Tom Lingard was a master, a lover, a servant of the sea. The sea took him young, fashioned him body and soul; gave him his fierce aspect, his loud voice, his fearless eyes, his stupidly guileless heart. Generously it gave him his absurd faith in himself, his universal love of creation, his wide indulgence, his contemptuous severity, his straightforward19 simplicity20 of motive21 and honesty of aim. Having made him what he was, womanlike, the sea served him humbly22 and let him bask23 unharmed in the sunshine of its terribly uncertain favour. Tom Lingard grew rich on the sea and by the sea. He loved it with the ardent24 affection of a lover, he made light of it with the assurance of perfect mastery, he feared it with the wise fear of a brave man, and he took liberties with it as a spoiled child might do with a paternal25 and good-natured ogre. He was grateful to it, with the gratitude26 of an honest heart. His greatest pride lay in his profound conviction of its faithfulness — in the deep sense of his unerring knowledge of its treachery.
The little brig Flash was the instrument of Lingard’s fortune. They came north together — both young — out of an Australian port, and after a very few years there was not a white man in the islands, from Palembang to Ternate, from Ombawa to Palawan, that did not know Captain Tom and his lucky craft. He was liked for his reckless generosity27, for his unswerving honesty, and at first was a little feared on account of his violent temper. Very soon, however, they found him out, and the word went round that Captain Tom’s fury was less dangerous than many a man’s smile. He prospered28 greatly. After his first — and successful — fight with the sea robbers, when he rescued, as rumour29 had it, the yacht of some big wig30 from home, somewhere down Carimata way, his great popularity began. As years went on it grew apace. Always visiting out-of-the-way places of that part of the world, always in search of new markets for his cargoes31 — not so much for profit as for the pleasure of finding them — he soon became known to the Malays, and by his successful recklessness in several encounters with pirates, established the terror of his name. Those white men with whom he had business, and who naturally were on the look-out for his weaknesses, could easily see that it was enough to give him his Malay title to flatter him greatly. So when there was anything to be gained by it, and sometimes out of pure and unprofitable good nature, they would drop the ceremonious “Captain Lingard” and address him half seriously as Rajah Laut — the King of the Sea.
He carried the name bravely on his broad shoulders. He had carried it many years already when the boy Willems ran barefooted on the deck of the ship Kosmopoliet IV. in Samarang roads, looking with innocent eyes on the strange shore and objurgating his immediate33 surroundings with blasphemous34 lips, while his childish brain worked upon the heroic idea of running away. From the poop of the Flash Lingard saw in the early morning the Dutch ship get lumberingly under weigh, bound for the eastern ports. Very late in the evening of the same day he stood on the quay35 of the landing canal, ready to go on board of his brig. The night was starry36 and clear; the little custom-house building was shut up, and as the gharry that brought him down disappeared up the long avenue of dusty trees leading to the town, Lingard thought himself alone on the quay. He roused up his sleeping boat-crew and stood waiting for them to get ready, when he felt a tug37 at his coat and a thin voice said, very distinctly —
“English captain.”
Lingard turned round quickly, and what seemed to be a very lean boy jumped back with commendable38 activity.
“Who are you? Where do you spring from?” asked Lingard, in startled surprise.
From a safe distance the boy pointed39 toward a cargo32 lighter40 moored41 to the quay.
“Been hiding there, have you?” said Lingard. “Well, what do you want? Speak out, confound you. You did not come here to scare me to death, for fun, did you?”
The boy tried to explain in imperfect English, but very soon Lingard interrupted him.
“I see,” he exclaimed, “you ran away from the big ship that sailed this morning. Well, why don’t you go to your countrymen here?”
“Ship gone only a little way — to Sourabaya. Make me go back to the ship,” explained the boy.
“Best thing for you,” affirmed Lingard with conviction.
“No,” retorted the boy; “me want stop here; not want go home. Get money here; home no good.”
“This beats all my going a-fishing,” commented the astonished Lingard. “It’s money you want? Well! well! And you were not afraid to run away, you bag of bones, you!”
