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LORD JIM
BY JOSEPH CONRAD
AUTHOR'S NOTE
When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got about that I
had been bolted away with. Some reviewers maintained that the work
starting as a short story had got beyond the writer's control. One
or two discovered internal evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse
them. They pointed out the limitations of the narrative form. They
argued that no man could have been expected to talk all that time,
and other men to listen so long. It was not, they said, very credible.
After thinking it over for something like sixteen years, I am not
so sure about that. Men have been known, both in the tropics and
in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night 'swapping yarns'.
This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions affording
some measure of relief; and in regard to the listeners' endurance,
the postulate must be accepted that the story was interesting. It is
the necessary preliminary assumption. If I hadn't believed that it
was interesting I could never have begun to write it. As to the mere
physical possibility we all know that some speeches in Parliament
have taken nearer six than three hours in delivery; whereas all that
part of the book which is Marlow's narrative can be read through
aloud, I should say, in less than three hours. Besides--though I
have kept strictly all such insignificant details out of the tale--we
may presume that there must have been refreshments on that night,
a glass of mineral water of some sort to help the narrator on.
But, seriously, the truth of the matter is, that my first thought
was of a short story, concerned only with the pilgrim ship episode;
nothing more. And that was a legitimate conception. After writing
a few pages, however, I became for some reason discontented and
I laid them aside for a time. I didn't take them out of the drawer
till the late Mr. William Blackwood suggested I should give something
again to his magazine.
It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim ship episode
was a good starting-point for a free and wandering tale; that it was
an event, too, which could conceivably colour the whole 'sentiment
of existence' in a simple and sensitive character. But all these
preliminary moods and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the
time, and they do not appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so
many years.
The few pages I had laid aside were not without their weight in
the choice of subject. But the whole was re-written deliberately.
When I sat down to it I knew it would be a long book, though I
didn't foresee that it would spread itself over thirteen numbers
of Maga.
I have been asked at times whether this was not the book of mine
I liked best. I am a great foe to favouritism in public life, in private
life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.
As a matter of principle I will have no favourites; but I don't go so
far as to feel grieved and annoyed by the preference some people
give to my Lord Jim. I won't even say that I 'fail to understand . . .'
No! But once I had occasion to be puzzled and surprised.
A friend of mine returning from Italy had talked with a lady there
who did not like the book. I regretted that, of course, but what
surprised me was the ground of her dislike. 'You know,' she said,
'it is all so morbid.'
The pronouncement gave me food for an hour's anxious thought. Finally
I arrived at the conclusion that, making due allowances for the subject
itself being rather foreign to women's normal sensibilities, the lady
could not have been an Italian. I wonder whether she was European at
all? In any case, no Latin temperament would have perceived anything
morbid in the acute consciousness of lost honour. Such a consciousness
may be wrong, or it may be right, or it may be condemned as artificial;
and, perhaps, my Jim is not a type of wide commonness. But I can safely
assure my readers that he is not the product of coldly perverted thinking.
He's not a figure of Northern Mists either. One sunny morning, in the
commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, I saw his form pass
by--appealing--significant--under a cloud--perfectly silent. Which
is as it should be. It was for me, with all the sympathy of which I was
capable, to seek fit words for his meaning. He was 'one of us'.
J.C.
1917.
LORD JIM
CHAPTER 1
He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and
he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders,
head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think
of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed
a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It
seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself
as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate
white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got
his living as ship-chandler's water-clerk he was very popular.
A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun,
but he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practically.
His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other
water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily,
forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and
on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation
to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and
drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy
and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of
gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is
received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before.
There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements,
a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the
salt of a three months' passage out of a seaman's heart. The connection
thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship remains in harbour, by the
daily visits of the water-clerk. To the captain he is faithful like a
friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish
devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Later on the bill
is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane occupation. Therefore good
water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk who possesses Ability
in the abstract has also the advantage of having been brought up
to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money and some
humouring. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring
as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with
black ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart.
To his employers the reasons he gave were obviously inadequate.
They said 'Confounded fool!' as soon as his back was turned. This
was their criticism on his exquisite sensibility.
To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains
of ships he was just Jim--nothing more. He had, of course, another
name, but he was anxious that it should not be pronounced. His
incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to
hide a personality but a fact. When the fact broke through the
incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened
to be at the time and go to another--generally farther east. He kept
to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had
Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of
a water-clerk. He retreated in good order towards the rising sun,
and the fact followed him casually but inevitably. Thus in the
course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in
Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places
was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of
the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men,
even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where
he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the
monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might
say--Lord Jim.
Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders of fine
merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim's
father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as
made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing
the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to
live in mansions. The little church on a hill had the mossy greyness
of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. It had stood there
for centuries, but the trees around probably remembered the laying
of the first stone. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with
a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees,
with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and
the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. The
living had belonged to the family for generations; but Jim was one
of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday literature his
vocation for the sea had declared itself, he was sent at once to a
'training-ship for officers of the mercantile marine.'
He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant
yards. He was generally liked. He had the third place in navigation
and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having a steady head with an
excellent physique, he was very smart aloft. His station was in the
fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt
of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful
multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream,
while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory
chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like
a pencil, and belching out smoke like a volcano. He could see the
big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the
move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy
splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life
in the world of adventure.
On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would
forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light
literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting
away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line;
or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on
uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He
confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high
seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of
despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as
unflinching as a hero in a book.
'Something's up. Come along.'
He leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders.
Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and
when he got through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded.
It was the dusk of a winter's day. The gale had freshened since
noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the
strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of
great guns firing over the ocean. The rain slanted in sheets that
flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening
glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing
along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad
ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages
heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. The next gust seemed to
blow all this away. The air was full of flying water. There was a
fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of
the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed
at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. He stood still. It seemed
to him he was whirled around.
He was jostled. 'Man the cutter!' Boys rushed past him. A coaster
running in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor,
and one of the ship's instructors had seen the accident. A mob of
boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. 'Collision.
Just ahead of us. Mr. Symons saw it.' A push made him stagger
against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. The old
training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing
gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a
deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. 'Lower away!' He
saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail, and rushed after
her. He heard a splash. 'Let go; clear the falls!' He leaned over.
The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter could be
seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind, that
for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship. A
yelling voice in her reached him faintly: 'Keep stroke, you young
whelps, if you want to save anybody! Keep stroke!' And suddenly
she lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave,
broke the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide.
Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. 'Too late, youngster.' The
captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed
on the point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain
of conscious defeat in his eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically.
'Better luck next time. This will teach you to be smart.'
A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing back half full
of water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom
boards. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared
very contemptible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their
inefficient menace. Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to
him he cared nothing for the gale. He could affront greater perils.
He would do so--better than anybody. Not a particle of fear was
left. Nevertheless he brooded apart that evening while the bowman
of the cutter--a boy with a face like a girl's and big grey eyes--was
the hero of the lower deck. Eager questioners crowded round him.
He narrated: 'I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook
in the water. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard,
as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my
legs--the boat nearly swamped. Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don't
mind a bit him being grumpy with us. He swore at me all the time he
held my leg, but that was only his way of telling me to stick to the
boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully excitable--isn't he? No--not the
little fair chap--the other, the big one with a beard. When we pulled
him in he groaned, "Oh, my leg! oh, my leg!" and turned up his eyes.
Fancy such a big chap fainting like a girl. Would any of you fellows
faint for a jab with a boat-hook?--I wouldn't. It went into his leg so
far.' He showed the boat-hook, which he had carried below for the purpose,
and produced a sensation. 'No, silly! It was not his flesh that held
him--his breeches did. Lots of blood, of course.'
Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered
to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry
with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares
and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes.
Otherwise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since
a lower achievement had served the turn. He had enlarged his
knowledge more than those who had done the work. When all men
flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone would know how to deal
with the spurious menace of wind and seas. He knew what to think
of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible. He could detect
no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering
event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys,
he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in
a sense of many-sided courage.
CHAPTER 2
After two years of training he went to sea, and entering the
regions so well known to his imagination, found them strangely
barren of adventure. He made many voyages. He knew the magic
monotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the
criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity
of the daily task that gives bread--but whose only reward is in the
perfect love of the work. This reward eluded him. Yet he could not
go back, because there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting,
and enslaving than the life at sea. Besides, his prospects were good.
He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge
of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief
mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events
of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man,
the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the
quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not
only to others but also to himself.
Only once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness
in the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent
as people might think. There are many shades in the danger of
adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears
on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable
something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man,
that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are
coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond
control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his
hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest:
which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen,
known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--
the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the
whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and
appalling act of taking his life.
Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which
his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect
meeracle to me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched
on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the
bottom of an abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would
be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The
danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human
thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of
men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the
dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing but the disorder of
his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the midst of a small
devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck. But
now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him
bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the
unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such
sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost.
Then fine weather returned, and he thought no more about It.
His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at
an Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. His recovery was slow,
and he was left behind.
There were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the
purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway;
and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province,
afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor
for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine
which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion.
They told each other the story of their lives, played cards a little,
or, yawning and in pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs
without saying a word. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle
breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought
into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth,
the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. There were perfumes in
it, suggestions of infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim
looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of
the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that
roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead
dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like
toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the
eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of
the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon.
Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended into the
town to look for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered
just then, and, while waiting, he associated naturally with the men
of his calling in the port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few
and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an
undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of
dreamers. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes,
dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the dark places of the
sea; and their death was the only event of their fantastic existence
that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement. The
majority were men who, like himself, thrown there by some accident,
had remained as officers of country ships. They had now a horror of
the home service, with its harder conditions, severer view of duty,
and the hazard of stormy oceans. They were attuned to the eternal
peace of Eastern sky and sea. They loved short passages, good deck-chairs,
large native crews, and the distinction of being white. They shuddered
at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always
on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement, serving
Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes--would have served the devil himself had
he made it easy enough. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck:
how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing;
how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was
doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions,
in their looks, in their persons--could be detected the soft spot,
the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence.
To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first
more unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found
a fascination in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing
so well on such a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside
the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and
suddenly, giving up the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief
mate of the Patna.
The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a
greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank.
She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a
sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly
his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck's
victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore
a 'blood-and-iron' air,' combined with a purple nose and a red moustache.
After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred
pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam
up alongside a wooden jetty.
They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in
urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a
continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur,
or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all
sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the
yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water
filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like
water rising silently even with the rim. Eight hundred men and
women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they
had collected there, coming from north and south and from the
outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending
the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small
canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting
strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They
came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs,
from villages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left
their forests, their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their
prosperity, their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the
graves of their fathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat,
with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties,
the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young
boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with
tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their
breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping
babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief.
'Look at dese cattle,' said the German skipper to his new chief mate.
An Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. He walked
slowly aboard, handsome and grave in his white gown and large
turban. A string of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the
Patna cast off and backed away from the wharf.
She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the
anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in
the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs.
The Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by
sea. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey,
implored His blessing on men's toil and on the secret purposes of
their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the
Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse,
planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at
her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith.
She cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, continued on her way
through the 'One-degree' passage. She held on straight for the Red
Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded,
enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed
the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. And under
the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound,
remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--
viscous, stagnant, dead. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over
that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke
across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam
that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a
lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.
Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the
progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly
at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon,
pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the
men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea
evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her
advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated
from the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof
from stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone
revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the
ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one
into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake
of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her
steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if
scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.
The nights descended on her like a benediction.
CHAPTER 3
A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together
with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the
assurance of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and
shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from
a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like
a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a
dark horizon. The propeller turned without a check, as though its
beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each
side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre
on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and
diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss,
a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind,
agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the
ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular
stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull
remaining everlastingly in its centre.
Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded
safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature
like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness
of a mother's face. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the
wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of
their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims
of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on
every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled
in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their
faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children;
the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before
sleep, death's brother.
A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship,
passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks,
swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps
were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the
blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the
unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed
eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn
covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched
as if offering itself to the knife. The well-to-do had made for their
families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed
side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their
heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their
prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each
side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his
forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled
hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head
to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked
child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab's belongings, piled right
aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung
above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy
brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the
straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows,
the spout of a tin coffee-pot. The patent log on the taffrail periodically
rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of
faith. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times
floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic
clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh
scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally,
as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts
full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on
evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously
the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky.
Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud
to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming
about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the
unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. The
only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring
heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly
dissolving in the air. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless,
steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone
fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Now
and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching
hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links
of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Jim
would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable
horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a
leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as
if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he
cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days.
From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four
drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear
case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented
a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to a
stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface
of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it;
the ship's position at last noon was marked with a small black cross,
and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the
course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the
promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil
with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like
a naked ship's spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. 'How
steady she goes,' thought Jim with wonder, with something like
gratitude for this high peace of sea and sky. At such times his
thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams
and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best
parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous
virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with an
heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it
drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself.
There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased with the
idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when
he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake
drawn as straight by the ship's keel upon the sea as the black line
drawn by the pencil upon the chart.
The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold
ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch
was near. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to
part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of
his thoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor
running through every limb as though all the blood in his body
had turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in
pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face,
only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid
and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his
ribs sleepily. There was something obscene in the sight of his naked
flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had
sweated out his fat in his sleep. He pronounced a professional
remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of
a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung
like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Jim started,
and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy
figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed
itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile
and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust
for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill
our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills
our lungs.
The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost
itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity
beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the
augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness
in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of
an opaque sea. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion
was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a
crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind
the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the
breath of future creations. 'Hot is no name for it down below,' said
a voice.
Jim smiled without looking round. The skipper presented an unmoved
breadth of back: it was the renegade's trick to appear pointedly
unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at
you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy,
abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Now he
emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of
the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag,
unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. The sailors had a
good time of it up here, and what was the use of them in the world
he would be blowed if he could see. The poor devils of engineers
had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the
rest too; by gosh they--'Shut up!' growled the German stolidly.
'Oh yes! Shut up--and when anything goes wrong you fly to us,
don't you?' went on the other. He was more than half cooked, he
expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned,
because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of
training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b'gosh,
he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket
below. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap
rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more
so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God
made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at
fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. He must have
been born reckless, b'gosh. He . . . 'Where did you get drink?'
inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of
the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat.
Jim went on smiling at the retreating horizon; his heart was full of
generous impulses, and his thought was contemplating his own
superiority. 'Drink!' repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he
was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with
flexible legs. 'Not from you, captain. You're far too mean, b'gosh.
You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of
schnapps. That's what you Germans call economy. Penny wise,
pound foolish.' He became sentimental. The chief had given him a
four-finger nip about ten o'clock--'only one, s'elp me!'--good old
chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton
crane couldn't do it. Not it. Not to-night anyhow. He was sleeping
sweetly like a little child, with a bottle of prime brandy under his
pillow. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came
a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered
high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. He and
the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving
the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles
and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his
pigtail. The quay-side opinion in the Patna's home-port was that
these two in the way of brazen peculation 'had done together pretty
well everything you can think of.' Outwardly they were badly matched:
one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other
lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old
horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent
glazed glance of sunken eyes. He had been stranded out East
somewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he
probably did not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor
yet the cause of his shipwreck. He had been, in mercy to his youth,
kicked quietly out of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it
might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode
had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation
expanding in these seas and men of his craft being scarce at first,
he had 'got on' after a sort. He was eager to let strangers know
in a dismal mumble that he was 'an old stager out here.' When he
moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk
was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the
engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco
in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with
the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy
from the hazy glimpse of a truth. He was usually anything but free
with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed
from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of
Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength
of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. The
fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an
exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient
for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the
watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not
belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren't bad chaps
though. Even the skipper himself . . . His gorge rose at the mass
of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy
trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid
to dislike actively this or any other thing. The quality of these
men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but they
could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was
different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . .
The life was easy and he was too sure of himself--too sure
of himself to . . . The line dividing his meditation from a
surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a
spider's web.
The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the
consideration of his finances and of his courage.
'Who's drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won't do. You ought to
know by this time the chief ain't free-hearted enough to make a
sparrow drunk, b'gosh. I've never been the worse for liquor in my
life; the stuff ain't made yet that would make _me_ drunk. I could
drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b'gosh, and keep
as cool as a cucumber. If I thought I was drunk I would jump
overboard--do away with myself, b'gosh. I would! Straight! And
I won't go off the bridge. Where do you expect me to take the air
on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that vermin down there?
Likely--ain't it! And I am not afraid of anything you can do.'
The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a
little without a word.
'I don't know what fear is,' pursued the engineer, with the
enthusiasm of sincere conviction. 'I am not afraid of doing all the
bloomin' work in this rotten hooker, b'gosh! And a jolly good thing
for you that there are some of us about the world that aren't afraid
of their lives, or where would you be--you and this old thing here
with her plates like brown paper--brown paper, s'elp me? It's all
very fine for you--you get a power of pieces out of her one way and
another; but what about me--what do I get? A measly hundred and
fifty dollars a month and find yourself. I wish to ask you
respectfully--respectfully, mind--who wouldn't chuck a dratted job like
this? 'Tain't safe, s'elp me, it ain't! Only I am one of them fearless
fellows . . .'
He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating
in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted
in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for
the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first
as though he had been clubbed from behind. He said 'Damn!' as he
tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching:
Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and
catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed,
at the undisturbed level of the sea. Then they looked upwards at
the stars.
What had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the
earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and
suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably
insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning
destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and
collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said 'What's that?' in
the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder,
of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a
vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if
the thunder had growled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two
Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark
hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its
way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole
length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again
rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea.
Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all
at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of
vibrating water and of humming air.
CHAPTER 4
A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed questions,
tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said,
speaking of the ship: 'She went over whatever it was as easy as a
snake crawling over a stick.' The illustration was good: the questions
were aiming at facts, and the official Inquiry was being held
in the police court of an Eastern port. He stood elevated in the
witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big
framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head,
and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out
of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as
if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had
been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. It was very loud, it
rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the
world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers
seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--
came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of
one's conscience. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the
wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made
you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. The face of the
presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him
deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. The
light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the
heads and shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct
in the half-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed
composed of staring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They
demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!
'After you had concluded you had collided with something floating
awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain
to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you
think it likely from the force of the blow?' asked the assessor
sitting to the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient
cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged
hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the
other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm
extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a
blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy
arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms
crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side
of his inkstand.
'I did not,' said Jim. 'I was told to call no one and to make no noise
for fear of creating a panic. I thought the precaution reasonable.
I took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went
forward. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there.
I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that
the forepeak was more than half full of water already. I knew then
there must be a big hole below the water-line.' He paused.
'Yes,' said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad;
his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise.
'I did not think of danger just then. I might have been a little
startled: all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly.
I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision
bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. I went back
to tell the captain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at
the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he
thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on the top step
when getting down while I was forward. He exclaimed, "My God!
That rotten bulkhead'll give way in a minute, and the damned thing
will go down under us like a lump of lead." He pushed me away
with his right arm and ran before me up the ladder, shouting as he
climbed. His left arm hung by his side. I followed up in time to see
the captain rush at him and knock him down flat on his back. He
did not strike him again: he stood bending over him and speaking
angrily but quite low. I fancy he was asking him why the devil he
didn't go and stop the engines, instead of making a row about it on
deck. I heard him say, "Get up! Run! fly!" He swore also. The
engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight
to the engine-room companion which was on the port side. He moaned
as he ran. . . .'
He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness;
he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer
for the better information of these men who wanted facts. After
his first feeling of revolt he had come round to the view that
only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true
horror behind the appalling face of things. The facts those men
were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses,
occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence
a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the
watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression,
a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and
something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit
of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a
detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had not
been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost
importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted
to go on talking for truth's sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and
while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round
and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about
him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature
that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes,
dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a
weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which
it may squeeze itself and escape. This awful activity of mind made
him hesitate at times in his speech. . . .
'The captain kept on moving here and there on the bridge; he
seemed calm enough, only he stumbled several times; and once as
I stood speaking to him he walked right into me as though he had
been stone-blind. He made no definite answer to what I had to tell.
He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that
sounded like "confounded steam!" and "infernal steam!"--something
about steam. I thought . . .'
He was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut short his
speech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely discouraged
and weary. He was coming to that, he was coming to that--and now,
checked brutally, he had to answer by yes or no. He answered
truthfully by a curt 'Yes, I did'; and fair of face, big of frame,
with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box
while his soul writhed within him. He was made to answer another
question so much to the point and so useless, then waited again.
His mouth was tastelessly dry, as though he had been eating dust,
then salt and bitter as after a drink of sea-water. He wiped his damp
forehead, passed his tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run
down his back. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed
on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other
above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness;
the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the
flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he
rested his temple in the palm of his hand. The wind of the punkahs
eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in
voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and
in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and
holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the
walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted
rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on
head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers.
Jim's eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon
a white man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and
clouded, but with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and
clear. Jim answered another question and was tempted to cry out,
'What's the good of this! what's the good!' He tapped with his foot
slightly, bit his lip, and looked away over the heads. He met the
eyes of the white man. The glance directed at him was not the
fascinated stare of the others. It was an act of intelligent volition.
Jim between two questions forgot himself so far as to find leisure
for a thought. This fellow--ran the thought--looks at me as though
he could see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had
come across that man before--in the street perhaps. He was positive
he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days, he had
spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless
converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a
wayfarer lost in a wilderness. At present he was answering questions
that did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted
whether he would ever again speak out as long as he lived. The
sound of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate
opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer. That man
there seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty. Jim looked at
him, then turned away resolutely, as after a final parting.
And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow
showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at
length, in detail and audibly.
Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless
foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by
fiery cigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured
a silent listener. Now and then a small red glow would move
abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part
of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair
of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead;
and with the very first word uttered Marlow's body, extended at
rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had
winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking
through his lips from the past.
CHAPTER 5
'Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,' he would say, 'and to this day I
haven't left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each
of us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that
each of us has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because
I don't like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--
the devil, I mean. I haven't seen him, of course, but I go upon
circumstantial evidence. He is there right enough, and, being
malicious, he lets me in for that kind of thing. What kind of thing,
you ask? Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you
wouldn't think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up
people in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you?--the
kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways
causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots,
with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the
sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I
had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I
didn't have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my
own soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be
thus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns
as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in
this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle
of confessions. Then why? Can't tell--unless it be to make time pass
away after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely
good, and in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber
as a tumultuous occupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think
to themselves, "Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk."
'Talk? So be it. And it's easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after
a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of
decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight
that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here
and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious
minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet
to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and
with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with
right and left. Of course there are men here and there to whom the
whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant,
empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten
before the end is told--before the end is told--even if there happens
to be any end to it.
'My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know
that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because
the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious
cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious,
because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact,
about as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside
talked of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing
in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee
Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank
a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would
meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you
ever hear of anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the
man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two.
Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the
sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer
in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you
heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker's, at your
agent's, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very
boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by
Jove! There was some indignation, not a few jokes, and no end of
discussions as to what had become of them, you know. This went
on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion that whatever
was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic as well,
began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing in the
shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men
walking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where
that queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted
to myself, "Here they are!"
'There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and
one much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just
landed with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound
Dale Line steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise.
There could be no mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna
at the first glance: the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt
clear round that good old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or
so before, I had come across him in Samarang. His steamer was
loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions
of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and
day after day in De Jongh's back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged
a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid,
would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered
up, declare confidentially, "Business is business, but this man,
captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!"
'I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurrying on a little
in advance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk
in a startling way. He made me think of a trained baby elephant
walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got
up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical
stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and
somebody's cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for
him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head.
You understand a man like that hasn't the ghost of a chance when
it comes to borrowing clothes. Very well. On he came in hot haste,
without a look right or left, passed within three feet of me, and in
the innocence of his heart went on pelting upstairs into the harbour
office to make his deposition, or report, or whatever you like to call
it.
'It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to the principal
shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story
goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down
to his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him--an obliging
little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck,
and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the
way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few
potatoes, or what not. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live
sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to
do anything for me--he couldn't, you know--but because his childlike
belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart.
It was so strong as to be almost beautiful. The race--the two races
rather--and the climate . . . However, never mind. I know where
I have a friend for life.
'Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official
morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion
at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something
round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead
wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large
floor space in the office. He declares he was so taken aback that
for quite an appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive,
and sat still wondering for what purpose and by what means that object
had been transported in front of his desk. The archway from the
ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons,
the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their
necks and almost climbing on each other's backs. Quite a riot. By that
time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head,
and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so
discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out
what that apparition wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious
but intrepid, and little by little it dawned upon Archie that this
was a development of the Patna case. He says that as soon as he
understood who it was before him he felt quite unwell--Archie is so
sympathetic and easily upset--but pulled himself together and shouted
"Stop! I can't listen to you. You must go to the Master Attendant.
I can't possibly listen to you. Captain Elliot is the man you want to see.
This way, this way." He jumped up, ran round that long counter,
pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first,
and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct
made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. "Look
here! what's up? Let go! Look here!" Archie flung open the door
without knocking. "The master of the Patna, sir," he shouts. "Go
in, captain." He saw the old man lift his head from some writing
so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and fled
to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature:
but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he
couldn't collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of
his own name. Archie's the most sensitive shipping-master in the
two hemispheres. He declares he felt as though he had thrown a
man to a hungry lion. No doubt the noise was great. I heard it down
below, and I have every reason to believe it was heard clear across
the Esplanade as far as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had a great
stock of words and could shout--and didn't mind who he shouted
at either. He would have shouted at the Viceroy himself. As he used
to tell me: "I am as high as I can get; my pension is safe. I've a few
pounds laid by, and if they don't like my notions of duty I would
just as soon go home as not. I am an old man, and I have always
spoken my mind. All I care for now is to see my girls married before
I die." He was a little crazy on that point. His three daughters were
awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the
mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial
prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because,
they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. However,
that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed
to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak,
and--ah! ejected him again.
'Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend
in haste and stand still on the outer steps. He had stopped close to
me for the purpose of profound meditation: his large purple cheeks
quivered. He was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me
with a sidelong vexed look. The other three chaps that had landed
with him made a little group waiting at some distance. There was
a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long
individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter
than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about
him with an air of jaunty imbecility. The third was an upstanding,
broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his
back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly.
He stared across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle gharry, all
dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and
the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself
up to the critical examination of his toes. The young chap, making
no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the
sunshine. This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned
and unapproachable as only the young can look. There he stood,
clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as
the sun ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and
a little more too, I was as angry as though I had detected him trying
to get something out of me by false pretences. He had no business to
look so sound. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong
like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and
dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of
an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess
with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of
ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease--is
he silly? is he callous? He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. And
note, I did not care a rap about the behaviour of the other two. Their
persons somehow fitted the tale that was public property, and was going
to be the subject of an official inquiry. "That old mad rogue upstairs
called me a hound," said the captain of the Patna. I can't tell whether
he recognised me--I rather think he did; but at any rate our glances
met. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had
reached me through the open window. "Did he?" I said from some strange
inability to hold my tongue. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under
his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and
passionate impudence--"Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. You damned
Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there's plenty room for a
man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . ." He paused
reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of
people he was "aguaindt" with in those places. I won't make a secret of
it that I had been "aguaindt" with not a few of that sort myself. There
are times when a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any
company. I've known such a time, and, what's more, I shan't now pretend
to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad
company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from
some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty
times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you
fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit,
from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate
reasons.
' "You Englishmen are all rogues," went on my patriotic Flensborg or
Stettin Australian. I really don't recollect now what decent little
port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that
precious bird. "What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better
than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me."
His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars;
it trembled from head to foot. "That's what you English always make--make
a tam' fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your
tam' country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don't want the
certificate. A man like me don't want your verfluchte certificate.
I shpit on it." He spat. "I vill an Amerigan citizen begome," he cried,
fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles
from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get
away from that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his
bullet head positively smoked. Nothing mysterious prevented me from
going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held
me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young
fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk,
gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico
of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as
soon as his friend is ready. That's how he looked, and it was odious.
I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through,
squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it
too--if you understand what I mean. Nothing more awful than to
watch a man who has been found out, not in a crime but in a more
than criminal weakness. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents
us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness
unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you
suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie
hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned,
repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us
is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called
names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit
may well survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter,
by Jove! And there are things--they look small enough sometimes
too--by which some of us are totally and completely undone. I
watched the youngster there. I liked his appearance; I knew his
appearance; he came from the right place; he was one of us. He
stood there for all the parentage of his kind, for men and women
by no means clever or amusing, but whose very existence is based
upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage. I don't mean
military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. I
mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the
face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without
pose--a power of resistance, don't you see, ungracious if you
like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the
outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the
seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the
strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of
ideas. Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the
back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each
carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions
you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die
easy!
'This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly
so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right
and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries
of intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. He was
the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in
charge of the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. I say
I would, and I ought to know. Haven't I turned out youngsters
enough in my time, for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of
the sea, to the craft whose whole secret could be expressed in one
short sentence, and yet must be driven afresh every day into young
heads till it becomes the component part of every waking thought--till
it is present in every dream of their young sleep! The sea has
been good to me, but when I remember all these boys that passed
through my hands, some grown up now and some drowned by this
time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don't think I have done badly
by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two
days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would
overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice
speaking above my hat would ask: "Don't you remember me, sir?
Why! little So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage."
And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than
the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister
on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs
at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps
some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy
to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in
the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble
ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. The mud pilot
on the poop sings out to me in a drawl, "Hold her with the check
line for a moment, Mister Mate. There's a gentleman wants to get
ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got carried off to Talcahuano,
didn't you? Now's your time; easy does it. . . . All right. Slack
away again forward there." The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition,
get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore
is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella
after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of sacrifice
to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks nothing of
it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick before
next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little mysteries
and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live or
die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this
fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to
have his back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery
sea-puppy voice: "Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so."
'I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least
you had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and
I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day
long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of
that hearty thump. Don't I remember the little So-and-so's! I tell
you I ought to know the right kind of looks. I would have trusted
the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and
gone to sleep with both eyes--and, by Jove! it wouldn't have been
safe. There are depths of horror in that thought. He looked as
genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some infernal alloy in his
metal. How much? The least thing--the least drop of something
rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made you--standing
there with his don't-care-hang air--he made you wonder whether
perchance he were nothing more rare than brass.
'I couldn't believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for
the honour of the craft. The other two no-account chaps spotted
their captain, and began to move slowly towards us. They chatted
together as they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they
had not been visible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other--might
have been exchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw that with one
of them it was a case of a broken arm; and as to the long individual
with grey moustaches he was the chief engineer, and in various
ways a pretty notorious personality. They were nobodies. They
approached. The skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet:
he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease,
by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. He lifted his head,
saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary,
sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and
then a thought seemed to strike him. His thick, purplish lips came
together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the
gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality
of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on
its side, pony and all. The driver, shaken out of his meditation
over the sole of his foot, displayed at once all the signs of intense
terror, and held with both hands, looking round from his box at
this vast carcass forcing its way into his conveyance. The little
machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that
lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving
of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing
effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one's sense of
probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those
grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever.
He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little
box on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but
it only sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one
venetian blind rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in
the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a
captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. He reached for the
gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a
lump of raw meat. He roared at him to be off, to go on. Where? Into
the Pacific, perhaps. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared
once, and darted off at a gallop. Where? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had
6000 miles of tropical belt to disport himself in, and I did not hear
the precise address. A snorting pony snatched him into "Ewigkeit" in the
twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what's more,
I don't know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he
departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little
gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. He
departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough
it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never
again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical
Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. The Pacific is indeed big;
but whether he found a place for a display of his talents in it or not,
the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on a broomstick.
The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after the
carriage, bleating, "Captain! I say, Captain! I sa-a-ay!"--but after
a few steps stopped short, hung his head, and walked back slowly.
At the sharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where
he stood. He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and
remained facing in the new direction after the gharry had swung
out of sight.
'All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I
am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous
effect of visual impressions. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent
by Archie to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna,
came upon the scene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right
and left, and very full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure
as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached
the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found
himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried
his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for
a row. He wasn't going to be ordered about--"not he, b'gosh." He
wouldn't be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little
quill-driver. He was not going to be bullied by "no object of that
sort," if the story were true "ever so"! He bawled his wish, his
desire, his determination to go to bed. "If you weren't a God-forsaken
Portuguee," I heard him yell, "you would know that the hospital is the
right place for me." He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the
other's nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but
doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions.
I went away without waiting to see the end.
'But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time,
and going there to see about him the day before the opening of the
Inquiry, I saw in the white men's ward that little chap tossing on
his back, with his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my
great surprise the other one, the long individual with drooping
white moustache, had also found his way there. I remembered I
had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance,
half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. He was no
stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make
tracks straight for Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the
bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the
man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places,
kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut
him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous
hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his
personal safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told
me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my
steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more
for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy
favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. He
thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes
glistening with tears: "Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!"
What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned,
but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under
lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a
litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk,
and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This
lasted till the evening of the third day, when, after letting out a
few horrible screams, he found himself compelled to seek safety in
flight from a legion of centipedes. He burst the door open, made one
leap for dear life down the crazy little stairway, landed bodily on
Mariani's stomach, picked himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into
the streets. The police plucked him off a garbage-heap in the early
morning. At first he had a notion they were carrying him off to be
hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but when I sat down by his
bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean bronzed head, with
white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of
a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint
of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance,
resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a
pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to indulge in the
eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the famous affair
from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable
details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than
as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a community
of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct,
I can't explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you like;
but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps,
unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound
and redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing
shadow of an excuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the
impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of
man's creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret
and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of
death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard
of conduct. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the
thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies;
it's the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe in a miracle? and
why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own sake that I
wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young fellow whom
I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a touch
of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of
his weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint
of a destructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had
resembled his youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my
prying. I was, and no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing
that at this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent
of my imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered
and shady invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must
have been pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after
a few indifferent and friendly sentences which he answered with
languid readiness, just as any decent sick man would do, I produced
the word Patna wrapped up in a delicate question as in a wisp of
floss silk. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him;
I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry
for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would
have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor iniquities,
and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated Patna?
interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and said:
"Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down." I made
ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added
smoothly, "She was full of reptiles."
'This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom
of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into
mine wistfully. "They turned me out of my bunk in the middle
watch to look at her sinking," he pursued in a reflective tone. His
voice sounded alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my
folly. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen
flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a
long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship
in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set
rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out
an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. "Only my eyes
were good enough to see. I am famous for my eyesight. That's why
they called me, I expect. None of them was quick enough to see her
go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and sang out
together--like this." . . . A wolfish howl searched the very recesses
of my soul. "Oh! make 'im dry up," whined the accident case
irritably. "You don't believe me, I suppose," went on the other,
with an air of ineffable conceit. "I tell you there are no such eyes
as mine this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed."
'Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done
so. "What can you see?" he asked. "Nothing," I said, feeling
awfully ashamed of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and
withering contempt. "Just so," he said, "but if I were to look I
could see--there's no eyes like mine, I tell you." Again he clawed,
pulling at me downwards in his eagerness to relieve himself by a
confidential communication. "Millions of pink toads. There's no
eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It's worse than seeing a ship
sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke my pipe all day long.
Why don't they give me back my pipe? I would get a smoke while
I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They've got to
be watched, you know." He winked facetiously. The perspiration
dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back:
the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads,
the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass
rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare
floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft
wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter's
gale in an old barn at home. "Don't you let him start his hollering,
mister," hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry
shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call
down a tunnel. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered
at me knowingly. "The ship was full of them, you know, and we
had to clear out on the strict Q.T.," he whispered with extreme
rapidity. "All pink. All pink--as big as mastiffs, with an eye on the
top of the head and claws all round their ugly mouths. Ough!
Ough!" Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat
coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my
shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled
tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the
spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his
face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became
decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning,
of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--
"Ssh! what are they doing now down there?" he asked, pointing to
the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose
meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick
of my cleverness. "They are all asleep," I answered, watching him
narrowly. That was it. That's what he wanted to hear; these were
the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long breath. "Ssh!
Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them brutes.
Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There's too many of them,
and she won't swim more than ten minutes." He panted again.
"Hurry up," he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream:
"They are all awake--millions of them. They are trampling on me!
Wait! Oh, wait! I'll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me!
Help! H-e-elp!" An interminable and sustained howl completed my
discomfiture. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably
both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin
showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end
of a telescope. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more
ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped into
the outside gallery. The howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned
into a deserted landing, and suddenly all became very still and quiet
around me, and I descended the bare and shiny staircase in a silence
that enabled me to compose my distracted thoughts. Down below
I met one of the resident surgeons who was crossing the courtyard
and stopped me. "Been to see your man, Captain? I think we may
let him go to-morrow. These fools have no notion of taking care of
themselves, though. I say, we've got the chief engineer of that
pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.'s of the worst kind. He has
been drinking hard in that Greek's or Italian's grog-shop for three
days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy a
day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside
I should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the
curious part is there's some sort of method in his raving. I am trying
to find out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium.
Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn't. Good old
tradition's at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are
batrachian. Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested
in a case of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don't you know,
after such a festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object.
Four-and-twenty years of the tropics too. You ought really to take
a peep at him. Noble-looking old boozer. Most extraordinary man
I ever met--medically, of course. Won't you?"
'I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest,
but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and
shook hands in a hurry. "I say," he cried after me; "he can't attend
that inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?"
' "Not in the least," I called back from the gateway.'
CHAPTER 6
'The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry
was not adjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the
law, and it was well attended because of its human interest, no
doubt. There was no incertitude as to facts--as to the one material
fact, I mean. How the Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to
find out; the court did not expect to find out; and in the whole
audience there was not a man who cared. Yet, as I've told you, all
the sailors in the port attended, and the waterside business was fully
represented. Whether they knew it or not, the interest that drew
them here was purely psychological--the expectation of some
essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the horror, of
human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be disclosed.
The examination of the only man able and willing to face it was
beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of questions
upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on an iron
box, were the object to find out what's inside. However, an official
inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the fundamental
why, but the superficial how, of this affair.
'The young chap could have told them, and, though that very
thing was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put
to him necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance,
would have been the only truth worth knowing. You can't expect
the constituted authorities to inquire into the state of a man's soul--
or is it only of his liver? Their business was to come down upon
the consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and two
nautical assessors are not much good for anything else. I don't mean
to imply these fellows were stupid. The magistrate was very patient.
One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard,
and of a pious disposition. Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some
of you must have heard of Big Brierly--the captain of the crack
ship of the Blue Star line. That's the man.
'He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him.
