If you were to look for the little island of Tana Masa on a map you would find it right on the equator slightly to the west of Sumatra. But if you asked Captain J. van Toch of the Kandong Bandoeng what kind of place this Tana Masa was, the place off which he had just dropped anchor, he would curse for a while and then he would tell you that it was the filthiest hole in all the Sunda Islands, even more miserable than Tana Bala and at least as lousy a place as Pini or Banjak; that the only, if you’ll excuse me, human being living there -disregarding, of course, those lousy Bataks - was a drunken agent, a cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese and an even greater thief, heathen and swine than a pure-bred Cuban and a pure-bred white man combined; and if there was something really lousy in this world then it was this lousy life on this lousy Tana Masa, yessir. Whereupon you, might cautiously inquire why in that case he had dropped his lousy anchor, just as if he was going to stop here for three lousy days, he’d just snort irritably and mutter something to the effect that the Kandong Bandoeng would not have sailed here just for some lousy copra or palm oil, stands to reason, doesn’t it?, and anyway what business is it of yours, sir?, but I’ve got my damned orders, sir, and will you kindly mind your own damned business. And he’d curse as richly and colourfully as you’d expect from a sea captain who was getting on a bit but was still in good shape for his years.
But if instead of asking such nosy questions you left Captain van Toch to grumble and curse to himself you’d probably learn a lot more. Can’t you see that he needs to let off steam? Just let him be and his irritability will simmer down on its own. ‘It’s like this, sir,’ the captain would burst out, ‘those fellows back home in Amsterdam, those damned Jews at the top, suddenly say to you: pearls, that’s what it is about, my man, you look out for pearls. People apparently go nuts over pearls and suchlike.’ Here the captain expectorated angrily. ‘Sure thing, put your money into pearls! That’s because you people are always wanting to have wars or suchlike. Worried about your money, that’s what it is. What’s called a crisis, yessir.’ Captain van Toch hesitated for a moment as to whether to embark on a discourse of the economy with you; after all, nobody talked about anything else these days. Except that out here, off Tana Masa, it’s a little too hot and enervating for that. So Captain van Toch just waved his hand and grumbled: ‘Easily said: pearls! In Ceylon, sir, they cleared them clean out five years ago and in Formosa they’ve put a ban on pearl-fishing. - Why then, Captain van Toch, you’d better find some new fishing grounds. You just sail to those damned little islands, for all you know you may find whole banks of shells there - .’ The captain contemptuously blew his nose into a sky-blue handkerchief. ‘Those rats back in Europe imagine you can still find something here that nobody else knows about! Christ Almighty, those nitwits! For two pins they’d have made me peer up the snouts of those Bataks in case they snot up pearls! New fishing grounds, my arse! There’s a new brothel in Padang, for sure, but new pearl-fishing grounds? Why sir, I know these islands here like the back of my hand … all the way from Ceylon to that lousy Clipperton Island … If anyone thinks he can find something here to make money out of, well, good luck to him! I’ve been sailing these waters for thirty years and now those idiots want me to discover something new here!’ Captain van Toch almost choked under this insulting demand. ‘Why don’t they send out some greenhorn, he’d discover things for them enough to make their eyes pop - but to expect Captain van Toch … well, sir, I ask you! In Europe you might still find something or other, but here? Surely people come down here only to sniff around for something they can guzzle up, or not even guzzle up, for something to buy and sell. Why sir, if there was anything left in these lousy tropics that was worth a brass farthing you’d find three agents standing over it and waving a dirty handkerchief to ships of seven nationalities to heave to. That’s how it is, sir. I know these parts better than Her Majesty’s Colonial Office, if you’ll pardon me.’ With an effort Captain van Toch struggled with his righteous indignation and after some further storming managed to master it. ‘See that pair of lazy bastards there? Those are pearl fishers from Ceylon, may God forgive me, Singhalese as the Lord made them - though why he should have done so beats me. That’s what I carry now, sir, and wherever I come across a stretch of coastline that hasn’t got a notice Agency or Bata Corporation or Customs Office I drop that lot into the water to rout out shells. That shorter rascal can dive to a depth of forty fathoms; over there on Princes Island he came up from forty-five fathoms with the handle of a film camera, yessir, but as for pearls - nope! Not a trace! Useless scoundrels, those Singhalese. That’s the kind of lousy job I’ve got, sir: making out I’m buying palm oil and all the time searching for new pearl-fishing grounds. Next thing they’ll expect me to do is discover some virgin continent, what? That’s no job for the honest master of a merchantman, no sir. J. van Toch’s not one of your damned adventurers, sir. No sir.’ And so on; the sea is vast and the ocean of time is boundless: spit into it and it won’t rise, or rant at your fate but you won’t change it; and so, after many preliminaries and diversions, we’ve at last reached the point where Captain J. van Toch of the Dutch ship Kandong Bandoeng with a deep sigh and a curse climbs down into a boat to step ashore at the kampong on Tana Masa, in order to discuss a few business matters with the drunken cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese.
