‘Tuan, a boat is coming.’
The lalang grass prevented Izzart from seeing anything.
‘Shout to them,’ he said.
Hassan slipped out of view and made his way along the branch of a tree that overhung the water; he cried out and waved. Presently Izzart heard voices. There was a rapid conversation between the boy and the occupants of the boat, and then the boy came back.
‘They saw us capsize, Tuan,’ he said, ‘and they came as soon as the Bore passed. There’s a long-house on the other side. If you will cross the river they will give us sarongs and food and we can sleep there.’
Izzart for a moment felt that he could not again trust himself on the face of the treacherous water.
‘What about the other tuan?’ he asked.
‘They do not know.’
‘If he’s drowned they must find the body.’
‘Another boat has gone up-stream.’
Izzart did not know what to do. He was numb. Hassan put his arm round his shoulder and raised him to his feet. He made his way through the thick grass to the edge of the water, and there he saw a dug-out with two Dyaks in it. The river now once more was calm and sluggish; the great wave had passed on and no one would have dreamed that so short a while before the placid surface was like a stormy sea. The Dyaks repeated to him what they had already told the boy. Izzart could not bring himself to speak. He felt that if he said a word he would burst out crying. Hassan helped him to get in, and the Dyaks began to pull across. He fearfully wanted something to smoke, but his cigarettes and his matches, both in a hip-pocket, were soaking. The passage of the river seemed endless. The night fell and when they reached the bank the first stars were shining. He stepped ashore and one of the Dyaks took him up to the long-house. But Hassan seized the paddle he had dropped and with the other pushed out into the stream. Two or three men and some children came down to meet Izzart and he climbed to the house amid a babel of conversation. He went up the ladder and was led with greetings and excited comment to the space where the young men slept. Rattan mats were hurriedly laid to make him a couch and he sank down on them. Someone brought him a jar of arak and he took a long drink; it was rough and fiery, burning his throat, but it warmed his heart. He slipped off his shirt and trousers and put on a dry sarong which someone lent him. By chance he caught sight of the yellow new moon lying on her back, and it gave him a keen, almost a sensual, pleasure. He could not help thinking that he might at that moment be a corpse floating up the river with the tide. The moon had never looked to him more lovely. He began to feel hungry and he asked for rice. One of the women went into a room to prepare it. He was more himself now, and he began to think again of the explanations he would make at Kuala Solor. No one could really blame him because he had gone to sleep; he certainly wasn’t drunk, Hutchinson would bear him out there, and how was he to suspect that the steersman would be such a damned fool? It was just rotten luck. But he couldn’t think of Campion without a shudder. At last a platter of rice was brought him, and he was just about to start eating when a man ran hurriedly along and came up to him.
‘The tuan’s come,’ he cried.
‘What tuan?’
He jumped up. There was a commotion about the doorway and he stepped forward. Hassan was coming quickly towards him out of the darkness, and then he heard a voice.
‘Izzart. Are you there?’
Campion advanced towards him.
‘Well, here we are again. By God, that was a pretty near thing, wasn’t it? You seem to have made yourself nice and comfortable. My heavens, I could do with a drink.’
His dank clothes clung round him, and he was muddy and dishevelled. But he was in excellent spirits.
‘I didn’t know where the hell they were bringing me. I’d made up my mind that I should have to spend the night on the bank. I thought you were drowned.’
‘Here’s some arak,’ said Izzart.
Campion put his mouth to the jar and drank and spluttered and drank again.
‘Muck, but by God it’s strong.’ He looked at Izzart with a grin of his broken and discoloured teeth. ‘I say, old man, you look as though you’d be all the better for a wash.’
‘I’ll wash later.’