He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident,
never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to
be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much
less of self-mistrust. At thirty-two he had one of the best commands
going in the Eastern trade--and, what's more, he thought a lot of
what he had. There was nothing like it in the world, and I suppose
if you had asked him point-blank he would have confessed that in
his opinion there was not such another commander. The choice
had fallen upon the right man. The rest of mankind that did not
command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures.
He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had
a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a
pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign
Government, in commemoration of these services. He was acutely
aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough,
though some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn't stand
him at any price. I haven't the slightest doubt he considered himself
vastly my superior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and
West, you could not have ignored your inferiority in his presence--
but I couldn't get up any real sentiment of offence. He did not
despise me for anything I could help, for anything I was--don't
you know? I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_
fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of
the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of
silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship
and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of
my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a
black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was
such a man loved thus by such a dog. No doubt, to have all this
forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that
I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred
millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear
my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake
of something indefinite and attractive in the man. I have never
defined to myself this attraction, but there were moments when I
envied him. The sting of life could do no more to his complacent
soul than the scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. This was
enviable. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming
pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction
presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite.
He committed suicide very soon after.
'No wonder Jim's case bored him, and while I thought with
something akin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the
young man under examination, he was probably holding silent
inquiry into his own case. The verdict must have been of unmitigated
guilt, and he took the secret of the evidence with him in that
leap into the sea. If I understand anything of men, the matter was
no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken
ideas--start into life some thought with which a man unused to
such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am in a position
to know that it wasn't money, and it wasn't drink, and it wasn't
woman. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of
the inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward
passage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he
had suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open
wide for his reception.
'Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate
sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations
with his commander the surliest chief officer I've ever seen, would
tell the story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came
on deck in the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room.
"It was ten minutes to four," he said, "and the middle watch was
not relieved yet of course. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking
to the second mate, and called me in. I was loth to go, and that's
the truth, Captain Marlow--I couldn't stand poor Captain Brierly,
I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of. He
had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own,
and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but
by the way he said 'Good morning.' I never addressed him, sir, but
on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep
a civil tongue in my head." (He flattered himself there. I often
wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than
half a voyage.) "I've a wife and children," he went on, "and I
had been ten years in the Company, always expecting the next
command--more fool I. Says he, just like this: 'Come in here, Mr.
Jones,' in that swagger voice of his--'Come in here, Mr. Jones.' In
I went. 'We'll lay down her position,' says he, stooping over the
chart, a pair of dividers in hand. By the standing orders, the officer
going off duty would have done that at the end of his watch. However,
I said nothing, and looked on while he marked off the ship's
position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and the time. I can see
him this moment writing his neat figures: seventeen, eight, four
A.M. The year would be written in red ink at the top of the chart. He
never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly didn't. I've
the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down at the
mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me.
'Thirty-two miles more as she goes,' says he, 'and then we shall be
clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.'
' "We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage.
I said, 'All right, sir,' wondering what he was fussing about, since
I had to call him before altering the course anyhow. lust then eight
bells were struck: we came out on the bridge, and the second mate
before going off mentions in the usual way--'Seventy-one on the
log.' Captain Brierly looks at the compass and then all round. It
was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty
night in high latitudes. Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh:
'I am going aft, and shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that
there can be no mistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and
then you are safe. Let's see--the correction on the log is six per
cent. additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may
come twenty degrees to starboard at once. No use losing any distance--is
there?' I had never heard him talk so much at a stretch, and to
no purpose as it seemed to me. I said nothing. He went down the
ladder, and the dog, that was always at his heels whenever he
moved, night or day, followed, sliding nose first, after him. I heard
his boot-heels tap, tap on the after-deck, then he stopped and spoke
to the dog--'Go back, Rover. On the bridge, boy! Go on--get.'
Then he calls out to me from the dark, 'Shut that dog up in the
chart-room, Mr. Jones--will you?'
' "This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow.
These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human
being, sir." At this point the old chap's voice got quite unsteady.
"He was afraid the poor brute would jump after him, don't you
see?" he pursued with a quaver. "Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the
log for me; he--would you believe it?--he put a drop of oil in it
too. There was the oil-feeder where he left it near by. The boat--
swain's mate got the hose along aft to wash down at half-past five;
by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on the bridge--'Will you
please come aft, Mr. Jones,' he says. 'There's a funny thing. I don't
like to touch it.' It was Captain Brierly's gold chronometer watch
carefully hung under the rail by its chain.
' "As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew,
sir. My legs got soft under me. It was as if I had seen him go over;
and I could tell how far behind he was left too. The taffrail-log
marked eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins
were missing round the mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help
him down, I suppose; but, Lord! what's four iron pins to a powerful
man like Captain Brierly. Maybe his confidence in himself was
just shook a bit at the last. That's the only sign of fluster he
gave in his whole life, I should think; but I am ready to answer for
him, that once over he did not try to swim a stroke, the same as he
would have had pluck enough to keep up all day long on the bare
chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir. He was
second to none--if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He had
written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and
the other to me. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--
I had been in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end
of hints as to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I
should keep the command of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would
to a favourite son, Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years
his senior and had tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched.
In his letter to the owners--it was left open for me to see--he said
that he had always done his duty by them--up to that moment--
and even now he was not betraying their confidence, since he was
leaving the ship to as competent a seaman as could be found--
meaning me, sir, meaning me! He told them that if the last act of
his life didn't take away all his credit with them, they would give
weight to my faithful service and to his warm recommendation,
when about to fill the vacancy made by his death. And much more
like this, sir. I couldn't believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all
over," went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing
something in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad
as a spatula. "You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only
to give an unlucky man a last show to get on. What with the shock
of him going in this awful rash way, and thinking myself a made
man by that chance, I was nearly off my chump for a week. But no
fear. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa--came
aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with
his hair parted in the middle. 'Aw--I am--aw--your new captain,
Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.' He was drowned in scent--fairly
stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look I gave him
that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural
disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer
got the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of
course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Says I, 'Don't
you mind old Jones, sir; dam' his soul, he's used to it.' I could see
directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first
tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and
that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy
show. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held
my peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something.
Up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little
fighting-cock. 'You'll find you have a different person to deal with
than the late Captain Brierly.' 'I've found it,' says I, very glum, but
pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. 'You are an old ruffian,
Mister--aw--Jones; and what's more, you are known for an old
ruffian in the employ,' he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers
stood about listening with their mouths stretched from ear to
ear. 'I may be a hard case,' answers I, 'but I ain't so far gone as
to put up with the sight of you sitting in Captain Brierly's chair.'
With that I lay down my knife and fork. 'You would like to sit in it
yourself--that's where the shoe pinches,' he sneers. I left the
saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage
about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Yes.
Adrift--on shore--after ten years' service--and with a poor woman
and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay
for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir! I chucked it rather than hear
Captain Brierly abused. He left me his night-glasses--here they are;
and he wished me to take care of the dog--here he is. Hallo, Rover,
poor boy. Where's the captain, Rover?" The dog looked up at us
with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under
the table.
'All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on
board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge
of--quite by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson
they generally called him--the same who used to hang out in
Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. The old chap
snuffled on--
' "Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there's no
other place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a
word in reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing!
Perhaps they did not want to know."
'The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head
with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the
squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his
memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly's
remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief
in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate
terrors. Almost! Perhaps wholly. Who can tell what flattering
view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide?
' "Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you
think?" asked Jones, pressing his palms together. "Why? It beats
me! Why?" He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead. "If he had
been poor and old and in debt--and never a show--or else mad.
But he wasn't of the kind that goes mad, not he. You trust me.
What a mate don't know about his skipper isn't worth knowing.
Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit here sometimes thinking,
thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason."
' "You may depend on it, Captain Jones," said I, "it wasn't
anything that would have disturbed much either of us two," I said;
and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain,
poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew
his nose, nodding at me dolefully: "Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir,
had ever thought so much of ourselves."
'Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly
is tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon
it. I spoke with him for the last time during the progress of the
inquiry. It was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me
in the street. He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with
surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse
being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the
existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. "They
caught me for that inquiry, you see," he began, and for a while
enlarged complainingly upon the inconveniences of daily attendance
in court. "And goodness knows how long it will last. Three days,
I suppose." I heard him out in silence; in my then opinion it
was a way as good as another of putting on side. "What's the use
of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine," he pursued hotly.
I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me with a sort
of pent-up violence. "I feel like a fool all the time." I looked up at
him. This was going very far--for Brierly--when talking of Brierly.
He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it a slight
tug. "Why are we tormenting that young chap?" he asked. This
question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of
mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I
answered at once, "Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you."
I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that
utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said
angrily, "Why, yes. Can't he see that wretched skipper of his has
cleared out? What does he expect to happen? Nothing can save him.
He's done for." We walked on in silence a few steps. "Why eat all
that dirt?" he exclaimed, with an oriental energy of expression--
about the only sort of energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth
meridian. I wondered greatly at the direction of his thoughts, but
now I strongly suspect it was strictly in character: at bottom poor
Brierly must have been thinking of himself. I pointed out to him
that the skipper of the Patna was known to have feathered his
nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the means
of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was
keeping him in the Sailors' Home for the time being, and probably
he hadn't a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some
money to run away. "Does it? Not always," he said, with a bitter
laugh, and to some further remark of mine--"Well, then, let him
creep twenty feet underground and stay there! By heavens! _I_
would." I don't know why his tone provoked me, and I said, "There
is a kind of courage in facing it out as he does, knowing very well
that if he went away nobody would trouble to run after hmm."
"Courage be hanged!" growled Brierly. "That sort of courage is of
no use to keep a man straight, and I don't care a snap for such
courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice now--of
softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if you
put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear
out early to-morrow morning. The fellow's a gentleman if he ain't
fit to be touched--he will understand. He must! This infernal
publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded
natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that's
enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. This is abominable.
Why, Marlow, don't you think, don't you feel, that this is abominable;
don't you now--come--as a seaman? If he went away all this would
stop at once." Brierly said these words with a most unusual
animation, and made as if to reach after his pocket-book. I
restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice of these four
men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance. "And
you call yourself a seaman, I suppose," he pronounced angrily. I
said that's what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard
me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive
me of my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. "The
worst of it," he said, "is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity;
you don't think enough of what you are supposed to be."
'We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped
opposite the harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which
the immense captain of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny
feather blown away in a hurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: "This
is a disgrace. We've got all kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels
in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve professional decency
or we become no better than so many tinkers going about loose. We
are trusted. Do you understand?--trusted! Frankly, I don't care a
snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent
man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of old rags in
bales. We aren't an organised body of men, and the only thing that
holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency. Such an
affair destroys one's confidence. A man may go pretty near through
his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip. But
when the call comes . . . Aha! . . . If I . . ."
'He broke off, and in a changed tone, "I'll give you two hundred
rupees now, Marlow, and you just talk to that chap. Confound him!
I wish he had never come out here. Fact is, I rather think some of
my people know his. The old man's a parson, and I remember now
I met him once when staying with my cousin in Essex last year. If
I am not mistaken, the old chap seemed rather to fancy his sailor
son. Horrible. I can't do it myself--but you . . ."
'Thus, apropos of Jim, I had a glimpse of the real Brierly a few
days before he committed his reality and his sham together to the
keeping of the sea. Of course I declined to meddle. The tone of this
last "but you" (poor Brierly couldn't help it), that seemed to imply
I was no more noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the
proposal with indignation, and on account of that provocation, or
for some other reason, I became positive in my mind that the inquiry
was a severe punishment to that Jim, and that his facing it--
practically of his own free will--was a redeeming feature in his abominable
case. I hadn't been so sure of it before. Brierly went off in a huff.
At the time his state of mind was more of a mystery to me than it
is now.
'Next day, coming into court late, I sat by myself. Of course I
could not forget the conversation I had with Brierly, and now I had
them both under my eyes. The demeanour of one suggested gloomy
impudence and of the other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude
might not have been truer than the other, and I was aware that
one was not true. Brierly was not bored--he was exasperated; and
if so, then Jim might not have been impudent. According to my
theory he was not. I imagined he was hopeless. Then it was that our
glances met. They met, and the look he gave me was discouraging
of any intention I might have had to speak to him. Upon either
hypothesis--insolence or despair--I felt I could be of no use to
him. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very soon after
that exchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the
next day. The white men began to troop out at once. Jim had been
told to stand down some time before, and was able to leave amongst
the first. I saw his broad shoulders and his head outlined in the light
of the door, and while I made my way slowly out talking with some
one--some stranger who had addressed me casually--I could see
him from within the court-room resting both elbows on the balustrade
of the verandah and turning his back on the small stream of people
trickling down the few steps. There was a murmur of voices and
a shuffle of boots.
'The next case was that of assault and battery committed upon a
money-lender, I believe; and the defendant--a venerable villager
with a straight white beard--sat on a mat just outside the door with
his sons, daughters, sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think,
half the population of his village besides, squatting or standing
around him. A slim dark woman, with part of her back and one
black shoulder bared, and with a thin gold ring in her nose, suddenly
began to talk in a high-pitched, shrewish tone. The man with
me instinctively looked up at her. We were then just through the
door, passing behind Jim's burly back.
'Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog with them,
I don't know. Anyhow, a dog was there, weaving himself in and
out amongst people's legs in that mute stealthy way native dogs
have, and my companion stumbled over him. The dog leaped away
without a sound; the man, raising his voice a little, said with a
slow laugh, "Look at that wretched cur," and directly afterwards we
became separated by a lot of people pushing in. I stood back for
a moment against the wall while the stranger managed to get down
the steps and disappeared. I saw Jim spin round. He made a step
forward and barred my way. We were alone; he glared at me with
an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware I was being held up,
so to speak, as if in a wood. The verandah was empty by then, the
noise and movement in court had ceased: a great silence fell upon
the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice
began to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak
in at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.
' "Did you speak to me?" asked Jim very low, and bending forward,
not so much towards me but at me, if you know what I mean. I said
"No" at once. Something in the sound of that quiet tone of his
warned me to be on my defence. I watched him. It was very much
like a meeting in a wood, only more uncertain in its issue,
since he could possibly want neither my money nor my life--nothing
that I could simply give up or defend with a clear conscience. "You
say you didn't," he said, very sombre. "But I heard." "Some mistake,"
I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking my eyes off
him. To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky before a
clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the
doom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.
' "As far as I know, I haven't opened my lips in your hearing,"
I affirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a little angry, too, at the
absurdity of this encounter. It strikes me now I have never in my
life been so near a beating--I mean it literally; a beating with fists.
I suppose I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in
the air. Not that he was actively threatening me. On the contrary,
he was strangely passive--don't you know? but he was lowering,
and, though not exceptionally big, he looked generally fit to demolish
a wall. The most reassuring symptom I noticed was a kind of
slow and ponderous hesitation, which I took as a tribute to the
evident sincerity of my manner and of my tone. We faced each
other. In the court the assault case was proceeding. I caught the
words: "Well--buffalo--stick--in the greatness of my fear. . . ."
' "What did you mean by staring at me all the morning?" said Jim at
last. He looked up and looked down again. "Did you expect us all to
sit with downcast eyes out of regard for your susceptibilities?"
I retorted sharply. I was not going to submit meekly to any of his
nonsense. He raised his eyes again, and this time continued to
look me straight in the face. "No. That's all right," he pronounced
with an air of deliberating with himself upon the truth of
this statement--"that's all right. I am going through with that.
Only"--and there he spoke a little faster--"I won't let any man
call me names outside this court. There was a fellow with you. You
spoke to him--oh yes--I know; 'tis all very fine. You spoke to him,
but you meant me to hear. . . ."
'I assured him he was under some extraordinary delusion. I had
no conception how it came about. "You thought I would be afraid
to resent this," he said, with just a faint tinge of bitterness. I was
interested enough to discern the slightest shades of expression, but
I was not in the least enlightened; yet I don't know what in these
words, or perhaps just the intonation of that phrase, induced me
suddenly to make all possible allowances for him. I ceased to be
annoyed at my unexpected predicament. It was some mistake on
his part; he was blundering, and I had an intuition that the blunder
was of an odious, of an unfortunate nature. I was anxious to end
this scene on grounds of decency, just as one is anxious to cut short
some unprovoked and abominable confidence. The funniest part
was, that in the midst of all these considerations of the higher order
I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to the possibility--nay,
likelihood--of this encounter ending in some disreputable brawl
which could not possibly be explained, and would make me ridiculous.
I did not hanker after a three days' celebrity as the man who
got a black eye or something of the sort from the mate of the Patna.
He, in all probability, did not care what he did, or at any rate would
be fully justified in his own eyes. It took no magician to see he was
amazingly angry about something, for all his quiet and even torpid
demeanour. I don't deny I was extremely desirous to pacify him at
all costs, had I only known what to do. But I didn't know, as you
may well imagine. It was a blackness without a single gleam. We
confronted each other in silence. He hung fire for about fifteen
seconds, then made a step nearer, and I made ready to ward off a
blow, though I don't think I moved a muscle. "If you were as big
as two men and as strong as six," he said very softly, "I would tell
you what I think of you. You . . ." "Stop!" I exclaimed. This
checked him for a second. "Before you tell me what you think of
me," I went on quickly, "will you kindly tell me what it is I've
said or done?" During the pause that ensued he surveyed me with
indignation, while I made supernatural efforts of memory, in which
I was hindered by the oriental voice within the court-room expostulating
with impassioned volubility against a charge of falsehood. Then
we spoke almost together. "I will soon show you I am not," he said,
in a tone suggestive of a crisis. "I declare I don't know," I
protested earnestly at the same time. He tried to crush me by the
scorn of his glance. "Now that you see I am not afraid you try to
crawl out of it," he said. "Who's a cur now--hey?" Then, at last,
I understood.
'He had been scanning my features as though looking for a place
where he would plant his fist. "I will allow no man," . . . he mumbled
threateningly. It was, indeed, a hideous mistake; he had given
himself away utterly. I can't give you an idea how shocked I was. I
suppose he saw some reflection of my feelings in my face, because
his expression changed just a little. "Good God!" I stammered,
"you don't think I . . ." "But I am sure I've heard," he persisted,
raising his voice for the first time since the beginning of this deplorable
scene. Then with a shade of disdain he added, "It wasn't you, then?
Very well; I'll find the other." "Don't be a fool," I cried in
exasperation; "it wasn't that at all." "I've heard," he said again
with an unshaken and sombre perseverance.
'There may be those who could have laughed at his pertinacity; I didn't.
Oh, I didn't! There had never been a man so mercilessly shown up by his
own natural impulse. A single word had stripped him of his discretion--of
that discretion which is more necessary to the decencies of our inner
being than clothing is to the decorum of our body. "Don't be a fool,"
I repeated. "But the other man said it, you don't deny that?" he
pronounced distinctly, and looking in my face without flinching. "No,
I don't deny," said I, returning his gaze. At last his eyes followed
downwards the direction of my pointing finger. He appeared at first
uncomprehending, then confounded, and at last amazed and scared as
though a dog had been a monster and he had never seen a dog before.
"Nobody dreamt of insulting you," I said.
'He contemplated the wretched animal, that moved no more than
an effigy: it sat with ears pricked and its sharp muzzle pointed
into the doorway, and suddenly snapped at a fly like a piece of
mechanism.
'I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened
suddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead,
spread to the roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely
crimson, and even the clear blue of his eyes was darkened many
shades by the rush of blood to his head. His lips pouted a little,
trembling as though he had been on the point of bursting into tears.
I perceived he was incapable of pronouncing a word from the excess
of his humiliation. From disappointment too--who knows? Perhaps
he looked forward to that hammering he was going to give me
for rehabilitation, for appeasement? Who can tell what relief he
expected from this chance of a row? He was naive enough to expect
anything; but he had given himself away for nothing in this case.
He had been frank with himself--let alone with me--in the wild
hope of arriving in that way at some effective refutation, and the
stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an inarticulate
noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the
head. It was pitiful.
'I didn't catch up again with him till well outside the gate. I had
even to trot a bit at the last, but when, out of breath at his elbow,
I taxed him with running away, he said, "Never!" and at once
turned at bay. I explained I never meant to say he was running away
from _me_. "From no man--from not a single man on earth," he
affirmed with a stubborn mien. I forbore to point out the one obvious
exception which would hold good for the bravest of us; I thought
he would find out by himself very soon. He looked at me patiently
while I was thinking of something to say, but I could find
nothing on the spur of the moment, and he began to walk on. I kept
up, and anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn't
think of leaving him under a false impression of my--of my--I
stammered. The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was
trying to finish it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with
their sense or the logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble
seemed to please him. He cut it short by saying, with courteous
placidity that argued an immense power of self-control or else a
wonderful elasticity of spirits--"Altogether my mistake." I marvelled
greatly at this expression: he might have been alluding to
some trifling occurrence. Hadn't he understood its deplorable
meaning? "You may well forgive me," he continued, and went on
a little moodily, "All these staring people in court seemed such fools
that--that it might have been as I supposed."
'This opened suddenly a new view of him to my wonder. I looked
at him curiously and met his unabashed and impenetrable eyes. "I
can't put up with this kind of thing," he said, very simply, "and I
don't mean to. In court it's different; I've got to stand that--and I
can do it too."
'I don't pretend I understood him. The views he let me have of
himself were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a
thick fog--bits of vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected
idea of the general aspect of a country. They fed one's curiosity
without satisfying it; they were no good for purposes of orientation.
Upon the whole he was misleading. That's how I summed him up
to myself after he left me late in the evening. I had been staying at
the Malabar House for a few days, and on my pressing invitation
he dined with me there.'
CHAPTER 7
'An outward-bound mail-boat had come in that afternoon, and
the big dining-room of the hotel was more than half full of people
with a-hundred-pounds-round-the-world tickets in their pockets.
There were married couples looking domesticated and bored with
each other in the midst of their travels; there were small parties
and large parties, and lone individuals dining solemnly or feasting
boisterously, but all thinking, conversing, joking, or scowling as
was their wont at home; and just as intelligently receptive of new
impressions as their trunks upstairs. Henceforth they would be
labelled as having passed through this and that place, and so would
be their luggage. They would cherish this distinction of their persons,
and preserve the gummed tickets on their portmanteaus as documentary
evidence, as the only permanent trace of their improving enterprise.
The dark-faced servants tripped without noise over the vast and
polished floor; now and then a girl's laugh would be heard, as
innocent and empty as her mind, or, in a sudden hush of crockery,
a few words in an affected drawl from some wit embroidering for
the benefit of a grinning tableful the last funny story of
shipboard scandal. Two nomadic old maids, dressed up to kill,
worked acrimoniously through the bill of fare, whispering to each
other with faded lips, wooden-faced and bizarre, like two sumptuous
scarecrows. A little wine opened Jim's heart and loosened his
tongue. His appetite was good, too, I noticed. He seemed to have
buried somewhere the opening episode of our acquaintance. It was
like a thing of which there would be no more question in this world.
And all the time I had before me these blue, boyish eyes looking
straight into mine, this young face, these capable shoulders, the
open bronzed forehead with a white line under the roots of clustering
fair hair, this appearance appealing at sight to all my sympathies:
this frank aspect, the artless smile, the youthful seriousness. He
was of the right sort; he was one of us. He talked soberly, with a
sort of composed unreserve, and with a quiet bearing that might
have been the outcome of manly self-control, of impudence, of
callousness, of a colossal unconsciousness, of a gigantic deception.
Who can tell! From our tone we might have been discussing a third
person, a football match, last year's weather. My mind floated in a
sea of conjectures till the turn of the conversation enabled me,
without being offensive, to remark that, upon the whole, this
inquiry must have been pretty trying to him. He darted his arm
across the tablecloth, and clutching my hand by the side of my
plate, glared fixedly. I was startled. "It must be awfully hard," I
stammered, confused by this display of speechless feeling. "It is--
hell," he burst out in a muffled voice.
'This movement and these words caused two well-groomed male
globe-trotters at a neighbouring table to look up in alarm from their
iced pudding. I rose, and we passed into the front gallery for coffee
and cigars.
'On little octagon tables candles burned in glass globes; clumps
of stiff-leaved plants separated sets of cosy wicker chairs; and
between the pairs of columns, whose reddish shafts caught in a
long row the sheen from the tall windows, the night, glittering and
sombre, seemed to hang like a splendid drapery. The riding lights
of ships winked afar like setting stars, and the hills across the
roadstead resembled rounded black masses of arrested thunder-clouds.
' "I couldn't clear out," Jim began. "The skipper did--that's all
very well for him. I couldn't, and I wouldn't. They all got out of it
in one way or another, but it wouldn't do for me."
'I listened with concentrated attention, not daring to stir in my
chair; I wanted to know--and to this day I don't know, I can only
guess. He would be confident and depressed all in the same breath,
as if some conviction of innate blamelessness had checked the truth
writhing within him at every turn. He began by saying, in the tone
in which a man would admit his inability to jump a twenty-foot
wall, that he could never go home now; and this declaration recalled
to my mind what Brierly had said, "that the old parson in Essex
seemed to fancy his sailor son not a little."
'I can't tell you whether Jim knew he was especially "fancied,"
but the tone of his references to "my Dad" was calculated to give
me a notion that the good old rural dean was about the finest man
that ever had been worried by the cares of a large family since the
beginning of the world. This, though never stated, was implied
with an anxiety that there should be no mistake about it, which was
really very true and charming, but added a poignant sense of lives
far off to the other elements of the story. "He has seen it all in the
home papers by this time," said Jim. "I can never face the poor old
chap." I did not dare to lift my eyes at this till I heard him add, "I
could never explain. He wouldn't understand." Then I looked up.
He was smoking reflectively, and after a moment, rousing himself,
began to talk again. He discovered at once a desire that I should not
confound him with his partners in--in crime, let us call it. He was
not one of them; he was altogether of another sort. I gave no sign
of dissent. I had no intention, for the sake of barren truth, to rob
him of the smallest particle of any saving grace that would come in
his way. I didn't know how much of it he believed himself. I didn't
know what he was playing up to--if he was playing up to anything
at all--and I suspect he did not know either; for it is my belief no
man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from
the grim shadow of self-knowledge. I made no sound all the time
he was wondering what he had better do after "that stupid inquiry
was over."
'Apparently he shared Brierly's contemptuous opinion of these
proceedings ordained by law. He would not know where to turn,
he confessed, clearly thinking aloud rather than talking to me.
Certificate gone, career broken, no money to get away, no work that
he could obtain as far as he could see. At home he could perhaps
get something; but it meant going to his people for help, and that
he would not do. He saw nothing for it but ship before the mast--
could get perhaps a quartermaster's billet in some steamer. Would
do for a quartermaster. . . . "Do you think you would?" I asked
pitilessly. He jumped up, and going to the stone balustrade looked
out into the night. In a moment he was back, towering above my
chair with his youthful face clouded yet by the pain of a conquered
emotion. He had understood very well I did not doubt his ability
to steer a ship. In a voice that quavered a bit he asked me why did
I say that? I had been "no end kind" to him. I had not even laughed
at him when--here he began to mumble--"that mistake, you know--
made a confounded ass of myself." I broke in by saying rather
warmly that for me such a mistake was not a matter to laugh at. He
sat down and drank deliberately some coffee, emptying the small
cup to the last drop. "That does not mean I admit for a moment
the cap fitted," he declared distinctly. "No?" I said. "No," he
affirmed with quiet decision. "Do you know what _you_ would have
done? Do you? And you don't think yourself" . . . he gulped something
. . . "you don't think yourself a--a--cur?"
'And with this--upon my honour!--he looked up at me inquisitively.
It was a question it appears--a bona fide question! However, he
didn't wait for an answer. Before I could recover he went on,
with his eyes straight before him, as if reading off something written
on the body of the night. "It is all in being ready. I wasn't; not--
not then. I don't want to excuse myself; but I would like to explain--
I would like somebody to understand--somebody--one person at least!
You! Why not you?"
'It was solemn, and a little ridiculous too, as they always are,
those struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his
idea of what his moral identity should be, this precious notion of
a convention, only one of the rules of the game, nothing more, but
all the same so terribly effective by its assumption of unlimited
power over natural instincts, by the awful penalties of its
failure. He began his story quietly enough. On board that Dale Line
steamer that had picked up these four floating in a boat upon the
discreet sunset glow of the sea, they had been after the first day
looked askance upon. The fat skipper told some story, the others
had been silent, and at first it had been accepted. You don't
cross-examine poor castaways you had the good luck to save, if not
from cruel death, then at least from cruel suffering. Afterwards,
with time to think it over, it might have struck the officers of
the Avondale that there was "something fishy" in the affair; but of
course they would keep their doubts to themselves. They had picked up
the captain, the mate, and two engineers of the steamer Patna sunk
at sea, and that, very properly, was enough for them. I did not ask
Jim about the nature of his feelings during the ten days he spent on
board. From the way he narrated that part I was at liberty to infer
he was partly stunned by the discovery he had made--the discovery
about himself--and no doubt was at work trying to explain it away
to the only man who was capable of appreciating all its tremendous
magnitude. You must understand he did not try to minimise its
importance. Of that I am sure; and therein lies his distinction.
As to what sensations he experienced when he got ashore and heard
the unforeseen conclusion of the tale in which he had taken such
a pitiful part, he told me nothing of them, and it is difficult
to imagine.
'I wonder whether he felt the ground cut from under his feet? I
wonder? But no doubt he managed to get a fresh foothold very
soon. He was ashore a whole fortnight waiting in the Sailors' Home,
and as there were six or seven men staying there at the time, I had
heard of him a little. Their languid opinion seemed to be that, in
addition to his other shortcomings, he was a sulky brute. He had
passed these days on the verandah, buried in a long chair, and
coming out of his place of sepulture only at meal-times or late at
night, when he wandered on the quays all by himself, detached
from his surroundings, irresolute and silent, like a ghost without a
home to haunt. "I don't think I've spoken three words to a living
soul in all that time," he said, making me very sorry for him; and
directly he added, "One of these fellows would have been sure to
blurt out something I had made up my mind not to put up with,
and I didn't want a row. No! Not then. I was too--too . . . I had
no heart for it." "So that bulkhead held out after all," I remarked
cheerfully. "Yes," he murmured, "it held. And yet I swear to you
I felt it bulge under my hand." "It's extraordinary what strains old
iron will stand sometimes," I said. Thrown back in his seat, his legs
stiffly out and arms hanging down, he nodded slightly several times.
You could not conceive a sadder spectacle. Suddenly he lifted his
head; he sat up; he slapped his thigh. "Ah! what a chance missed!
My God! what a chance missed!" he blazed out, but the ring of the
last "missed" resembled a cry wrung out by pain.
'He was silent again with a still, far-away look of fierce yearning
after that missed distinction, with his nostrils for an instant dilated,
sniffing the intoxicating breath of that wasted opportunity. If you
think I was either surprised or shocked you do me an injustice in
more ways than one! Ah, he was an imaginative beggar! He would
give himself away; he would give himself up. I could see in his
glance darted into the night all his inner being carried on, projected
headlong into the fanciful realm of recklessly heroic aspirations. He
had no leisure to regret what he had lost, he was so wholly and
naturally concerned for what he had failed to obtain. He was very
far away from me who watched him across three feet of space. With
every instant he was penetrating deeper into the impossible world
of romantic achievements. He got to the heart of it at last! A strange
look of beatitude overspread his features, his eyes sparkled in the
light of the candle burning between us; he positively smiled! He
had penetrated to the very heart--to the very heart. It was an
ecstatic smile that your faces--or mine either--will never wear, my
dear boys. I whisked him back by saying, "If you had stuck to the
ship, you mean!"
'He turned upon me, his eyes suddenly amazed and full of pain,
with a bewildered, startled, suffering face, as though he had tumbled
down from a star. Neither you nor I will ever look like this on
any man. He shuddered profoundly, as if a cold finger-tip had
touched his heart. Last of all he sighed.
'I was not in a merciful mood. He provoked one by his contradictory
indiscretions. "It is unfortunate you didn't know beforehand!"
I said with every unkind intention; but the perfidious shaft fell
harmless--dropped at his feet like a spent arrow, as it were, and he
did not think of picking it up. Perhaps he had not even seen it.
Presently, lolling at ease, he said, "Dash it all! I tell you it bulged.
I was holding up my lamp along the angle-iron in the lower deck
when a flake of rust as big as the palm of my hand fell off the plate,
all of itself." He passed his hand over his forehead. "The thing
stirred and jumped off like something alive while I was looking at
it." "That made you feel pretty bad," I observed casually. "Do you
suppose," he said, "that I was thinking of myself, with a hundred
and sixty people at my back, all fast asleep in that fore-'tween-deck
alone--and more of them aft; more on the deck--sleeping--knowing
nothing about it--three times as many as there were boats for,
even if there had been time? I expected to see the iron open out
as I stood there and the rush of water going over them as they
lay. . . . What could I do--what?"
'I can easily picture him to myself in the peopled gloom of the
cavernous place, with the light of the globe-lamp falling on a small
portion of the bulkhead that had the weight of the ocean on the
other side, and the breathing of unconscious sleepers in his ears.
I can see him glaring at the iron, startled by the falling rust,
overburdened by the knowledge of an imminent death. This, I gathered,
was the second time he had been sent forward by that skipper of
his, who, I rather think, wanted to keep him away from the bridge.
He told me that his first impulse was to shout and straightway
make all those people leap out of sleep into terror; but such an
overwhelming sense of his helplessness came over him that he was
not able to produce a sound. This is, I suppose, what people mean
by the tongue cleaving to the roof of the mouth. "Too dry," was
the concise expression he used in reference to this state. Without
a sound, then, he scrambled out on deck through the number one
hatch. A windsail rigged down there swung against him accidentally,
and he remembered that the light touch of the canvas on his
face nearly knocked him off the hatchway ladder.
'He confessed that his knees wobbled a good deal as he stood on
the foredeck looking at another sleeping crowd. The engines having
been stopped by that time, the steam was blowing off. Its deep
rumble made the whole night vibrate like a bass string. The ship
trembled to it.
'He saw here and there a head lifted off a mat, a vague form
uprise in sitting posture, listen sleepily for a moment, sink down
again into the billowy confusion of boxes, steam-winches, ventilators.
He was aware all these people did not know enough to take intelligent
notice of that strange noise. The ship of iron, the men with white
faces, all the sights, all the sounds, everything on board to that
ignorant and pious multitude was strange alike, and as trustworthy
as it would for ever remain incomprehensible. It occurred
to him that the fact was fortunate. The idea of it was simply terrible.
'You must remember he believed, as any other man would have
done in his place, that the ship would go down at any moment; the
bulging, rust-eaten plates that kept back the ocean, fatally must
give way, all at once like an undermined dam, and let in a sudden
and overwhelming flood. He stood still looking at these recumbent
bodies, a doomed man aware of his fate, surveying the silent company
of the dead. They _were_ dead! Nothing could save them! There
were boats enough for half of them perhaps, but there was no time.
No time! No time! It did not seem worth while to open his lips, to
stir hand or foot. Before he could shout three words, or make three
steps, he would be floundering in a sea whitened awfully by the
desperate struggles of human beings, clamorous with the distress
of cries for help. There was no help. He imagined what would
happen perfectly; he went through it all motionless by the hatchway
with the lamp in his hand--he went through it to the very last
harrowing detail. I think he went through it again while he was
telling me these things he could not tell the court.
' "I saw as clearly as I see you now that there was nothing I could
do. It seemed to take all life out of my limbs. I thought I might just
as well stand where I was and wait. I did not think I had many
seconds . . ." Suddenly the steam ceased blowing off. The noise,
he remarked, had been distracting, but the silence at once became
intolerably oppressive.
' "I thought I would choke before I got drowned," he said.
'He protested he did not think of saving himself. The only distinct
thought formed, vanishing, and re-forming in his brain, was:
eight hundred people and seven boats; eight hundred people and
seven boats.
' "Somebody was speaking aloud inside my head," he said a little
wildly. "Eight hundred people and seven boats--and no time! Just think
of it." He leaned towards me across the little table, and I tried to
avoid his stare. "Do you think I was afraid of death?" he asked in a
voice very fierce and low. He brought down his open hand with a bang
that made the coffee-cups dance. "I am ready to swear I was not--I
was not. . . . By God--no!" He hitched himself upright and crossed
his arms; his chin fell on his breast.
'The soft clashes of crockery reached us faintly through the high
windows. There was a burst of voices, and several men came out in
high good-humour into the gallery. They were exchanging jocular
reminiscences of the donkeys in Cairo. A pale anxious youth stepping
softly on long legs was being chaffed by a strutting and rubicund
globe-trotter about his purchases in the bazaar. "No, really--do you
think I've been done to that extent?" he inquired very earnest and
deliberate. The band moved away, dropping into chairs as they went;
matches flared, illuminating for a second faces without the ghost of
an expression and the flat glaze of white shirt-fronts; the hum of
many conversations animated with the ardour of feasting sounded to
me absurd and infinitely remote.
' "Some of the crew were sleeping on the number one hatch within
reach of my arm," began Jim again.
'You must know they kept Kalashee watch in that ship, all hands
sleeping through the night, and only the reliefs of quartermasters
and look-out men being called. He was tempted to grip and shake
the shoulder of the nearest lascar, but he didn't. Something held
his arms down along his sides. He was not afraid--oh no! only he
just couldn't--that's all. He was not afraid of death perhaps, but
I'll tell you what, he was afraid of the emergency. His confounded
imagination had evoked for him all the horrors of panic, the
trampling rush, the pitiful screams, boats swamped--all the appalling
incidents of a disaster at sea he had ever heard of. He might have
been resigned to die but I suspect he wanted to die without added
terrors, quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance. A certain readiness to
perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom that you meet men whose
souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of resolution, are ready
to fight a losing battle to the last; the desire of peace waxes stronger
as hope declines, till at last it conquers the very desire of life. Which
of us here has not observed this, or maybe experienced something
of that feeling in his own person--this extreme weariness of
emotions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest? Those striving
with unreasonable forces know it well,--the shipwrecked castaways
in boats, wanderers lost in a desert, men battling against the
unthinking might of nature, or the stupid brutality of crowds.'
CHAPTER 8
'How long he stood stock-still by the hatch expecting every
moment to feel the ship dip under his feet and the rush of water
take him at the back and toss him like a chip, I cannot say. Not
very long--two minutes perhaps. A couple of men he could not
make out began to converse drowsily, and also, he could not tell
where, he detected a curious noise of shuffling feet. Above these
faint sounds there was that awful stillness preceding a catastrophe,
that trying silence of the moment before the crash; then it came
into his head that perhaps he would have time to rush along and
cut all the lanyards of the gripes, so that the boats would float
as the ship went down.
'The Patna had a long bridge, and all the boats were up there,
four on one side and three on the other--the smallest of them on
the port-side and nearly abreast of the steering gear. He assured
me, with evident anxiety to be believed, that he had been most
careful to keep them ready for instant service. He knew his duty. I
dare say he was a good enough mate as far as that went. "I always
believed in being prepared for the worst," he commented, staring
anxiously in my face. I nodded my approval of the sound principle,
averting my eyes before the subtle unsoundness of the man.
