Chapter 21 Chapter Twenty

They got into an old Ford and drove to Frith's house, three miles from the hotel.The road was densely lined with tall trees, and the ground was covered with a thick layer of ferns and creepers.On the outskirts of the town is a virgin forest.Along the way, a dilapidated thatched hut popped out from time to time. Malays in ragged clothes were wandering in the veranda, and listless children were playing among the pigs under the pile.It was humid and muggy.At this time they came to a manor left by a certain planter.The gates of the manor house were stuccoed, pleasing to the eye and imposing, but old and dilapidated.Above the arch is embedded a doorplate with the name of the owner and the date the estate was built.They drove inward bumping along a dirt road, potholed and full of little mounds and ruts.At the end of the dirt road is a single family house.This is a large-scale square building with a Malay-style Attap roof, but it is a masonry structure instead of a pile-supported structure.Surrounding the house is an abandoned garden.They headed for the gate, the Malay driver honking his horn vigorously, before a man emerged from the house and waved to them.He is Frith.He stood on the steps leading to the veranda, and when the strangers came up the steps, he enthusiastically called out their names and shook hands with them one by one.

"Nice to meet you, I haven't seen an Englishman in a year, come in for a drink." Frith was tall and fat, with gray hair and a small gray mustache on his upper lip.His hair was thinning, bald on the top of his head, and his forehead was very broad.His face is round, without a single wrinkle, flushed and radiant with sweat, and at first glance he looks like a big boy.There is a crumbling yellow front tooth embedded in the center of his mouth, which seems to be able to be pulled out with a little force.Frith was wearing khaki shorts, an open-necked tennis shirt, and walked with a noticeable limp.He led a group of people into a spacious room, which is both a living room and a dining room.The walls of the room were decorated with Malay weapons, antlers of deer and bison, and the floor was covered with an old tiger skin, which looked like it had been eaten by moths and had some mildew spots on it.

As soon as they entered the room, a small old man got up from his chair.He didn't go up to meet them, but just stood there staring at the three strangers who came to visit.He was stooped, his weather-beaten face was lined with lines, and he looked very old. "This is Swann," Frith said, nodding casually. "He's my father-in-law." The old man in front of him had a pair of light blue eyes with red eyelids, and there was nothing inside.However, what he sees through these eyes is full of cunning, and when he looks at you, his eyeballs roll around, as nimbly as a monkey.He shook hands with the three strangers without a word, then turned to Frith, opened his teeth-shrunken lips, and spoke in a language that no one could understand.

"Mr. Swann is Swedish," Frith explained. The old man looked at them one by one, with obvious suspicion in his eyes, and a kind of straightforward contempt that was not concealed. "Fifty years ago, I went out to sea with a sailing boat, and I have never been back since then. Maybe I will be able to go back next year." "Sir, I am also a sailor," said Captain Nichols. Mr. Swan, however, was not at all interested in him. "I did a lot of good work in my youth," he went on. "I was captain of a schooner, and I was in the slave trade." "The blackbird business," interrupted Captain Nichols, "it did make a lot of money in the old days."

"I also worked as a blacksmith, a trader, and ran a plantation. There is probably nothing I haven't done. Those people have been trying to kill me. I have a chest hernia, which is the wound I left when I fought with the locals of Solomon. Cause, they really wanted to kill me, because I had a lot of money then. Don't you, George?" "That's what I heard." "The hurricane took all my property, the store, everything, but I don't care, now it's just this estate, and it doesn't matter, it's enough to eat and drink anyway. I have four wives and countless Qing's child."

His voice is so hoarse and he speaks English with a thick Swedish accent that you have to listen to him with all your attention.He spoke very fast, as if reciting texts.After he finished speaking, he laughed, and his laughter also revealed a long-sounding attitude, as if he was saying that he had experienced too many changes, and he had already seen through the world, and everything was meaningless to him.He observes the world and its affairs from a distance, but he does not use the attitude of standing on the Olympic Mountain overlooking it, but hides furtively behind the trees, jumping to another tree every once in a while, Stick your head out and entertain the world.

At this moment a Malay servant brought a bottle of whiskey and a siphon.Frith poured wine for the guests. "Swan, a little scotch?" he suggested to the old man. "Why do you ask me that?" he said in a trembling voice. "You know I can't stand it, get me some rum and water. Scotland is a ruin on the Pacific, and when I come out of Sweden, there's no one to drink Scotch, all drink rum, if they had kept drinking rum and sailing, things wouldn't have been as they are now, it's so far away." "We encountered very bad weather when we came." Captain Nichols said, wanting to create a seafarer-to-seafarer chat atmosphere.

"Bad weather? What bad weather is there these days. You should see the bad weather I had in my youth. I remember once when I was in one of my schooners and was about to take a boat from the New Hebrides. A group of laborers sailed to Samoa, but they were trapped by a hurricane. I let the group of savages get on board quickly, and then I set sail. I didn't sleep for three days, and I came back with a life, but lost the sail and the mainmast. Broken, life raft gone. Bad weather! Don't mention bad weather to me, young man." "I meant no offense." Captain Nichols grinned, showing his tiny moth-eaten teeth.

