Lord Jim Joseph Conrad (epub ebook reader .txt) 📖

turned two hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river. The talkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son and his son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience, who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them the amazing fact.

“Jim’s coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to them, as to many of us, the blessing came heralded by terrors. So many generations had been released since the last white man had visited the river that the very tradition had been lost. The appearance of the being that descended upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patusan was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; his generosity more than suspicious. It was an unheard-of request. There was no precedent. What would the Rajah say to this? What would he do to them? The best part of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate risk from the anger of that strange man seemed so great that at last a cranky dugout was got ready. The women shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless old hag cursed the stranger.

“He sat in it, as I’ve told you, on his tin box, nursing the unloaded revolver on his lap. He sat with precaution⁠—than which there is nothing more fatiguing⁠—and thus entered the land he was destined to fill with the fame of his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to the white ribbon of surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with its labouring waves forever rising, sinking, and vanishing to rise again⁠—the very image of struggling mankind⁠—and faced the immovable forests rooted deep in the soil, soaring towards the sunshine, everlasting in the shadowy might of their tradition, like life itself. And his opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride waiting to be uncovered by the hand of the master. He, too, was the heir of a shadowy and mighty tradition! He told me, however, that he had never in his life felt so depressed and tired as in that canoe. All the movement he dared to allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the shell of half a coconut floating between his shoes, and bale some of the water out with a carefully restrained action. He discovered how hard the lid of a block-tin case was to sit upon. He had heroic health; but several times during that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water’s edge was a log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came right down on the bank and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage. Such was the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine as any man ever achieved. Principally, he longed for sunset; and meantime his three paddlers were preparing to put into execution their plan of delivering him up to the Rajah.

“ ‘I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or perhaps I did doze off for a time,’ he said. The first thing he knew was his canoe coming to the bank. He became instantaneously aware of the forest having been left behind, of the first houses being visible higher up, of a stockade on his left, and of his boatmen leaping out together upon a low point of land and taking to their heels. Instinctively he leaped out after them. At first he thought himself deserted for some inconceivable reason, but he heard excited shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured out, making towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed men appeared on the river and came alongside his empty canoe, thus shutting off his retreat.

“ ‘I was too startled to be quite cool⁠—don’t you know? and if that revolver had been loaded I would have shot somebody⁠—perhaps two, three bodies, and that would have been the end of me. But it wasn’t.⁠ ⁠…’ ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Well, I couldn’t fight the whole population, and I wasn’t coming to them as if I were afraid of my life,’ he said, with just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness in the glance he gave me. I refrained from pointing out to him that they could not have known the chambers were actually empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own way.⁠ ⁠… ‘Anyhow it wasn’t,’ he repeated good-humouredly, ‘and so I just stood still and asked them what was the matter. That seemed to strike them dumb. I saw some of these thieves going off with my box. That long-legged old scoundrel Kassim (I’ll show him to you tomorrow) ran out fussing to me about the Rajah wanting to see me. I said, “All right.” I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply walked in through the gate and⁠—and⁠—here I am.’ He laughed, and then with unexpected emphasis, ‘And do you know what’s the best in it?’ he asked. ‘I’ll tell you. It’s the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place that would have been the loser.’

“He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening I’ve mentioned⁠—after we had watched the moon float away above the chasm between the hills like an ascending spirit out of a grave; its sheen descended, cold and pale, like the ghost of