章节正文
"You, Tuan, are of the sea, and more like what we are. Therefore
I speak to you all the words that are in my heart. . . . Only
once has the sea been stronger than the Rajah of the sea."
"You know it; do you?" said Lingard, with pained sharpness.
"Hai! We have heard about your ship--and some rejoiced. Not I.
Amongst the whites, who are devils, you are a man."
"Trima kassi! I give you thanks," said Lingard, gravely.
Babalatchi looked down with a bashful smile, but his face became
saddened directly, and when he spoke again it was in a mournful
tone.
"Had you come a day sooner, Tuan, you would have seen an enemy
die. You would have seen him die poor, blind, unhappy--with no
son to dig his grave and speak of his wisdom and courage. Yes;
you would have seen the man that fought you in Carimata many
years ago, die alone--but for one friend. A great sight to you."
"Not to me," answered Lingard. "I did not even remember him till
you spoke his name just now. You do not understand us. We
fight, we vanquish--and we forget."
"True, true," said Babalatchi, with polite irony; "you whites are
so great that you disdain to remember your enemies. No! No!" he
went on, in the same tone, "you have so much mercy for us, that
there is no room for any remembrance. Oh, you are great and
good! But it is in my mind that amongst yourselves you know how
to remember. Is it not so, Tuan?"
Lingard said nothing. His shoulders moved imperceptibly. He
laid his gun across his knees and stared at the flint lock
absently.
"Yes," went on Babalatchi, falling again into a mournful mood,
"yes, he died in darkness. I sat by his side and held his hand,
but he could not see the face of him who watched the faint breath
on his lips. She, whom he had cursed because of the white man,
was there too, and wept with covered face. The white man walked
about the courtyard making many noises. Now and then he would
come to the doorway and glare at us who mourned. He stared with
wicked eyes, and then I was glad that he who was dying was blind.
This is true talk. I was glad; for a white man's eyes are not
good to see when the devil that lives within is looking out
through them."
"Devil! Hey?" said Lingard, half aloud to himself, as if struck
with the obviousness of some novel idea. Babalatchi went on:
"At the first hour of the morning he sat up--he so weak--and said
plainly some words that were not meant for human ears. I held
his hand tightly, but it was time for the leader of brave men to
go amongst the Faithful who are happy. They of my household
brought a white sheet, and I began to dig a grave in the hut in
which he died. She mourned aloud. The white man came to the
doorway and shouted. He was angry. Angry with her because she
beat her breast, and tore her hair, and mourned with shrill cries
as a woman should. Do you understand what I say, Tuan? That
white man came inside the hut with great fury, and took her by
the shoulder, and dragged her out. Yes, Tuan. I saw Omar dead,
and I saw her at the feet of that white dog who has deceived me.
I saw his face grey, like the cold mist of the morning; I saw his
pale eyes looking down at Omar's daughter beating her head on the
ground at his feet. At the feet of him who is Abdulla's slave.
Yes, he lives by Abdulla's will. That is why I held my hand
while I saw all this. I held my hand because we are now under
the flag of the Orang Blanda, and Abdulla can speak into the ears
of the great. We must not have any trouble with white men.
Abdulla has spoken--and I must obey."
"That's it, is it?" growled Lingard in his moustache. Then in
Malay, "It seems that you are angry, O Babalatchi!"
"No; I am not angry, Tuan," answered Babalatchi, descending from
the insecure heights of his indignation into the insincere depths
of safe humility. "I am not angry. What am I to be angry? I am
only an Orang Laut, and I have fled before your people many
times. Servant of this one--protected of another; I have given
my counsel here and there for a handful of rice. What am I, to
be angry with a white man? What is anger without the power to
strike? But you whites have taken all: the land, the sea, and the
power to strike! And there is nothing left for us in the islands
but your white men's justice; your great justice that knows not
anger."
He got up and stood for a moment in the doorway, sniffing the hot
air of the courtyard, then turned back and leaned against the
stay of the ridge pole, facing Lingard who kept his seat on the
chest. The torch, consumed nearly to the end, burned noisily.
