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Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer - Romance

J >> Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer >> Romance




And now the time was approaching; the time to awake and step forth out
of the temple of sunshine and love--of whispers and silences. It had
come. The night before both Williams and Sebright had been on deck,
working the ship with an anxious care to take the utmost advantage of
every favouring flaw in the contrary breeze. In the morning I was told
there was a norther brewing. A norther is a tempestuous gale. I saw no
signs of it. The realm of the sun, like the vanished one of the stars,
appeared to my senses to be profoundly asleep, and breathing as gently
as a child upon the ship. The _Lion_, too, seemed to lie wrapped in an
enchanted slumber from the water-line to the tops of her upright masts.
And yet she moved with the breath of the world, but so imperceptibly
that it was the coast that seemed to be nearing her like a line of
low vapour blown along the water. Between Williams and Sebright Castro
pointed with his one arm, and a splutter of guttural syllables fell like
hail out of his lips. The other two seemed incredulous. He stamped with
both his feet angrily. Finally they went below together, to look at the
chart, I suppose. They came up again very fast, one after another, and
stood in a row, looking on as before. Three more dissimilar human beings
it would have been difficult to imagine.

Dazzling white patches, about the size of a man's hand, came out between
sky and water. They grew in width, and ran together with a hummocky
outline into a continuous undulation of sand-dunes. Here and there this
rampart had a gap like a breach made by guns. Mrs. Williams, behind me,
blew her nose faintly; her eyes were red, but she did not look at us.
No eye was turned our way, and the spell of the coast was on her, too. A
low, dark headland broke out to view through the dunes, and stood
there conspicuous amongst the heaps of dazzling sand, like a small man
frowning. A voice on deck pronounced:

"That's right. Here's his landmark. The fellow knew very well what he
was talking about."

It was Sebright's voice, and Castro, strolling away triumphantly,
affected to turn his back on the land. He had recognized the formation
of the coast about the inlet long before anybody else could distinguish
the details. His word had been doubted. He was offended, and passed us
by, wrapping himself up closely. One of Seraphina's locks blew against
my cheek, and this last effort of the breeze remained snared in the
silken meshes of her hair.

"There's not enough wind to fill the sail of a toy boat," grumbled
Sebright; "and you can't pull this heavy gig ashore with only that
one-armed man at the other oar." He was sorry he could not send us off
with four good rowers. The norther might be coming on before they could
return to the ship, and--apart from the presence of four English sailors
on the coast being sure to get talked about--there was the difficulty
in getting them back on board in Havana. We could, no doubt, smuggle
ourselves in; but six people would make too much of a show. On the other
hand, the absence of four men out of the ship's company could not be
accounted for very well to the authorities. "We can't say they all died,
and we threw them overboard. It would be too startling. No; you must go
alone, and leave us at the first breath of wind; and that, I fear, 'll
be the first of the norther, too."

He threw his head back, and hailed, "Do you see anything of that
schooner from aloft there?"

"Nothing of her, sir," answered a man perched, with dangling feet,
astride the very end of the topsail yard-arm. He paused, scanned
the space from under the flat of his hand, and added, shouting with
deliberation, "There's--a--haze--to seaward, sir." The ship, with her
decks sprinkled over with men in twos and threes, sent up to his ears a
murmur of satisfaction.

If we could not see her, she could not see us. This was a favourable
circumstance. To the infinite gratification of everyone on board, it
had been discovered at daylight that the schooner had lost touch with
us during the hours of darkness--either through unskillful handling,
or from some accidental disadvantage of the variable wind. I had been
informed of it, directly I showed myself on deck in the morning, by
several men who had radiant grins, as if some great piece of luck had
befallen them, one and all. They shared their unflagging attention
between the land and the sea-horizon, pointing out to each other,
with their tattooed arms, the features of the coast, nodding knowingly
towards the open. At midday most of them brought out their dinners on
deck, and could be seen forward, each with a tin plate in the left hand,
gesticulating amicably with clasp knives. A small white handkerchief
hung from Mrs. Williams' fingers, and now and then she touched her eyes
lightly, one after the other. Her husband and Sebright, with a grave
mien, stamped busily around the binnacle aft, changing places, making
way for each other, stooping in turns to glance carefully along the
compass card at the low bluff, like two gunners laying a piece of
heavy ordnance for an important shot. The steward, emerging out of the
companion, rang a handbell violently, and remained scared at the failure
of that appeal. After waiting for a moment, he produced a further feeble
tinkle, and sank down out of sight, with resignation.

