________________________________________________
_ '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.' _
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