The Narrow Corner Page 7

  “Oh?”

  “There’s politics at the bottom of it or I’ll eat my ’at. If there ’adn’t been Ryan wouldn’t ’ave been mixed up in it. The Government’s pretty rocky in New South Wales. They’re ’angin’ on by their teeth. If there was a scandal they’d go out to-morrow. There’ll ’ave to be an election soon, anyway. They think they’ll get in again, but my belief is it’s a toss-up and I guess they know they can’t take a risk. I shouldn’t be surprised if Fred wasn’t the son of somebody pretty important.”

  “Premier, or somebody like that, you mean? Is there one of the Ministers called Blake?”

  “Blake’s no more ’is name than it is mine. It’s one of the Ministers all right, and Fred’s ’is son or ’is nephew; and whatever it is, if it come out, he’d lose ’is seat, and my opinion is they all thought it better Fred should be out of the way for a few months.”

  “And what d’you think it is he did?”

  “Murder, if you ask me.”

  “He’s only a kid.”

  “Old enough to ’ang.”

  xii

  “HULLOA, what’s that?” said the skipper. “There’s a boat comin’.”

  His hearing was indeed acute, for Dr. Saunders heard nothing. The captain peered into the darkness. He put his hand on the doctor’s arm and getting up noiselessly, slipped down into the cabin. In a moment he came up again and the doctor saw that he carried a revolver.

  “No ’arm bein’ on the safe side,” he said.

  Now the doctor discerned the faint grating of oars turning in rusty rowlocks.

  “It’s the schooner’s dinghy,” he said.

  “I know it is. But I don’t know what they want. Pretty late to pay a social call.”

  The two men waited in silence and listened to the approaching sound. Presently, they not only heard the splash of the water, but saw the vague outline of the boat, a little black mass against the black sea.

  “Hullo there,” cried Nichols suddenly. “Boat ahoy.”

  “That you, Captain?” a voice travelled over the water.

  “Yes, it’s me. What d’you want?”

  He stood at the gunwale, the revolver in his hand, hanging from the end of his loose arm. The Australian rowed on.

  “Wait till I come on board,” he said.

  “Pretty late, ain’t it?” cried Nichols.

  The Australian told the man who was rowing to stop.

  “Wake up the doctor, will you? I don’t half like the look of my Jap. Seems to me he’s sinking.”

  “The doctor’s ’ere. Come to the side.”

  The dinghy came on and Captain Nichols, leaning over, saw that the Australian was alone with a blackfellow.

  “D’you want me to come over?” asked Dr. Saunders.

  “Sorry to trouble you, doc, but I think he’s pretty bad.”

  “I’ll come. Wait till I get my things.”

  He stumbled down the companion and picked up a satchel in which he had what was necessary for emergencies. He climbed over the side and let himself down into the dinghy. The blackfellow rowed off quickly.

  “You know what it is,” said the Australian, “you can’t get a diver for the asking, not a Jap, and they’re the only ones worth having. There isn’t one in the Arus out of a job now, and if I lose this chap it’s going to queer my pitch good and proper. I mean, I shall have to go all the way to Yokohama, and then the chances are I shall have to hang around for a month before I get what I want.”

  The diver was lying on one of the lower bunks in the crew’s quarters. The air was fetid and the heat fearful. Two blackfellows were asleep and one of them, lying on his back, breathed stertorously. A third, sitting on his haunches on the floor by the sick man’s side, was staring at him with eyes that had no meaning. A hurricane lamp hanging from a beam gave a dim light. The diver was in a state of collapse. He was conscious, but when the doctor went up to him there was no change in the expression of the coal-black Oriental eyes. One might have thought that they gazed already at Eternity and could not be distracted by a transitory object. Dr. Saunders felt his pulse and put his hand on the clammy forehead. He gave him a hypodermic injection. He stood by the side of the bunk and looked reflectively at the recumbent form.

  “Let’s go up and get a little air,” he said presently. “Tell this man to come and tell us if there’s any change.”

  “Is he for it?” asked the Australian, when they got on deck.

  “Looks like it.”

