 OF THE FIVE STORIES IN THIS VOLUME, THE LAGUNE, THE LAST IN ORDER IS THE EARLIEST IN DATE. IT IS THE FIRST SHORT STORY I EVER WROTE, AND MARKS, IN A MANOR OF SPEAKING, THE END OF MY FIRST PHASE, THE MALASION PHASE, WITH ITS SPECIAL SUBJECT IN ITS VERBAL SUGESTIONS. CONCEIVED IN THE SAME MOOD WHICH PRODUCED ALMEIR'S FOLLY AND AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLAND, IT IS TOLD IN THE SAME BREATH, WITH WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT, THAT IS, AFTER THE END OF AN OUTCAST, SEEN WITH THE SAME VISION, RENDERED IN THE SAME METHOD, IF SUCH A THING AS METHOD DID THEN EXIST IN MY CONSCIENCE RELATION TO THIS NEW ADVENTURE OF WRITING FOR PRINT. I doubt it very much. One does one's work first and theorizes about it afterwards. It is a very amusing and egotistical occupation of no use whatever to any one, and just as likely as not to lead to false conclusions. Anybody can see that between the last paragraph of an outcast and the first of the lagoon there has been no change of pen, figuratively speaking. It happened also to be literally true. It was the same pen, a common steel pen. Having been charged with a certain lack of emotional faculty, I am glad to be able to say that on one occasion at least I did give way to a sentimental impulse. I thought the pen had been a good pen, and that it had done enough for me, and so with the idea of keeping it for a sort of memento on which I could look later with tender eyes I put it into my waistcoat pocket. Afterwards it used to turn up in all sorts of places, at the bottom of small drawers, among my studs and cardboard boxes, till at last it found permanent rest in a large wooden bowl containing some loose keys, bits of ceiling wax, bits of string, small broken chains, a few buttons, and similar minute wreckage that washes out of a man's life into such receptacles. I would catch sight of it from time to time with a distinct feeling of satisfaction, till one day I perceived with horror that there were two old pens in there. How the other pen found its way into the bowl instead of the fireplace or waste-paper basket I can't imagine. But there the two were, lying side by side, both encrusted with ink and completely indistinguishable from each other. It was very distressing, but being determined not to share my sentiment between the two pens, or run the risk of sentimentalizing over a mere stranger, I threw them both out of the window into a flower bed, which strikes me now as a poetical grave for the remnants of one's past. But the tale remained. It was first fixed in print in the Cornhill magazine, being my first appearance in a serial of any kind, and I have lived long enough to see it guide most agreeably by Mr. Mac's beer-bomb in a volume of parodies entitled A Christmas Garland, where I found myself in very good company. I was immensely gratified. I began to believe in my public existence. I have much to thank the lagoon for. My next effort in short story writing was a departure. I mean a departure from the Malay archipelago. Without premeditation, without sorrow, without rejoicing, and almost without noticing it, I stepped into the very different atmosphere of an outpost of progress. I found there a different moral attitude. I seemed able to capture new reactions, new suggestions, and even new rhythms for my paragraphs. For a moment I fancied myself a new man, a most exciting illusion. It clung to me for some time, monstrous, half conviction and half hope as to its body, with an iridescent tale of dreams and with a changeable head like a plastic mask. It was only later that I perceived that in common with the rest of men, nothing could deliver me from my fatal consistency. We cannot escape from ourselves. An outpost of progress is the lightest part of the lute I carried off from Central Africa, the main portion being, of course, the heart of darkness. Other men have found a lot of quite different things there, and I have the comfortable conviction that what I took would not have been of much use to anybody else. And it must be said that it was but a very small amount of plunder. All of it could go into one's breast pocket when folded neatly. As for the story itself, it is true enough in its essentials. The sustained invention of a really telling lie demands a talent which I do not possess. The Idias is such an obviously derivative piece of work that it is impossible for me to say anything about it here. The suggestion of it was not mental but visual, the actual Idias. It was after an interval of long groping amongst vague impulses and hesitations which ended in the production of The Nigger that I turned to my third short story in the order of time, the first in this volume, Carrain, A Memory. Reading it after many years, Carrain produced on me the effect of something seen through a pair of glasses, from a rather advantageous position. In that story I had not gone back to the archipelago, I had only turned for another look at it. I admit that I was absorbed by the distant view, so absorbed that I didn't notice then that the motif of the story is almost identical with the motif of the lagoon. However, the idea at the back is very different, but the story is mainly made memorable to me by the fact that it was my first contribution to Blackwood's magazine, and that it led to my personal acquaintance with Mr. William Blackwood, whose guarded appreciation I felt nevertheless to be genuine and prized accordingly. Carrain was begun on a sudden impulse only three days after I wrote The Last Line of The Nigger, and the recollection of its difficulties is mixed up with the worries of the unfinished return, the last pages of which I took up again at the time, the only instance in my life when I made an attempt to write with both hands at once, as it were. Indeed my innermost feeling now is that the return is a left-handed production. Looking through that story lately, I had the material impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella in the loud drumming of a heavy rain-shower. It was very distracting. In the general uproar one could hear every individual drop strike on the stout and distended silk. Mentally the reading rendered me dumb for the remainder of the day, not exactly with astonishment but with a sort of dismal wonder. I don't want to talk disrespectively of any pages of mine. Psychologically there were no doubt good reasons for my attempt, and it was worthwhile, if only to see, of what excesses I was capable in that short virtuosity. In this connection I should like to confess my surprise on finding that, notwithstanding all its apparatus of analysis, the story consists for the most part of physical impressions, impressions of sound and sight, railway stations, streets, a trotting-horse, reflections in mirrors and so on, rendered as if for their own sake, and combined with a sublimated description of a desirable middle-class town residence which somehow manages to produce a sinister effect. For the rest any kind word about the return, and there have been such words said at different times, awakens in me the liveliest gratitude, for I know how much the writing of that fantasy has cost me in sheer toil, in temper, and in disillusion. We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any property now, and I hear that many negligently have lost their lives. But I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence of various native risings in the eastern archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the lines of those short paragraphs, sunshine and the glitter of the sea. A strange name wakes up memories, the printed words sent the smoky atmosphere of today faintly, with the subtle and penetrating perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone nights. A signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a somber cliff. Great trees, the advanced centuries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water. A line of white surf, thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs, and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished sea like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel. There are faces too, faces dark, truculent and smiling. The frank, audacious faces of men barefooted, well-armed and noiseless. They thronged the narrow length of Arskuna's decks with their ornamented and barbarous crowd, with the variegated colours of checkered sarongs, red turbans, white jackets, embroideries, with the gleam of scabbards, gold rings, charms, armlets, lance blades, and jewelled handles of their weapons. They had an independent veering, resolute eyes, a restrained manner, and we seem yet to hear their soft voices speaking of battles, travels, and escapes, boasting with composure, joking quietly, sometimes in well-bred murmurs extolling their own valour, our generosity, or celebrating with loyal enthusiasm the virtues of their ruler. We remember the faces, the eyes, the voices. We see again the gleam of silk and metal, the murmuring stir of that crowd, brilliant, festive, and marshal, and we seem to feel the touch of friendly brown hands, that, after one short grasp, returned to rest on a chaste hilt. They were Coraine's people, a devoted following. Their movements hung on his lips. They read their thoughts in his eyes. He murmured to them nonchalantly, of life and death, and they accepted his words humbly, like gifts of fate. They were all free men, and when speaking to him said, your slave. On his passage voices died out, as though he had walked guarded by silence. Ord whispers followed him. They called him their war chief. He was the ruler of three villages on a narrow plain, the master of an insignificant foothold on the earth, of a conquered foothold that, shaped like a young moon, lay ignored between the hills and the sea. From the deck of Arscuna, anchored in the middle of the bay, he integrated, by a theatrical sweep of his arm along the jagged outline of the hills, the whole of his domain. And the ample