'He started unsteadily to run. He had to step over legs, avoid
stumbling against the heads. Suddenly some one caught hold of his
coat from below, and a distressed voice spoke under his elbow. The
light of the lamp he carried in his right hand fell upon an upturned
dark face whose eyes entreated him together with the voice. He had
picked up enough of the language to understand the word water,
repeated several times in a tone of insistence, of prayer, almost of
despair. He gave a jerk to get away, and felt an arm embrace his
leg.
' "The beggar clung to me like a drowning man," he said
impressively. "Water, water! What water did he mean? What did
he know? As calmly as I could I ordered him to let go. He was
stopping me, time was pressing, other men began to stir; I wanted
time--time to cut the boats adrift. He got hold of my hand now,
and I felt that he would begin to shout. It flashed upon me it was
enough to start a panic, and I hauled off with my free arm and slung
the lamp in his face. The glass jingled, the light went out, but the
blow made him let go, and I ran off--I wanted to get at the boats;
I wanted to get at the boats. He leaped after me from behind. I
turned on him. He would not keep quiet; he tried to shout; I had
half throttled him before I made out what he wanted. He wanted
some water--water to drink; they were on strict allowance, you
know, and he had with him a young boy I had noticed several times.
His child was sick--and thirsty. He had caught sight of me as I
passed by, and was begging for a little water. That's all. We were
under the bridge, in the dark. He kept on snatching at my wrists;
there was no getting rid of him. I dashed into my berth, grabbed
my water-bottle, and thrust it into his hands. He vanished. I didn't
find out till then how much I was in want of a drink myself." He
leaned on one elbow with a hand over his eyes.
'I felt a creepy sensation all down my backbone; there was something
peculiar in all this. The fingers of the hand that shaded his
brow trembled slightly. He broke the short silence.
' "These things happen only once to a man and . . . Ah! well!
When I got on the bridge at last the beggars were getting one of the
boats off the chocks. A boat! I was running up the ladder when a
heavy blow fell on my shoulder, just missing my head. It didn't
stop me, and the chief engineer--they had got him out of his bunk
by then--raised the boat-stretcher again. Somehow I had no mind
to be surprised at anything. All this seemed natural--and awful--
and awful. I dodged that miserable maniac, lifted him off the deck
as though he had been a little child, and he started whispering in
my arms: 'Don't! don't! I thought you were one of them niggers.'
I flung him away, he skidded along the bridge and knocked the legs
from under the little chap--the second. The skipper, busy about
the boat, looked round and came at me head down, growling like a
wild beast. I flinched no more than a stone. I was as solid standing
there as this," he tapped lightly with his knuckles the wall beside
his chair. "It was as though I had heard it all, seen it all, gone
through it all twenty times already. I wasn't afraid of them. I drew
back my fist and he stopped short, muttering--
' " 'Ah! it's you. Lend a hand quick.'
' "That's what he said. Quick! As if anybody could be quick
enough. 'Aren't you going to do something?' I asked. 'Yes. Clear
out,' he snarled over his shoulder.
' "I don't think I understood then what he meant. The other two
had picked themselves up by that time, and they rushed together
to the boat. They tramped, they wheezed, they shoved, they cursed
the boat, the ship, each other--cursed me. All in mutters. I didn't
move, I didn't speak. I watched the slant of the ship. She was as
still as if landed on the blocks in a dry dock--only she was like
this," He held up his hand, palm under, the tips of the fingers
inclined downwards. "Like this," he repeated. "I could see the line
of the horizon before me, as clear as a bell, above her stem-head; I
could see the water far off there black and sparkling, and still--still
as a-pond, deadly still, more still than ever sea was before--more
still than I could bear to look at. Have you watched a ship floating
head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old iron too rotten to
stand being shored up? Have you? Oh yes, shored up? I thought of
that--I thought of every mortal thing; but can you shore up a
bulkhead in five minutes--or in fifty for that matter? Where was I
going to get men that would go down below? And the timber--the
timber! Would you have had the courage to swing the maul for the
first blow if you had seen that bulkhead? Don't say you would: you
had not seen it; nobody would. Hang it--to do a thing like that you
must believe there is a chance, one in a thousand, at least, some
ghost of a chance; and you would not have believed. Nobody would
have believed. You think me a cur for standing there, but what
would you have done? What! You can't tell--nobody can tell. One
must have time to turn round. What would you have me do? Where
was the kindness in making crazy with fright all those people I
could not save single-handed--that nothing could save? Look here!
As true as I sit on this chair before you . . ."
'He drew quick breaths at every few words and shot quick glances
at my face, as though in his anguish he were watchful of the effect.
He was not speaking to me, he was only speaking before me, in a
dispute with an invisible personality, an antagonistic and inseparable
partner of his existence--another possessor of his soul. These
were issues beyond the competency of a court of inquiry: it was a
subtle and momentous quarrel as to the true essence of life, and did
not want a judge. He wanted an ally, a helper, an accomplice. I felt
the risk I ran of being circumvented, blinded, decoyed, bullied,
perhaps, into taking a definite part in a dispute impossible of
decision if one had to be fair to all the phantoms in possession--to
the reputable that had its claims and to the disreputable that had
its exigencies. I can't explain to you who haven't seen him and who
hear his words only at second hand the mixed nature of my feelings.
It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend the Inconceivable--and
I know of nothing to compare with the discomfort of such a sensation.
I was made to look at the convention that lurks in all truth and
on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to all sides
at once--to the side turned perpetually to the light of day,
and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon,
exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light
falling at times on the edge. He swayed me. I own to it, I own up.
The occasion was obscure, insignificant--what you will: a lost
youngster, one in a million--but then he was one of us; an incident
as completely devoid of importance as the flooding of an ant-heap,
and yet the mystery of his attitude got hold of me as though he had
been an individual in the forefront of his kind, as if the obscure
truth involved were momentous enough to affect mankind's conception
of itself. . . .'
Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring cheroot, seemed
to forget all about the story, and abruptly began again.
'My fault of course. One has no business really to get interested.
It's a weakness of mine. His was of another kind. My weakness
consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental--for
the externals--no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen
of the next man. Next man--that's it. I have met so many men,' he
pursued, with momentary sadness--'met them too with a certain--
certain--impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance--and in
each case all I could see was merely the human being. A confounded
democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness,
but has been of no advantage to me, I can assure you. Men expect
one to take into account their fine linen. But I never could
get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! it's a failing; it's a
failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too indolent for
whist--and a story. . . .'
He paused again to wait for an encouraging remark, perhaps, but
nobody spoke; only the host, as if reluctantly performing a duty,
murmured--
'You are so subtle, Marlow.'
'Who? I?' said Marlow in a low voice. 'Oh no! But _he_ was; and
try as I may for the success of this yarn, I am missing innumerable
shades--they were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words.
Because he complicated matters by being so simple, too--the simplest
poor devil! . . . By Jove! he was amazing. There he sat telling
me that just as I saw him before my eyes he wouldn't be afraid to
face anything--and believing in it too. I tell you it was fabulously
innocent and it was enormous, enormous! I watched him covertly,
just as though I had suspected him of an intention to take a jolly
good rise out of me. He was confident that, on the square, "on the
square, mind!" there was nothing he couldn't meet. Ever since he
had been "so high"--"quite a little chap," he had been preparing
himself for all the difficulties that can beset one on land and water.
He confessed proudly to this kind of foresight. He had been elaborating
dangers and defences, expecting the worst, rehearsing his best.
He must have led a most exalted existence. Can you fancy it? A
succession of adventures, so much glory, such a victorious
progress! and the deep sense of his sagacity crowning every day of
his inner life. He forgot himself; his eyes shone; and with every
word my heart, searched by the light of his absurdity, was growing
heavier in my breast. I had no mind to laugh, and lest I should
smile I made for myself a stolid face. He gave signs of irritation.
' "It is always the unexpected that happens," I said in a propitiatory
tone. My obtuseness provoked him into a contemptuous "Pshaw!" I
suppose he meant that the unexpected couldn't touch him; nothing
less than the unconceivable itself could get over his perfect
state of preparation. He had been taken unawares--and he whispered
to himself a malediction upon the waters and the firmament, upon
the ship, upon the men. Everything had betrayed him! He had been
tricked into that sort of high-minded resignation which prevented
him lifting as much as his little finger, while these others
who had a very clear perception of the actual necessity were tumbling
against each other and sweating desperately over that boat
business. Something had gone wrong there at the last moment. It
appears that in their flurry they had contrived in some mysterious
way to get the sliding bolt of the foremost boat-chock jammed tight,
and forthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds over the
deadly nature of that accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the
fierce industry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that
floated quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time
for the freeing of that boat, grovelling on all-fours, standing up in
despair, tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready
to kill, ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's
throats by the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an
inflexible and cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh yes! It must have been a
pretty sight. He saw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and
bitterness; he had a minute knowledge of it by means of some sixth
sense, I conclude, because he swore to me he had remained apart
without a glance at them and at the boat--without one single glance.
And I believe him. I should think he was too busy watching the
threatening slant of the ship, the suspended menace discovered in
the midst of the most perfect security--fascinated by the sword
hanging by a hair over his imaginative head.
'Nothing in the world moved before his eyes, and he could depict
to himself without hindrance the sudden swing upwards of the dark
sky-line, the sudden tilt up of the vast plain of the sea, the swift
still rise, the brutal fling, the grasp of the abyss, the struggle without
hope, the starlight closing over his head for ever like the vault of a
tomb--the revolt of his young life--the black end. He could! By
Jove! who couldn't? And you must remember he was a finished
artist in that peculiar way, he was a gifted poor devil with the faculty
of swift and forestalling vision. The sights it showed him had turned
him into cold stone from the soles of his feet to the nape of his neck;
but there was a hot dance of thoughts in his head, a dance of lame,
blind, mute thoughts--a whirl of awful cripples. Didn't I tell you
he confessed himself before me as though I had the power to bind
and to loose? He burrowed deep, deep, in the hope of my absolution,
which would have been of no good to him. This was one of those
cases which no solemn deception can palliate, where no man can
help; where his very Maker seems to abandon a sinner to his own devices.
'He stood on the starboard side of the bridge, as far as he could
get from the struggle for the boat, which went on with the agitation
of madness and the stealthiness of a conspiracy. The two Malays
had meantime remained holding to the wheel. Just picture to yourselves
the actors in that, thank God! unique, episode of the sea, four
beside themselves with fierce and secret exertions, and three
looking on in complete immobility, above the awnings covering
the profound ignorance of hundreds of human beings, with their
weariness, with their dreams, with their hopes, arrested, held by
an invisible hand on the brink of annihilation. For that they were
so, makes no doubt to me: given the state of the ship, this was the
deadliest possible description of accident that could happen. These
beggars by the boat had every reason to go distracted with funk.
Frankly, had I been there, I would not have given as much as a
counterfeit farthing for the ship's chance to keep above water to the
end of each successive second. And still she floated! These sleeping
pilgrims were destined to accomplish their whole pilgrimage to the
bitterness of some other end. It was as if the Omnipotence whose
mercy they confessed had needed their humble testimony on earth
for a while longer, and had looked down to make a sign, "Thou shalt
not!" to the ocean. Their escape would trouble me as a prodigiously
inexplicable event, did I not know how tough old iron can be--as
tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then,
worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life. Not the least
wonder of these twenty minutes, to my mind, is the behaviour of
the two helmsmen. They were amongst the native batch of all sorts
brought over from Aden to give evidence at the inquiry. One of
them, labouring under intense bashfulness, was very young, and
with his smooth, yellow, cheery countenance looked even younger
than he was. I remember perfectly Brierly asking him, through the
interpreter, what he thought of it at the time, and the interpreter,
after a short colloquy, turning to the court with an important air--
' "He says he thought nothing."
'The other, with patient blinking eyes, a blue cotton handkerchief,
faded with much washing, bound with a smart twist over a lot of
grey wisps, his face shrunk into grim hollows, his brown skin made
darker by a mesh of wrinkles, explained that he had a knowledge of
some evil thing befalling the ship, but there had been no order;
he could not remember an order; why should he leave the helm? To
some further questions he jerked back his spare shoulders, and
declared it never came into his mind then that the white men were
about to leave the ship through fear of death. He did not
believe it now. There might have been secret reasons. He wagged
his old chin knowingly. Aha! secret reasons. He was a man of great
experience, and he wanted _that_ white Tuan to know--he turned
towards Brierly, who didn't raise his head--that he had acquired a
knowledge of many things by serving white men on the sea for a
great number of years--and, suddenly, with shaky excitement he
poured upon our spellbound attention a lot of queer-sounding
names, names of dead-and-gone skippers, names of forgotten country
ships, names of familiar and distorted sound, as if the hand of
dumb time had been at work on them for ages. They stopped him
at last. A silence fell upon the court,--a silence that remained
unbroken for at least a minute, and passed gently into a deep murmur.
This episode was the sensation of the second day's proceedings--affecting
all the audience, affecting everybody except Jim, who was sitting
moodily at the end of the first bench, and never looked up at this
extraordinary and damning witness that seemed possessed of some
mysterious theory of defence.
'So these two lascars stuck to the helm of that ship without steerage-way,
where death would have found them if such had been their destiny.
The whites did not give them half a glance, had probably forgotten
their existence. Assuredly Jim did not remember it. He remembered
he could do nothing; he could do nothing, now he was alone. There
was nothing to do but to sink with the ship. No use making a disturbance
about it. Was there? He waited upstanding, without a sound, stiffened
in the idea of some sort of heroic discretion. The first engineer
ran cautiously across the bridge to tug at his sleeve.
' "Come and help! For God's sake, come and help!"
'He ran back to the boat on the points of his toes, and returned
directly to worry at his sleeve, begging and cursing at the same
time.
' "I believe he would have kissed my hands," said Jim savagely,
"and, next moment, he starts foaming and whispering in my face,
'If I had the time I would like to crack your skull for you.' I pushed
him away. Suddenly he caught hold of me round the neck. Damn
him! I hit him. I hit out without looking. 'Won't you save your own
life--you infernal coward?' he sobs. Coward! He called me an
infernal coward! Ha! ha! ha! ha! He called me--ha! ha! ha! . . ."
'He had thrown himself back and was shaking with laughter. I
had never in my life heard anything so bitter as that noise. It fell
like a blight on all the merriment about donkeys, pyramids, bazaars,
or what not. Along the whole dim length of the gallery the voices
dropped, the pale blotches of faces turned our way with one accord,
and the silence became so profound that the clear tinkle of a teaspoon
falling on the tesselated floor of the verandah rang out like a
tiny and silvery scream.
' "You mustn't laugh like this, with all these people about," I
remonstrated. "It isn't nice for them, you know."
'He gave no sign of having heard at first, but after a while, with
a stare that, missing me altogether, seemed to probe the heart of
some awful vision, he muttered carelessly--"Oh! they'll think I am
drunk."
'And after that you would have thought from his appearance he
would never make a sound again. But--no fear! He could no more
stop telling now than he could have stopped living by the mere
exertion of his will.'
CHAPTER 9
' "I was saying to myself, 'Sink--curse you! Sink!' " These were
the words with which he began again. He wanted it over. He was
severely left alone, and he formulated in his head this address to
the ship in a tone of imprecation, while at the same time he enjoyed
the privilege of witnessing scenes--as far as I can judge--of low
comedy. They were still at that bolt. The skipper was ordering,
"Get under and try to lift"; and the others naturally shirked. You
understand that to be squeezed flat under the keel of a boat wasn't
a desirable position to be caught in if the ship went down suddenly.
"Why don't you--you the strongest?" whined the little engineer.
"Gott-for-dam! I am too thick," spluttered the skipper in despair.
It was funny enough to make angels weep. They stood idle for a
moment, and suddenly the chief engineer rushed again at Jim.
' "Come and help, man! Are you mad to throw your only chance
away? Come and help, man! Man! Look there--look!"
'And at last Jim looked astern where the other pointed with
maniacal insistence. He saw a silent black squall which had eaten
up already one-third of the sky. You know how these squalls come
up there about that time of the year. First you see a darkening of
the horizon--no more; then a cloud rises opaque like a wall. A
straight edge of vapour lined with sickly whitish gleams flies up
from the southwest, swallowing the stars in whole constellations;
its shadow flies over the waters, and confounds sea and sky into one
abyss of obscurity. And all is still. No thunder, no wind, no sound;
not a flicker of lightning. Then in the tenebrous immensity a livid
arch appears; a swell or two like undulations of the very darkness
run past, and suddenly, wind and rain strike together with a
peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through something solid. Such
a cloud had come up while they weren't looking. They had just
noticed it, and were perfectly justified in surmising that if in
absolute stillness there was some chance for the ship to keep afloat a few
minutes longer, the least disturbance of the sea would make an end
of her instantly. Her first nod to the swell that precedes the burst
of such a squall would be also her last, would become a plunge,
would, so to speak, be prolonged into a long dive, down, down to
the bottom. Hence these new capers of their fright, these new antics
in which they displayed their extreme aversion to die.
' "It was black, black," pursued Jim with moody steadiness. "It
had sneaked upon us from behind. The infernal thing! I suppose
there had been at the back of my head some hope yet. I don't know.
But that was all over anyhow. It maddened me to see myself caught
like this. I was angry, as though I had been trapped. I _was_ trapped!
The night was hot, too, I remember. Not a breath of air."
'He remembered so well that, gasping in the chair, he seemed to
sweat and choke before my eyes. No doubt it maddened him; it
knocked him over afresh--in a manner of speaking--but it made
him also remember that important purpose which had sent him
rushing on that bridge only to slip clean out of his mind. He had
intended to cut the lifeboats clear of the ship. He whipped out his
knife and went to work slashing as though he had seen nothing,
had heard nothing, had known of no one on board. They thought
him hopelessly wrong-headed and crazy, but dared not protest noisily
against this useless loss of time. When he had done he returned
to the very same spot from which he had started. The chief was
there, ready with a clutch at him to whisper close to his head,
scathingly, as though he wanted to bite his ear--
' "You silly fool! do you think you'll get the ghost of a show when
all that lot of brutes is in the water? Why, they will batter your head
for you from these boats."
'He wrung his hands, ignored, at Jim's elbow. The skipper kept
up a nervous shuffle in one place and mumbled, "Hammer! hammer!
Mein Gott! Get a hammer."
'The little engineer whimpered like a child, but, broken arm and
all, he turned out the least craven of the lot as it seems, and, actually,
mustered enough pluck to run an errand to the engine-room. No
trifle, it must be owned in fairness to him. Jim told me he darted
desperate looks like a cornered man, gave one low wail, and dashed
off. He was back instantly clambering, hammer in hand, and without
a pause flung himself at the bolt. The others gave up Jim at
once and ran off to assist. He heard the tap, tap of the hammer, the
sound of the released chock falling over. The boat was clear. Only
then he turned to look--only then. But he kept his distance--he
kept his distance. He wanted me to know he had kept his distance;
that there was nothing in common between him and these men--who
had the hammer. Nothing whatever. It is more than probable he
thought himself cut off from them by a space that could not be
traversed, by an obstacle that could not be overcome, by a chasm
without bottom. He was as far as he could get from them--the
whole breadth of the ship.
'His feet were glued to that remote spot and his eyes to their
indistinct group bowed together and swaying strangely in the common
torment of fear. A hand-lamp lashed to a stanchion above a little
table rigged up on the bridge--the Patna had no chart-room
amidships--threw a light on their labouring shoulders, on their
arched and bobbing backs. They pushed at the bow of the boat;
they pushed out into the night; they pushed, and would no more
look back at him. They had given him up as if indeed he had been
too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to be worth an
appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to look
back upon his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention.
The boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare
for an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered
their self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their
desperate exertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit for
knockabout clowns in a farce. They pushed with their hands, with
their heads, they pushed for dear life with all the weight of their
bodies, they pushed with all the might of their souls--only no
sooner had they succeeded in canting the stem clear of the davit
than they would leave off like one man and start a wild scramble
into her. As a natural consequence the boat would swing in
abruptly, driving them back, helpless and jostling against each
other. They would stand nonplussed for a while, exchanging in
fierce whispers all the infamous names they could call to mind, and
go at it again. Three times this occurred. He described it to me with
morose thoughtfulness. He hadn't lost a single movement of that
comic business. "I loathed them. I hated them. I had to look at
all that," he said without emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely
watchful glance. "Was ever there any one so shamefully tried?"
'He took his head in his hands for a moment, like a man driven
to distraction by some unspeakable outrage. These were things he
could not explain to the court--and not even to me; but I would
have been little fitted for the reception of his confidences had I not
been able at times to understand the pauses between the words. In
this assault upon his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a
spiteful and vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in
his ordeal--a degradation of funny grimaces in the approach of
death or dishonour.
'He related facts which I have not forgotten, but at this distance
of time I couldn't recall his very words: I only remember that he
managed wonderfully to convey the brooding rancour of his mind
into the bare recital of events. Twice, he told me, he shut his eyes
in the certitude that the end was upon him already, and twice he
had to open them again. Each time he noted the darkening of the
great stillness. The shadow of the silent cloud had fallen upon the
ship from the zenith, and seemed to have extinguished every sound
of her teeming life. He could no longer hear the voices under the
awnings. He told me that each time he closed his eyes a flash of
thought showed him that crowd of bodies, laid out for death, as
plain as daylight. When he opened them, it was to see the dim
struggle of four men fighting like mad with a stubborn boat. "They
would fall back before it time after time, stand swearing at each
other, and suddenly make another rush in a bunch. . . . Enough to
make you die laughing," he commented with downcast eyes; then
raising them for a moment to my face with a dismal smile, "I ought
to have a merry life of it, by God! for I shall see that funny sight a
good many times yet before I die." His eyes fell again. "See and
hear. . . . See and hear," he repeated twice, at long intervals, filled
by vacant staring.
'He roused himself.
' "I made up my mind to keep my eyes shut," he said, "and I
couldn't. I couldn't, and I don't care who knows it. Let them go
through that kind of thing before they talk. Just let them--and do
better--that's all. The second time my eyelids flew open and my
mouth too. I had felt the ship move. She just dipped her bows--and
lifted them gently--and slow! everlastingly slow; and ever so
little. She hadn't done that much for days. The cloud had raced
ahead, and this first swell seemed to travel upon a sea of lead. There
was no life in that stir. It managed, though, to knock over something
in my head. What would you have done? You are sure of yourself--aren't
you? What would you do if you felt now--this minute--the house here
move, just move a little under your chair. Leap! By heavens! you
would take one spring from where you sit and land in that clump
of bushes yonder."
'He flung his arm out at the night beyond the stone balustrade.
I held my peace. He looked at me very steadily, very severe. There
could be no mistake: I was being bullied now, and it behoved me
to make no sign lest by a gesture or a word I should be drawn into
a fatal admission about myself which would have had some bearing
on the case. I was not disposed to take any risk of that sort. Don't
forget I had him before me, and really he was too much like one of
us not to be dangerous. But if you want to know I don't mind telling
you that I did, with a rapid glance, estimate the distance to the
mass of denser blackness in the middle of the grass-plot before the
verandah. He exaggerated. I would have landed short by several
feet--and that's the only thing of which I am fairly certain.
'The last moment had come, as he thought, and he did not move.
His feet remained glued to the planks if his thoughts were knocking
about loose in his head. It was at this moment too that he saw one
of the men around the boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the
air with raised arms, totter and collapse. He didn't exactly fall, he
only slid gently into a sitting posture, all hunched up, and with his
shoulders propped against the side of the engine-room skylight.
"That was the donkey-man. A haggard, white-faced chap with a
ragged moustache. Acted third engineer," he explained.
' "Dead," I said. We had heard something of that in court.
' "So they say," he pronounced with sombre indifference. "Of
course I never knew. Weak heart. The man had been complaining
of being out of sorts for some time before. Excitement. Over-exertion.
Devil only knows. Ha! ha! ha! It was easy to see he did not
want to die either. Droll, isn't it? May I be shot if he hadn't been
fooled into killing himself! Fooled--neither more nor less. Fooled
into it, by heavens! just as I . . . Ah! If he had only kept still; if he
had only told them to go to the devil when they came to rush him
out of his bunk because the ship was sinking! If he had only stood
by with his hands in his pockets and called them names!"
'He got up, shook his fist, glared at me, and sat down.
' "A chance missed, eh?" I murmured.
' "Why don't you laugh?" he said. "A joke hatched in hell. Weak
heart! . . . I wish sometimes mine had been."
'This irritated me. "Do you?" I exclaimed with deep-rooted
irony. "Yes! Can't _you_ understand?" he cried. "I don't know what
more you could wish for," I said angrily. He gave me an utterly
uncomprehending glance. This shaft had also gone wide of the
mark, and he was not the man to bother about stray arrows. Upon
my word, he was too unsuspecting; he was not fair game. I was glad
that my missile had been thrown away,--that he had not even heard
the twang of the bow.
'Of course he could not know at the time the man was dead. The
next minute--his last on board--was crowded with a tumult of
events and sensations which beat about him like the sea upon a
rock. I use the simile advisedly, because from his relation I am
forced to believe he had preserved through it all a strange illusion
of passiveness, as though he had not acted but had suffered himself
to be handled by the infernal powers who had selected him for the
victim of their practical joke. The first thing that came to him was
the grinding surge of the heavy davits swinging out at last--a jar
which seemed to enter his body from the deck through the soles of
his feet, and travel up his spine to the crown of his head. Then, the
squall being very near now, another and a heavier swell lifted the
passive hull in a threatening heave that checked his breath, while
his brain and his heart together were pierced as with daggers by
panic-stricken screams. "Let go! For God's sake, let go! Let go!
She's going." Following upon that the boat-falls ripped through
the blocks, and a lot of men began to talk in startled tones under
the awnings. "When these beggars did break out, their yelps were
enough to wake the dead," he said. Next, after the splashing shock
of the boat literally dropped in the water, came the hollow noises
of stamping and tumbling in her, mingled with confused shouts:
"Unhook! Unhook! Shove! Unhook! Shove for your life! Here's
the squall down on us. . . ." He heard, high above his head, the
faint muttering of the wind; he heard below his feet a cry of pain.
A lost voice alongside started cursing a swivel hook. The ship began
to buzz fore and aft like a disturbed hive, and, as quietly as he was
telling me of all this--because just then he was very quiet in attitude,
in face, in voice--he went on to say without the slightest warning
as it were, "I stumbled over his legs."
'This was the first I heard of his having moved at all. I could not
restrain a grunt of surprise. Something had started him off at last,
but of the exact moment, of the cause that tore him out of his
immobility, he knew no more than the uprooted tree knows of the
wind that laid it low. All this had come to him: the sounds, the
sights, the legs of the dead man--by Jove! The infernal joke was
being crammed devilishly down his throat, but--look you--he was
not going to admit of any sort of swallowing motion in his gullet.
It's extraordinary how he could cast upon you the spirit of his
illusion. I listened as if to a tale of black magic at work upon a
corpse.
' "He went over sideways, very gently, and this is the last thing
I remember seeing on board," he continued. "I did not care what
he did. It looked as though he were picking himself up: I thought
he was picking himself up, of course: I expected him to bolt past
me over the rail and drop into the boat after the others. I could hear
them knocking about down there, and a voice as if crying up a shaft
called out 'George!' Then three voices together raised a yell. They
came to me separately: one bleated, another screamed, one howled.
Ough!"
'He shivered a little, and I beheld him rise slowly as if a steady
hand from above had been pulling him out of the chair by his hair.
Up, slowly--to his full height, and when his knees had locked stiff
the hand let him go, and he swayed a little on his feet. There was a
suggestion of awful stillness in his face, in his movements, in his
very voice when he said "They shouted"--and involuntarily I
pricked up my ears for the ghost of that shout that would be heard
directly through the false effect of silence. "There were eight
hundred people in that ship," he said, impaling me to the back of my
seat with an awful blank stare. "Eight hundred living people, and
they were yelling after the one dead man to come down and be
saved. 'Jump, George! Jump! Oh, jump!' I stood by with my hand
on the davit. I was very quiet. It had come over pitch dark. You
could see neither sky nor sea. I heard the boat alongside go bump,
bump, and not another sound down there for a while, but the ship
under me was full of talking noises. Suddenly the skipper howled
'Mein Gott! The squall! The squall! Shove off!' With the first hiss
of rain, and the first gust of wind, they screamed, 'Jump, George!
We'll catch you! Jump!' The ship began a slow plunge; the rain
swept over her like a broken sea; my cap flew off my head; my
breath was driven back into my throat. I heard as if I had been on
the top of a tower another wild screech, 'Geo-o-o-orge! Oh, jump!'
She was going down, down, head first under me. . . ."
'He raised his hand deliberately to his face, and made picking
motions with his fingers as though he had been bothered with cobwebs,
and afterwards he looked into the open palm for quite half a second
before he blurted out--
' "I had jumped . . ." He checked himself, averted his gaze. . . .
"It seems," he added.
'His clear blue eyes turned to me with a piteous stare, and looking
at him standing before me, dumfounded and hurt, I was oppressed
by a sad sense of resigned wisdom, mingled with the amused and
profound pity of an old man helpless before a childish disaster.
' "Looks like it," I muttered.
' "I knew nothing about it till I looked up," he explained hastily.
And that's possible, too. You had to listen to him as you would to a
small boy in trouble. He didn't know. It had happened somehow.
It would never happen again. He had landed partly on somebody
and fallen across a thwart. He felt as though all his ribs on his left
side must be broken; then he rolled over, and saw vaguely the ship
he had deserted uprising above him, with the red side-light glowing
large in the rain like a fire on the brow of a hill seen through a mist.
"She seemed higher than a wall; she loomed like a cliff over the
boat . . . I wished I could die," he cried. "There was no going
back. It was as if I had jumped into a well--into an everlasting deep
hole. . . ." '
CHAPTER 10
'He locked his fingers together and tore them apart. Nothing
could be more true: he had indeed jumped into an everlasting deep
hole. He had tumbled from a height he could never scale again. By
that time the boat had gone driving forward past the bows. It was
too dark just then for them to see each other, and, moreover, they
were blinded and half drowned with rain. He told me it was like
being swept by a flood through a cavern. They turned their backs
to the squall; the skipper, it seems, got an oar over the stern to keep
the boat before it, and for two or three minutes the end of the world
had come through a deluge in a pitchy blackness. The sea hissed
"like twenty thousand kettles." That's his simile, not mine. I fancy
there was not much wind after the first gust; and he himself had
admitted at the inquiry that the sea never got up that night to any
extent. He crouched down in the bows and stole a furtive glance
back. He saw just one yellow gleam of the mast-head light high up
and blurred like a last star ready to dissolve. "It terrified me to see
it still there," he said. That's what he said. What terrified him was
the thought that the drowning was not over yet. No doubt he wanted
to be done with that abomination as quickly as possible. Nobody
in the boat made a sound. In the dark she seemed to fly, but of
course she could not have had much way. Then the shower swept
ahead, and the great, distracting, hissing noise followed the rain
into distance and died out. There was nothing to be heard then
but the slight wash about the boat's sides. Somebody's teeth were
chattering violently. A hand touched his back. A faint voice said,
"You there?" Another cried out shakily, "She's gone!" and they
all stood up together to look astern. They saw no lights. All was
black. A thin cold drizzle was driving into their faces. The boat
lurched slightly. The teeth chattered faster, stopped, and began
again twice before the man could master his shiver sufficiently to
say, "Ju-ju-st in ti-ti-me. . . . Brrrr." He recognised the voice of
the chief engineer saying surlily, "I saw her go down. I happened
to turn my head." The wind had dropped almost completely.
'They watched in the dark with their heads half turned to windward
as if expecting to hear cries. At first he was thankful the night
had covered up the scene before his eyes, and then to know of it
and yet to have seen and heard nothing appeared somehow the
culminating point of an awful misfortune. "Strange, isn't it?" he
murmured, interrupting himself in his disjointed narrative.
'It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had an
unconscious conviction that the reality could not be half as bad, not
half as anguishing, appalling, and vengeful as the created terror of
his imagination. I believe that, in this first moment, his heart was
wrung with all the suffering, that his soul knew the accumulated
savour of all the fear, all the horror, all the despair of eight hundred
human beings pounced upon in the night by a sudden and violent
death, else why should he have said, "It seemed to me that I must
jump out of that accursed boat and swim back to see--half a mile--more
--any distance--to the very spot . . ."? Why this impulse?
Do you see the significance? Why back to the very spot? Why not
drown alongside--if he meant drowning? Why back to the very
spot, to see--as if his imagination had to be soothed by the assurance
that all was over before death could bring relief? I defy any one of
you to offer another explanation. It was one of those bizarre and
exciting glimpses through the fog. It was an extraordinary disclosure.
He let it out as the most natural thing one could say. He
fought down that impulse and then he became conscious of the
silence. He mentioned this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky,
merged into one indefinite immensity still as death around these
saved, palpitating lives. "You might have heard a pin drop in the
boat," he said with a queer contraction of his lips, like a man trying
to master his sensibilities while relating some extremely moving
fact. A silence! God alone, who had willed him as he was, knows
what he made of it in his heart. "I didn't think any spot on earth
could be so still," he said. "You couldn't distinguish the sea from
the sky; there was nothing to see and nothing to hear. Not a glimmer,
not a shape, not a sound. You could have believed that every
bit of dry land had gone to the bottom; that every man on earth but
I and these beggars in the boat had got drowned." He leaned over the
table with his knuckles propped amongst coffee-cups, liqueur-glasses,
cigar-ends. "I seemed to believe it. Everything was gone and--all was
over . . ." he fetched a deep sigh . . . "with me." '
Marlow sat up abruptly and flung away his cheroot with force. It
made a darting red trail like a toy rocket fired through the drapery
of creepers. Nobody stirred.
'Hey, what do you think of it?' he cried with sudden animation.
'Wasn't he true to himself, wasn't he? His saved life was over for
want of ground under his feet, for want of sights for his eyes, for
want of voices in his ears. Annihilation--hey! And all the time it
was only a clouded sky, a sea that did not break, the air that did
not stir. Only a night; only a silence.
'It lasted for a while, and then they were suddenly and unanimously
moved to make a noise over their escape. "I knew from the first she
would go." "Not a minute too soon." "A narrow squeak, b'gosh!" He
said nothing, but the breeze that had dropped came back, a gentle
draught freshened steadily, and the sea joined its murmuring voice
to this talkative reaction succeeding the dumb moments of awe. She
was gone! She was gone! Not a doubt of it. Nobody could have helped.
They repeated the same words over and over again as though they
couldn't stop themselves. Never doubted she would go. The lights
were gone. No mistake. The lights were gone. Couldn't expect
anything else. She had to go. . . . He noticed that they talked as
though they had left behind them nothing but an empty ship. They
concluded she would not have been long when she once started. It
seemed to cause them some sort of satisfaction. They assured each
other that she couldn't have been long about it--"Just shot down
like a flat-iron." The chief engineer declared that the mast-head
light at the moment of sinking seemed to drop "like a lighted match
you throw down." At this the second laughed hysterically. "I am
g-g-glad, I am gla-a-a-d." His teeth went on "like an electric
rattle," said Jim, "and all at once he began to cry. He wept and
blubbered like a child, catching his breath and sobbing 'Oh dear!
oh dear! oh dear!' He would be quiet for a while and start suddenly,
'Oh, my poor arm! oh, my poor a-a-a-arm!' I felt I could knock him
down. Some of them sat in the stern-sheets. I could just make out
their shapes. Voices came to me, mumble, mumble, grunt, grunt.
All this seemed very hard to bear. I was cold too. And I could do
nothing. I thought that if I moved I would have to go over the
side and . . ."
'His hand groped stealthily, came in contact with a liqueur-glass,
and was withdrawn suddenly as if it had touched a red-hot coal. I
pushed the bottle slightly. "Won't you have some more?" I asked.
He looked at me angrily. "Don't you think I can tell you what there
is to tell without screwing myself up?" he asked. The squad of
globe-trotters had gone to bed. We were alone but for a vague white
form erect in the shadow, that, being looked at, cringed forward,
hesitated, backed away silently. It was getting late, but I did not
hurry my guest.
'In the midst of his forlorn state he heard his companions begin
to abuse some one. "What kept you from jumping, you lunatic?"
said a scolding voice. The chief engineer left the stern-sheets, and
could be heard clambering forward as if with hostile intentions
against "the greatest idiot that ever was." The skipper shouted with
rasping effort offensive epithets from where he sat at the oar. He
lifted his head at that uproar, and heard the name "George," while
a hand in the dark struck him on the breast. "What have you got
to say for yourself, you fool?" queried somebody, with a sort of
virtuous fury. "They were after me," he said. "They were abusing
me--abusing me . . . by the name of George."
'He paused to stare, tried to smile, turned his eyes away and went
on. "That little second puts his head right under my nose, 'Why,
it's that blasted mate!' 'What!' howls the skipper from the other
end of the boat. 'No!' shrieks the chief. And he too stooped to look
at my face."
'The wind had left the boat suddenly. The rain began to fall
again, and the soft, uninterrupted, a little mysterious sound with
which the sea receives a shower arose on all sides in the night.
"They were too taken aback to say anything more at first," he
narrated steadily, "and what could I have to say to them?" He
faltered for a moment, and made an effort to go on. "They called
me horrible names." His voice, sinking to a whisper, now and
then would leap up suddenly, hardened by the passion of scorn, as
though he had been talking of secret abominations. "Never mind
what they called me," he said grimly. "I could hear hate in their
voices. A good thing too. They could not forgive me for being in
that boat. They hated it. It made them mad. . . ." He laughed
short. . . . "But it kept me from--Look! I was sitting with my arms
crossed, on the gunwale! . . ." He perched himself smartly on the
edge of the table and crossed his arms. . . . "Like this--see? One
little tilt backwards and I would have been gone--after the others.
One little tilt--the least bit--the least bit." He frowned, and tapping
his forehead with the tip of his middle finger, "It was there all the
time," he said impressively. "All the time--that notion. And the
rain--cold, thick, cold as melted snow--colder--on my thin cotton
clothes--I'll never be so cold again in my life, I know. And the sky
was black too--all black. Not a star, not a light anywhere. Nothing
outside that confounded boat and those two yapping before me like
a couple of mean mongrels at a tree'd thief. Yap! yap! 'What you
doing here? You're a fine sort! Too much of a bloomin' gentleman
to put your hand to it. Come out of your trance, did you? To sneak
in? Did you?' Yap! yap! 'You ain't fit to live!' Yap! yap! Two of
them together trying to out-bark each other. The other would bay
from the stern through the rain--couldn't see him--couldn't make
it out--some of his filthy jargon. Yap! yap! Bow-ow-ow-ow-ow!
Yap! yap! It was sweet to hear them; it kept me alive, I tell you. It
saved my life. At it they went, as if trying to drive me overboard
with the noise! . . . 'I wonder you had pluck enough to jump. You
ain't wanted here. If I had known who it was, I would have tipped
you over--you skunk! What have you done with the other? Where
did you get the pluck to jump--you coward? What's to prevent us
three from firing you overboard?' . . . They were out of breath; the
shower passed away upon the sea. Then nothing. There was nothing
round the boat, not even a sound. Wanted to see me overboard, did
they? Upon my soul! I think they would have had their wish if they
had only kept quiet. Fire me overboard! Would they? 'Try,' I said.
'I would for twopence.' 'Too good for you,' they screeched together.