Small explosions took place in the heart of the flame, driving
through its smoky blaze strings of hard, round puffs of white
smoke, no bigger than peas, which rolled out of doors in the
faint draught that came from invisible cracks of the bamboo
walls. The pungent taint of unclean things below and about the
hut grew heavier, weighing down Lingard's resolution and his
thoughts in an irresistiblenumbness of the brain. He thought
drowsily of himself and of that man who wanted to see him--who
waited to see him. Who waited! Night and day. Waited. . . . A
spiteful but vaporous idea floated through his brain that such
waiting could not be very pleasant to the fellow. Well, let him
wait. He would see him soon enough. And for how long? Five
seconds--five minutes--say nothing--say something. What? No!
Just give him time to take one good look, and then . . .
Suddenly Babalatchi began to speak in a soft voice. Lingard
blinked, cleared his throat--sat up straight.
"You know all now, Tuan. Lakamba dwells in the stockaded house
of Patalolo; Abdulla has begun to build godowns of plank and
stone; and now that Omar is dead, I myself shall depart from this
place and live with Lakamba and speak in his ear. I have served
many. The best of them all sleeps in the ground in a white
sheet, with nothing to mark his grave but the ashes of the hut in
which he died. Yes, Tuan! the white man destroyed it himself.
With a blazing brand in his hand he strode around, shouting to me
to come out--shouting to me, who was throwing earth on the body
of a great leader. Yes; swearing to me by the name of your God
and ours that he would burn me and her in there if we did not
make haste. . . . Hai! The white men are very masterful and
wise. I dragged her out quickly!"
"Oh, damn it!" exclaimed Lingard--then went on in Malay, speaking
earnestly. "Listen. That man is not like other white men. You
know he is not. He is not a man at all. He is . . . I don't
know."
Babalatchi lifted his hand deprecatingly. His eye twinkled, and
his red-stained big lips, parted by an expressionless grin,
uncovered a stumpy row of black teeth filed evenly to the gums.
"Hai! Hai! Not like you. Not like you," he said, increasing
the softness of his tones as he neared the object uppermost in
his mind during that much-desired interview. "Not like you,
Tuan, who are like ourselves, only wiser and stronger. Yet he,
also, is full of great cunning, and speaks of you without any
respect, after the manner of white men when they talk of one
another."
Lingard leaped in his seat as if he had been prodded.
"He speaks! What does he say?" he shouted.
"Nay, Tuan," protested the composed Babalatchi; "what matters his
talk if he is not a man? I am nothing before you--why should I
repeat words of one white man about another? He did boast to
Abdulla of having learned much from your wisdom in years past.
Other words I have forgotten. Indeed, Tuan, I have . . ."
Lingard cut short Babalatchi's protestations by a contemptuous
wave of the hand and reseated himself with dignity.
"I shall go," said Babalatchi, "and the white man will remain
here, alone with the spirit of the dead and with her who has been
the delight of his heart. He, being white, cannot hear the voice
of those that died. . . . Tell me, Tuan," he went on, looking at
Lingard with curiosity--"tell me, Tuan, do you white people ever
hear the voices of the invisible ones?"
"We do not," answered Lingard, "because those that we cannot see
do not speak."
"Never speak! And never complain with sounds that are not
words?" exclaimed Babalatchi, doubtingly. "It may be so--or your
ears are dull. We Malays hear many sounds near the places where
men are buried. To-night I heard . . . Yes, even I have heard.
. . . I do not want to hear any more," he added, nervously.
"Perhaps I was wrong when I . . . There are things I regret.
The trouble was heavy in his heart when he died. Sometimes I
think I was wrong . . . but I do not want to hear the complaint
of invisible lips. Therefore I go, Tuan. Let the unquiet spirit
speak to his enemy the white man who knows not fear, or love, or
mercy--knows nothing but contempt and violence. I have been
wrong! I have! Hai! Hai!"