movement seemed to drive back its limits, augmenting it suddenly into something so immense and vague, that for a moment it appeared to be bounded only by the sky. And really, looking at that place, landlocked from the sea, and shut off from the land by the precipitous slopes of mountains, it was difficult to believe in the existence of any neighbourhood. It was still, complete, unknown, and full of a life that went on stealthily with a troubling effect of solitude, of a life that seemed unaccountably empty of anything that would stir the thought, touch the heart, give a hint of the ominous sequence of days. It appeared to us a land without memories, regrets, and hopes, a land where nothing could survive the coming of the night, and where each sunrise, like a dazzling act of special creation, was disconnected from the eve and the morrow. Karene swept his hand over it. All mine. He struck the deck with his long staff. The gold head flashed like a falling star. Very close behind him, a silent old fellow in a richly embroidered black jacket, alone of all the malaise around, did not follow the masterful gesture with a look. He did not even lift his eyelids. He bowed his head behind his master, and without stirring, held, hilt up over his right shoulder, a long blade in a silver scabbard. He was there on duty, but without curiosity, and seemed weary, not with age, but with the possession of a burdensome secret of existence. Karene, heavy and proud, had a lofty pose, and breathed calmly. It was our first visit, and we looked about, curiously. The bay was like a bottomless pit of intense light. The circular sheet of water reflected a luminous sky, and the shores, enclosing it, made an opaque ring of earth, floating in an emptiness of transparent blue. The hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky. Their summits seemed to fade into a colored tremble, as of ascending vapor. Their steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines. At their foot lay rice fields, plantain patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound about like a dropped thread. Clumps of fruit trees marked the villages. Slim palms put their nodding heads together above the low houses. Dried palm leaf roofs shone afar, like roofs of gold behind the dark colonnades of tree trunks. Figures passed vivid and vanishing. The smoke of fires stood upright above the masses of flowering bushes. Bamboo fences glittered, running away in broken lines between the fields. A sudden cry on the shore sounded plaintive in the distance, and ceased abruptly, as if stifled in the downpour of sunshine. A puff of breeze made a flash of darkness on the smooth water, touched our faces and became forgotten. Nothing moved. The sun blazed down into a shadowless hollow of colors and stillness. It was the stage where, dressed splendidly for his part, he strutted incomparably dignified, made important by the power he had to awaken an absurd expectation of something heroic going to take place. A burst of action or song upon the vibrating tone of a wonderful sunshine. He was ornate and disturbing, for one could not imagine what depth of horrible void such an elaborate front could be worthy to hide. He was not masked. There was too much life in him, and a mask is only a lifeless thing. But he presented himself essentially as an actor, as a human being aggressively disguised. His smallest acts were prepared and unexpected. His speeches grave, his sentences ominous, like hints and complicated, like arabesques. He was treated with a solemn respect accorded in the irreverent west, only to the monarchs of the stage. And he accepted the profound homage with a sustained dignity seen nowhere else but behind the footlights and in the condensed falseness of some grossly tragic situation. It was almost impossible to remember who he was, only a petty chief of a conveniently isolated corner of Mindanao, where we could, in comparative safety, break the law against the traffic in firearms and ammunition with the natives. What would happen, should one of the moribund Spanish gunboats be suddenly galvanized into a flicker of active life, did not trouble us? Once we were inside the bay, so completely did it appear out of the reach of a meddling world. And besides, in those days we were imaginative enough to look with a kind of joyous equanimity on any chance there was of being quietly hanged, somewhere out of the way of diplomatic remonstrance. As to Kareen, nothing could happen to him unless what happens to all, failure and death, but his quality was to appear clothed in the illusion of unavoidable success. He seemed too effective, too necessary there, too much of an essential condition for the existence of his land and his people to be destroyed by anything short of an earthquake. He summed up his race, his country, the elemental force of ardent life, of tropical nature. He had its luxuriant strength, its fascination. And like it, he carried the seed of peril within. In many successive visits, we came to know his stage well, the purple semicircle of hills, the slim trees leaning over houses, the yellow sands, the streaming green of ravines, all that had the crude and blended coloring, the appropriateness almost excessive, the suspicious immobility of a painted scene. And it enclose so perfectly the accomplished acting of his amazing pretenses that the rest of the world seemed shut out forever from the gorgeous spectacle. There could be nothing outside. It was as if the earth had gone on spinning, and had left that crumb of its surface alone in space. He appeared utterly cut off from everything but the sunshine, and that even seemed to be made for him alone. Once, when asked what was on the other side of the hills, he said with a meaning smile, friends and enemies, many enemies. Else why should I buy your rifles and powder? He was always like this, word perfect in his part, playing up faithfully to the mysteries and certitudes of his surroundings. Friends and enemies. Nothing else. It was impalpable and vast. The earth had indeed rolled away from under his land, and he with his handful of people stood surrounded by a silent tumult as of contending shades. Certainly no sound came from outside. Friends and enemies. He might have added and memories, at least as far as he himself was concerned. But he neglected to make that point then. It made itself later on though, but it was after the daily performance in the wings, so to speak, and with the lights out. Meantime he filled the stage with barbarous dignity. Some ten years ago he had led his people. A scratch lot of wandering bougies to the conquest of the bay, and now in his utmost care they had forgotten all the past, and had lost all concern for the future. He gave them wisdom, advice, reward, punishment, life or death, with the same serenity of attitude and voice. He understood irrigation and the art of war, the qualities of weapons and the craft of boatbuilding. He could conceal his heart, had more endurance, he could swim longer, and steer a canoe better than any of his people. He could shoot straighter and negotiate more torturously than any man of his race I knew. He was an adventurer of the sea, an outcast, a ruler, and my very good friend. I wish him a quick death in a stand-up fight, a death in sunshine. For he had known remorse and power, and no man can demand more from life. Day after day he appeared before us, incomparably faithful to the illusions of the stage, and at sunset the night descended upon him quickly, like a falling curtain. The seemed hills became black shadows towering high upon a clear sky. Above them the glittering confusion of stars resembled a mad turmoil stilled by a gesture. Sounds ceased, men slept, forms vanished, and the reality of the universe alone remained. A marvellous thing of darkness and glimmers. End of chapter one of Coraine, A Memory. Section two of Tales of Unrest. Chapter two of Coraine, A Memory. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Zhu. Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad. Coraine, A Memory. Chapter two. But it was at night that he talked openly, forgetting the exactions of his stage. In the daytime there were affairs to be discussed in state. There were at first between him and me his own splendour, my shabby suspicions, and the scenic landscape that intruded upon the reality of our lives by its motionless fantasy of outline and colour. His followers thronged round him. Above his head, the broad blades of their spears made a spiked halo of iron points, and they hedged him from humanity by the shimmer of silks, the gleam of weapons, the excited and respectful hum of eager voices. Before sunset he would take leave with ceremony, and go off sitting under a red umbrella, and escorted by a score of boats. All the paddles flashed and struck together with a mighty splash that reverberated loudly in the monumental amphitheatre of hills. A broad stream of dazzling foam trailed behind the fatilla. The canoes appeared very black on the white hiss of water. Turbined heads swayed back and forth. A multitude of arms in crimson and yellow rose and fell with one movement. The spearmen upright in the boughs of canoes had variegated sarongs and gleaming shoulders like bronze statues. The muttered stroves of the paddler's song ended periodically in a plaintive shout. They diminished in the distance. The song ceased. They swarmed on the beach in the long shadows of the western hills. The sunlight lingered on the purple crests, and we could see him leading the way to his stockade, a burly, bare-headed figure, walking far in advance of a straggling cortège, and swinging regularly an abinet staff taller than himself. The darkness deepened fast. Tortures gleamed fitfully, passing behind bushes, a long hail or two trailed in the silence of the evening, and at last the night stretched its smooth veil over the shore, the lights and the voices. Then, just as we were thinking of repose, the watchmen of the