XXI

The liner’s deck was a neat road, a disciplined promenade, and the seams of its scoured woodwork ran so far and straight that they were as incredible as plain truth. It had garden seats. The extraordinary thing about that deck was that it was too solid and steady. Colet could only flop loose feet upon it. It was funny, trying to walk on a steady deck. The feet didn’t know it was steady.

“Purser, I can’t move,” complained Collins, in a whisper. “I can’t walk.”

A beneficence had come unexpectedly out of the blue, just as the apparitions of monsters had loomed beside the boat in the body of the sea, and as the hopeful lights of ships, in night watches, had declined into setting stars. But it had come. It enfolded them. They were in luck. Colet was tucked into a cabin, a luxurious place, not yet to be believed, but quite solid, for all that, and there he lay in the surrender of release, while yet his body was responsive to the soaring lightness of that boat. His body still had a ghostly apprehension of the swift lift and the descent. Couldn’t forget that. Never forget that; nor the swaying ridges of the great seas overshadowing them at dusk. Hale’s last words: “That’s all, Colet. Time to go.” And Wilson’s head at daybreak, watching; watching without a movement the march of the seas as if he knew all about them, but doubted the loyalty of their inferior nature. Nothing to do now but to snuff up the smell of cool linen again, and forget a book while listening to the soporific whirr of the electric fan. The surgeon would then come in, easy and bland.

“Morning, doctor. How’s the rest? How’s Lycett?”

“That’s how you feel, is it? All is well with the child.”

“And Sinclair, our chief officer? You’ve seen him, too?”

“Ah, the redheaded pirate. Couldn’t help seeing him. He’s picking up. He just told me to go to hell.”

“Gillespie?”

“Don’t know him. Oh, you mean the dear old Glasgow Highlander who keeps on asking for a long whisky and soda? Unless his anxiety exhausts him first, he’ll smell whisky again, some day.”

“Don’t be hard on him. He’s all right.”

“So the engineers say. But he hates me. You all do, you know. I’ve never seen such a crew. Some of the women here are nervous. It’s as much as I can do to keep them out of your cabins.”

“They’re not coming, are they?”

“Not unless you don’t do what I tell you.”

The youthful but white-haired surgeon, tall, deliberate, and gracious, who in his white uniform could have been a functionary, immaculate and revered, in a sphere where all was pure and noble, one morning took Colet, shrunk within a borrowed suit, which made him feel like an awkward mortal who had blundered into the abode of the blest, to the smoke-room. There was Sinclair, with some strangers about him. Sinclair came to meet him. He was much amused by something in Colet’s appearance. He held him off at arm’s length, and laughed.

“You look holy, purser. You look as if you were just coming out of the wilderness after turning down the devil. Come and have a pick-me-up.”

The strangers made room for him, adjusting wicker chairs about one of the tables with an air of quickly providing for a welcome guest who was really invisible to them. Colet noticed that they observed him cautiously only when they supposed they were unobserved. They continued their conversation as though he had not come. They did not want to embarrass him by showing they were aware of his unusual presence. The shyness of Englishmen was so delicate and polite, he thought, and so encouraging, that a nervous kitten might be deluded into thinking that it had the room to itself, until it was trodden on. They evidently knew nothing about the rescue of any castaways. They had never heard of it. Luckily for him, no boats had been picked up in mid-ocean, so there was no need, if challenged, to confess to an episode which probably had never happened. They talked of rubber, of one or two important men who ought to be shot, of one or two unimportant women who had provided the ship, that voyage, with a little welcome unexpectedness, and of a fellow-passenger whose luck at cards was evidence of the existence of the devil. But presently, when the conversation became various with subjects discreet between pairs of these strangers, the man next to Colet tapped out his pipe and leaned over to him, as though with a chance private thought.

“Feeling all right now?”

“Fine.”

That was as far as it went. The stranger began to refill a beautiful briar with some rich tobacco which moved Colet with a sudden yearning. But the stranger was unaware of it. He lovingly loaded that ripe bowl, and Colet watched the rite with the happy knowledge that he had come back to the sun, that sights and smells were good, and that there were pleasant things to be done.

“What happens to you, may I ask, after an occasion of this sort? What do you do?”

“I’ve no idea. Sent home, I suppose.”

“But an official has to worry about it, presumably. They ought not to land you at Rangoon and just leave it at that.”

“Rangoon?”

“Where we’re going. You knew that?”

“No. I forgot to ask.”

The stranger was amused. “I guess you’re right. Any old place would do for me, after an outing like yours.”

“Do you know Rangoon?”

“Pretty well. All round from that purgatory to Bangkok.”

“The names sound very attractive.”

