Free The Rescue by Joseph Conrad

channels. It may be said that in a belt of sea
twenty miles broad along that low shore there is much more coral, mud,
sand, and stones than actual sea water. It was amongst the outlying
shoals of this stretch that the yacht had gone ashore and the events
consequent upon her stranding took place.
    The diffused light of the short daybreak showed the open water to the
westward, sleeping, smooth and grey, under a faded heaven. The straight
coast threw a heavy belt of gloom along the shoals, which, in the calm
of expiring night, were unmarked by the slightest ripple. In the faint
dawn the low clumps of bushes on the sandbanks appeared immense.
    Two figures, noiseless like two shadows, moved slowly over the beach of
a rocky islet, and stopped side by side on the very edge of the water.
Behind them, between the mats from which they had arisen, a small heap
of black embers smouldered quietly. They stood upright and perfectly
still, but for the slight movement of their heads from right to left and
back again as they swept their gaze through the grey emptiness of the
waters where, about two miles distant, the hull of the yacht loomed up
to seaward, black and shapeless, against the wan sky.
    The two figures looked beyond without exchanging as much as a murmur.
The taller of the two grounded, at arm's length, the stock of a gun with
a long barrel; the hair of the other fell down to its waist; and, near
by, the leaves of creepers drooping from the summit of the steep rock
stirred no more than the festooned stone. The faint light, disclosing
here and there a gleam of white sandbanks and the blurred hummocks of
islets scattered within the gloom of the coast, the profound silence,
the vast stillness all round, accentuated the loneliness of the two
human beings who, urged by a sleepless hope, had risen thus, at break of
day, to look afar upon the veiled face of the sea.
    "Nothing!" said the man with a sigh, and as if awakening from a long
period of musing.
    He was clad in a jacket of coarse blue cotton, of the kind a poor
fisherman might own, and he wore it wide open on a muscular chest the
colour and smoothness of bronze. From the twist of threadbare sarong
wound tightly on the hips protruded outward to the left the ivory hilt,
ringed with six bands of gold, of a weapon that would not have disgraced
a ruler. Silver glittered about the flintlock and the hardwood stock
of his gun. The red and gold handkerchief folded round his head was of
costly stuff, such as is woven by high-born women in the households of
chiefs, only the gold threads were tarnished and the silk frayed in the
folds. His head was thrown back, the dropped eyelids narrowed the gleam
of his eyes. His face was hairless, the nose short with mobile nostrils,
and the smile of careless good-humour seemed to have been permanently
wrought, as if with a delicate tool, into the slight hollows about
the corners of rather full lips. His upright figure had a negligent
elegance. But in the careless face, in the easy gestures of the whole
man there was something attentive and restrained.
    After giving the offing a last searching glance, he turned and, facing
the rising sun, walked bare-footed on the elastic sand. The trailed butt
of his gun made a deep furrow. The embers had ceased to smoulder. He
looked down at them pensively for a while, then called over his shoulder
to the girl who had remained behind, still scanning the sea:
    "The fire is out, Immada."
    At the sound of his voice the girl moved toward the mats. Her black hair
hung like a mantle. Her sarong, the kilt-like garment which both sexes
wear, had the national check of grey and red, but she had not completed
her attire by the belt, scarves, the loose upper wrappings, and the
head-covering of a woman. A black silk jacket, like that of a man of
rank, was buttoned over her bust and fitted closely to her slender
waist. The edge of a stand-up collar, stiff with gold embroidery,
rubbed her cheek. She had no bracelets, no anklets, and