schooner would hail a splash of paddles away in the starlit gloom of the bay. A voice would respond in cautious tones, and our sarang, putting his head down the open skylight, would inform us without surprise, that Raja, he coming. He here now. Corraine appeared noiselessly in the doorway of the little cabin. He was simplicity itself then, all in white, muffled about his head, for arms only a crease with a plain, buffalo-horn handle, which he would politely conceal within a fold of his sarong before stepping over the threshold. The old swordbearer's face, the worn-out and mournful face so covered with wrinkles that it seemed to look out through the meshes of a fine dark net, could be seen close above his shoulders. Corraine never moved without that attendant, who stood or squattered close at his back. He had a dislike of an open space behind him. It was more than a dislike. It resembled fear. A nervous preoccupation of what went on where he could not see. This, in view of the evident and fierce loyalty that surrounded him, was inexplicable. He was there alone in the midst of devoted men. He was safe from neighbourly ambushes, from fraternal ambitions, and yet more than one of our visitors had assured us that their ruler could not bear to be alone. They said, even when he eats and sleeps there is always one on the watch near him who has strength and weapons. There was indeed always one near him, though our informants had no conception of that watch's strength and weapons, which were both shadowy and terrible. We knew but only later on when we heard the story. Meantime we noticed that even during the most important interviews Corraine would often give a start, and interrupting his discourse would sweep his arm back with the sudden movement to feel whether the old fellow was there. The old fellow, impenetrable and weary, was always there. He shared his food, his repose and his thoughts. He knew his plans, guarded his secrets, and impassive behind his master's agitation, without stirring the least bit, murmured above his head in a soothing tone some words difficult to catch. It was only on board the schooner, when surrounded by white faces, by unfamiliar sights and sounds, that Corraine seemed to forget the strange obsession that wound like a black thread through the gorgeous pomp of his public life. At night we treated him in a free and easy manner which just stopped short of slapping him on the back, for there are liberties one must not take with a malay. He said himself that on such occasions he was only a private gentleman, coming to see other gentlemen whom he supposed as well-born as himself. I fancy that to the last he believed us to be emissaries of government, darkly official persons furthering by our illegal traffic some dark scheme of high statecraft. Our denials and protestations were unavailing. He only smiled with discreet politeness and inquired about the Queen. Every visit began with that inquiry. He was insatiable of details. He was fascinated by the holder of a scepter, the shadow of which, stretching from the westward over the earth and over the seas, passed far beyond his own hands-breath of conquered land. He multiplied questions. He could never know enough of the monarch of whom he spoke with wonder and chivalrous respect, with a kind of affection at all. Afterwards, when we had learned that he was the son of a woman who had many years ago ruled a small Buddhist state, we came to suspect that the memory of his mother, of whom he spoke with enthusiasm, mingled somehow in his mind with the image he tried to form for himself of the far-off Queen, whom he called great, invincible, pious, and fortunate. We had to invent details at last to satisfy his craving curiosity, and our loyalty must be pardoned, for we tried to make them fit for his august and resplendent ideal. We talked. The night slipped over us, over the still schooner, over the sleeping land, and over the sleepless sea that thundered amongst the reefs outside the bay. His paddlers, two trustworthy men, slept in the canoe at the foot of our side-ladder. The old confidant, relieved from duty, dozed on his heels with his back against the companion doorway, and Corraine sat squarely in the ship's wooden armchair under the slight sway of the cabin-lamp, a charoute between his dark fingers and a glass of lemonade before him. He was amused by the fizz of the thing, but after a sip or two would let it go flat, and with a courteous wave of his hand asked for a fresh bottle. He decimated our slender stock, but we did not begrudge it to him, for when he began he talked well. He must have been a great Buddhist dandy in his time, for even then, and when we knew him he was no longer young, his splendor was spotlessly neat, and he dyed his hair a light shade of brown. The quiet dignity of his bearing transformed the dimlet-cuddy of the schooner into an audience-hall. He talked of inter-island politics with an ironic and melancholy shrewdness. He had travelled much, suffered not a little, intrigued, fought. He knew native courts, European settlements, the forests, the sea, and as he said himself, had spoken in his time to many great men. He liked to talk with me because I had known some of these men. He seemed to think that I could understand him, and with a fine confidence assumed that I at least could appreciate how much greater he was himself. But he preferred to talk of his native country, a small Buddhist state on the island of Salibs. I had visited it some time before, and he asked eagerly for news. As men's names came up in conversation he would say, We swam against one another when we were boys, or we hunted the deer together. He could use the noose and the spear as well as I. Now and then his big dreamy eyes would roll restlessly. He frowned or smiled, or he would become pensive, and staring in silence would nod slightly for a time at some regretted vision of the past. His mother had been the ruler of a small semi-independent state on the sea coast at the head of the Gulf of Boney. He spoke of her with pride. She had been a woman resoluted in affairs of state and of her own heart. After the death of her first husband, undismayed by the turbulent opposition of the chiefs, she married a rich traitor, a carinche man of no family. Corraine was her son by that second marriage, but his unfortunate dissent had apparently nothing to do with his exile. He said nothing as to its cause, though once he let slip with a sigh. My land will not feel any more the weight of my body. But he related willingly the story of his wanderings and told us all about the conquest of the bay. Alluding to the people beyond the hills, he would murmur gently with a careless wave of the hand. They came over the hills once to fight us, but those who got away never came again. He thought for a while, smiling to himself. Very few got away. He added with proud serenity. He cherished the recollections of his successors. He had an exulting eagerness friend ever when he talked. His aspect was warlike, chivalrous and uplifting. No wonder his people admired him. We saw him once walking in daylight amongst the houses of the settlement. At the doors of huts groups of women turned to look after him warbling softly and with gleaming eyes. Armed men stood out of the way, submissive and erect. Others approached from the side, bending their backs to address him humbly. An old woman stretched out a draped lean arm. Blessings on thy head, she cried from a dark doorway. A fiery-eyed man showed above the low fence of a plantain patch a streaming face, a bare breast, guard in two places, and bellowed out pantingly after him. God give victory to our master! Corraine walked fast, and with firm long strides he answered greetings right and left by quick piercing glances. Children ran forward between the houses, peeped fearfully round corners. Young boys kept up with him, gliding between bushes, their eyes gleamed through the dark leaves. The old sword-bearer, shouldering the silver scabbard, shuffled hastily at his heels with bowed head and his eyes on the ground, and in the midst of a great stir they passed swift and absorbed, like two men, hurrying through a great solitude. In his council hall he was surrounded by the gravity of armed chiefs. While two long rows of old headmen, dressed in cotton-stuff, squatted on their heels with idle arms hanging over their knees. Under the thatch-roof, supported by smooth columns of which each one had cost the life of a straight, stemmed young palm, the scent of flowering hedges drifted in warm waves. The sun was sinking. In the open courtyard, suppliants walked through the gate, raising when yet far off their joined hands above bowed heads, and bending low in the bright stream of sunlight. Young girls with flowers in their laps sat under the wide-spreading boughs of a big tree. The blue smoke of wood-fires spread in a thin mist above the high-pitched roofs of houses that had glistening walls of woven reeds, and all round them rough wooden pillars under the sloping eaves. He dispensed justice in the shade. From a high seat he gave orders advice reproof. Now and then the harm of approbation rose louder, and idle spearmen that lounged listlessly against the posts looking at the girls would turn their heads slowly. To no man had been given the shelter of so much respect, confidence, and awe. Yet at times he would lean forward and appear to listen as to a far-off note of discord as if expecting to hear some faint voice, the sound of light footsteps. Or he would start half up in his seat, as though he had been familiarly touched on the shoulder. He glanced back with apprehension. His aged follower whispered inaudibly at his ear. The chiefs turned their eyes away in silence, for the old wizard, the man who could command ghosts and send evil spirits against enemies, was speaking low to their ruler. Around the short stillness of the open place the trees rustled faintly. The soft laughter of girls playing with the flowers