‘Sorry, Captain,’ finally said the cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese, ‘but there are no pearl-oysters here on Tana Masa. Those filthy Bataks,’ he said with infinite loathing, ‘will even eat jellyfish, they’re more at home in the water than on dry land, the women here stink of fish, you’ve no idea - what was I going to say? Ah yes, you were asking about the women.’
‘And isn’t there any stretch of shore,’ the captain inquired, ‘where those Bataks don’t get into the water?’
The cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese shook his head. ‘None, sir. Except of course Devil Bay, but that’s no use to you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because … no one’s allowed there, sir. Top you up, Captain?’
‘Thanks. Are there any sharks there?’
‘Sharks and other things/ the half-breed muttered. ‘It’s a bad spot, sir. The Bataks wouldn’t like to see anyone going there.’
‘Why not?’
‘There are devils there, sir. Sea devils.’
‘What’s a sea devil? A fish?’
‘Not a fish,’ the half-breed countered evasively. ‘Simply a devil, sir. A deep-sea devil. The Bataks call them tapa. Tapa. They’re said to have their town down there, those devils. Top you up?’
‘And what does … this sea devil look like?’
The cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese shrugged. ‘Like a devil, sir. I saw one once - that is, only his head. I was in my boat coming back from Cape Haarlem … and suddenly it pushed its ugly mug out of the water right in front of me.’
‘Well? And what did it look like?’
‘It’s got a pate … like a Batak, sir, but bald as a coot.’
‘You sure it wasn’t a Batak?’
‘Quite sure, sir. No Batak would ever go into the water at that spot. Besides … it blinked at me with its lower lids, sir.’ The half-breed shivered with horror. ‘With its lower lids which came up right over its eyes. That’s a tapa.’
Captain J. van Toch twisted his glass of palm wine between his fleshy fingers. ‘Sure you weren’t drunk, eh? You weren’t sloshed?’
‘Of course I was, sir. Otherwise I wouldn’t have rowed out there. The Bataks don’t like people to … to disturb the devils.’
Captain van Toch shook his head. ‘Come on, man, no such thing as devils. And if there were they’d look like Europeans. Probably was some fish or something.’
‘A fish,’ the cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese stammered, ‘a fish hasn’t got any hands, sir. I’m not a Batak, sir, I went to school in Badjoeng … perhaps I can still recite the Ten Commandments and other scientifically proved doctrines; an educated person can tell the difference between a devil and an animal. You ask the Bataks, sir.’
‘Nigger superstitions, man,’ the captain declared with the jovial superiority of the educated. ‘Scientifically it’s nonsense. Surely a devil can’t live in water. What would he be doing there? Shouldn’t listen to natives’ gossip, man. Somebody called the bay Devil Bay and the Bataks have been afraid of it ever since. That’s the long and the short of it,’ said the captain, bringing his massive palm down on the table. ‘There’s nothing there, man; that’s scientifically evident, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ agreed the half-breed who had been to school in Badjoeng. ‘But no man in his right senses has any business in Devil Bay.’