“They do? How one forgets!” His amusement was faint but provocative. “Yes, I suppose they sound attractive. Must have sounded so to me once. Must have.”

“And now they don’t. That’s the worst of disillusionment. The real thing goes.”

“Eh? I’m not disillusioned. I’m busy. I heard you all right, didn’t I? Didn’t you say the real thing goes when we know the reality? Now, what on earth do you mean by that?”

“Well⁠ ⁠… of course it means nothing. Only a little doubt about the nature of the reality, perhaps.”

“You’ll feel stronger presently. We understand reality well enough, when we bark our shins on it. Now, I say that’s the fun of it, seeing what things are in good time, and treating them as they deserve; don’t you?”

“I expect you are right.”

“Sure of it. Like testing a piece of rock. That’s my job. Most people would call it road metalling. Good enough for them. But if you know what to do with it, it might mean⁠—it might mean kissing your hand to those places with names you think so attractive, and getting that deer park at home.”

Colet laughed. “Have you come across that magic lump of road metalling yet?”

“Not so far. Only something a bit like it. Enough to keep me going on. Can’t have the park yet, but I could buy a fawn⁠—one or two nice little fawns.”

“Perhaps the fun is in the search, not in finding.”

“Say that again. It sounds interesting. Though I’d like to hear you say it after you’d ploughed through Siamese forests in the rains, punctured from head to foot by ticks and leeches, and no more to show for it than enough to buy quinine for the next bout of ‘the shakes.’ ”

“I think I’d say it then. The hunt’s the game. The quarry doesn’t matter so much.”

The stranger swerved in his chair to inspect Colet. He frowned at him comically, and his scrutiny was met with a candid conviction of good cheer. This stranger was a man some years older than himself, with a hard but amiable countenance, eyes that were mocking him now in good nature, and a little moustache which might have been cast in iron. There was a scar on his chin, and Colet judged that very likely it had been well earned. That chin would take some breaking, though. The man would take some breaking.

“I don’t see it. Though if you’re not looking for much perhaps you’re right. I’m looking for important metal that goes by troy weight; or by the ton, if it runs to it. When I find it I’m very loving. If I don’t find it I’m not happy at all. Your abstractions wouldn’t turn my scales with a martyr’s crown as makeweight.”

“Well⁠ ⁠… I wonder whether we wouldn’t look twice at the scales, if we know what was in them? Though of all possible things the last I want is martyrdom. It’s too lonely.”

“Here, your talk is quite Christian. I’m afraid to listen to it. Let’s have a merry drink and forget it.”

They waited while a steward, with no sign of emotion but the deepest respect, listened in turn and without a comment to the trivial wishes of that circle of men.

“So you don’t know what you’ll do at Rangoon?”

“Not in the least. I’m a destitute seaman.”

“Um.”

“Eh? I said I am a destitute seaman.”

“I heard you. I only made the noise of a thought. You don’t know anyone at Rangoon?”

“Nobody. Never been there.”

“Well, I do know Rangoon, and anyone destitute there would be about as happy as a hungry dog in a stone yard.”

An elderly neighbour leaned towards them with a gentle contradiction. He had heard Rangoon mentioned, and he and the stranger began a blithe dispute about their destination which left that port uncertain between a dream city of Oriental delights, and a worthy abode of rectangular commercial ideals, in their satisfactory concrete, surrounded by quarters for ministrant coolies. Sinclair extricated Colet, and they began to pace the deck, and gossip of what had been. Colet learned that the end of his voyage was now but a matter of days.

The surgeon, on his next visit, was perfunctory.

“I only call because I’m very dutiful. You are fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. Only be quite sure,” he added, “that the spoils come safely in at the end. By the way, that passenger you were talking to yesterday, Mr. Norrie. He’s coming here. There’s a book he wants you to look at. And here he is. I’m off to find your friend the engineer.”

Norrie took the settee.

“I heard the doctor give you my name. It really is my name. And I have brought you a book. As good an excuse as any for walking uninvited into another man’s cabin.”

Colet regarded the book politely. It was not exactly technical, but it appeared to be a serious address to geologists and surveyors, should the thought ever occur to them of exploring the chances Siam held in secret. It was loaded with maps. They bore such legends as Chlorite and Hornblende rocks; Gold Sands; Gem Gravels; Sandstone. What was most attractive about it was its amateurish drawings of temples, boats, camps, and natives. While he turned the pages with respect, looking for something he might say for this kindness, he did, for a moment, become lost in a brief description of a place named Wat Chinareth⁠ ⁠… “far in the jungle, when the eye has become accustomed to green for weeks, the wonderful yellow-red of the tiles of the temple roof, picked off with green borders, and light-red lower buildings of the cloisters, were most striking⁠ ⁠… the entrance to the tower was in its day very prettily panelled and gilded; now, alas, bats and cobwebs are legion.”

