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be no place for such a feeling as that of remorse.
The days passed. They passed unnoticed, unseen, in the rapid blaze of
glaring sunrises, in the short glow of tender sunsets, in the crushing
oppression of high noons without a cloud. How many days? Twothreeor more?
He did not know. To him, since Lingard had gone, the time seemed to roll on
in profound darkness.
All was night within him. All was gone from his sight. He walked about
blindly in the deserted courtyards, amongst the empty houses that, perched
high on their posts, looked down inimically on him, a white stranger, a man
from other lands; seemed to look hostile and mute out of all the memories of
native life that lingered between their decaying walls. His wandering feet
stumbled against the blackened brands of extinct fires, kicking up a light
black dust of cold ashes that flew in drifting clouds and settled to leeward
on the fresh grass sprouting from the hard ground, between the shade trees.
He moved on, and on; ceaseless, unresting, in widening circles, in
zigzagging paths that led to no issue; he struggled on wearily with a set,
distressed face
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CHAPTER THREE
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behind which, in his tired brain, seethed his thoughts: restless, sombre,
tangled, chilling, horrible and venomous, like a nestful of snakes.
From afar, the bleared eyes of the old serving woman, the sombre gaze of
Aissa followed the gaunt and tottering figure in its unceasing prowl along
the fences, between the houses, amongst the wild luxuriance of riverside
thickets. Those three human beings abandoned by all were like shipwrecked
people left on an insecure and slippery ledge by the retiring tide of an
angry sealistening to its distant roar, living anguished between the menace
of its return and the hopeless horror of their solitudein the midst of a
tempest of passion, of regret, of disgust, of despair. The breath of the
storm had cast two of them there, robbed of everythingeven of resignation.
The third, the decrepit witness of their struggle and their torture,
accepted her own dull conception of facts; of strength and youth gone; of her
useless old age; of her last servitude; of being thrown away by her chief,
by her nearest, to use up the last and worthless remnant of flickering life
between those two incomprehensible and sombre outcasts: a shrivelled, an
unmoved, a passive companion of their disaster.
To the river Willems turned his eyes like a captive that looks fixedly at the
door of his cell. If there was any hope in the world it would come from the
river, by the river. For hours together he would stand in sunlight while
the sea breeze sweeping over the lonely reach fluttered his ragged garments;
the keen salt breeze that made him shiver now and then under the flood of
intense heat. He looked at the brown and sparkling solitude of the flowing
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water, of the water flowing ceaseless and free in a soft, cool murmur of
ripples at his feet. The world seemed to end there. The forests of the
other bank appeared unattainable, enigmatical, for ever beyond reach like
the stars of heavenand as indifferent. Above and below, the forests on his
side of the river came down to the water in a serried multitude of tall,
immense trees towering in a great spread of twisted boughs above the thick
undergrowth; great, solid trees, looking sombre, severe, and malevolently
stolid, like a giant crowd of pitiless enemies pressing round silently to
witness his slow agony. He was alone, small, crushed. He thought of
escapeof something to be done. What? A raft! He imagined himself working
at it, feverishly, desperately; cutting down trees, fastening the logs
together and then drifting down with the current, down to the sea into the
straits. There were ships thereships, help, white men. Men like himself.
Good men who would rescue him, take him away, take him far away where there
was trade, and houses, and other men that could understand him exactly,
appreciate his capabilities; where there was proper food, and money; where
there were beds, knives, forks, carriages, brass bands, cool drinks,
churches with welldressed people praying in them. He would pray also. The
superior land of refined delights where he could sit on a chair, eat his
tiffin off a white tablecloth, nod to fellowsgood fellows; he would be
popular; always waswhere he could be virtuous, correct, do business, draw a
salary, smoke cigars, buy things in shopshave boots . . . be happy, free,
become rich. O God! What was wanted? Cut down a few trees. No! One would
do. They used to make canoes by burning out a tree trunk, he had heard.
Yes! One would do. One tree to cut down . . . He rushed forward, and
suddenly stood still as if rooted in the ground. He had a pocketknife.
And he would throw himself down on the ground by the riverside. He was
tired, exhausted; as if that raft had been made, the voyage accomplished,
the fortune attained. A glaze came over his staring eyes, over his eyes
that gazed hopelessly at the rising river where big logs and uprooted trees
drifted in the shine of midstream:
a long procession of black and ragged specks. He could swim out and drift
away on one of these trees.
Anything to escape! Anything! Any risk! He could fasten himself up between
the dead branches. He was torn by desire, by fear; his heart was wrung by
the faltering of his courage. He turned over, face downwards, his head on
his arms. He had a terrible vision of shadowless horizons where the blue
sky and the blue sea met; or a circular and blazing emptiness where a dead
tree and a dead man drifted together, endlessly, up and down, upon the
brilliant undulations of the straits. No ships there. Only death. And the
river led to it.
He sat up with a profound groan.
An Outcast of the Islands
CHAPTER THREE
141
Yes, death. Why should he die? No! Better solitude, better hopeless
waiting, alone. Alone. No! he was not alone, he saw death looking at him
from everywhere; from the bushes, from the cloudshe heard her speaking to
him in the murmur of the river, filling the space, touching his heart, his
brain with a cold hand.
He could see and think of nothing else. He saw itthe sure deatheverywhere.
He saw it so close that he was always on the point of throwing out his arms
to keep it off. It poisoned all he saw, all he did; the miserable food he
ate, the muddy water he drank; it gave a frightful aspect to sunrises and
sunsets, to the brightness of hot noon, to the cooling shadows of the
evenings. He saw the horrible form among the big trees, in the network of
creepers in the fantastic outlines of leaves, of the great indented leaves
that seemed to be so many enormous hands with big broad palms, with stiff
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fingers outspread to lay hold of him; hands gently stirring, or hands
arrested in a frightful immobility, with a stillness attentive and watching
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