The White Rajah (1961)

by Monsarrat, Nicholas

  It was inhabited, and even prosperous. As soon as they began their eastward journey, they came upon a series of sampan villages – row upon row of fishing sampans, with palm-leaf canopies for shelter, linked and clustered like bees, clinging to the shoreline like a fringe of seaweed. There were nets staked out in the tideway, and others drying ashore, and the smoke from a thousand fires and the murmur of a thousand voices, and surly captive cormorants with lines tied round their gullets to prevent them swallowing their masters’ fish.

  There were groves of coconut trees, and scarlet-flowering plants, and bigger houses inland, and a road that wound along the coast, dusty and rough. Once they saw a small fleet of native canoes, called prahus, and men on board staring at them; once they saw a working elephant, pushing teak logs down a long green slope towards the sea. But they did not see what they were looking for – a sizeable village, with a sandy bay where they could safely careen their ship.

  They stood to arms throughout the day, by Richard’s orders; the deck bristled with the best of their weapons – pistols, and ancient muskets, and shotguns; the cannon in the bows was ready loaded. The day progressed to a burning noon, with the sun overhead like a ball of fire; watch succeeded watch, meal succeeded meal, and all the time the suck and thud of the pumps, ceaselessly manned at the cost of hard-driven muscles and hands skinned to the raw, could be heard and felt throughout the ship. The water, so Henty reported, was slowly gaining on them – a few inches an hour, but it was enough to ruin them in the end. If they did not find their careenage soon, they would not need to look for one. The Lucinda D, already sluggish, already wallowing, would slide quietly to the bottom of her own accord.

  Twilight came, and with it a fitful wind which barely filled their sails; and still the long arm of the land continued, though it was higher now, with the green changing to purple, pricked by hundreds of oil lamps which flickered bravely against the coming of night. Their ship glided through the dusk like a pale ghost; once she came up with a big outrigger prahu, and a man dozing in the stern – a man who woke with a cry and stared after them as if he had seen a spectral ship. The leadsman chanted his soundings; the pumps laboured and groaned, as their hull settled inch by inch lower and lower. Then, with night not far away, and the first stars studding the pale sky, they crept past the corner of a protecting headland, and came upon an extraordinary sight – a flight of steps.

  There could have been no other steps like them in all the world. They led up from the water’s edge in a broad majestic sweep, tier upon tier, nobly balustraded; they seemed to be of marble; they must have been half a mile long. At the top, consummating this fantastic approach, was a palace, huge, of pink coral stone which, catching the last of the light, glowed in the dusk as if it were on fire deep within. Hundreds of windows gleamed in its façade. The steps themselves were strange enough, but the vast edifice topping them, with its lawns and palm trees and endless roofline sharp against the sky, had an unearthly quality. Only in fairy-tales, or in dreams, could there be such a flight of steps, and such a mansion to crown them.

  On board, every man stared landwards with disbelieving eyes; it must be a mirage, a dream … Nick Garrett, standing beside Richard, was the first to break the silence. He drew in his breath sharply.

  ‘By God, I know this place!’ he exclaimed. ‘Or I have heard tell of it. It could not be anything else.’ He pointed. ‘They call those the Steps of Heaven.’

  Richard, none the wiser, rounded on him quickly. He would have given much to avoid his question, but this was not the time for pride.

  ‘And the island itself?’

  ‘It is Makassang!’

  Makassang … For Far Eastern sailors, the very name had the ring of a curse; it stood for evil repute, lurking danger, nightmare terrors. Makassang, of all the thousand islands in these waters, was the one to be avoided; it was known to treat invaders like harbingers of the plague, and castaways like animals to be hunted to their death. Even now, when all the world was one, little of detail had been learned about it, save that it was cruelly hostile; in the last fifty years, two attempts to set up a British settlement had been starved to extinction, and, more recently, a Dutch trading station – though well armed and provisioned – reduced to the customary bloody ruin of fired houses, captured women, and the headless corpses which were still the brutal sign-manual of Makassang.