rose in clear bursts of joyous sound. At the end of upright spear-shafts the long tufts of dyed horsehair waved crimson and filmy in the gust of wind. And beyond the blaze of hedges the brook of limpid quick-water ran invisible and loud under the drooping grass of the bank with a great murmur, passionate and gentle. After sunset, far across the fields and over the bay, clusters of torches could be seen burning under the high roofs of the council shed. Smokey red flames swayed on high poles and the fiery blaze flickered over faces, clung to the smooth trunks of palm trees, kindled bright sparks on the rims of metal dishes standing on fine floor mats. That obscure adventurer feasted like a king. Small groups of men crouched in tight circles, round the wooden platters. Brown hands hovered over snowy heaps of rice. Sitting upon a rough couch, apart from the others, he leaned on his elbow with inclined head and near him a youth improvised in a high tone a song that celebrated his valour and wisdom. The singer rocked himself to and fro rolling frenzied eyes. Old women hobbled about with dishes and men squatting low lifted their heads to listen gravely without ceasing to eat. The song of triumph vibrated in the night and the stanzas rolled out mournful and fiery like the thoughts of a hermit. He silenced it with a sign. Enough. An owl hooted far away exulting in the delight of deep gloom in dense foliage. Overhead lizards ran in the atap thatch calling softly. The dry leaves of the roof rustled, the rumour of mingled voices grew louder suddenly. After a circular and startled glance, as of a man waking up abruptly to the sense of danger, he would throw himself back and under the downward gaze of an old sorcerer take up wide-eyed the slender thread of his dream. They watched his moods, the swelling rumour of animated talk, subsided like a wave on a sloping beach. The chief is pensive, and above the spreading whisper of lowered voices only a little rattle of weapons would be heard, a single louder word, distinct and alone, or the grave ring of a big brass tray. End of chapter two of Corraine. A memory. Section three of Tales of Unrest. Chapter three of Corraine. A memory. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Zhu. Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad. Corraine. A memory. Chapter three. For two years, at short intervals, we visited him. We came to like him, to trust him, almost to admire him. He was plotting and preparing a war with patience, with foresight, with the fidelity to his purpose, and with the steadfastness of which I would have thought him racially incapable. He seemed fearless of the future, and in his plans displayed a sagacity that was only limited by his profound ignorance of the rest of the world. We tried to enlighten him, but our attempts to make clear the irresistible nature of the forces which he desired to arrest fail to discourage his eagerness to strike a blow for his own primitive ideas. He did not understand us, and replied by arguments that almost drove one to desperation by their childish shrewdness. He was absurd and unanswerable. Sometimes we caught glimpses of a somber glowing fury within him, a brooding and vague sense of wrong, and a concentrated lust of violence which is dangerous in a native. He raved like one inspired. On one occasion, after we had been talking to him late in his campong, he jumped up. A great clear fire blazed in the grove. Lights and shadows dance together between the trees. In the still night, bats flittered in and out of the boughs, like fluttering flakes of denser darkness. He snatched the sword from the old man, whizzed it out of the scabbard, and thrust the point into the earth. Upon the thin upright blade, the silver hilt released, swayed before him like something alive. He stepped back apace, and in a deaden tone spoke fiercely to the vibrating steel. If there is virtue in the fire, in the iron, in the hand that forged thee, in the words spoken over thee, in the desire of my heart, and in the wisdom of thy makers, then shall we be victorious together. He drew it out, looked along the edge. Take, he said over his shoulder to the old sword bearer. The other, unmoved on his hands, wiped the point with the corner of his sarong, and returning the weapon to its scabbard, sat nursing it on his knees without a single look upwards. Corraine, suddenly very calm, receded himself with dignity. We gave up remonstrating after this, and let him go his way to an honourable disaster. All we could do for him was to see to it that the powder was good for the money, and the rifle's serviceable, if old. But the game was becoming at last too dangerous, and if we, who had faced it pretty often, thought little of the danger, it was decided for us by some very respectable people, sitting safely in counting houses, that the risks were too great, and that only one more trip could be made. After giving in the usual way many misleading hints as to our destination, we slipped away quietly, and after a very quick passage entered the bay. It was early morning, and even before the anchor went to the bottom, the schooner was surrounded by boats. The first thing we heard was that Corraine's mysterious sword-bearer had died a few days ago. We did not attach much importance to the news. It was certainly difficult to imagine Corraine without his inseparable follower, but the fellow was old. He had never spoken to one of us. We hardly ever had heard the sound of his voice, and we had come to look upon him as upon something inanimate, as a part of our friend's trappings of state, like that sword he carried, or the fringe-red umbrella displayed during an official progress. Corraine did not visit us in the afternoon as usual. A message of greeting and a present of fruit and vegetables came off for us before sunset. Our friend paid us like a banker, but treated us like a prince. We sat up for him till midnight under the stern awning bearded Jackson jingled an old guitar and sang with an execrable accent Spanish love songs, while young Hollis and I, sprawling on the deck, had a game of chess by the light of a cargo lantern. Corraine did not appear. Next day we were busy unloading and heard that the raja was unwell. The expected invitation to visit him ashore did not come. We sent friendly messages, but fearing to intrude upon some secret council remained on board. Early on the third day we had landed all the powder and rifles and also a six-pounder brass gun with its carriage, which we had subscribed together for a present for our friend. The afternoon was sultry. Ragged edges of black clouds peeped over the hills and invisible thunderstorms circled outside, growling like wild beasts. We got the schooner ready for sea, intending to leave next morning at daylight. All day a merciless sun blazed down into the bay, fierce and pale, as if at white heat. Nothing moved on the land. The beach was empty, the villages seemed deserted. The trees far off stood in unsteering clumps, as if painted. The white smoke of some invisible bushfire spread itself low over the shores of the bay, like a settling fog. Late in the day three of Coraine's chief men, dressed in their best and armed to the teeth, came off in a canoe, bringing a case of dollars. They were gloomy and languid, and told as they had not seen their raja for five days, no one had seen him. We settled all accounts, and after shaking hands in turn, and in profound silence, they descended one after another into their boat, and were paddled to the shore, sitting close together, clad in vivid colors, with hanging heads. The gold embroideries of their jackets flashed dazzlingly as they went away gliding on the smooth water, and not one of them looked back once. Before sunset, the growling clouds carried with a rush the ridge of hills, and came tumbling down the inner slopes. Everything disappeared. Black whirling vapours filled the bay, and in the midst of them the schooner swung here and there in the shifting gusts of wind. A single clap of thunder detonated in the hollow with a violence that seemed capable of bursting into small pieces the ring of high land, and a warm deluge descended. The wind died out. We panted in the closed cabin, our faces streamed, the bay outside hissed as if boiling. The water fell in perpendicular shafts, as heavy as lead. It swished about the deck, poured off the spars, gurgled, sobbed, splashed, murmured in the blind night. Our lamp burned low. Hollis, stripped to the waist, lay stretched out on the lockers with closed eyes, and motionless like a despoiled corpse. At his head Jackson twanged the guitar, and gasped out in sighs a mournful dirge about hopeless love, and eyes like stars. Then we had startled voices on deck, crying in the rain, hurried footsteps overhead, and suddenly Corraine appeared in the doorway of the cabin. His bare breast and his face glistened in the light, his sorongs soaked, clung about his legs. He had his sheathed crisps in his left hand, and wisps of wet hair escaping from under his red kerchief, stuck over his eyes and down his cheeks. He stepped in with a headlong stride, and looking over his shoulder like a man pursued. Hollis turned on his side quickly and opened his eyes. Jackson clapped his big hand over the strings, and the jingling vibration died suddenly. I stood up. We didn't hear your boat's hail, like exclaimed. Boat? The man swam off, drolled out Hollis from the locker. Look at him. He breathed heavily, wild eyed, while we looked at him in silence. Water dripped from him, made a dark pool, and ran crookedly across the cabin floor. We could hear Jackson, who had gone out to drive away our Malay seaman from the doorway of the companion. He swam menacingly in the patter of a heavy shower, and there was a great commotion on deck. The watchmen, scared out of their wits by the glimpse of a shadowy figure leaping over the rail, straight out of the night, as it were, had alarmed all hands. Then Jackson, with glittering