“Perhaps the fun is in the search, not in finding.”
“Say that again. It sounds interesting. Though I’d like to hear you say it after you’d ploughed through Siamese forests in the rains, punctured from head to foot by ticks and leeches, and no more to show for it than enough to buy quinine for the next bout of ‘the shakes.’ ”
“I think I’d say it then. The hunt’s the game. The quarry doesn’t matter so much.”
The stranger swerved in his chair to inspect Colet. He frowned at him comically, and his scrutiny was met with a candid conviction of good cheer. This stranger was a man some years older than himself, with a hard but amiable countenance, eyes that were mocking him now in good nature, and a little moustache which might have been cast in iron. There was a scar on his chin, and Colet judged that very likely it had been well earned. That chin would take some breaking, though. The man would take some breaking.
“I don’t see it. Though if you’re not looking for much perhaps you’re right. I’m looking for important metal that goes by troy weight; or by the ton, if it runs to it. When I find it I’m very loving. If I don’t find it I’m not happy at all. Your abstractions wouldn’t turn my scales with a martyr’s crown as makeweight.”
“Well … I wonder whether we wouldn’t look twice at the scales, if we know what was in them? Though of all possible things the last I want is martyrdom. It’s too lonely.”
“Here, your talk is quite Christian. I’m afraid to listen to it. Let’s have a merry drink and forget it.”
They waited while a steward, with no sign of emotion but the deepest respect, listened in turn and without a comment to the trivial wishes of that circle of men.
“So you don’t know what you’ll do at Rangoon?”
“Not in the least. I’m a destitute seaman.”
“Um.”
“Eh? I said I am a destitute seaman.”
“I heard you. I only made the noise of a thought. You don’t know anyone at Rangoon?”
“Nobody. Never been there.”
“Well, I do know Rangoon, and anyone destitute there would be about as happy as a hungry dog in a stone yard.”
An elderly neighbour leaned towards them with a gentle contradiction. He had heard Rangoon mentioned, and he and the stranger began a blithe dispute about their destination which left that port uncertain between a dream city of Oriental delights, and a worthy abode of rectangular commercial ideals, in their satisfactory concrete, surrounded by quarters for ministrant coolies. Sinclair extricated Colet, and they began to pace the deck, and gossip of what had been. Colet learned that the end of his voyage was now but a matter of days.
The surgeon, on his next visit, was perfunctory.
“I only call because I’m very dutiful. You are fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. Only be quite sure,” he added, “that the spoils come safely in at the end. By the way, that passenger you were talking to yesterday, Mr. Norrie. He’s coming here. There’s a book he wants you to look at. And here he is. I’m off to find your friend the engineer.”
Norrie took the settee.
“I heard the doctor give you my name. It really is my name. And I have brought you a book. As good an excuse as any for walking uninvited into another man’s cabin.”
Colet regarded the book politely. It was not exactly technical, but it appeared to be a serious address to geologists and surveyors, should the thought ever occur to them of exploring the chances Siam held in secret. It was loaded with maps. They bore such legends as Chlorite and Hornblende rocks; Gold Sands; Gem Gravels; Sandstone. What was most attractive about it was its amateurish drawings of temples, boats, camps, and natives. While he turned the pages with respect, looking for something he might say for this kindness, he did, for a moment, become lost in a brief description of a place named Wat Chinareth … “far in the jungle, when the eye has become accustomed to green for weeks, the wonderful yellow-red of the tiles of the temple roof, picked off with green borders, and light-red lower buildings of the cloisters, were most striking … the entrance to the tower was in its day very prettily panelled and gilded; now, alas, bats and cobwebs are legion.”
“Don’t look for entertainment in it,” he was advised. “Look for facts, Mr. Colet. But not now. I have an idea, but you may not care for it. You’ll find in that book some faint hints of the barbarism of my own life, when poking about for a good substitute for that deer-park. I’m a prospector, that’s what; but I will say for myself that I was passed through the turnstiles of the Royal School of Mines. I won’t flatter you by suggesting that you could be my expert assistant. Field geology is not learned in a day. But, if you’re at a loose end, it would be pleasant if you could come along with me.”
Colet got up on his elbow in his bunk, and considered Norrie, but not his suggestion. His visitor gave no hint of a barbaric life. His dress was only a little less punctilious than the surgeon’s uniform. His intonation was that of one in authority. Colet twisted the point of his beard.
“But—but—of course, I shall be glad to read this book. It’s travel, anyhow. All the same, I can’t see where I could come in.”
“Naturally. You’ve never done it. If you had, you’d refuse. If you can believe me, I’m trying to beguile you into a most damnable passage. For my own sake, of course. Don’t make a mistake about that. I don’t like getting fever in the forest on my lonesome. It’s beginning to frighten me. Then there are the natives. They’re sometimes so volatile. Two could manage them better