He stood for awhile with his elbow in the palm of his left hand,
the fingers of the other over his lips as if to stifle the
expression of inconvenientremorse; then, after glancing at the
torch, burnt out nearly to its end, he moved towards the wall by
the chest, fumbled about there and suddenly flung open a large
shutter of attaps woven in a light framework of sticks. Lingard
swung his legs quickly round the corner of his seat.
"Hallo!" he said, surprised.
The cloud of smoke stirred, and a slow wisp curled out through
the new opening. The torch flickered, hissed, and went out, the
glowing end falling on the mat, whence Babalatchi snatched it up
and tossed it outside through the open square. It described a
vanishing curve of red light, and lay below, shining feebly in
the vast darkness. Babalatchi remained with his arm stretched
out into the empty night.
"There," he said, "you can see the white man's courtyard, Tuan,
and his house."
"I can see nothing," answered Lingard, putting his head through
the shutter-hole. "It's too dark."
"Wait, Tuan," urged Babalatchi. "You have been looking long at
the burning torch. You will soon see. Mind the gun, Tuan. It
is loaded."
"There is no flint in it. You could not find a fire-stone for a
hundred miles round this spot," said Lingard, testily. "Foolish
thing to load that gun."
"I have a stone. I had it from a man wise and pious that lives
in Menang Kabau. A very pious man--very good fire. He spoke
words over that stone that make its sparks good. And the gun is
good--carries straight and far. Would carry from here to the
door of the white man's house, I believe, Tuan."
"Tida apa. Never mind your gun," muttered Lingard, peering into
the formless darkness. "Is that the house--that black thing over
there?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Babalatchi; "that is his house. He lives there
by the will of Abdulla, and shall live there till . . . From
where you stand, Tuan, you can look over the fence and across the
courtyard straight at the door--at the door from which he comes
out every morning, looking like a man that had seen Jehannum in
his sleep."
Lingard drew his head in. Babalatchi touched his shoulder with a
groping hand.
"Wait a little, Tuan. Sit still. The morning is not far off
now--a morning without sun after a night without stars. But
there will be light enough to see the man who said not many days
ago that he alone has made you less than a child in Sambir."
He felt a slight tremor under his hand, but took it off directly
and began feeling all over the lid of the chest, behind Lingard's
back, for the gun.
"What are you at?" said Lingard, impatiently. "You do worry about
that rotten gun. You had better get a light."
"A light! I tell you, Tuan, that the light of heaven is very
near," said Babalatchi, who had now obtained possession of the
I speak to you all the words that are in my heart. . . . Only
once has the sea been stronger than the Rajah of the sea."
"You know it; do you?" said Lingard, with pained sharpness.
"Hai! We have heard about your ship--and some rejoiced. Not I.
Amongst the whites, who are devils, you are a man."
"Trima kassi! I give you thanks," said Lingard, gravely.
Babalatchi looked down with a bashful smile, but his face became
saddened directly, and when he spoke again it was in a mournful
tone.
"Had you come a day sooner, Tuan, you would have seen an enemy
die. You would have seen him die poor, blind, unhappy--with no
son to dig his grave and speak of his wisdom and courage. Yes;
you would have seen the man that fought you in Carimata many
years ago, die alone--but for one friend. A great sight to you."
"Not to me," answered Lingard. "I did not even remember him till
you spoke his name just now. You do not understand us. We
fight, we vanquish--and we forget."
"True, true," said Babalatchi, with polite irony; "you whites are
so great that you disdain to remember your enemies. No! No!" he
went on, in the same tone, "you have so much mercy for us, that
there is no room for any remembrance. Oh, you are great and
good! But it is in my mind that amongst yourselves you know how
to remember. Is it not so, Tuan?"
Lingard said nothing. His shoulders moved imperceptibly. He
laid his gun across his knees and stared at the flint lock
absently.
"Yes," went on Babalatchi, falling again into a mournful mood,
"yes, he died in darkness. I sat by his side and held his hand,
but he could not see the face of him who watched the faint breath
on his lips. She, whom he had cursed because of the white man,
was there too, and wept with covered face. The white man walked
about the courtyard making many noises. Now and then he would
come to the doorway and glare at us who mourned. He stared with
wicked eyes, and then I was glad that he who was dying was blind.
