The Rescue by Joseph Conrad Page A

this man your debtor—a slave?"
    "Slave?" cried Lingard. "This is an English brig. Slave? No. A free man
like myself."
    "Hai. He is indeed free now," muttered the Malay with another glance
downward. "But who will pay the bereaved for his life?"
    "If there is anywhere a woman or child belonging to him, I—my serang
would know—I shall seek them out," cried Lingard, remorsefully.
    "You speak like a chief," said Hassim, "only our great men do not go
to battle with naked hands. O you white men! O the valour of you white
men!"
    "It was folly, pure folly," protested Lingard, "and this poor fellow has
paid for it."
    "He could not avoid his destiny," murmured the Malay. "It is in my mind
my trading is finished now in this place," he added, cheerfully.
    Lingard expressed his regret.
    "It is no matter, it is no matter," assured the other courteously, and
after Lingard had given a pressing invitation for Hassim and his two
companions of high rank to visit the brig, the two parties separated.
    The evening was calm when the Malay craft left its berth near the shore
and was rowed slowly across the bay to Lingard's anchorage. The end of a
stout line was thrown on board, and that night the white man's brig and
the brown man's prau swung together to the same anchor.
    The sun setting to seaward shot its last rays between the headlands,
when the body of the killed Lascar, wrapped up decently in a white
sheet, according to Mohammedan usage, was lowered gently below the
still waters of the bay upon which his curious glances, only a few
hours before, had rested for the first time. At the moment the dead man,
released from slip-ropes, disappeared without a ripple before the eyes
of his shipmates, the bright flash and the heavy report of the brig's
bow gun were succeeded by the muttering echoes of the encircling shores
and by the loud cries of sea birds that, wheeling in clouds, seemed
to scream after the departing seaman a wild and eternal good-bye. The
master of the brig, making his way aft with hanging head, was followed
by low murmurs of pleased surprise from his crew as well as from the
strangers who crowded the main deck. In such acts performed simply, from
conviction, what may be called the romantic side of the man's nature
came out; that responsive sensitiveness to the shadowy appeals made by
life and death, which is the groundwork of a chivalrous character.
    Lingard entertained his three visitors far into the night. A sheep from
the brig's sea stock was given to the men of the prau, while in the
cabin, Hassim and his two friends, sitting in a row on the stern settee,
looked very splendid with costly metals and flawed jewels. The talk
conducted with hearty friendship on Lingard's part, and on the part of
the Malays with the well-bred air of discreet courtesy, which is natural
to the better class of that people, touched upon many subjects and, in
the end, drifted to politics.
    "It is in my mind that you are a powerful man in your own country," said
Hassim, with a circular glance at the cuddy.
    "My country is upon a far-away sea where the light breezes are as strong
as the winds of the rainy weather here," said Lingard; and there were
low exclamations of wonder. "I left it very young, and I don't know
about my power there where great men alone are as numerous as the poor
people in all your islands, Tuan Hassim. But here," he continued, "here,
which is also my country—being an English craft and worthy of it,
too—I am powerful enough. In fact, I am Rajah here. This bit of my
country is all my own."
    The visitors were impressed, exchanged meaning glances, nodded at each
other.
    "Good, good," said Hassim at last, with a smile. "You carry your country
and your power with you over the sea. A Rajah upon the sea. Good!"
    Lingard laughed thunderously while the others looked amused.
    "Your country is very powerful—we know," began again Hassim after a
pause, "but is it stronger than the country of the Dutch who steal our
land?"
    "Stronger?" cried