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PART THREE: CHAPTER SIX
Heyst was astounded. Looking all round, as if to take the whole
room to witness of this outrage, he became aware of Wang
materialized in the doorway. The intrusion was as surprising as
anything could be, in view of the strict regularity with which Wang
made himself visible. Heyst was tempted to laugh at first. This
practical comment on his affirmation that nothing could break in on
them relieved the strain of his feelings. He was a little vexed,
too. The Chinaman preserved a profound silence.
"What do you want?" asked Heyst sternly.
"Boat out there," said the Chinaman.
"Where? What do you mean? Boat adrift in the straits?"
Some subtle change in Wang's bearing suggested his being out of
breath; but he did not pant, and his voice was steady.
"No--row."
It was Heyst now who was startled and raised his voice.
"Malay man, eh?"
Wang made a slight negative movement with his head.
"Do you hear, Lena?" Heyst called out. "Wang says there is a boat
in sight--somewhere near apparently. Where's that boat Wang?"
"Round the point," said Wang, leaping into Malay unexpectedly, and
in a loud voice. "White men three."
"So close as that?" exclaimed Heyst, moving out on the veranda
followed by Wang. "White men? Impossible!"
Over the clearing the shadows were already lengthening. The sun
hung low; a ruddy glare lay on the burnt black patch in front of the
bungalow, and slanted on the ground between the straight, tall,
mast-like trees soaring a hundred feet or more without a branch.
The growth of bushes cut off all view of the jetty from the veranda.
Far away to the right Wang's hut, or rather its dark roof of mats,
could be seen above the bamboo fence which insured the privacy of
the Alfuro woman. The Chinaman looked that way swiftly. Heyst
paused, and then stepped back a pace into the room.
"White men, Lena, apparently. What are you doing?"
"I am just bathing my eyes a little," the girl's voice said from the
inner room.
"Oh, yes; all right!"
"Do you want me?"
"No. You had better--I am going down to the jetty. Yes, you had
better stay in. What an extraordinary thing!"
It was so extraordinary that nobody could possibly appreciate how
extraordinary it was but himself. His mind was full of mere
exclamations, while his feet were carrying him in the direction of
the jetty. He followed the line of the rails, escorted by Wang.
"Where were you when you first saw the boat?" he asked over his
shoulder.
Wang explained in Malay that he had gone to the shore end of the
wharf, to get a few lumps of coal from the big heap, when, happening
to raise his eyes from the ground, he saw the boat--a white man
boat, not a canoe. He had good eyes. He had seen the boat, with
the men at the oars; and here Wang made a particular gesture over
his eyes, as if his vision had received a blow. He had turned at
once and run to the house to report.
"No mistake, eh?" said Heyst, moving on. At the very outer edge of
the belt he stopped short. Wang halted behind him on the path, till
the voice of Number One called him sharply forward into the open.
He obeyed.
"Where's that boat?" asked Heyst forcibly. "I say--where is it?"
Nothing whatever was to be seen between the point and the jetty.
The stretch of Diamond Bay was like a piece of purple shadow,
lustrous and empty, while beyond the land, the open sea lay blue and
opaque under the sun. Heyst's eyes swept all over the offing till
they met, far off, the dark cone of the volcano, with its faint
plume of smoke broadening and vanishing everlastingly at the top,
without altering its shape in the glowing transparency of the
evening.
"The fellow has been dreaming," he muttered to himself.
He looked hard at the Chinaman. Wang seemed turned into stone.
Suddenly, as if he had received a shock, he started, flung his arm
out with a pointing forefinger, and made guttural noises to the
effect that there, there, there, he had seen a boat.
It was very uncanny. Heyst thought of some strange hallucination.
Unlikely enough; but that a boat with three men in it should have
sunk between the point and the jetty, suddenly, like a stone,
without leaving as much on the surface as a floating oar, was still
more unlikely. The theory of a phantom boat would have been more
credible than that.
"Confound it!" he muttered to himself.
He was unpleasantly affected by this mystery; but now a simple
explanation occurred to him. He stepped hastily out on the wharf.
The boat, if it had existed and had retreated, could perhaps be seen
from the far end of the long jetty.
