The Narrow Corner

  “Get me some tea,” said the doctor.

  Ah Kay was on his feet in a minute. The doctor followed him up the companion. The sun had not yet risen and one pale star still loitered in the sky, but the night had thinned to a ghostly grey, and the ketch seemed to float on the surface of a cloud. The man at the helm in an old coat, with a muffler round his neck and a battered hat crammed down on his head, gave the doctor a surly nod. The sea was quite calm. They were passing between two islands so close together that they might have been sailing down a canal. There was a very light breeze. The blackfellow at the helm seemed half asleep. The dawn slid between the low, wooded islands, gravely, with a deliberate calmness that seemed to conceal an inward apprehension, and you felt it natural and even inevitable that men should have personified it in a maiden. It had indeed the shyness and the grace of a young girl, the charming seriousness, the indifference and the ruthlessness. The sky had the washed-out colour of an archaic statue. The virgin forests on each side of them still held the night, but then insensibly the grey of the sea was shot with the soft hues of a pigeon’s breast. There was a pause, and with a smile the day broke. Sailing between those uninhabited islands, on that still sea, in a silence that caused you almost to hold your breath, you had a strange and exciting impression of the beginning of the world. There man might never have passed and you had a feeling that what your eyes saw had never been seen before. You had a sensation of primeval freshness, and all the complication of the generations disappeared. A stark simplicity, as bare and severe as a straight line, filled the soul with rapture. Dr. Saunders knew at that moment the ecstasy of the mystic.

  Ah Kay brought him a cup of tea, jasmine scented, and scrambling down from the spiritual altitudes on which for an instant he had floated, he made himself comfortable, as in an arm-chair, in the bliss of a material enjoyment. The air was cool but balmy. He asked for nothing but to go on for ever in that boat sailing on an even keel between green islands.

  When he had been sitting there an hour, delighting in his ease, he heard steps on the companion, and Fred Blake came on deck. In his pyjamas, with his tousled hair, he looked very young, and as was natural to his age he had awakened fresh, with all the lines smoothed out of his face, and not puckered and wrinkled and time-worn as sleep had left the doctor.

  “Up early, doctor?” He noticed the empty cup. “I wonder if I can get a cup of tea.”

  “Ask Ah Kay.”

  “All right. I’ll just get Utan to throw a couple of buckets of water over me.”

  He went forward and spoke to one of the men. The doctor saw the blackfellow lower a bucket by a rope into the sea, and then Fred Blake stripped his pyjamas and stood on deck naked while the other threw the contents over him. The bucket was lowered again and Fred turned round. He was tall, with square shoulders, a small waist and slender hips; his arms and neck were tanned, but the rest of his body was very white. He dried himself, and putting on his pyjamas again came aft. His eyes were shining and on his lips was the outline of a smile.

  “You’re a very good-looking young fellow,” said the doctor.

  Fred gave an indifferent shrug of the shoulders and sank into the next chair.

  “We lost a boat in the night. D’you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Blew like the devil. We’ve lost the jib. Just torn to tatters. Nichols wasn’t half glad to get into the shelter of the islands, I can tell you. I thought we’d never make it.”

  “Did you stay up on deck all the time?”

  “Yes, I thought if we foundered I’d rather be in the open.”

  “There wouldn’t have been much chance for you.”

  “No, I know that.”

  “Weren’t you afraid?”

  “No. You know I think if it’s coming to you, it’ll come. And there’s nothing to do about it.”

  “I was frightened.”

  “Nichols said you were in the afternoon. He thought it a hell of a joke.”

  “It’s a question of age, you know. The old are much more easily frightened than the young. I couldn’t help thinking it rather funny at the time that I, who had so much less to lose than you who’ve got all your life before you, should dread losing it so much more than you did.”

  “How could you think if you were as scared as all that?”

  “I was scared with my body. That didn’t prevent me from thinking with my mind.”

