Schomberg in the stern-sheets of the launch. His body was long and loose-jointed,
his slender fingers, intertwined, clasped the leg resting on the knee, as he lolled
back in a careless yet tense attitude. On the other side of Schomberg sat another
passenger, who was introduced by the clean-shaven man as—
"My secretary. He must have the room next to mine."
"We can manage that easily for you."
Schomberg steered with dignity, staring straight ahead, but very much interested
by these two promising "accounts." Their belongings, a couple of large leather
trunks browned by age and a few smaller packages, were piled up in the bows. A
third individual—a nondescript, hairy creature—had modestly made his way
forward and had perched himself on the luggage. The lower part of his
physiognomy was over-developed; his narrow and low forehead, unintelligently
furrowed by horizontal wrinkles, surmounted wildly hirsute cheeks and a flat nose
with wide, baboon-like nostrils. There was something equivocal in the appearance
of his shaggy, hair-smothered humanity. He, too, seemed to be a follower of the
clean-shaven man, and apparently had travelled on deck with native passengers,
sleeping under the awnings. His broad, squat frame denoted great strength.
Grasping the gunwales of the launch, he displayed a pair of remarkably long arms,
terminating in thick, brown hairy paws of simian aspect.
"What shall we do with the fellow of mine?" the chief of the party asked
Schomberg. "There must be a boarding-house somewhere near the port—some
grog-shop where they could let him have a mat to sleep on?"
Schomberg said there was a place kept by a Portuguese half-caste.
"A servant of yours?" he asked.
"Well, he hangs on to me. He is an alligator-hunter. I picked him up in
Colombia, you know. Ever been in Colombia?"
"No," said Schomberg, very much surprised. "An alligator-hunter? Funny trade!
Are you coming from Colombia, then?"
"Yes, but I have been coming for a long time. I come from a good many places. I
am travelling west, you see."
"For sport, perhaps?" suggested Schomberg.
"Yes. Sort of sport. What do you say to chasing the sun?"
"I see—a gentleman at large," said Schomberg, watching a sailing canoe about to
cross his bow, and ready to clear it by a touch of the helm.
The other passenger made himself heard suddenly.
"Hang these native craft! They always get in the way."
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6378/6378-h/6378-h.htm
3/28/2007
Victory: an Island Tale, by Joseph Conrad
Page 59 of 59
He was a muscular, short man with eyes that gleamed and blinked, a harsh voice,
and a round, toneless, pock-marked face ornamented by a thin, dishevelled
moustache, sticking out quaintly under the tip of a rigid nose. Schomberg made the
reflection that there was nothing secretarial about him. Both he and his long, lank
principal wore the usual white suit of the tropics, cork helmets, pipe-clayed white
shoes—all correct. The hairy nondescript creature perched on their luggage in the
bow had a check shirt and blue dungaree trousers. He gazed in their direction from
forward in an expectant, trained-animal manner.
"You spoke to me first," said Schomberg in his manly tones. "You were
acquainted with my name. Where did you hear of me, gentlemen, may I ask?"
"In Manila," answered the gentleman at large, readily. "From a man with whom I
had a game of cards one evening in the Hotel Castille."
"What man? I've no friends in Manila that I know of," wondered Schomberg
with a severe frown.
"I can't tell you his name. I've clean forgotten it; but don't you worry. He was
anything but a friend of yours. He called you all the names he could think of. He
said you set a lot of scandal going about him once, somewhere—in Bangkok, I
think. Yes, that's it. You were running a table d'hote in Bangkok at one time,
weren't you?"
Schomberg, astounded by the turn of the information, could only throw out his
chest more and exaggerate his austere Lieutenant-of-the-Reserve manner. A table
d'hote? Yes, certainly. He always—for the sake of white men. And here in this
place, too? Yes, in this place, too.
"That's all right, then." The stranger turned his black, cavernous, mesmerizing
glance away from the bearded Schomberg, who sat gripping the brass tiller in a
sweating palm. "Many people in the evening at your place?"
Schomberg had recovered somewhat.
"Twenty covers or so, take one day with another," he answered feelingly, as
befitted a subject on which he was sensitive. "Ought to be more, if only people
would see that it's for their own good. Precious little profit I get out of it. You are
partial to tables d'hote, gentlemen?"
The new guest made answe
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6378/6378-h/6378-h.htm
3/28/2007
Joseph Conrad, Victory (Dover Thrift Editions)
(Series: # )
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends