Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  The grip on his arm of the two others tightened, resistance was no use though he felt sorely tempted again to engage in a struggle. If only he could free himself for a moment, dash off into the darkness, and throw that absurd packet away somewhere before they caught him again. It was a sort of solution; but he discovered in himself an unsuspected and unreasoning loyalty. “No! Somebody would find it and take it to the police,” he thought. “If we come near the quay I may manage to fling it on the water.”

  He said with lofty negligence: “You needn’t hold my arms.”

  This suggestion was met by a profound silence. Neither of the men holding him relaxed his grasp. Another was treading close on his heels, while the police-hound in the big hat marched a couple of paces in front of him, importantly.

  Before long they approached the guardhouse close enough for Cosmo to see the sentry at the foot of the steps, who challenged them militarily. The sbirro in the hat advanced alone and made himself known in the light streaming through the door. It was too late to attempt anything. As he was impelled by his two captors inside the guardroom, which was lighted by a smoky lamp and also full of tobacco smoke, Cosmo thought, “I am in for it. What a horrible nuisance! I wonder whether they will search me?”

  At Cosmo’s entrance with his escort several soldiers reclining on the floor raised their heads. It was a small place which may have been used as a store for sails or cordage. The furniture consisted of one long bench, a rack of muskets, a table, and one chair. A sergeant sitting on that chair rose and talked with the head sbirro for a time in a familiar and interested manner about the incidents of the chase, before he even looked at Cosmo. Cosmo could not hear the words. The sergeant was a fine man with long black moustaches and a great scar on his cheek. He nodded from time to time in an understanding manner to the man in the hat, whom the light of the guardroom disclosed as the possessor of very small eyes, a short thick beard, and a pear-shaped yellow physiognomy which had a pained expression. At the suggestion of the sbirri (they had let him go) Cosmo sat down on a bench running along the wall. Part of it was occupied by a soldier stretched at full length with his head on his knapsack and with his shako hung above him on the wall. He was profoundly asleep. “Perhaps that’s the fellow who took those shots at me,” thought Cosmo. Another of the sbirri approached Cosmo and with a propitiatory smile handed him his cloak. Cosmo had forgotten all about it.

  “I carried it behind the signore all the way,” he murmured with an air of secrecy; and Cosmo was moved to say: “You ought to have brought it to me at Canteluc-ci’s inn,” in a significant tone. The man made a deprecatory gesture and said in a low voice: “The signore may want it to-night.”

  He was young. His eyes met Cosmo’s without flinch-ing.

  “I see,” whispered Cosmo. “What is going to be done with me?” The man looked away indifferently and said: “I am new at this work; but there is a post of royal gendarmerie on the other side of the harbour.”

  He threw himself on the bench by Cosmo’s side, stretched his legs out, folded his arms across his breast, and yawned unconcernedly.

  “Can I trust him?” Cosmo asked himself. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to him. The sbirro in the hat bustled out of the guardroom in great haste; the other two remained on guard; the sergeant sitting astride the chair folded his arms on the back of it and stared at the night through the open door. The sbirro by Cosmo’s side muttered, looking up at the ceiling: “I think Barbone is gone to find a boatman.” From this Cosmo understood that he was going to be taken across the harbour and given up to the gendarmes. He thought, “If they insist upon searching me I would have to submit and in any case a hat is not a hiding-place. I may just as well hand the packet over without a struggle.” A bright idea struck him. “If those fellows take me over there in a boat to save themselves the trouble of walking round the harbour I will simply contrive to drop my hat overboard — even if they do hold my arms during the passage.” He was now convinced that Attilio belonged to some secret society. He certainly was no common fellow. He wondered what had happened to him. Was he slinking and dodging about the low parts of the town on his way to some ref- uge; or had he really found the excitable man and the grumpy man still waiting under the tower with a boat? Most unlikely after such an alarming commotion of yells and shots. He feared that Attilio, unable to get away, could hardly avoid being caught to-morrow, or at the furthest next day. He himself obviously did not expect anything better; or else he would not have been so anxious to get rid of those papers. Cosmo concluded that conspirators were perfectly absurd with their passion for documents, which were invariably found at a critical time and sent them all to the gallows.

