“Thus Brown, invisible in the mist, goes out of Patusan elbow to elbow with Cornelius in the stern-sheets of the long-boat. ‘Perhaps you shall get a small bullock,’ said Cornelius. ‘Oh, yes. Bullock. Yam. You’ll get it if he said so. He always speaks the truth. He stole everything I had. I suppose you like a small bullock better than the loot of many houses.’ ‘I would advise you to hold your tongue, or somebody here may fling you overboard into this damned fog,’ said Brown. The boat seemed to be standing still; nothing could be seen, not even the river alongside, only the water-dust flew and trickled, condensed, down their beards and faces. It was weird, Brown told me. Every individual man of them felt as though he were adrift alone in a boat, haunted by an almost imperceptible suspicion of sighing, muttering ghosts. ‘Throw me out, would you? But I would know where I was,’ mumbled Cornelius, surlily. ‘I’ve lived many years here.’ ‘Not long enough to see through a fog like this,’ Brown said, lolling back with his arm swinging to and fro on the useless tiller. ‘Yes. Long enough for that,’ snarled Cornelius. ‘That’s very useful,’ commented Brown. ‘Am I to believe you could find that backway you spoke of blindfold, like this?’ Cornelius grunted. ‘Are you too tired to row?’ he asked after a silence. ‘No, by God!’ shouted Brown suddenly. ‘Out with your oars there.’ There was a great knocking in the fog, which after a while settled into a regular grind of invisible sweeps against invisible thole-pins. Otherwise nothing was changed, and but for the slight splash of a dipped blade it was like rowing a balloon car in a cloud, said Brown. Thereafter Cornelius did not open his lips except to ask querulously for somebody to bale out his canoe, which was towing behind the long-boat. Gradually the fog whitened and became luminous ahead. To the left Brown saw a darkness as though he had been looking at the back of the departing night. All at once a big bough covered with leaves appeared above his head, and ends of twigs, dripping and still, curved slenderly close alongside. Cornelius, without a word, took the tiller from his hand.”
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Chapter Forty-Four
“I DON’T think they spoke together again. ‘The boat entered a narrow by-channel, where it was pushed by the oar-blades set into crumbling banks, and there was a gloom as if enormous black wings had been outspread above the mist that filled its depth to the summits of the trees. The branches overhead showered big drops through the gloomy fog. At a mutter from Cornelius, Brown ordered his men to load. ‘I’ll give you a chance to get even with them before we’re done, you dismal cripples, you,’ he said to his gang. ‘Mind you don’t throw it away—you hounds.’ Low growls answered that speech. Cornelius showed much fussy concern for the safety of his canoe.
“Meantime Tamb’ Itam had reached the end of his journey. The fog had delayed him a little, but he had paddled steadily, keeping in touch with the south bank. By-and-by daylight came like a glow in a ground glass globe. The shores made on each side of the river a dark smudge, in which one could detect hints of columnar forms and shadows of twisted branches high up. The mist was still thick on the water, but a good watch was being kept, for as Tamb’ Itam approached the camp the figures of two men emerged out of the white vapour, and voices spoke to him boisterously. He answered and presently a canoe lay alongside, and he exchanged news with the paddlers. All was well. The trouble was over. Then the men in the canoe let go their grip on the side of his dug-out and incontinently fell out of sight. He pursued his way till he heard voices coming to him quietly over the water, and saw, under the now lifting, swirling mist, the glow of many little fires burning on a sandy stretch, backed by lofty thin timber and bushes. There again a look-out was kept, for he was challenged. He shouted his name as the two last sweeps of his paddle ran his canoe up on the strand. It was a big camp. Men crouched in many knots under a subdued murmur of early morning talk. Many thin threads of smoke curled slowly on the white mist. Little shelters, elevated above the ground, had been built for the chiefs. Muskets were stacked in small pyramids, and long spears were stuck singly into the sand near the fires.