  “God, I do have bad luck.”

  The doctor chuckled. The Australian asked him to sit down. The night was as still as death. In the calm water the stars from their vast distances looked at themselves. The two men were silent. Some say that if you believe a thing with sufficient force it becomes true. For that Jap, lying there, dying there, painlessly, it was not the end, but the turning over of a page; he knew, as certainly as he knew that the sun in a few hours would rise, that he was but slipping from one life to another. Karma, the deeds of this as of all the other lives he had passed, would be somehow continued; and perhaps, in his exhaustion, the only emotion that remained to him was curiosity, anxious it might be or amused, to know in what condition he would be reborn. Dr. Saunders dozed off. He was awakened by a blackman’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Come quick.”

  The dawn was breaking. It was not yet day, but the light of the stars had dwindled and the sky was ghostly. He went below. The diver was sinking fast. His eyes were open still, but his pulse was imperceptible and his body had the coldness of death. Suddenly there was a little rattle, not loud, but deprecating and conciliatory, like the manners of the Japanese, and he was dead. The two sleepers had wakened and one sat on the edge of his bunk, his black naked legs dangling, while the other, as though he wanted to shut away from him what was happening so close, sat crouched on the floor with his back to the dying man, and held his head in his hands.

  When the doctor went back on deck, and told the captain, he shrugged his shoulders.

  “No physique, these Japs,” he said.

  Dawn now was stealing over the water, and the first rays of the sun touched its stillness with cool and delicate colours.

  “Well, I’ll be getting back to the Fenton,” said the doctor. “I know the captain wants to sail soon after it’s light.”

  “You’d better have some breakfast before you go. You must be pretty peckish.”

  “Well, I could do with a cup of tea.”

  “I’ll tell you what, I’ve got some eggs, I was keeping them for the Jap, but he won’t want ’em now, let’s have some bacon and eggs.”

  He shouted for the cook.

  “I just fancy a plate of bacon and eggs,” he said, rubbing his hands. “They ought to be pretty fresh still.”

  Presently the cook brought them, piping hot, with tea and biscuits.

  “God, they smell good,” said the Australian. “Funny thing, you know, I never get tired of bacon and eggs. When I’m at home I have them every day. Sometimes my wife gives me something else for a change, but there’s nothing I like ’alf so much.”

  But when the blackfellow was rowing Dr. Saunders back to the Fenton, it struck him that death was a funnier thing even than that the schooner’s captain should like bacon and eggs for breakfast. The flat sea was shining like polished steel. Its colours were pale and delicate like the colours in the boudoir of an eighteenth-century marquise. It seemed very odd to the doctor that men should die. There was something absurd in the notion that this pearl diver, the heir of innumerable generations, the result of a complicated process of evolution that had lasted since the planet was formed, here and now, because of a succession of accidents that confounded the imagination, should be brought to death on this lost and uninhabited spot.

  Captain Nichols was shaving when the doctor reached the side and he gave him a hand to help him on board.

  “Well, what’s the news?”

  “Oh, he’s dead.”

  “I thought as much. What’s
bein’ done about buryin’ ’im?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t ask. I suppose they’ll just throw him overboard.”

  “Like a dog?”

  “Why not?”

  The skipper gave signs of an agitation that not a little surprised Dr. Saunders.

  “That won’t do at all. Not on a British vessel. He must be buried in the proper way. I mean, he must ’ave a proper service and all that.”

  “He was a Buddhist or Shintoist or something like that, you know.”

  “I can’t ’elp that. I been at sea, man and boy, for more than thirty years, and when a chap dies on a British ship he must ’ave a British funeral. Death levels all men, doc, you ought to know that, and at a time like this we can’t ’old it up against a fellow that he’s a Jap, or a nigger, or a dago, or anything. Hi, you men, lower a boat and look sharp about it. I’ll go over to the schooner meself. When I see you didn’t come back all this time I said to meself that this was going to ’appen. That’s why I was shavin’ when you come alongside.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m goin’ to talk to the skipper of that there schooner. We must do what’s right. Give that Jap a send-off in style. I’ve always made a point of that on every vessel I’ve commanded. Makes a rare good impression on the crew. Then they know what to expect if anything ’appens to them.”