  “Bit of a character, aren’t you, doctor.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I’m sorry I was so short with you when you asked if you could have a passage on this boat.” He hesitated an instant. “I’ve been ill, you know, and my nerves are a bit funny. I’m not crazy about people I don’t know.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m just a rough-neck.” He looked round at the peaceful scene. They had sailed out of the narrow arm between the two islands, and now found themselves in what looked like an inland sea. They were surrounded by low-lying islets, thickly covered with vegetation, and the water was as calm and blue as a Swiss lake. “Bit of a change from last night. Got worse when the moon rose. How you could have slept through it beats me. There was a hell of a racket.”

  “I smoked.”

  “Nichols said you were going to when you and the Chink went into the cabin. I wouldn’t believe it. But when we came down—huh, it was enough to take the roof of your head off.”

  “Why wouldn’t you believe it?”

  “I couldn’t imagine that a man like you could degrade himself by doing such a thing.”

  The doctor chuckled.

  “One should be tolerant of other people’s vices,” he said calmly.

  “I’ve got no cause to blame anybody.”

  “What else has Nichols said about me?”

  “Oh, well.” He paused as he saw Ah Kay, as neat as a new pin in his white dress, slim and graceful, come along to fetch the empty cups. “It’s no business of mine, anyway. He says you were struck off the rolls for something.”

  “Removed from the Register is the correct expression,” placidly interrupted the doctor.

  “And he says he believes you went to gaol. Naturally one can’t help wondering when one sees a man with your intelligence, and the reputation you have in the East, settled in a beastly Chinese city.”

  “What makes you think I’m intelligent?”

  “I can see that you’re educated. I don’t want you to think that I’m just a larrikin. I was studying to be an accountant when my health broke down. This isn’t the sort of life I’m used to.”

  The doctor smiled. No one could have looked more radiantly well than Fred Blake. His broad chest, his athletic build, gave the lie to his tale of tuberculosis.

  “Shall I tell you something?”

  “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “Oh, not about myself. I don’t talk much about myself. I think there’s no harm in a doctor being a trifle mysterious. It adds to his patients’ belief in him. I was going to give you a reflection based on experience. When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.”

  Fred looked down.

  “Why do you say that to me?”

  “I thought it might be a useful piece of information.”

  The young man sighed a little.

  “You never know about people, do you? I used to think you were either white or yellow. It seems to me you can’t tell what anyone’ll do when it comes to the pinch. Of all the rotten skunks I’ve met I’ve never met one to beat Nichols. He’d rather go crooked than straight. You can’t trust him an inch. We’ve been together a good while now, and I thought t
here wasn’t much I didn’t know about him. He’d do his own brother down if he got the chance. Not a decent thing about him. You should have seen him last night. I don’t mind telling you it was a pretty near thing. You’d have been surprised. Calm as a cucumber. My opinion is that he just revelled in it. Once he said to me: ‘Said your prayers, Fred? If we don’t make the islands before it gets much worse, we shall be feeding the fishes in the morning.’ And he grinned all over his ugly face. He kept his head all right. I’ve done a bit of sailing in Sydney harbour and I give you my word I’ve never seen a boat handled like he handled this one. I take my hat off to him. If we’re here now it’s him we owe it to. He’s got nerve all right. And if he thought there was twenty pounds to be made without risk by doing us in, you and me, d’you think he’d hesitate? How d’you explain that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “But don’t you think it’s funny that a chap who’s nothing but a born crook should have all that pluck? I mean, I’ve always heard that when a man was a wrong ’un he might bluster and bully, but when it comes to a crisis he’d just crumple up. I hate that chap, and all the same, last night I couldn’t help admiring him.”

  The doctor smiled quietly, but did not answer. He was amused by the lad’s ingenuous surprise at the complexity of human nature.

  “And he’s conceited. We play cribbage all the time, fancies himself at the game. I always beat him, and he will go on.”

  “He tells me you’ve been very lucky.”

