Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (motivational novels for students TXT) đ
- Author: Joseph Conrad
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âThe Patna had a long bridge, and all the boats were up there, four on one side and three on the otherâthe smallest of them on the port-side and nearly abreast of the steering gear. He assured me, with evident anxiety to be believed, that he had been most careful to keep them ready for instant service. He knew his duty. I dare say he was a good enough mate as far as that went. âI always believed in being prepared for the worst,â he commented, staring anxiously in my face. I nodded my approval of the sound principle, averting my eyes before the subtle unsoundness of the man.
âHe started unsteadily to run. He had to step over legs, avoid stumbling against the heads. Suddenly some one caught hold of his coat from below, and a distressed voice spoke under his elbow. The light of the lamp he carried in his right hand fell upon an upturned dark face whose eyes entreated him together with the voice. He had picked up enough of the language to understand the word water, repeated several times in a tone of insistence, of prayer, almost of despair. He gave a jerk to get away, and felt an arm embrace his leg.
â âThe beggar clung to me like a drowning man,â he said impressively. âWater, water! What water did he mean? What did he know? As calmly as I could I ordered him to let go. He was stopping me, time was pressing, other men began to stir; I wanted timeâtime to cut the boats adrift. He got hold of my hand now, and I felt that he would begin to shout. It flashed upon me it was enough to start a panic, and I hauled off with my free arm and slung the lamp in his face. The glass jingled, the light went out, but the blow made him let go, and I ran offâI wanted to get at the boats; I wanted to get at the boats. He leaped after me from behind. I turned on him. He would not keep quiet; he tried to shout; I had half throttled him before I made out what he wanted. He wanted some waterâwater to drink; they were on strict allowance, you know, and he had with him a young boy I had noticed several times.
His child was sickâand thirsty. He had caught sight of me as I passed by, and was begging for a little water. Thatâs all. We were under the bridge, in the dark. He kept on snatching at my wrists; there was no getting rid of him. I dashed into my berth, grabbed my water-bottle, and thrust it into his hands. He vanished. I didnât find out till then how much I was in want of a drink myself.â He leaned on one elbow with a hand over his eyes.
âI felt a creepy sensation all down my backbone; there was something peculiar in all this. The fingers of the hand that shaded his brow trembled slightly. He broke the short silence.
â âThese things happen only once to a man and ⊠Ah! well!
When I got on the bridge at last the beggars were getting one of the boats off the chocks. A boat! I was running up the ladder when a heavy blow fell on my shoulder, just missing my head. It didnât stop me, and the chief engineerâthey had got him out of his bunk by thenâraised the boat-stretcher again. Somehow I had no mind to be surprised at anything. All this seemed naturalâand awfulâ
and awful. I dodged that miserable maniac, lifted him off the deck as though he had been a little child, and he started whispering in my arms: âDonât! donât! I thought you were one of them niggers.â
I flung him away, he skidded along the bridge and knocked the legs from under the little chapâthe second. The skipper, busy about the boat, looked round and came at me head down, growling like a wild beast. I flinched no more than a stone. I was as solid standing there as this,â he tapped lightly with his knuckles the wall beside his chair. âIt was as though I had heard it all, seen it all, gone through it all twenty times already. I wasnât afraid of them. I drew back my fist and he stopped short, mutteringâ
â â âAh! itâs you. Lend a hand quick.â
â âThatâs what he said. Quick! As if anybody could be quick enough. âArenât you going to do something?â I asked. âYes. Clear out,â he snarled over his shoulder.