drops of water on his hair and beard, came back looking angry, and Hollis, who being the youngest of us assumed an indolent superiority, said without stirring, give him a dry sarong, give him mine. It's hanging up in the bathroom. Corraine laid the crease on the table, hilt inwards, and murmured a few words in a strangled voice. What's that? asked Hollis, who had not heard. He apologizes for coming in with a weapon in his hand, I said, daisily. Ceremonious beggar, tell him we forgive a friend on such a night, drawled out Hollis. What's wrong? Corraine slipped the dry sarong over his head, dropped the wet one at his feet, and stepped out of it. I pointed to the wooden armchair, his armchair. He sat down very straight, said, her, in a strong voice. A short shiver shook his broad frame. He looked over his shoulder uneasily, turned as if to speak to us, but only stared in a curious, blind manner, and again looked back. Jackson bellowed out, watch well on deck there! Heard a faint answer from above, and reaching out with his foot, slammed to the cabin door. All right now, he said. Corraine's lips moved slightly. A vivid flash of lightning made the two round stern ports facing him glimmer like a pair of crawl and phosphorescent eyes. The flame of the lamp seemed to wither into brown dust for an instant, and the looking glass over the little sideboard leaped out behind his back in a smooth sheet of vivid light. The roll of thunder came near, crashed over us. The schooner trembled, and the great voice went on, threatening terribly into the distance. For less than a minute a furious shower rattled on the decks. Corraine looked slowly from face to face, and then the silence became so profound that we all could hear distinctly the two chronometers in my cabin ticking along with unflagging speed against one another. And we three strangely moved could not take our eyes from him. He had become enigmatic and touching, in virtue of that mysterious cause that had driven him through the night and through the thunderstorm to the shelter of the schooner's cuddy. Not one of us doubted that we were looking at a fugitive. Incredible as it appeared to us, he was haggard as though he had not slept for weeks. He had become lean as though he had not eaten for days. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunk, the muscles of his chest and arms twitched slightly as if after an exhausting contest. Of course it had been a long swim off to the schooner, but his face showed another kind of fatigue, the tormented weariness, the anger and the fear of a struggle against a thought, an idea, against something that cannot be grappled, that never rests, a shadow, a nothing, unconquerable and immortal that preys upon life. We knew it as though he had shouted it at us. His chest expanded time after time as if it could not contain the beating of his heart. For a moment he had the power of the possessed, the power to awaken in the beholder's wonder, pain, pity and a fearful near sense of things invisible, of things dark and mute that surround the loneliness of mankind. His eyes roamed aimlessly for a moment, then became still. He said with effort, I came here, I leaped out of my stockade as after a defeat, I ran in the night, the water was black, I left him calling on the edge of black water, I left him standing alone on the beach. I swam, he called out after me, I swam, he trembled from head to foot sitting very upright and gazing straight before him. Left whom? Who called? We didn't know, we could not understand. I said at all hazards, be firm. The sound of my voice seemed to steady him into a sudden rigidity, but otherwise he took no notice. He seemed to listen, to expect something for a moment, then went on. He cannot come here, therefore I sought you, you men with white faces who despise the invisible voices. He cannot abide your unbelief and your strength. He was silent for a while, then exclaimed softly, oh the strength of unbelievers. There's no one here but you and we three, said Hollis quietly. He reclined with his head supported on elbow and didn't budge. I know, said Corraine, he has never followed me here, was not the wise man ever by my side, but since the old wise man who knew of my trouble has died I have heard the voice every night. I shut myself up for many days in the dark. I can hear the sorrowful murmurs of women, the whisper of the wind, of the running waters, the clash of weapons in the hands of faithful men, their footsteps, and his voice. Near, so, in my ear, I felt him near, his breath passed over my neck. I leaped out without a cry. All about me men slept quietly. I ran to the sea. He ran by my side without footsteps, whispering, whispering old words, whispering into my ear in his old voice. I ran into the sea. I swam off to you with my crease between my teeth. I armed. I fled before a breath. To you. Take me away to your land. The wise old man has died and with him is gone the power of his words and charms, and I can tell no one, no one. There is no one here faithful enough and wise enough to know. It is only near you, unbelievers, that my trouble fades like a mist under the eye of day. He turned to me. With you I go, he cried in a contained voice, with you who know so many of us. I want to leave this land. My people and him there. He pointed a shaking finger at random over his shoulder. It was hard for us to bear the intensity of that undisclosed distress. Hollis stared at him hard. I asked gently, where is the danger? Everywhere outside this place, he answered mournfully. In every place where I am, he waits for me on the paths, under the trees, in the place where I sleep. Everywhere but here. He looked round the little cabin at the painted beams, at the tarnished varnish of bulkheads. He looked round as if appealing to all its shabby strangeness, to the disorderly jumble of unfamiliar things that belong to an inconceivable life of stress, of power, of endeavour, of unbelief, to the strong life of white men which rolls on irresistible and hard on the edge of outer darkness. He stretched out his arms as if to embrace it and us. We waited. The wind and rain had ceased and the stillness of the night round the schooner was as dumb and complete as if a dead world had been laid to rest in a grave of clouds. We expected him to speak. The necessity within him tore at his lips. There are those who say that a native will not speak to a white man. Error. No man will speak to his master, but to a wanderer and a friend. To him who does not come to teach or to rule. To him who asks for nothing and accepts all things. Words are spoken by the campfires in the shared solitude of the sea, in riverside villages, in resting places surrounded by forests. Words are spoken that take no account of race or color. One heart speaks. Another one listens. And the earth, the sea, the sky, the passing wind and the stirring leaf hear also the futile tale of the burden of life. He spoke at last. It is impossible to convey the effect of his story. It is undying. It is but a memory and its vividness cannot be made clear to another mind any more than the vivid emotions of a dream. One must have seen his innate splendor. One must have known him before, looked at him then. The wavering gloom of the little cabin. The breathless stillness outside through which only the lapping of water against the schooner's sides could be heard. Hollis' pale face with steady dark eyes. The energetic head of Jackson held up between two big palms and with the long yellow hair of his beard flowing over the strings of the guitar lying on the table. Coraine's upright and motionless pose, his tone, all this made an impression that cannot be forgotten. He faced us across the table. His dark head and bronze torso appeared above the tarnished slab of wood, gleaming and still as if cast in metal. Only his lips moved and his eyes glowed, went out, blazed again, or stared mournfully. His expressions came straight from his tormented heart. His words sounded low in a sad murmur as of running water. At times they rang loud like the clash of a war gong, or trailed slowly like weary travellers, or rushed forward with the speed of fear. End of chapter three of Coraine a memory. Section four of Tales of Unrest chapter four of Coraine a memory. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Zhu. Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad. Coraine a memory. Chapter four. This is, imperfectly, what he said. It was after the great trouble that broke the alliance of the four states of Wajou. We fought amongst ourselves, and the Dutch watched from afar till we were weary. Then the smoke of their fireships was seen at the mouth of our rivers, and their great men came in boats full of soldiers to talk to us of protection and peace. We answered with caution and wisdom for our villagers were burnt, our stockades weak, the people weary and the weapons blunt. They came and went. There had been much talk, but after they went away everything seemed to be as before. Only their ships remained in sight from our coast, and very soon their traders came amongst us under a promise of safety. My brother was a ruler, and one of those who had given the promise. I was young then, and had fought in the war, and Patamatara had fought by my side. We had shared hunger, danger, fatigue and victory. His eyes saw my danger quickly, and twice my arm had preserved his life. It was his destiny. He was my friend, and he was great amongst us, one of those who were near my brother, the ruler. He spoke in council. His courage was great. He was the chief of many villagers round the great lake that is in the middle of our country, as the heart is in the middle of a man's body. When his sword was carried into a kampong in advance of his coming, the maidens whispered, wonderingly, under the fruit trees, the rich men consulted together in the shade, and a feast was made ready with rejoicings and songs. He had the favour of the ruler, and the affection of the