‘All right, so will I. Tell them to get me a sarong. How did you get out?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘I thought I was done for. I owe my life to these two sportsmen here.’ He indicated with a cheery nod two of the Dyak prisoners whom Izzart vaguely recognized as having been part of their crew. ‘They were hanging on to that blasted boat on each side of me and somehow they cottoned on to it that I was down and out. I couldn’t have lasted another minute. They made signs to me that we could risk having a shot at getting to the bank, but I didn’t think I had the strength. By George, I’ve never been so blown in all my life. I don’t know how they managed it, but somehow they got hold of the mattress we’d been lying on, and they made it into a roll. They’re sportsmen they are. I don’t know why they didn’t just save themselves without bothering about me. They gave it me. I thought it a damned poor lifebelt, but I saw the force of the proverb about a drowning man clutching at a straw. I caught hold of the damned thing and between them somehow or other they dragged me ashore.’
The danger from which he had escaped made Campion excited and voluble; but Izzart hardly listened to what he said. He heard once more, as distinctly as though the words rang now through the air, Campion’s agonized cry for help, and he felt sick with terror. The blind panic raced down his nerves. Campion was talking still, but was he talking to conceal his thoughts? Izzart looked into those bright blue eyes and sought to read the sense behind the flow of words. Was there a hard glint in them or something of cynical mockery? Did he know that Izzart, leaving him to his fate, had cut and run? He flushed deeply. After all, what was there that he could have done? At such a moment it was each for himself and the devil take the hindmost. But what would they say in Kuala Solor if Campion told them that Izzart had deserted him? He ought to have stayed, he wished now with all his heart that he had, but then, then it was stronger than himself, he couldn’t. Could anyone blame him? No one who had seen that fierce and seething torrent. Oh, the water and the exhaustion, so that he could have cried!
‘If you’re as hungry as I am you’d better have a tuck in at this rice,’ he said.
Campion ate voraciously, but when Izzart had taken a mouthful or two he found that he had no appetite. Campion talked and talked. Izzart listened suspiciously. ‘He felt that he must be alert and he drank more arak. He began to feel a little drunk.
‘I shall get into the devil of a row at KS’ he said tentatively.
‘I don’t know why.’
‘I was told off to look after you. They won’t think it was very clever of me to let you get nearly drowned.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of the damned fool of a steersman. After all, the important thing is that we’re saved. By George, I thought I was finished once. I shouted out to you. I don’t know if you heard me.’
‘No, I didn’t hear anything. There was such a devil of a row, wasn’t there?’
‘Perhaps you’d got away before. I don’t know exactly when you did get away.’
Izzart looked at him sharply. Was it his fancy that there was an odd look in Campion’s eyes?
‘There was such an awful confusion,’ he said. ‘I was just about down and out. My boy threw me over an oar. He gave me to understand you were all right. He told me you’d got ashore.’
The oar! He ought to have given Campion the oar and told Hassan, the strong swimmer, to give him his help. Was it his fancy again that Campion gave him a quick and searching glance?
‘I wish I could have been of more use to you,’ said Izzart.
‘Oh, I’m sure you had enough to do to look after yourself,’ answered Campion.
The headman brought them cups of arak, and they both drank a great deal. Izzart’s head began to spin and he suggested that they should turn in. Beds had been prepared
for them and mosquito nets fixed. They were to set out at dawn on the rest of their journey down the river. Campion’s bed was next to his, and in a few minutes he heard him snoring. He had fallen asleep the moment he lay down. The young men of the long-house and the prisoners of the boat’s crew went on talking late into the night. Izzart’s head now was aching horribly and he could not think. When Hassan roused him as day broke it seemed to him that he had not slept at all. Their clothes had been washed and dried, but they were bedraggled objects as they walked along the narrow pathway to the river where the prahu was waiting for them. They rowed leisurely. The morning was lovely and the great stretch of placid water gleamed in the early light.
‘By George, it’s fine to be alive,’ said Campion.
