Jorgenson pointed at the mass of praus, coasting boats, and sampans that, jammed up together in the canal, lay covered with mats and flooded by the cold moonlight with here and there a dim lantern burning amongst the confusion of high sterns, spars, masts and lowered sails.
'There!' he said, as they moved on, and their hatted and clothed shadows fell heavily on the queer-shaped vessels that carry the fortunes of brown men upon a shallow sea. 'There! I can sit with them, I can talk to them, I can come and go as I like. They know me now—it's time-thirty-five years. Some of them give a plate of rice and a bit of fish to the white man. That's all I get—after thirty-five years—given up to them.'
He was silent for a time.
'I was like you once,' he added, and then laying his hand on Lingard's sleeve, murmured—'Are you very deep in this thing?'
'To the very last cent,' said Lingard, quietly, and looking straight before him.
The glitter of the roadstead went out, and the masts of anchored ships vanished in the invading shadow of a cloud.
'Drop it,' whispered Jorgenson.
'I am in debt,' said Lingard, slowly, and stood still.
'Drop it!'
'Never dropped anything in my life.'
'Drop it!'
'By God, I won't!' cried Lingard, stamping his foot.
There was a pause.
'I was like you—once,' repeated Jorgenson. 'Five and thirty years—never dropped anything. And what you can do is only child's play to some jobs I have had on my hands—understand that—great man as you are, Captain Lingard of the Lightning. . . . You should have seen the Wild Rose,' he added with a sudden break in his voice.
Lingard leaned over the guard-rail of the pier. Jorgenson came closer.
'I set fire to her with my own hands!' he said in a vibrating tone and very low, as if making a monstrous confession.
'Poor devil,' muttered Lingard, profoundly moved by the tragic enormity of the act. 'I suppose there was no way out?'
'I wasn't going to let her rot to pieces in some Dutch port,' said Jorgenson, gloomily. 'Did you ever hear of Dawson?'
'Something—I don't remember now—' muttered Lingard, who felt a chill down his back at the idea of his own vessel decaying slowly in some Dutch port. 'He died—didn't he?' he asked, absently, while he wondered whether he would have the pluck to set fire to the brig—on an emergency.
'Cut his throat on the beach below Fort Rotterdam,' said Jorgenson. His gaunt figure wavered in the unsteady moonshine as though made of mist. 'Yes. He broke some trade regulation or other and talked big about law-courts and legal trials to the lieutenant of the Komet. 'Certainly,' says the hound. 'Jurisdiction of Macassar, I will take your schooner there.' Then coming into the roads he tows her full tilt on a ledge of rocks on the north side—smash! When she was half full of water he takes his hat off to Dawson. 'There's the shore,' says he—'go and get your legal trial, you—Englishman—'' He lifted a long arm and shook his fist at the moon which dodged suddenly behind a cloud. 'All was lost. Poor Dawson walked the streets for months barefooted and in rags. Then one day he begged a knife from some charitable soul, went down to take a last look at the wreck, and—'
'I don't interfere with the Dutch,' interrupted Lingard, impatiently. 'I want Hassim to get back his own—'
'And suppose the Dutch want the things just so,' returned Jorgenson. 'Anyway there is a devil in such work— drop it!'
'Look here,' said Lingard, 'I took these people off when they were in their last ditch. That means something. I ought not to have meddled and it would have been all over in a few hours. I must have meant something when I interfered, whether I knew it or not. I meant it then—and did not know it. Very well. I mean it now—and do know it. When you save people from death you take a share in their life. That's how I look at it.'
Jorgenson shook his head.
'Foolishness!' he cried, then asked softly in a voice that trembled with curiosity—'Where did you leave them?'
'With Belarab,' breathed out Lingard. 'You knew him in the old days.'
'I knew him, I knew his father,' burst out the other in an excited whisper. 'Whom did I not know? I knew Sentot when he was King of the South Shore of Java and the Dutch offered a price for his head—enough to make any man's fortune. He slept twice on board the Wild Rose when things had begun to go wrong with him. I knew him, I knew all his chiefs, the priests, the fighting men, the old regent who lost heart and went over to the Dutch, I knew—' he stammered as if the words could not come out, gave it up and sighed—'Belarab's father escaped with me,' he began again, quietly, 'and joined the Padris in Sumatra. He rose to be a great leader. Belarab was a youth then. Those were the times. I ranged the coast—and laughed at the cruisers; I saw every battle fought in the Battak country—and I saw the Dutch run; I was at the taking of Singal and escaped. I was the white man who advised the chiefs of Manangkabo. There was a lot about me in the Dutch papers at the time. They said I was a Frenchman turned Mohammedan—' he swore a great oath, and, reeling against the guard-rail, panted, muttering curses on newspapers.
'Well, Belarab has the job in hand,' said Lingard, composedly. 'He is the chief man on the Shore of Refuge. There are others, of course. He has sent messages north and south. We must have men.'
'All the devils unchained,' said Jorgenson. 'You have done it and now—look out—look out. . . .'
'Nothing can go wrong as far as I can see,' argued Lingard. 'They all know what's to be done. I've got them in hand. You don't think Belarab unsafe? Do you?'
'Haven't seen him for fifteen years—but the whole thing's unsafe,' growled Jorgenson.
