Lord Jim Joseph Conrad (epub ebook reader .txt) 📖

showed him up; the creek was no more than seven yards wide in that place, and there happened to be a man crouching in the bush on the other bank.

“He was a Bugis of Tondano only lately come to Patusan, and a relation of the man shot in the afternoon. That famous long shot had indeed appalled the beholders. The man in utter security had been struck down, in full view of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they seemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a bitter rage. That relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was then with Doramin in the stockade only a few feet away. You who know these chaps must admit that the fellow showed an unusual pluck by volunteering to carry the message, alone, in the dark. Creeping across the open ground, he had deviated to the left and found himself opposite the boat. He was startled when Brown’s man shouted. He came to a sitting position with his gun to his shoulder, and when the other jumped out, exposing himself, he pulled the trigger and lodged three jagged slugs point-blank into the poor wretch’s stomach. Then, lying flat on his face, he gave himself up for dead, while a thin hail of lead chopped and swished the bushes close on his right hand; afterwards he delivered his speech shouting, bent double, dodging all the time in cover. With the last word he leaped sideways, lay close for a while, and afterwards got back to the houses unharmed, having achieved on that night such a renown as his children will not willingly allow to die.

“And on the hill the forlorn band let the two little heaps of embers go out under their bowed heads. They sat dejected on the ground with compressed lips and downcast eyes, listening to their comrade below. He was a strong man and died hard, with moans now loud, now sinking to a strange confidential note of pain. Sometimes he shrieked, and again, after a period of silence, he could be heard muttering deliriously a long and unintelligible complaint. Never for a moment did he cease.

“ ‘What’s the good?’ Brown had said unmoved once, seeing the Yankee, who had been swearing under his breath, prepare to go down. ‘That’s so,’ assented the deserter, reluctantly desisting. ‘There’s no encouragement for wounded men here. Only his noise is calculated to make all the others think too much of the hereafter, cap’n.’ ‘Water!’ cried the wounded man in an extraordinarily clear vigorous voice, and then went off moaning feebly. ‘Ay, water. Water will do it,’ muttered the other to himself, resignedly. ‘Plenty by-and-by. The tide is flowing.’

“At last the tide flowed, silencing the plaint and the cries of pain, and the dawn was near when Brown, sitting with his chin in the palm of his hand before Patusan, as one might stare at the unscalable side of a mountain, heard the brief ringing bark of a brass six-pounder far away in town somewhere. ‘What’s this?’ he asked of Cornelius, who hung about him. Cornelius listened. A muffled roaring shout rolled downriver over the town; a big drum began to throb, and others responded, pulsating and droning. Tiny scattered lights began to twinkle in the dark half of the town, while the part lighted by the loom of fires hummed with a deep and prolonged murmur. ‘He has come,’ said Cornelius. ‘What? Already? Are you sure?’ Brown asked. ‘Yes! yes! Sure. Listen to the noise.’ ‘What are they making that row about?’ pursued Brown. ‘For joy,’ snorted Cornelius; ‘he is a very great man, but all the same, he knows no more than a child, and so they make a great noise to please him, because they know no better.’ ‘Look here,’ said Brown, ‘how is one to get at him?’ ‘He shall come to talk to you,’ Cornelius declared. ‘What do you mean? Come down here strolling as it were?’ Cornelius nodded vigorously in the dark. ‘Yes. He will come straight here and talk to you. He is just like a fool. You shall see what a fool he is.’ Brown was incredulous. ‘You shall see; you shall see,’ repeated Cornelius. ‘He is not afraid⁠—not afraid of anything. He will come and order you to leave his people alone. Everybody must leave his people alone. He is like a little child. He will come to you straight.’ Alas! he knew Jim well⁠—that ‘mean little skunk,’ as Brown called him to me. ‘Yes, certainly,’ he pursued with ardour, ‘and then, captain, you tell that tall man with a gun to shoot him. Just you kill him, and you will frighten everybody so much that you can do anything you like with them afterwards⁠—get what you like⁠—go away when you like. Ha! ha! ha! Fine.⁠ ⁠…’ He almost danced with impatience and eagerness; and Brown, looking over his shoulder at him, could see, shown up by the pitiless dawn, his men drenched with dew, sitting amongst the cold ashes and the litter of the camp, haggard, cowed, and in rags.”

XLI

“To the very last moment, till the full day came upon them with a spring, the fires on the west bank blazed bright and clear; and then Brown saw in a knot of coloured figures motionless between the advanced houses a man in European clothes, in a helmet, all white. ‘That’s him; look! look!’ Cornelius said excitedly. All Brown’s men had sprung up and crowded at his back with lustreless eyes. The group of vivid colours and dark faces with the white figure in their midst were observing the knoll. Brown could see naked arms being raised to shade the eyes and other brown arms pointing. What should he do? He looked around, and the forests that faced him on all sides walled the cockpit of an unequal contest. He looked once more at his men. A contempt, a weariness, the desire of life, the