poor. He loved war, dear hunts, and the charms of women. He was the possessor of jewels, of lucky weapons, and of men's devotion. He was a fierce man, and I had no other friend. I was the chief of a stockade at the mouth of the river, and collected tolls for my brother from the passing boats. One day I saw a Dutch trader go up the river. He went up with three boats, and no toll was demanded from him, because the smoke of Dutch warships stood out from the open sea, and we were too weak to forget treaties. He went up under the promise of safety, and my brother gave him protection. He said he came to trade. He listened to our voices, for we are men who speak openly and without fear. He counted the number of our spears. He examined the trees, the running waters, the grasses of the bank, the slopes of our hills. He went up to Metara's country, and obtained permission to build a house. He traded, and planted. He despised our joys, our thoughts, and our sorrows. His face was red, his hair like flame, and his eyes pale like a river mist. He moved heavily, and spoke with a deep voice. He laughed aloud like a fool, and knew no courtesy in his speech. He was a big, scornful man who looked into women's faces, and put his hand on the shoulders of free men, as though he had been a noble-born chief. We bore with him. Time passed. Then Pata Metara's sister fled from the Kampong, and went to live in the Dutchman's house. She was a great and willful lady. I had seen her once carried high on slave shoulders amongst the people, with uncovered face, and I had heard all men say that her beauty was extreme, silencing the reason, and ravishing the heart of the beholders. The people were dismayed. Metara's face was blackened with that disgrace, for she knew she had been promised to another man. Metara went to the Dutchman's house, and said, Give her up to die. She is the daughter of chiefs. The white man refused, and shut himself up, while his servants kept guard night and day with loaded guns. Metara raged. My brother called a council. But the Dutch ships were near, and watched our coast greedily. My brother said, If he dies now, our land will pay for his blood. Leave him alone till we grow stronger, and the ships are gone. Metara was wise. He waited and watched. But the white man feared for her life, and went away. He left his house, his plantations, and his goods. He departed, armed, and menacing, and left all for her. She had ravished his heart. From my stockade I saw him put out to sea in a big boat. Metara and I watched him from the fighting platform behind the pointed stakes. He sat cross-legged with his gun in his hands, on the roof at the stern of his prowl. The barrel of his rifle glinted a slant before his big red face. The broad river was stretched under him, level, smooth, shining, like a plain of silver, and his prowl, looking very short and black from the shore, glided along the silver plain, and over into the blue of the sea. Thrice Metara, standing by my side, called aloud her name with grief and imprecations. He stirred my heart. It leaped three times, and three times with the eyes of my mind. I saw in the gloom within the enclosed space of the prowl a woman with streaming hair, going away from her land and her people. I was angry, and sorry. Why? And then I also cried out insults and threats. Metara said, Now they have left our land, their lives are mine. I shall follow and strike, and alone pay the price of blood. A great wind was sweeping towards the setting sun over the empty river. I cried, By your side I will go. He lowered his head in sign of ascent. It was his destiny. The sun had set, and the trees swayed their boughs with a great noise above our heads. On the third night we too left our land together in a trading prowl. The sea metters, the sea wide, pathless, and without voice. A sailing prowl leaves no track. We went south. The moon was full, and looking up we said to one another, When the next moon shines as this one, we shall return, and they will be dead. It was fifteen years ago. Many moons have grown full and withered, and I have not seen my land since. We sailed south. We overtook many prowls. We examined the creeks and the bays. We saw the end of our coast, of our island, a steep cape over a disturbed strait, where drift the shadows of shipwrecked prowls and drowned men clamour in the night. The wide sea was all around us now. We saw a great mountain burning in the midst of water. We saw thousands of islets scattered like bits of iron, fired from a big gun. We saw a long coast of mountain and lowlands stretching away in sunshine from west to east. It was Java. We said they are there. Their time is near and we shall return or die cleansed from dishonour. We landed. Is there anything good in that country? The paths run straight and hard and dusty. Stone campongs full of white faces are surrounded by fertile fields, but every man you meet is a slave. The rulers live under the edge of a foreign sword. We ascended mountains. We traversed valleys. At sunset we entered villages. We asked everyone, have you seen such a white man? Some stared, others laughed. Women gave us food, sometimes, with fear and respect, as though we had been distracted by the visitation of God. But some did not understand our language and some cursters, or yawning, asked with contempt the reason of our quest. Once as we were going away, an old man called after us, desist. We went on, concealing our weapons. We stood humbly aside before the horsemen on the road. We bowed low in the courtyards of chiefs who were no better than slaves. We lost ourselves in the fields, in the jungle, and one night in a tangled forest. We came upon a place where crumbling old walls had fallen amongst the trees, and where strange stone idols carved images of devils with many arms and legs, with snakes twined round their bodies, with twenty heads, and holding a hundred swords, seemed to live and threaten in the light of our campfire. Nothing dismayed us. And on the road by every fire in resting places we always talked of her and of him. Their time was near. We spoke of nothing else. No, not of hunger, thirst, weariness, and faltering hearts. No, we spoke of him and her. Of her. And we thought of them. Of her. Matara brooded by the fire. I sat and thought and thought, till suddenly I could see again the image of a woman, beautiful and young, and great and proud and tender, going away from her land and her people. Matara said, When we find them we shall kill her first to cleanse the dishonour. Then the man must die. I would say, It shall be so. It is your vengeance. He stared long at me with his big sunken eyes. We came back to the coast. Our feet were bleeding, our bodies thin. We slept in rags under the shadow of stone enclosures. We prowled, soiled, and lean about the gateways of white men's courtyards. Their hairy dogs barked at us, and their servants shouted from afar, Begone! Low-born wretches that keep watch over the streets of stone campongs asked us who we were. We lied, we cringed, we smiled with hate in our hearts, and we kept looking here, looking there for them, for the white man with hair like flame, and for her, for the woman who had broken faith, and therefore must die. We looked. At last in every woman's face I thought I could see hers. We ran swiftly. No. Sometimes Matara would whisper, Here is the man. And we waited, crouching. He came near. It was not the man. Those Dutchmen are all alike. We suffered the anguish of deception. In my sleep I saw her face and was both joyful and sorry. Why? I seemed to hear a whisper near me. I turned swiftly. She was not there. And as we trudged wearily from stone city to stone city. I seemed to hear a light footstep near me. A time came when I heard it always and I was glad. I thought walking dizzy and weary in sunshine on the hard paths of white men. I thought she is there with us. Matara was somber. We were often hungry. We sold the carved sheaths of our creases, the ivory sheaths with golden ferreels. We sold the jeweled hilts. But we kept the blades for them. The blades that never touch but kill. We kept the blades for her. Why? She was always by our side. We starved. We begged. We left Java at last. We went west. We went east. We saw many lands. Crowds of strange faces. Men that live in trees and men who eat their old people. We cut ratans in the forest for a handful of rice and for a living swept the decks of big ships and heard curses heaped upon our heads. We toiled in villages. We wandered upon the seas with the Bajau people who have no country. We fought for pay. We hired ourselves to work for Goram men and were cheated. And under the orders of rough white faces we dived for pearls in barren bays, dotted with black rocks upon a coast of sand and desolation. And everywhere we watched we listened. We asked. We asked traders, robbers, white men. We heard jeers, mockery, threats, words of wonder and words of contempt. We never knew rest. We never thought of home for our work was not done. A year passed and then another. I ceased to count the number of nights of moons of years. I watched over Matara. He had my last handful of rice. If there was water enough for one he drank it. I covered him up when he shivered with cold and when the hot sickness came upon him I sat sleepless through many nights and fanned his face. He was a fierce man and my friend. He spoke of her with fury in the daytime, with sorrow in the dark. He remembered her in health, in sickness. I said nothing. But I saw her every day, always. At first I saw only her head as of a woman walking in the low mist on a river bank. Then she sat by our fire. I saw her. I looked at her. She had tender eyes and a ravishing face. I murmured to her in the night. Matara said sleepily sometimes. To whom are you talking? Who is there? I answered quickly. No one. It was a lie. She never left me. She shared the warmth of our fire. She sat on my couch of leaves. She swam on the sea to follow me. I saw