Captain J. van Toch turned florid. ‘What?’ he shouted. ‘You filthy Cuban, you think I’m scared of your devils? We’ll see about that,’ he said, rising to the full majesty of his ample fourteen stone. ‘I’m not wasting my time here with you when I have business to attend to. But remember one thing: there are no devils in the Dutch colonies; if there are any at all, then they are in the French colonies. Yes, there might well be some there. And now get me the mayor of this lousy kampong.’
The dignitary referred to was not too difficult to find: he was squatting next to the half-breed’s shop, chewing sugar cane. He was a naked elderly gentleman, and a lot thinner than mayors as a rule come in Europe. A short way behind him, keeping an appropriate distance, squatted the entire village, complete with women and children, evidently in expectation of being filmed.
‘Now listen to me, man,’ Captain van Toch addressed him in Malay (he might equally well have addressed him in Dutch or in English since the venerable old Batak did not understand a word of Malay and the whole of the captain’s speech had to be interpreted into the Batak dialect by the cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese; but for some reason or other the captain regarded the Malay language as more suitable). ‘Now listen to me, man, I need a few big strong brave fellows to go hunting with me. Understand? Hunting.’
The half-breed translated and the mayor nodded his head to indicate he understood. He thereupon turned to his wider audience and delivered a speech to them with obvious success.
‘The chief says,’ the half-breed interpreted, ‘that the whole village will go hunting with the tuan captain, where the tuan wishes.’
‘There you are. You tell them we’ll go shell-fishing in Devil Bay.’
There followed about a quarter of an hour of excited discussion, with the whole village taking part, especially the old women. Eventually the half-breed turned to the captain. ‘They’re saying, sir, one can’t go to Devil Bay.’
The captain grew red in the face. ‘And why not?’
The half-breed shrugged his shoulders. ‘Because of the tapa-tapa there. The devils, sir.’
The captain’s face was beginning to turn puce. ‘Tell them if they won’t come … I’ll knock all their teeth in … I’ll tear their ears off …I’ll hang them … and that I’ll burn their lousy kampong down, d’you understand?’
The half-breed translated faithfully, whereupon another lively consultation took place. In the end the half-breed turned to the captain. ‘They’re saying, sir, they’ll go and complain to the police in Padang that the tuan has threatened them. There are laws about this. The mayor says he won’t leave it at that.’
Captain J. van Toch began to turn blue. ‘Tell him then,’ he roared, ‘that he is …’ And he spoke for a good eleven minutes without drawing breath.
The half-breed translated as much as his vocabulary permitted, and after another prolonged but businesslike consultation among the Bataks he interpreted to the captain: ‘They’re saying, sir, that they might be willing to drop legal proceedings if the tuan captain paid a fine to the local authorities. They say,’ here he hesitated, ‘200 rupees; but that’s a bit steep, sir. Why not offer them five.’
Captain van Toch’s colour began to break up into russet blotches. At first he offered to massacre all Bataks the world over, then he came down to 300 kicks, and finally he would have settled for stuffing the mayor for the Colonial Museum in Amsterdam. The Bataks on their part came down from 200 rupees to one iron pump with a wheel and in the end insisted that the captain should, by way of a fine, give the mayor a petrol cigarette lighter. (‘Give it to them, sir,’ the cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese pleaded, ‘I’ve got three lighters in stock but they’ve got no wick.’) Thus peace was restored on Tana Masa but Captain J. van Toch realised that the honour of the white race was now at stake.
In the afternoon a boat put off from the Dutch ship Kandong Bandoeng: it contained, more particularly, Captain van Toch, a Swede called Jensen, an Icelander called Gudmunson, a Finn called Gillemainen and two Singhalese pearl-fishers. The boat made straight for Devil Bay.