  It was known only that the interior, largely jungle, was the haunt of headhunting Dyaks; that the northern coast, towards Borneo, was a nest of pirates which could not be flushed out; that there was a caste of warrior priests, and a rajah who kept barbaric state in this same Sun Palace crowning the Steps of Heaven. It had limitless riches, or so it was said; gold and silver, diamonds and pearls, teak and copra and spices of all kinds. But there were some riches which were too hard for the winning, even in these waters where no man of any nation lacked courage and endurance and (if need be) treachery.

  Of what use was it (they asked) to come upon a silver mine, if your first blessing was a spear between the shoulderblades, and your next – and last – distinction to furnish the main course of a public banquet? … There was easier game to be hunted hereabouts, easier pickings to be had, without challenging the skill of savages who would as soon make a necklace of your private parts as fashion a string of beads.

  Thus mariners, by common consent, gave Makassang a wide berth, and had always done so. It lived on in its wicked isolation; all news of it was bad. Sometimes there were rumours of internal strife, of wars and expeditions, of unspeakable trophies brought back by tribal fighters. But it would take a brave man, and a foolhardy one, to dip his foot into this cauldron and find out its true nature; and though there was no stint of brave men, it was the foolhardy kind who lived the shortest lives and left the smallest imprint upon their time.

  Makassang, the world said, was best left alone, to swelter, to dream evil dreams, and to feed on its own wickedness.

  iv

  ‘Makassang!’ Inevitably, it was Peter Ramsay, the man with the long tongue, who was the first to speak, of all the intent men crowding the deck of the Lucinda D. His voice was high-pitched in complaint as he turned to face Richard Marriott. ‘Makassang! By God, we are mad to be here!’

  ‘We have no choice,’ answered Richard indifferently. He was studying the huge flight of steps and the fantastic palace at the top, and then, with more care, the bay across which they were now gliding. It seemed to be what they were looking for; it shelved to a wide sandy beach, and there were small craft close inshore, making use of its shelter. ‘This will serve our purpose, till we can be patched up.’

  ‘It will serve our funeral, more like!’ cried Ramsay. He was glancing from one to another of the crew, looking (as he always did) for allies in his perennial skirmish with authority. ‘I have heard tell of Makassang, too. They have cannibals and headhunters here! They cut down the Borrowdale’s crew, to the last man, and–’

  ‘That was on the north coast,’ broke in Richard roughly, ‘and it was plain pirates that did it, not cannibals. Since when were we afraid of pirates?’

  But Peter Ramsay was not to be put off. Around him, in the half-darkness, the men were murmuring among themselves; this was his favourite moment, his chosen stage for playing. ‘Pirates or cannibals,’ he whined, ‘it is all one, when you finish up with the blade of a parang in your belly! I tell you, Makassang is poison for sailors. I’ve seen it writ in the old pilot books. “Mariners, Beware!” Aye, that was it! They warned of natives who would take a ship by treachery, and not leave a man alive to tell the tale. They are headhunters still, and proud of it! I dare swear, if we set foot ashore here–’

  He would have gone on forever in the same strain, and Richard knew that he must be checked, even though what he said had, by common repute, much of truth in it. The Lucinda D had no choice but to stay where she was, and he did not want any talkative fool of a sea lawyer taking the heart out of his men. ‘Ramsay!’ he roared out suddenly.

  Ramsay tu
rned, in mid-sentence. ‘Aye?’

  ‘Put a dish-clout in your mouth, for the love of God!’ Richard’s voice was purposefully brutal. ‘You talk like some damned old woman who wants to make our flesh creep! Are you afraid of a few natives who might try to steal a round of beef? No one else on board is afraid of them, I can promise you. Is it a bodyguard you want?’

  ‘I was only saying–’ began Ramsay aggrievedly.

  ‘Well, stop saying, and start working! We’ll beach her here, and make our repairs, and be off again, before your cannibals have sharpened their front teeth.’ There was a laugh at that, and the men round Ramsay broke their grouping and began to move towards their stations, ready for the orders which they knew were coming. ‘Give me soundings!’ Richard called out to Singleton, and then, to Nick Garrett: ‘Take off all sail. We’ll steer for the beach.’