A white sun, as if blazing with the pallor of fury, swung past the
zenith in a profound and universal stillness. There was not a wrinkle on
the sea; it presented a lustrous and glittering level, like the
polished facet of a gem. In the cabin we sat down to the meal, not even
pretending a desire to eat, exchanging vague phrases, hanging our heads
over the empty plates. But the regular footsteps of the boatswain
left in charge hesitated, stopped near the skylight. He said in an
imperfectly assured voice, "Seems as if there was a steadier draught
coming now." At this we rose from the table impetuously, as though he
had shouted an alarm of fire, and Mrs. Williams, with a little cry, ran
round to Seraphina. Leaving the two women locked in a silent embrace,
the captain, Sebright and myself hurried out on deck.

Every man in the ship had done the same. Even the shiny black cook had
come out of his galley, and was already comfortably seated on the rail,
baring his white teeth to the sunshine.

"Just about enough to blow out a farthing dip," said Sebright, in a
disappointed mutter.

He thought, however, we had better not wait for more. There would be too
much presently. Some sailors hauled the boat alongside, the rest lined
the rail as for a naval spectacle, and Williams stared blankly. We were
waiting for Seraphina, who appeared, attended by Mrs. Williams, looking
more kind, bloodless, and ascetic than ever. But my girl's cheeks
glowed; her eyes sparkled audaciously. She had done up her hair in some
way that made it fit her head like a cap. It became her exceedingly, and
the decision of her movements, the white serenity of her brow, dazzled
me as if I had never seen her before. She seemed less childlike, older,
ripe for this adventure in a new development of strength and courage.
She inclined her head slowly at the gaping sailors, who had taken their
caps off.

As soon as she appeared, Castro, who had been leaning against the
bulwark, started up, and with a muttered "_Adios, Senores_," went down
the overside ladder and ensconced himself in the bow of the boat. The
leave-taking was hurried over. Williams gave no sign of feeling, except,
perhaps, for the greater intensity of his stare, which passed beyond our
shoulders in the very act of handshaking. Sebright helped Seraphina down
into the boat, and ran up again nimbly. Mrs. Williams, with her slim
hand held in both mine, uttered a few incoherent words--about men's
promises and the happiness of women, as I thought; but, truth to say,
my own suppressed excitement was too considerable for close attention.
I only knew that I had given her my confidence, that complete and utter
confidence which neither wisdom nor power alone, can command. And,
suddenly, it occurred to me that the heiress of a splendid name and
fortune, down in the boat there, had no better friend in the world than
this woman, who had come to us out of the waste of the sea, opening her
simple heart to our need, like a pious and naive hermit in a wilderness
throwing open the door of his cell to strange wayfarers.

"Mrs. Williams," I stammered. "If we--if I--there's no saying what may
happen to any of us. If she ever comes to you--if she ever is in want of
help...."

"Yes, yes. Always, always--like my own daughter."

And the good woman broke down, as if, indeed, I were taking her own
daughter away.

"Nonsense, Mary!" Williams advanced, muttering tremendously. "They are
not going round the world. Dare say get ashore in time for supper."

He stared through her without expression, as if she had been thin air,
but she seized his arm, of course, and he gave me, then, an amazingly
rapid wink which, I suppose, meant that I should go....

"All right there?" asked Sebright from above, as soon as I had taken my
seat in the stern sheets by the side of Seraphina. He was standing on
the poop deck ready with a sign for letting go the end of our painter
on deck; but before I could answer in the affirmative, Castro, ensconced
forward under his hat, drew his ready blade across the rope, as it were
a throat.

At once a narrow strip of water opened between the boat and the ship,
and our long-prepared departure, hastened thus by half a second, seemed
to strike everybody dumb with surprise, as if we had taken wings to
ourselves to fly away. Hastily I grasped the tiller to give the boat a
sheer, and heard a sort of loud gasp in the air above. A row of heads,
posed on chins all along the rail, stared after us with unanimous
fixity. Mrs. Williams averted her face on her husband's shoulder. Behind
the couple, Sebright raised his cap gravely.