her. I tell you I saw her long black hair spread behind her upon the moonlit water as she struck out with bare arms by the side of a swift prowl. She was beautiful. She was faithful, and in the silence of foreign countries she spoke to me very low in the language of my people. No one saw her. No one heard her. She was mine only. In daylight she moved with a swaying walk before me upon the weary paths. Her figure was straight and flexible, like the stem of a slender tree. The heels of her feet were round and polished, like shells of eggs. With her round arms she made signs. At night she looked into my face, and she was sad. Her eyes were tender and frightened, her voice soft and fleeting. Once I murmured to her you shall not die. And she smiled. Ever after she smiled she gave me courage to bear witness and hardships. Those were times of pain and she soothed me. We wandered patient in our search. We knew deception, false hopes. We knew captivity, sickness, thirst, misery, despair. Enough. We found them. He cried out the last words and paused. His face was impassive, and he kept still like a man in a trance. Hollis sat up quickly and spread his elbows on the table. Jackson made a brusque movement and accidentally touched the guitar. A plaintive resonance filled the cabin with confused vibrations and died out slowly. Then Carrain began to speak again. The restrained fierceness of his tone seemed to rise like a voice from outside, like a thing unspoken but heard. It filled the cabin and enveloped in its intense and deadened murmur, the motionless figure in the chair. We were on our way to Ache, where there was war. But the vessel ran on a sandbank, and we had to land in Delhi. We had earned a little money and had bought a gun from some Selangor traders. Only one gun, which was fired by the spark of a stone. Matara carried it. We landed. Many white men lived there, planting tobacco on conquered plains, and Matara, but no matter, he saw him. The Dutchman, at last. We crept and watched. Two nights and a day we watched. He had a house, a big house in a clearing in the midst of his fields. Flowers and bushes grew around. There were narrow paths of yellow earth between the cut grass and thick hedges to keep people out. The third night we came armed and lay behind a hedge. A heavy dew seemed to soak through our flesh and made our very entrails cold. The grass, the twigs, the leaves covered with drops of water were gray in the moonlight. Matara curled up in the grass, shivered in his sleep. My teeth rattled in my head so loud that I was afraid the noise would wake up all the land. A far the watchman of white men's houses struck wooden clappers and hooted in the darkness, and as every night I saw her by my side. She smiled no more. The fire of anguish burned in my breast and she whispered to me with compassion, with pity, softly as women will. She soothed the pain of my mind. She bent her face over me, the face of a woman who ravishes the hearts and silences the reason of men. She was all mine and no one could see her, no one of living mankind. Stars shone through her bosom, through her floating hair. I was overcome with regret, with tenderness, with sorrow. Matara slept. Had I slept? Matara was shaking me by the shoulder and the fire of the sun was drying the grass, the bushes, the leaves. It was day. Shreds of white mist hung between the branches of trees. Was it night or day? I saw nothing again till I heard Matara breathe quickly where he lay, and then outside the house I saw her. I saw them both. They had come out. She sat on a bench under the wall and twigs laden with flowers crept high above her head, hung over her hair. She had a box on her lap and gazed into it, counting the increase of her pearls. The Dutchman stood by looking on. He smiled down at her. His white teeth flashed. The hair on his lip was like two twisted flames. He was big and fat and joyous and without fear. Matara tipped fresh priming from the hollow of his palm, scraped the flint with his thumbnail and gave the gun to me. To me I took it. Oh, fate. He whispered into my ear lying on his stomach. I shall creep close and then amok. Let her die by my hand. You take aim at the fat swine there. Let him see me strike my shame off the face of the earth and then you are my friend. Kill with a sure shot. I said nothing. There was no air in my chest. There was no air in the world. Matara had gone suddenly from my side. The grass nodded. Then a bush rustled. She lifted her head. I saw her. The consola of sleepless nights, of weary days. The companion of troubled years. I saw her. She looked straight at the place where I crouched. She was there as I had seen her for years. A faithful wanderer by my side. She looked with sad eyes and had smiling lips. She looked at me. Smiling lips. Had I not promised that she should not die. She was far off. And I felt her near. Her touch caressed me. And her voice murmured. Whispered above me, around me. Who shall be thy companion? Who shall console thee if I die? I saw a flowering thicket to the left of her stir a little. Matara was ready. I cried aloud. Return! She leaped up. The box fell. The pearls streamed at her feet. The big Dutchman by her side rolled menacing eyes through the still sunshine. The gun went up to my shoulder. I was kneeling and I was firm. Firmer than the trees, the rocks, the mountains. But in front of the steady long barrel, the fields, the house, the earth, the sky, swayed to and fro like shadows in a forest on a windy day. Matara burst out of the thicket, before him the petals of torn flowers whirled high as if driven by a tempest. I heard her cry. I saw her spring with open arms in front of the white man. She was a woman of my country and of noble blood. They are so. I heard her shriek of anguish and fear and all stood still. The fields, the house, the earth, the sky stood still while Matara lept at her with uplifted arm. I pulled the trigger, saw a spark, heard nothing. The smoke drove back into my face. Then I could see Matara roll over, head first, and lie with stretched arms at her feet. Huh! A sure shot. The sunshine fell on my back colder than the running water. A sure shot. I flung the gun off to the shot. Those two stood over the dead man as though they had been bewitched by a charm. I shouted at her, live and remember. Then for a time I stumbled about in a cold darkness. Behind me there were great shouts, the running of many feet. Strange men surrounded me, cried meaningless words into my face, pushed me, dragged me, supported me. I stood before the big Dutchman. He stared as if bereft of his reason. He wanted to know. He talked fast. He spoke of gratitude. He offered me food, shelter, gold. He asked many questions. I laughed in his face. I said, I am a caridanty traveller from Perak over there, and I know nothing of that dead man. I was passing along the path when I heard a shot, and your senseless people rushed out and dragged me here. He lifted his arms. He wondered. He could not believe. He could not understand. He clamoured in his own tongue. She had her arms clasped round his neck, and over her shoulder stared back at me with wide eyes. I smiled and looked at her. I smiled and waited to hear the sound of her voice. The white man asked her suddenly, Do you know him? I listened. My life was in my ears. She looked at me long. She looked at me with unflinching eyes and said aloud, No. I never saw him before. What? Never before. Had she forgotten already? Was it possible? Forgotten already after so many years, so many years of wandering, of companionship, of trouble, of tender words? Forgotten already. I tore myself out from the hands that held me, and went away without a word. They let me go. I was weary. Did I sleep? I do not know. I remember walking upon a broad path under a clear starlight, and that strange country seemed so big. The rice field so vast that, as I looked around, my head swam with the fear of space. Then I saw a forest. The joyous starlight was heavy upon me. I turned off the path, and entered the forest, which was very somber and very sad. End of Chapter 4 of Corraine, A Memory Section 5 of Tales of Unrest Chapter 5 of Corraine, A Memory This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Xu Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad Corraine, A Memory Chapter 5 Corraine's tone had been getting lower and lower, as though he had been going away from us. Till the last words sounded faint but clear, as if shouted on a calm day from a very great distance. He moved not. He stared fixedly past the motionless head of Hollis, who faced him as still as himself. Jackson had turned sideways, and with elbow on the table, shaded his eyes with the palm of his hand. And I looked on, surprised and moved. I looked at that man, loyal to a vision, betrayed by his dream, spurned by his illusion, and coming to us unbelievers for help, against a thought. The silence was profound, but it seemed full of noiseless phantoms, of things sorrowful, shadowy, and mute, in whose invisible presence the firm, pulsating beat of the two ship's chronometers, ticking off steadily the seconds of Greenwich Time, seemed to me a protection and a relief. Corraine stirred stonily, and looking at his rigid figure, I thought of his wanderings, of that obscure odyssey of revenge, of all the men that wonder amongst illusions, faithful, faithless, of the illusions that give joy, that give sorrow, that give pain, that give peace, of the invincible illusions that can make life and death appear serene, inspiring, tormented, or ignoble. A murmur was heard, that voice from outside seemed to flow out of a dreaming world, into the lamp-light of the cabin. Corraine was speaking. I lived in the forest. She came no more, never, never once. I lived alone. She had forgotten. It was well. I did not want her. I wanted no one. I found an abandoned house in an old clearing. Nobody came near. Sometimes I heard in the distance the voices of people going along a