The Rescue quotes

Out of the level blue of a shallow sea Carimata raises a lofty barrenness of grey and yellow tints, the drab eminence of its arid heights.

Separated by a narrow strip of water, Suroeton, to the west, shows a curved and ridged outline resembling the backbone of a stooping giant.

He felt her live in every motion, in every roll, in every sway of her tapering masts, of those masts whose painted trucks move forever, to a seaman’s eye, against the clouds or against the stars.

To him she was always precious⁠—like old love; always desirable⁠—like a strange woman; always tender⁠—like a mother; always faithful⁠—like the favourite daughter of a man’s heart.

For hours he would stand elbow on rail, his head in his hand and listen—and listen in dreamy stillness to the cajoling and promising whisper of the sea, that slipped past in vanishing bubbles along the smooth black-painted sides of his craft.

“Yes,” said Lingard, “we have met very few ships since we left Pedra Branca over the stern. Yes; it has been a lonely sea. But for all that, Shaw, this sea, if lonely, is not blind.

Every island in it is an eye.

And now, since our squadron has left for the China waters—”

“It’s a sign that something is up.

Once set a rumour afloat in these waters, and it will make its way from island to island, without any breeze to drive it along.

”

“Come on board!” shouted Lingard. “Why didn’t you speak at once? I thought you might have been some masquerading Dutchmen from a dodging gunboat.”

“Do I speak like a blamed Dutchman? Pull a stroke, boys⁠—oars! Tend bow, John.”

The boat came alongside with a gentle knock, and a man’s shape began to climb at once up the brig’s side with a kind of ponderous agility.

“Yes; and the moon is waning,” she answered in a low voice. “The moon is waning. Yet he promised to be here when the nights are light and the water covers the sandbanks as far as the bushes.”

“The traveller knows the time of his setting out, but not the time of his return,” observed the man, calmly.

“The nights of waiting are long,” she murmured.

“And sometimes they are vain,” said the man with the same composure. “Perhaps he will never return.”

“The road is long and the heart may grow cold,” was the answer in a quiet voice. “If he does not return it is because he has forgotten.”

“Oh, Hassim, it is because he is dead,” cried the girl, indignantly.

“Remember the promise!” shouted the other. “And come soon!” he went on, raising his voice as the brig forged past.

“Come soon⁠—lest what perhaps is written should come to pass!”

“What?” yelled Lingard in a puzzled tone, “what’s written?”

During one of those intervals. Lingard, tired and sleepy, was beginning to doze where he stood, when suddenly it occurred to him that, somewhere below, the sea had spoken in a human voice.

It had said, “Praise be to God⁠—” and the voice sounded small, clear, and confident, like the voice of a child speaking in a cathedral.

Lingard gave a start and thought—I’ve dreamed this—and directly the sea said very close to him, “Give a rope.”

After a time, as if to beings plunged in the abyss of eternal silence, there came to their ears an unfamiliar thin, faraway voice saying:

“I seek the white man.”

“Here,” cried Lingard. Then, when he had the stranger, dripping and naked but for a soaked waistcloth, under the lamp of the cabin, he said, “I don’t know you.”

“If I had ten men like you!” he cried.

“We are ten, but they are twenty to one,” said Jaffir, simply.

“Do you want anything that a man can give?” he asked.

C. Jörgenson. Barque Wild Rose.”

It was like an inscription on a tomb.

The Wild Rose was dead, and so was Captain H. C. Jörgenson, and the sextant case was all that was left of them.

He was silent for a time.

“I was like you once,” he added, and then laying his hand on Lingard’s sleeve, murmured⁠—“Are you very deep in this thing?”

“To the very last cent,” said Lingard, quietly, and looking straight before him.

I must have meant something when I interfered, whether I knew it or not. I meant it then—and did not know it. Very well. I mean it now—and do know it.

When you save people from death you take a share in their life.

That’s how I look at it.”

“We will stir them up. We will wake up the country!” he was, without knowing it in the least, making a complete confession of the idealism hidden under the simplicity of his strength.

