Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (motivational novels for students TXT) đ
- Author: Joseph Conrad
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interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and said: âQuite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down.â I made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added smoothly, âShe was full of reptiles.â
âThis made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine wistfully. âThey turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking,â he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. âOnly my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my eyesight. Thatâs why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and sang out togetherâlike this.â ⊠A wolfish howl searched the very recesses of my soul. âOh! make âim dry up,â whined the accident case irritably. âYou donât believe me, I suppose,â went on the other, with an air of ineffable conceit. âI tell you there are no such eyes as mine this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed.â
âOf course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so. âWhat can you see?â he asked. âNothing,â I said, feeling awfully ashamed of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt. âJust so,â he said, âbut if I were to look I could seeâthereâs no eyes like mine, I tell you.â Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. âMillions of pink toads. Thereâs no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. Itâs worse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke my pipe all day long.
Why donât they give me back my pipe? I would get a smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. Theyâve got to be watched, you know.â He winked facetiously. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winterâs gale in an old barn at home. âDonât you let him start his hollering, mister,â hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. âThe ship was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,â he whispered with extreme rapidity. âAll pink. All pinkâas big as mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their ugly mouths. Ough!
Ough!â Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cryâ
âSsh! what are they doing now down there?â he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. âThey are all asleep,â I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. Thatâs what he wanted to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long breath. âSsh!
Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them brutes.
Bash in the head of the first that stirs. Thereâs too many of them, and she wonât swim more than ten minutes.â He panted again.
âHurry up,â he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: âThey are all awakeâmillions of them. They are trampling on me!
Wait! Oh, wait! Iâll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me!
Help! H-e-elp!â An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons who was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. âBeen to see your man, Captain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no notion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, weâve got the chief engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.âs of the worst kind. He has been drinking hard in that Greekâs or Italianâs grog-shop for three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy a day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious part is thereâs some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to find out. Most unusualâthat thread of logic in such a delirium.
Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesnât. Good old traditionâs at a discount nowadays. Eh! Hisâerâvisions are batrachian. Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, donât you know, after such a festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object.
Four-and-twenty years of the tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking old boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever metâmedically, of course. Wonât you?â
âI have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest, but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. âI say,â he cried after me; âhe canât attend that inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?â
â âNot in the least,â I called back from the gateway.â
âThe authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry was not adjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law, and it was well attended because of its human interest, no doubt. There was no incertitude as to factsâas to the one material fact, I mean. How the Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the court did not expect to find out; and in the whole audience there was not a man who cared. Yet, as Iâve told you, all the sailors in the port attended, and the waterside business was fully represented. Whether they knew it or not, the interest that drew them here was purely psychologicalâthe expectation of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the horror, of human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be disclosed.
The examination of the only man able and willing to face it was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on an iron box, were the object to find out whatâs inside. However, an official inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair.
âThe young chap could have told them, and, though that very thing was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put to him necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance, would have been the only truth worth knowing. You canât expect the constituted authorities to inquire into the state of a manâs soulâ
or is it only of his liver? Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not much good for anything else. I donât mean to imply these fellows were stupid. The magistrate was very patient.
One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition. Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some of you must have heard of Big Brierlyâthe captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line. Thatâs the man.
âHe seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him.
He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust. At thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern tradeâand, whatâs more, he thought a lot of what he had. There was nothing like it in the world, and I suppose if you had asked him point-blank he would have confessed that in his opinion there was not such another commander. The choice had fallen upon the right man. The rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures.
He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription
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