  The dinghy was lowered and the skipper rowed away. Fred Blake came aft. With his tousled hair, his clear skin and blue eyes, his springtime radiance, he looked like a young Bacchus in a Venetian picture. The doctor, tired after a night of little sleep, felt a moment’s envy of his insolent youth.

  “How’s the patient, doctor?”

  “Dead.”

  “Some fellows have all the luck, don’t they?”

  Dr. Saunders gave him a sharp look, but did not speak.

  In a little while, they saw the dinghy coming back from the schooner, but without Captain Nichols. The man called Utan spoke English well. He brought them a message that they were all to go over.

  “What the hell for?” asked Blake.

  “Come on,” said the doctor.

  The two white men climbed over the side and the remaining two members of the crew.

  “Captain say everybody. China boy, too.”

  “Jump in, Ah Kay,” said the doctor to his servant, who was sitting on deck, unconcerned, sewing a button on a pair of trousers.

  Ah Kay put down his work and with his friendly little smile stepped down on light feet into the dinghy. They rowed over to the schooner. When they climbed up the ladder, they found Captain Nichols and the Australian waiting for them.

  “Captain Atkinson agrees with me that we ought to do the right thing by this poor Jap,” said Nichols, “and as he ’asn’t the experience what I ’ave, ’e’s asked me to conduct the ceremony in proper style.”

  “That’s right,” said the Australian.

  “It isn’t my place, I know that. When you ’ave a death at sea it’s the captain’s place to read the service, but ’e don’t ’appen to ’ave a prayer-book on board and ’e don’t know what to do any more than a canary with a rumpsteak. Am I right, Captain?”

  The Australian nodded gravely.

  “But I thought you were a Baptist,” said the doctor.

  “Ordinarily, I am,” said Nichols. “But when it comes to funerals and that-like I always ’ave used the prayer-book and I always shall use the prayer-book. Now, Captain, as soon as your party’s ready we’ll assemble the men and get on with the job.”

  The Australian walked forward and in a minute or two rejoined them.

  “Looks to me as if they was just putting in the last stitches,” he said.

  “A stitch in time saves nine,” said Captain Nichols, somewhat to the doctor’s perplexity.

  “What d’you say to a little drink while we’re waiting?”

  “Not yet, Captain. We’ll ’ave that afterwards. Business before pleasure.”

  Then a man came alone.

  “All finished, boss,” he said.

  “That’s fine,” said Nichols. “Come on, chaps.”

  He was alert. He held himself erect. His little foxy eyes were twinkling with pleasant anticipation. The doctor observed with demure amusement his air of subdued gaiety. It was plain that he enjoyed the situation. They marched aft. The crews of the two boats, blackfellows all of them, were standing about, some with pipes in their mouths, one or two with the fag-end of a cigarette sticking to their thick lips. On the deck lay a bundle in what looked to the doctor like a copra sack. It was very small. You could hardly believe that it contained what had once been a man.

  “Are you all ’ere?” asked Captain Nichols, looking round. “No smokin’, please. Respect for the dead.”

  They put away their pipes, and spat out the ends of their cigarettes.

  “Stand round now. You near me, Captain. I’m only doin’ this to oblige, you understand, and I don’t want you to think I don’t know it’s your place and not mine. Now then, are you all ready?”

  Captain Nichols’ recollection of the burial service was somewhat sketchy. He began with a prayer that owed much to his invention, but which he delivered with unction. Its language was florid. He ended with a resounding amen.

  “Now we’ll sing a ’ymn.” He looked at the blackfellows. “You’ve all been to missionary schools and I want you to put your guts in it. Let ’em ’ear you right away to Macassar. Come on, all of you. Onward Christian Soldiers, onwards as to war.”