He would wake up the country!

That was the fundamental and unconscious emotion on which were engrafted his need of action, the primitive sense of what was due to justice, to gratitude, to friendship, the sentimental pity for the hard lot of Immada—poor child—the proud conviction that of all the men …

“No,” said Mrs. Travers, gazing straight before her above the slow flutter of the fan. “No, I did not know it was ever done; men burrow under or slip round quietly while they look the other way.”

“Ah! you define diplomacy,” murmured d’Alcacer.

“A little of it here would do no harm. But our picturesque visitor has none of it. I’ve a great liking for him.”

She looked up for a moment, and he went on, gravely: “I think it is the truest, the most profound of sentiments. You do not love because of what is in the other.

You love because of something that is in you⁠—something alive⁠—in yourself.

” He struck his breast lightly with the tip of one finger. “A capacity in you. And not everyone may have it—not everyone deserves to be touched by fire from heaven.”

D’Alcacer, after muttering to himself, “This is getting serious,” made a movement, and could not believe his ears when he heard Mrs. Travers say rapidly with a kind of fervour:

“Don’t go, pray; don’t stop them. Oh! This is truth⁠—this is anger⁠—something real at last.”

D’Alcacer leaned back at once against the rail.

“He is accustomed to be addressed deferentially,” she said after a pause, “and you—”

“Who is he?” asked Lingard, simply.

These three words seemed to her to scatter her past in the air—like smoke. They robbed all the multitude of mankind of every vestige of importance.

“Who is he?” asked Lingard, simply.

These three words seemed to her to scatter her past in the air⁠—like smoke.

They robbed all the multitude of mankind of every vestige of importance. She was amazed to find that on this night, in this place, there could be no adequate answer to the searching naiveness of that question.

“What can there be at stake?” she began, wonderingly.

“A kingdom,” said Lingard.

Mrs. Travers leaned far over the rail, staring, and their faces, one above the other, came very close together.

The unchecked gentleness of the flow captured the eye by a subtle spell, fastened insidiously upon the mind a disturbing sense of the irretrievable.

The ebbing of the sea athwart the lonely sheen of flames resembled the eternal ebb-tide of time;

and when at last Lingard looked up, the knowledge of that noiseless passage of the waters produced on his mind a bewildering effect.

“D’you mean to say, John, you would go to the bottom as soon as you would go home? Come now!”—

“To the bottom,” repeated the wan voice, composedly. “Aye! That’s where we all are going to, in one way or another. The way don’t matter.”

“Ough! You would give the blues to the funny man of a blooming circus. What would my missus say if I wasn’t to turn up never at all?”—“She would get another man; there’s always plenty of fools about.”

Lingard flung open the cabin door, entered, and, with a slam, shut the darkness out.

“I am, under Providence, to serve your turn,” he said after standing very still for a while, with his eyes upon Mrs. Travers.

The brig’s swing-lamp lighted the cabin with an extraordinary brilliance. Mrs. Travers had thrown back her hood. The radiant brightness of the little place enfolded her so close, clung to her with such force that it might have been part of her very essence.

“Remember those two men are innocent,” she began.

“So am I⁠—innocent. So is everybody in the world. Have you ever met a man or a woman that was not? They’ve got to take their chances all the same.”

“I expect you to be generous,” she said.

“You ask … Ah!” she cried.

“Don’t you see that I have no kingdoms to conquer?”

He shook his head. She gazed at him anxiously for a moment. “In your memories then,” she said and was surprised by the expression of profound sadness that overspread his attentive face.

“Do you know what I remember?” he said. “Do you want to know?” She listened with slightly parted lips. “I will tell you. Poverty, hard work⁠—and death,” he went on, very quietly. “And now I’ve told you, and you don’t know. That’s how it is between us. You talk to me⁠—I talk to you⁠—and we don’t know.”

“What can I find to say?” she went on. “What can I do? I mustn’t give in. Think! Amongst your memories there must be some face—some voice—some name, if nothing more. I can not believe that there is nothing but bitterness.”