â âI donât think I understood then what he meant. The other two had picked themselves up by that time, and they rushed together to the boat. They tramped, they wheezed, they shoved, they cursed the boat, the ship, each otherâcursed me. All in mutters. I didnât move, I didnât speak. I watched the slant of the ship. She was as still as if landed on the blocks in a dry dockâonly she was like this,â He held up his hand, palm under, the tips of the fingers inclined downwards. âLike this,â he repeated. âI could see the line of the horizon before me, as clear as a bell, above her stem-head; I could see the water far off there black and sparkling, and stillâstill as a-pond, deadly still, more still than ever sea was beforeâmore still than I could bear to look at. Have you watched a ship floating head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old iron too rotten to stand being shored up? Have you? Oh yes, shored up? I thought of thatâI thought of every mortal thing; but can you shore up a bulkhead in five minutesâor in fifty for that matter? Where was I going to get men that would go down below? And the timberâthe timber! Would you have had the courage to swing the maul for the first blow if you had seen that bulkhead? Donât say you would: you had not seen it; nobody would. Hang itâto do a thing like that you must believe there is a chance, one in a thousand, at least, some ghost of a chance; and you would not have believed. Nobody would have believed. You think me a cur for standing there, but what would you have done? What! You canât tellânobody can tell. One must have time to turn round. What would you have me do? Where was the kindness in making crazy with fright all those people I could not save single-handedâthat nothing could save? Look here!
As true as I sit on this chair before you âŠâ
âHe drew quick breaths at every few words and shot quick glances at my face, as though in his anguish he were watchful of the effect.
He was not speaking to me, he was only speaking before me, in a dispute with an invisible personality, an antagonistic and inseparable partner of his existenceâanother possessor of his soul. These were issues beyond the competency of a court of inquiry: it was a subtle and momentous quarrel as to the true essence of life, and did not want a judge. He wanted an ally, a helper, an accomplice. I felt the risk I ran of being circumvented, blinded, decoyed, bullied, perhaps, into taking a definite part in a dispute impossible of decision if one had to be fair to all the phantoms in possessionâto the reputable that had its claims and to the disreputable that had its exigencies. I canât explain to you who havenât seen him and who hear his words only at second hand the mixed nature of my feelings.
It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend the Inconceivableâand I know of nothing to compare with the discomfort of such a sensation.
I was made to look at the convention that lurks in all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to all sides at onceâto the side turned perpetually to the light of day, and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon, exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light falling at times on the edge. He swayed me. I own to it, I own up.
The occasion was obscure, insignificantâwhat you will: a lost youngster, one in a millionâbut then he was one of us; an incident as completely devoid of importance as the flooding of an ant-heap, and yet the mystery of his attitude got hold of me as though he had been an individual in the forefront of his kind, as if the obscure truth involved were momentous enough to affect mankindâs conception of itself⊠.â
Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring cheroot, seemed to forget all about the story, and abruptly began again.
âMy fault of course. One has no business really to get interested.
Itâs a weakness of mine. His was of another kind. My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidentalâfor the externalsâno eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next man. Next manâthatâs it. I have met so many men,â he pursued, with momentary sadnessââmet them too with a certainâ
certainâimpact, let us say; like this fellow, for instanceâand in each case all I could see was merely the human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me, I can assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But I never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! itâs a failing; itâs a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too indolent for whistâand a story⊠.â
He paused again to wait for an encouraging remark, perhaps, but nobody spoke; only the host, as if reluctantly performing a duty, murmuredâ
âYou are so subtle, Marlow.â
âWho? I?â said Marlow in a low voice. âOh no! But he was; and try as I may for the success of this yarn, I am missing innumerable shadesâthey were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words.
Because he complicated matters by being so simple, tooâthe simplest poor devil! ⊠By Jove! he was amazing. There he sat telling me that just as I saw him before my eyes he wouldnât be afraid to face anythingâand believing in it too. I tell you it was fabulously innocent and it was enormous, enormous! I watched him covertly, just as though I had suspected him of an intention to take a jolly good rise out of me. He was confident that, on the square, âon the square, mind!â there was nothing he couldnât meet. Ever since he had been âso highâââquite a little chap,â he had been preparing himself for all the difficulties that can beset one on land and water.
He confessed proudly to this kind of foresight. He had been elaborating dangers and defences, expecting the worst, rehearsing his best.
He must have led a most exalted existence. Can you fancy it? A succession of adventures, so much glory, such a victorious progress! and the deep sense
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