Complete works of a e w.., p.637
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 637
I found myself saying silently to myself, and stupidly:
“Here I finish. This is where I get off. I hope it won’t hurt.... People who have been mauled say that it doesn’t. I shall know about that, however. He’ll probably smash my face in. Beastly!”
But while my thoughts were stupid, my right hand was acting very cleverly. It slipped down to the floor on the far side of my narrow camp bedstead. It sought, found, and grasped one of my heavy walking shoes. Until that moment it seemed to have been acting quite independently of me. But as I felt the weight of the shoe, I took command of it. I sat up suddenly, yelled with all my voice and threw with all my strength. By good fortune my aim was straight. The heavy, nailed heel struck the beast hard between the shining eyes when he was on the very point of springing. No doubt the shoe hurt, but the panther even so was more startled than hurt. He uttered one yelp, turned tail, and streaked across the clearing into the forest, black and swift as some incarnation of Satan overtaken by the dawn. I was out of bed the next instant; I slipped a dressing-gown over my pyjamas, put on my shoes, and fixed a clip of cartridges in my rifle.
I fumbled over that proceeding. For now that the moment of danger had passed, I felt the animal’s great pad slapping down on my face and wiping it away. I smelt its fetid breath. And I probably felt and smelt more acutely than I should have done had it actually leaped. However, the clip was shot into its sockets at last. Then I waited on the verandah in the hope that my panther might return. And I waited. And I waited.
I had an odd feeling that the forest was waiting for him too, listening for the tiniest rustle of its undergrowth, watching for him to charge out of that tangled wall. I had never known silence so complete. I was prepared, of course, for my camp servants to sleep through that or any other racket. It would have needed the last trump to rouse them and they might have overslept themselves even then. But the hush was so deep that I was aware of it less as a negation of sound than as a new form of activity. I tried my pulse; it was now perfectly steady. I was not excited. There was not a drop of sweat upon my forehead. Nor do I think that I am particularly vain. But for the rest of that night I felt myself to be the axis of a world in suspense.
The panther did not return. My fox-terrier crept out, and still whimpering and shivering, nestled close against my side. The glamour of the moonlight took on a shade of grey. The clearing, the crowded boles of the great teak trees were bathed now in a spectral and unearthly light. Then darkness came, black and blinding, like a cloak flung over the head. There was no longer forest or clearing. There was nothing but one man with a rifle across his knees of which he could only see the speck of its ivory foresight. But during all these changes my sense of expectation never lifted. It changed, however, as the night changed. I no longer waited for my panther. My mind had lost sight of him, as my eyes had lost sight of the forest. What it was I waited for I had no idea. But it was for something big, forming somewhere out of the reach of knowledge. Nor did the morning help me. I marched into the little village of Sawadi merely conscious that I had passed the oddest night in all my experience.
On the stern-wheel steamer Dagonet I made the acquaintance of its Captain, Michael Crowther.
Chapter 2 The Packet
DURING THE MORNING Captain Crowther stood beside his helmsman at the high wheel on the roof of the steamer. The Second Defile with its monstrous, high cliff, its racing waters, and the unmanageable great rafts of teak wood floating down to Rangoon presented always a delicate problem in navigation. But Captain Crowther certainly knew his business. He edged his steamer in here, thrust a raft aside there, and by lunch-time the hills had fallen back and we were thrashing down the broader waterway to Schwegu. At luncheon Crowther took the head of the table and I found that a place had been laid for me at his elbow. He was a man of thirty-six years or so, and he had the sort of hard, leering, and wicked face the early craftsmen were so fond of carving on the groins and pillars of French cathedrals. I took a dislike to him at my first glance.
“You are Mr. Martin Legatt of the Forest Corporation,” he said to me as I took my seat.
“Yes.”
“I am Michael D. Crowther, the Captain of the Dagonet”; and he spoke with so violent an American accent that I felt sure at once that he was an Englishman.
