APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/lord_jim/CHAP10_19

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                     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 wind-
ward 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 dis-
closure. 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 glim-
mer, 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 unani-
mously 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 bim!' '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, mut-
tered 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 star-
tled 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 conver-
sation 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 some-
thing 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, con-
viction, or even the visual aspect of material things, there are as
many shipwrecks as there are men, and in this one there was some-
thing 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 under-
gone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were exasper-
ated 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 disas-
ter 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 stead-
fastness 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 mad-
ness, 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 clear-
ing 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 harml"

'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 under-
stand. 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, chal-
lenged, 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 mad-
ness.... "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 con-
ceived to experience had he, after spinning round on his heel, pre-
sented 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. 'Don-
nerwetter! 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 second, 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 begin-
nings, 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 obsti-
nately, 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 expla-
nation. 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 gun-
boat homeward bound from Reunion. The report of her com-
mander was public property. He had swept a little out of his course
to ascertain what was the matter with that steamer floating danger-
ously 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 remem-
bered 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 com-
prendre -- vous concevez," he said, with a curious mixture of uncon-
cern 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 them-
selves -- 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 doubdess (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, begin-
ning 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 dhe 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 mir-
aculous, power of producing striking effects by means impossible
of detection which is the last word of the highest art. "Twenty-
five munutes -- 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 know-
ingly on his tongue the savour of a smart bit of work. He persuaded
one without any further demonstration that his approval was emi-
nendy worth having, and resuming his hardly interrupted immo-
bility 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 -- every-
thing -- 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 motion-
less 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 lieuten-
ant 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 diffi-
culty 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 concen-
tration. 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 some-
how 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 indul-
gently. "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. Abomin-
able 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 -- neces-
sity -- 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 induce-
ments -- 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 scram-
ble 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, tnrying 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 can-
vasser. 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 colli-
sion 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 senice, 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 star-
board -- 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 back-
shop, 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 gallen 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, yeu, 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 heart-
rending. 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 mur-
mured 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 resoludon -- reflected them in
turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of
unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by aus-
tere 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 remem-
ber," 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 hesita-
tion 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 com-
munity 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 sun-
shine, 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 unfore-
seen -- 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-litho-
graph of a camp in a book of Eastern travel. One missed the obliga-
tory thread of smoke in the foreground and the pack-animals
grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind overtopping the tree,
reflecdng 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 move-
ments, 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 practi-
cally 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 provi-
dence, 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 dis-
composed 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 diffficult 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 part-
ner? 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 providendally
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 after-
wards 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, Cap-
tain 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 anchor-
age, 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 shipown-
ing 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 doubt-
fully with sad, dim pupils.... "He! he! he!" ... He leaned heav-
ier 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, Cap-
tain 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 confidendally.
"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 wiU 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 shadow-
less 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 anyt}ung 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 busi-
ness. It had something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince
Ravonalo something; but the pivot of the whole affair was the stu-
pidity 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 both-
ered 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 fright-
ened; 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 effec-
tively with such a disaster. That strange idealist had found a practi-
cal 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 corre-
spondence, 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 conscious-
ness; 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 stand-
ing 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 know-
ing 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 ges-
tures, 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 intoxi-
cated, 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 surround-
ings -- 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 exuber-
ant imagination would have made of Walpole islet -- that most hope-
lessly 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 exuemely 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 sud-
denly. "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 con-
venient -- 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 . . . "with-
out 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 ani-
mosity. "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 incompre-
hensible, 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 out-
stretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsol-
able, 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 of asking 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 youth-
ful, 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 con-
cluded, "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 under-
stand 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 bloom-
ing -- 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, how-
ever, 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 clever-
ness. 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 envel-
ope 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. "Ohno! 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 remem-
bered 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 everlast-
ing scolding was part of the place like the other fixtures; even stran-
gers 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 him-
self 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 wilder-
ness.... "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 engin-
eering 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 dare say 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 mer-
chants, 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 prin-
ciples, 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 sil-
ent -- 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 scorn-
fully. "What difference would it make?" . . . I felt at once con-
vinced 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 conjunc-
tion 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 distinc-
tion, 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.'