"Never mind," chuckled old Swann, "give him some rum, George. If he's really a sailor, he won't like your nasty whiskey." After a while Eric suggested that everyone go for a walk around the estate. "They haven't seen a nutmeg garden yet." "George, show them around. It's the best piece of land on the island, twenty-seven acres," said the old man. "Bought for a bag of pearls thirty years ago." They got up and walked out into the garden, leaving Swann alone.He was like a strange vulture drinking rum and water with his shoulders hunched and his back hunched.There is no obvious sign at the end of the garden, and we came to the manor after walking.The nights are cool and the air is clean.Tall Javanese olive trees stand in rows, towering like columns in a mosque from The Arabian Nights.In their shade grows the fat cash cow, the nutmeg.There is no winding understory on the ground, but a layer of dead leaves, like a carpet.There are lots of pigeons on the estate, you can hear them cooing and see them flapping their wings as they take off.Flocks of little green parrots flitted screeching over the nutmeg trees like living jewels thrown into the tenderly starlit night sky.Dr. Saunders felt very peaceful, almost as free as a disembodied soul.One picture after another flashed in his mind, and he happily enjoyed the fun of imagination without feeling tired at all.The doctor walked side by side with Ferris and the captain, and Ferris was describing the nutmeg trade, but he did not hear a word.There is a lazy breath in the air, so thick that it feels like you can touch it with your own hands, reminiscent of soft and full fibers.Fred and Eric followed them side by side.As the sun went down, the golden rays passed through the tall branches of the Javanese olive trees, and on the leaves of the nutmeg trees, the rich and gorgeous green shone like shiny copper coins.

They walked leisurely along a winding path. There was no road here, but after walking a lot, it became a road.Then they saw a girl coming towards them.She hung her head, as if she was thinking about something.She heard their footsteps, and then she raised her head and stopped. "This is my daughter," Frith said. You might imagine that she would stop in embarrassment the moment she saw a stranger, but she didn't run away in panic as you imagined, but stood there quietly, watching her walk towards her. The man who went was surprisingly calm.What this calmness reveals is not self-confidence, but an indifferent indifference.She wore only a sarong made of Javanese batik cloth with some white patterns on a brown base.She was barefoot, and the sarong was wrapped tightly around her chest, just up to her knees.After seeing these strangers, a smile stayed on the corner of her mouth.She shook her head naturally, loosened her hair, put her hand into her hair, combed it with her fingers, and stroked her long hair hanging on her back a few times.Apart from this, there was no trace on her body that could indicate that she had noticed the group of strangers in front of her.That hair shrouded the back of her neck and shoulders like a cloud, it was very thick, so soft and shiny that it had an off-white luster, making people mistake it for long silver hair.She stood there calmly, the sarong wrapped her body tightly, highlighting her graceful figure.She was slender, with a narrow waist and long legs, making her seem tall at first glance.Her skin was tanned a rich golden brown like honey.Usually doctors are not easy to be tempted by beauty. He always thinks that a woman's figure is born to meet the physiological needs of a man. There is no beauty at all.Just as a table should be strong, broad and of moderate height, a woman should be billowy, with broad and plump hips, but in both cases, beauty is only an accessory to utility. Some people may think that a strong, broad and moderately high table is beautiful, But to Dr. Saunders, it was always just a sturdy, wide table of moderate height.The girl in front of her was standing lazily, exuding a kind of calm and indifferent beauty, coupled with the folded sarong around her waist, the doctor thought of a statue of a goddess he had seen in an art gallery, where exactly was it? A goddess he could no longer remember, either a Greek god or a Roman god.Like those Chinese girls on the flower boats in Guangzhou, she has an ambiguous slenderness.When he was young, from time to time he could feel the pleasure of watching from a distance from them.The daughter of Ferris is as graceful as a flower, and her beauty brings an exotic flavor to this tropical land, and the whole garden looks radiant.She reminded the doctor of hydrangeas, pale and crowded together.

"They were friends of Christensen," her father said. Then Frith introduced her one by one, first Dr. Saunders, then the captain.She did not extend her hand, but nodded gracefully towards the two strangers.She calmly observed the two in front of her with doubts in her eyes, and then quickly made a judgment.The doctor noted her thin, long brown hands, her blue eyes, and the delicate symmetry of her features. She was undoubtedly a very pretty young lady. "I just took a bath in the pool," she said. Then Eric and Fred came over, and when she saw Eric, she gave a sweet and friendly smile. "This is Fred Blake," he said. She turned her head slightly, and the moment she saw Fred, her eyes froze, and the smile on her lips disappeared. "Nice to meet you." Fred said, holding out his right hand. Her gaze remained on him.Her expression was neither haughty nor impudent, but there was a hint of surprise that made one think that she had met Fred before and was now scratching her head trying to figure out where she had seen this familiar face.Yet her hesitation was so short that no one realized she had hesitated when she took Fred's outstretched hand. "I'm going back to my room to get dressed," she said. "I'll go with you," Eric said. Eric stood next to her, and it was only then that everyone realized that she was not as tall as they first saw, but that she had long limbs, a slender figure, and elegant manners, which made people mistake her for being tall. "Who is that young man?" she asked. "I don't know," Eric said. "He was with that sullen, skinny guy. I heard they were looking for pearl oysters, looking for a new farm." "He's good looking." "I reckon you'll like him, the lad is nice." Others continued to visit the manor.