“Press the flesh,” said I, extending my hand, and equal, I hoped, to the occasion.
The stewards placed great basins of soup in front of each of us. There were eight passengers besides myself, so far as I remember. Michael Crowther consumed his soup with a little finger crooked from a suburban past and almost an excess of good breeding. When he had finished — and he deserved every drop of it for his skill in wriggling so quickly through the Second Defile — he said:
“A solitary life yours, Mr. Legatt. Gee, I don’t think that I could stick it for a week.”
I had all a young man’s inclination to make his ways look magnificent and unusual; and the presence of the eight tourists was a temptation to embroidery. But Captain Crowther was the last man in the world to whom I would have tried to explain the magic which forest life then held for me. So I answered with a show of indifference:
“There are compensations, Captain. I don’t suppose, for instance, that there is a single person on board who is feeling half the pleasure I am at this moment from simply stretching my legs out under a civilised dining-table with the knowledge that I have nothing to do all the afternoon except lounge in a long chair and watch the river-banks go by.”
“Well, each man to his taste,” Captain Crowther remarked. He was kind enough to look me over with approval. “I should have thought that a young fellow like you, however — why, holy snakes! I reckon you never came across a bird from one end of the month to the other.”
For a moment I was mystified, but the knowing wink with which Crowther supported his remark was a sufficiently explanatory footnote.
“Nary a bird,” I answered.
The tourists looked up intelligently. They were going to obtain information at first hand about the forests of Burma. Two ladies of middle age sat opposite to me — the two inevitable English ladies to be met with on any steamer and any train within the world’s circumference. One of them, the younger I suppose by a couple of years, said eagerly:
“Not a bird! Now isn’t that strange? Would you say that that was particularly Oriental?”
“My dear!” the friend chided her by the right of, say, her two years’ seniority. “After all, we have our birdless grove at Goodwood — or rather the Duke has his.”
She was standing up gallantly for her country. Privately she might think it was down and out, publicly you couldn’t beat it. Even if it came to a comparison of birdlessness, the gorgeous East had nothing on England. Wasn’t there the famous Grove?
The junior of the pair, however, objected to corrections at the dinner-table. She bridled and answered with a definite tartness.
“I have heard grave doubts thrown upon that story — —” she began, but I thought it time to stop a rift which might in the end split a pleasant fellowship. I interrupted her.
“I am afraid that the birds of Captain Crowther’s vocabulary are not the birds which nest in trees.”
The ladies were puzzled; Captain Crowther was noisily delighted. He slapped the flat of his hand upon the table.
“That’s a good one! That’s a witticism, that is, Mr. Legatt!” He felt in his pockets. “I keep a little book to jot down the wise-cracks I hear. ‘Not the birds...’” And pulling out his book he wrote my poor little remark down, with a final stab of his pencil at the end which no doubt it deserved. “And not a pal to hobnob with over a glass of something?” he continued.
“A pal to hobnob with from time to time, yes, but not a glass of something. And talking of glasses” — I turned towards the steward— “I would like a whisky and soda.”
“With me,” said the Captain.
I sat up.
“Oh no, please!”
“With me,” Crowther repeated, waving a hand to the steward; and there was an end of the matter. I couldn’t make a scene, of course, but I grew hot with resentment and I talked no more until the end of the banquet. All the meals upon the Irrawaddy steamers are banquets, even the breakfasts which are little trifles of four set courses. I watched, however, and noticed that the other passengers were as uncomfortable as myself. Michael Crowther was behaving like a profiteer pressing drinks upon his poorer friends in his new nickel-plated yacht. I should have to come to an understanding with him before the hour of dinner.
All through the afternoon, however, Captain Crowther stood by the high wheel driving his steamer down the stream. It was very pleasant on the great triangular porch in front of the saloon. The chant of the two men with the sounding-poles announcing the depth of the water, the thud and thunder of the great stern-wheel; the banks now falling back in flat, green rice-fields, now closing up with jungle-clothed hills, and perhaps a great white-legged buffalo knee-deep in the water; a village here, a village there, and always a pagoda; the red poles marking the channel upon the one side and the white poles upon the other; the long rafts where the steersman seated on a high throne with an immense sweep in his hands looked like the steersman of a Greek trireme in a picture; all the accessories of sound and prospect filled the long afternoon for me with enchantment.