This is true talk. I was glad; for a white man's eyes are not
good to see when the devil that lives within is looking out
through them."
"Devil! Hey?" said Lingard, half aloud to himself, as if struck
with the obviousness of some novel idea. Babalatchi went on:
"At the first hour of the morning he sat up--he so weak--and said
plainly some words that were not meant for human ears. I held
his hand tightly, but it was time for the leader of brave men to
go amongst the Faithful who are happy. They of my household
brought a white sheet, and I began to dig a grave in the hut in
which he died. She mourned aloud. The white man came to the
doorway and shouted. He was angry. Angry with her because she
beat her breast, and tore her hair, and mourned with shrill cries
as a woman should. Do you understand what I say, Tuan? That
white man came inside the hut with great fury, and took her by
the shoulder, and dragged her out. Yes, Tuan. I saw Omar dead,
and I saw her at the feet of that white dog who has deceived me.
I saw his face grey, like the cold mist of the morning; I saw his
pale eyes looking down at Omar's daughter beating her head on the
ground at his feet. At the feet of him who is Abdulla's slave.
Yes, he lives by Abdulla's will. That is why I held my hand
while I saw all this. I held my hand because we are now under
the flag of the Orang Blanda, and Abdulla can speak into the ears
of the great. We must not have any trouble with white men.
Abdulla has spoken--and I must obey."
"That's it, is it?" growled Lingard in his moustache. Then in
Malay, "It seems that you are angry, O Babalatchi!"
"No; I am not angry, Tuan," answered Babalatchi, descending from
the insecure heights of his indignation into the insincere depths
of safe humility. "I am not angry. What am I to be angry? I am
only an Orang Laut, and I have fled before your people many
times. Servant of this one--protected of another; I have given
my counsel here and there for a handful of rice. What am I, to
be angry with a white man? What is anger without the power to
strike? But you whites have taken all: the land, the sea, and the
power to strike! And there is nothing left for us in the islands
but your white men's justice; your great justice that knows not
anger."
He got up and stood for a moment in the doorway, sniffing the hot
air of the courtyard, then turned back and leaned against the
stay of the ridge pole, facing Lingard who kept his seat on the
chest. The torch, consumed nearly to the end, burned noisily.
Small explosions took place in the heart of the flame, driving
through its smoky blaze strings of hard, round puffs of white
smoke, no bigger than peas, which rolled out of doors in the
faint draught that came from invisible cracks of the bamboo
walls. The pungent taint of unclean things below and about the
hut grew heavier, weighing down Lingard's resolution and his
thoughts in an irresistiblenumbness of the brain. He thought
drowsily of himself and of that man who wanted to see him--who
waited to see him. Who waited! Night and day. Waited. . . . A
spiteful but vaporous idea floated through his brain that such
waiting could not be very pleasant to the fellow. Well, let him
wait. He would see him soon enough. And for how long? Five
seconds--five minutes--say nothing--say something. What? No!
Just give him time to take one good look, and then . . .
Suddenly Babalatchi began to speak in a soft voice. Lingard
blinked, cleared his throat--sat up straight.
"You know all now, Tuan. Lakamba dwells in the stockaded house
of Patalolo; Abdulla has begun to build godowns of plank and
stone; and now that Omar is dead, I myself shall depart from this
place and live with Lakamba and speak in his ear. I have served
many. The best of them all sleeps in the ground in a white
sheet, with nothing to mark his grave but the ashes of the hut in
which he died. Yes, Tuan! the white man destroyed it himself.
With a blazing brand in his hand he strode around, shouting to me
to come out--shouting to me, who was throwing earth on the body
of a great leader. Yes; swearing to me by the name of your God
and ours that he would burn me and her in there if we did not
make haste. . . . Hai! The white men are very masterful and
wise. I dragged her out quickly!"
"Oh, damn it!" exclaimed Lingard--then went on in Malay, speaking
earnestly. "Listen. That man is not like other white men. You
know he is not. He is not a man at all. He is . . . I don't
know."