“Don’t look for entertainment in it,” he was advised. “Look for facts, Mr. Colet. But not now. I have an idea, but you may not care for it. You’ll find in that book some faint hints of the barbarism of my own life, when poking about for a good substitute for that deer-park. I’m a prospector, that’s what; but I will say for myself that I was passed through the turnstiles of the Royal School of Mines. I won’t flatter you by suggesting that you could be my expert assistant. Field geology is not learned in a day. But, if you’re at a loose end, it would be pleasant if you could come along with me.”

Colet got up on his elbow in his bunk, and considered Norrie, but not his suggestion. His visitor gave no hint of a barbaric life. His dress was only a little less punctilious than the surgeon’s uniform. His intonation was that of one in authority. Colet twisted the point of his beard.

“But⁠—but⁠—of course, I shall be glad to read this book. It’s travel, anyhow. All the same, I can’t see where I could come in.”

“Naturally. You’ve never done it. If you had, you’d refuse. If you can believe me, I’m trying to beguile you into a most damnable passage. For my own sake, of course. Don’t make a mistake about that. I don’t like getting fever in the forest on my lonesome. It’s beginning to frighten me. Then there are the natives. They’re sometimes so volatile. Two could manage them better than one. If they make trouble, you might get it, and not me. That’s one advantage of a partner.”

His manner conveyed that he was explaining but the melancholy truth.

“Don’t let me persuade you. I want you to come, but not if you don’t feel like it.”

He began to fill that briar slowly, and once he rubbed it on his cheeks, as though caressing it. Colet considered the man, and thought of road metalling, levelled and hard. But there must be something in a fellow who could choose such a pipe, and treat it like that. Not easy to read that man, but easy to read his pipe. Go by the pipe, and jump for it?

Norrie began to form leisurely clouds, and to watch them unfold; and at his ease, in a reminiscent way, to insult the Orient attractively because he had nothing better to do just then.

Colet fumbled in a jacket pocket.

“Before you go any further, for the love of Heaven hand me your tobacco-pouch.”

“Oh, you smoke, do you? I thought you didn’t. That was a count against you.”

“I don’t know when last I had a pipe.” He held his nose over the smoke of his bowl. “Now, if you talk to me, I think I’d agree to go with you either to perdition or the pearly gates.”

“Then I shan’t say any more about it; not yet. Neither of those two places is in my prospectus.”

“No? Well, the very smell of your mixture warns me that it must be one or the other, and there’s no telling which.”

“Odd; I thought it was a better tobacco than that. I like to listen to you. That’s why I’ve come in. But don’t forget I’m a metallurgist. My only anodynes are the pipe and drink.”

“Is doubt about the nature of things an anodyne?”

Norrie was sadly emphatic. “Rather. That, or an infection. It’s debilitating. It’s worse than dysentery. It takes away a man’s inside. When I want something, I don’t doubt whether I ought to have it or not. The only doubt is, can I get it? That’s the miserable doubt, can I get it? Usually I can’t. No doubt about that.”

Norrie, Colet thought, was a man worth looking at, large and satisfactorily indolent, but with quick and wary eyes which is usually looked down his nose when he was talking, as if his converse was self-communion which you overhead. There was nobody else for him to look at, of course; nobody who mattered so much as himself, anyhow. But the man was kindly; the purring, perhaps, of one of the larger carnivora when it was well fed. Now and then, when he had a question, a sly glance went with it, instant but casual, and you knew your answer would have to be precise; no use to hedge; but, if you hedged, then at least he would sympathise with so human a failing. His taut moustache was dark, but its hint of cruelty was forgotton in his abdundant hair, which was careless of definition, and allowed a few trumbles of grey waves to stray over his brow. His eyes and hair gave an assurance that he was often playfully human, while his long thin nose reminded Colet of a knife that would be always prompt to the usual bidding of that firm mouth with its lurking derision of scruples.

“Now, Colet, I’ve been talking of the jungle, not the pearly gates. I don’t like the jungle, but it happens to be a verifiable fact. And please don’t dwell on the thought of perdition. It makes me uncomfortable. Think of valuable deposits, which are much better. They might come in this life. Mine is a business notion. It isn’t metaphysical. Leave metaphysics to the senile, who take to thin joys because they can’t have babies. What I’m looking for is something a bank manager would respect; and yet it might come to nothing but quinine and another shot at the game later. Let me press the button for your steward. Let’s have something to make us hopeful and foolish.”