At three o’clock, just as the low tide was turning, the captain was standing on the beach, the boat was bobbing up and down about a hundred yards offshore to keep a look-out for sharks, and the two Singhalese divers, each with a knife in hand, were waiting for the signal to jump into the water.
‘OK, you first,’ the captain ordered the taller one of the naked figures. The Singhalese jumped in, waded a few steps and disappeared under the surface. The captain glanced at his watch.
Four minutes and twenty seconds later a brown head broke surface some sixty yards to the left; in a curiously desperate and at the same time paralysed rush the Singhalese scrambled up on the rocks, in one hand his knife for cutting the shells loose and in the other a pearl-oyster.
The captain scowled. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said sharply.
The Singhalese was still climbing over the boulders, gasping noisily with fright.
‘What’s up?’ yelled the captain.
‘Sahib, sahib,’ the Singhalese managed to utter, sinking down on the shore and letting his breath out in gasps. ‘Sahib … sahib …’
‘Sharks?’
‘Djins,’ the Singhalese moaned. ‘Devils, sir. Thousands and thousands of devils!’ He dug his fists into his eyes. ‘Nothing but devils, sir!’
‘Let’s see that shell,’ the captain ordered. He opened it with a knife. It contained a small clear pearl. ‘This is all you found?’
The Singhalese took out three more shells from the bag slung around his neck. ‘There are shells there all right, sir, but those devils are guarding them … They were looking at me as I cut them loose …’ His straggly hair bristled in horror. ‘Not at this spot, sahib!’
The captain opened the shells; two were empty but the third contained a pearl the size of a pea, as round as a drop of mercury. Captain van Toch studied in turn the pearl and the Singhalese who was crouching in a heap on the ground.
‘You, boy,’ he said hesitantly, ‘you wouldn’t like to go down there once more?’
The Singhalese shook his head speechlessly.
Captain van Toch felt a strong itch on his tongue to blaspheme. But to his surprise he found that he was talking quietly and almost gently: ‘Don’t be afraid, boy. And what do those … devils … look like?’
‘Like little children,’ the Singhalese breathed. ‘They’ve got a tail and they are this tall,’ and he indicated about four feet from the ground. ‘They stood all around me and watched what I was doing there … there was a whole ring of them around me …’ The Singhalese began to tremble. ‘Sahib! Not here, sahib!’
Captain van Toch reflected. ‘And tell me, do they blink their lower lids, or what?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ the Singhalese croaked. ‘There’s … ten thousands of them there!’
The captain looked round for the other Singhalese. He was standing some 150 yards off, casually waiting with his arms folded over his shoulders. It is true, of course, that when a chap is naked he’s got nowhere to put his hands except on his own shoulders. The captain made a silent signal to him and the short Singhalese jumped into the water. Three minutes and fifty seconds later he emerged again and with slippery hands slithered up the rocks.
‘Well, get out then,’ the captain shouted. But then he looked more closely and already he was leaping over the boulders towards those desperately groping hands; you’d never credit such a bulk with such agility. He just managed to snatch hold in time of one hand, and panting he dragged the Singhalese out of the water. Then he laid him down on a rock and mopped his sweat. The Singhalese was lying motionless: one of his shins was skinned to the bone, evidently by a rock, but otherwise he was in one piece. The captain lifted his eyelid: only the white of his upturned eyes was visible. He had no shells and no knife.
At just that moment the boat with the crew closed in towards the shore. ‘Sir,’ the Swede Jensen shouted, ‘there are sharks here. Will you carry on fishing?’
‘No,’ said the captain. ‘Pull in here and pick up these two.’