He was grubby and unshaved. He took long breaths, and his twisted mouth was half open with a grin. You could tell that he found the air singularly good to breathe. He was delighted with the blue sky and the sunshine and the greenness of the trees. Izzart hated him. He was sure that this morning there was a difference in his manner. He did not know what to do. He had a mind to throw himself on his mercy. He had behaved like a cad, but he was sorry, he would give anything to have the chance again, but anyone might have done what he did, and if Campion gave him away he was ruined. He could never stay in Sembulu; his name would be mud in Borneo and the Straits Settlements. If he made his confession to Campion he could surely get Campion to promise to hold his tongue. But would he keep his promise? He looked at him, a shifty little man: how could he be relied on? Izzart thought of what he had said the night before. It wasn’t the truth, of course, but who could know that? At all events who could prove that he hadn’t honestly thought that Campion was safe? Whatever Campion said, it was only his word against Izzart’s; he could laugh and shrug his shoulders and say that Campion had lost his head and didn’t know what he was talking about. Besides, it wasn’t certain that Campion hadn’t accepted his story; in that frightful struggle for life he could be very sure of nothing. He had a temptation to go back to the subject, but he was afraid if he did that he would excite suspicion in Campion’s mind. He must hold his tongue. That was his only chance of safety. And when they got to KS he would get in his story first.
‘I should be completely happy now,’ said Campion, ‘if I only had something to smoke.’
‘We shall be able to get some stinkers on board.’
Campion gave a little laugh.
‘Human beings are very unreasonable,’ he said. ‘At the first moment I was so glad to be alive that I thought of nothing else, but now I’m beginning to regret the loss of my notes and my photographs and my shaving tackle.’
Izzart formulated the thought which had lurked at the back of his mind, but which all through the night he had refused to admit into his consciousness.
‘I wish to God he’d been drowned. Then I’d have been safe.’
‘There she is,’ cried Campion suddenly.
Izzart looked round. They were at the mouth of the river and there was the Sultan Ahmed waiting for them. Izzart’s heart sank: he had forgotten that she had an English skipper and that he would have to be told the story of their adventure. What would Campion say? The skipper was called Bredon, and Izzart had met him often at Kuala Solor. He was a little bluff man, with a black moustache, and a breezy manner.
‘Hurry up,’ he called out to them, as they rowed up, ‘I’ve been waiting for you since dawn.’ But when they climbed on board his face fell. ‘Hullo, what’s the matter with you?’
‘Give us a drink and you shall hear all about it,’ said Campion, with his crooked grin.
‘Come along.’
They sat down under the awning. On a table were glasses, a bottle of whisky and soda-water. The skipper gave an order and in a few minutes they were noisily under way.
‘We were caught in the Bore,’ said Izzart.
He felt he must say something. His mouth was horribly dry notwithstanding the drink.
‘Were you, by Jove? You’re lucky not to have been drowned. What happened?’
He addressed himself to Izzart because he knew him, but it was Campion who answered. He related the whole incident, accurately, and Izzart listened with strained attention. Campion spoke in the plural when he told the early part of the story, and then, as he came to the moment when they were thrown into the water, changed to the singular. At first it was what they had done and now it was what happened to him. He left Izzart out of it. Izzart did not know whether to be relieved or alarmed. Why did he not mention him? Was it because in that mortal struggle for life he had thought of nothing but himself or – did he know?
‘And what happened to you?’ said Captain Bredon, turning to Izzart.
Izzart was about to answer when Campion spoke.
‘Until I got over to the other side of the river I thought he was drowned. I don’t know how he got out. I expect he hardly knows himself.’
‘It was touch and go,’ said Izzart with a laugh.
Why had Campion said that? He caught his eye. He was sure now that there was a gleam of amusement in it. It was awful not to be certain. He was frightened. He was ashamed. He wondered if he could not so guide the conversation, either now or later, as to ask Campion whether that was the story he was going to tell in Kuala Solor. There was nothing in it to excite anyone’s suspicions. But if nobody else knew, Campion knew. He could have killed him.
