’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.’
’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.
