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ashy patches on the skin of their naked shoulders and breasts. Their heads were bound in dirty but carefully folded handkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to state a complaint, voluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared eyes confidently. The Rajahs people would not leave them alone; there had been some trouble about a lot of turtles eggs his people had collected on the islets thereand leaning at arms length upon his paddle, he pointed with a brown skinny hand over the sea. Jim listened for a time without looking up, and at last told him gently to wait. He would hear him by and by. They withdrew obediently to some little distance, and sat on their heels, with their paddles lying before them on the sand; the silvery gleams in their eyes followed our movements patiently; and the immensity of the outspread sea, the stillness of the coast, passing north and south beyond the limits of my vision, made up one colossal Presence watching us four dwarfs isolated on a strip of glistening sand. "The trouble is," remarked Jim, moodily, "that for generations these beggars of fishermen in that village there had been considered as the Rajahs personal slavesand the old rip cant get it into his head that ...." He paused. "That you have changed all that," I said. "Yes. Ive changed all that," he muttered in a gloomy voice. "You have had your opportunity," I pursued. "Had I?" he said. "Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I have got back my confidence in myselfa good nameyet sometimes I wish . . . No I shall hold what Ive got. Cant expect anything more." He flung his arm out towards the sea. "Not out there anyhow." He stamped his foot upon the sand. "This is my limit, because nothing less will do." We continued pacing the beach. "Yes, Ive changed all that," he went on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; "but only try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! cant you see it? Hell loose. No! I To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking that silly old Tunku Allangs coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss over these rotten turtles eggs. No. I cant sayenough. Never. I must go on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can touch me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and toto" . . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it on the sea . . . "to keep in touch with" . . . His voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . . "with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any more. Withwithyou, for instance." I was profoundly humbled by his words. "For Gods sake," I said, "dont set me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself." I felt a gratitude, an affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping my place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How little that was to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face away; under the low sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like an ember snatched from the fire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the approach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak, but checked himself: at last, as if he had found a formula: "I shall be faithful," he said quietly. "I shall be faithful," he repeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple under the fires of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I recalled some words of Steins.... " In the destructive element immerse I . . . To follow the dream, and again to follow the dreamand soalwaysusque ad finem ...." He was romantic, but none the less true. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west I . . . A small boat, leaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars, towards the sandbank to take me off. "And then theres Jewel," he said, out of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mastered my very thoughts so that his voice made me start. "Theres Jewel." "Yes," I murmured. "I need not tell you what she is to me," he pursued. "Youve seen. In time she will come to understand...." "I hope so," I interrupted. "She trusts me, too," he mused, and then |
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