He could not sacrifice his intention, the intention of years, the intention of his life; he could no more part with it and exist than he could cut out his heart and live.

The adventurer held fast to his adventure which made him in his own sight exactly what he was.

He considered the problem with cool audacity, backed by a belief in his own power. It was not these two men he had to save; he had to save himself! And looked upon in this way the situation appeared familiar.

the sail collapsed, shivered audibly, stood full and still in turn; and again the sensation of vertiginous speed and of absolute immobility succeeding each other with increasing swiftness merged at last into a bizarre state of headlong motion and profound peace.

The darkness enfolded her like the enervating caress of a sombre universe. It was gentle and destructive.

Its languor seduced her soul into surrender. Nothing existed and even all her memories vanished into space. She was content that nothing should exist.

“What? No fight!” inquired Jörgenson again without the slightest sign of animation.

“And you a fighting man.”

“Listen to me, Jörgenson. Things turned out so that before the time came for a fight it was already too late.” He turned to Mrs. Travers still looking about with anxious eyes and a faint smile on her lips.

“Your conduct was, of course, above reproach; but you made for yourself a detestable reputation of mental superiority, expressed ironically. You inspired mistrust in the best people. You were never popular.”

“I was bored,” murmured Mrs. Travers in a reminiscent tone and with her chin resting in the hollow of her hand.

Mr. Travers got up from the seaman’s chest as unexpectedly as if he had been stung by a wasp, but, of course, with a much slower and more solemn motion.

“The matter with you, Edith, is that at heart you are perfectly primitive.” Mrs. Travers stood up, too, with a supple, leisurely movement, and raising her hands to her hair turned half away with a pensive remark:

“Imperfectly civilized.”

“Imperfectly disciplined,” corrected Mr. Travers after a moment of dreary meditation.

Lingard’s hand closed on hers with a gentle pressure. She looked at him, speechless. He waited for a moment, then in an unconsciously tender voice he said:

“Well, wish me luck then.”

She remained silent. And he still holding her hand looked surprised at her hesitation.

And when I reflect how little people of our sort can know of such a man I am quite content to address him as Captain Lingard. It’s common and soothing and most respectable and satisfactory; for

Captain is the most empty of all titles. What is a Captain? Anybody can be a Captain

; and for Lingard it’s a name like any other. Whereas what he deserves is something special, significant, and expressive, that would match his person, his simple and romantic person.”

“You seem to understand him, Mrs. Travers.

Women have a singular capacity for understanding.

I mean subjects that interest them; because when their imagination is stimulated they are not afraid of letting it go. A man is more mistrustful of himself, but women are born much more reckless.

“I spoke in general,” remonstrated d’Alcacer. “Anything else would have been an impertinence.

Yes, obscurity is women’s best friend. Their daring loves it; but a sudden flash of light disconcerts them.

Generally speaking, if they don’t get exactly at the truth they always manage to come pretty near to it.”

“Care for something of my own,” murmured Lingard, very close to her face. “Why should you care for my rights?”

“Because,” she said, holding her ground though their foreheads were nearly touching, “because if I ever get back to my life I don’t want to make it more absurd by real remorse.”

Her tone was soft and Lingard received the breath of those words like a caress on his face. D’Alcacer, in the Cage, made still another effort to keep up his pacing. He didn’t want to give Mr.

“That I should live to hear anybody say they cared anything for what was mine!” whispered Lingard. “And that it should be you—you, who have taken all hardness out of me.”

“I don’t want your heart to be made hard. I want it to be made firm.”

“You couldn’t have said anything better than what you have said just now to make it steady,” flowed the murmur of Lingard’s voice with something tender in its depth. “Has anybody ever had a friend like this?”

“And I who mistrusted you! Like Arabs do to their great men, I ought to kiss the hem of your robe in repentance for having doubted the greatness of your heart.”

“Oh! my heart!” said Mrs. Travers, lightly, still gazing at the fire, which had suddenly shot up to a tall blaze. “I can assure you it has been of very little account in the world.”

She paused for a moment to steady her voice, then said, firmly, “Let’s get this over.”

