Section 11

Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring
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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 even- ing; 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 re- luctantly 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
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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 fore- sight. 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 t 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 pro- voked 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
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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 free- ing 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 con- clude, 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 fore- stalling vision. The sights it showed him had turned him into cold stone from the soles of his feet to the
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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, which 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 farth- ing 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
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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 per- fectly 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 knowl- edge of many things by serving white men on the
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sea for a great number of years — and, suddenly, with shaky excitement he poured upon our spell- bound attention a lot of queer-sounding names, names of dead-and-gone skippers, names of forgotten coun- try 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 en- gineer 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
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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 any- thing 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 NINE
‘“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 en- joyed 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 under- stand 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. 4 Why don’t you — you the strongest?’ whined the little engineer. 4 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.
44 4 Come and help, man! Are you mad to throw your only chance away? Come and help, man! Man! Look there — look!’
4 4 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 darken- ing 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 101
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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 re- member 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 life-boats clear of the ship. He whipped out his knife and went to work slashing as
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though he had seen nothing, had heard nothing, had known of no one on board. They thought him hope- lessly 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 prob- able he thought himself cut off from them by a space that could not be traversed, by an obstacle that could