‘Well, I think you’re both of you damned lucky to be alive,’ said the skipper.
It was but a short run to Kuala Solor, and as they steamed up the Sembulu river Izzart moodily watched the banks. On each side were the mangroves and the nipahs washed by the water, and behind, the dense green of the jungle; here and there, among fruit trees, were Malay houses on piles. Night fell as they docked. Goring, of the police, came on board and shook hands with them. He was living at the rest-house just then, and as he set about his work of seeing the native passengers he told them they would find another man, Porter by name, staying there too. They would all meet at dinner. The boys took charge of their kit, and Campion and Izzart strolled along. They bathed and changed, and at half past eight the four of them assembled in the common-room for gin pahits.
‘I say, what’s this Bredon tells me about your being nearly drowned?’ said Goring as he came in.
Izzart felt himself flush, but before he could answer Campion broke in, and it seemed certain to Izzart that he spoke in order to give the story as he chose. He felt hot with shame. Not a word was spoken in disparagement of him, not a word was said of him at all; he wondered if those two men who listened, Goring and Porter, thought it strange that he should be left out. He looked at Campion intently as he proceeded with his narration; he told it rather humorously; he did not disguise the danger in which they had been, but he made a joke of it, so that the two listeners laughed at the quandary in which they found themselves.
‘A thing that’s tickled me since,’ said Campion, ‘is that when I got over to the other bank I was black with mud from head to foot. I felt I really ought to jump in the river and have a wash, but you know I felt I’d been in that damned river as much as ever I wanted, and I said to myself; No, by George, I’ll go dirty. And when I got into the long-house and saw Izzart as black as I was, I knew he’d felt just like I did.’
They laughed and Izzart forced himself to laugh too. He noticed that Campion had told the story in precisely the same words as he had used when he told it to the skipper of the Sultan Ahmed. There could be only one explanation of that; he knew, he knew everything, and had made up his mind exactly what story to tell. The ingenuity with which Campion gave the facts and yet left out what must be to Izzart’s discredit was devilish. But why was he holding his hand? It wasn’t in him not to feel contempt and resentment for the man who had callously deserted him in that moment of dreadful peril. Suddenly, in a flash of inspiration Izzart understood: he was keeping the truth to tell to Willis, the Resident. Izzart had gooseflesh as he thought of confronting Willis. He could deny, b
ut would his denials serve him? Willis was no fool, and he would get at Hassan; Hassan could not be trusted to be silent; Hassan would give him away. Then he would be done for. Willis would suggest that he had better go home.
He had a racking headache, and after dinner he went to his room, for he wanted to be alone so that he could devise a plan of action. And then a thought came to him which made him go hot and cold: he knew that the secret which he had guarded so long was a secret to nobody. He was on a sudden certain of it. Why should he have those bright eyes and that swarthy skin? Why should he speak Malay with such ease and have learned Dyak so quickly? Of course they knew. What a fool he was ever to think that they believed that story of his, about the Spanish grandmother! They must have laughed up their sleeves when he told it, and behind his back they had called him a damned nigger. And now another thought came to him, torturing, and he asked himself whether it was on account of that wretched drop of native blood in him that when he heard Campion cry out his nerve failed him. After all, anyone might at that moment have been seized with panic; and why in God’s name should he sacrifice his life to save a man’s whom he cared nothing for? It was insane. But of course in KS they would say it was only what they expected; they would make no allowances.
At last he went to bed, but when, after tossing about recklessly for God knows how long, he fell asleep, he was awakened by a fearful dream; he seemed to be once more in that raging torrent, with the boat turning, turning; and then there was the desperate clutching at the gunwale, and the agony as it slipped out of his hands, and the water that roared over him. He was wide awake before dawn. His only chance was to see Willis and get his story in first; and he thought over carefully what he was going to say, and chose the very words he meant to use.
Collected Short Stories: Volume 1 Page 54