It was so dark that it was only when one or the other of them moved
that I was quite sure of seeing him. By heavens! I only wish they
had tried."
'I couldn't help exclaiming, "What an extraordinary affair!"
' "Not bad--eh?" he said, as if in some sort astounded. "They
pretended to think I had done away with that donkey-man for some
reason or other. Why should I? And how the devil was I to know?
Didn't I get somehow into that boat? into that boat--I . . ." The
muscles round his lips contracted into an unconscious grimace that
tore through the mask of his usual expression--something violent,
short-lived and illuminating like a twist of lightning that admits the
eye for an instant into the secret convolutions of a cloud. "I did. I
was plainly there with them--wasn't I? Isn't it awful a man should
be driven to do a thing like that--and be responsible? What did I
know about their George they were howling after? I remembered I
had seen him curled up on the deck. 'Murdering coward!' the chief
kept on calling me. He didn't seem able to remember any other two
words. I didn't care, only his noise began to worry me. 'Shut up,'
I said. At that he collected himself for a confounded screech. 'You
killed him! You killed him!' 'No,' I shouted, 'but I will kill you
directly.' I jumped up, and he fell backwards over a thwart with an
awful loud thump. I don't know why. Too dark. Tried to step back
I suppose. I stood still facing aft, and the wretched little second
began to whine, 'You ain't going to hit a chap with a broken arm--and
you call yourself a gentleman, too.' I heard a heavy tramp--one--two--and
wheezy grunting. The other beast was coming at me, clattering his
oar over the stern. I saw him moving, big, big--as you see a man in a
mist, in a dream. 'Come on,' I cried. I would have tumbled him over
like a bale of shakings. He stopped, muttered to himself, and went
back. Perhaps he had heard the wind. I didn't. It was the last heavy
gust we had. He went back to his oar. I was sorry. I would have tried
to--to . . ."
'He opened and closed his curved fingers, and his hands had an
eager and cruel flutter. "Steady, steady," I murmured.
' "Eh? What? I am not excited," he remonstrated, awfully hurt,
and with a convulsive jerk of his elbow knocked over the cognac
bottle. I started forward, scraping my chair. He bounced off the
table as if a mine had been exploded behind his back, and half
turned before he alighted, crouching on his feet to show me a startled
pair of eyes and a face white about the nostrils. A look of intense
annoyance succeeded. "Awfully sorry. How clumsy of me!" he
mumbled, very vexed, while the pungent odour of spilt alcohol
enveloped us suddenly with an atmosphere of a low drinking-bout
in the cool, pure darkness of the night. The lights had been put out
in the dining-hall; our candle glimmered solitary in the long gallery,
and the columns had turned black from pediment to capital. On
the vivid stars the high corner of the Harbour Office stood out
distinct across the Esplanade, as though the sombre pile had glided
nearer to see and hear.
'He assumed an air of indifference.
' "I dare say I am less calm now than I was then. I was ready for
anything. These were trifles. . . ."
' "You had a lively time of it in that boat," I remarked
' "I was ready," he repeated. "After the ship's lights had gone,
anything might have happened in that boat--anything in the world--and
the world no wiser. I felt this, and I was pleased. It was just
dark enough too. We were like men walled up quick in a roomy
grave. No concern with anything on earth. Nobody to pass an
opinion. Nothing mattered." For the third time during this conversation
he laughed harshly, but there was no one about to suspect him of being
only drunk. "No fear, no law, no sounds, no eyes--not even our own,
till--till sunrise at least."
'I was struck by the suggestive truth of his words. There is something
peculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea. Over the lives borne
from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow
of madness. When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to
fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, took care of you.
It is as if the souls of men floating on an abyss and in touch with
immensity had been set free for any excess of heroism, absurdity,
or abomination. Of course, as with belief, thought, love, hate,
conviction, or even the visual aspect of material things, there are as
many shipwrecks as there are men, and in this one there was something
abject which made the isolation more complete--there was a villainy
of circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the
rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial
of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were exasperated with him
for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on them his hatred
of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal revenge
for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat
on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the
bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was part
of the burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea
that they did not come to blows. It was all threats, all a terribly
effective feint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the
tremendous disdain of the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on
the verge of triumph, are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of
men. I asked, after waiting for a while, "Well, what happened?" A
futile question. I knew too much already to hope for the grace of a
single uplifting touch, for the favour of hinted madness, of shadowed
horror. "Nothing," he said. "I meant business, but they meant noise
only. Nothing happened."
'And the rising sun found him just as he had jumped up first in
the bows of the boat. What a persistence of readiness! He had been
holding the tiller in his hand, too, all the night. They had dropped
the rudder overboard while attempting to ship it, and I suppose the
tiller got kicked forward somehow while they were rushing up and
down that boat trying to do all sorts of things at once so as to get
clear of the side. It was a long heavy piece of hard wood, and
apparently he had been clutching it for six hours or so. If you don't
call that being ready! Can you imagine him, silent and on his feet
half the night, his face to the gusts of rain, staring at sombre forms
watchful of vague movements, straining his ears to catch rare low
murmurs in the stern-sheets! Firmness of courage or effort of fear?
What do you think? And the endurance is undeniable too. Six hours
more or less on the defensive; six hours of alert immobility while
the boat drove slowly or floated arrested, according to the caprice
of the wind; while the sea, calmed, slept at last; while the clouds
passed above his head; while the sky from an immensity lustreless
and black, diminished to a sombre and lustrous vault, scintillated
with a greater brilliance, faded to the east, paled at the zenith; while
the dark shapes blotting the low stars astern got outlines, relief
became shoulders, heads, faces, features,--confronted him with
dreary stares, had dishevelled hair, torn clothes, blinked red eyelids
at the white dawn. "They looked as though they had been knocking
about drunk in gutters for a week," he described graphically; and
then he muttered something about the sunrise being of a kind that
foretells a calm day. You know that sailor habit of referring to the
weather in every connection. And on my side his few mumbled
words were enough to make me see the lower limb of the sun clearing
the line of the horizon, the tremble of a vast ripple running over
all the visible expanse of the sea, as if the waters had shuddered,
giving birth to the globe of light, while the last puff of the breeze
would stir the air in a sigh of relief.
' "They sat in the stern shoulder to shoulder, with the skipper
in the middle, like three dirty owls, and stared at me," I heard him
say with an intention of hate that distilled a corrosive virtue into
the commonplace words like a drop of powerful poison falling into
a glass of water; but my thoughts dwelt upon that sunrise. I could
imagine under the pellucid emptiness of the sky these four men
imprisoned in the solitude of the sea, the lonely sun, regardless of
the speck of life, ascending the clear curve of the heaven as if to
gaze ardently from a greater height at his own splendour reflected
in the still ocean. "They called out to me from aft," said Jim, "as
though we had been chums together. I heard them. They were
begging me to be sensible and drop that 'blooming piece of wood.'
Why _would_ I carry on so? They hadn't done me any harm--had they?
There had been no harm. . . . No harm!"
'His face crimsoned as though he could not get rid of the air in
his lungs.
' "No harm!" he burst out. "I leave it to you. You can understand.
Can't you? You see it--don't you? No harm! Good God! What more
could they have done? Oh yes, I know very well--I jumped. Certainly.
I jumped! I told you I jumped; but I tell you they were too much
for any man. It was their doing as plainly as if they had reached
up with a boat-hook and pulled me over. Can't you see it? You must
see it. Come. Speak--straight out."
'His uneasy eyes fastened upon mine, questioned, begged, challenged,
entreated. For the life of me I couldn't help murmuring, "You've been
tried." "More than is fair," he caught up swiftly. "I wasn't given
half a chance--with a gang like that. And now they were friendly--oh,
so damnably friendly! Chums, shipmates. All in the same boat. Make
the best of it. They hadn't meant anything. They didn't care a hang
for George. George had gone back to his berth for something at the
last moment and got caught. The man was a manifest fool. Very sad,
of course. . . . Their eyes looked at me; their lips moved; they
wagged their heads at the other end of the boat--three of them; they
beckoned--to me. Why not? Hadn't I jumped? I said nothing. There
are no words for the sort of things I wanted to say. If I had opened
my lips just then I would have simply howled like an animal. I was
asking myself when I would wake up. They urged me aloud to come
aft and hear quietly what the skipper had to say. We were sure to be
picked up before the evening--right in the track of all the Canal
traffic; there was smoke to the north-west now.
' "It gave me an awful shock to see this faint, faint blur, this low
trail of brown mist through which you could see the boundary of
sea and sky. I called out to them that I could hear very well where
I was. The skipper started swearing, as hoarse as a crow. He wasn't
going to talk at the top of his voice for _my_ accommodation. 'Are you
afraid they will hear you on shore?' I asked. He glared as if he would
have liked to claw me to pieces. The chief engineer advised him to
humour me. He said I wasn't right in my head yet. The other rose
astern, like a thick pillar of flesh--and talked--talked. . . ."
'Jim remained thoughtful. "Well?" I said. "What did I care what
story they agreed to make up?" he cried recklessly. "They could
tell what they jolly well liked. It was their business. I knew the
story. Nothing they could make people believe could alter it for me.
I let him talk, argue--talk, argue. He went on and on and on.
Suddenly I felt my legs give way under me. I was sick, tired--tired
to death. I let fall the tiller, turned my back on them, and sat down
on the foremost thwart. I had enough. They called to me to know
if I understood--wasn't it true, every word of it? It was true, by
God! after their fashion. I did not turn my head. I heard them
palavering together. 'The silly ass won't say anything.' 'Oh, he
understands well enough.' 'Let him be; he will be all right.' 'What
can he do?' What could I do? Weren't we all in the same boat? I
tried to be deaf. The smoke had disappeared to the northward. It
was a dead calm. They had a drink from the water-breaker, and I
drank too. Afterwards they made a great business of spreading the
boat-sail over the gunwales. Would I keep a look-out? They crept
under, out of my sight, thank God! I felt weary, weary, done up,
as if I hadn't had one hour's sleep since the day I was born. I
couldn't see the water for the glitter of the sunshine. From time to
time one of them would creep out, stand up to take a look all round,
and get under again. I could hear spells of snoring below the sail.
Some of them could sleep. One of them at least. I couldn't! All was
light, light, and the boat seemed to be falling through it. Now
and then I would feel quite surprised to find myself sitting on a
thwart. . . ."
'He began to walk with measured steps to and fro before my
chair, one hand in his trousers-pocket, his head bent thoughtfully,
and his right arm at long intervals raised for a gesture that seemed
to put out of his way an invisible intruder.
' "I suppose you think I was going mad," he began in a changed
tone. "And well you may, if you remember I had lost my cap. The
sun crept all the way from east to west over my bare head, but that
day I could not come to any harm, I suppose. The sun could not make
me mad. . . ." His right arm put aside the idea of madness. . . .
"Neither could it kill me. . . ." Again his arm repulsed a
shadow. . . . "_That_ rested with me."
' "Did it?" I said, inexpressibly amazed at this new turn, and I
looked at him with the same sort of feeling I might be fairly conceived
to experience had he, after spinning round on his heel, presented
an altogether new face.
' "I didn't get brain fever, I did not drop dead either," he went
on. "I didn't bother myself at all about the sun over my head. I was
thinking as coolly as any man that ever sat thinking in the shade.
That greasy beast of a skipper poked his big cropped head from
under the canvas and screwed his fishy eyes up at me. 'Donnerwetter!
you will die,' he growled, and drew in like a turtle. I had
seen him. I had heard him. He didn't interrupt me. I was thinking
just then that I wouldn't."
'He tried to sound my thought with an attentive glance dropped
on me in passing. "Do you mean to say you had been deliberating
with yourself whether you would die?" I asked in as impenetrable
a tone as I could command. He nodded without stopping. "Yes, it
had come to that as I sat there alone," he said. He passed on a few
steps to the imaginary end of his beat, and when he flung round to
come back both his hands were thrust deep into his pockets. He
stopped short in front of my chair and looked down. "Don't you
believe it?" he inquired with tense curiosity. I was moved to make
a solemn declaration of my readiness to believe implicitly anything
he thought fit to tell me.'
CHAPTER 11
'He heard me out with his head on one side, and I had another
glimpse through a rent in the mist in which he moved and had his
being. The dim candle spluttered within the ball of glass, and that
was all I had to see him by; at his back was the dark night with the
clear stars, whose distant glitter disposed in retreating planes lured
the eye into the depths of a greater darkness; and yet a mysterious
light seemed to show me his boyish head, as if in that moment the
youth within him had, for a moment, glowed and expired. "You are
an awful good sort to listen like this," he said. "It does me good.
You don't know what it is to me. You don't" . . . words seemed to
fail him. It was a distinct glimpse. He was a youngster of the sort
you like to see about you; of the sort you like to imagine yourself
to have been; of the sort whose appearance claims the fellowship of
these illusions you had thought gone out, extinct, cold, and which,
as if rekindled at the approach of another flame, give a flutter deep,
deep down somewhere, give a flutter of light . . . of heat! . . . Yes;
I had a glimpse of him then . . . and it was not the last of that
kind. . . . "You don't know what it is for a fellow in my position
to be believed--make a clean breast of it to an elder man. It is so
difficult--so awfully unfair--so hard to understand."
'The mists were closing again. I don't know how old I appeared
to him--and how much wise. Not half as old as I felt just then; not
half as uselessly wise as I knew myself to be. Surely in no other craft
as in that of the sea do the hearts of those already launched to sink
or swim go out so much to the youth on the brink, looking with
shining eyes upon that glitter of the vast surface which is only a
reflection of his own glances full of fire. There is such magnificent
vagueness in the expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such
a glorious indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that
are their own and only reward. What we get--well, we won't talk
of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life
is the illusion more wide of reality--in no other is the beginning _all_
illusion--the disenchantment more swift--the subjugation more
complete. Hadn't we all commenced with the same desire, ended
with the same knowledge, carried the memory of the same cherished
glamour through the sordid days of imprecation? What wonder that
when some heavy prod gets home the bond is found to be close;
that besides the fellowship of the craft there is felt the strength of
a wider feeling--the feeling that binds a man to a child. He was
there before me, believing that age and wisdom can find a remedy
against the pain of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a young
fellow in a scrape that is the very devil of a scrape, the sort of scrape
greybeards wag at solemnly while they hide a smile. And he had
been deliberating upon death--confound him! He had found that
to meditate about because he thought he had saved his life, while
all its glamour had gone with the ship in the night. What more
natural! It was tragic enough and funny enough in all conscience to
call aloud for compassion, and in what was I better than the rest of
us to refuse him my pity? And even as I looked at him the mists
rolled into the rent, and his voice spoke--
' "I was so lost, you know. It was the sort of thing one does not
expect to happen to one. It was not like a fight, for instance."
' "It was not," I admitted. He appeared changed, as if he had
suddenly matured.
' "One couldn't be sure," he muttered.
' "Ah! You were not sure," I said, and was placated by the sound
of a faint sigh that passed between us like the flight of a bird in the
night.
' "Well, I wasn't," he said courageously. "It was something like
that wretched story they made up. It was not a lie--but it wasn't
truth all the same. It was something. . . . One knows a downright
lie. There was not the thickness of a sheet of paper between the
right and the wrong of this affair."
' "How much more did you want?" I asked; but I think I spoke
so low that he did not catch what I said. He had advanced his
argument as though life had been a network of paths separated by
chasms. His voice sounded reasonable.
' "Suppose I had not--I mean to say, suppose I had stuck to the
ship? Well. How much longer? Say a minute--half a minute. Come.
In thirty seconds, as it seemed certain then, I would have been
overboard; and do you think I would not have laid hold of the first
thing that came in my way--oar, life-buoy, grating--anything?
Wouldn't you?"
' "And be saved," I interjected.
' "I would have meant to be," he retorted. "And that's more
than I meant when I" . . . he shivered as if about to swallow some
nauseous drug . . . "jumped," he pronounced with a convulsive
effort, whose stress, as if propagated by the waves of the air, made
my body stir a little in the chair. He fixed me with lowering eyes.
"Don't you believe me?" he cried. "I swear! . . . Confound it! You
got me here to talk, and . . . You must! . . . You said you would
believe." "Of course I do," I protested, in a matter-of-fact tone
which produced a calming effect. "Forgive me," he said. "Of
course I wouldn't have talked to you about all this if you had not
been a gentleman. I ought to have known . . . I am--I am--a
gentleman too . . ." "Yes, yes," I said hastily. He was looking
me squarely in the face, and withdrew his gaze slowly. "Now you
understand why I didn't after all . . . didn't go out in that way. I
wasn't going to be frightened at what I had done. And, anyhow, if
I had stuck to the ship I would have done my best to be saved. Men
have been known to float for hours--in the open sea--and be picked
up not much the worse for it. I might have lasted it out better
than many others. There's nothing the matter with my heart." He
withdrew his right fist from his pocket, and the blow he struck on
his chest resounded like a muffled detonation in the night.
' "No," I said. He meditated, with his legs slightly apart and his
chin sunk. "A hair's-breadth," he muttered. "Not the breadth of
a hair between this and that. And at the time . . ."
' "It is difficult to see a hair at midnight," I put in, a little
viciously I fear. Don't you see what I mean by the solidarity of the
craft? I was aggrieved against him, as though he had cheated me--
me!--of a splendid opportunity to keep up the illusion of my
beginnings, as though he had robbed our common life of the last spark
of its glamour. "And so you cleared out--at once."
' "Jumped," he corrected me incisively. "Jumped--mind!" he
repeated, and I wondered at the evident but obscure intention.
"Well, yes! Perhaps I could not see then. But I had plenty of time
and any amount of light in that boat. And I could think, too. Nobody
would know, of course, but this did not make it any easier for me.
You've got to believe that, too. I did not want all this talk. . . .
No . . . Yes . . . I won't lie . . . I wanted it: it is the very thing I
wanted--there. Do you think you or anybody could have made me
if I . . . I am--I am not afraid to tell. And I wasn't afraid to think
either. I looked it in the face. I wasn't going to run away. At first--
at night, if it hadn't been for those fellows I might have . . . No!
by heavens! I was not going to give them that satisfaction. They
had done enough. They made up a story, and believed it for all I
know. But I knew the truth, and I would live it down--alone, with
myself. I wasn't going to give in to such a beastly unfair thing. What
did it prove after all? I was confoundedly cut up. Sick of life--to
tell you the truth; but what would have been the good to shirk it--
in--in--that way? That was not the way. I believe--I believe it
would have--it would have ended--nothing."
'He had been walking up and down, but with the last word he
turned short at me.
' "What do _you_ believe?" he asked with violence. A pause ensued,
and suddenly I felt myself overcome by a profound and hopeless
fatigue, as though his voice had startled me out of a dream of
wandering through empty spaces whose immensity had harassed
my soul and exhausted my body.
' ". . . Would have ended nothing," he muttered over me obstinately,
after a little while. "No! the proper thing was to face it out--
alone for myself--wait for another chance--find out . . ." '
CHAPTER 12
'All around everything was still as far as the ear could reach.
The mist of his feelings shifted between us, as if disturbed by his
struggles, and in the rifts of the immaterial veil he would appear to
my staring eyes distinct of form and pregnant with vague appeal
like a symbolic figure in a picture. The chill air of the night seemed
to lie on my limbs as heavy as a slab of marble.
' "I see," I murmured, more to prove to myself that I could break
my state of numbness than for any other reason.
' "The Avondale picked us up just before sunset," he remarked
moodily. "Steamed right straight for us. We had only to sit and
wait."
'After a long interval, he said, "They told their story." And again
there was that oppressive silence. "Then only I knew what it was I
had made up my mind to," he added.
' "You said nothing," I whispered.
' "What could I say?" he asked, in the same low tone. . . .
"Shock slight. Stopped the ship. Ascertained the damage. Took
measures to get the boats out without creating a panic. As the first
boat was lowered ship went down in a squall. Sank like lead. . . .
What could be more clear" . . . he hung his head . . . "and more
awful?" His lips quivered while he looked straight into my eyes.
"I had jumped--hadn't I?" he asked, dismayed. "That's what I had
to live down. The story didn't matter." . . . He clasped his hands
for an instant, glanced right and left into the gloom: "It was like
cheating the dead," he stammered.
' "And there were no dead," I said.
'He went away from me at this. That is the only way I can describe it.
In a moment I saw his back close to the balustrade. He stood there for
some time, as if admiring the purity and the peace of the night. Some
flowering-shrub in the garden below spread its powerful scent through
the damp air. He returned to me with hasty steps.
' "And that did not matter," he said, as stubbornly as you please.
' "Perhaps not," I admitted. I began to have a notion he was too
much for me. After all, what did _I_ know?
' "Dead or not dead, I could not get clear," he said. "I had to
live; hadn't I?"
' "Well, yes--if you take it in that way," I mumbled.
' "I was glad, of course," he threw out carelessly, with his mind
fixed on something else. "The exposure," he pronounced slowly,
and lifted his head. "Do you know what was my first thought when
I heard? I was relieved. I was relieved to learn that those shouts--
did I tell you I had heard shouts? No? Well, I did. Shouts for
help . . . blown along with the drizzle. Imagination, I suppose.
And yet I can hardly . . . How stupid. . . . The others did not. I
asked them afterwards. They all said No. No? And I was hearing
them even then! I might have known--but I didn't think--I only
listened. Very faint screams--day after day. Then that little
half-caste chap here came up and spoke to me. 'The Patna . . . French
gunboat. . . towed successfully to Aden. . . Investigation. . .
Marine Office . . . Sailors' Home . . . arrangements made for your
board and lodging!' I walked along with him, and I enjoyed the
silence. So there had been no shouting. Imagination. I had to believe
him. I could hear nothing any more. I wonder how long I could
have stood it. It was getting worse, too . . . I mean--louder."
'He fell into thought.
' "And I had heard nothing! Well--so be it. But the lights! The
lights did go! We did not see them. They were not there. If they
had been, I would have swam back--I would have gone back and
shouted alongside--I would have begged them to take me on
board. . . . I would have had my chance. . . . You doubt me? . . .
How do you know how I felt? . . . What right have you to
doubt? . . . I very nearly did it as it was--do you understand?" His
voice fell. "There was not a glimmer--not a glimmer," he protested
mournfully. "Don't you understand that if there had been, you
would not have seen me here? You see me--and you doubt."
'I shook my head negatively. This question of the lights being
lost sight of when the boat could not have been more than a quarter
of a mile from the ship was a matter for much discussion. Jim stuck
to it that there was nothing to be seen after the first shower had
cleared away; and the others had affirmed the same thing to the
officers of the Avondale. Of course people shook their heads and
smiled. One old skipper who sat near me in court tickled my ear
with his white beard to murmur, "Of course they would lie." As a
matter of fact nobody lied; not even the chief engineer with his
story of the mast-head light dropping like a match you throw down.
Not consciously, at least. A man with his liver in such a state might
very well have seen a floating spark in the corner of his eye when
stealing a hurried glance over his shoulder. They had seen no light
of any sort though they were well within range, and they could only
explain this in one way: the ship had gone down. It was obvious
and comforting. The foreseen fact coming so swiftly had justified
their haste. No wonder they did not cast about for any other
explanation. Yet the true one was very simple, and as soon as Brierly
suggested it the court ceased to bother about the question. If you
remember, the ship had been stopped, and was lying with her head
on the course steered through the night, with her stern canted high
and her bows brought low down in the water through the filling of
the fore-compartment. Being thus out of trim, when the squall
struck her a little on the quarter, she swung head to wind as sharply
as though she had been at anchor. By this change in her position all
her lights were in a very few moments shut off from the boat to
leeward. It may very well be that, had they been seen, they would
have had the effect of a mute appeal--that their glimmer lost in the
darkness of the cloud would have had the mysterious power of the
human glance that can awaken the feelings of remorse and pity. It
would have said, "I am here--still here" . . . and what more can
the eye of the most forsaken of human beings say? But she turned
her back on them as if in disdain of their fate: she had swung round,
burdened, to glare stubbornly at the new danger of the open sea
which she so strangely survived to end her days in a breaking-up
yard, as if it had been her recorded fate to die obscurely under the
blows of many hammers. What were the various ends their destiny
provided for the pilgrims I am unable to say; but the immediate
future brought, at about nine o'clock next morning, a French gunboat
homeward bound from Reunion. The report of her commander was public
property. He had swept a little out of his course to ascertain what
was the matter with that steamer floating dangerously by the head
upon a still and hazy sea. There was an ensign, union down, flying
at her main gaff (the serang had the sense to make a signal of
distress at daylight); but the cooks were preparing the food in the
cooking-boxes forward as usual. The decks were packed as close as
a sheep-pen: there were people perched all along the rails, jammed
on the bridge in a solid mass; hundreds of eyes stared, and not a
sound was heard when the gunboat ranged abreast, as if all that
multitude of lips had been sealed by a spell.
'The Frenchman hailed, could get no intelligible reply, and after
ascertaining through his binoculars that the crowd on deck did not
look plague-stricken, decided to send a boat. Two officers came on
board, listened to the serang, tried to talk with the Arab, couldn't
make head or tail of it: but of course the nature of the emergency was
obvious enough. They were also very much struck by discovering a
white man, dead and curled up peacefully on the bridge. "Fort
intrigues par ce cadavre," as I was informed a long time after by an
elderly French lieutenant whom I came across one afternoon in
Sydney, by the merest chance, in a sort of cafe, and who remembered
the affair perfectly. Indeed this affair, I may notice in passing,
had an extraordinary power of defying the shortness of memories
and the length of time: it seemed to live, with a sort of uncanny
vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their tongues. I've had
the questionable pleasure of meeting it often, years afterwards,
thousands of miles away, emerging from the remotest possible talk,
coming to the surface of the most distant allusions. Has it not turned
up to-night between us? And I am the only seaman here. I am the
only one to whom it is a memory. And yet it has made its way out!
But if two men who, unknown to each other, knew of this affair
met accidentally on any spot of this earth, the thing would pop up
between them as sure as fate, before they parted. I had never seen
that Frenchman before, and at the end of an hour we had done with
each other for life: he did not seem particularly talkative either; he
was a quiet, massive chap in a creased uniform, sitting drowsily
over a tumbler half full of some dark liquid. His shoulder-straps
were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved cheeks were large and sallow;
he looked like a man who would be given to taking snuff--don't
you know? I won't say he did; but the habit would have fitted that
kind of man. It all began by his handing me a number of Home
News, which I didn't want, across the marble table. I said "Merci."
We exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly,
before I knew how it had come about, we were in the midst of it,
and he was telling me how much they had been "intrigued by that
corpse." It turned out he had been one of the boarding officers.
'In the establishment where we sat one could get a variety of
foreign drinks which were kept for the visiting naval officers, and
he took a sip of the dark medical-looking stuff, which probably was
nothing more nasty than cassis a l'eau, and glancing with one eye
into the tumbler, shook his head slightly. "Impossible de comprendre--
vous concevez," he said, with a curious mixture of unconcern and
thoughtfulness. I could very easily conceive how impossible it had
been for them to understand. Nobody in the gunboat knew enough
English to get hold of the story as told by the serang. There was a
good deal of noise, too, round the two officers. "They crowded upon
us. There was a circle round that dead man (autour de ce mort)," he
described. "One had to attend to the most pressing. These people
were beginning to agitate themselves--Parbleu! A mob like that--don't
you see?" he interjected with philosophic indulgence. As to the
bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the safest thing was to
leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at. They got two hawsers
on board promptly (en toute hale) and took the Patna in tow--stern
foremost at that--which, under the circumstances, was not so foolish,
since the rudder was too much out of the water to be of any great
use for steering, and this manoeuvre eased the strain on the bulkhead,
whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded the greatest care
(exigeait les plus grands menagements). I could not help thinking that
my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of these
arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active,
and he was seamanlike too, in a way, though as he sat there, with
his thick fingers clasped lightly on his stomach, he reminded you
of one of those snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are
poured the sins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations,
on whose faces the placid and simple expression is like a veil thrown
over the mystery of pain and distress. He ought to have had a
threadbare black soutane buttoned smoothly up to his ample chin,
instead of a frock-coat with shoulder-straps and brass buttons. His
broad bosom heaved regularly while he went on telling me that it
had been the very devil of a job, as doubtless (sans doute) I could
figure to myself in my quality of a seaman (en votre qualite de marin).
At the end of the period he inclined his body slightly towards me,
and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the air to escape with a gentle
hiss. "Luckily," he continued, "the sea was level like this table,
and there was no more wind than there is here." . . . The place
struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy, and very hot; my face burned
as though I had been young enough to be embarrassed and blushing.
They had directed their course, he pursued, to the nearest English
port "naturellement," where their responsibility ceased, "Dieu
merci." . . . He blew out his flat cheeks a little. . . . "Because, mind
you (notez bien), all the time of towing we had two quartermasters
stationed with axes by the hawsers, to cut us clear of our tow in case
she . . ." He fluttered downwards his heavy eyelids, making his
meaning as plain as possible. . . . "What would you! One does what
one can (on fait ce qu'on peut)," and for a moment he managed to
invest his ponderous immobility with an air of resignation. "Two
quartermasters--thirty hours--always there. Two!" he repeated,
lifting up his right hand a little, and exhibiting two fingers. This
was absolutely the first gesture I saw him make. It gave me the
opportunity to "note" a starred scar on the back of his hand--effect
of a gunshot clearly; and, as if my sight had been made more acute
by this discovery, I perceived also the seam of an old wound,
beginning a little below the temple and going out of sight under the short
grey hair at the side of his head--the graze of a spear or the cut of
a sabre. He clasped his hands on his stomach again. "I remained
on board that--that--my memory is going (s'en va). Ah! Patt-na.
C'est bien ca. Patt-na. Merci. It is droll how one forgets. I stayed on
that ship thirty hours. . . ."
' "You did!" I exclaimed. Still gazing at his hands, he pursed his
lips a little, but this time made no hissing sound. "It was judged
proper," he said, lifting his eyebrows dispassionately, "that one of
the officers should remain to keep an eye open (pour ouvrir l'oeil)"
. . . he sighed idly . . . "and for communicating by signals
with the towing ship--do you see?--and so on. For the rest, it was
my opinion too. We made our boats ready to drop over--and I also
on that ship took measures. . . . Enfin! One has done one's possible.
It was a delicate position. Thirty hours! They prepared me some
food. As for the wine--go and whistle for it--not a drop." In some
extraordinary way, without any marked change in his inert attitude
and in the placid expression of his face, he managed to convey the
idea of profound disgust. "I--you know--when it comes to eating
without my glass of wine--I am nowhere."
'I was afraid he would enlarge upon the grievance, for though he
didn't stir a limb or twitch a feature, he made one aware how much
he was irritated by the recollection. But he seemed to forget all
about it. They delivered their charge to the "port authorities," as
he expressed it. He was struck by the calmness with which it had
been received. "One might have thought they had such a droll find
(drole de trouvaille) brought them every day. You are extraordinary--
you others," he commented, with his back propped against the wall,
and looking himself as incapable of an emotional display as a
sack of meal. There happened to be a man-of-war and an Indian
Marine steamer in the harbour at the time, and he did not conceal
his admiration of the efficient manner in which the boats of these
two ships cleared the Patna of her passengers. Indeed his torpid
demeanour concealed nothing: it had that mysterious, almost miraculous,
power of producing striking effects by means impossible of detection
which is the last word of the highest art. "Twenty-five minutes--watch
in hand--twenty-five, no more." . . . He unclasped and clasped
again his fingers without removing his hands from his stomach,
and made it infinitely more effective than if he had thrown up his
arms to heaven in amazement. . . . "All that lot (tout ce monde) on
shore--with their little affairs--nobody left but a guard of seamen
(marins de l'Etat) and that interesting corpse (cet interessant cadavre).
Twenty-five minutes." . . . With downcast eyes and his head tilted
slightly on one side he seemed to roll knowingly on his tongue the
savour of a smart bit of work. He persuaded one without any further
demonstration that his approval was eminently worth having, and resuming
his hardly interrupted immobility, he went on to inform me that, being
under orders to make the best of their way to Toulon, they left in two
hours' time, "so that (de sorte que) there are many things in this
incident of my life (dans cet episode de ma vie) which have remained
obscure." '
CHAPTER 13
'After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, so to
speak, submitted himself passively to a state of silence. I kept him
company; and suddenly, but not abruptly, as if the appointed time
had arrived for his moderate and husky voice to come out of his
immobility, he pronounced, "Mon Dieu! how the time passes!"
Nothing could have been more commonplace than this remark;
but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It's
extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull
ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may
be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable
majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can
be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments
of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much--everything--in
a flash--before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence.
I raised my eyes when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never
seen him before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy
folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so
curiously suggestive of his having been simply left there. Time
had passed indeed: it had overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left
him hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the iron-grey hair,
the heavy fatigue of the tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished
shoulder-straps; one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw
material of great reputations, one of those uncounted lives that
are buried without drums and trumpets under the foundations of
monumental successes. "I am now third lieutenant of the Victorieuse"
(she was the flagship of the French Pacific squadron at the time),
he said, detaching his shoulders from the wall a couple of inches
to introduce himself. I bowed slightly on my side of the table,
and told him I commanded a merchant vessel at present anchored in
Rushcutters' Bay. He had "remarked" her,--a pretty little craft.
He was very civil about it in his impassive way. I even fancy he
went the length of tilting his head in compliment as he repeated,
breathing visibly the while, "Ah, yes. A little craft painted
black--very pretty--very pretty (tres coquet)." After a time
he twisted his body slowly to face the glass door on our right. "A
dull town (triste ville)," he observed, staring into the street. It was
a brilliant day; a southerly buster was raging, and we could see the
passers-by, men and women, buffeted by the wind on the sidewalks,
the sunlit fronts of the houses across the road blurred by the tall
whirls of dust. "I descended on shore," he said, "to stretch my legs
a little, but . . ." He didn't finish, and sank into the depths of his
repose. "Pray--tell me," he began, coming up ponderously, "what
was there at the bottom of this affair--precisely (au juste)? It is
curious. That dead man, for instance--and so on."
' "There were living men too," I said; "much more curious."
' "No doubt, no doubt," he agreed half audibly, then, as if after
mature consideration, murmured, "Evidently." I made no difficulty
in communicating to him what had interested me most in this affair.
It seemed as though he had a right to know: hadn't he spent
thirty hours on board the Palna--had he not taken the succession,
so to speak, had he not done "his possible"? He listened to me,
looking more priest-like than ever, and with what--probably on
account of his downcast eyes--had the appearance of devout concentration.
Once or twice he elevated his eyebrows (but without raising his eyelids),
as one would say "The devil!" Once he calmly exclaimed, "Ah, bah!"
under his breath, and when I had finished he pursed his lips in a
deliberate way and emitted a sort of sorrowful whistle.
'In any one else it might have been an evidence of boredom, a
sign of indifference; but he, in his occult way, managed to make
his immobility appear profoundly responsive, and as full of valuable
thoughts as an egg is of meat. What he said at last was nothing
more than a "Very interesting," pronounced politely, and not much
above a whisper. Before I got over my disappointment he added,
but as if speaking to himself, "That's it. That _is_ it." His chin seemed
to sink lower on his breast, his body to weigh heavier on his seat. I
was about to ask him what he meant, when a sort of preparatory
tremor passed over his whole person, as a faint ripple may be seen
upon stagnant water even before the wind is felt. "And so that poor
young man ran away along with the others," he said, with grave
tranquillity.
'I don't know what made me smile: it is the only genuine smile
of mine I can remember in connection with Jim's affair. But somehow
this simple statement of the matter sounded funny in French. . . .
"S'est enfui avec les autres," had said the lieutenant. And suddenly
I began to admire the discrimination of the man. He had made out
the point at once: he did get hold of the only thing I cared about.
I felt as though I were taking professional opinion on the case.
His imperturbable and mature calmness was that of an expert in
possession of the facts, and to whom one's perplexities are
mere child's-play. "Ah! The young, the young," he said indulgently.
"And after all, one does not die of it." "Die of what?" I asked
swiftly. "Of being afraid." He elucidated his meaning and sipped his drink.
'I perceived that the three last fingers of his wounded hand were
stiff and could not move independently of each other, so that he
took up his tumbler with an ungainly clutch. "One is always afraid.
One may talk, but . . ." He put down the glass awkwardly. . . .
"The fear, the fear--look you--it is always there." . . . He touched
his breast near a brass button, on the very spot where Jim had given
a thump to his own when protesting that there was nothing the
matter with his heart. I suppose I made some sign of dissent,
because he insisted, "Yes! yes! One talks, one talks; this is all very
fine; but at the end of the reckoning one is no cleverer than the next
man--and no more brave. Brave! This is always to be seen. I
have rolled my hump (roule ma bosse)," he said, using the slang
expression with imperturbable seriousness, "in all parts of the
world; I have known brave men--famous ones! Allez!" . . . He
drank carelessly. . . . "Brave--you conceive--in the Service--one
has got to be--the trade demands it (le metier veut ca). Is it not so?"
he appealed to me reasonably. "Eh bien! Each of them--I say each
of them, if he were an honest man--bien entendu--would confess
that there is a point--there is a point--for the best of us--there is
somewhere a point when you let go everything (vous lachez tout).
And you have got to live with that truth--do you see? Given a
certain combination of circumstances, fear is sure to come. Abominable
funk (un trac epouvantable). And even for those who do not
believe this truth there is fear all the same--the fear of themselves.
Absolutely so. Trust me. Yes. Yes. . . . At my age one knows what
one is talking about--que diable!" . . . He had delivered himself of
all this as immovably as though he had been the mouthpiece of
abstract wisdom, but at this point he heightened the effect of
detachment by beginning to twirl his thumbs slowly. "It's evident--
parbleu!" he continued; "for, make up your mind as much as you
like, even a simple headache or a fit of indigestion (un derangement
d'estomac) is enough to . . . Take me, for instance--I have made
my proofs. Eh bien! I, who am speaking to you, once . . ."
'He drained his glass and returned to his twirling. "No, no; one
does not die of it," he pronounced finally, and when I found he did
not mean to proceed with the personal anecdote, I was extremely
disappointed; the more so as it was not the sort of story, you know,
one could very well press him for. I sat silent, and he too, as if
nothing could please him better. Even his thumbs were still now.
Suddenly his lips began to move. "That is so," he resumed placidly.
"Man is born a coward (L'homme est ne poltron). It is a difficulty--
parbleu! It would be too easy other vise. But habit--habit--necessity--
do you see?--the eye of others--voila. One puts up with it.
And then the example of others who are no better than yourself,
and yet make good countenance. . . ."
'His voice ceased.
' "That young man--you will observe--had none of these inducements--at
least at the moment," I remarked.
'He raised his eyebrows forgivingly: "I don't say; I don't say.
The young man in question might have had the best dispositions--
the best dispositions," he repeated, wheezing a little.
' "I am glad to see you taking a lenient view," I said. "His own
feeling in the matter was--ah!--hopeful, and . . ."
'The shuffle of his feet under the table interrupted me. He drew
up his heavy eyelids. Drew up, I say--no other expression can
describe the steady deliberation of the act--and at last was disclosed
completely to me. I was confronted by two narrow grey circlets,
like two tiny steel rings around the profound blackness of the
pupils. The sharp glance, coming from that massive body, gave
a notion of extreme efficiency, like a razor-edge on a battle-axe.