  He noticed the eyes of the sergeant, a Croat, with pendent black moustaches, fixed on his hat, and at once felt uneasy as if he had belonged to a secret society himself. His hat was the latest thing in men’s round hats which he had bought in Paris. But, almost directly, the sergeant’s eyes wandered off to the doorway and resumed their stare. Cosmo was relieved. He decided, however, to attempt no communication with the young police fellow whose lounging attitude, abandoned and drowsy, and almost touching elbows with him, seemed to Cosmo too suggestive to be trustworthy. And indeed, he reflected, what could he do for him?

  His excitement about this adventure was combined in a strange way with a state of inward peace which he had not known for hours. He wondered at his loyalty to the astute Attilio. He would have been justified in regarding the transaction as a scurvy trick; whereas he found that he could not help contemplating it as a matter of trust. He went on exercising his wits upon the problem of those documents (he was sure those were papers of some kind) which he had been asked to give to Cantelucci (how surprised he would be), since apparently the innkeeper was a conspirator too. Yet, he thought, it would be better to destroy them than to let them fall into the hands of the Piedmontese justice, or the Austrian military command. “I must contrive,” he thought, “to get rid of them in the boat. I can always shake my hat overboard accidentally.” But the packet would float and some boatman would be sure to find it during the day. On the other hand, by the time daylight came the handwriting would probably have become illegible. Or perhaps not? Fire, not water, was what he needed. If there had been a fire in that inexpressibly dirty guardroom he would have made use of it at once under the very noses of those wild-looking Croats. But would that have been the proper thing to do in such a hurry?

  He had not come to any conclusion before Barbone returned, accompanied by a silver-haired, meek old fellow, with a nut-brown face, bare-footed and bare-armed, and carrying a pair of sculls over his shoulder, whom Barbone pushed in front of the sergeant. The latter took his short pipe out of his mouth, spat on one side, looked at the old man with a fixed savage stare, and finally nodded. At Cosmo he did not look at all, but to Barbone he handed a key with the words, “Bring it back.” The sbirri closed round Cosmo and Barbone uttered a growl with a gesture towards the door. Why Barbone should require a key to take him out of doors Cosmo could not understand. Unless it were the key of liberty. But it was not likely that the fierce Croat and the gloomy Barbone should have indulged in symbolic actions. The mariner with the sculls on his shoulder followed the group patiently to where, on the very edge of the quay, the Austrian soldier with his musket shouldered paced to and fro across the streak of reddish light from the garrison door. He swung round and stood, very martial, in front of the group, but at the sight of the key exhibited to him by Barbone moved out of the way. The air was calm but chilly. Below the level of the quay there was the clinking of metal and the rattling of small chains, and Cosmo then discovered that the key belonged to a padlock securing the chain to which quite a lot of small rowing boats were moored. The young policeman said from behind into Cosmo’s ear, “The signore is always forgetting his cloak,” and threw it lightly on Cosmo’s shoulders. He explained also that every night all the small boats in the port were collected and secured like this on both sides of the port and the Austrians
furnished the sentry to look after them on this side. The object was that there should be no boats moving after ten o’clock, except the galley of the dogana and of course the boat of the English man-of-war.

  “Come and see me at noon at Cantelucci’s inn,” whispered Cosmo, to which the other breathed out a, “Certainly, Excellency,” feelingly before going up the steps.

  Cosmo found himself presently sitting in a boat between two sbirri. The ancient fellow shoved off and shipped his oars. From the quay, high above, Bar-bone’s voice shouted to him, “The gendarmes will take charge of your boat for the rest of the night.” The old boatman’s only answer was a deep sigh, and in a very few strokes the quay with the sentry receded into the darkness. One of the sbirri remarked in a tone of satisfaction, “Our service will be over after we have given up the signore there.” The other said, “I hope the signore will consider we have been kept late on his account.” Cosmo, who was contemplating with immense distaste the prospect of being delivered up to the gendarmes, emitted a mirthless laugh, and after a while said m a cold tone: “Why waste your time in pulling to the other side of the harbour? Put me on board the near- est vessel. I’ll soon find my way to the quay from one tartane to another, and your service would be over at once.”