Babalatchi lifted his hand deprecatingly. His eye twinkled, and
his red-stained big lips, parted by an expressionless grin,
uncovered a stumpy row of black teeth filed evenly to the gums.
"Hai! Hai! Not like you. Not like you," he said, increasing
the softness of his tones as he neared the object uppermost in
his mind during that much-desired interview. "Not like you,
Tuan, who are like ourselves, only wiser and stronger. Yet he,
also, is full of great cunning, and speaks of you without any
respect, after the manner of white men when they talk of one
another."
Lingard leaped in his seat as if he had been prodded.
"He speaks! What does he say?" he shouted.
"Nay, Tuan," protested the composed Babalatchi; "what matters his
talk if he is not a man? I am nothing before you--why should I
repeat words of one white man about another? He did boast to
Abdulla of having learned much from your wisdom in years past.
Other words I have forgotten. Indeed, Tuan, I have . . ."
Lingard cut short Babalatchi's protestations by a contemptuous
wave of the hand and reseated himself with dignity.
"I shall go," said Babalatchi, "and the white man will remain
here, alone with the spirit of the dead and with her who has been
the delight of his heart. He, being white, cannot hear the voice
of those that died. . . . Tell me, Tuan," he went on, looking at
Lingard with curiosity--"tell me, Tuan, do you white people ever
hear the voices of the invisible ones?"
"We do not," answered Lingard, "because those that we cannot see
do not speak."
"Never speak! And never complain with sounds that are not
words?" exclaimed Babalatchi, doubtingly. "It may be so--or your
ears are dull. We Malays hear many sounds near the places where
men are buried. To-night I heard . . . Yes, even I have heard.
. . . I do not want to hear any more," he added, nervously.
"Perhaps I was wrong when I . . . There are things I regret.
The trouble was heavy in his heart when he died. Sometimes I
think I was wrong . . . but I do not want to hear the complaint
of invisible lips. Therefore I go, Tuan. Let the unquiet spirit
speak to his enemy the white man who knows not fear, or love, or
mercy--knows nothing but contempt and violence. I have been
wrong! I have! Hai! Hai!"
He stood for awhile with his elbow in the palm of his left hand,
the fingers of the other over his lips as if to stifle the
expression of inconvenientremorse; then, after glancing at the
torch, burnt out nearly to its end, he moved towards the wall by
the chest, fumbled about there and suddenly flung open a large
shutter of attaps woven in a light framework of sticks. Lingard
swung his legs quickly round the corner of his seat.
"Hallo!" he said, surprised.
The cloud of smoke stirred, and a slow wisp curled out through
the new opening. The torch flickered, hissed, and went out, the
glowing end falling on the mat, whence Babalatchi snatched it up
and tossed it outside through the open square. It described a
vanishing curve of red light, and lay below, shining feebly in
the vast darkness. Babalatchi remained with his arm stretched
out into the empty night.
"There," he said, "you can see the white man's courtyard, Tuan,
and his house."
"I can see nothing," answered Lingard, putting his head through
the shutter-hole. "It's too dark."
"Wait, Tuan," urged Babalatchi. "You have been looking long at
the burning torch. You will soon see. Mind the gun, Tuan. It
is loaded."
"There is no flint in it. You could not find a fire-stone for a
hundred miles round this spot," said Lingard, testily. "Foolish
thing to load that gun."
"I have a stone. I had it from a man wise and pious that lives
in Menang Kabau. A very pious man--very good fire. He spoke
words over that stone that make its sparks good. And the gun is
good--carries straight and far. Would carry from here to the
door of the white man's house, I believe, Tuan."
"Tida apa. Never mind your gun," muttered Lingard, peering into
the formless darkness. "Is that the house--that black thing over
there?" he asked.
"Yes," answered Babalatchi; "that is his house. He lives there
by the will of Abdulla, and shall live there till . . . From
where you stand, Tuan, you can look over the fence and across the
courtyard straight at the door--at the door from which he comes
out every morning, looking like a man that had seen Jehannum in
his sleep."