‘Look, sir,’ Jensen pointed out as they were returning to the ship; ‘look how suddenly it gets shallow here. All the way from here to the shore,’ he pointed out, poking his oar in the water. ‘Just as if there was some kind of dam here under the water.’ Not till he was on the boat did the short Singhalese come round. He sat with his knees drawn up to his chin and was shaking all over. The captain sent the men away and sat down with his legs straddled.
‘Well, let’s have it,’ he said. ‘What did you see there?’
‘Djins, sahib,’ the short Singhalese whispered. Now even his eyelids were beginning to tremble and little pimples of gooseflesh erupted all over his body.
Captain van Toch cleared his throat. ‘And … what do they look like?’
‘Like … like …’ A strip of white again began to appear in the Singhalese’s eyes. With unexpected agility Captain van Toch slapped both his cheeks with the palm and the back of his hand to bring him round.
‘Thanks, sahib,’ the short Singhalese breathed, and his pupils again swam out in the white of his eyes.
‘AH right now?’
‘Yes, sahib.’
‘Any shells there?’
‘Yes, sahib.’
Captain van Toch continued his cross-examination with a great deal of patience and thoroughness. OK, so there are devils there. How many? Thousands and thousands. They’re about as tall as a child of ten, sir, and nearly black. They swim in the water and on the sea-bed they walk upright. Upright, sir, just like you and me, but they sway their bodies the while: like this, and like this, all the time … Yes, sir, they’ve got hands too, just like human beings; no, they’ve got no claws, more like the hands of children. No, sir, they haven’t got any horns or any hair. Yes, they’ve got a tail, a bit like a fish but without a tail-fin. And a big head, a round head like the Bataks. No, sir, they didn’t say anything; they only seemed to smack their lips. As the Singhalese was cutting off some shells at a depth of about fifty feet he had felt something touching his back - like small cold fingers. He’d turned round, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them all round him. Hundreds and hundreds, sir, swimming or standing on rocks, and all of them watching what the Singhalese was doing there. That was when he’d dropped his knife and the shells and had tried to swim to the surface. In doing so he’d collided with some of the devils who were swimming above him, and what happened next he didn’t know, sir.
Captain van Toch gazed thoughtfully at the trembling little diver. That boy wouldn’t be any use for anything, he thought to himself; he’d send him home to Ceylon from Padang. Growling and snorting he went back to his cabin. There he tipped out two pearls from the bag on to his table. One of them was as small as a grain of sand and the other was like a pea, with a silvery gleam and a touch of pink. And the captain of the Dutch ship snorted and took his Irish whisky from the cupboard.
Towards six o’clock he again had himself taken in the boat to the kampong, and made straight for that cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese. ‘Toddy,’ he said, and that was the only word he uttered; he sat on the corrugated iron verandah with a thick glass between his thick fingers, and drank and spat and peered from beneath his bushy eyebrows at the scrawny yellow hens which were pecking heaven knows what on the trampled dirt yard between the palms. The half-breed was careful not to say anything and merely filled the glasses. Gradually the captain’s eyes became bloodshot and his fingers began to lack response. It was nearly dusk when he got to his feet and yanked up his trousers.
‘Turning in already, captain?’ the half-breed between the devil and Satan inquired courteously.
The captain stabbed his finger into the air. ‘I’d be damned surprised,’ he said, ‘if there were any devils in the world whom I’ve yet to come across. You man, which way is bloody northwest?’
‘That way,’ the half-breed pointed. ‘Where are you off to, sir?’
‘To hell,’ Captain J. van Toch growled. ‘Going to have a look at Devil Bay.’