Nothing was to be seen. Heyst let his eyes roam idly over the sea.
He was so absorbed in his perplexity that a hollow sound, as of
somebody tumbling about in a boat, with a clatter of oars and spars,
failed to make him move for a moment. When his mind seized its
meaning, he had no difficulty in locating the sound. It had come
from below--under the jetty!
He ran back for a dozen yards or so, and then looked over. His
sight plunged straight into the stern-sheets of a big boat, the
greater part of which was hidden from him by the planking of the
jetty. His eyes fell on the thin back of a man doubled up over the
tiller in a queer, uncomfortable attitude of drooping sorrow.
Another man, more directly below Heyst, sprawled on his back from
gunwale to gunwale, half off the after thwart, his head lower than
his feet. This second man glared wildly upward, and struggled to
raise himself, but to all appearance was much too drunk to succeed.
The visible part of the boat contained also a flat, leather trunk,
on which the first man's long legs were tucked up nervelessly. A
large earthenware jug, with its wide mouth uncorked, rolled out on
the bottom-boards from under the sprawling man.
Heyst had never been so much astonished in his life. He stared
dumbly at the strange boat's crew. From the first he was positive
that these men were not sailors. They wore the white drill-suit of
tropical civilization; but their apparition in a boat Heyst could
not connect with anything plausible. The civilization of the
tropics could have had nothing to do with it. It was more like
those myths, current in Polynesia, of amazing strangers, who arrive
at an island, gods or demons, bringing good or evil to the innocence
of the inhabitants--gifts of unknown things, words never heard
before.
Heyst noticed a cork helmet floating alongside the boat, evidently
fallen from the head of the man doubled over the tiller, who
displayed a dark, bony poll. An oar, too, had been knocked
overboard, probably by the sprawling man, who was still struggling,
between the thwarts. By this time Heyst regarded the visitation no
longer with surprise, but with the sustained attention demanded by a
difficult problem. With one foot poised on the string-piece, and
leaning on his raised knee, he was taking in everything. The
sprawling man rolled off the thwart, collapsed, and, most
unexpectedly, got on his feet. He swayed dizzily, spreading his
arms out and uttered faintly a hoarse, dreamy "Hallo!" His upturned
face was swollen, red, peeling all over the nose and cheeks. His
stare was irrational. Heyst perceived stains of dried blood all
over the front of his dirty white coat, and also on one sleeve.
"What's the matter? Are you wounded?"
The other glanced down, reeled--one of his feet was inside a large
pith hat--and, recovering himself, let out a dismal, grating sound
in the manner of a grim laugh.
"Blood--not mine. Thirst's the matter. Exhausted's the matter.
Done up. Drink, man! Give us water!"
Thirst was in the very tone of his words, alternating a broken croak
and a faint, throaty rustle which just reached Heyst's ears. The
man in the boat raised his hands to be helped up on the jetty,
whispering:
"I tried. I am too weak. I tumbled down."
Wang was coming along the jetty slowly, with intent, straining eyes.
"Run back and bring a crowbar here. There's one lying by the coal-
heap," Heyst shouted to him.
The man standing in the boat sat down on the thwart behind him. A
horrible coughing laugh came through his swollen lips.
"Crowbar? What's that for?" he mumbled, and his head dropped on his
chest mournfully.
Meantime, Heyst, as if he had forgotten the boat, started kicking
hard at a large brass tap projecting above the planks. To
accommodate ships that came for coal and happened to need water as
well, a stream had been tapped in the interior and an iron pipe led
along the jetty. It terminated with a curved end almost exactly
where the strangers' boat had been driven between the piles; but the
tap was set fast.
"Hurry up!" Heyst yelled to the Chinaman, who was running with the
crowbar in his hand.
Heyst snatched it from him and, obtaining a leverage against the
string-piece, wrung the stiff tap round with a mighty jerk. "I hope
that pipe hasn't got choked!" he muttered to himself anxiously.
