ago ruled a small Bugis state, we came to suspect that the
memory of his mother (of whom he spoke with enthusiasm) mingled
somehow in his mind with the image he tried to form for himself of
the far-off Queen whom he called Great, Invincible, Pious, and
Fortunate. We had to invent details at last to satisfy his craving
curiosity; and our loyalty must be pardoned, for we tried to make
them fit for his august and resplendent ideal. We talked. The night
slipped over us, over the still schooner, over the sleeping land,
and over the sleepless sea that thundered amongst the reefs outside
the bay. His paddlers, two trustworthy men, slept in the canoe at
the foot of our side-ladder. The old confidant, relieved from duty,
dozed on his heels, with his back against the companion-doorway;
and Karain sat squarely in the ship's wooden armchair, under the
slight sway of the cabin lamp, a cheroot between his dark fingers,
and a glass of lemonade before him. He was amused by the fizz of
the thing, but after a sip or two would let it get flat, and with a
courteous wave of his hand ask for a fresh bottle. He decimated our
slender stock; but we did not begrudge it to him, for, when he
began, he talked well. He must have been a great Bugis dandy in his
time, for even then (and when we knew him he was no longer young)
his splendour was spotlessly neat, and he dyed his hair a light
shade of brown. The quiet dignity of his bearing transformed the
dim-lit cuddy of the schooner into an audience-hall. He talked of
inter-island politics with an ironic and melancholy shrewdness. He
had travelled much, suffered not a little, intrigued, fought. He
knew native Courts, European Settlements, the forests, the sea,
and, as he said himself, had spoken in his time to many great men.
He liked to talk with me because I had known some of these men: he
seemed to think that I could understand him, and, with a fine
confidence, assumed that I, at least, could appreciate how much
greater he was himself. But he preferred to talk of his native
country—a small Bugis state on the island of Celebes. I had visited
it some time before, and he asked eagerly for news. As men's names
came up in conversation he would say, "We swam against one another
when we were boys"; or, "We hunted the deer together—he could use
the noose and the spear as well as I." Now and then his big dreamy
eyes would roll restlessly; he frowned or smiled, or he would
become pensive, and, staring in silence, would nod slightly for a
time at some regretted vision of the past.His mother had been the ruler of a small semi-independent
state on the sea-coast at the head of the Gulf of Boni. He spoke of
her with pride. She had been a woman resolute in affairs of state
and of her own heart. After the death of her first husband,
undismayed by the turbulent opposition of the chiefs, she married a
rich trader, a Korinchi man of no family. Karain was her son by
that second marriage, but his unfortunate descent had apparently
nothing to do with his exile. He said nothing as to its cause,
though once he let slip with a sigh, "Ha! my land will not feel any
more the weight of my body." But he related willingly the story of
his wanderings, and told us all about the conquest of the bay.
Alluding to the people beyond the hills, he would murmur gently,
with a careless wave of the hand, "They came over the hills once to
fight us, but those who got away never came again." He thought for
a while, smiling to himself. "Very few got away," he added, with
proud serenity. He cherished the recollections of his successes; he
had an exulting eagerness for endeavour; when he talked, his aspect
was warlike, chivalrous, and uplifting. No wonder his people
admired him. We saw him once walking in daylight amongst the houses
of the settlement. At the doors of huts groups of women turned to
look after him, warbling softly, and with gleaming eyes; armed men
stood out of the way, submissive and erect; others approached from
the side, bending their backs to address him humbly; an old woman
stretched out a draped lean arm—"Blessings on thy head!" she cried
from a dark doorway; a fiery-eyed man showed above the low fence of
a plantain-patch a streaming face, a bare breast scarred in two
places, and bellowed out pantingly after him, "God give victory to
our master!" Karain walked fast, and with firm long strides; he
answered greetings right and left by quick piercing glances.
Children ran forward between the houses, peeped fearfully round
corners; young boys kept up with him, gliding between bushes: their
eyes gleamed through the dark leaves. The old sword-bearer,
shouldering the silver scabbard, shuffled hastily at his heels with
bowed head, and his eyes on the ground. And in the midst of a great
stir they passed swift and absorbed, like two men hurrying through
a great solitude.In his council hall he was surrounded by the gravity of armed
chiefs, while two long rows of old headmen dressed in cotton stuffs
squatted on their heels, with idle arms hanging over their knees.
Under the thatch roof supported by smooth columns, of which each
one had cost the life of a straight-stemmed young palm, the scent
of flowering hedges drifted in warm waves. The sun was sinking. In
the open courtyard suppliants walked through the gate, raising,
when yet far off, their joined hands above bowed heads, and bending
low in the bright stream of sunlight. Young girls, with flowers in
their laps, sat under the wide-spreading boughs of a big tree. The
blue smoke of wood fires spread in a thin mist above the
high-pitched roofs of houses that had glistening walls of woven
reeds, and all round them rough wooden pillars under the sloping
eaves. He dispensed justice in the shade; from a high seat he gave
orders, advice, reproof. Now and then the hum of approbation rose
louder, and idle spearmen that lounged listlessly against the
posts, looking at the girls, would turn their heads slowly. To no
man had been given the shelter of so much respect, confidence, and
awe. Yet at times he would lean forward and appear to listen as for
a far-off note of discord, as if expecting to hear some faint
voice, the sound of light footsteps; or he would start half up in
his seat, as though he had been familiarly touched on the shoulder.