But towards evening Crowther came down from his sentry-box on the roof to the second wheel on the porch. Here was my opportunity, but for the moment I was too lazy to take it. The huge headlight in the bows was turned on. For the moment it threw merely a grey and rather ghostly beam down the river, a beam hardly noticeable except when it struck a sand-bank. Then it became a radiance. But the darkness rushed upon us, the sky blazed with stars and the beam became a thick column of bright gold along which myriads of white moths, like the flakes of a heavy snow-storm driven by a high wind, streamed to their death on the burning glass of the projector.
I got up from my chair then and went to the Captain. He was standing by the wheel, but the First Officer was steering so that he was free. I said:
“Captain, I want to be clear about this. I’m a passenger on an Irrawaddy steamer, and if I ask you at some odd time to have a drink with me or you ask me to have one with you — that’s all in order. But if you insist on paying for what I drink with my meals you’re going to force me to drink nothing but water till we reach Mandalay, and I’m tired of water.”
I expect that it sounded rather priggish, but most young men have a touch of the prig in them and I like the others. Captain Crowther was certainly taken aback, but he had no time to answer me. For at that moment we rounded a bend of the river and a petrol storm-lamp upon the bank lit up a little square of sand, a group of people in bright silk skirts, and a few booths backed by trees.
“Tagaung,” said the First Officer. He rang the engine-room bell, set the indicator at half-speed and put his helm up. I had said my say and was glad to pass on to another subject.
“We stay the night here, I suppose?” I said.
Captain Crowther looked at me quickly and queerly. The First Officer grinned.
“No,” Captain Crowther replied curtly.
“It looks as if there were a good many rice-bags waiting, sir,” said the First Officer.
The First Officer was puzzled now. There was indeed a parapet of rice-bags built up on the shore.
“All the more for the next boat then,” said Crowther sharply. “I’ll wait half an hour here. I have orders to reach Mandalay as early as possible to-morrow, so I shall push on to Thabeikyin to-night.”
The First Officer was utterly at a loss. His eyebrows went up to the roots of his hair. I thought indeed that he was on the point of protesting. But Michael Crowther stood with his underlip thrust out and a black look upon his face which would have stopped any subordinate from questioning his commands.
“Very well, sir,” said the officer, and the Dagonet sidled up to the bank and was made fast. The great headlight was swung round towards the shore and lighted up the little settlement, the great tamarinds and fig-trees behind it and the groups in the open square. It was like a tiny scene upon a stage fantastically bright, set in a proscenium of ebony. A general scene of coloured movement to prepare us for the appearance of the principal characters. I walked aft and, leaning upon the rail of the ship, watched it; the long prison wall of the brown rice-bags melting down to a garden wall and then here and there without any order, to a terrace parapet as though a bombardment had blown breaches through it; a procession of men tramping down the mud-bank and up the gangway to the lower deck with the bags upon their heads, and then back again with no bags at all, purposeful as ants. I lifted my eyes to the illuminated square and I suddenly saw the principals take the stage.