That evening marked the start of Captain J. van Toch’s eccentricity. He did not return to the kampong until daybreak; he spoke not a single word and had himself rowed out to the ship, where he locked himself in his cabin until evening. So far nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary since the Kandong Bandoeng was busy enough loading some of the blessings of the island (copra, pepper, camphor, gutta-percha, palm oil, tobacco and labour); but when in the evening he was informed that all the cargo had been stowed he merely snorted and said: ‘The boat. To the kampong.’ And again he did not return until dawn. The Swede Jensen, who helped him on board, inquired, just from politeness: ‘So we’re sailing today, captain?’ The captain spun round as if he had had a needle stuck in his behind. ‘What the hell’s that to you?’ he snapped. ‘Mind your own bloody business!’ All day long the Kandong Bandoeng rode at anchor a cable’s length off the shore of Tana Masa, doing nothing. As evening fell the captain rolled out of his cabin and commanded: ‘The boat. To the kampong.’ Zapatis, the little Greek, followed him with his one blind and one squinting eye. ‘Boys,’ he said; ‘either the old man’s got a girl there or he’s gone clean off his rocker.’ The Swede Jensen scowled. ‘What the hell’s that to you?’ he snapped at Zapatis. ‘Mind your own bloody business!’ Then, together with the Icelander Gudmunson he took the little dinghy and rowed in the direction of Devil Bay. They pulled in behind some boulders and awaited developments. In the bay the captain was pacing up and down: he seemed to be waiting for somebody. Now and again he would stop and call out something like ts, ts, ts. ‘Look,’ Gudmunson said, pointing to the sea which was now blindingly red and golden from the sunset. Jensen counted two, three, four, six fins, sharp as a blade, making for Devil Bay. ‘Shit,’ muttered Jensen; ‘all those sharks!’ Every so often one of the blades would submerge, a tail would flap above the surface and the water would be churned up. At that point Captain J. van Toch began to hop about furiously on the beach, hurl curses and shake his fist at the sharks. Then a brief tropical dusk fell and the moon sailed out over the island. Jensen gripped his oars and brought the dinghy to within a furlong of the shore. The captain was now sitting on a boulder, going ts, ts, ts. Something was moving near him, but it was difficult to make out what it was. Looks like seals, Jensen thought, but seals crawl differently. Whatever it was emerged from the water among the boulders and waddled along the beach with a swaying motion like penguins. Jensen quietly pulled on his oars and stopped half a furlong from the captain. Yes, the captain was saying something, but the devil only knew what it was - probably Malay or Tamil. He was waving his arms as if he were throwing something to the seals (except that they weren’t seals, Jensen reassured himself), and all the while he was jabbering away in Chinese or Malay. At that moment a raised oar slipped from Jensen’s hand and slapped into the water. The captain raised his head, stood up and took about thirty paces towards the water. And suddenly there were flashes and cracks: the captain was firing his Browning in the direction of the dinghy. Almost simultaneously there was a rustling, swirling and splashing as if of a thousand seals diving into the water. But by then Jensen and Gudmundson were pulling on their oars and fairly whipping their dinghy round the nearest headland. When they got back to the ship they did not say a word to anyone. These Nordics know how to keep silent. The captain returned towards dawn: he was morose and angry, but he did not speak a word. Only as Jensen was helping him on board two pairs of blue eyes met in a cold searching stare.
‘Jensen,’ the captain said.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We sail today.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’ll get your papers in Surabaya.’
‘Yes, sir.’
That was all. That day the Kandong Bandoeng sailed for Padang. From Padang Captain J. van Toch sent a package to his company in Amsterdam, a package insured for £1,200 sterling. And simultaneously he telegraphed a request for a year’s leave. Urgent reasons of health and that sort of thing. Then he knocked about Padang until he found whoever he had been looking for. He was a savage from Borneo, a Dayak whom English tourists would occasionally hire as a shark hunter, just in order to watch him at work, for the Dayak still operated in the old way, armed only with a long knife. He was evidently a cannibal but he had his fixed scale of charges: five pounds per shark, plus board. Otherwise he was hideous to behold, for his skin had been scraped off both his arms, his chest and his thighs by sharkskin, and his nose and ears were adorned with sharks’ teeth. Everyone called him Shark.
With this Dayak Captain J. van Toch now set out for the island of Tana Masa.