The boy intimated that he was frightened of nothing but of being sent back to the ship. Lingard looked at him in meditative42 silence.
“Come closer,” he said at last. He took the boy by the chin, and turning up his face gave him a searching look. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“There’s not much of you for seventeen. Are you hungry?”
“A little.”
“Will you come with me, in that brig there?”
The boy moved without a word towards the boat and scrambled43 into the bows.
“Knows his place,” muttered Lingard to himself as he stepped heavily into the stern sheets and took up the yoke44 lines. “Give way there.”
The Malay boat crew lay back together, and the gig sprang away from the quay heading towards the brig’s riding light.
Such was the beginning of Willems’ career.
Lingard learned in half an hour all that there was of Willems’ commonplace story. Father outdoor clerk of some ship-broker in Rotterdam; mother dead. The boy quick in learning, but idle in school. The straitened circumstances in the house filled with small brothers and sisters, sufficiently45 clothed and fed but otherwise running wild, while the disconsolate46 widower47 tramped about all day in a shabby overcoat and imperfect boots on the muddy quays48, and in the evening piloted wearily the half-intoxicated foreign skippers amongst the places of cheap delights, returning home late, sick with too much smoking and drinking — for company’s sake — with these men, who expected such attentions in the way of business. Then the offer of the good-natured captain of Kosmopoliet IV., who was pleased to do something for the patient and obliging fellow; young Willems’ great joy, his still greater disappointment with the sea that looked so charming from afar, but proved so hard and exacting on closer acquaintance — and then this running away by a sudden impulse. The boy was hopelessly at variance49 with the spirit of the sea. He had an instinctive50 contempt for the honest simplicity of that work which led to nothing he cared for. Lingard soon found this out. He offered to send him home in an English ship, but the boy begged hard to be permitted to remain. He wrote a beautiful hand, became soon perfect in English, was quick at figures; and Lingard made him useful in that way. As he grew older his trading instincts developed themselves astonishingly, and Lingard left him often to trade in one island or another while he, himself, made an intermediate trip to some out-of-the-way place. On Willems expressing a wish to that effect, Lingard let him enter Hudig’s service. He felt a little sore at that abandonment because he had attached himself, in a way, to his protege. Still he was proud of him, and spoke51 up for him loyally. At first it was, “Smart boy that — never make a seaman52 though.” Then when Willems was helping53 in the trading he referred to him as “that clever young fellow.” Later when Willems became the confidential54 agent of Hudig, employed in many a delicate affair, the simple-hearted old seaman would point an admiring finger at his back and whisper to whoever stood near at the moment, “Long-headed chap that; deuced long-headed chap. Look at him. Confidential man of old Hudig. I picked him up in a ditch, you may say, like a starved cat. Skin and bone. ‘Pon my word I did. And now he knows more than I do about island trading. Fact. I am not joking. More than I do,” he would repeat, seriously, with innocent pride in his honest eyes.
From the safe elevation55 of his commercial successes Willems patronized Lingard. He had a liking56 for his benefactor57, not unmixed with some disdain58 for the crude directness of the old fellow’s methods of conduct. There were, however, certain sides of Lingard’s character for which Willems felt a qualified59 respect. The talkative seaman knew how to be silent on certain matters that to Willems were very interesting. Besides, Lingard was rich, and that in itself was enough to compel Willems’ unwilling60 admiration61. In his confidential chats with Hudig, Willems generally alluded62 to the benevolent63 Englishman as the “lucky old fool” in a very distinct tone of vexation; Hudig would grunt64 an unqualified assent65, and then the two would look at each other in a sudden immobility of pupils fixed66 by a stare of unexpressed thought.
“You can’t find out where he gets all that india-rubber, hey Willems?” Hudig would ask at last, turning away and bending over the papers on his desk.
“No, Mr. Hudig. Not yet. But I am trying,” was Willems’ invariable reply, delivered with a ring of regretful deprecation.
“Try! Always try! You may try! You think yourself clever perhaps,” rumbled67 on Hudig, without looking up. “I have been trading with him twenty — thirty years now. The old fox. And I have tried. Bah!”