Captain Crowther first. He came from the darkness of the huts behind the square and for a moment I doubted whether it could be he, so imperceptibly had he vanished from his ship, and so completely had my attention been engrossed by the busy spectacle. But it was the man. I recognised the shortish, thick-set figure; I could see the gold badge upon his cap and count the gold stripes upon his sleeve. He was not alone. The First Officer’s grin when I asked whether we were to stay the night at Tagaung and his perplexity when the Captain definitely answered “No,” were explained to me. For here was Captain Crowther the centre of a small family group. A young and pretty Burmese woman in a gay tartan skirt of silk with a rose in her black hair, walked at his side. And she held by the hand a little girl whose hair was fairer than her own and her skin less brown. The pretty Burmese woman was pleading earnestly at one moment, and coaxing daintily the next with a small, appealing hand laid upon his arm. The little girl whom I took to be about eight years old, every now and then added her entreaties, setting the palms of her hands together in prayer, catching hold of the hem of his jacket and jumping up and down on her toes. There could not be a doubt of their relationship. The mother, though her feet were bare, had put the child into white socks and little brown shoes to emphasise that she was white, and their supplications were as easy to understand as they would have been had they been uttered within my hearing. They were all in the one word: “Stay!”
I looked at Crowther. He was a picture of compunction and regret. He looked at his ship. He took off his cap and scratched his head and shook it. I could see his face clearly now. He was the most woebegone man one could ever see. A martyr to duty. He would stay if he could, but he was only a servant. He had his orders. He must go. On the next trip he would not be so hurried. Et cetera. And et cetera.
I should have thought it the prettiest little romantic scene of happiness deferred if I had not had a conviction that Michael Crowther was merely giving a performance. I had no belief in those orders. He had only to make an early start on the next morning and running downstream he could reach Mandalay before noon. The young woman ceased to plead, her face lost its vivacity and then crumpled like a child’s when the tears come. A movement of irritation and a sharp order from the Captain checked her, and the next moment the child plucked at her skirt. It seemed to me that she was reminding her mother of something which, in her distress, she had forgotten. Certainly the trio turned aside from the lighted space. They were just visible still but they were amongst the shadows and I could no longer distinguish their movements or the expressions upon their faces. They stood thus for a few minutes and then Captain Crowther emerged again into the light, but alone. He walked quickly down the slope of the bank to the gangway and he carried a small package in his hand. It should have been a box and the name of the lady who gave it to him should have been Pandora. So many troubles and misfortunes tumbled out of it for all of us.
Chapter 3 First Appearance of the Sapphire
THE GREAT HEADLIGHT was switched on to the channel, the Dagonet shook and rumbled from stem to stern, the gap widened between it and the shore. I stood by the rail of the ship aft of the saloon. In a few minutes nothing of Tagaung was visible but the storm-lamp on the ground in the tiny square. It diminished to a spark. A cool wind blew through the ship. The spark on the shore flickered. I suppose that I had been more deeply moved by the odd episode than I was aware; and there’s always, I think, a particular sadness, not of separations but of leaving people behind. Anyway, that little shaking flame in the heart of the darkness seemed to me the very image and symbol of a soul in great distress. I turned to find Michael Crowther at my elbow. He, too, was watching the tiny flame wavering, pleading, desperately calling. A bend of the river hid it from our sight.
I wondered what Crowther’s reactions would be to its utter disappearance. I turned and looked at him. His face was one wide smile of gross content.
“That’s that,” said he, and followed his words with a great gasp of relief. He slapped the pocket of his jacket and I noticed that it bulged unnaturally. He winked cheerfully at me and strode forward through the saloon. He took the wheel himself, smiling like a man fresh out of prison, and between the white poles and the red he drove his steamer down to Thabeikyin. The river was low and now and again the steamer grounded with a bump upon a sand-bank and must go astern and wriggle itself clear.
“I’ll dine afterwards,” Crowther said to the steward when the dinner-bell rang; and the dinner for the passengers was over when the ship was moored to the bank. Thabeikyin is bigger than most of the villages along the upper river. It is the port of the Ruby Mines sixty miles away over the hills at Mogok. It has a Government rest-house, a telegraph office and a row of shops along the river’s edge. The other passengers accordingly trooped on shore, leaving the saloon to the Captain and the cool, dark porch to me. But I was not to enjoy my solitude for long. Crowther was laughing aloud whilst he ate. He was in one of those moods of high spirits and relief when he must confide or burst. Anyone with a pair of ears would have served, and mine were the only pair handy. He turned round towards the open door and called to me.