  “Lucky in love, unlucky at cards, they say. I’ve played cards all my life. I’ve got a knack for it. That’s one of the reasons why I went in for being an accountant. I’ve got that sort of head. It’s not luck. You have luck in streaks. I know about cards, and in the long run it’s always the fellow who plays best who wins. Nichols thinks he’s smart. He hasn’t got a dog’s chance playing with me.”

  The conversation dropped and they sat side by side in easy comfort. After a while Captain Nichols woke and came on deck. In his dirty pyjamas, unwashed, unshaved, with his decayed teeth and general air of having run to seed, he presented an appearance that was almost repulsive. His face, grey in the light of early morning, bore a peevish expression.

  “It’s come on again, doc.”

  “What?”

  “My dyspepsia. I ’ad a snack last night before I went to bed. I knew I oughtn’t to eat anything just before turnin’ in, but I was that ’ungry I just ’ad to, and it’s on me chest now somethin’ cruel.”

  “We’ll see what we can do about it,” smiled the doctor, getting up from his chair.

  “You won’t be able to do a thing,” answered the skipper gloomily. “I know my digestion. After I been through a patch of dirty weather I always ’ave dyspepsia as sure as my name’s Nichols. Cruel ’ard, I call it. I mean, you would think after I’d been at the wheel for eight hours I could eat a bit of cold sausage and a slice of cheese without sufferin’ for it. Damn it all, a man must eat.”

  xv

  DR. SAUNDERS was to leave them at Kanda-Meira, twin islands in the Kanda Sea, at which vessels of the Royal Netherlands Steam Packet Company called regularly. He thought it unlikely that he would have to wait long before a ship came in bound for some place to which he was not unwilling to go. The gale had forced them out of their course, and for twenty-four hours they were becalmed, so that it was not till the sixth day that, early in the morning, with but just enough wind to fill their sails, they sighted the volcano of Meira. The town was on Kanda. It was nine o’clock before they reached the entrance to the harbour, and the Sailing Directions had warned them that it was difficult. Meira was a tall conical hill covered with jungle almost to its summit, and a plume of dense smoke, like a huge umbrella pine, rose from its crater. The channel between the two islands was narrow and tidal streams were said to run through it with great force. In one place it was barely half a cable wide, and there were shoals in the centre with very little water over them. But Captain Nichols was a fine seaman and knew it. He liked an opportunity to show off. Looking astonishingly disreputable in loud, striped pyjamas, a battered topi on his head, and a week’s growth of white beard, he took the Fenton in with style.

  “Don’t look so bad,” he said, as the little town was discovered.

  There were warehouses to the water’s edge and native houses on poles with thatched roofs. Naked children were playing about in the clear water. A Chinese in a broad-brimmed hat was fishing from a dug-out. The harbour was far from crowded: there were only two junks, three or four large prahus, a motor-boat and a derelict schooner. Beyond the town was a hill surmounted by a flag-staff, and from it dangled limply a Dutch flag.

  “I wonder if there’s a hotel,” murmured the doctor.

  He and Fred Blake stood on each side of Captain Nichols at the helm.

  “Sure to be. Used to be a grand place in the old days. Centre of the spice trade and all that. Nutmegs. Never been ’ere meself, but I been told there’s marble palaces and I don’t know what all.”

  There were two piers. One was neat and tidy; the other, of wood, was ramshackle and badly needed a coat of paint. It was shorter than the first.

  “The long ’un belongs to the Netherlands Company, I guess,” said the skipper. “Let’s go to the other.”

  They reached the side. The mainsail was lowered with a clatter and they tied up.

  “Well, doc, you’ve arrived. Luggage ready and all that?”

  “You’re coming ashore, aren’t you?”

  “What about it, Fred?”

  “Yes, come on. I’m sick of being aboard this boat. And we’ve got to get another dinghy anyway.”