Clearly. If he had been lying seriously ill in a room in a hotel and had overheard some ominous whispers he would not have cared in the least. Ah, but then he would have been ill—and in illness one grows so indifferent.

Illness is a great help to unemotional behaviour, which of course is the correct behaviour for a man of the world.

He almost regretted he was not very ill. But, then, Mr. Travers was obviously ill and it did not seem to help him much. D’Alcacer glanced at the bedstead where Mr. Travers preserved an immobility which struck d’Alcacer as obviously affected. He mistrusted it.

“I wish you had not,” uttered the same unringing woman’s voice.

“You are always coming to me with those lives and those deaths in your hand.”

“Yes, it’s too much for you,” was Lingard’s undertoned comment. “You could be no other than true. And you are innocent! Don’t wish me life, but wish me luck, for you are innocent—and you will have to take your chance.”

And Mrs. Travers was ready for revolt. She cried with suppressed passion:

“Are you aware, Captain Jörgenson, that I am alive?”

He turned his eyes on her, and for a moment she was daunted by their cold glassiness. But before they could drive her away, something like the gleam of a spark gave them an instant’s animation.

They are the iridescent gleams on a hard and dark surface. For the world is hard, Captain Lingard, it is hard, both in what it will remember and in what it will forget.

It is for such women that people toil on the ground and underground and artists of all sorts invoke their inspiration.

”

“No, there are not many of them. And yet they are all. They decorate our life for us.

They are the gracious figures on the drab wall which lies on this side of our common grave.

They lead a sort of ritual dance, that most of us have agreed to take seriously. It is a very binding agreement with which sincerity and good faith and honour have nothing to do. Very binding. Woe to him or her who breaks it.

“They wander in it lamenting over themselves. I would shudder at that fate for anything I loved. Do you know, Captain Lingard, how people lost in a maze end?” he went on holding Lingard by a steadfast stare. “No? … I will tell you then.

They end by hating their very selves, and they die in disillusion and despair.

”

A profound silence succeeded. It was clear that the envoy was gone, keeping in the shadow of the shore. Jörgenson turned to Jaffir.

“Death amongst friends is but a festival,”

he quoted, mumbling in his moustache.

The sun had sunk already, leaving that evening no trace of its glory on a sky clear as crystal and on the waters without a ripple. All colour seemed to have gone out of the world.

The oncoming shadow rose as subtle as a perfume from the black coast lying athwart the eastern semicircle; and such was the silence within the horizon that one might have fancied oneself come to the end of time.

Black and toy-like in the clear depths and the final stillness of the evening the brig and the schooner lay anchored in the middle of the main channel with their heads swung the same way.

“You are the most generous of women,” he said. He bent over her. Her eyes were wide open. Her lips felt cold. It did not shock him. After he stood up he remained near her.

Heat is a consuming thing, but she with her cold lips seemed to him indestructible⁠—and, perhaps, immortal!

Again he stooped, but this time it was only to kiss the fringe of her head scarf. Then he turned away to meet the three men, who, coming round the corner of the hut containing the prisoners, were approaching him with measured steps.

There was no peace in it. But who wanted peace?

Surrender was better, the dreadful ease of slack limbs in the sweep of an enormous tide and in a divine emptiness of mind.

If this was existence then he knew that he existed. And he knew that the woman existed, too, in the sweep of the tide, without speech, without movement, without heat! Indestructible—and, perhaps, immortal!

The creator of the Shore of Refuge, the weary Ruler of the Settlement, with his scorn of the unrest and folly of men, was angry with his white friend who was always bringing his desires and his troubles to his very door.

Belarab did not want anyone to die but neither did he want anyone in particular to live.

What he was concerned about was to preserve the mystery and the power of his melancholy hesitations.

“What is an accident?” said Lingard with a great effort. “Where did you hear of such a thing? Accident! Don’t disturb me, Mr. d’Alcacer.

I have just come back to life and it has closed on me colder and darker than the grave itself.

Let me get used … I can’t bear the sound of a human voice yet.”