"Pardon," he said punctiliously. His right hand went up, and he
swayed forward. "Allow me . . . I contended that one may get on
knowing very well that one's courage does not come of itself (ne
vient pas tout seul). There's nothing much in that to get upset
about. One truth the more ought not to make life impossible. . . .
But the honour--the honour, monsieur! . . . The honour . . . that
is real--that is! And what life may be worth when" . . . he got on
his feet with a ponderous impetuosity, as a startled ox might scramble
up from the grass . . . "when the honour is gone--ah ca! par
exemple--I can offer no opinion. I can offer no opinion--because--
monsieur--I know nothing of it."
'I had risen too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness into our
attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china dogs on a
mantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked the bubble. The
blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon
our conversation, and made it a thing of empty sounds. "Very
well," I said, with a disconcerted smile; "but couldn't it reduce
itself to not being found out?" He made as if to retort readily, but
when he spoke he had changed his mind. "This, monsieur, is too
fine for me--much above me--I don't think about it." He bowed
heavily over his cap, which he held before him by the peak, between
the thumb and the forefinger of his wounded hand. I bowed too.
We bowed together: we scraped our feet at each other with much
ceremony, while a dirty specimen of a waiter looked on critically,
as though he had paid for the performance. "Serviteur," said the
Frenchman. Another scrape. "Monsieur" . . . "Monsieur." . . .
The glass door swung behind his burly back. I saw the southerly
buster get hold of him and drive him down wind with his hand to
his head, his shoulders braced, and the tails of his coat blown hard
against his legs.
'I sat down again alone and discouraged--discouraged about
Jim's case. If you wonder that after more than three years it had
preserved its actuality, you must know that I had seen him only
very lately. I had come straight from Samarang, where I had loaded
a cargo for Sydney: an utterly uninteresting bit of business,--what
Charley here would call one of my rational transactions,--and in
Samarang I had seen something of Jim. He was then working for De
Jongh, on my recommendation. Water-clerk. "My representative
afloat," as De Jongh called him. You can't imagine a mode of life
more barren of consolation, less capable of being invested with a
spark of glamour--unless it be the business of an insurance canvasser.
Little Bob Stanton--Charley here knew him well--had gone through
that experience. The same who got drowned afterwards trying to save
a lady's-maid in the Sephora disaster. A case of collision on a hazy
morning off the Spanish coast--you may remember. All the passengers
had been packed tidily into the boats and shoved clear of the ship,
when Bob sheered alongside again and scrambled back on deck to fetch
that girl. How she had been left behind I can't make out; anyhow,
she had gone completely crazy--wouldn't leave the ship--held to the
rail like grim death. The wrestling-match could be seen plainly from
the boats; but poor Bob was the shortest chief mate in the merchant
service, and the woman stood five feet ten in her shoes and was as
strong as a horse, I've been told. So it went on, pull devil, pull
baker, the wretched girl screaming all the time, and Bob letting out
a yell now and then to warn his boat to keep well clear of the ship.
One of the hands told me, hiding a smile at the recollection, "It was
for all the world, sir, like a naughty youngster fighting with his
mother." The same old chap said that "At the last we could see that
Mr. Stanton had given up hauling at the gal, and just stood by looking
at her, watchful like. We thought afterwards he must've been reckoning
that, maybe, the rush of water would tear her away from the rail
by-and-by and give him a show to save her. We daren't come alongside
for our life; and after a bit the old ship went down all on a sudden
with a lurch to starboard--plop. The suck in was something awful.
We never saw anything alive or dead come up." Poor Bob's spell of
shore-life had been one of the complications of a love affair, I
believe. He fondly hoped he had done with the sea for ever, and made
sure he had got hold of all the bliss on earth, but it came to
canvassing in the end. Some cousin of his in Liverpool put up to it.
He used to tell us his experiences in that line. He made us laugh till
we cried, and, not altogether displeased at the effect, undersized and
bearded to the waist like a gnome, he would tiptoe amongst us and say,
"It's all very well for you beggars to laugh, but my immortal soul was
shrivelled down to the size of a parched pea after a week of that work."
I don't know how Jim's soul accommodated itself to the new conditions of
his life--I was kept too busy in getting him something to do that would
keep body and soul together--but I am pretty certain his adventurous
fancy was suffering all the pangs of starvation. It had certainly
nothing to feed upon in this new calling. It was distressing to see him
at it, though he tackled it with a stubborn serenity for which I must
give him full credit. I kept my eye on his shabby plodding with a sort
of notion that it was a punishment for the heroics of his fancy--an
expiation for his craving after more glamour than he could carry. He
had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse, and now he
was condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger's donkey. He did
it very well. He shut himself in, put his head down, said never a word.
Very well; very well indeed--except for certain fantastic and violent
outbreaks, on the deplorable occasions when the irrepressible Patna case
cropped up. Unfortunately that scandal of the Eastern seas would not die
out. And this is the reason why I could never feel I had done with Jim
for good.
'I sat thinking of him after the French lieutenant had left, not,
however, in connection with De Jongh's cool and gloomy backshop,
where we had hurriedly shaken hands not very long ago, but
as I had seen him years before in the last flickers of the candle, alone
with me in the long gallery of the Malabar House, with the chill
and the darkness of the night at his back. The respectable sword of
his country's law was suspended over his head. To-morrow--or
was it to-day? (midnight had slipped by long before we parted)--the
marble-faced police magistrate, after distributing fines and terms of
imprisonment in the assault-and-battery case, would take up the
awful weapon and smite his bowed neck. Our communion in the
night was uncommonly like a last vigil with a condemned man. He
was guilty too. He was guilty--as I had told myself repeatedly,
guilty and done for; nevertheless, I wished to spare him the mere
detail of a formal execution. I don't pretend to explain the reasons
of my desire--I don't think I could; but if you haven't got a sort of
notion by this time, then I must have been very obscure in my
narrative, or you too sleepy to seize upon the sense of my words. I
don't defend my morality. There was no morality in the impulse
which induced me to lay before him Brierly's plan of evasion--I
may call it--in all its primitive simplicity. There were the rupees--
absolutely ready in my pocket and very much at his service. Oh! a
loan; a loan of course--and if an introduction to a man (in Rangoon)
who could put some work in his way . . . Why! with the greatest
pleasure. I had pen, ink, and paper in my room on the first floor
And even while I was speaking I was impatient to begin the letter--
day, month, year, 2.30 A.M. . . . for the sake of our old friendship
I ask you to put some work in the way of Mr. James So-and-so, in
whom, &c., &c. . . . I was even ready to write in that strain about
him. If he had not enlisted my sympathies he had done better for
himself--he had gone to the very fount and origin of that sentiment
he had reached the secret sensibility of my egoism. I am concealing
nothing from you, because were I to do so my action would appear
more unintelligible than any man's action has the right to be, and--
in the second place--to-morrow you will forget my sincerity along
with the other lessons of the past. In this transaction, to speak
grossly and precisely, I was the irreproachable man; but the subtle
intentions of my immorality were defeated by the moral simplicity
of the criminal. No doubt he was selfish too, but his selfishness had
a higher origin, a more lofty aim. I discovered that, say what I
would, he was eager to go through the ceremony of execution, and
I didn't say much, for I felt that in argument his youth would tell
against me heavily: he believed where I had already ceased to doubt.
There was something fine in the wildness of his unexpressed, hardly
formulated hope. "Clear out! Couldn't think of it," he said, with a
shake of the head. "I make you an offer for which I neither demand
nor expect any sort of gratitude," I said; "you shall repay the money
when convenient, and . . ." "Awfully good of you," he muttered
without looking up. I watched him narrowly: the future must have
appeared horribly uncertain to him; but he did not falter, as though
indeed there had been nothing wrong with his heart. I felt angry--
not for the first time that night. "The whole wretched business," I
said, "is bitter enough, I should think, for a man of your kind . . ."
"It is, it is," he whispered twice, with his eyes fixed on the floor. It
was heartrending. He towered above the light, and I could see the
down on his cheek, the colour mantling warm under the smooth
skin of his face. Believe me or not, I say it was outrageously
heartrending. It provoked me to brutality. "Yes," I said; "and allow me
to confess that I am totally unable to imagine what advantage you
can expect from this licking of the dregs." "Advantage!" he murmured
out of his stillness. "I am dashed if I do," I said, enraged.
"I've been trying to tell you all there is in it," he went on slowly,
as if meditating something unanswerable. "But after all, it is _my_
trouble." I opened my mouth to retort, and discovered suddenly
that I'd lost all confidence in myself; and it was as if he too had
given me up, for he mumbled like a man thinking half aloud. "Went
away . . . went into hospitals. . . . Not one of them would face
it. . . . They! . . ." He moved his hand slightly to imply disdain.
"But I've got to get over this thing, and I mustn't shirk any of it
or . . . I won't shirk any of it." He was silent. He gazed as though
he had been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the passing
expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution--reflected them in
turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of
unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by austere
shades. "Oh! nonsense, my dear fellow," I began. He had a movement
of impatience. "You don't seem to understand," he said incisively;
then looking at me without a wink, "I may have jumped, but I don't run
away." "I meant no offence," I said; and added stupidly, "Better men
than you have found it expedient to run, at times." He coloured all
over, while in my confusion I half-choked myself with my own tongue.
"Perhaps so," he said at last, "I am not good enough; I can't afford
it. I am bound to fight this thing down--I am fighting it now." I got
out of my chair and felt stiff all over. The silence was embarrassing,
and to put an end to it I imagined nothing better but to remark,
"I had no idea it was so late," in an airy tone. . . . "I dare say you
have had enough of this," he said brusquely: "and to tell you the
truth"--he began to look round for his hat--"so have I."
'Well! he had refused this unique offer. He had struck aside my
helping hand; he was ready to go now, and beyond the balustrade
the night seemed to wait for him very still, as though he had been
marked down for its prey. I heard his voice. "Ah! here it is." He
had found his hat. For a few seconds we hung in the wind. "What
will you do after--after . . ." I asked very low. "Go to the dogs as
likely as not," he answered in a gruff mutter. I had recovered my
wits in a measure, and judged best to take it lightly. "Pray remember,"
I said, "that I should like very much to see you again before
you go." "I don't know what's to prevent you. The damned thing
won't make me invisible," he said with intense bitterness,--"no
such luck." And then at the moment of taking leave he treated me
to a ghastly muddle of dubious stammers and movements, to an
awful display of hesitations. God forgive him--me! He had taken
it into his fanciful head that I was likely to make some difficulty as
to shaking hands. It was too awful for words. I believe I shouted
suddenly at him as you would bellow to a man you saw about to walk
over a cliff; I remember our voices being raised, the appearance of
a miserable grin on his face, a crushing clutch on my hand, a nervous
laugh. The candle spluttered out, and the thing was over at last,
with a groan that floated up to me in the dark. He got himself
away somehow. The night swallowed his form. He was a horrible
bungler. Horrible. I heard the quick crunch-crunch of the gravel
under his boots. He was running. Absolutely running, with nowhere
to go to. And he was not yet four-and-twenty.'
CHAPTER 14
'I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a slight
hesitation gave up my early morning visit to my ship. It was really very
wrong of me, because, though my chief mate was an excellent man
all round, he was the victim of such black imaginings that if he did
not get a letter from his wife at the expected time he would go quite
distracted with rage and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, quarrel
with all hands, and either weep in his cabin or develop such a
ferocity of temper as all but drove the crew to the verge of mutiny.
The thing had always seemed inexplicable to me: they had been
married thirteen years; I had a glimpse of her once, and, honestly,
I couldn't conceive a man abandoned enough to plunge into sin for
the sake of such an unattractive person. I don't know whether I
have not done wrong by refraining from putting that view before
poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for himself, and I
also suffered indirectly, but some sort of, no doubt, false delicacy
prevented me. The marital relations of seamen would make an
interesting subject, and I could tell you instances. . . . However,
this is not the place, nor the time, and we are concerned with Jim--
who was unmarried. If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all
the extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous
familiars of his youth would not let him run away from the block,
I, who of course can't be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly
impelled to go and see his head roll off. I wended my way towards
the court. I didn't hope to be very much impressed or edified, or
interested or even frightened--though, as long as there is any life
before one, a jolly good fright now and then is a salutary discipline.
But neither did I expect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness
of his punishment was in its chill and mean atmosphere. The real
significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the
community of mankind, and from that point of view he was no mean
traitor, but his execution was a hole-and-corner affair. There was
no high scaffolding, no scarlet cloth (did they have scarlet cloth on
Tower Hill? They should have had), no awe-stricken multitude to
be horrified at his guilt and be moved to tears at his fate--no air of
sombre retribution. There was, as I walked along, the clear sunshine,
a brilliance too passionate to be consoling, the streets full of
jumbled bits of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope: yellow, green,
blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an undraped shoulder, a
bullock-cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry in a
drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native
policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent
leather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful eyes as though
his migrating spirit were suffering exceedingly from that unforeseen--
what d'ye call 'em?--avatar--incarnation. Under the shade of a
lonely tree in the courtyard, the villagers connected with the
assault case sat in a picturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph
of a camp in a book of Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory
thread of smoke in the foreground and the pack-animals grazing. A
blank yellow wall rose behind overtopping the tree, reflecting the
glare. The court-room was sombre, seemed more vast. High up in the
dim space the punkahs were swaying short to and fro, to and fro.
Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed by the bare walls, remained
without stirring amongst the rows of empty benches, as if absorbed
in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had been beaten,--an obese
chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one fat breast bare and a
bright yellow caste-mark above the bridge of his nose,--sat in
pompous immobility: only his eyes glittered, rolling in the gloom,
and the nostrils dilated and collapsed violently as he breathed.
Brierly dropped into his seat looking done up, as though he had
spent the night in sprinting on a cinder-track. The pious sailing-ship
skipper appeared excited and made uneasy movements, as if restraining
with difficulty an impulse to stand up and exhort us earnestly to
prayer and repentance. The head of the magistrate, delicately pale
under the neatly arranged hair, resembled the head of a hopeless
invalid after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in bed.
He moved aside the vase of flowers--a bunch of purple with a few
pink blossoms on long stalks--and seizing in both hands a long sheet
of bluish paper, ran his eye over it, propped his forearms on the
edge of the desk, and began to read aloud in an even, distinct, and
careless voice.
'By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling
off--I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy
sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest
and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had
all the cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a
sentence of exile. This is how I looked at it that morning--and even
now I seem to see an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated
view of a common occurrence. You may imagine how strongly I felt
this at the time. Perhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring
myself to admit the finality. The thing was always with me, I was
always eager to take opinion on it, as though it had not been
practically settled: individual opinion--international opinion--by Jove!
That Frenchman's, for instance. His own country's pronouncement
was uttered in the passionless and definite phraseology a machine
would use, if machines could speak. The head of the magistrate was
half hidden by the paper, his brow was like alabaster.
'There were several questions before the court. The first as to
whether the ship was in every respect fit and seaworthy for the
voyage. The court found she was not. The next point, I remember,
was, whether up to the time of the accident the ship had been
navigated with proper and seamanlike care. They said Yes to that,
goodness knows why, and then they declared that there was no
evidence to show the exact cause of the accident. A floating derelict
probably. I myself remember that a Norwegian barque bound out
with a cargo of pitch-pine had been given up as missing about that
time, and it was just the sort of craft that would capsize in a squall
and float bottom up for months--a kind of maritime ghoul on the
prowl to kill ships in the dark. Such wandering corpses are common
enough in the North Atlantic, which is haunted by all the terrors
of the sea,--fogs, icebergs, dead ships bent upon mischief, and long
sinister gales that fasten upon one like a vampire till all the strength
and the spirit and even hope are gone, and one feels like the empty
shell of a man. But there--in those seas--the incident was rare
enough to resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent providence,
which, unless it had for its object the killing of a donkeyman
and the bringing of worse than death upon Jim, appeared an utterly
aimless piece of devilry. This view occurring to me took off my
attention. For a time I was aware of the magistrate's voice as a sound
merely; but in a moment it shaped itself into distinct words . . .
"in utter disregard of their plain duty," it said. The next sentence
escaped me somehow, and then . . . "abandoning in the moment
of danger the lives and property confided to their charge" . . . went
on the voice evenly, and stopped. A pair of eyes under the white
forehead shot darkly a glance above the edge of the paper. I looked
for Jim hurriedly, as though I had expected him to disappear. He
was very still--but he was there. He sat pink and fair and extremely
attentive. "Therefore, . . ." began the voice emphatically. He
stared with parted lips, hanging upon the words of the man behind
the desk. These came out into the stillness wafted on the wind made
by the punkahs, and I, watching for their effect upon him, caught
only the fragments of official language. . . . "The Court. . .
Gustav So-and-so . . . master . . . native of Germany . . . James
So-and-so. . . mate . . . certificates cancelled." A silence fell.
The magistrate had dropped the paper, and, leaning sideways on the
arm of his chair, began to talk with Brierly easily. People started
to move out; others were pushing in, and I also made for the door.
Outside I stood still, and when Jim passed me on his way to the
gate, I caught at his arm and detained him. The look he gave discomposed
me, as though I had been responsible for his state he looked at me
as if I had been the embodied evil of life. "It's all over," I
stammered. "Yes," he said thickly. "And now let no man . . ." He jerked
his arm out of my grasp. I watched his back as he went away. It was
a long street, and he remained in sight for some time. He walked
rather slow, and straddling his legs a little, as if he had found
it difficult to keep a straight line. Just before I lost him I
fancied he staggered a bit.
' "Man overboard," said a deep voice behind me. Turning round, I
saw a fellow I knew slightly, a West Australian; Chester was his
name. He, too, had been looking after Jim. He was a man with an
immense girth of chest, a rugged, clean-shaved face of mahogany
colour, and two blunt tufts of iron-grey, thick, wiry hairs
on his upper lip. He had been pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler too,
I believe; in his own words--anything and everything a man may
be at sea, but a pirate. The Pacific, north and south, was his proper
hunting-ground; but he had wandered so far afield looking for a
cheap steamer to buy. Lately he had discovered--so he said--a
guano island somewhere, but its approaches were dangerous, and
the anchorage, such as it was, could not be considered safe, to say
the least of it. "As good as a gold-mine," he would exclaim. "Right
bang in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if it's true enough
that you can get no holding-ground anywhere in less than forty
fathom, then what of that? There are the hurricanes, too. But it's
a first-rate thing. As good as a gold-mine--better! Yet there's not
a fool of them that will see it. I can't get a skipper or a shipowner
to go near the place. So I made up my mind to cart the blessed stuff
myself." . . . This was what he required a steamer for, and I knew
he was just then negotiating enthusiastically with a Parsee firm for
an old, brig-rigged, sea-anachronism of ninety horse-power. We
had met and spoken together several times. He looked knowingly
after Jim. "Takes it to heart?" he asked scornfully. "Very much,"
I said. "Then he's no good," he opined. "What's all the to-do
about? A bit of ass's skin. That never yet made a man. You must
see things exactly as they are--if you don't, you may just as well
give in at once. You will never do anything in this world. Look at
me. I made it a practice never to take anything to heart." "Yes," I
said, "you see things as they are." "I wish I could see my partner
coming along, that's what I wish to see," he said. "Know my partner?
Old Robinson. Yes; _the_ Robinson. Don't _you_ know? The notorious Robinson.
The man who smuggled more opium and bagged more seals in his time than
any loose Johnny now alive. They say he used to board the
sealing-schooners up Alaska way when the fog was so thick that the
Lord God, He alone, could tell one man from another. Holy-Terror
Robinson. That's the man. He is with me in that guano thing. The best
chance he ever came across in his life." He put his lips to my ear.
"Cannibal?--well, they used to give him the name years and years ago.
You remember the story? A shipwreck on the west side of Stewart
Island; that's right; seven of them got ashore, and it seems they did
not get on very well together. Some men are too cantankerous for
anything--don't know how to make the best of a bad job--don't see
things as they are--as they _are_, my boy! And then what's the consequence?
Obvious! Trouble, trouble; as likely as not a knock on the head; and
serve 'em right too. That sort is the most useful when it's dead. The
story goes that a boat of Her Majesty's ship Wolverine found him
kneeling on the kelp, naked as the day he was born, and chanting some
psalm-tune or other; light snow was falling at the time. He waited
till the boat was an oar's length from the shore, and then up and
away. They chased him for an hour up and down the boulders, till
a marihe flung a stone that took him behind the ear providentially
and knocked him senseless. Alone? Of course. But that's like that
tale of sealing-schooners; the Lord God knows the right and the
wrong of that story. The cutter did not investigate much. They
wrapped him in a boat-cloak and took him off as quick as they could,
with a dark night coming on, the weather threatening, and the ship
firing recall guns every five minutes. Three weeks afterwards he was
as well as ever. He didn't allow any fuss that was made on shore to
upset him; he just shut his lips tight, and let people screech. It
was bad enough to have lost his ship, and all he was worth besides,
without paying attention to the hard names they called him. That's
the man for me." He lifted his arm for a signal to some one down the
street. "He's got a little money, so I had to let him into my thing.
Had to! It would have been sinful to throw away such a find, and I
was cleaned out myself. It cut me to the quick, but I could see the
matter just as it was, and if I _must_ share--thinks I--with any man,
then give me Robinson. I left him at breakfast in the hotel to come
to court, because I've an idea. . . . Ah! Good morning, Captain
Robinson. . . . Friend of mine, Captain Robinson."
'An emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill, a solah topi with
a green-lined rim on a head trembling with age, joined us after
crossing the street in a trotting shuffle, and stood propped with
both hands on the handle of an umbrella. A white beard with amber
streaks hung lumpily down to his waist. He blinked his creased
eyelids at me in a bewildered way. "How do you do? how do you
do?" he piped amiably, and tottered. "A little deaf," said Chester
aside. "Did you drag him over six thousand miles to get a cheap
steamer?" I asked. "I would have taken him twice round the world
as soon as look at him," said Chester with immense energy. "The
steamer will be the making of us, my lad. Is it my fault that every
skipper and shipowner in the whole of blessed Australasia turns out
a blamed fool? Once I talked for three hours to a man in Auckland.
'Send a ship,' I said, 'send a ship. I'll give you half of the first cargo
for yourself, free gratis for nothing--just to make a good start.'
Says he, 'I wouldn't do it if there was no other place on earth to
send a ship to.' Perfect ass, of course. Rocks, currents, no anchorage,
sheer cliff to lay to, no insurance company would take the risk,
didn't see how he could get loaded under three years. Ass! I nearly
went on my knees to him. 'But look at the thing as it is,' says I.
'Damn rocks and hurricanes. Look at it as it is. There's guano there
Queensland sugar-planters would fight for--fight for on the quay,
I tell you.' . . . What can you do with a fool? . . . 'That's one of
your little jokes, Chester,' he says. . . . Joke! I could have wept.
Ask Captain Robinson here. . . . And there was another shipowning
fellow--a fat chap in a white waistcoat in Wellington, who seemed
to think I was up to some swindle or other. 'I don't know what sort
of fool you're looking for,' he says, 'but I am busy just now. Good
morning.' I longed to take him in my two hands and smash him through
the window of his own office. But I didn't. I was as mild as a curate.
'Think of it,' says I. '_Do_ think it over. I'll call to-morrow.'
He grunted something about being 'out all day.' On the stairs I felt
ready to beat my head against the wall from vexation. Captain Robinson
here can tell you. It was awful to think of all that lovely stuff
lying waste under the sun--stuff that would send the sugar-cane shooting
sky-high. The making of Queensland! The making of Queensland! And in
Brisbane, where I went to have a last try, they gave me the name of a
lunatic. Idiots! The only sensible man I came across was the cabman
who drove me about. A broken-down swell he was, I fancy. Hey! Captain
Robinson? You remember I told you about my cabby in Brisbane--don't
you? The chap had a wonderful eye for things. He saw it all in a jiffy.
It was a real pleasure to talk with him. One evening after a devil of a
day amongst shipowners I felt so bad that, says I, 'I must get drunk.
Come along; I must get drunk, or I'll go mad.' 'I am your man,' he
says; 'go ahead.' I don't know what I would have done without him.
Hey! Captain Robinson."
'He poked the ribs of his partner. "He! he! he!" laughed the
Ancient, looked aimlessly down the street, then peered at me doubtfully
with sad, dim pupils. . . . "He! he! he!" . . . He leaned heavier on
the umbrella, and dropped his gaze on the ground. I needn't tell
you I had tried to get away several times, but Chester had foiled
every attempt by simply catching hold of my coat. "One minute.
I've a notion." "What's your infernal notion?" I exploded at last.
"If you think I am going in with you . . ." "No, no, my boy. Too
late, if you wanted ever so much. We've got a steamer." "You've
got the ghost of a steamer," I said. "Good enough for a start--
there's no superior nonsense about us. Is there, Captain Robinson?"
"No! no! no!" croaked the old man without lifting his eyes, and the
senile tremble of his head became almost fierce with determination.
"I understand you know that young chap," said Chester, with a
nod at the street from which Jim had disappeared long ago. "He's
been having grub with you in the Malabar last night--so I was
told."
'I said that was true, and after remarking that he too liked to live
well and in style, only that, for the present, he had to be saving of
every penny--"none too many for the business! Isn't that so, Captain
Robinson?"--he squared his shoulders and stroked his dumpy
moustache, while the notorious Robinson, coughing at his side,
clung more than ever to the handle of the umbrella, and seemed
ready to subside passively into a heap of old bones. "You see, the
old chap has all the money," whispered Chester confidentially.
"I've been cleaned out trying to engineer the dratted thing. But
wait a bit, wait a bit. The good time is coming." . . . He seemed
suddenly astonished at the signs of impatience I gave. "Oh,
crakee!" he cried; "I am telling you of the biggest thing that ever
was, and you . . ." "I have an appointment," I pleaded mildly.
"What of that?" he asked with genuine surprise; "let it wait."
"That's exactly what I am doing now," I remarked; "hadn't you
better tell me what it is you want?" "Buy twenty hotels like that,"
he growled to himself; "and every joker boarding in them too--
twenty times over." He lifted his head smartly "I want that young
chap." "I don't understand," I said. "He's no good, is he?" said
Chester crisply. "I know nothing about it," I protested. "Why, you
told me yourself he was taking it to heart," argued Chester. "Well,
in my opinion a chap who . . . Anyhow, he can't be much good;
but then you see I am on the look-out for somebody, and I've just
got a thing that will suit him. I'll give him a job on my island." He
nodded significantly. "I'm going to dump forty coolies there--if
I've to steal 'em. Somebody must work the stuff. Oh! I mean to act
square: wooden shed, corrugated-iron roof--I know a man in
Hobart who will take my bill at six months for the materials. I do.
Honour bright. Then there's the water-supply. I'll have to fly round
and get somebody to trust me for half-a-dozen second-hand iron
tanks. Catch rain-water, hey? Let him take charge. Make him
supreme boss over the coolies. Good idea, isn't it? What do you
say?" "There are whole years when not a drop of rain falls on
Walpole," I said, too amazed to laugh. He bit his lip and seemed
bothered. "Oh, well, I will fix up something for them--or land a
supply. Hang it all! That's not the question."
'I said nothing. I had a rapid vision of Jim perched on a shadowless
rock, up to his knees in guano, with the screams of sea-birds in
his ears, the incandescent ball of the sun above his head; the
empty sky and the empty ocean all a-quiver, simmering together in
the heat as far as the eye could reach. "I wouldn't advise my worst
enemy . . ." I began. "What's the matter with you?" cried Chester;
"I mean to give him a good screw--that is, as soon as the thing is
set going, of course. It's as easy as falling off a log. Simply nothing
to do; two six-shooters in his belt . . . Surely he wouldn't be afraid
of anything forty coolies could do--with two six-shooters and he
the only armed man too! It's much better than it looks. I want you
to help me to talk him over." "No!" I shouted. Old Robinson lifted
his bleared eyes dismally for a moment, Chester looked at me with
infinite contempt. "So you wouldn't advise him?" he uttered
slowly. "Certainly not," I answered, as indignant as though he had
requested me to help murder somebody; "moreover, I am sure he
wouldn't. He is badly cut up, but he isn't mad as far as I know."
"He is no earthly good for anything," Chester mused aloud. "He
would just have done for me. If you only could see a thing as it is,
you would see it's the very thing for him. And besides . . . Why!
it's the most splendid, sure chance . . ." He got angry suddenly.
"I must have a man. There! . . ." He stamped his foot and smiled
unpleasantly. "Anyhow, I could guarantee the island wouldn't sink
under him--and I believe he is a bit particular on that point."
"Good morning," I said curtly. He looked at me as though I had
been an incomprehensible fool. . . . "Must be moving, Captain
Robinson," he yelled suddenly into the old man's ear. "These
Parsee Johnnies are waiting for us to clinch the bargain." He took
his partner under the arm with a firm grip, swung him round, and,
unexpectedly, leered at me over his shoulder. "I was trying to do
him a kindness," he asserted, with an air and tone that made my
blood boil. "Thank you for nothing--in his name," I rejoined.
"Oh! you are devilish smart," he sneered; "but you are like the rest
of them. Too much in the clouds. See what you will do with him."
"I don't know that I want to do anything with him." "Don't you?"
he spluttered; his grey moustache bristled with anger, and by his
side the notorious Robinson, propped on the umbrella, stood with
his back to me, as patient and still as a worn-out cab-horse. "I
haven't found a guano island," I said. "It's my belief you wouldn't
know one if you were led right up to it by the hand," he riposted
quickly; "and in this world you've got to see a thing first, before
you can make use of it. Got to see it through and through at that,
neither more nor less." "And get others to see it, too," I insinuated,
with a glance at the bowed back by his side. Chester snorted at me.
"His eyes are right enough--don't you worry. He ain't a puppy."
"Oh, dear, no!" I said. "Come along, Captain Robinson," he
shouted, with a sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old
man's hat; the Holy Terror gave a submissive little jump. The ghost
of a steamer was waiting for them, Fortune on that fair isle! They
made a curious pair of Argonauts. Chester strode on leisurely, well
set up, portly, and of conquering mien; the other, long, wasted,
drooping, and hooked to his arm, shuffled his withered shanks with
desperate haste.'
CHAPTER 15
'I did not start in search of Jim at once, only because I had really
an appointment which I could not neglect. Then, as ill-luck would
have it, in my agent's office I was fastened upon by a fellow fresh
from Madagascar with a little scheme for a wonderful piece of
business. It had something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince
Ravonalo something; but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity
of some admiral--Admiral Pierre, I think. Everything turned on that,
and the chap couldn't find words strong enough to express his
confidence. He had globular eyes starting out of his head with
a fishy glitter, bumps on his forehead, and wore his long hair
brushed back without a parting. He had a favourite phrase which
he kept on repeating triumphantly, "The minimum of risk with the
maximum of profit is my motto. What?" He made my head ache,
spoiled my tiffin, but got his own out of me all right; and as soon
as I had shaken him off, I made straight for the water-side. I caught
sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. Three native
boatmen quarrelling over five annas were making an awful row at
his elbow. He didn't hear me come up, but spun round as if the
slight contact of my finger had released a catch. "I was looking,"
he stammered. I don't remember what I said, not much anyhow,
but he made no difficulty in following me to the hotel.
'He followed me as manageable as a little child, with an obedient
air, with no sort of manifestation, rather as though he had been
waiting for me there to come along and carry him off. I need not
have been so surprised as I was at his tractability. On all the round
earth, which to some seems so big and that others affect to consider
as rather smaller than a mustard-seed, he had no place where he
could--what shall I say?--where he could withdraw. That's it!
Withdraw--be alone with his loneliness. He walked by my side
very calm, glancing here and there, and once turned his head to
look after a Sidiboy fireman in a cutaway coat and yellowish
trousers, whose black face had silky gleams like a lump of anthracite
coal. I doubt, however, whether he saw anything, or even remained
all the time aware of my companionship, because if I had not edged
him to the left here, or pulled him to the right there, I believe he
would have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped
by a wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my bedroom,
and sat down at once to write letters. This was the only place in the
world (unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef--but that was not so
handy) where he could have it out with himself without being bothered
by the rest of the universe. The damned thing--as he had expressed it--had
not made him invisible, but I behaved exactly as though he were. No
sooner in my chair I bent over my writing-desk like a medieval scribe,
and, but for the movement of the hand holding the pen, remained
anxiously quiet. I can't say I was frightened; but I certainly
kept as still as if there had been something dangerous in the room,
that at the first hint of a movement on my part would be provoked to
pounce upon me. There was not much in the room--you know how these
bedrooms are--a sort of four-poster bedstead under a mosquito-net,
two or three chairs, the table I was writing at, a bare floor. A
glass door opened on an upstairs verandah, and he stood with his
face to it, having a hard time with all possible privacy. Dusk fell;
I lit a candle with the greatest economy of movement and as much
prudence as though it were an illegal proceeding. There is no doubt
that he had a very hard time of it, and so had I, even to the point,
I must own, of wishing him to the devil, or on Walpole Reef at least.
It occurred to me once or twice that, after all, Chester was, perhaps,
the man to deal effectively with such a disaster. That strange
idealist had found a practical use for it at once--unerringly, as it
were. It was enough to make one suspect that, maybe, he really could
see the true aspect of things that appeared mysterious or utterly
hopeless to less imaginative persons. I wrote and wrote; I liquidated
all the arrears of my correspondence, and then went on writing to
people who had no reason whatever to expect from me a gossipy letter
about nothing at all. At times I stole a sidelong glance. He was
rooted to the spot, but convulsive shudders ran down his back; his
shoulders would heave suddenly. He was fighting, he was fighting--mostly
for his breath, as it seemed. The massive shadows, cast all one way
from the straight flame of the candle, seemed possessed of gloomy
consciousness; the immobility of the furniture had to my furtive eye an air
of attention. I was becoming fanciful in the midst of my industrious
scribbling; and though, when the scratching of my pen stopped for
a moment, there was complete silence and stillness in the room, I
suffered from that profound disturbance and confusion of thought
which is caused by a violent and menacing uproar--of a heavy gale
at sea, for instance. Some of you may know what I mean: that
mingled anxiety, distress, and irritation with a sort of craven feeling
creeping in--not pleasant to acknowledge, but which gives a quite
special merit to one's endurance. I don't claim any merit for standing
the stress of Jim's emotions; I could take refuge in the letters;
I could have written to strangers if necessary. Suddenly, as I was
taking up a fresh sheet of notepaper, I heard a low sound, the first
sound that, since we had been shut up together, had come to my
ears in the dim stillness of the room. I remained with my head
down, with my hand arrested. Those who have kept vigil by a
sick-bed have heard such faint sounds in the stillness of the night
watches, sounds wrung from a racked body, from a weary soul. He
pushed the glass door with such force that all the panes rang: he
stepped out, and I held my breath, straining my ears without knowing
what else I expected to hear. He was really taking too much
to heart an empty formality which to Chester's rigorous criticism
seemed unworthy the notice of a man who could see things as they
were. An empty formality; a piece of parchment. Well, well. As to
an inaccessible guano deposit, that was another story altogether.
One could intelligibly break one's heart over that. A feeble burst of
many voices mingled with the tinkle of silver and glass floated up
from the dining-room below; through the open door the outer edge
of the light from my candle fell on his back faintly; beyond all was
black; he stood on the brink of a vast obscurity, like a lonely figure
by the shore of a sombre and hopeless ocean. There was the Walpole
Reef in it--to be sure--a speck in the dark void, a straw for the
drowning man. My compassion for him took the shape of the thought
that I wouldn't have liked his people to see him at that moment. I
found it trying myself. His back was no longer shaken by his gasps;
he stood straight as an arrow, faintly visible and still; and the
meaning of this stillness sank to the bottom of my soul like lead
into the water, and made it so heavy that for a second I wished
heartily that the only course left open for me was to pay for his
funeral. Even the law had done with him. To bury him would
have been such an easy kindness! It would have been so much in
accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in putting out
of sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our
mortality; all that makes against our efficiency--the memory of our
failures, the hints of our undying fears, the bodies of our dead
friends. Perhaps he did take it too much to heart. And if so then--
Chester's offer. . . . At this point I took up a fresh sheet and began
to write resolutely. There was nothing but myself between him and
the dark ocean. I had a sense of responsibility. If I spoke, would
that motionless and suffering youth leap into the obscurity--clutch
at the straw? I found out how difficult it may be sometimes to make
a sound. There is a weird power in a spoken word. And why the
devil not? I was asking myself persistently while I drove on with
my writing. All at once, on the blank page, under the very point of
the pen, the two figures of Chester and his antique partner, very
distinct and complete, would dodge into view with stride and gestures,
as if reproduced in the field of some optical toy. I would watch
them for a while. No! They were too phantasmal and extravagant to
enter into any one's fate. And a word carries far--very far--deals
destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. I
said nothing; and he, out there with his back to the light, as if
bound and gagged by all the invisible foes of man, made no stir and
made no sound.'
CHAPTER 16
'The time was coming when I should see him loved, trusted,
admired, with a legend of strength and prowess forming round his
name as though he had been the stuff of a hero. It's true--I assure
you; as true as I'm sitting here talking about him in vain. He, on
his side, had that faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his
desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would
know no lover and no adventurer. He captured much honour and an
Arcadian happiness (I won't say anything about innocence) in the
bush, and it was as good to him as the honour and the Arcadian
happiness of the streets to another man. Felicity, felicity--how
shall I say it?--is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude:
the flavour is with you--with you alone, and you can make it as
intoxicating as you please. He was of the sort that would drink
deep, as you may guess from what went before. I found him, if not
exactly intoxicated, then at least flushed with the elixir at his
lips. He had not obtained it at once. There had been, as you know,
a period of probation amongst infernal ship-chandlers, during which
he had suffered and I had worried about--about--my trust--you may
call it. I don't know that I am completely reassured now, after
beholding him in all his brilliance. That was my last view of him--in
a strong light, dominating, and yet in complete accord with his
surroundings--with the life of the forests and with the life of men.
I own that I was impressed, but I must admit to myself that after all
this is not the lasting impression. He was protected by his isolation,
alone of his own superior kind, in close touch with Nature, that keeps
faith on such easy terms with her lovers. But I cannot fix before my
eye the image of his safety. I shall always remember him as seen
through the open door of my room, taking, perhaps, too much to heart
the mere consequences of his failure. I am pleased, of course, that
some good--and even some splendour--came out of my endeavours; but at
times it seems to me it would have been better for my peace of mind if
I had not stood between him and Chester's confoundedly generous offer.
I wonder what his exuberant imagination would have made of Walpole
islet--that most hopelessly forsaken crumb of dry land on the face of
the waters. It is not likely I would ever have heard, for I must tell
you that Chester, after calling at some Australian port to patch up
his brig-rigged sea-anachronism, steamed out into the Pacific with a
crew of twenty-two hands all told, and the only news having a possible
bearing upon the mystery of his fate was the news of a hurricane which
is supposed to have swept in its course over the Walpole shoals, a
month or so afterwards. Not a vestige of the Argonauts ever turned up;
not a sound came out of the waste. Finis! The Pacific is the most
discreet of live, hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic can keep
a secret too, but more in the manner of a grave.