  “We’ll be wantin’ a new jib, too. I’ll just go and doll meself up and then I’ll join you.”

  The skipper went down into the cabin. His toilet did not take him long, for it consisted only in changing his pyjamas for a pair of khaki trousers, putting a khaki coat on his bare back and slipping his naked feet into old tennis shoes. They clambered by rickety steps on to the pier and walked along it. There was no one there. They reached the quay and after hesitating for a moment took what looked like the main street. It was empty and silent. They wandered down the middle of the roadway, abreast, and looked about them. It was pleasant to be able to stretch one’s legs after those days on the lugger, and a relief to feel under one’s feet the solid earth. The bungalows on either side of the road had very high roofs, thatched and pointed, and the roofs, jutting out, were supported by pillars, Doric and Corinthian, so as to form broad verandahs. They had an air of ancient opulence, but their whitewash was stained and worn, and the little gardens in front of them were rank with tangled weeds. They came to shops and they all seemed to sell the same sort of things: cottons, sarongs and canned foods. There was no animation. Some of the shops had not even an attendant, as though no purchaser could possibly be expected. The few persons they passed, Malays or Chinese, walked quickly as though they were afraid to awaken the echo. Now and then a whiff of nutmeg assaulted the nostrils. Dr. Saunders stopped a Chinese and asked him where the hotel was. He told them to go straight on, and presently they came to it. They went in. There was no one about, but they sat down at a table on the verandah and thumped on it with their fists. A native woman in a sarong came and looked at them, but vanished when the doctor addressed her. Then appeared a half-caste, buttoning up his stengah-shifter, and Dr. Saunders asked if he could have a room. The man did not understand, and the doctor spoke to him in Chinese.

  The man answered in Dutch, but when the doctor shook his head, with a smile made signs that they were to wait and ran down the steps. They saw him cross the road.

  “Gone to fetch someone, I expect,” said the skipper. “Extraordinary thing they shouldn’t speak English. They give me to understand the place was civilized.”

  The half-caste returned in a few minutes with a white man, who gave them a curious glance as his companion pointed them out to him, and then as he came up the steps politely raised his topi.

&nbs
p; “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Can I be of any service to you? Van Ryk cannot understand what you want.”

  He spoke English very correctly, but with a foreign accent. He was a young man, in the twenties, very tall, six foot three at least, and broad-shouldered, a powerful fellow, but clumsily built, so that though he gave you an impression of great strength, it was of an ungainly nature. His ducks were neat and clean. A fountain pen protruded from the pocket of his closely-buttoned tunic.

  “We’ve just come in on a sailing-boat,” said the doctor, “and I want to know if I can have a room here till the next steamer comes in.”

  “Surely. The hotel isn’t as full as all that.”

  He turned to the half-caste and fluently explained what the doctor wanted. After a brief conversation he returned to English.

  “Yes, he can give you a nice room. Your board included, it’ll come to eight gulden a day. The manager’s away at Batavia, but van Ryk’s looking after things, and he’ll make you comfortable.”

  “What about a drink?” said the skipper. “Let’s ’ave some beer.”

  “Won’t you join us?” asked the doctor politely.

  “Thank you very much.”

  The young man sat down and took off his topi. He had a broad, flat face and a flat nose, with high cheek bones and rather small black eyes; his smooth skin was sallow, and there was no colour in his cheeks; his hair, cut very short, was coal black. He was not at all good-looking, but his great ugly face bore an expression of such good nature that you could not but be somewhat taken by him. His eyes were mild and kindly.

  “Dutch?” asked the skipper.

  “No, I’m a Dane. Erik Christessen. I represent a Danish company here.”

  “Been here long?”

  “Four years.”

  “Good God!” cried Fred Blake.

  Erik Christessen gave a little laugh, childlike in its simplicity, and his friendly eyes beamed with good will.

  “It’s a fine place. It’s the most romantic spot in the East. They wanted to move me, but I begged them to let me stay on.”