Our little sail filled to a breeze which was much too feeble to produce
a perceptible effect on the ship, and we left behind us her towering
form, as one recedes from a tall white spire on a plain. I laid the
boat's head straight for the dwarf headland, marking the mouth of the
inlet on the interminable range of sand-dunes. We drove on with a smart
ripple, but before we felt sufficiently settled to exchange a few words
the animated sound languished suddenly, paused altogether, and, with
a renewed murmur under our feet seemed to lose itself below the glassy
waters.




CHAPTER SEVEN

The calm had returned. The sea, changing from the warm glitter of a
gem, and attuned to the grays and blacks of space, resembled a monstrous
cinder under a sky of ashes.

The sun had disappeared, smothered in these clouds that had formed
themselves all at once and everywhere, like some swift corruption of
the upper air. For the best part of the afternoon the ship and the boat
remained lying at right angles, within half a mile of each other. What
light was left in the world, cut off from the source of life, seemed to
sicken with a strange decay. The long stretch of sands and the sails of
the motionless vessel stood out lividly pale in universal gloom. And
yet the state of the atmosphere was such that we could see clear-cut the
very folds in the steep face of the dunes, and the figures of the people
moving on the poop of the _Lion_. There was always somebody there that
had the aspect of watching us. Then, with some excitement, we saw them
on board haul up the mainsail and lower the gig.

The four oars beat the sombre water, rising and falling apparently
in the same place. She was an interminable time coming on, but as she
neared us I was surprised at her dashing speed. Sebright, who steered,
laid her alongside smartly, and two of his men, clambering over without
a word, lowered our lug at once.

"We came to reef your sail for you. You couldn't manage that very well
with a one-armed crew," said the young mate quietly in the enormous
stillness. In his opinion, we couldn't expect now any wind till the
first squall came down. This flurry, as he called it, would send us in
smoking, and he was sure it would help the ship, as well, into Havana,
in about twenty-four hours. He didn't think that it would come _very_
heavy at first; and, once landed, we need not care how hard it blew.

He tendered me over the gunwale a pocket-flask covered with leather,
and with a screwed silver stopper in the shape of a cup. It was from the
captain; full of prime rum. We were pretty sure to get wet. He thrust,
also, into my hands a gray woollen shawl. Mrs. Williams thought my young
lady might be glad of it at night. "The dear old woman has shut herself
up inside their stateroom, and is praying for you now," he concluded.
"Look alive, boys."

His men did not answer him, but at some words he addressed to Castro,
the latter, in the bows and looking at the coast, growled with a surly
impatience. He was perfectly sure of the entrance. Had been in and out
several times. Yes. At night, too. Sebright then turned to me. After
all, it was not so difficult. The inlet bore due south from us, and the
wind would come true from the north. Always did in these bursts. I had
only to keep dead before it. "The clouds will light you in at the last,"
he added meaningly, glancing upwards.

The two sailors, having finished reefing, hoisted, lowered, and hoisted
again the yard to see that the gear ran clear, and without one look
at us, stepped back into the gig, and sat down in their places. For a
moment longer we lay together, touching sides. Sebright extended his
hand from boat to boat.

"You are in God's care now, Kemp," he said, looking up at me, and with
an unexpected depth of feeling in his tone. "Take no turn with the sheet
on any account, and if you feel it coming too heavy, let fly and chance
it. Did I tell you we have sighted the schooner from aloft? No? We can
just make her out from the main-yard away astern under the land. That
don't matter now.... Senorita, I kiss your hands." He liked to air his
Spanish.... "Keep cool whatever happens. Dead before it--mind. And count
on sixteen days from to-morrow. Well. No more. Give way, boys."

He never looked back. We watched the boat being hoisted and secured.
Shortly afterwards, as we were observing the Lion shortening sail, the
first of the rain descended between her and us like a lowered veil.
For a time she remained mistily visible, dark and gaunt with her bared
spars. The downpour redoubled; she disappeared; and our hearts were
stirred to a faster beat.

The shower fell on us, around us, descending perpendicularly, with a
steady force; and the thunder rolled far off, as if coming from under
the sea. Sometimes the muffled rumbling stopped, and let us hear plainly
the gentle hiss and the patter of the drops falling upon a vast expanse.
Suddenly, mingled with a loud detonation right over our heads, a burst
of light outlined under the bellying strip of our sail the pointed crown
of Castro's hat, reposing on a heap of black clothing huddled in the
bows. The darkness swallowed it all. I swung Seraphina in front of me,
and made her sit low on the stern sheets beneath my feet. A lot of foam
boiled up around the boat, and we had the sensation of having been sent
flying from a catapult.