  He burst out singing in a throaty, tuneless strain, but with fervour, and he had hardly started before the crews of the two boats joined in. They sang lustily with rich deep voices and the sound travelled over the peaceful sea. It was a hymn they had all learnt in their native islands, and they knew every word of it; but in their unfamiliar speech, with its queer intonations, it gathered a strange mystery so that it seemed not like a Christian hymn but like the barbaric, rhythmical shouting of a savage multitude. It rang with fantastic sounds, the beating of drums and the clang of curious instruments, and it suggested the night and dark ceremonies by the water’s edge and the dripping of blood in human sacrifice. Ah Kay, very clean in his neat white dress, stood a little apart from the black men in an attitude of negligent grace, and in his lovely liquid eyes was a look of a slightly scornful astonishment. They ended the first verse and without prompting from Captain Nichols sang the second. But when they started on the third he clapped his hands sharply.

  “Now then, that’s enough,” he cried. “This ain’t a bloody concert. We don’t want to stay ’ere all night.”

  They stopped suddenly and he looked round with severity. The doctor’s eyes fell on that small bundle in the copra sack that lay on deck in the middle of the circle. He did not know why, but he thought of the little boy the dead diver once had been, with his yellow face and sloe-black eyes, who played in the streets of a Japanese town and was taken by his mother in her pretty Japanese dress, with pins in her elaborately done hair and clogs on her feet, to see the cherry blossom when it was in flower and, on holidays to the temple, where he was given a cake; and perhaps once, dressed all in white, with an ashen wand in his hand, he had gone with all his family on pilgrimage and watched the sun rise from the summit of Fuji Yama the sacred mountain.

  “Now I’m going to say another prayer and when I come to the words, ‘we therefore commend ’is body to the deep,’ and mind you watch out for them, I don’t want a hitch or anythin’ like that, you just catch ’old of ’im and pop ’im over, see? Better detail two men to do that, Captain.”

  “You, Bob. And Jo.”

  The two men stepped forward and made to seize the body.

  “Not yet, you damned fools,” cried Captain Nichols. “Let me get the words out of me mouth, blast you.” And then, without stopping to take breath, he burst into prayer. He went on till he could evidently think of nothing more to say, and then raising his voice a little: “Forasmuch as it ’as pleased Almighty God of ’is gre
at mercy to take unto ’isself the soul of our dear brother ’ere departed: We therefore commend his body to the deep …” He gave the two men a severe look, but they were staring at him with open mouths. “Now then, don’t be all night about it. Pop the bleeder over, blast you.”

  With a start they leapt at the little bundle that lay on deck and flung it overboard. It plunged into the water with hardly a splash. Captain Nichols went on with a little satisfied smile on his face.

  “To be turned into corruption, lookin’ for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up its dead. Now, dearly beloved brethren, we’ll all say the Lord’s Prayer, and no mumblin’, please. God wants to ’ear and I want to ’ear. Our Father which art in ’eaven …”

  He repeated it to the crew in a loud voice and all but Ah Kay said it with him.

  “Now, men, that’s about all,” he continued, but in the same unctuous voice; “I’m glad to ’ave ’ad the opportunity to conduct this sad ceremony in the proper way. In the midst of life we are in death, and accidents will ’appen in the best regulated families. I want you to know that if you’re taken to the bourne from which no one ever comes back, so long as you’re on a British ship and under the British flag, you can be sure of ’avin’ a decent funeral and bein’ buried like a faithful son of our Lord Jesus Christ. Under ordinary circumstances I should now call upon you to give three cheers for your captain, Captain Atkinson, but this is a sad occasion upon which we are gathered together and our thoughts are too deep for tears, so I will ask you to give ’im three cheers in your ’earts. And now to God the Father, God the Son and God the ’oly Ghost. A-a-men.”

  Captain Nichols turned aside with the manner of a man descending from the pulpit and held out his hand to the captain of the schooner. The Australian wrung it warmly.

  “By God, you done that first rate,” he said.

  “Practice,” said Captain Nichols modestly.

  “Now, boys, what about a tiddly?”

  “That’s the idea,” said Captain Nichols. He turned to his crew. “You fellers get back to the Fenton and Tom you come back and fetch us.”

  The four men shambled along the deck. Captain Atkinson brought up from the cabin a bottle of whisky and some glasses.