  The fellow on his left assumed an astonishing seriousness: “Most of those tartanes have a dog on board. We could not expose an illustrious stranger to get bitten by one of these ugly brutes.”

  But the other had no mind for grave mockery. In a harsh and overbearing tone he ordered the boatman to pull well into the middle of the harbour away from the moored craft.

  It was like crossing a lake overshadowed by the hills with the breakwaters prolonging the shore to seaward. The old man raised and dipped his oars slowly, without a sound, and the long trails of starlight trembled on the ripples on each side of the boat. When they had progressed far enough to open the harbour entrance Cosmo detected between the end of the jetties far away — he was glancing casually about — a dark speck about the size of a man’s head, which ought not to have been there. The air was perfectly still and the stars thick on the horizon. It struck him at once that it could be nothing than either the English man-of-war’s boat or the boat of the dogana, since no others were allowed to move at night. His thoughts were, however, so busy with speculating as to what he had better do that he paid no more attention to that remarkable speck. He looked absently at the silver-haired boatman pulling an easy stroke and asked himself: Was it or was it not time to lose his hat overboard? How could he contrive to make it look plausible in this absurd calm? Then he reproached himself for reasoning as if those two low fellows (whose proximity had grown extremely irksome to him) had wits of preternatural sharpness. If he were to snatch it and fling it away they would probably con- elude that he was trying to make himself troublesome, or simply mad, or anything in the world rather than guess that he had in his hat something which he wanted to destroy. He undid quietly the clasp of his cloak and rested his hands on his knees. His guardians did not think it necessary now to hold his arms. In fact they did not seem to pay much attention to him. Cosmo asked himself for a moment whether he would stand up suddenly and jump into the water. Of course he knew that fully clothed and in his boots they would very soon get hold of him, but the object would have been attained. However, the prospect of being towed behind a boat to the custom-house quay by the collar of his coat and being led into the presence of the gendarmes looking like a drowned rat was so disagreeable that he rejected that plan.

  By that time the boat had reached little more than half way across the harbour. The great body of the shipping was merged with the shore. The nearest vessels were a polacca brig and xebec lying at anchor. Both were shadowy, and the last, with her low spars, a mere low smudge on the dim sheen of the water. From time to time the aged boatman emitted a moan. The boat seemed hardly to move. Everything afloat was silent and dark. The crews of the coasters were ashore or asleep; and if there were any dogs on board any of them they too seemed plunged in the same slumber that lay over all things of the earth, and by contrast with which the stars of heaven looked intensely wakeful. In the midst of his perplexities Cosmo enjoyed the feeling of peace that had come to him directly his trouble had begun.

  “We will be all night getting across,” growled suddenly the man on his left. . . I don’t know what

  Barbone was thinking of to get this antiquity out of his bed.”

  “I told him there was hardly any breath in my old body,” declared the boatman’s tranquil voice.

  Apparently in order to speak he had to cease rowing, for he rested on his oars while he went on in the gravelike silence. “But he raged like a devil; and rather than let him wake up all the neighbours I came out. I may just as well die in the boat as in bed.”

  Both sbirri exclaimed indignantly against Barbone, but neither offered to take the sculls. With a painful groan the old man began to pull again. Cosmo asked: “What’s that dark thing between the heads of the jetties?” One of his captors, turning his head to look, said, “That must be the galley. I wish she would come this way. We would ask her for a tow.” The other man remarked sarcastically, “No fear, they are all snoozing in her except one perhaps to keep a lookout. It’s an easy life. . . . Voga, vecchio, voga.”

  Cosmo thought suddenly that if by any chance the man-of-war boat happened to be pulling that way he would hail her without hesitation, and, surely, the officer in charge would not leave him in the hands of those villains without at least listening to his tale. Unluckily their way across the harbour did not take them near the man-of-war. The light at her mizzen peak seemed to Cosmo very far away; so that if it had not burned against the dark background of the land it would have seemed more distant than any star, and not half as brightly vigilant. He took his eyes from it and let them rest idly on the water ahead. The sbirro on his right hand emitted an immense yawn. This provided the other to mutter curses on the tediousness of all this affair. Cosmo had been too perplexed to feel bored.