'And there is a sense of blessed finality in such discretion, which
is what we all more or less sincerely are ready to admit--for what
else is it that makes the idea of death supportable? End! Finis!
the potent word that exorcises from the house of life the haunting
shadow of fate. This is what--notwithstanding the testimony of my
eyes and his own earnest assurances--I miss when I look back upon
Jim's success. While there's life there is hope, truly; but there is
fear too. I don't mean to say that I regret my action, nor will I
pretend that I can't sleep o' nights in consequence; still, the idea
obtrudes itself that he made so much of his disgrace while it is the
guilt alone that matters. He was not--if I may say so--clear to me.
He was not clear. And there is a suspicion he was not clear to himself
either. There were his fine sensibilities, his fine feelings, his fine
longings--a sort of sublimated, idealised selfishness. He was--if
you allow me to say so--very fine; very fine--and very unfortunate.
A little coarser nature would not have borne the strain; it would
have had to come to terms with itself--with a sigh, with a grunt,
or even with a guffaw; a still coarser one would have remained
invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting.
'But he was too interesting or too unfortunate to be thrown to
the dogs, or even to Chester. I felt this while I sat with my face over
the paper and he fought and gasped, struggling for his breath in
that terribly stealthy way, in my room; I felt it when he rushed out
on the verandah as if to fling himself over--and didn't; I felt it more
and more all the time he remained outside, faintly lighted on the
background of night, as if standing on the shore of a sombre and
hopeless sea.
'An abrupt heavy rumble made me lift my head. The noise
seemed to roll away, and suddenly a searching and violent glare fell
on the blind face of the night. The sustained and dazzling flickers
seemed to last for an unconscionable time. The growl of the thunder
increased steadily while I looked at him, distinct and black, planted
solidly upon the shores of a sea of light. At the moment of greatest
brilliance the darkness leaped back with a culminating crash, and
he vanished before my dazzled eyes as utterly as though he had been
blown to atoms. A blustering sigh passed; furious hands seemed to
tear at the shrubs, shake the tops of the trees below, slam doors,
break window-panes, all along the front of the building. He stepped
in, closing the door behind him, and found me bending over the
table: my sudden anxiety as to what he would say was very great,
and akin to a fright. "May I have a cigarette?" he asked. I gave a
push to the box without raising my head. "I want--want--tobacco,"
he muttered. I became extremely buoyant. "Just a moment." I
grunted pleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. "That's
over," I heard him say. A single distant clap of thunder came from
the sea like a gun of distress. "The monsoon breaks up early this
year," he remarked conversationally, somewhere behind me. This
encouraged me to turn round, which I did as soon as I had finished
addressing the last envelope. He was smoking greedily in the middle
of the room, and though he heard the stir I made, he remained with
his back to me for a time.
' "Come--I carried it off pretty well," he said, wheeling suddenly.
"Something's paid off--not much. I wonder what's to come." His
face did not show any emotion, only it appeared a little darkened
and swollen, as though he had been holding his breath. He smiled
reluctantly as it were, and went on while I gazed up at him
mutely. . . . "Thank you, though--your room--jolly convenient--for
a chap--badly hipped." . . . The rain pattered and swished in the
garden; a water-pipe (it must have had a hole in it) performed
just outside the window a parody of blubbering woe with funny sobs
and gurgling lamentations, interrupted by jerky spasms of silence. . . .
"A bit of shelter," he mumbled and ceased.
'A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black framework
of the windows and ebbed out without any noise. I was thinking
how I had best approach him (I did not want to be flung off again)
when he gave a little laugh. "No better than a vagabond now" . . .
the end of the cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . "without
a single--single," he pronounced slowly; "and yet . . ." He
paused; the rain fell with redoubled violence. "Some day one's
bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again.
Must!" he whispered distinctly, glaring at my boots.
'I did not even know what it was he wished so much to regain,
what it was he had so terribly missed. It might have been so much
that it was impossible to say. A piece of ass's skin, according to
Chester. . . . He looked up at me inquisitively. "Perhaps. If life's
long enough," I muttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity.
"Don't reckon too much on it."
' "Jove! I feel as if nothing could ever touch me," he said in a
tone of sombre conviction. "If this business couldn't knock me
over, then there's no fear of there being not enough time to--climb
out, and . . ." He looked upwards.
'It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of
waifs and strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down
into all the gutters of the earth. As soon as he left my room, that
"bit of shelter," he would take his place in the ranks, and begin the
journey towards the bottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but
it was I, too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of
words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same way one dares not
move for fear of losing a slippery hold. It is when we try to grapple
with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible,
wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of
the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were
a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of
flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the
outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable,
and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp. It
was the fear of losing him that kept me silent, for it was borne
upon me suddenly and with unaccountable force that should I let
him slip away into the darkness I would never forgive myself.
' "Well. Thanks--once more. You've been--er--uncommonly--really
there's no word to . . . Uncommonly! I don't know why, I am sure.
I am afraid I don't feel as grateful as I would if the whole
thing hadn't been so brutally sprung on me. Because at bottom . . .
you, yourself . . ." He stuttered.
' "Possibly," I struck in. He frowned.
' "All the same, one is responsible." He watched me like a hawk.
' "And that's true, too," I said.
' "Well. I've gone with it to the end, and I don't intend to let any
man cast it in my teeth without--without--resenting it." He
clenched his fist.
' "There's yourself," I said with a smile--mirthless enough, God
knows--but he looked at me menacingly. "That's my business," he
said. An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face
like a vain and passing shadow. Next moment he looked a dear good
boy in trouble, as before. He flung away the cigarette. "Good-bye,"
he said, with the sudden haste of a man who had lingered too long
in view of a pressing bit of work waiting for him; and then for
a second or so he made not the slightest movement. The downpour
fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with
a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one's mind
the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined
mountains. No man could breast the colossal and headlong stream
that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness in which
we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. The perforated
pipe gurgled, choked, spat, and splashed in odious ridicule of a
swimmer fighting for his life. "It is raining," I remonstrated, "and
I . . ." "Rain or shine," he began brusquely, checked himself, and
walked to the window. "Perfect deluge," he muttered after a while:
he leaned his forehead on the glass. "It's dark, too."
' "Yes, it is very dark," I said.
'He pivoted on his heels, crossed the room, and had actually
opened the door leading into the corridor before I leaped up from
my chair. "Wait," I cried, "I want you to . . ." "I can't dine with
you again to-night," he flung at me, with one leg out of the room
already. "I haven't the slightest intention to ask you," I shouted.
At this he drew back his foot, but remained mistrustfully in the
very doorway. I lost no time in entreating him earnestly not to be
absurd; to come in and shut the door.'
CHAPTER 17
'He came in at last; but I believe it was mostly the rain that did
it; it was falling just then with a devastating violence which quieted
down gradually while we talked. His manner was very sober and
set; his bearing was that of a naturally taciturn man possessed by
an idea. My talk was of the material aspect of his position; it had
the sole aim of saving him from the degradation, ruin, and despair
that out there close so swiftly upon a friendless, homeless man; I
pleaded with him to accept my help; I argued reasonably: and every
time I looked up at that absorbed smooth face, so grave and youthful,
I had a disturbing sense of being no help but rather an obstacle
to some mysterious, inexplicable, impalpable striving of his
wounded spirit.
' "I suppose you intend to eat and drink and to sleep under
shelter in the usual way," I remember saying with irritation. "You
say you won't touch the money that is due to you." . . . He came
as near as his sort can to making a gesture of horror. (There were
three weeks and five days' pay owing him as mate of the Patna.)
"Well, that's too little to matter anyhow; but what will you do
to-morrow? Where will you turn? You must live . . ." "That isn't
the thing," was the comment that escaped him under his breath. I
ignored it, and went on combating what I assumed to be the scruples
of an exaggerated delicacy. "On every conceivable ground," I
concluded, "you must let me help you." "You can't," he said very
simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I could
detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which I
despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed
his well-proportioned bulk. "At any rate," I said, "I am able to
help what I can see of you. I don't pretend to do more." He shook
his head sceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. "But
I can," I insisted. "I can do even more. I _am_ doing more. I am
trusting you . . ." "The money . . ." he began. "Upon my word
you deserve being told to go to the devil," I cried, forcing the note
of indignation. He was startled, smiled, and I pressed my attack
home. "It isn't a question of money at all. You are too superficial,"
I said (and at the same time I was thinking to myself: Well, here
goes! And perhaps he is, after all). "Look at the letter I want you
to take. I am writing to a man of whom I've never asked a favour,
and I am writing about you in terms that one only ventures to use
when speaking of an intimate friend. I make myself unreservedly
responsible for you. That's what I am doing. And really if you will
only reflect a little what that means . . ."
'He lifted his head. The rain had passed away; only the water-pipe
went on shedding tears with an absurd drip, drip outside the
window. It was very quiet in the room, whose shadows huddled
together in corners, away from the still flame of the candle flaring
upright in the shape of a dagger; his face after a while seemed
suffused by a reflection of a soft light as if the dawn had broken
already.
' "Jove!" he gasped out. "It is noble of you!"
'Had he suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, I could
not have felt more humiliated. I thought to myself--Serve me right
for a sneaking humbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face,
but I perceived it was not a mocking brightness. All at once he
sprang into jerky agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures
that are worked by a string. His arms went up, then came down
with a slap. He became another man altogether. "And I had never
seen," he shouted; then suddenly bit his lip and frowned. "What a
bally ass I've been," he said very slow in an awed tone. . . . "You
are a brick! " he cried next in a muffled voice. He snatched my hand
as though he had just then seen it for the first time, and dropped it
at once. "Why! this is what I--you--I . . ." he stammered, and
then with a return of his old stolid, I may say mulish, manner he
began heavily, "I would be a brute now if I . . ." and then his voice
seemed to break. "That's all right," I said. I was almost alarmed
by this display of feeling, through which pierced a strange elation.
I had pulled the string accidentally, as it were; I did not fully
understand the working of the toy. "I must go now," he said. "Jove! You
_have_ helped me. Can't sit still. The very thing . . ." He looked at
me with puzzled admiration. "The very thing . . ."
'Of course it was the thing. It was ten to one that I had saved him
from starvation--of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably
associated with drink. This was all. I had not a single illusion on
that score, but looking at him, I allowed myself to wonder at the
nature of the one he had, within the last three minutes, so evidently
taken into his bosom. I had forced into his hand the means to carry
on decently the serious business of life, to get food, drink, and
shelter of the customary kind while his wounded spirit, like a bird
with a broken wing, might hop and flutter into some hole to die
quietly of inanition there. This is what I had thrust upon him: a
definitely small thing; and--behold!--by the manner of its reception
it loomed in the dim light of the candle like a big, indistinct, perhaps
a dangerous shadow. "You don't mind me not saying anything
appropriate," he burst out. "There isn't anything one could say.
Last night already you had done me no end of good. Listening to
me--you know. I give you my word I've thought more than once
the top of my head would fly off. . ." He darted--positively
darted--here and there, rammed his hands into his pockets, jerked
them out again, flung his cap on his head. I had no idea it was in
him to be so airily brisk. I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an
eddy of wind, while a mysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite
doubt, weighed me down in my chair. He stood stock-still, as if
struck motionless by a discovery. "You have given me confidence,"
he declared, soberly. "Oh! for God's sake, my dear fellow--don't!"
I entreated, as though he had hurt me. "All right. I'll shut up
now and henceforth. Can't prevent me thinking though. . . . Never
mind! . . . I'll show yet . . ." He went to the door in a hurry,
paused with his head down, and came back, stepping deliberately.
"I always thought that if a fellow could begin with a clean slate . . .
And now you . . . in a measure . . . yes . . . clean slate." I waved
my hand, and he marched out without looking back; the sound
of his footfalls died out gradually behind the closed door--the
unhesitating tread of a man walking in broad daylight.
'But as to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained
strangely unenlightened. I was no longer young enough to behold
at every turn the magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps
in good and in evil. I smiled to think that, after all, it was yet he,
of us two, who had the light. And I felt sad. A clean slate, did he
say? As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven in
imperishable characters upon the face of a rock.'
CHAPTER 18
'Six months afterwards my friend (he was a cynical, more than
middle-aged bachelor, with a reputation for eccentricity, and owned
a rice-mill) wrote to me, and judging, from the warmth of my
recommendation, that I would like to hear, enlarged a little upon
Jim's perfections. These were apparently of a quiet and effective
sort. "Not having been able so far to find more in my heart than a
resigned toleration for any individual of my kind, I have lived till
now alone in a house that even in this steaming climate could be
considered as too big for one man. I have had him to live with me
for some time past. It seems I haven't made a mistake." It seemed
to me on reading this letter that my friend had found in his heart
more than tolerance for Jim--that there were the beginnings of
active liking. Of course he stated his grounds in a characteristic
way. For one thing, Jim kept his freshness in the climate. Had he
been a girl--my friend wrote--one could have said he was blooming--
blooming modestly--like a violet, not like some of these blatant
tropical flowers. He had been in the house for six weeks, and
had not as yet attempted to slap him on the back, or address
him as "old boy," or try to make him feel a superannuated fossil.
He had nothing of the exasperating young man's chatter. He was
good-tempered, had not much to say for himself, was not clever by
any means, thank goodness--wrote my friend. It appeared, however,
that Jim was clever enough to be quietly appreciative of his wit,
while, on the other hand, he amused him by his naiveness. "The
dew is yet on him, and since I had the bright idea of giving
him a room in the house and having him at meals I feel less withered
myself. The other day he took it into his head to cross the room
with no other purpose but to open a door for me; and I felt more in
touch with mankind than I had been for years. Ridiculous, isn't it?
Of course I guess there is something--some awful little scrape--
which you know all about--but if I am sure that it is terribly
heinous, I fancy one could manage to forgive it. For my part, I
declare I am unable to imagine him guilty of anything much worse
than robbing an orchard. Is it much worse? Perhaps you ought to
have told me; but it is such a long time since we both turned saints
that you may have forgotten we, too, had sinned in our time? It may
be that some day I shall have to ask you, and then I shall expect to
be told. I don't care to question him myself till I have some idea
what it is. Moreover, it's too soon as yet. Let him open the door a
few times more for me. . . ." Thus my friend. I was trebly pleased--
at Jim's shaping so well, at the tone of the letter, at my own
cleverness. Evidently I had known what I was doing. I had read characters
aright, and so on. And what if something unexpected and wonderful
were to come of it? That evening, reposing in a deck-chair under
the shade of my own poop awning (it was in Hong-Kong harbour),
I laid on Jim's behalf the first stone of a castle in Spain.
'I made a trip to the northward, and when I returned I found
another letter from my friend waiting for me. It was the first
envelope I tore open. "There are no spoons missing, as far as I know,"
ran the first line; "I haven't been interested enough to inquire. He
is gone, leaving on the breakfast-table a formal little note of apology,
which is either silly or heartless. Probably both--and it's all one to
me. Allow me to say, lest you should have some more mysterious
young men in reserve, that I have shut up shop, definitely and for
ever. This is the last eccentricity I shall be guilty of. Do not imagine
for a moment that I care a hang; but he is very much regretted at
tennis-parties, and for my own sake I've told a plausible lie at the
club. . . ." I flung the letter aside and started looking through the
batch on my table, till I came upon Jim's handwriting. Would you
believe it? One chance in a hundred! But it is always that hundredth
chance! That little second engineer of the Patna had turned up in
a more or less destitute state, and got a temporary job of looking
after the machinery of the mill. "I couldn't stand the familiarity of
the little beast," Jim wrote from a seaport seven hundred miles
south of the place where he should have been in clover. "I am now
for the time with Egstrom & Blake, ship-chandlers, as their--well--
runner, to call the thing by its right name. For reference I gave
them your name, which they know of course, and if you could write
a word in my favour it would be a permanent employment." I was
utterly crushed under the ruins of my castle, but of course I wrote
as desired. Before the end of the year my new charter took me that
way, and I had an opportunity of seeing him.
'He was still with Egstrom & Blake, and we met in what they
called "our parlour" opening out of the store. He had that moment
come in from boarding a ship, and confronted me head down, ready
for a tussle. "What have you got to say for yourself?" I began as
soon as we had shaken hands. "What I wrote you--nothing more,"
he said stubbornly. "Did the fellow blab--or what?" I asked. He
looked up at me with a troubled smile. "Oh, no! He didn't. He made
it a kind of confidential business between us. He was most damnably
mysterious whenever I came over to the mill; he would wink at me
in a respectful manner--as much as to say 'We know what we
know.' Infernally fawning and familiar--and that sort of thing . . ."
He threw himself into a chair and stared down his legs. "One day
we happened to be alone and the fellow had the cheek to say, 'Well,
Mr. James'--I was called Mr. James there as if I had been the son--
'here we are together once more. This is better than the old ship--
ain't it?' . . . Wasn't it appalling, eh? I looked at him, and he put
on a knowing air. 'Don't you be uneasy, sir,' he says. 'I know a
gentleman when I see one, and I know how a gentleman feels. I
hope, though, you will be keeping me on this job. I had a hard time
of it too, along of that rotten old Patna racket.' Jove! It was awful.
I don't know what I should have said or done if I had not just then
heard Mr. Denver calling me in the passage. It was tiffin-time, and
we walked together across the yard and through the garden to the
bungalow. He began to chaff me in his kindly way . . . I believe he
liked me . . ."
'Jim was silent for a while.
' "I know he liked me. That's what made it so hard. Such a
splendid man! . . . That morning he slipped his hand under my
arm. . . . He, too, was familiar with me." He burst into a short
laugh, and dropped his chin on his breast. "Pah! When I remembered
how that mean little beast had been talking to me," he began suddenly
in a vibrating voice, "I couldn't bear to think of myself . . . I
suppose you know . . ." I nodded. . . . "More like a father," he cried;
his voice sank. "I would have had to tell him. I couldn't let it go
on--could I?" "Well?" I murmured, after waiting a while. "I preferred
to go," he said slowly; "this thing must be buried."
'We could hear in the shop Blake upbraiding Egstrom in an abusive,
strained voice. They had been associated for many years, and every
day from the moment the doors were opened to the last minute
before closing, Blake, a little man with sleek, jetty hair and
unhappy, beady eyes, could be heard rowing his partner incessantly
with a sort of scathing and plaintive fury. The sound of that
everlasting scolding was part of the place like the other fixtures;
even strangers would very soon come to disregard it completely unless
it be perhaps to mutter "Nuisance," or to get up suddenly and shut
the door of the "parlour." Egstrom himself, a raw-boned, heavy
Scandinavian, with a busy manner and immense blonde whiskers,
went on directing his people, checking parcels, making out bills
or writing letters at a stand-up desk in the shop, and comported
himself in that clatter exactly as though he had been stone-deaf.
Now and again he would emit a bothered perfunctory "Sssh," which
neither produced nor was expected to produce the slightest effect.
"They are very decent to me here," said Jim. "Blake's a little cad,
but Egstrom's all right." He stood up quickly, and walking with
measured steps to a tripod telescope standing in the window and
pointed at the roadstead, he applied his eye to it. "There's that ship
which has been becalmed outside all the morning has got a breeze
now and is coming in," he remarked patiently; "I must go and
board." We shook hands in silence, and he turned to go. "Jim!" I
cried. He looked round with his hand on the lock. "You--you have
thrown away something like a fortune." He came back to me all the
way from the door. "Such a splendid old chap," he said. "How
could I? How could I?" His lips twitched. "Here it does not matter."
"Oh! you--you--" I began, and had to cast about for a suitable
word, but before I became aware that there was no name that would
just do, he was gone. I heard outside Egstrom's deep gentle voice
saying cheerily, "That's the Sarah W. Granger, Jimmy. You must
manage to be first aboard"; and directly Blake struck in, screaming
after the manner of an outraged cockatoo, "Tell the captain we've
got some of his mail here. That'll fetch him. D'ye hear, Mister
What's-your-name?" And there was Jim answering Egstrom with
something boyish in his tone. "All right. I'll make a race of it." He
seemed to take refuge in the boat-sailing part of that sorry business.
'I did not see him again that trip, but on my next (I had a six
months' charter) I went up to the store. Ten yards away from the
door Blake's scolding met my ears, and when I came in he gave
me a glance of utter wretchedness; Egstrom, all smiles, advanced,
extending a large bony hand. "Glad to see you, captain. . . .
Sssh. . . . Been thinking you were about due back here. What did
you say, sir? . . . Sssh. . . . Oh! him! He has left us. Come into the
parlour." . . . After the slam of the door Blake's strained voice
became faint, as the voice of one scolding desperately in a
wilderness. . . . "Put us to a great inconvenience, too. Used us badly--I
must say . . ." "Where's he gone to? Do you know?" I asked. "No.
It's no use asking either," said Egstrom, standing bewhiskered and
obliging before me with his arms hanging down his sides clumsily,
and a thin silver watch-chain looped very low on a rucked-up blue
serge waistcoat. "A man like that don't go anywhere in particular."
I was too concerned at the news to ask for the explanation of that
pronouncement, and he went on. "He left--let's see--the very day
a steamer with returning pilgrims from the Red Sea put in here with
two blades of her propeller gone. Three weeks ago now." "Wasn't
there something said about the Patna case?" I asked, fearing the
worst. He gave a start, and looked at me as if I had been a sorcerer.
"Why, yes! How do you know? Some of them were talking about
it here. There was a captain or two, the manager of Vanlo's
engineering shop at the harbour, two or three others, and myself. Jim
was in here too, having a sandwich and a glass of beer; when we are
busy--you see, captain--there's no time for a proper tiffin. He was
standing by this table eating sandwiches, and the rest of us were
round the telescope watching that steamer come in; and by-and-by
Vanlo's manager began to talk about the chief of the Patna; he had
done some repairs for him once, and from that he went on to tell
us what an old ruin she was, and the money that had been made
out of her. He came to mention her last voyage, and then we all
struck in. Some said one thing and some another--not'much--what
you or any other man might say; and there was some laughing.
Captain O'Brien of the Sarah W. Granger, a large, noisy old man
with a stick--he was sitting listening to us in this arm-chair here--
he let drive suddenly with his stick at the floor, and roars out,
'Skunks!' . . . Made us all jump. Vanlo's manager winks at us and
asks, 'What's the matter, Captain O'Brien?' 'Matter! matter!' the
old man began to shout; 'what are you Injuns laughing at? It's no
laughing matter. It's a disgrace to human natur'--that's what it is.
I would despise being seen in the same room with one of those men.
Yes, sir!' He seemed to catch my eye like, and I had to speak out
of civility. 'Skunks!' says I, 'of course, Captain O'Brien, and I
wouldn't care to have them here myself, so you're quite safe in this
room, Captain O'Brien. Have a little something cool to drink.'
'Dam' your drink, Egstrom,' says he, with a twinkle in his eye;
'when I want a drink I will shout for it. I am going to quit. It stinks
here now.' At this all the others burst out laughing, and out they
go after the old man. And then, sir, that blasted Jim he puts down
the sandwich he had in his hand and walks round the table to me;
there was his glass of beer poured out quite full. 'I am off,' he
says--just like this. 'It isn't half-past one yet,' says I; 'you
might snatch a smoke first.' I thought he meant it was time for him
to go down to his work. When I understood what he was up to, my arms
fell--so! Can't get a man like that every day, you know, sir; a regular
devil for sailing a boat; ready to go out miles to sea to meet ships
in any sort of weather. More than once a captain would come in here
full of it, and the first thing he would say would be, 'That's a
reckless sort of a lunatic you've got for water-clerk, Egstrom. I was
feeling my way in at daylight under short canvas when there comes
flying out of the mist right under my forefoot a boat half under
water, sprays going over the mast-head, two frightened niggers on
the bottom boards, a yelling fiend at the tiller. Hey! hey! Ship
ahoy! ahoy! Captain! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake's man first to speak
to you! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake! Hallo! hey! whoop! Kick the
niggers--out reefs--a squall on at the time--shoots ahead whooping
and yelling to me to make sail and he would give me a lead in--more
like a demon than a man. Never saw a boat handled like that in all
my life. Couldn't have been drunk--was he? Such a quiet, soft-spoken
chap too--blush like a girl when he came on board. . . .' I tell
you, Captain Marlow, nobody had a chance against us with a strange
ship when Jim was out. The other ship-chandlers just kept their old
customers, and . . ."
'Egstrom appeared overcome with emotion.
' "Why, sir--it seemed as though he wouldn't mind going a
hundred miles out to sea in an old shoe to nab a ship for the firm.
If the business had been his own and all to make yet, he couldn't
have done more in that way. And now . . . all at once . . . like this!
Thinks I to myself: 'Oho! a rise in the screw--that's the trouble--
is it?' 'All right,' says I, 'no need of all that fuss with me, Jimmy.
Just mention your figure. Anything in reason.' He looks at me as if
he wanted to swallow something that stuck in his throat. 'I can't
stop with you.' 'What's that blooming joke?' I asks. He shakes his
head, and I could see in his eye he was as good as gone already, sir.
So I turned to him and slanged him till all was blue. 'What is it
you're running away from?' I asks. 'Who has been getting at you?
What scared you? You haven't as much sense as a rat; they don't
clear out from a good ship. Where do you expect to get a better
berth?--you this and you that.' I made him look sick, I can tell
you. 'This business ain't going to sink,' says I. He gave a big jump.
'Good-bye,' he says, nodding at me like a lord; 'you ain't half a bad
chap, Egstrom. I give you my word that if you knew my reasons
you wouldn't care to keep me.' 'That's the biggest lie you ever told
in your life,' says I; 'I know my own mind.' He made me so mad
that I had to laugh. 'Can't you really stop long enough to drink this
glass of beer here, you funny beggar, you?' I don't know what came
over him; he didn't seem able to find the door; something comical,
I can tell you, captain. I drank the beer myself. 'Well, if you're in
such a hurry, here's luck to you in your own drink,' says I; 'only,
you mark my words, if you keep up this game you'll very soon find
that the earth ain't big enough to hold you--that's all.' He gave me
one black look, and out he rushed with a face fit to scare little
children."
'Egstrom snorted bitterly, and combed one auburn whisker with
knotty fingers. "Haven't been able to get a man that was any good
since. It's nothing but worry, worry, worry in business. And where
might you have come across him, captain, if it's fair to ask?"
' "He was the mate of the Patna that voyage," I said, feeling that
I owed some explanation. For a time Egstrom remained very still,
with his fingers plunged in the hair at the side of his face, and then
exploded. "And who the devil cares about that?" "I daresay no
one," I began . . . "And what the devil is he--anyhow--for to go
on like this?" He stuffed suddenly his left whisker into his mouth
and stood amazed. "Jee!" he exclaimed, "I told him the earth
wouldn't be big enough to hold his caper." '
CHAPTER 19
'I have told you these two episodes at length to show his manner
of dealing with himself under the new conditions of his life. There
were many others of the sort, more than I could count on the fingers
of my two hands. They were all equally tinged by a high-minded
absurdity of intention which made their futility profound and
touching. To fling away your daily bread so as to get your hands
free for a grapple with a ghost may be an act of prosaic heroism.
Men had done it before (though we who have lived know full well
that it is not the haunted soul but the hungry body that makes an
outcast), and men who had eaten and meant to eat every day had
applauded the creditable folly. He was indeed unfortunate, for all
his recklessness could not carry him out from under the shadow.
There was always a doubt of his courage. The truth seems to be
that it is impossible to lay the ghost of a fact. You can face it or
shirk it--and I have come across a man or two who could wink at
their familiar shades. Obviously Jim was not of the winking sort;
but what I could never make up my mind about was whether his
line of conduct amounted to shirking his ghost or to facing him out.
'I strained my mental eyesight only to discover that, as with the
complexion of all our actions, the shade of difference was so delicate
that it was impossible to say. It might have been flight and it might
have been a mode of combat. To the common mind he became
known as a rolling stone, because this was the funniest part: he did
after a time become perfectly known, and even notorious, within
the circle of his wanderings (which had a diameter of, say, three
thousand miles), in the same way as an eccentric character is known
to a whole countryside. For instance, in Bankok, where he found
employment with Yucker Brothers, charterers and teak merchants,
it was almost pathetic to see him go about in sunshine hugging
his secret, which was known to the very up-country logs on the river.
Schomberg, the keeper of the hotel where he boarded, a hirsute
Alsatian of manly bearing and an irrepressible retailer of all
the scandalous gossip of the place, would, with both elbows on the
table, impart an adorned version of the story to any guest who cared
to imbibe knowledge along with the more costly liquors. "And,
mind you, the nicest fellow you could meet," would be his generous
conclusion; "quite superior." It says a lot for the casual crowd that
frequented Schomberg's establishment that Jim managed to hang
out in Bankok for a whole six months. I remarked that people,
perfect strangers, took to him as one takes to a nice child. His
manner was reserved, but it was as though his personal appearance,
his hair, his eyes, his smile, made friends for him wherever he went.
And, of course, he was no fool. I heard Siegmund Yucker (native
of Switzerland), a gentle creature ravaged by a cruel dyspepsia, and
so frightfully lame that his head swung through a quarter of a circle
at every step he took, declare appreciatively that for one so young
he was "of great gabasidy," as though it had been a mere question
of cubic contents. "Why not send him up country?" I suggested
anxiously. (Yucker Brothers had concessions and teak forests in the
interior.) "If he has capacity, as you say, he will soon get hold of the
work. And physically he is very fit. His health is always excellent."
"Ach! It's a great ting in dis goundry to be vree vrom tispep-shia,"
sighed poor Yucker enviously, casting a stealthy glance at the pit
of his ruined stomach. I left him drumming pensively on his desk
and muttering, "Es ist ein' Idee. Es ist ein' Idee." Unfortunately,
that very evening an unpleasant affair took place in the hotel.
'I don't know that I blame Jim very much, but it was a truly
regrettable incident. It belonged to the lamentable species of bar-room
scuffles, and the other party to it was a cross-eyed Dane of sorts
whose visiting-card recited, under his misbegotten name: first
lieutenant in the Royal Siamese Navy. The fellow, of course, was
utterly hopeless at billiards, but did not like to be beaten, I suppose.
He had had enough to drink to turn nasty after the sixth game, and
make some scornful remark at Jim's expense. Most of the people
there didn't hear what was said, and those who had heard seemed to
have had all precise recollection scared out of them by the appalling
nature of the consequences that immediately ensued. It was very
lucky for the Dane that he could swim, because the room opened
on a verandah and the Menam flowed below very wide and black.
A boat-load of Chinamen, bound, as likely as not, on some thieving
expedition, fished out the officer of the King of Siam, and Jim
turned up at about midnight on board my ship without a hat.
"Everybody in the room seemed to know," he said, gasping yet
from the contest, as it were. He was rather sorry, on general principles,
for what had happened, though in this case there had been, he said,
"no option." But what dismayed him was to find the nature of his
burden as well known to everybody as though he had gone about all
that time carrying it on his shoulders. Naturally after this he
couldn't remain in the place. He was universally condemned for
the brutal violence, so unbecoming a man in his delicate position;
some maintained he had been disgracefully drunk at the time;
others criticised his want of tact. Even Schomberg was very much
annoyed. "He is a very nice young man," he said argumentatively
to me, "but the lieutenant is a first-rate fellow too. He dines every
night at my table d'hote, you know. And there's a billiard-cue
broken. I can't allow that. First thing this morning I went over with
my apologies to the lieutenant, and I think I've made it all right for
myself; but only think, captain, if everybody started such games!
Why, the man might have been drowned! And here I can't run out
into the next street and buy a new cue. I've got to write to Europe
for them. No, no! A temper like that won't do!" . . . He was
extremely sore on the subject.
'This was the worst incident of all in his--his retreat. Nobody
could deplore it more than myself; for if, as somebody said hearing
him mentioned, "Oh yes! I know. He has knocked about a good
deal out here," yet he had somehow avoided being battered and
chipped in the process. This last affair, however, made me seriously
uneasy, because if his exquisite sensibilities were to go the length
of involving him in pot-house shindies, he would lose his name of
an inoffensive, if aggravating, fool, and acquire that of a common
loafer. For all my confidence in him I could not help reflecting that
in such cases from the name to the thing itself is but a step. I suppose
you will understand that by that time I could not think of washing
my hands of him. I took him away from Bankok in my ship, and
we had a longish passage. It was pitiful to see how he shrank within
himself. A seaman, even if a mere passenger, takes an interest in a
ship, and looks at the sea-life around him with the critical enjoyment
of a painter, for instance, looking at another man's work. In every
sense of the expression he is "on deck"; but my Jim, for the most
part, skulked down below as though he had been a stowaway. He
infected me so that I avoided speaking on professional matters,
such as would suggest themselves naturally to two sailors during a
passage. For whole days we did not exchange a word; I felt
extremely unwilling to give orders to my officers in his presence.
Often, when alone with him on deck or in the cabin, we didn't
know what to do with our eyes.
'I placed him with De Jongh, as you know, glad enough to dispose
of him in any way, yet persuaded that his position was now growing
intolerable. He had lost some of that elasticity which had enabled
him to rebound back into his uncompromising position after every
overthrow. One day, coming ashore, I saw him standing on the
quay; the water of the roadstead and the sea in the offing made one
smooth ascending plane, and the outermost ships at anchor seemed
to ride motionless in the sky. He was waiting for his boat, which
was being loaded at our feet with packages of small stores for some
vessel ready to leave. After exchanging greetings, we remained
silent--side by side. "Jove!" he said suddenly, "this is killing work."
'He smiled at me; I must say he generally could manage a smile.
I made no reply. I knew very well he was not alluding to his duties;
he had an easy time of it with De Jongh. Nevertheless, as soon as
he had spoken I became completely convinced that the work was
killing. I did not even look at him. "Would you like," said I, "to
leave this part of the world altogether; try California or the West
Coast? I'll see what I can do . . ." He interrupted me a little
scornfully. "What difference would it make?" . . . I felt at once
convinced that he was right. It would make no difference; it was not
relief he wanted; I seemed to perceive dimly that what he wanted,
what he was, as it were, waiting for, was something not easy to
define--something in the nature of an opportunity. I had given him
many opportunities, but they had been merely opportunities to earn
his bread. Yet what more could any man do? The position struck
me as hopeless, and poor Brierly's saying recurred to me, "Let
him creep twenty feet underground and stay there." Better that, I
thought, than this waiting above ground for the impossible. Yet
one could not be sure even of that. There and then, before his boat
was three oars' lengths away from the quay, I had made up my
mind to go and consult Stein in the evening.
'This Stein was a wealthy and respected merchant. His "house"
(because it was a house, Stein & Co., and there was some sort of
partner who, as Stein said, "looked after the Moluccas") had a large
inter-island business, with a lot of trading posts established in the
most out-of-the-way places for collecting the produce. His wealth
and his respectability were not exactly the reasons why I was anxious
to seek his advice. I desired to confide my difficulty to him because
he was one of the most trustworthy men I had ever known. The
gentle light of a simple, unwearied, as it were, and intelligent
good-nature illumined his long hairless face. It had deep downward folds,
and was pale as of a man who had always led a sedentary life--which
was indeed very far from being the case. His hair was thin, and
brushed back from a massive and lofty forehead. One fancied that
at twenty he must have looked very much like what he was now at
threescore. It was a student's face; only the eyebrows nearly all
white, thick and bushy, together with the resolute searching glance
that came from under them, were not in accord with his, I may say,
learned appearance. He was tall and loose-jointed; his slight stoop,
together with an innocent smile, made him appear benevolently
ready to lend you his ear; his long arms with pale big hands had
rare deliberate gestures of a pointing out, demonstrating kind. I
speak of him at length, because under this exterior, and in conjunction
with an upright and indulgent nature, this man possessed an
intrepidity of spirit and a physical courage that could have been
called reckless had it not been like a natural function of the body--
say good digestion, for instance--completely unconscious of itself.
It is sometimes said of a man that he carries his life in his hand.
Such a saying would have been inadequate if applied to him; during
the early part of his existence in the East he had been playing ball
with it. All this was in the past, but I knew the story of his life and
the origin of his fortune. He was also a naturalist of some distinction,
or perhaps I should say a learned collector. Entomology was his
special study. His collection of Buprestidae and Longicorns--beetles
all--horrible miniature monsters, looking malevolent in
death and immobility, and his cabinet of butterflies, beautiful and
hovering under the glass of cases on lifeless wings, had spread his
fame far over the earth. The name of this merchant, adventurer,
sometime adviser of a Malay sultan (to whom he never alluded
otherwise than as "my poor Mohammed Bonso"), had, on account
of a few bushels of dead insects, become known to learned persons
in Europe, who could have had no conception, and certainly would
not have cared to know anything, of his life or character. I, who
knew, considered him an eminently suitable person to receive my
confidences about Jim's difficulties as well as my own.'
CHAPTER 20
'Late in the evening I entered his study, after traversing an
imposing but empty dining-room very dimly lit. The house was
silent. I was preceded by an elderly grim Javanese servant in a sort
of livery of white jacket and yellow sarong, who, after throwing
the door open, exclaimed low, "O master!" and stepping aside,
vanished in a mysterious way as though he had been a ghost only
momentarily embodied for that particular service. Stein turned
round with the chair, and in the same movement his spectacles
seemed to get pushed up on his forehead. He welcomed me in his
quiet and humorous voice. Only one corner of the vast room, the
corner in which stood his writing-desk, was strongly lighted by a
shaded reading-lamp, and the rest of the spacious apartment melted
into shapeless gloom like a cavern. Narrow shelves filled with
dark boxes of uniform shape and colour ran round the walls, not
from floor to ceiling, but in a sombre belt about four feet broad.
Catacombs of beetles. Wooden tablets were hung above at irregular
intervals. The light reached one of them, and the word Coleoptera
written in gold letters glittered mysteriously upon a vast dimness.
The glass cases containing the collection of butterflies were ranged
in three long rows upon slender-legged little tables. One of these
cases had been removed from its place and stood on the desk, which
was bestrewn with oblong slips of paper blackened with minute
handwriting.
' "So you see me--so," he said. His hand hovered over the case
where a butterfly in solitary grandeur spread out dark bronze wings,
seven inches or more across, with exquisite white veinings and a
gorgeous border of yellow spots. "Only one specimen like this they
have in _your_ London, and then--no more. To my small native town
this my collection I shall bequeath. Something of me. The best."
'He bent forward in the chair and gazed intently, his chin over
the front of the case. I stood at his back. "Marvellous," he whispered,
and seemed to forget my presence. His history was curious.
He had been born in Bavaria, and when a youth of twenty-two had
taken an active part in the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily
compromised, he managed to make his escape, and at first found a
refuge with a poor republican watchmaker in Trieste. From there
he made his way to Tripoli with a stock of cheap watches to hawk
about,--not a very great opening truly, but it turned out lucky
enough, because it was there he came upon a Dutch traveller--a
rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember his name. It
was that naturalist who, engaging him as a sort of assistant, took
him to the East. They travelled in the Archipelago together and
separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years or more.
Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having no home to go
to, remained with an old trader he had come across in his journeys
in the interior of Celebes--if Celebes may be said to have an interior.