He glanced back with apprehension; his aged follower whispered
inaudibly at his ear; the chiefs turned their eyes away in silence,
for the old wizard, the man who could command ghosts and send evil
spirits against enemies, was speaking low to their ruler. Around
the short stillness of the open place the trees rustled faintly,
the soft laughter of girls playing with the flowers rose in clear
bursts of joyous sound. At the end of upright spear-shafts the long
tufts of dyed horse-hair waved crimson and filmy in the gust of
wind; and beyond the blaze of hedges the brook of limpid quick
water ran invisible and loud under the drooping grass of the bank,
with a great murmur, passionate and gentle.After sunset, far across the fields and over the bay,
clusters of torches could be seen burning under the high roofs of
the council shed. Smoky red flames swayed on high poles, and the
fiery blaze flickered over faces, clung to the smooth trunks of
palm-trees, kindled bright sparks on the rims of metal dishes
standing on fine floor-mats. That obscure adventurer feasted like a
king. Small groups of men crouched in tight circles round the
wooden platters; brown hands hovered over snowy heaps of rice.
Sitting upon a rough couch apart from the others, he leaned on his
elbow with inclined head; and near him a youth improvised in a high
tone a song that celebrated his valour and wisdom. The singer
rocked himself to and fro, rolling frenzied eyes; old women hobbled
about with dishes, and men, squatting low, lifted their heads to
listen gravely without ceasing to eat. The song of triumph vibrated
in the night, and the stanzas rolled out mournful and fiery like
the thoughts of a hermit. He silenced it with a sign, "Enough!" An
owl hooted far away, exulting in the delight of deep gloom in dense
foliage; overhead lizards ran in the attap thatch, calling softly;
the dry leaves of the roof rustled; the rumour of mingled voices
grew louder suddenly. After a circular and startled glance, as of a
man waking up abruptly to the sense of danger, he would throw
himself back, and under the downward gaze of the old sorcerer take
up, wide-eyed, the slender thread of his dream. They watched his
moods; the swelling rumour of animated talk subsided like a wave on
a sloping beach. The chief is pensive. And above the spreading
whisper of lowered voices only a little rattle of weapons would be
heard, a single louder word distinct and alone, or the grave ring
of a big brass tray.IIIFor two years at short intervals we visited him. We came to
like him, to trust him, almost to admire him. He was plotting and
preparing a war with patience, with foresight—with a fidelity to
his purpose and with a steadfastness of which I would have thought
him racially incapable. He seemed fearless of the future, and in
his plans displayed a sagacity that was only limited by his
profound ignorance of the rest of the world. We tried to enlighten
him, but our attempts to make clear the irresistible nature of the
forces which he desired to arrest failed to discourage his
eagerness to strike a blow for his own primitive ideas. He did not
understand us, and replied by arguments that almost drove one to
desperation by their childish shrewdness. He was absurd and
unanswerable. Sometimes we caught glimpses of a sombre, glowing
fury within him—a brooding and vague sense of wrong, and a
concentrated lust of violence which is dangerous in a native. He
raved like one inspired. On one occasion, after we had been talking
to him late in his campong, he jumped up. A great, clear fire
blazed in the grove; lights and shadows danced together between the
trees; in the still night bats flitted in and out of the boughs
like fluttering flakes of denser darkness. He snatched the sword
from the old man, whizzed it out of the scabbard, and thrust the
point into the earth. Upon the thin, upright blade the silver hilt,
released, swayed before him like something alive. He stepped back a
pace, and in a deadened tone spoke fiercely to the vibrating steel:
"If there is virtue in the fire, in the iron, in the hand that
forged thee, in the words spoken over thee, in the desire of my
heart, and in the wisdom of thy makers,—then we shall be victorious
together!" He drew it out, looked along the edge. "Take," he said
over his shoulder to the old sword-bearer. The other, unmoved on
his hams, wiped the point with a corner of his sarong, and
returning the weapon to its scabbard, sat nursing it on his knees
without a single look upwards. Karain, suddenly very calm, reseated
himself with dignity. We gave up remonstrating after this, and let
him go his way to an honourable disaster. All we could do for him
was to see to it that the powder was good for the money and the
rifles serviceable, if old.But the game was becoming at last too dangerous; and if we,
who had faced it pretty often, thought little of the danger, it was
decided for us by some very respectable people sitting safely in
counting-houses that the risks were too great, and that only one
more trip could be made. After giving in the usual way many
misleading hints as to our destination, we slipped away quietly,
and after a very quick passage entered the bay. It was early
morning, and even before the anchor went to the bottom the schooner
was surrounded by boats.