  Just then as if in antagonism to those offensive manifestations he felt very alert. Moreover, the moment when something would have to be done was approaching, a tension of all his senses accumulating in a sort of all-over impatience. While in that state, staring into the night, he caught sight of the man-of-war’s boat.

  But was it? — well,it was something dark on the water, and as there was no other boat about ... It was small — well, far off and probably end on. . . . He had heard no sound of rowing . . . lying on her oars ... He could see nothing now . . well, here goes, on the chance.

  Without stirring a limb he took a long breath and let out the shout of “Boat ahoy” with all the force of his lungs. The volume of tone astonished himself. It seemed to fill the whole of the harbour so effectually that he felt he needn’t shout again and he remained as still as a statue. The effect on his neighbours was that both gave a violent start, which set the boat rolling slightly, and in their bewilderment they bent forward to peer into his face with immense eyes. After a time one of them asked in an awestruck murmur, “What’s the matter, signore?” and seized his cloak. The other, Cosmo heard distinctly whisper to himself, “ That was a war cry,” while he also grabbed the cloak. The clasp being undone, it slipped off Cosmo’s shoulders and then they clung to his arms. It struck Cosmo as remarkable that the old boatman had not ceased his feeble rowing for a moment.

  The shout had done Cosmo good. It reestablished his self-respect somehow and it sent the blood moving through his veins as if indeed it had been a war cry. He had shaken their nerves. If they had not remained perfectly motionless holding his arms there would have started a scrimmage in that boat which would certainly have ended in the water. But their grip was feeble. They did nothing, but, bending towards each other in front of Cosmo till their heads almost touched, watched his lips from which such an extraordinary shout had come. Cosmo stared stonily ahead as if unconscious of their existence, and again he had that strange illusion of a dark spot ahead of th
e boat. He thought, “That’s no illusion. What a fool I was. It must be a mooring buoy.” A couple of minutes elapsed before he thought again, “That old fellow will be right into it, presently.”

  He didn’t consider it his business to utter a warning because the bump he expected happened almost immediately. He had misjudged the distance. Owing to the slow pace the impact was very slight, slighter even than Cosmo expected against such a heavy body as a mooring buoy would be. It was really more like a feeble hollow sound than a shock. Cosmo, who was prepared for it, was really the one that felt it at once, and the ancient boatman looked sharply over his shoulder. He uttered no sound and did not even attempt to rise from the thwart. He simply, as it seemed to Cosmo, let go the oars. The sbirri only became aware of something having happened after the hollow bump was repeated, and Cosmo had become aware that the object on the water was not a buoy but another boat not much bigger than theirs. Then they both exclaimed and in their surprise their grip relaxed. One of them cried in astonishment, “An empty boat.” It was indeed a surprising occurrence. With no particular purpose in his mind Cosmo stood up while one of the sbirri stood up either to catch hold of the boat or push it away, for the two boats were alongside each other by that time. A strange voice in the dark said very loud: “The man in the hat,” and as if by enchantment three figures appeared standing in a row. Cosmo had not even time to feel surprised. The two boats started knocking about considerably, and he felt himself seized by the collar and one arm and dragged away violently from between the two sbirri by the power of irresistible arms which as suddenly let him go as if he were an inanimate object, and he fell heavily in the bottom of the second boat almost before his legs were altogether clear of the other. During this violent translation his hat fell off his head without any scheming on his part.

  He was not exactly frightened but he was excusably flustered. One is not kidnapped like this without any preliminaries every day. He was painfully aware of being in the way of his new captors. He was kicked in the ribs and his legs were trodden upon. He heard blows being struck against hard substances which he knew were human skulls because of the abortive yells ending in groans. There was a determination and ferocity in this attack combined with the least possible amount of noise. All he could hear were the heavy blows and the hard breathing of the assailants. Then came a sort of helpless splash. “Somebody will get drowned,” he thought.