Suspense: A Napoleonic Novel

by Joseph Conrad

"Better for him to die under the open sky than in prison," murmured Attilio in a gloomy voice. "Listen, old man, could you keep the boat straight at a star if I were to point you one?"

"I was at home in a boat before I could speak plainly," was the answer, while the boatman raised his arm and let it rest on the tiller as if to prove that he had strength enough for that at least.

"I have my boat's crew, signore. Let him do something for all Italy if it is with his last breath, that old Genoese. And now if you were only to take that bow oar you have been using so well only a few moments ago, I will pull stroke and we will make this boat fly."

Cosmo felt the subdued vibration of this appeal without having paid any attention to the words. They required no answer. Attilio pressed him as though he had been arguing against objections. Surely he was no friend of tyranny or of Austrian oppressors and he wouldn't refuse to serve a man whom some hidden power had thrown in his way. He, Attilio, had not sought him. He would have been content never to have seen him. He surely had nothing that could call him back on shore this very night, since he had not been more than three days in Genoa. No time for him to have affairs. The words poured out of his lips into Cosmo's ear while the white-headed boatman sat still above the torrent of whispered speech, appearing to listen like a venerable judge. What could stand in the way of him lending his luck and the strength of his arm? Surely it couldn't be love, since he was travelling alone.

"Enough," said Cosmo, as if the word had been extorted from him by pain, but Attilio felt that his cause had been gained, though he hastened to apologize for the impropriety of the argument, and assure the milord Inglese that nothing would be easier than to put him ashore in the course of the next day.

"What do you think. Excellency, there is my own native village not very far from Genoa on the Riviera di Ponente, and you will be amongst friends to carry out such orders as you may give, or pass you from one to another back to Genoa as fast as mules can climb or horses trot. And it would be the same from any point in Italy. They would get you into Genoa in disguise, or without disguise, and into the very home of Cantelucci, so that you could appear there without a soul knowing how you entered or how you came back."

Cosmo, feeling a sudden relief, wondered that he should have found it in the mere resolution to go off secretly with only the clothes he stood up in, absolutely without money or anything of value on him, not even a watch, and without a hat, at the mere bidding of a man bound on some secret work, God knows where and for what object, and who had volunteered to him no statement except that he had cousins in every spot in Italy and a love affair with an ortolana. The enormous absurdity of it made him impatient to be doing, and upon his expressed desire to make a start Attilio, with the words, "You command here, signore," told his men it was time to be moving.

In less than half an hour the boat, with all her crew crouching at the bottom and using the oars for poling in the shallow water along the coast with infinite precaution to avoid knocks and bangs as though the boat, the oars, and everything in her were made of glass, had been moved far enough from the tower to have her nose put to the open sea. After the first few strokes Cosmo felt himself draw back again to the receding shore. But it was too late. He seemed to feel profoundly that he was not—perhaps no man was—a free agent. He felt a sort of fear, a faltering of all his limbs, as he swung back to his oar. Then his eyes caught the galley, indeed everybody's eyes in the boat were turned that way except the eyes of the ancient steersman, the white-headed figure in an unexpectedly erect attitude who, with hardly any breath left in his body and a mere helpless victim of other men's will, had a strange appearance of the man in command.

In less than ten minutes the galley became invisible, and even the long shadows of the jetties had sunk to the level of the sea. There was a moment when one of the men observed without excitement, "She's after us," but this remark provoked no answer and turned out to be mistaken, and for an hour longer Attilio, pulling stroke, watched the faint phosphorescent wake, the evanescent fire under the black smoothness of the sea, elusive like the tail of a comet amongst the dim reflections of the stars. Its straightness was the only proof of the silent helmsman with his arm resting along the tiller being still alive. Then he began to look about him, and presently, laying in his oar, relieved the old man at the tiller. He had to take his arm off it. The other never said a word.

The boat moved slowly now. The problem was to discover the awaiting felucca without lights and with her sails lowered. Several times Attilio stood up to have a look without being able to make out anything. He was growing uneasy. He spoke to Cosmo.