This old Scotsman, the only white man allowed to reside in the
country at the time, was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of
Wajo States, who was a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that
chap, who was slightly paralysed on one side, had introduced him
to the native court a short time before another stroke carried him
off. He was a heavy man with a patriarchal white beard, and of
imposing stature. He came into the council-hall where all the rajahs,
pangerans, and headmen were assembled, with the queen, a fat
wrinkled woman (very free in her speech, Stein said), reclining on
a high couch under a canopy. He dragged his leg, thumping with
his stick, and grasped Stein's arm, leading him right up to the
couch. "Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is my son," he proclaimed
in a stentorian voice. "I have traded with your fathers, and when I
die he shall trade with you and your sons."
'By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's
privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a
fortified house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country.
Shortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech,
died, and the country became disturbed by various pretenders to
the throne. Stein joined the party of a younger son, the one of
whom thirty years later he never spoke otherwise but as "my poor
Mohammed Bonso." They both became the heroes of innumerable
exploits; they had wonderful adventures, and once stood a siege in
the Scotsman's house for a month, with only a score of followers
against a whole army. I believe the natives talk of that war to this
day. Meantime, it seems, Stein never failed to annex on his own
account every butterfly or beetle he could lay hands on. After some
eight years of war, negotiations, false truces, sudden outbreaks,
reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as peace seemed at
last permanently established, his "poor Mohammed Bonso" was
assassinated at the gate of his own royal residence while dismounting
in the highest spirits on his return from a successful deer-hunt.
This event rendered Stein's position extremely insecure, but he
would have stayed perhaps had it not been that a short time afterwards
he lost Mohammed's sister ("my dear wife the princess," he used
to say solemnly), by whom he had had a daughter--mother and child
both dying within three days of each other from some infectious fever.
He left the country, which this cruel loss had made unbearable to him.
Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What
followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which
remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.
He had a little money; he started life afresh, and in the course of
years acquired a considerable fortune. At first he had travelled a
good deal amongst the islands, but age had stolen upon him, and of
late he seldom left his spacious house three miles out of town,
with an extensive garden, and surrounded by stables, offices, and
bamboo cottages for his servants and dependants, of whom he had many.
He drove in his buggy every morning to town, where he had an office
with white and Chinese clerks. He owned a small fleet of schooners
and native craft, and dealt in island produce on a large scale. For
the rest he lived solitary, but not misanthropic, with his books
and his collection, classing and arranging specimens, corresponding
with entomologists in Europe, writing up a descriptive catalogue of
his treasures. Such was the history of the man whom I had come to
consult upon Jim's case without any definite hope. Simply to hear what
he would have to say would have been a relief. I was very anxious, but
I respected the intense, almost passionate, absorption with which he
looked at a butterfly, as though on the bronze sheen of these frail
wings, in the white tracings, in the gorgeous markings, he could see
other things, an image of something as perishable and defying
destruction as these delicate and lifeless tissues displaying a
splendour unmarred by death.
' "Marvellous!" he repeated, looking up at me. "Look! The
beauty--but that is nothing--look at the accuracy, the harmony.
And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature--the
balance of colossal forces. Every star is so--and every blade of
grass stands so--and the mighty Kosmos il perfect equilibrium
produces--this. This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature--the great
artist."
' "Never heard an entomologist go on like this," I observed
cheerfully. "Masterpiece! And what of man?"
' "Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece," he said, keeping
his eyes fixed on the glass case. "Perhaps the artist was a little
mad. Eh? What do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is
come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for
if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about
here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about
the stars, disturbing the blades of grass? . . ."
' "Catching butterflies," I chimed in.
'He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and stretched his
legs. "Sit down," he said. "I captured this rare specimen myself
one very fine morning. And I had a very big emotion. You don't
know what it is for a collector to capture such a rare specimen. You
can't know."
'I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair. His eyes seemed to look
far beyond the wall at which they stared; and he narrated how, one
night, a messenger arrived from his "poor Mohammed," requiring
his presence at the "residenz"--as he called it--which was distant
some nine or ten miles by a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with
patches of forest here and there. Early in the morning he started
from his fortified house, after embracing his little Emma, and
leaving the "princess," his wife, in command. He described how she
came with him as far as the gate, walking with one hand on the neck
of his horse; she had on a white jacket, gold pins in her hair, and a
brown leather belt over her left shoulder with a revolver in it. "She
talked as women will talk," he said, "telling me to be careful, and
to try to get back before dark, and what a great wikedness it was
for me to go alone. We were at war, and the country was not safe;
my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters to the house and
loading their rifles, and she begged me to have no fear for her.
She could defend the house against anybody till I returned. And I
laughed with pleasure a little. I liked to see her so brave and young
and strong. I too was young then. At the gate she caught hold of
my hand and gave it one squeeze and fell back. I made my horse
stand still outside till I heard the bars of the gate put up behind me.
There was a great enemy of mine, a great noble--and a great rascal
too--roaming with a band in the neighbourhood. I cantered for
four or five miles; there had been rain in the night, but the musts
had gone up, up--and the face of the earth was clean; it lay smiling
to me, so fresh and innocent--like a little child. Suddenly somebody
fires a volley--twenty shots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets
sing in my ear, and my hat jumps to the back of my head. It was a
little intrigue, you understand. They got my poor Mohammed to
send for me and then laid that ambush. I see it all in a minute, and
I think--This wants a little management. My pony snort, jump,
and stand, and I fall slowly forward with my head on his mane. He
begins to walk, and with one eye I could see over his neck a faint
cloud of smoke hanging in front of a clump of bamboos to my left.
I think--Aha! my friends, why you not wait long enough before
you shoot? This is not yet gelungen. Oh no! I get hold of my revolver
with my right hand--quiet--quiet. After all, there were only seven
of these rascals. They get up from the grass and start running with
their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above their heads, and yelling
to each other to look out and catch the horse, because I was
dead. I let them come as close as the door here, and then bang,
bang, bang--take aim each time too. One more shot I fire at a man's
back, but I miss. Too far already. And then I sit alone on my horse
with the clean earth smiling at me, and there are the bodies of three
men lying on the ground. One was curled up like a dog, another on
his back had an arm over his eyes as if to keep off the sun, and the
third man he draws up his leg very slowly and makes it with one
kick straight again. I watch him very carefully from my horse, but
there is no more--bleibt ganz ruhig--keep still, so. And as I looked
at his face for some sign of life I observed something like a faint
shadow pass over his forehead. It was the shadow of this butterfly.
Look at the form of the wing. This species fly high with a strong
flight. I raised my eyes and I saw him fluttering away. I think--Can
it be possible? And then I lost him. I dismounted and went on very
slow, leading my horse and holding my revolver with one hand and
my eyes darting up and down and right and left, everywhere! At last
I saw him sitting on a small heap of dirt ten feet away. At once my
heart began to beat quick. I let go my horse, keep my revolver in one
hand, and with the other snatch my soft felt hat off my head. One
step. Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him! When I got up I shook
like a leaf with excitement, and when I opened these beautiful wings
and made sure what a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen I
had, my head went round and my legs became so weak with emotion
that I had to sit on the ground. I had greatly desired to possess myself
of a specimen of that species when collecting for the professor. I took
long journeys and underwent great privations; I had dreamed of him
in my sleep, and here suddenly I had him in my fingers--for myself!
In the words of the poet" (he pronounced it "boet")--
" 'So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen,
Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein.' "
He gave to the last word the emphasis of a suddenly lowered voice,
and withdrew his eyes slowly from my face. He began to charge a
long-stemmed pipe busily and in silence, then, pausing with his
thumb on the orifice of the bowl, looked again at me significantly.
' "Yes, my good friend. On that day I had nothing to desire; I
had greatly annoyed my principal enemy; I was young, strong; I
had friendship; I had the love" (he said "lof") "of woman, a child
I had, to make my heart very full--and even what I had once
dreamed in my sleep had come into my hand too!"
'He struck a match, which flared violently. His thoughtful placid
face twitched once.
' "Friend, wife, child," he said slowly, gazing at the small flame--
"phoo!" The match was blown out. He sighed and turned again to
the glass case. The frail and beautiful wings quivered faintly, as if
his breath had for an instant called back to life that gorgeous object
of his dreams.
' "The work," he began suddenly, pointing to the scattered slips,
and in his usual gentle and cheery tone, "is making great progress.
I have been this rare specimen describing. . . . Na! And what is
your good news?"
' "To tell you the truth, Stein," I said with an effort that surprised
me, "I came here to describe a specimen. . . ."
' "Butterfly?" he asked, with an unbelieving and humorous eagerness.
' "Nothing so perfect," I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited
with all sorts of doubts. "A man!"
' "Ach so!" he murmured, and his smiling countenance, turned
to me, became grave. Then after looking at me for a while he said
slowly, "Well--I am a man too."
'Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so generously
encouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesitate on the brink of
confidence; but if I did hesitate it was not for long.
'He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes his head
would disappear completely in a great eruption of smoke, and a
sympathetic growl would come out from the cloud. When I finished
he uncrossed his legs, laid down his pipe, leaned forward towards
me earnestly with his elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of
his fingers together.
' "I understand very well. He is romantic."
'He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was quite startled
to find how simple it was; and indeed our conference resembled so
much a medical consultation--Stein, of learned aspect, sitting in
an arm-chair before his desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him,
but a little to one side--that it seemed natural to ask--
' "What's good for it?"
'He lifted up a long forefinger.
' "There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us from being
ourselves cure!" The finger came down on the desk with a smart
rap. The case which he had made to look so simple before became
if possible still simpler--and altogether hopeless. There was a pause.
"Yes," said I, "strictly speaking, the question is not how to get
cured, but how to live."
'He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed. "Ja!
ja! In general, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the
question. . . ." He went on nodding sympathetically. . . . "How
to be! Ach! How to be."
'He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the desk.
' "We want in so many different ways to be," he began again.
"This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still
on it; but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want
to be so, and again he want to be so. . . ." He moved his hand up,
then down. . . . "He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a
devil--and every time he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very
fine fellow--so fine as he can never be. . . . In a dream. . . ."
'He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked sharply, and
taking up the case in both hands he bore it religiously away to its
place, passing out of the bright circle of the lamp into the ring of
fainter light--into shapeless dusk at last. It had an odd effect--as
if these few steps had carried him out of this concrete and perplexed
world. His tall form, as though robbed of its substance, hovered
noiselessly over invisible things with stooping and indefinite
movements; his voice, heard in that remoteness where he could be
glimpsed mysteriously busy with immaterial cares, was no longer
incisive, seemed to roll voluminous and grave--mellowed by distance.
' "And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there
comes the real trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you,
my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your
dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or
not clever enough. .Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine
fellow too! Wie? Was? Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha!
ha!"
'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed
boisterously.
' "Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls
into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb
out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he
drowns--nicht wahr? . . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive
element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and
feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you
ask me--how to be?"
'His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though away there
in the dusk he had been inspired by some whisper of knowledge.
"I will tell you! For that too there is only one way."
'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring
of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the
lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his
deepset eyes seemed to pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered
no word, and the austere exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk
vanished from his face. The hand that had been pointing at my
breast fell, and by-and-by, coming a step nearer, he laid it gently
on my shoulder. There were things, he said mournfully, that perhaps
could never be told, only he had lived so much alone that sometimes
he forgot--he forgot. The light had destroyed the assurance which had
inspired him in the distant shadows. He sat down and, with both elbows
on the desk, rubbed his forehead. "And yet it is true--it is true.
In the destructive element immerse." . . . He spoke in a subdued tone,
without looking at me, one hand on each side of his face. "That was
the way. To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream--and
so--ewig--usque ad finem. . . ." The whisper of his conviction seemed
to open before me a vast and uncertain expanse, as of a crepuscular
horizon on a plain at dawn--or was it, perchance, at the coming of
the night? One had not the courage to decide; but it was a charming
and deceptive light, throwing the impalpable poesy of its dimness
over pitfalls--over graves. His life had begun in sacrifice, in
enthusiasm for generous ideas; he had travelled very far, on various
ways, on strange paths, and whatever he followed it had been without
faltering, and therefore without shame and without regret. In so
far he was right. That was the way, no doubt. Yet for all that, the
great plain on which men wander amongst graves and pitfalls remained
very desolate under the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular light,
overshadowed in the centre, circled with a bright edge as if
surrounded by an abyss full of flames. When at last I broke the
silence it was to express the opinion that no one could be more
romantic than himself.
'He shook his head slowly, and afterwards looked at me with a
patient and inquiring glance. It was a shame, he said. There we
were sitting and talking like two boys, instead of putting our heads
together to find something practical--a practical remedy--for the
evil--for the great evil--he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent
smile. For all that, our talk did not grow more practical. We avoided
pronouncing Jim's name as though we had tried to keep flesh and
blood out of our discussion, or he were nothing but an erring spirit,
a suffering and nameless shade. "Na!" said Stein, rising. "To-night
you sleep here, and in the morning we shall do something practical--
practical. . . ." He lit a two-branched candlestick and led the way.
We passed through empty dark rooms, escorted by gleams from
the lights Stein carried. They glided along the waxed floors, sweeping
here and there over the polished surface of a table, leaped upon
a fragmentary curve of a piece of furniture, or flashed perpendicularly
in and out of distant mirrors, while the forms of two men and the
flicker of two flames could be seen for a moment stealing silently
across the depths of a crystalline void. He walked slowly a pace in
advance with stooping courtesy; there was a profound, as it were a
listening, quietude on his face; the long flaxen locks mixed with
white threads were scattered thinly upon his slightly bowed neck.
' "He is romantic--romantic," he repeated. "And that is very
bad--very bad. . . . Very good, too," he added. "But _is he_?" I
queried.
' "Gewiss," he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum,
but without looking at me. "Evident! What is it that by inward pain
makes him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes
him--exist?"
'At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim's existence--
starting from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by
clouds of dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in
a material world--but his imperishable reality came to me with a
convincing, with an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in
our progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams
of light and the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with
flickering flames within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had
approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself,
floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters
of mystery. "Perhaps he is," I admitted with a slight laugh, whose
unexpectedly loud reverberation made me lower my voice directly;
"but I am sure you are." With his head dropping on his breast and
the light held high he began to walk again. "Well--I exist, too," he
said.
'He preceded me. My eyes followed his movements, but what I
did see was not the head of the firm, the welcome guest at afternoon
receptions, the correspondent of learned societies, the entertainer
of stray naturalists; I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he
had known how to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun
in humble surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in
friendship, love, war--in all the exalted elements of romance. At
the door of my room he faced me. "Yes," I said, as though carrying
on a discussion, "and amongst other things you dreamed foolishly
of a certain butterfly; but when one fine morning your dream came
in your way you did not let the splendid opportunity escape. Did
you? Whereas he . . ." Stein lifted his hand. "And do you know
how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost
that had come in my way?" He shook his head regretfully. "It seems
to me that some would have been very fine--if I had made them
come true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know."
"Whether his were fine or not," I said, "he knows of one which he
certainly did not catch." "Everybody knows of one or two like
that," said Stein; "and that is the trouble--the great trouble. . . ."
'He shook hands on the threshold, peered into my room under
his raised arm. "Sleep well. And to-morrow we must do something
practical--practical. . . ."
'Though his own room was beyond mine I saw him return the
way he came. He was going back to his butterflies.'
CHAPTER 21
'I don't suppose any of you have ever heard of Patusan?' Marlow
resumed, after a silence occupied in the careful lighting of a cigar.
'It does not matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding
upon us of a night that mankind had never heard of, it being
outside the sphere of its activities and of no earthly importance to
anybody but to the astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about
its composition, weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the
aberrations of its light--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. Thus
with Patusan. It was referred to knowingly in the inner government
circles in Batavia, especially as to its irregularities and aberrations,
and it was known by name to some few, very few, in the mercantile
world. Nobody, however, had been there, and I suspect no one
desired to go there in person, just as an astronomer, I should fancy,
would strongly object to being transported into a distant heavenly
body, where, parted from his earthly emoluments, he would be
bewildered by the view of an unfamiliar heavens. However, neither
heavenly bodies nor astronomers have anything to do with Patusan.
It was Jim who went there. I only meant you to understand that
had Stein arranged to send him into a star of the fifth magnitude
the change could not have been greater. He left his earthly failings
behind him and what sort of reputation he had, and there was a
totally new set of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work
upon. Entirely new, entirely remarkable. And he got hold of them
in a remarkable way.
'Stein was the man who knew more about Patusan than anybody
else. More than was known in the government circles I suspect. I
have no doubt he had been there, either in his butterfly-hunting
days or later on, when he tried in his incorrigible way to season with
a pinch of romance the fattening dishes of his commercial kitchen.
There were very few places in the Archipelago he had not seen in
the original dusk of their being, before light (and even electric light)
had been carried into them for the sake of better morality and--
and--well--the greater profit, too. It was at breakfast of the morning
following our talk about Jim that he mentioned the place, after
I had quoted poor Brierly's remark: "Let him creep twenty feet
underground and stay there." He looked up at me with interested
attention, as though I had been a rare insect. "This could be done,
too," he remarked, sipping his coffee. "Bury him in some sort," I
explained. "One doesn't like to do it of course, but it would be the
best thing, seeing what he is." "Yes; he is young," Stein mused.
"The youngest human being now in existence," I affirmed. "Schon.
There's Patusan," he went on in the same tone. . . . "And the woman
is dead now," he added incomprehensibly.
'Of course I don't know that story; I can only guess that once
before Patusan had been used as a grave for some sin, transgression,
or misfortune. It is impossible to suspect Stein. The only woman
that had ever existed for him was the Malay girl he called "My
wife the princess," or, more rarely, in moments of expansion, "the
mother of my Emma." Who was the woman he had mentioned in connection
with Patusan I can't say; but from his allusions I understand she had
been an educated and very good-looking Dutch-Malay girl, with a tragic
or perhaps only a pitiful history, whose most painful part no doubt
was her marriage with a Malacca Portuguese who had been clerk in some
commercial house in the Dutch colonies. I gathered from Stein that
this man was an unsatisfactory person in more ways than one, all being
more or less indefinite and offensive. It was solely for his wife's
sake that Stein had appointed him manager of Stein & Co.'s trading
post in Patusan; but commercially the arrangement was not a success,
at any rate for the firm, and now the woman had died, Stein was
disposed to try another agent there. The Portuguese, whose name was
Cornelius, considered himself a very deserving but ill-used person,
entitled by his abilities to a better position. This man Jim would
have to relieve. "But I don't think he will go away from the place,"
remarked Stein. "That has nothing to do with me. It was only for the
sake of the woman that I . . . But as I think there is a daughter left,
I shall let him, if he likes to stay, keep the old house."
'Patusan is a remote district of a native-ruled state, and the chief
settlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty
miles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can
be seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep
hills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep
fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the
valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance from
the settlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two, and with
the two halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the full,
the moon, as seen from the open space in front of Jim's house (he
had a very fine house in the native style when I visited him), rose
exactly behind these hills, its diffused light at first throwing the two
masses into intensely black relief, and then the nearly perfect disc,
glowing ruddily, appeared, gliding upwards between the sides of
the chasm, till it floated away above the summits, as if escaping
from a yawning grave in gentle triumph. "Wonderful effect," said
Jim by my side. "Worth seeing. Is it not?"
'And this question was put with a note of personal pride that
made me smile, as though he had had a hand in regulating that
unique spectacle. He had regulated so many things in Patusan--things
that would have appeared as much beyond his control as the motions
of the moon and the stars.
'It was inconceivable. That was the distinctive quality of the part
into which Stein and I had tumbled him unwittingly, with no other
notion than to get him out of the way; out of his own way, be it
understood. That was our main purpose, though, I own, I might
have had another motive which had influenced me a little. I was
about to go home for a time; and it may be I desired, more than I
was aware of myself, to dispose of him--to dispose of him, you
understand--before I left. I was going home, and he had come to
me from there, with his miserable trouble and his shadowy claim,
like a man panting under a burden in a mist. I cannot say I had ever
seen him distinctly--not even to this day, after I had my last view
of him; but it seemed to me that the less I understood the more I
was bound to him in the name of that doubt which is the inseparable
part of our knowledge. I did not know so much more about myself.
And then, I repeat, I was going home--to that home distant enough
for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the
humblest of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands
over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning
beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but
it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to
render an account. We return to face our superiors, our kindred,
our friends--those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but
even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and
bereft of ties,--even those for whom home holds no dear face, no
familiar voice,--even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within
the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in
its fields, in its waters and its trees--a mute friend, judge, and
inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to
face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may
seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have
the will or the capacity to look consciously under the surface of
familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the men we look up
to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures!
But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean
hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I think
it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their
own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to
meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit--it is those
who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of
its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us
understand, but we all feel it though, and I say _all_ without exception,
because those who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has
its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and
so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together
with his life. I don't know how much Jim understood; but I know
he felt, he felt confusedly but powerfully, the demand of some such
truth or some such illusion--I don't care how you call it, there is
so little difference, and the difference means so little. The thing is
that in virtue of his feeling he mattered. He would never go home
now. Not he. Never. Had he been capable of picturesque manifestations
he would have shuddered at the thought and made you shudder too. But
he was not of that sort, though he was expressive enough in his way.
Before the idea of going home he would grow desperately stiff and
immovable, with lowered chin and pouted lips, and with those candid
blue eyes of his glowering darkly under a frown, as if before something
unbearable, as if before something revolting. There was imagination in
that hard skull of his, over which the thick clustering hair fitted
like a cap. As to me, I have no imagination (I would be more certain
about him today, if I had), and I do not mean to imply that I figured
to myself the spirit of the land uprising above the white cliffs of
Dover, to ask me what I--returning with no bones broken, so to
speak--had done with my very young brother. I could not make such a
mistake. I knew very well he was of those about whom there is no
inquiry; I had seen better men go out, disappear, vanish utterly,
without provoking a sound of curiosity or sorrow. The spirit of the
land, as becomes the ruler of great enterprises, is careless of
innumerable lives. Woe to the stragglers! We exist only in so far as we
hang together. He had straggled in a way; he had not hung on; but he
was aware of it with an intensity that made him touching, just as a
man's more intense life makes his death more touching than the death
of a tree. I happened to be handy, and I happened to be touched.
That's all there is to it. I was concerned as to the way he would go
out. It would have hurt me if, for instance, he had taken to drink.
The earth is so small that I was afraid of, some day, being waylaid by
a blear-eyed, swollen-faced, besmirched loafer, with no soles to his
canvas shoes, and with a flutter of rags about the elbows, who, on the
strength of old acquaintance, would ask for a loan of five dollars.
You know the awful jaunty bearing of these scarecrows coming to
you from a decent past, the rasping careless voice, the half-averted
impudent glances--those meetings more trying to a man who
believes in the solidarity of our lives than the sight of an impenitent
death-bed to a priest. That, to tell you the truth, was the only
danger I could see for him and for me; but I also mistrusted my
want of imagination. It might even come to something worse, in
some way it was beyond my powers of fancy to foresee. He wouldn't
let me forget how imaginative he was, and your imaginative people
swing farther in any direction, as if given a longer scope of cable in
the uneasy anchorage of life. They do. They take to drink too. It
may be I was belittling him by such a fear. How could I tell? Even
Stein could say no more than that he was romantic. I only knew he
was one of us. And what business had he to be romantic? I am
telling you so much about my own instinctive feelings and bemused
reflections because there remains so little to be told of him. He
existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for
you. I've led him out by the hand; I have paraded him before you.
Were my commonplace fears unjust? I won't say--not even now.
You may be able to tell better, since the proverb has it that the
onlookers see most of the game. At any rate, they were superfluous.
He did not go out, not at all; on the contrary, he came on wonderfully,
came on straight as a die and in excellent form, which showed
that he could stay as well as spurt. I ought to be delighted, for it is
a victory in which I had taken my part; but I am not so pleased as
I would have expected to be. I ask myself whether his rush had
really carried him out of that mist in which he loomed interesting
if not very big, with floating outlines--a straggler yearning
inconsolably for his humble place in the ranks. And besides, the last word
is not said,--probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short
for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of
course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting
those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced,
would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our
last word--the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse,
submissions, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken,
I suppose--at least, not by us who know so many truths about
either. My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had
achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling,
or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust
but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows
had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean
to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions--and safe--and
profitable--and dull. Yet you, too, in your time must have known
the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of
trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone--and
as short-lived, alas!'
CHAPTER 22
'The conquest of love, honour, men's confidence--the pride of
it, the power of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds
are struck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim's successes
there were no externals. Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the
sight of an indifferent world, and the noise of the white surf along
the coast overpowered the voice of fame. The stream of civilisation,
as if divided on a headland a hundred miles north of Patusan, branches
east and south-east, leaving its plains and valleys, its old trees
and its old mankind, neglected and isolated, such as an insignificant
and crumbling islet between the two branches of a mighty, devouring
stream. You find the name of the country pretty often in collections
of old voyages. The seventeenth-century traders went there for
pepper, because the passion for pepper seemed to burn like a
flame of love in the breast of Dutch and English adventurers about
the time of James the First. Where wouldn't they go for pepper!
For a bag of pepper they would cut each other's throats without
hesitation, and would forswear their souls, of which they were so
careful otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them
defy death in a thousand shapes--the unknown seas, the loathsome
and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence, and
despair. It made them great! By heavens! it made them heroic; and
it made them pathetic too in their craving for trade with the
inflexible death levying its toll on young and old. It seems impossible to
believe that mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of
purpose, to such a blind persistence in endeavour and sacrifice. And
indeed those who adventured their persons and lives risked all they
had for a slender reward. They left their bones to lie bleaching on
distant shores, so that wealth might flow to the living at home. To
us, their less tried successors, they appear magnified, not as agents
of trade but as instruments of a recorded destiny, pushing out into
the unknown in obedience to an inward voice, to an impulse beating
in the blood, to a dream of the future. They were wonderful; and
it must be owned they were ready for the wonderful. They recorded
it complacently in their sufferings, in the aspect of the seas, in the
customs of strange nations, in the glory of splendid rulers.
'In Patusan they had found lots of pepper, and had been
impressed by the magnificence and the wisdom of the Sultan; but
somehow, after a century of chequered intercourse, the country
seems to drop gradually out of the trade. Perhaps the pepper had
given out. Be it as it may, nobody cares for it now; the glory has
departed, the Sultan is an imbecile youth with two thumbs on his
left hand and an uncertain and beggarly revenue extorted from a
miserable population and stolen from him by his many uncles.
'This of course I have from Stein. He gave me their names and a
short sketch of the life and character of each. He was as full of
information about native states as an official report, but infinitely
more amusing. He _had_ to know. He traded in so many, and in some
districts--as in Patusan, for instance--his firm was the only one to
have an agency by special permit from the Dutch authorities. The
Government trusted his discretion, and it was understood that he
took all the risks. The men he employed understood that too, but
he made it worth their while apparently. He was perfectly frank
with me over the breakfast-table in the morning. As far as he was
aware (the last news was thirteen months old, he stated precisely),
utter insecurity for life and property was the normal condition.
There were in Patusan antagonistic forces, and one of them was
Rajah Allang, the worst of the Sultan's uncles, the governor of the
river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and ground down
to the point of extinction the country-born Malays, who, utterly
defenceless, had not even the resource of emigrating--"For
indeed," as Stein remarked, "where could they go, and how could
they get away?" No doubt they did not even desire to get away.
The world (which is circumscribed by lofty impassable mountains)
has been given into the hand of the high-born, and _this_ Rajah they
knew: he was of their own royal house. I had the pleasure of meeting
the gentleman later on. He was a dirty, little, used-up old man with
evil eyes and a weak mouth, who swallowed an opium pill every
two hours, and in defiance of common decency wore his hair
uncovered and falling in wild stringy locks about his wizened grimy
face. When giving audience he would clamber upon a sort of narrow
stage erected in a hall like a ruinous barn with a rotten bamboo
floor, through the cracks of which you could see, twelve or fifteen
feet below, the heaps of refuse and garbage of all kinds lying
under the house. That is where and how he received us when,
accompanied by Jim, I paid him a visit of ceremony. There were
about forty people in the room, and perhaps three times as many
in the great courtyard below. There was constant movement, coming
and going, pushing and murmuring, at our backs. A few youths in gay
silks glared from the distance; the majority, slaves and humble
dependants, were half naked, in ragged sarongs, dirty with ashes
and mud-stains. I had never seen Jim look so grave, so self-possessed,
in an impenetrable, impressive way. In the midst of these dark-faced
men, his stalwart figure in white apparel, the gleaming clusters of
his fair hair, seemed to catch all the sunshine that trickled
through the cracks in the closed shutters of that dim hall, with
its walls of mats and a roof of thatch. He appeared like a creature
not only of another kind but of another essence. Had they not seen
him come up in a canoe they might have thought he had descended
upon them from the clouds. He did, however, come in a crazy dug-out,
sitting (very still and with his knees together, for fear of overturning
the thing)--sitting on a tin box--which I had lent him--nursing on his
lap a revolver of the Navy pattern--presented by me on parting--which,
through an interposition of Providence, or through some wrong-headed
notion, that was just like him, or else from sheer instinctive sagacity,
he had decided to carry unloaded. That's how he ascended the Patusan
river. Nothing could have been more prosaic and more unsafe, more
extravagantly casual, more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would
cast the complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive
unreflecting desertion of a jump into the unknown.
'It is precisely the casualness of it that strikes me most. Neither
Stein nor I had a clear conception of what might be on the other
side when we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him
over the wall with scant ceremony. At the moment I merely wished
to achieve his disappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a
sentimental motive. He had a notion of paying off (in kind, I suppose)
the old debt he had never forgotten. Indeed he had been all his life
especially friendly to anybody from the British Isles. His late
benefactor, it is true, was a Scot--even to the length of being
called Alexander McNeil--and Jim came from a long way south of
the Tweed; but at the distance of six or seven thousand miles Great
Britain, though never diminished, looks foreshortened enough even
to its own children to rob such details of their importance. Stein
was excusable, and his hinted intentions were so generous that I
begged him most earnestly to keep them secret for a time. I felt
that no consideration of personal advantage should be allowed to
influence Jim; that not even the risk of such influence should be
run. We had to deal with another sort of reality. He wanted a refuge,
and a refuge at the cost of danger should be offered him--nothing
more.
'Upon every other point I was perfectly frank with him, and
I even (as I believed at the time) exaggerated the danger of the
undertaking. As a matter of fact I did not do it justice; his first day
in Patusan was nearly his last--would have been his last if he had
not been so reckless or so hard on himself and had condescended
to load that revolver. I remember, as I unfolded our precious
scheme for his retreat, how his stubborn but weary resignation was
gradually replaced by surprise, interest, wonder, and by boyish
eagerness. This was a chance he had been dreaming of. He couldn't
think how he merited that I . . . He would be shot if he could
see to what he owed . . .And it was Stein, Stein the merchant,
who . . .but of course it was me he had to . . . I cut him short. He
was not articulate, and his gratitude caused me inexplicable pain. I
told him that if he owed this chance to any one especially, it was to
an old Scot of whom he had never heard, who had died many years
ago, of whom little was remembered besides a roaring voice and a
rough sort of honesty. There was really no one to receive his thanks.
Stein was passing on to a young man the help he had received in
his own young days, and I had done no more than to mention his
name. Upon this he coloured, and, twisting a bit of paper in his
fingers, he remarked bashfully that I had always trusted him.
'I admitted that such was the case, and added after a pause that
I wished he had been able to follow my example. "You think I
don't?" he asked uneasily, and remarked in a mutter that one had
to get some sort of show first; then brightening up, and in a loud
voice he protested he would give me no occasion to regret my confidence,
which--which . . .
' "Do not misapprehend," I interrupted. "It is not in your power
to make me regret anything." There would be no regrets; but if
there were, it would be altogether my own affair: on the other hand,
I wished him to understand clearly that this arrangement, this--
this--experiment, was his own doing; he was responsible for it and
no one else. "Why? Why," he stammered, "this is the very thing
that I . . ." I begged him not to be dense, and he looked more
puzzled than ever. He was in a fair way to make life intolerable to
himself . . . "Do you think so?" he asked, disturbed; but in a
moment added confidently, "I was going on though. Was I not?"
It was impossible to be angry with him: I could not help a smile,
and told him that in the old days people who went on like this
were on the way of becoming hermits in a wilderness. "Hermits be
hanged!" he commented with engaging impulsiveness. Of course
he didn't mind a wilderness. . . . "I was glad of it," I said. That
was where he would be going to. He would find it lively enough, I
ventured to promise. "Yes, yes," he said, keenly. He had shown a
desire, I continued inflexibly, to go out and shut the door after
him. . . . "Did I?" he interrupted in a strange access of gloom that
seemed to envelop him from head to foot like the shadow of a
passing cloud. He was wonderfully expressive after all. Wonderfully!
"Did I?" he repeated bitterly. "You can't say I made much noise about it.
And I can keep it up, too--only, confound it! you show me a door." . . .
"Very well. Pass on," I struck in. I could make him a solemn promise
that it would be shut behind him with a vengeance. His fate, whatever
it was, would be ignored, because the country, for all its rotten
state, was not judged ripe for interference. Once he got in, it would
be for the outside world as though he had never existed. He would have
nothing but the soles of his two feet to stand upon, and he would have
first to find his ground at that. "Never existed--that's it, by
Jove," he murmured to himself. His eyes, fastened upon my lips,
sparkled. If he had thoroughly understood the conditions, I concluded,
he had better jump into the first gharry he could see and drive on to
Stein's house for his final instructions. He flung out of the room
before I had fairly finished speaking.'
CHAPTER 23
'He did not return till next morning. He had been kept to dinner
and for the night. There never had been such a wonderful man as
Mr. Stein. He had in his pocket a letter for Cornelius ("the Johnnie
who's going to get the sack," he explained, with a momentary drop
in his elation), and he exhibited with glee a silver ring, such
as natives use, worn down very thin and showing faint traces of
chasing.
'This was his introduction to an old chap called Doramin--one of the
principal men out there--a big pot--who had been Mr. Stein's friend
in that country where he had all these adventures. Mr. Stein called
him "war-comrade." War-comrade was good. Wasn't it? And didn't Mr.
Stein speak English wonderfully well? Said he had learned it in
Celebes--of all places! That was awfully funny. Was it not? He did
speak with an accent--a twang--did I notice? That chap Doramin had
given him the ring. They had exchanged presents when they parted
for the last time. Sort of promising eternal friendship. He called
it fine--did I not? They had to make a dash for dear life out of
the country when that Mohammed--Mohammed--What's-his-name had been
killed. I knew the story, of course. Seemed a beastly shame, didn't
it? . . .
'He ran on like this, forgetting his plate, with a knife and fork
in hand (he had found me at tiffin), slightly flushed, and with his
eyes darkened many shades, which was with him a sign of excitement.
The ring was a sort of credential--("It's like something you read
of in books," he threw in appreciatively)--and Doramin would
do his best for him. Mr. Stein had been the means of saving that
chap's life on some occasion; purely by accident, Mr. Stein had
said, but he--Jim--had his own opinion about that. Mr. Stein was
just the man to look out for such accidents. No matter. Accident or
purpose, this would serve his turn immensely. Hoped to goodness
the jolly old beggar had not gone off the hooks meantime. Mr. Stein
could not tell. There had been no news for more than a year; they
were kicking up no end of an all-fired row amongst themselves, and
the river was closed. Jolly awkward, this; but, no fear; he would
manage to find a crack to get in.
'He impressed, almost frightened, me with his elated rattle. He
was voluble like a youngster on the eve of a long holiday with a
prospect of delightful scrapes, and such an attitude of mind in a
grown man and in this connection had in it something phenomenal,
a little mad, dangerous, unsafe. I was on the point of entreating
him to take things seriously when he dropped his knife and fork
(he had begun eating, or rather swallowing food, as it were,
unconsciously), and began a search all round his plate. The ring! The
ring! Where the devil . . . Ah! Here it was . . . He closed his big
hand on it, and tried all his pockets one after another. Jove!
wouldn't do to lose the thing. He meditated gravely over his fist.
Had it? Would hang the bally affair round his neck! And he proceeded
to do this immediately, producing a string (which looked like a bit of
a cotton shoe-lace) for the purpose. There! That would do the trick!
It would be the deuce if . . . He seemed to catch sight of my face for
the first time, and it steadied him a little. I probably didn't
realise, he said with a naive gravity, how much importance he attached
to that token. It meant a friend; and it is a good thing to have a
friend. He knew something about that. He nodded at me expressively,
but before my disclaiming gesture he leaned his head on his hand and
for a while sat silent, playing thoughtfully with the bread-crumbs on
the cloth . . . "Slam the door--that was jolly well put," he cried,
and jumping up, began to pace the room, reminding me by the set of the
shoulders, the turn of his head, the headlong and uneven stride, of
that night when he had paced thus, confessing, explaining--what you
will--but, in the last instance, living--living before me, under his
own little cloud, with all his unconscious subtlety which could draw
consolation from the very source of sorrow. It was the same mood, the
same and different, like a fickle companion that to-day guiding you on
the true path, with the same eyes, the same step, the same impulse,
to-morrow will lead you hopelessly astray. His tread was assured,
his straying, darkened eyes seemed to search the room for something.
One of his footfalls somehow sounded louder than the other--the fault
of his boots probably--and gave a curious impression of an invisible halt
in his gait. One of his hands was rammed deep into his trousers'
pocket, the other waved suddenly above his head. "Slam the door!"
he shouted. "I've been waiting for that. I'll show yet . . . I'll . . .
I'm ready for any confounded thing . . . I've been dreaming of
it . . . Jove! Get out of this. Jove! This is luck at last . . . You wait.
I'll . . ."
'He tossed his head fearlessly, and I confess that for the first and
last time in our acquaintance I perceived myself unexpectedly to be
thoroughly sick of him. Why these vapourings? He was stumping
about the room flourishing his arm absurdly, and now and then
feeling on his breast for the ring under his clothes. Where was the
sense of such exaltation in a man appointed to be a trading-clerk,
and in a place where there was no trade--at that? Why hurl defiance
at the universe? This was not a proper frame of mind to approach
any undertaking; an improper frame of mind not only for him, I
said, but for any man. He stood still over me. Did I think so? he
asked, by no means subdued, and with a smile in which I seemed
to detect suddenly something insolent. But then I am twenty years
his senior. Youth is insolent; it is its right--its necessity; it has got
to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance,
is an insolence. He went off into a far corner, and coming back, he,
figuratively speaking, turned to rend me. I spoke like that because
I--even I, who had been no end kind to him--even I remembered--
remembered--against him--what--what had happened. And what
about others--the--the--world? Where's the wonder he wanted to
get out, meant to get out, meant to stay out--by heavens! And I
talked about proper frames of mind!
' "It is not I or the world who remember," I shouted. "It is you--you,
who remember."
'He did not flinch, and went on with heat, "Forget everything,
everybody, everybody." . . . His voice fell. . . "But you," he
added.
' "Yes--me too--if it would help," I said, also in a low tone.
After this we remained silent and languid for a time as if exhausted.
Then he began again, composedly, and told me that Mr. Stein had
instructed him to wait for a month or so, to see whether it was
possible for him to remain, before he began building a new house
for himself, so as to avoid "vain expense." He did make use of
funny expressions--Stein did. "Vain expense" was good. . . . Remain?