path. I slept. I rested. There was wild rice, water from a running stream, and peace. Every night I sat alone by my small fire before the hut. Many nights passed over my head. Then, one evening, as I sat by my fire after having eaten, I looked down on the ground and began to remember my wanderings. I lifted my head. I had heard no sound, no rustle, no footsteps, but I lifted my head. A man was coming towards me across the small clearing. I waited. He came up without a greeting and squattered down into the firelight. Then he turned his face to me. It was Matara. He stared at me fiercely with his big, sunken eyes. The night was cold. The heat died suddenly out of the fire, and he stared at me. I rose and went away from there, leaving him by the fire that had no heat. I walked all that night, all next day, and in the evening made up a big blaze and sat down to wait for him. He had not come into the light. I heard him in the bushes here and there, whispering, whispering. I understood at last I had heard the words before. You are my friend. Kill with a sure shot. I bore it as long as I could, then leaped away as on this very night I leaped from my stockade and swam to you. I ran. I ran crying like a child left alone and far from the houses. He ran by my side without footsteps, whispering, whispering, invisible and heard. I sought people. I wanted men around me, men who had not died. And again we too wandered. I sought danger, violence, and death. I fought in the Ache War, and a brave people wandered at the valiance of a stranger. But we were too. He warded off the blows. Why? I wanted peace, not life, and no one could see him. No one knew. I dared tell no one. At times he would leave me, but not for long. Then he would return and whisper or stare. My heart was torn with a strange fear but could not die. Then I met an old man. You all knew him. People here called him my sorcerer, my servant and sword-bearer, but to me he was father, mother, protection, refuge, and peace. When I met him he was returning from a pilgrimage, and I heard him intoning the prayer of sunset. He had gone to the holy place with his son, his son's wife, and a little child. And on their return, by the favour of the most high, they all died. The strong man, the young mother, the little child, they died, and the old man reached his country alone. He was a pilgrim, serene and pious, very wise and very lonely. I told him all. For a time we lived together. He said over me words of compassion, of wisdom, of prayer. He warded from me the shade of the dead. I begged him for a charm that would make me safe. For a long time he refused, but at last with a sigh and a smile he gave me one. Doubtless he could command a spirit stronger than the unrest of my dead friend, and again I had peace. But I had become restless and a lover of turmoil and danger. The old man never left me. We travelled together. We were welcomed by the great. His wisdom and my courage are remembered, where your strength, the white men, is forgotten. We served the Sultan of Sula. We fought the Spaniards. There were victories, hopes, defeats, sorrow, blood, women's tears. What for? We fled. We collected wanderers of a warlike race, and came here to fight again. The rest you know. I am the ruler of a conquered land, a lover of war and danger, a fighter and a plotter, but the old man has died, and I am again the slave of the dead. He is not here now to drive away the reproachful shade, to silence the lifeless voice. The power of his charm has died with him, and I know fear, and I hear the whisper, kill, kill, kill. Have I not killed enough? For the first time that night, a sudden convulsion of madness and rage passed over his face. His wavering glances darted here and there like scared birds in the thunderstorm. He jumped up, shouting, by the spirits that drink blood, by the spirits that cry in the night, by all the spirits of fury and misfortune and death. I swear someday I will strike into every heart I meet. I... He looks so dangerous that we all three leap to our feet, and Hollis, with the back of his hand, sent the crease flying off the table. I believe we shouted together. It was a short scare, and the next moment he was again composed in his chair, with three white men standing over him in rather foolish attitudes. We felt a little ashamed of ourselves. Jackson picked up the crease, and after an inquiring glance at me gave it to him. He received it with a stately inclination of the head, and stuck it in the twist of his sarong, with punctilious care to give his weapon a pacific position. Then he looked up at us with an austere smile. We were abashed and reproved. Hollis sat sideways on the table, and holding his chin in his hand scrutinized him in pensive silence. I said, you must abide with your people. They need you, and there is forgetfulness in life. Even the dead cease to speak in time. Am I a woman? To forget the long years before an eyelid has had the time to meet twice, he exclaimed with bitter resentment. He startled me. It was amazing. To him, his life, that cruel mirage of love and peace, seemed as real, as undeniable, as theirs would be to any saint, philosopher, or fool of us all. Hollis muttered. You won't soothe him with your platitudes. Corraine spoke to me. You know us. You have lived with us. Why? We cannot know, but you understand our sorrows and our thoughts. You have lived with my people, and you understand our desires and our fears. With you I will go, to your land, to your people, to your people who live in unbelief, to whom day is day, and night is night. Nothing more, because you understand all things seen and despise all else. To your land of unbelief, where the dead do not speak, where every man is wise and alone and at peace. Capital description, murmured Hollis with a flicker of a smile. Corraine hung his head. I can toil and fight and be faithful, he whispered in a weary tone, but I cannot go back to him who waits for me on the shore. No, take me with you, or else give me some of your strength, of your unbelief, a charm. He seemed utterly exhausted. Yes, take him home, said Hollis, very low, as if debating with himself. That would be one way. The ghosts there are in society and talk affably to ladies and gentlemen, but would scorn a naked human being like our princely friend, naked, flayed, I should say. I'm sorry for him. Impossible, of course, the end of all this shall be. He went on looking up at us. The end of this shall be that someday he will run amok amongst his faithful subjects, and send ad patres ever so many of them before they make up their minds to the disloyalty of knocking him on the head. I nodded. I thought it more than probable that such would be the end of Corraine. It was evident that he had been hunted by his thought along the very limit of human endurance, and very little more pressing was needed to make him swerve over into the form of madness peculiar to his race. The respite he had during the old man's life made the return of the torment unbearable. That much was clear. He lifted his head suddenly. We had imagined for a moment that he had been dozing. Give me your protection, or your strength, he cried, a charm, a weapon. Again his chin fell on his breast. We looked at him, then looked at one another with suspicious awe in our eyes, like men who come unexpectedly upon the scene of some mysterious disaster. He had given himself up to us. He had thrust into our hands his errors and his torment, his life and his peace, and we did not know what to do with that problem from the outer darkness. We three white men looking at the Malay could not find one word to the purpose amongst us, if indeed there existed a word that could solve that problem. We pondered and our hearts sank. We felt as though we three had been called to the very gate of infernal regions to judge to decide the fate of a wanderer coming suddenly from a world of sunshine and illusions. By Jove he seems to have a great idea of our power, whispered Hollis hopelessly. And then again there was a silence, the feeble plush of water, the steady tick of chronometers. Jackson, with bare arms crossed, leaned his shoulders against the bulkhead of the cabin. He was bending his head under the deck beam, his fair beard spread out magnificently over his chest. He looked colossal, ineffectual and mild. There was something lugubrious in the aspect of the cabin. The air in it seemed to become slowly charged with the cruel chill of helplessness, with the pitiless anger of egoism against the incomprehensible form of an intruding pain. We had no idea what to do. We began to resent bitterly the hard necessity to get rid of him. Hollis mused, muttered suddenly with a short laugh. Strength, protection, charm, he slipped off the table and left the cuddy without a look at us. It seemed a base desertion. Jackson and I exchanged indignant glances. We could hear him rummaging in his pigeon-hole of a cabin. Was the fellow actually going to bed? Currain sighed. It was intolerable. Then Hollis reappeared, holding in both hands a small leather box. He put it down gently on the table, and looked at us with a queer gasp, we thought, as though he had from some cause become speechless for a moment or were ethically uncertain about producing that box. But in an instant, the insolent and unearing wisdom of his youth gave him the needed courage. He said as he unlocked the box with a very small key, look as solemn as you can, new fellows. Probably we looked only surprised and stupid, for he glanced over his shoulder and said angrily, this is no play. I'm going to do something for him. Look serious, confound it. Can't you lie a little for a friend? Currain seemed to take no notice of us. But when Hollis threw open the lid of the box, his eyes flew to it, and so did ours. The quilted crimson satin of the inside put a violent patch of colour into the somber atmosphere. It was something positive to look at. It was fascinating. End of chapter five of Currain A Memory