  Garrett, preparing to move, shrugged his shoulders in grudging resignation. He did not care for their situation, but, like Richard, he knew well enough that there was no other choice open. The Lucinda D could not put to sea again, the way the leakage was gaining on them; indeed, she would not sail another five miles, even in still water. They must ground here, and take their chance of what was in store for them.

  ‘We’ll need to mount guard all night,’ Garrett said, in surly tones. ‘They might have a dozen war canoes alongside, before we see a sign of them.’

  ‘We’ll row guard,’ Richard corrected him. ‘I’ll take the skiff, and you the longboat. We can circle the ship every five minutes, if need be.’

  ‘The men won’t like it,’ said Garrett. ‘They need their sleep.’

  ‘They need what I give them,’ answered Richard curtly. ‘Get those headsails in.’

  Long after they had grounded, on a spit of sand in three full fathoms of water, and had laid out a kedge anchor and secured their ship for the night, the crew remained on deck, staring through the dusk at the mysterious land; wondering what they could make of it, and what it might make of them. They wore their sidearms ready, but, curiously, this quiet corner of the unknown carried no menace, only beauty and strangeness, and their warlike state seemed out of place. The palace grew in loveliness as the light failed; the pink of its coral stone was like a blush which faded with the quieting heart. No boats, no war prahus, no sampans approached them; they were left in isolation, while the tide ebbed, and the Lucinda D – square of keel, solid-bottomed like a wine jug – settled upright on her bed of soft sand.

  There were lights in the Sun Palace, and flickering fires on the slopes surrounding it; once, the silence was broken by the cries of peacocks, and once again by a sound which might have been the ceremonial clash of spears. But for the most part the palace reigned above them in noble stillness. It had no need of clamour or movement; it was enough that it was there, commanding respect by its very majesty.

  There was one brief moment, before night fell, when Richard, turning away from this contemplation of beauty and mystery, had his eye caught by a single gleam of golden light, far away across the wide bay behind them. He brought his telescope into focus, searching for his target, and found that it was indeed golden – the spire of a golden pagoda, twenty miles and more away, presiding in equal majesty over what must be the mainland of Makassang. Its dome, rounded and sculptured in purest outline, tapering to a sublime peak (being fashioned, men said, from immemorial times in the shape of a woman’s breast) was the only object to be seen, in all the northern horizon. All else was now shadow, and purple dusk.

  Fancifully, the pagoda seemed to challenge the Sun Palace; while the one dreamed on in royal solitude, the other stared at it with the eye of heaven … But with night, and the coming of the stars, and the need for watchfulness, such thoughts gave way to a simple imperative, one which had seized all men since the beginning of history – the hunger to live on, to survive unmolested and unharmed, until the next dawn.

  2

  The dawn broke in ominous splendour. The sun caught first the spire of the golden pagoda, miles away across the northern bay; then the roof of the Sun Palace, and the fantastic climbing of the steps towards it; and lastly the spars and upper rigging of the Lucinda D, on whose deck weary men, dog-tired, had not yet begun to go about the business of the day. They still slept, or lay inert, conscious of stiff, awkward limbs, and uncertain hearts to match them.

  They had long ago ceased manning the pumps, since their ship was firmly grounded on the sand spit, and the water was not gaining; but, as Richard had ordered – not sparing himself any more than his crew – both watches had rowed guard all night, circling the ship in the skiff and the longboat, ready for surprises of any sort. Yet surprise had not come, at any time in the course of their long vigil; nor did the dawn bring the smallest sign of change, the smallest alarm or alert. It was this which was most ominous of all.

  Richard Marriott, leaning against the solid bulwarks of his ship, staring at the Steps of Heaven, tried hard to interpret this silence, this ignoring of their presence. He had expected attack during the night, or at least the probing of scout canoes; a strange ship, grounding almost within the shadow of the royal palace in sufficient daylight, must surely have excited attention ashore; they must have been closely watched, from the very moment of their first arrival.