Everything was black--perfectly black. At intervals, headlong gusts of
rain swept over our heads. I suppose I did keep sufficiently cool, but
in every flash of lightning the wind, the sea, the clouds, the rain, and
the boat appeared to rush together thundering upon the coast. The line
of sands, bordered with a belt of foam, zigzagged dazzlingly upon an
earth as black as the clouds; only the headland, with every vision,
remained sombre and unmoved. At last it rose up right before the boat.
Blue lightning streamed on a lane of tumbling waters at its foot. Was
this the entrance? With the vague notion of shortening sail, I let the
sheet go from my hand. There was a jerk, the crack of snapped wood,
and the next flash showed me Castro emerging from the ruins of mast and
sail. He uprose, hurling the wreck from him overboard, then flickered
out of sight with his arm waving to the left, and I bore accordingly
on the tiller. In a moment I saw him again, erect forward, with the arm
pointing to the right, and I obeyed his signal. The clouds, straining
with water and fire, were, indeed, lighting us on our way. A wave
swelled astern, chasing us in; rocking frightfully, we glanced past a
stationary mass of foam--a sandbar--breakers.... It was terrible....
Suddenly, the motion of the boat changed, and the flickers of lightning
fell into a small, land-locked basin. The wind tore deep furrows in
it, howling and scuffling behind the dunes. Spray flew from the whole
surface, the entire pool of a bay seemed to heave bodily upwards, and
I saw Castro again, with his face to me this time. His black cloak was
blowing straight out from his throat, his mouth yawned wide; he
shouted directions, but in an instant darkness sealed my eyes with its
impenetrable impress. It was impossible to steer now; the boat swung and
reeled where she listed; a violent shock threw me sideways off my seat.
I felt her turning over, and, gathering Seraphina in my arms, I leaped
out before she capsized. I leaped clear out into shallow water.

I should never in my life have thought myself capable of such a feat,
and yet I did it with assurance, with no effort that I can remember.
More than that--I managed, after the leap, to keep my feet in the
clinging, staggering clutch of water charged with sand, which swirled
heavily about my knees. It kept on hurling itself at my legs from
behind, while I waded across the narrow strip of sand with an inspired
firmness of step defying all the power of the elements. I felt the
harder ground at last, but not before I had caught a momentary glimpse
of a black and bulky object tumbling over and over in the advancing and
withdrawing liquid flurry of the beach.

"Sit still here on the ground," I shouted to Seraphina, though flights
of spray enveloped us completely. "I am going back for Castro."

I faced about, putting my head down. He had been undoubtedly knocked
over; and an old man, with only one hand to help himself with, ran a
very serious risk of being buffeted into insensibility, and thus coming
to his death in some four feet of water. The violent glare disclosed a
body, entangled in a cloak, rolling about helplessly between land and
water, as it were. I dashed on in the dark; a wave went over my head
as I stooped, nearly waist-deep, groping. His rotary motion, in that
smother, made it extremely difficult to obtain any sort of hold. A
little more, and he would have knocked my legs from under me, but it
was as if my grim determination were by itself of a saving nature. He
submitted to being hauled up the beach, passively, like a sack. It was
a heavy drag on the sand; I felt him bump behind me on the edge of the
harder ground, and a deluge fell uninterruptedly from above. He lay
prone on his face, like a corpse, between Seraphina and myself. We could
not remain there, however.

But where to go? What to do? In what direction to look for a refuge? Was
there any shelter near by? How were we to reach it? How were we to
move at all? No doubt he had expired; and the earth, swept, deluged,
glimmering fiercely and devastated with an awful uproar, appeared no
longer habitable. A thunder-clap seemed to crash new life into him;
the world flared all round, as if turning to a spark, and he was seen
sitting up dazedly, like one called up from the dead. Through it all he
had preserved his hat.

It was fixed firmly down under his chin with a handkerchief, the
side rims over his ears like flaps, and, for the rest, presenting the
appearance of a coal-scuttle bonnet behind, as well as in front. We
followed its peculiar aspect. Driving on under this indestructible
headgear, he flickered in and out of the world, while, with entwined
arms and leaning back against the wind with all our might, Seraphina
and myself were borne along in his train. He knew of a shelter; and this
knowledge, perhaps, and also his evident familiarity with the topography
of the country, made him appear indomitably confident in the storm.