He stretched out a short, podgy leg and contemplated68 the bare instep and the grass slipper69 hanging by the toes. “You can’t make him drunk?” he would add, after a pause of stertorous70 breathing.
“No, Mr. Hudig, I can’t really,” protested Willems, earnestly.
“Well, don’t try. I know him. Don’t try,” advised the master, and, bending again over his desk, his staring bloodshot eyes close to the paper, he would go on tracing laboriously71 with his thick fingers the slim unsteady letters of his correspondence, while Willems waited respectfully for his further good pleasure before asking, with great deference72 —
“Any orders, Mr. Hudig?”
“Hm! yes. Go to Bun-Hin yourself and see the dollars of that payment counted and packed, and have them put on board the mail-boat for Ternate. She’s due here this afternoon.”
“Yes, Mr. Hudig.”
“And, look here. If the boat is late, leave the case in Bun-Hin’s godown till to-morrow. Seal it up. Eight seals as usual. Don’t take it away till the boat is here.”
“No, Mr. Hudig.”
“And don’t forget about these opium73 cases. It’s for to-night. Use my own boatmen. Transship them from the Caroline to the Arab barque,” went on the master in his hoarse74 undertone. “And don’t you come to me with another story of a case dropped overboard like last time,” he added, with sudden ferocity, looking up at his confidential clerk.
“No, Mr. Hudig. I will take care.”
“That’s all. Tell that pig as you go out that if he doesn’t make the punkah go a little better I will break every bone in his body,” finished up Hudig, wiping his purple face with a red silk handkerchief nearly as big as a counterpane.
Noiselessly Willems went out, shutting carefully behind him the little green door through which he passed to the warehouse75. Hudig, pen in hand, listened to him bullying76 the punkah boy with profane77 violence, born of unbounded zeal78 for the master’s comfort, before he returned to his writing amid the rustling79 of papers fluttering in the wind sent down by the punkah that waved in wide sweeps above his head.
Willems would nod familiarly to Mr. Vinck, who had his desk close to the little door of the private office, and march down the warehouse with an important air. Mr. Vinck — extreme dislike lurking80 in every wrinkle of his gentlemanly countenance81 — would follow with his eyes the white figure flitting in the gloom amongst the piles of bales and cases till it passed out through the big archway into the glare of the street.
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1
kernel
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| n.(果实的)核，仁；(问题)的中心，核心 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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enticing
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| adj.迷人的；诱人的 | |
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lulled
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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dividends
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| 红利( dividend的名词复数 )； 股息； 被除数； （足球彩票的）彩金 | |
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14
exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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15
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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drudge
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| n.劳碌的人；v.做苦工，操劳 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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18
propellers
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器( propeller的名词复数 ) | |
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19
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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20
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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21
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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22
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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23
bask
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| vt.取暖，晒太阳，沐浴于 | |
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24
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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27
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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28
prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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30
wig
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| n.假发 | |
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31
cargoes
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| n.（船或飞机装载的）货物( cargo的名词复数 )；大量，重负 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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blasphemous
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| adj.亵渎神明的，不敬神的 | |
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quay
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| n.码头，靠岸处 | |
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starry
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| adj.星光照耀的, 闪亮的 | |
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tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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commendable
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| adj.值得称赞的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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41
moored
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| adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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42
meditative
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| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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43
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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44
yoke
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| n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶 | |
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45
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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disconsolate
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| adj.忧郁的，不快的 | |
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widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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48
quays
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| 码头( quay的名词复数 ) | |
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49
variance
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| n.矛盾，不同 | |
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50
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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51
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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52
seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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53
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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54
confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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55
elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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56
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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57
benefactor
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| n. 恩人，行善的人，捐助人 | |
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58
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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59
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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60
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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61
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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62
alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63
benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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64
grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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65
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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67
rumbled
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| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
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68
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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69
slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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70
stertorous
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| adj.打鼾的 | |
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71
laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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72
deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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73
opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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74
hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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75
warehouse
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| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
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76
bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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77
profane
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| adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污 | |
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78
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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79
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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80
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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81
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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