  Now, at this fresh and revealing dawn, there should again be hundreds of inquisitive or baleful eyes, wondering what their business was, trying to divine their situation. The Lucinda D, he knew well, looked what she was – a private warship manned by fighting seamen; it was likely, even in Makassang which she had never yet visited, that she would be identified, and that her reputation, never fragrant in these waters, would have preceded her. In which case – unless they were all asleep ashore, or dead, or struck by cowardice – he would have expected a counter-movement of some kind. Even a herald of peace would have been less strange than this silence, this royal blind eye which affected not to see them.

  He straightened up, and stretched his stiff arms under the heavy boat cloak, to ease their aching. His servant, John Keston, who had taken his turn at rowing the skiff, along with the rest, appeared from the galley bearing a mug of coffee. At this moment, they were the only two stirring on board; it was Nick Garrett’s watch below, and the rest of the hands on deck still seemed asleep, curled up in the scuppers like weary dogs, hoping to ignore the demands of day.

  Richard took the proffered mug, and sipped it greedily before he spoke. He felt the coffee warming his gullet, bringing him new heart. He nodded his thanks to John Keston, and then, with a jerk of his head towards the land, said: ‘It is quiet yet.’

  ‘Too quiet for my taste,’ answered Keston promptly. There was a rough comradeship between master and man which was a far advance on their former standing; John Keston, still the servant, now had liberty to speak his mind, a liberty won in a dozen desperate encounters. ‘They must be up to something, or they would have sent a canoe out to see what we want here, or to sell us fruit and suchlike. But I would have wagered an attack before now, if Makassang is all they say.’

  ‘Perhaps it is not,’ said Richard. He was still staring at the land, narrowing his eyes against the brightness of the Steps of Heaven, which were beginning to catch the rays of the eastern sun. ‘Perhaps it is all talk. Perhaps it is they who are afraid.’

  ‘Peter Ramsay says they do not use money at all. Their currency is human skulls.’

  ‘Ramsay is a fool.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘And you are another, if you believe him.’

  ‘Aye,’ said John Keston again. ‘But even fools can sometimes talk sense, by accident … Do you know anything of the island, sir?’

  ‘No. I have heard gossip of it, that’s all. But whatever the truth, we must stay here until we are fit to leave. The water was gaining on the pumps, nearly a foot every hour. We have no choice. We have to careen the ship, and make good our damage. There’s three days’ hard work, there.’

  ‘They could surprise us then, while we are lying helpless.�
��

  ‘And we could surprise them!’ Richard turned, roused from his survey. ‘Come, talk sense, man! Who are we, to be afraid of a lot of prancing savages without a breech cloth among them?’ He pointed, up the steps towards the enormous palace. ‘With the bow gun mounted on a platform, we could pound that to rubble, if we cared to! We can have peacock pie for dinner tonight! Aye, with a soup of human skulls, if we’ve a taste for it! Has that prattling booby Ramsay taken your wits? I’ll wager they have nothing here but a few thousand natives and some old ruffian who calls himself king, or rajah. Have they weapons to match ours? Have they–’

  He broke off suddenly. He had been looking directly at John Keston, but Keston was no longer looking at him. Instead, he was staring over Richard’s shoulder towards the land, his eyes wide, his face a study in surprise. Then he pointed swiftly, and his voice when he spoke was urgent.

  ‘We need not wait long, to find out their weapons. Look at that!’

  Richard turned on the instant, and drew in his breath sharply at what he saw. Makassang, the dormant island, had boiled into sudden life, touched by some giant wand. Where before the bay had been all brooding stillness, the whole of it was now engulfed in movement. From the foot of the Steps of Heaven, an advancing armada was standing out towards them. In its centre was a huge, high-powered rowing barge, and its wings, like twin horns, were composed of scores of smaller craft – sampans, prahus, outrigger canoes with slatted sails. The whole mass was bearing down upon the Lucinda D, as if directed by a single hand.

  Richard crossed the deck in a swift stride, and with the butt of one of his pistols beat out a monstrous tocsin on the ship’s bell. As the sleeping men round him began to stir and gaze about them, he shouted: ‘Rouse up! Call the watch below! Stand to arms!’

  Then he turned again, hard-eyed, coldly watchful, to see what their enemy might be.