Creek after creek was passed and the boat crept on slowly like a monstrous water-spider with a big body and eight slender legs. … Did you follow with your ghostly eyes the quest of this obscure adventurer of yesterday, you shades of forgotten adventurers who, in leather jerkins and sweating under steel helmets, attacked with long rapiers the palisades of the strange heathen, or, musket on shoulder and match in cock, guarded timber blockhouses built upon the banks of rivers that command good trade? You, who, wearied with the toil of fighting, slept wrapped in frieze mantles on the sand of quiet beaches, dreaming of fabulous diamonds and of a far-off home.
“Here’s an opening,” said Lingard to Hassim, who sat at his side, just as the sun was setting away to his left. “Here’s an opening big enough for a ship. It’s the entrance we are looking for, I believe. We shall pull all night up this creek if necessary and it’s the very devil if we don’t come upon Belarab’s lair before daylight.”
He shoved the tiller hard over and the boat, swerving sharply, vanished from the coast.
And perhaps the ghosts of old adventurers nodded wisely their ghostly heads and exchanged the ghost of a wistful smile.
V
“What’s the matter with King Tom of late?” would ask someone when, all the cards in a heap on the table, the traders lying back in their chairs took a spell from a hard gamble.
“Tom has learned to hold his tongue, he must be up to some dam’ good thing,” opined another; while a man with hooked features and of German extraction who was supposed to be agent for a Dutch crockery house—the famous “Sphinx” mark—broke in resentfully:
“Nefer mind him, shentlemens, he’s matt, matt as a Marsh Hase. Dree monats ago I call on board his prig to talk pizness. And he says like dis—‘Glear oudt.’ ‘Vat for?’ I say. ‘Glear oudt before I shuck you oferboard.’ Gott-for-dam! Iss dat the vay to talk pizness? I vant sell him ein liddle case first chop grockery for trade and—”
“Ha, ha, ha! I don’t blame Tom,” interrupted the owner of a pearling schooner, who had come into the Roads for stores. “Why, Mosey, there isn’t a mangy cannibal left in the whole of New Guinea that hasn’t got a cup and saucer of your providing. You’ve flooded the market, savee?”
Jörgenson stood by, a skeleton at the gaming table.
“Because you are a Dutch spy,” he said, suddenly, in an awful tone.
The agent of the Sphinx mark jumped up in a sudden fury.
“Vat? Vat? Shentlemens, you all know me!” Not a muscle moved in the faces around. “Know me,” he stammered with wet lips. “Vat, fünf year—berfegtly acquaint—grockery—Verfluchte sponsher. Ich? Spy. Vat for spy? Vordamte English pedlars!”
The door slammed. “Is that so?” asked a New England voice. “Why don’t you let daylight into him?”
“Oh, we can’t do that here,” murmured one of the players. “Your deal, Trench, let us get on.”
“Can’t you?” drawled the New England voice. “You law-abiding, get-a-summons, act-of—parliament lot of sons of Belial—can’t you? Now, look a-here, these Colt pistols I am selling—” He took the pearler aside and could be heard talking earnestly in the corner. “See—you load—and—see?” There were rapid clicks. “Simple, isn’t it? And if any trouble—say with your divers”—click, click, click—“Through and through—like a sieve—warranted to cure the worst kind of cussedness in any nigger. Yes, siree! A case of twenty-four or single specimens—as you like. No? Shotguns—rifles? No! Waal, I guess you’re of no use to me, but I could do a deal with that Tom—what d’ye call him? Where d’ye catch him? Everywhere—eh? Waal—that’s nowhere. But I shall find him some day—yes, siree.”
Jörgenson, utterly disregarded, looked down dreamily at the falling cards. “Spy—I tell you,” he muttered to himself. “If you want to know anything, ask me.”
When Lingard returned from Wajo—after an uncommonly long absence—everyone remarked a great change. He was less talkative and not so noisy, he was still hospitable but his hospitality was less expansive, and the man who was never so happy as when discussing impossibly wild projects with half a dozen congenial spirits often showed a disinclination to meet his best friends. In a word, he returned much less of a good fellow than he went away. His visits to the Settlements were not less frequent, but much shorter; and when there he was always in a hurry to be gone.
During two years the brig had, in her way, as hard a life of it as the man. Swift and trim she flitted amongst the islands of little known groups. She could be descried afar from lonely headlands, a white speck travelling fast over the blue sea; the apathetic keepers of rare lighthouses dotting the great highway to the east came to know the cut of her topsails. They saw her passing east, passing west. They had faint glimpses of her flying with masts aslant in the mist of a rain-squall, or could observe her at leisure, upright and with shivering sails, forging ahead through a long day of unsteady airs. Men saw her battling with a heavy monsoon in the Bay of Bengal, lying becalmed in the Java Sea, or gliding out suddenly from behind a point of land, graceful and silent in the clear moonlight. Her activity was the subject of excited but low-toned conversations, which would be interrupted when her master appeared.
“Here he is. Came in last night,” whispered the gossiping group.
Lingard did not see the covert glances of respect tempered by irony; he nodded and passed on.
“Hey, Tom! No time for a drink?” would shout someone.
He would shake his