It hadn't; but it did not yield a strong gush. The sound of a thin
stream, partly breaking on the gunwale of the boat and partly
splashing alongside, became at once audible. It was greeted by a
cry of inarticulate and savage joy. Heyst knelt on the string-piece
and peered down. The man who had spoken was already holding his
open mouth under the bright trickle. Water ran over his eyelids and
over his nose, gurgled down his throat, flowed over his chin. Then
some obstruction in the pipe gave way, and a sudden thick jet broke
on his face. In a moment his shoulders were soaked, the front of
his coat inundated; he streamed and dripped; water ran into his
pockets, down his legs, into his shoes; but he had clutched the end
of the pipe, and, hanging on with both hands, swallowed, spluttered,
choked, snorted with the noises of a swimmer. Suddenly a curious
dull roar reached Heyst's ears. Something hairy and black flew from
under the jetty. A dishevelled head, coming on like a cannonball,
took the man at the pipe in flank, with enough force to tear his
grip loose and fling him headlong into the stern-sheets. He fell
upon the folded legs of the man at the tiller, who, roused by the
commotion in the boat, was sitting up, silent, rigid, and very much
like a corpse. His eyes were but two black patches, and his teeth
glistened with a death's head grin between his retracted lips, no
thicker than blackish parchment glued over the gums.
From him Heyst's eyes wandered to the creature who had replaced the
first man at the end of the water-pipe. Enormous brown paws
clutched it savagely; the wild, big head hung back, and in a face
covered with a wet mass of hair there gaped crookedly a wide mouth
full of fangs. The water filled it, welled up in hoarse coughs, ran
down on each side of the jaws and down the hairy throat, soaked the
black pelt of the enormous chest, naked under a torn check shirt,
heaving convulsively with a play of massive muscles carved in red
mahogany.
As soon as the first man had recovered the breath knocked out of him
by the irresistible charge, a scream of mad cursing issued from the
stern-sheets. With a rigid, angular crooking of the elbow, the man
at the tiller put his hand back to his hip.
"Don't shoot him, sir!" yelled the first man. "Wait! Let me have
that tiller. I will teach him to shove himself in front of a
caballero!"
Martin Ricardo flourished the heavy piece of wood, leaped forward
with astonishing vigour, and brought it down on Pedro's head with a
crash that resounded all over the quiet sweep of Black Diamond Bay.
A crimson patch appeared on the matted hair, red veins appeared in
the water flowing all over his face, and it dripped in rosy drops
off his head. But the man hung on. Not till a second furious blow
descended did the hairy paws let go their grip and the squirming
body sink limply. Before it could touch the bottom-boards, a
tremendous kick in the ribs from Ricardo's foot shifted it forward
out of sight, whence came the noise of a heavy thud, a clatter of
spars, and a pitiful grunt. Ricardo stooped to look under the
jetty.
"Aha, dog! This will teach you to keep back where you belong, you
murdering brute, you slaughtering savage, you! You infidel, you
robber of churches! Next time I will rip you open from neck to
heel, you carrion-cater! Esclavo!"
He backed a little and straightened himself up.
"I don't mean it really," he remarked to Heyst, whose steady eyes
met his from above. He ran aft briskly.
"Come along, sir. It's your turn. I oughtn't to have drunk first.
'S truth, I forgot myself! A gentleman like you will overlook that,
I know." As he made these apologies, Ricardo extended his hand.
"Let me steady you, sir."
Slowly Mr. Jones unfolded himself in all his slenderness, rocked,
staggered, and caught Ricardo's shoulder. His henchman assisted him
to the pipe, which went on gushing a clear stream of water,
sparkling exceedingly against the black piles and the gloom under
the jetty.
"Catch hold, sir," Ricardo advised solicitously. "All right?"
He stepped back, and, while Mr. Jones revelled in the abundance of
water, he addressed himself to Heyst with a sort of justificatory
speech, the tone of which, reflecting his feelings, partook of
purring and spitting. They had been thirty hours tugging at the
oars, he explained, and they had been more than forty hours without
water, except that the night before they had licked the dew off the
gunwales.
Ricardo did not explain to Heyst how it happened. At that precise
moment he had no explanation ready for the man on the wharf, who, he
guessed, must be wondering much more at the presence of his visitors
than at their plight.
Content of PART THREE CHAPTER SIX [Joseph Conrad's novel: Victory]
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