Lingard drew his head in. Babalatchi touched his shoulder with a
groping hand.
"Wait a little, Tuan. Sit still. The morning is not far off
now--a morning without sun after a night without stars. But
there will be light enough to see the man who said not many days
ago that he alone has made you less than a child in Sambir."
He felt a slight tremor under his hand, but took it off directly
and began feeling all over the lid of the chest, behind Lingard's
back, for the gun.
"What are you at?" said Lingard, impatiently. "You do worry about
that rotten gun. You had better get a light."
"A light! I tell you, Tuan, that the light of heaven is very
near," said Babalatchi, who had now obtained possession of the
- wisdom [´wizdəm]
n.智慧，聪明，才智 (初中英语单词) - polite [pə´lait] a.有礼貌的；温和的 (初中英语单词)
- doorway [´dɔ:wei] n.门口 (初中英语单词)
- faithful [´feiθfəl] a.忠实的；可靠的 (初中英语单词)
- counsel [´kaunsəl] n.商议；劝告；律师 (初中英语单词)
- invisible [in´vizəbəl] a.看不见的；无形的 (初中英语单词)
- resolution [,rezə´lu:ʃən] n.决心；坚决；果断 (初中英语单词)
- interview [´intəvju:] n.&vt.接见；会见；交谈 (初中英语单词)
- cunning [´kʌniŋ] a.&n.狡猾(诡诈)的 (初中英语单词)
- complain [kəm´plein] vi.抱怨，叫屈；控诉 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- violence [´vaiələns] n.猛烈；暴力(行) (初中英语单词)
- awhile [ə´wail] ad.少顷；片刻 (初中英语单词)
- opening [´əupəniŋ] n.开放；开端 a.开始的 (初中英语单词)
- disdain [dis´dein] vt.&n.藐视，轻视 (高中英语单词)
- remembrance [ri´membrəns] n.记忆(力)；回忆 (高中英语单词)
- amongst [ə´mʌŋst] prep.其中之一 =among (高中英语单词)
- courtyard [´kɔ:tjɑ:d] n.院子，庭院 (高中英语单词)
- tightly [´taitli] ad.紧，紧密地 (高中英语单词)
- shrill [ʃril] a.(声音)尖锐的 (高中英语单词)
- indignation [,indig´neiʃən] n.愤慨；气愤 (高中英语单词)
- handful [hændful] n.一把，少数，一小撮 (高中英语单词)
- draught [drɑ:ft] n.通风，通气；吸出 (高中英语单词)
- strode [strəud] stride的过去式 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- contempt [kən´tempt] n.轻蔑；受辱；不顾 (高中英语单词)
- stifle [´staifəl] vt.(使)窒息，闷死 (高中英语单词)
- rotten [´rɔtn] a.腐烂的；腐朽的 (高中英语单词)
- bashful [´bæʃful] a.害羞的，忸怩的 (英语四级单词)
- mournful [´mɔ:nful] a.令人沮丧的 (英语四级单词)
- humility [hju:´militi] n.谦逊，谦让 (英语四级单词)
- irresistible [,iri´zistəbəl] a.不可抵抗的 (英语四级单词)
- composed [kəm´pəuzd] a.镇静自若的 (英语四级单词)
- remorse [ri´mɔ:s] n.懊悔；自责；同情 (英语四级单词)
- whence [wens] ad.从何处；从那里 (英语四级单词)
- feebly [´fi:bli] ad.虚弱地；贫乏地 (英语四级单词)
- impatiently [im´peiʃəntli] ad.不耐烦地，急躁地 (英语四级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- unclean [ʌn´kli:n] a.不清洁的；讨厌的 (英语六级单词)
- numbness [´nʌmnis] n.麻木；愚蠢 (英语六级单词)
- softness [´sɔftnis] n.柔软；柔和；温柔 (英语六级单词)
- inconvenient [,inkən´vi:niənt] a.不方便的 (英语六级单词)
- framework [´freimwə:k] n.骨架；计划；机构 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
京公网安备 11011202003401号