A small plain of coarse grass was bounded by the steep spur of a rise.
To the left a little river would burst, all at once, in all its windings
into a bluish sulphurous glow; and between the crashes of thunder there
was heard the long-drawn, whistling swish of the rushes and cane-brakes
springing on the boggy ground. We skirted the rise. The rain beat
against it; the lightning showed its streaming and furrowed surface.
We stumbled in the gusts. We felt under our feet, mud, sand, rocky
inequalities of the ground, and the moving stones in the bed of a
torrent, which broke headlong against our ankles. The entrance of a deep
ravine opened.

Its lower sides palpitated with the ceaseless tossing of dwarf trees
and bushes; and, motionless above the sombre tumult of the slopes, the
monumental stretch of bare rock rose on high, level at the top, and
emitting a ghastly yellow sheen in the flashes. The thunderclaps rolled
ponderously between the narrowing walls of that chasm, that was all
aflame one moment, and all black the next. A torrent springing at its
head, and dashing with inaudible fury along the bottom, seemed to gleam
placidly amongst the rounded forms of inky bushes and pale boulders
below our path. Enormous eddies of wind from above made us stop short
and totter breathless, clinging to each other.

Castro sustained Seraphina on the other side; but frequently he had
to leave us and move ahead, looking for the way. There was, in fact, a
half-obliterated path winding along the less steep of the two sides; and
we struggled after our guide with the unthinking fortitude of despair.
He was being disclosed to us so suddenly, extinguished so swiftly, that
he appeared, always, as if motionless and posturing in a variety of
climbing attitudes. The rise of the bottom was very steep, and the last
hundred yards really stiff. We did them practically on our hands and
knees. The dislodged stones bounded away from under our feet, unheard,
like puff-balls.

At the top I tried to make of my body a shelter for Seraphina. The wind
howled and roared over us. "Up! _Vamos!_ The worst is yet before us,"
shrieked Castro in my ear.

What could he mean by this? The play of lightning opened to view only
a vast and rolling upland. Fire flowed in sheets undulating with the
expanses of long grass amongst the trees, here and there, in coal-black
clumps, and flashed violently against a low edge of forests very dark
and far away.

"Let us go!" he cried. "Courage, Senorita!"

Courage! The populace said of her that she had never needed to put
her foot to the ground. If courage consists, for a being so tender, in
toiling and enduring without faltering and plaint,--even to the very
limit of physical power,--then she was the most courageous woman in the
world, as she was the most charming, most faithful, most generous, and
the most worthy of love. I tried not to think of her racked limbs, for
the very pain and pity of it. We retraced our steps, but now following
the edge of that precipice out of which we had emerged. I had
peremptorily insisted on carrying her. She put her arms round my neck
and, to my uplifted heart, she weighed no heavier than a feather.
Castro, grasping my arm, guided my steps and gave me support against the
wind.

There was a distinct lull. Even the thunder had rolled away, dwindling
to a deep mutter. Castro fell on his knees in front of me.

"It is here," I heard him scream.

I set Seraphina down. A hooked dart of fire tore in two the thick canopy
of clouds. I started back from the edge.

"What! Here?" I yelled.

"Senor--_Si!_ There is a cavern below...."

I had seen a ledge clinging to the face of the rock.

It was a cornice inclining downwards upon the wall of the precipice, as
you see, sometimes, a flight of stairs built against the outside wall of
a house. And it resembled a stair roughly, with long, sloping steps, wet
with rain.

"_Por Dios_, Senor, do not let us stay to think here, or we shall perish
in this tempest."

He howled, gesticulated, shrieked with all the strength of his lungs.
He knew these tornadoes. Brute beasts would be found lying dead in the
fields in the morning. This was the beginning only. The lightning
showed his kneeling form, the eager upturned face, and a finger pointing
urgently into the abyss. The wind was nothing! Nothing to what would
come after. As he shrieked these words I was feeling the crust of the
earth vibrate, absolutely vibrate, under the soles of my feet, with the
sound of thunder.

He unfastened his cloak, and was seen to struggle above his head with
the hovering and flapping cloth, as though he had captured a black and
pugnacious bird. We mastered at last a corner each, and then we started
to twist the whole, as if to wring the water out. We produced, thus, a
sort of short rope, the thickness of a cable, and the descent began.

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