Why! of course. He would hang on. Let him only get in--that's all;
he would answer for it he would remain. Never get out. It was easy
enough to remain.
' "Don't be foolhardy," I said, rendered uneasy by his threatening
tone. "If you only live long enough you will want to come back."
' "Come back to what?" he asked absently, with his eyes fixed
upon the face of a clock on the wall.
'I was silent for a while. "Is it to be never, then?" I said. "Never,"
he repeated dreamily without looking at me, and then flew into
sudden activity. "Jove! Two o'clock, and I sail at four!"
'It was true. A brigantine of Stein's was leaving for the westward
that afternoon, and he had been instructed to take his passage in
her, only no orders to delay the sailing had been given. I suppose
Stein forgot. He made a rush to get his things while I went aboard
my ship, where he promised to call on his way to the outer roadstead.
He turned up accordingly in a great hurry and with a small leather
valise in his hand. This wouldn't do, and I offered him an old tin
trunk of mine supposed to be water-tight, or at least damp-tight.
He effected the transfer by the simple process of shooting out the
contents of his valise as you would empty a sack of wheat. I saw
three books in the tumble; two small, in dark covers, and a thick
green-and-gold volume--a half-crown complete Shakespeare. "You
read this?" I asked. "Yes. Best thing to cheer up a fellow," he said
hastily. I was struck by this appreciation, but there was no time
for Shakespearian talk. A heavy revolver and two small boxes of
cartridges were lying on the cuddy-table. "Pray take this," I said.
"It may help you to remain." No sooner were these words out of
my mouth than I perceived what grim meaning they could bear.
"May help you to get in," I corrected myself remorsefully. He
however was not troubled by obscure meanings; he thanked me
effusively and bolted out, calling Good-bye over his shoulder. I
heard his voice through the ship's side urging his boatmen to give
way, and looking out of the stern-port I saw the boat rounding
under the counter. He sat in her leaning forward, exciting his men
with voice and gestures; and as he had kept the revolver in his hand
and seemed to be presenting it at their heads, I shall never forget
the scared faces of the four Javanese, and the frantic swing of their
stroke which snatched that vision from under my eyes. Then turning
away, the first thing I saw were the two boxes of cartridges on
the cuddy-table. He had forgotten to take them.
'I ordered my gig manned at once; but Jim's rowers, under the
impression that their lives hung on a thread while they had that
madman in the boat, made such excellent time that before I had
traversed half the distance between the two vessels I caught sight
of him clambering over the rail, and of his box being passed up. All
the brigantine's canvas was loose, her mainsail was set, and the
windlass was just beginning to clink as I stepped upon her deck:
her master, a dapper little half-caste of forty or so, in a blue flannel
suit, with lively eyes, his round face the colour of lemon-peel, and
with a thin little black moustache drooping on each side of his thick,
dark lips, came forward smirking. He turned out, notwithstanding
his self-satisfied and cheery exterior, to be of a careworn temperament.
In answer to a remark of mine (while Jim had gone below for a moment)
he said, "Oh yes. Patusan." He was going to carry the gentleman to the
mouth of the river, but would "never ascend." His flowing English
seemed to be derived from a dictionary compiled by a lunatic. Had Mr.
Stein desired him to "ascend," he would have "reverentially"--(I think
he wanted to say respectfully--but devil only knows)--"reverentially
made objects for the safety of properties." If disregarded, he would
have presented "resignation to quit." Twelve months ago he had made
his last voyage there, and though Mr. Cornelius "propitiated many
offertories" to Mr. Rajah Allang and the "principal populations," on
conditions which made the trade "a snare and ashes in the mouth," yet
his ship had been fired upon from the woods by "irresponsive parties"
all the way down the river; which causing his crew "from exposure to
limb to remain silent in hidings," the brigantine was nearly stranded
on a sandbank at the bar, where she "would have been perishable
beyond the act of man." The angry disgust at the recollection, the
pride of his fluency, to which he turned an attentive ear, struggled
for the possession of his broad simple face. He scowled and beamed
at me, and watched with satisfaction the undeniable effect of his
phraseology. Dark frowns ran swiftly over the placid sea, and the
brigantine, with her fore-topsail to the mast and her main-boom
amidships, seemed bewildered amongst the cat's-paws. He told me
further, gnashing his teeth, that the Rajah was a "laughable hyaena"
(can't imagine how he got hold of hyaenas); while somebody else
was many times falser than the "weapons of a crocodile." Keeping
one eye on the movements of his crew forward, he let loose his
volubility--comparing the place to a "cage of beasts made ravenous
by long impenitence." I fancy he meant impunity. He had no intention,
he cried, to "exhibit himself to be made attached purposefully to
robbery." The long-drawn wails, giving the time for the pull of the
men catting the anchor, came to an end, and he lowered his voice.
"Plenty too much enough of Patusan," he concluded, with energy.
'I heard afterwards he had been so indiscreet as to get himself
tied up by the neck with a rattan halter to a post planted in the
middle of a mud-hole before the Rajah's house. He spent the best
part of a day and a whole night in that unwholesome situation, but
there is every reason to believe the thing had been meant as a sort
of joke. He brooded for a while over that horrid memory, I suppose,
and then addressed in a quarrelsome tone the man coming aft to
the helm. When he turned to me again it was to speak judicially,
without passion. He would take the gentleman to the mouth of the
river at Batu Kring (Patusan town "being situated internally," he
remarked, "thirty miles"). But in his eyes, he continued--a tone
of bored, weary conviction replacing his previous voluble delivery--
the gentleman was already "in the similitude of a corpse." "What?
What do you say?" I asked. He assumed a startlingly ferocious
demeanour, and imitated to perfection the act of stabbing from
behind. "Already like the body of one deported," he explained,
with the insufferably conceited air of his kind after what they
imagine a display of cleverness. Behind him I perceived Jim smiling
silently at me, and with a raised hand checking the exclamation on
my lips.
'Then, while the half-caste, bursting with importance, shouted
his orders, while the yards swung creaking and the heavy boom
came surging over, Jim and I, alone as it were, to leeward of the
mainsail, clasped each other's hands and exchanged the last hurried
words. My heart was freed from that dull resentment which had
existed side by side with interest in his fate. The absurd chatter of
the half-caste had given more reality to the miserable dangers of his
path than Stein's careful statements. On that occasion the sort of
formality that had been always present in our intercourse vanished
from our speech; I believe I called him "dear boy," and he tacked
on the words "old man" to some half-uttered expression of gratitude,
as though his risk set off against my years had made us more equal
in age and in feeling. There was a moment of real and profound
intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a glimpse of some everlasting,
of some saving truth. He exerted himself to soothe me as though he had
been the more mature of the two. "All right, all right," he said,
rapidly, and with feeling. "I promise to take care of myself. Yes; I
won't take any risks. Not a single blessed risk. Of course not. I mean
to hang out. Don't you worry. Jove! I feel as if nothing could touch
me. Why! this is luck from the word Go. I wouldn't spoil such a
magnificent chance!" . . . A magnificent chance! Well, it _was_
magnificent, but chances are what men make them, and how was I to
know? As he had said, even I--even I remembered--his--his misfortune
against him. It was true. And the best thing for him was to go.
'My gig had dropped in the wake of the brigantine, and I saw
him aft detached upon the light of the westering sun, raising his
cap high above his head. I heard an indistinct shout, "You--shall--
hear--of--me." Of me, or from me, I don't know which. I think
it must have been of me. My eyes were too dazzled by the glitter of
the sea below his feet to see him clearly; I am fated never to see him
clearly; but I can assure you no man could have appeared less "in
the similitude of a corpse," as that half-caste croaker had put it. I
could see the little wretch's face, the shape and colour of a ripe
pumpkin, poked out somewhere under Jim's elbow. He, too, raised
his arm as if for a downward thrust. Absit omen!'
CHAPTER 24
'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is
straight and sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen
like cataracts of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of
bushes and creepers clothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open
out at the mouth of rivers, with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond
the vast forests. In the offing a chain of islands, dark, crumbling
shapes, stand out in the everlasting sunlit haze like the remnants of
a wall breached by the sea.
'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring
branch of the estuary. The river, which had been closed so long, was
open then, and Stein's little schooner, in which I had my passage,
worked her way up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade
from "irresponsive parties." Such a state of affairs belonged
already to ancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of
the fishing village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot.
He talked to me (the second white man he had ever seen) with
confidence, and most of his talk was about the first white man he
had ever seen. He called him Tuan Jim, and the tone of his references
was made remarkable by a strange mixture of familiarity and awe.
They, in the village, were under that lord's special protection,
which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If he had warned me that
I would hear of him it was perfectly true. I was hearing of him.
There was already a story that the tide had turned two hours before
its time to help him on his journey up the river. The talkative
old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the
phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son
and his son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without
experience, who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed
out to them the amazing fact.
'Jim's coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them,
as to many of us, the blessing came heralded by terrors. So many
generations had been released since the last white man had visited
the river that the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of
the being that descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be
taken up to Patusan was discomposing; his insistence was alarming;
his generosity more than suspicious. It was an unheard-of request.
There was no precedent. What would the Rajah say to this? What
would he do to them? The best part of the night was spent in
consultation; but the immediate risk from the anger of that strange
man seemed so great that at last a cranky dug-out was got ready.
The women shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless old hag
cursed the stranger.
'He sat in it, as I've told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded
revolver on his lap. He sat with precaution--than which there is
nothing more fatiguing--and thus entered the land he was destined
to fill with the fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to
the white ribbon of surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight
of the sea with its labouring waves for ever rising, sinking, and
vanishing to rise again--the very image of struggling mankind--and
faced the immovable forests rooted deep in the soil, soaring
towards the sunshine, everlasting in the shadowy might of their
tradition, like life itself. And his opportunity sat veiled by his side
like an Eastern bride waiting to be uncovered by the hand of the
master. He too was the heir of a shadowy and mighty tradition! He
told me, however, that he had never in his life felt so depressed and
tired as in that canoe. All the movement he dared to allow himself
was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the shell of half a cocoa-nut
floating between his shoes, and bale some of the water out with a
carefully restrained action. He discovered how hard the lid of a
block-tin case was to sit upon. He had heroic health; but several
times during that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and
between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the
sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking
ahead to decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the
water's edge was a log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he
had to give that up. No fun in it. Always alligator. One of them
flopped into the river and all but capsized the canoe. But this
excitement was over directly. Then in a long empty reach he was very
grateful to a troop of monkeys who came right down on the bank
and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage. Such was the way
in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever
achieved. Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime his three
paddlers were preparing to put into execution their plan of delivering
him up to the Rajah.
' "I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I
did doze off for a time," he said. The first thing he knew was his
canoe coming to the bank. He became instantaneously aware of the
forest having been left behind, of the first houses being visible
higher up, of a stockade on his left, and of his boatmen leaping
out together upon a low point of land and taking to their heels.
Instinctively he leaped out after them. At first he thought himself
deserted for some inconceivable reason, but he heard excited
shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured out, making
towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed men appeared
on the river and came alongside his empty canoe, thus shutting off
his retreat.
' "I was too startled to be quite cool--don't you know? and if
that revolver had been loaded I would have shot somebody--perhaps
two, three bodies, and that would have been the end of me. But it
wasn't. . . ." "Why not?" I asked. "Well, I couldn't fight the whole
population, and I wasn't coming to them as if I were afraid of my
life," he said, with just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness
in the glance he gave me. I refrained from pointing out to him that
they could not have known the chambers were actually empty. He had to
satisfy himself in his own way. . . . "Anyhow it wasn't," he repeated
good-humouredly, "and so I just stood still and asked them what was
the matter. That seemed to strike them dumb. I saw some of these
thieves going off with my box. That long-legged old scoundrel Kassim
(I'll show him to you to-morrow) ran out fussing to me about the Rajah
wanting to see me. I said, 'All right.' I too wanted to see the Rajah,
and I simply walked in through the gate and--and--here I am." He
laughed, and then with unexpected emphasis, "And do you know what's
the best in it?" he asked. "I'll tell you. It's the knowledge that had
I been wiped out it is this place that would have been the loser."
'He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I've mentioned--
after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm between the
hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen descended,
cold and pale, like the ghost of dead sunlight. There is something
haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of
a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. It is
to our sunshine, which--say what you like--is all we have to live by,
what the echo is to the sound: misleading and confusing whether the
note be mocking or sad. It robs all forms of matter--which, after all,
is our domain--of their substance, and gives a sinister reality to
shadows alone. And the shadows were very real around us, but Jim by my
side looked very stalwart, as though nothing--not even the occult power
of moonlight--could rob him of his reality in my eyes. Perhaps, indeed,
nothing could touch him since he had survived the assault of the dark
powers. All was silent, all was still; even on the river the moonbeams
slept as on a pool. It was the moment of high water, a moment of
immobility that accentuated the utter isolation of this lost corner of
the earth. The houses crowding along the wide shining sweep without
ripple or glitter, stepping into the water in a line of jostling,
vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with black masses of shadow, were
like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures pressing forward to drink
in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and there a red gleam twinkled
within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living spark, significant of
human affections, of shelter, of repose.
'He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams
go out one by one, that he loved to see people go to sleep under his
eyes, confident in the security of to-morrow. "Peaceful here, eh?"
he asked. He was not eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in
the words that followed. "Look at these houses; there's not one
where I am not trusted. Jove! I told you I would hang on. Ask
any man, woman, or child . . ." He paused. "Well, I am all right
anyhow."
'I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end. I had
been sure of it, I added. He shook his head. "Were you?" He
pressed my arm lightly above the elbow. "Well, then--you were
right."
'There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low
exclamation. "Jove!" he cried, "only think what it is to me." Again
he pressed my arm. "And you asked me whether I thought of
leaving. Good God! I! want to leave! Especially now after what you
told me of Mr. Stein's . . . Leave! Why! That's what I was afraid
of. It would have been--it would have been harder than dying.
No--on my word. Don't laugh. I must feel--every day, every time
I open my eyes--that I am trusted--that nobody has a right--don't
you know? Leave! For where? What for? To get what?"
'I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it
was Stein's intention to present him at once with the house and the
stock of trading goods, on certain easy conditions which would
make the transaction perfectly regular and valid. He began to snort
and plunge at first. "Confound your delicacy!" I shouted. "It isn't
Stein at all. It's giving you what you had made for yourself. And in
any case keep your remarks for McNeil--when you meet him in
the other world. I hope it won't happen soon. . . ." He had to give
in to my arguments, because all his conquests, the trust, the fame,
the friendships, the love--all these things that made him master
had made him a captive, too. He looked with an owner's eye at the
peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses, at the everlasting
life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind, at the secrets of
the land, at the pride of his own heart; but it was they that possessed
him and made him their own to the innermost thought, to the
slightest stir of blood, to his last breath.
'It was something to be proud of. I, too, was proud--for him, if
not so certain of the fabulous value of the bargain. It was wonderful.
It was not so much of his fearlessness that I thought. It is strange
how little account I took of it: as if it had been something too
conventional to be at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck
by the other gifts he had displayed. He had proved his grasp of
the unfamiliar situation, his intellectual alertness in that field of
thought. There was his readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had
come to him in a manner like keen scent to a well-bred hound. He
was not eloquent, but there was a dignity in this constitutional
reticence, there was a high seriousness in his stammerings. He had
still his old trick of stubborn blushing. Now and then, though, a
word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how deeply, how
solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the certitude
of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land and the
people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous tenderness.'
CHAPTER 25
' "This is where I was prisoner for three days," he murmured to
me (it was on the occasion of our visit to the Rajah), while we
were making our way slowly through a kind of awestruck riot of
dependants across Tunku Allang's courtyard. "Filthy place, isn't
it? And I couldn't get anything to eat either, unless I made a row
about it, and then it was only a small plate of rice and a fried fish
not much bigger than a stickleback--confound them! Jove! I've
been hungry prowling inside this stinking enclosure with some of
these vagabonds shoving their mugs right under my nose. I had
given up that famous revolver of yours at the first demand. Glad to
get rid of the bally thing. Look like a fool walking about with an
empty shooting-iron in my hand." At that moment we came into
the presence, and he became unflinchingly grave and complimentary
with his late captor. Oh! magnificent! I want to laugh when I
think of it. But I was impressed, too. The old disreputable Tunku
Allang could not help showing his fear (he was no hero, for all the
tales of his hot youth he was fond of telling); and at the same time
there was a wistful confidence in his manner towards his late
prisoner. Note! Even where he would be most hated he was still trusted.
Jim--as far as I could follow the conversation--was improving the
occasion by the delivery of a lecture. Some poor villagers had been
waylaid and robbed while on their way to Doramin's house with a
few pieces of gum or beeswax which they wished to exchange for
rice. "It was Doramin who was a thief," burst out the Rajah. A
shaking fury seemed to enter that old frail body. He writhed weirdly
on his mat, gesticulating with his hands and feet, tossing the tangled
strings of his mop--an impotent incarnation of rage. There were
staring eyes and dropping jaws all around us. Jim began to speak.
Resolutely, coolly, and for some time he enlarged upon the text that
no man should be prevented from getting his food and his children's
food honestly. The other sat like a tailor at his board, one palm on
each knee, his head low, and fixing Jim through the grey hair that
fell over his very eyes. When Jim had done there was a great
stillness. Nobody seemed to breathe even; no one made a sound till the
old Rajah sighed faintly, and looking up, with a toss of his head,
said quickly, "You hear, my people! No more of these little
games." This decree was received in profound silence. A rather
heavy man, evidently in a position of confidence, with intelligent
eyes, a bony, broad, very dark face, and a cheerily of officious manner
(I learned later on he was the executioner), presented to us two cups
of coffee on a brass tray, which he took from the hands of an inferior
attendant. "You needn't drink," muttered Jim very rapidly. I
didn't perceive the meaning at first, and only looked at him. He
took a good sip and sat composedly, holding the saucer in his left
hand. In a moment I felt excessively annoyed. "Why the devil," I
whispered, smiling at him amiably, "do you expose me to such a
stupid risk?" I drank, of course, there was nothing for it, while he
gave no sign, and almost immediately afterwards we took our leave.
While we were going down the courtyard to our boat, escorted by
the intelligent and cheery executioner, Jim said he was very sorry.
It was the barest chance, of course. Personally he thought nothing
of poison. The remotest chance. He was--he assured me--considered
to be infinitely more useful than dangerous, and so . . . "But the
Rajah is afraid of you abominably. Anybody can see that," I argued
with, I own, a certain peevishness, and all the time watching
anxiously for the first twist of some sort of ghastly colic. I was
awfully disgusted. "If I am to do any good here and preserve my
position," he said, taking his seat by my side in the boat, "I must
stand the risk: I take it once every month, at least. Many people
trust me to do that--for them. Afraid of me! That's just it. Most
likely he is afraid of me because I am not afraid of his coffee." Then
showing me a place on the north front of the stockade where the
pointed tops of several stakes were broken, "This is where I leaped
over on my third day in Patusan. They haven't put new stakes there
yet. Good leap, eh?" A moment later we passed the mouth of a
muddy creek. "This is my second leap. I had a bit of a run and
took this one flying, but fell short. Thought I would leave my skin
there. Lost my shoes struggling. And all the time I was thinking to
myself how beastly it would be to get a jab with a bally long spear
while sticking in the mud like this. I remember how sick I felt
wriggling in that slime. I mean really sick--as if I had bitten
something rotten."
'That's how it was--and the opportunity ran by his side, leaped over
the gap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. The unexpectedness
of his coming was the only thing, you understand, that saved
him from being at once dispatched with krisses and flung into the
river. They had him, but it was like getting hold of an apparition,
a wraith, a portent. What did it mean? What to do with it? Was it
too late to conciliate him? Hadn't he better be killed without more
delay? But what would happen then? Wretched old Allang went
nearly mad with apprehension and through the difficulty of making
up his mind. Several times the council was broken up, and the
advisers made a break helter-skelter for the door and out on to the
verandah. One--it is said--even jumped down to the ground--fifteen
feet, I should judge--and broke his leg. The royal governor of
Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to introduce
boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when, getting
gradually excited, he would end by flying off his perch with a
kriss in his hand. But, barring such interruptions, the deliberations
upon Jim's fate went on night and day.
'Meanwhile he wandered about the courtyard, shunned by some,
glared at by others, but watched by all, and practically at the mercy
of the first casual ragamuffin with a chopper, in there. He took
possession of a small tumble-down shed to sleep in; the effluvia of
filth and rotten matter incommoded him greatly: it seems he had
not lost his appetite though, because--he told me--he had been
hungry all the blessed time. Now and again "some fussy ass"
deputed from the council-room would come out running to him,
and in honeyed tones would administer amazing interrogatories:
"Were the Dutch coming to take the country? Would the white
man like to go back down the river? What was the object of coming
to such a miserable country? The Rajah wanted to know whether
the white man could repair a watch?" They did actually bring out
to him a nickel clock of New England make, and out of sheer
unbearable boredom he busied himself in trying to get the alarum
to work. It was apparently when thus occupied in his shed that the
true perception of his extreme peril dawned upon him. He dropped
the thing--he says--"like a hot potato," and walked out hastily,
without the slightest idea of what he would, or indeed could, do. He
only knew that the position was intolerable. He strolled aimlessly
beyond a sort of ramshackle little granary on posts, and his eyes fell
on the broken stakes of the palisade; and then--he says--at once,
without any mental process as it were, without any stir of emotion,
he set about his escape as if executing a plan matured for a month.
He walked off carelessly to give himself a good run, and when
he faced about there was some dignitary, with two spearmen in
attendance, close at his elbow ready with a question. He started off
"from under his very nose," went over "like a bird," and landed
on the other side with a fall that jarred all his bones and seemed to
split his head. He picked himself up instantly. He never thought of
anything at the time; all he could remember--he said--was a great
yell; the first houses of Patusan were before him four hundred yards
away; he saw the creek, and as it were mechanically put on more
pace. The earth seemed fairly to fly backwards under his feet. He
took off from the last dry spot, felt himself flying through the air,
felt himself, without any shock, planted upright in an extremely
soft and sticky mudbank. It was only when he tried to move his
legs and found he couldn't that, in his own words, "he came to
himself." He began to think of the "bally long spears." As a matter
of fact, considering that the people inside the stockade had to run
to the gate, then get down to the landing-place, get into boats, and
pull round a point of land, he had more advance than he imagined.
Besides, it being low water, the creek was without water--you
couldn't call it dry--and practically he was safe for a time from
everything but a very long shot perhaps. The higher firm ground
was about six feet in front of him. "I thought I would have to die
there all the same," he said. He reached and grabbed desperately
with his hands, and only succeeded in gathering a horrible cold
shiny heap of slime against his breast--up to his very chin. It seemed
to him he was burying himself alive, and then he struck out madly,
scattering the mud with his fists. It fell on his head, on his face,
over his eyes, into his mouth. He told me that he remembered
suddenly the courtyard, as you remember a place where you had
been very happy years ago. He longed--so he said--to be back
there again, mending the clock. Mending the clock--that was the
idea. He made efforts, tremendous sobbing, gasping efforts, efforts
that seemed to burst his eyeballs in their sockets and make him
blind, and culminating into one mighty supreme effort in the darkness
to crack the earth asunder, to throw it off his limbs--and he
felt himself creeping feebly up the bank. He lay full length on the
firm ground and saw the light, the sky. Then as a sort of happy
thought the notion came to him that he would go to sleep. He will
have it that he _did_ actually go to sleep; that he slept--perhaps for a
minute, perhaps for twenty seconds, or only for one second, but he
recollects distinctly the violent convulsive start of awakening. He
remained lying still for a while, and then he arose muddy from
head to foot and stood there, thinking he was alone of his kind for
hundreds of miles, alone, with no help, no sympathy, no pity to
expect from any one, like a hunted animal. The first houses were
not more than twenty yards from him; and it was the desperate
screaming of a frightened woman trying to carry off a child that
started him again. He pelted straight on in his socks, beplastered
with filth out of all semblance to a human being. He traversed more
than half the length of the settlement. The nimbler women fled
right and left, the slower men just dropped whatever they had in
their hands, and remained petrified with dropping jaws. He was a
flying terror. He says he noticed the little children trying to run for
life, falling on their little stomachs and kicking. He swerved
between two houses up a slope, clambered in desperation over a
barricade of felled trees (there wasn't a week without some fight in
Patusan at that time), burst through a fence into a maize-patch,
where a scared boy flung a stick at him, blundered upon a path,
and ran all at once into the arms of several startled men. He just had
breath enough to gasp out, "Doramin! Doramin!" He remembers
being half-carried, half-rushed to the top of the slope, and in a vast
enclosure with palms and fruit trees being run up to a large man
sitting massively in a chair in the midst of the greatest possible
commotion and excitement. He fumbled in mud and clothes to
produce the ring, and, finding himself suddenly on his back, wondered
who had knocked him down. They had simply let him go--don't you
know?--but he couldn't stand. At the foot of the slope random shots
were fired, and above the roofs of the settlement there rose a dull
roar of amazement. But he was safe. Doramin's people were barricading
the gate and pouring water down his throat; Doramin's old wife, full
of business and commiseration, was issuing shrill orders to her girls.
"The old woman," he said softly, "made a to-do over me as if I had
been her own son. They put me into an immense bed--her state bed--and
she ran in and out wiping her eyes to give me pats on the back. I must
have been a pitiful object. I just lay there like a log for I don't
know how long."
'He seemed to have a great liking for Doramin's old wife. She on her
side had taken a motherly fancy to him. She had a round, nut-brown,
soft face, all fine wrinkles, large, bright red lips (she chewed
betel assiduously), and screwed up, winking, benevolent eyes. She
was constantly in movement, scolding busily and ordering unceasingly
a troop of young women with clear brown faces and big grave eyes,
her daughters, her servants, her slave-girls. You know how it
is in these households: it's generally impossible to tell the difference.
She was very spare, and even her ample outer garment, fastened in
front with jewelled clasps, had somehow a skimpy effect. Her dark
bare feet were thrust into yellow straw slippers of Chinese make.
I have seen her myself flitting about with her extremely thick,
long, grey hair falling about her shoulders. She uttered homely
shrewd sayings, was of noble birth, and was eccentric and arbitrary.
In the afternoon she would sit in a very roomy arm-chair, opposite
her husband, gazing steadily through a wide opening in the wall
which gave an extensive view of the settlement and the river.
'She invariably tucked up her feet under her, but old Doramin
sat squarely, sat imposingly as a mountain sits on a plain. He was
only of the nakhoda or merchant class, but the respect shown to
him and the dignity of his bearing were very striking. He was the
chief of the second power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes
(about sixty families that, with dependants and so on, could muster
some two hundred men "wearing the kriss") had elected him years
ago for their head. The men of that race are intelligent, enterprising,
revengeful, but with a more frank courage than the other Malays,
and restless under oppression. They formed the party opposed to
the Rajah. Of course the quarrels were for trade. This was the
primary cause of faction fights, of the sudden outbreaks that would
fill this or that part of the settlement with smoke, flame, the noise
of shots and shrieks. Villages were burnt, men were dragged into
the Rajah's stockade to be killed or tortured for the crime of trading
with anybody else but himself. Only a day or two before Jim's
arrival several heads of households in the very fishing village that
was afterwards taken under his especial protection had been driven
over the cliffs by a party of the Rajah's spearmen, on suspicion of
having been collecting edible birds' nests for a Celebes trader. Rajah
Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the
penalty for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of
trading was indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery.
His cruelty and rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and
he was afraid of the organised power of the Celebes men, only--till
Jim came--he was not afraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them
through his subjects, and thought himself pathetically in the right.
The situation was complicated by a wandering stranger, an Arab
half-breed, who, I believe, on purely religious grounds, had incited
the tribes in the interior (the bush-folk, as Jim himself called them)
to rise, and had established himself in a fortified camp on the summit
of one of the twin hills. He hung over the town of Patusan like a hawk
over a poultry-yard, but he devastated the open country. Whole villages,
deserted, rotted on their blackened posts over the banks of clear
streams, dropping piecemeal into the water the grass of their walls,
the leaves of their roofs, with a curious effect of natural decay
as if they had been a form of vegetation stricken by a blight at its
very root. The two parties in Patusan were not sure which one this
partisan most desired to plunder. The Rajah intrigued with him feebly.
Some of the Bugis settlers, weary with endless insecurity, were half
inclined to call him in. The younger spirits amongst them, chaffing,
advised to "get Sherif Ali with his wild men and drive the Rajah Allang
out of the country." Doramin restrained them with difficulty. He was
growing old, and, though his influence had not diminished, the
situation was getting beyond him. This was the state of affairs when
Jim, bolting from the Rajah's stockade, appeared before the chief
of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in a manner of
speaking, into the heart of the community.'
CHAPTER 26
'Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had
ever seen. His bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look
merely fat; he looked imposing, monumental. This motionless
body, clad in rich stuffs, coloured silks, gold embroideries; this
huge head, enfolded in a red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big,
round face, wrinkled, furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds
starting on each side of wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a
thick-lipped mouth; the throat like a bull; the vast corrugated brow
overhanging the staring proud eyes--made a whole that, once seen, can
never be forgotten. His impassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb
when once he sat down) was like a display of dignity. He was never
known to raise his voice. It was a hoarse and powerful murmur,
slightly veiled as if heard from a distance. When he walked, two
short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the waist, in white sarongs
and with black skull-caps on the backs of their heads, sustained his
elbows; they would ease him down and stand behind his chair till
he wanted to rise, when he would turn his head slowly, as if with
difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would catch
him under his armpits and help him up. For all that, there was
nothing of a cripple about him: on the contrary, all his ponderous
movements were like manifestations of a mighty deliberate force.
It was generally believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs;
but nobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange a single
word. When they sat in state by the wide opening it was in silence.
They could see below them in the declining light the vast expanse
of the forest country, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating
as far as the violet and purple range of mountains; the shining
sinuosity of the river like an immense letter S of beaten silver;
the brown ribbon of houses following the sweep of both banks,
overtopped by the twin hills uprising above the nearer tree-tops.
They were wonderfully contrasted: she, light, delicate, spare,
quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of motherly fussiness in
her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy, like a figure of
a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something magnanimous and
ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people was a most
distinguished youth.
'They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really so young as
he looked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so young when a man is
already father of a family at eighteen. When he entered the large
room, lined and carpeted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of
white sheeting, where the couple sat in state surrounded by a most
deferential retinue, he would make his way straight to Doramin, to
kiss his hand--which the other abandoned to him, majestically--and
then would step across to stand by his mother's chair. I suppose
I may say they idolised him, but I never caught them giving him an
overt glance. Those, it is true, were public functions. The room was
generally thronged. The solemn formality of greetings and leave-takings,
the profound respect expressed in gestures, on the faces, in the low
whispers, is simply indescribable. "It's well worth seeing," Jim had
assured me while we were crossing the river, on our way back. "They
are like people in a book, aren't they?" he said triumphantly. "And
Dain Waris--their son--is the best friend (barring you) I ever had.
What Mr. Stein would call a good 'war-comrade.' I was in luck. Jove!
I was in luck when I tumbled amongst them at my last gasp." He
meditated with bowed head, then rousing himself he added--' "Of course
I didn't go to sleep over it, but . . ." He paused again. "It seemed
to come to me," he murmured. "All at once I saw what I had to do . . ."
'There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come
through war, too, as is natural, since this power that came to him
was the power to make peace. It is in this sense alone that might so
often is right. You must not think he had seen his way at once.
When he arrived the Bugis community was in a most critical position.
"They were all afraid," he said to me--"each man afraid for himself;
while I could see as plain as possible that they must do something at
once, if they did not want to go under one after another, what between
the Rajah and that vagabond Sherif." But to see that was nothing. When
he got his idea he had to drive it into reluctant minds, through the
bulwarks of fear, of selfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was
nothing. He had to devise the means. He devised them--an audacious plan;
and his task was only half done. He had to inspire with his own
confidence a lot of people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang
back; he had to conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all
sorts of senseless mistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority,
and his son's fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the
distinguished youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of
those strange, profound, rare friendships between brown and white,
in which the very difference of race seems to draw two human
beings closer by some mystic element of sympathy. Of Dain Waris,
his own people said with pride that he knew how to fight like a
white man. This was true; he had that sort of courage--the courage
in the open, I may say--but he had also a European mind. You
meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to discover
unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision, a tenacity
of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but admirably
well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a polished,
easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky face, with
big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose thoughtful.
He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic smile, a
courteous deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great reserves
of intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western eye, so
often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden possibilities of races
and lands over which hangs the mystery of unrecorded ages. He
not only trusted Jim, he understood him, I firmly believe. I speak
of him because he had captivated me. His--if I may say so--his
caustic placidity, and, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy
with Jim's aspirations, appealed to me. I seemed to behold the very
origin of friendship. If Jim took the lead, the other had captivated
his leader. In fact, Jim the leader was a captive in every sense. The
land, the people, the friendship, the love, were like the jealous
guardians of his body. Every day added a link to the fetters of that
strange freedom. I felt convinced of it, as from day to day I learned
more of the story.
'The story! Haven't I heard the story? I've heard it on the march,
in camp (he made me scour the country after invisible game); I've
listened to a good part of it on one of the twin summits, after
climbing the last hundred feet or so on my hands and knees. Our
escort (we had volunteer followers from village to village) had
camped meantime on a bit of level ground half-way up the slope,
and in the still breathless evening the smell of wood-smoke reached
our nostrils from below with the penetrating delicacy of some choice
scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their distinct and
immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a felled tree, and pulling
out his pipe began to smoke. A new growth of grass and bushes was
springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass of
thorny twigs. "It all started from here," he said, after a long and
meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a
sombre precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing
here and there ruinously--the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable
camp.
'But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. He had
mounted Doramin's old ordnance on the top of that hill; two rusty
iron 7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon--currency cannon.
But if the brass guns represent wealth, they can also, when crammed
recklessly to the muzzle, send a solid shot to some little distance.
The thing was to get them up there. He showed me where he had
fastened the cables, explained how he had improvised a rude capstan
out of a hollowed log turning upon a pointed stake, indicated
with the bowl of his pipe the outline of the earthwork. The last
hundred feet of the ascent had been the most difficult. He had made
himself responsible for success on his own head. He had induced
the war party to work hard all night. Big fires lighted at intervals
blazed all down the slope, "but up here," he explained, "the hoisting
gang had to fly around in the dark." From the top he saw men
moving on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on that night
had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel, directing,
encouraging, watching all along the line. Old Doramin had himself
carried up the hill in his arm-chair. They put him down on the level
place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the big
fires--"amazing old chap--real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his
little fierce eyes--a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees.
Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks
and a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it
seems--in exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to
good old McNeil. God only knows how _he_ came by them. There he
sat, moving neither hand nor foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind
him, and lots of people rushing about, shouting and pulling round
him--the most solemn, imposing old chap you can imagine. He
wouldn't have had much chance if Sherif Ali had let his infernal
crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. Eh? Anyhow, he had come
up there to die if anything went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It thrilled
me to see him there--like a rock. But the Sherif must have thought
us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on. Nobody
believed it could be done. Why! I think the very chaps who pulled
and shoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done!
Upon my word I don't think they did. . . ."
'He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with
a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes. I sat on the
stump of a tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the
great expanse of the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like
a sea, with glints of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and
here and there a clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark
waves of continuous tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast
and monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss.
The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the
empty ocean, smooth and polished within the faint haze, seemed to
rise up to the sky in a wall of steel.
'And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of
that historic hill of his. He dominated the forest, the secular gloom,
the old mankind. He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to
represent in his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues,
of races that never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I
don't know why he should always have appeared to me symbolic.
Perhaps this is the real cause of my interest in his fate. I don't know
whether it was exactly fair to him to remember the incident which
had given a new direction to his life, but at that very moment I
remembered very distinctly. It was like a shadow in the light.'
CHAPTER 27
'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers.
Yes, it was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed,
and a strange contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men,
and each gun went up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild
pig rooting its way in the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest
shook their heads. There was something occult in all this, no doubt;
for what is the strength of ropes and of men's arms? There is a
rebellious soul in things which must be overcome by powerful
charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very respectable householder
of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one evening. However, Sura was
a professional sorcerer also, who attended all the rice sowings and
reapings for miles around for the purpose of subduing the stubborn
souls of things. This occupation he seemed to think a most arduous one,
and perhaps the souls of things are more stubborn than the souls of men.
As to the simple folk of outlying villages, they believed and said
(as the most natural thing in the world) that Jim had carried the guns
up the hill on his back--two at a time.
'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim
with an exasperated little laugh, "What can you do with such silly
beggars? They will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the
greater the lie the more they seem to like it." You could trace the
subtle influence of his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of
his captivity. The earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at
last I said, "My dear fellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this." He
looked at me quite startled. "Well, no! I suppose not," he said, and
burst into a Homeric peal of laughter. "Well, anyhow the guns were
there, and went off all together at sunrise. Jove! You should have
seen the splinters fly," he cried. By his side Dain Waris, listening
with a quiet smile, dropped his eyelids and shuffled his feet a little.
It appears that the success in mounting the guns had given Jim's
people such a feeling of confidence that he ventured to leave the
battery under charge of two elderly Bugis who had seen some fighting
in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and the storming party
who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours they began
creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the wet
grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed
signal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he
watched the swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work
and the climbing, he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how
afraid he was he would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before
the time came for the advance. "It was the slowest half-hour in my
life," he declared. Gradually the silent stockade came out on the
sky above him. Men scattered all down the slope were crouching
amongst the dark stones and dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying
flattened by his side. "We looked at each other," Jim said, resting
a gentle hand on his friend's shoulder. "He smiled at me as cheery
as you please, and I dared not stir my lips for fear I would break
out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word, it's true! I had been streaming
with perspiration when we took cover--so you may imagine . . ."
He declared, and I believe him, that he had no fears as to the result.
He was only anxious as to his ability to repress these shivers. He
didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to the top of
that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could be no
going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him
alone! His bare word. . . .
'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed
upon me. "As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret
it yet," he said. "Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--
worse luck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for
anything and everything. I could have no idea! Why, only the
other day an old fool he had never seen in his life came from some
village miles away to find out if he should divorce his wife. Fact.
Solemn word. That's the sort of thing. . . He wouldn't have
believed it. Would I? Squatted on the verandah chewing betel-nut,
sighing and spitting all over the place for more than an hour, and
as glum as an undertaker before he came out with that dashed
conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as it looks.
What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old
though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots.
Been living together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell.
A long, long time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a
little, when she was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour.
Suddenly in her old age she goes and lends three brass pots to her
sister's son's wife, and begins to abuse him every day in a loud
voice. His enemies jeered at him; his face was utterly blackened.
Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up about it. Impossible to fathom a
story like that; told him to go home, and promised to come along
myself and settle it all. It's all very well to grin, but it was
the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the forest, another
day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at the rights of
the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy in the thing.
Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other, and one
half of the village was ready to go for the other half with anything
that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of attending
to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of course--and
pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not. Could
settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little
finger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not
sure to this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried
him. And the talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail
to it. Rather storm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much!
Child's play to that other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well,
yes; a funny set out, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough
to be his grandfather. But from another point of view it was no
joke. His word decided everyt |
