Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (766 page)

“I have been at sea now, man and boy, for seven-and-thirty years, and I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in an English ship.  And that it should be my ship.  Wife on board, too.”

I was hardly listening to him.

“Don’t you think,” I said, “that the heavy sea which, you told me, came aboard just then might have killed the man?  I have seen the sheer weight of a sea kill a man very neatly, by simply breaking his neck.”

“Good God!” he uttered, impressively, fixing his smeary blue eyes on me.  “The sea!  No man killed by the sea ever looked like that.”  He seemed positively scandalised at my suggestion.  And as I gazed at him, certainly not prepared for anything original on his part, he advanced his head close to mine and thrust his tongue out at me so suddenly that I couldn’t help starting back.

After scoring over my calmness in this graphic way he nodded wisely.  If I had seen the sight, he assured me, I would never forget it as long as I lived.  The weather was too bad to give the corpse a proper sea burial.  So next day at dawn they took it up on the poop, covering its face with a bit of bunting; he read a short prayer, and then, just as it was, in its oilskins and long boots, they launched it amongst those mountainous seas that seemed ready every moment to swallow up the ship herself and the terrified lives on board of her.

“That reefed foresail saved you,” I threw in.

“Under God — it did,” he exclaimed fervently.  “It was by a special mercy, I firmly believe, that it stood some of those hurricane squalls.”

“It was the setting of that sail which — ” I began.

“God’s own hand in it,” he interrupted me.  “Nothing less could have done it.  I don’t mind telling you that I hardly dared give the order.  It seemed impossible that we could touch anything without losing it, and then our last hope would have been gone.”

The terror of that gale was on him yet.  I let him go on for a bit, then said, casually — as if returning to a minor subject:

“You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I believe?”

He was.  To the law.  His obscure tenacity on that point had in it something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it were, mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should not be suspected of “countenancing any doings of that sort.”  Seven-and-thirty virtuous years at sea, of which over twenty of immaculate command, and the last fifteen in the Sephora, seemed to have laid him under some pitiless obligation.

“And you know,” he went on, groping shamefacedly amongst his feelings, “I did not engage that young fellow.  His people had some interest with my owners.  I was in a way forced to take him on.  He looked very smart, very gentlemanly, and all that.  But do you know — I never liked him, somehow.  I am a plain man.  You see, he wasn’t exactly the sort for the chief mate of a ship like the Sephora.”

I had become so connected in thoughts and impressions with the secret sharer of my cabin that I felt as if I, personally, were being given to understand that I, too, was not the sort that would have done for the chief mate of a ship like the Sephora.  I had no doubt of it in my mind.

“Not at all the style of man.  You understand,” he insisted, superfluously, looking hard at me.

I smiled urbanely.  He seemed at a loss for a while.

“I suppose I must report a suicide.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Suicide!  That’s what I’ll have to write to my owners directly I get in.”

“Unless you manage to recover him before to-morrow,” I assented, dispassionately. . . “I mean, alive.”

He mumbled something which I really did not catch, and I turned my ear to him in a puzzled manner.  He fairly bawled:

“The land — I say, the mainland is at least seven miles off my anchorage.”

“About that.”

My lack of excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any sort of pronounced interest, began to arouse his distrust.  But except for the felicitous pretence of deafness I had not tried to pretend anything.  I had felt utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly, and therefore was afraid to try.  It is also certain that he had brought some ready-made suspicions with him, and that he viewed my politeness as a strange and unnatural phenomenon.  And yet how else could I have received him?  Not heartily!  That was impossible for psychological reasons, which I need not state here.  My only object was to keep off his inquiries.  Surlily?  Yes, but surliness might have provoked a point-blank question.  From its novelty to him and from its nature, punctilious courtesy was the manner best calculated to restrain the man.  But there was the danger of his breaking through my defence bluntly.  I could not, I think, have met him by a direct lie, also for psychological (not moral) reasons.  If he had only known how afraid I was of his putting my feeling of identity with the other to the test!  But, strangely enough — (I thought of it only afterward) — I believe that he was not a little disconcerted by the reverse side of that weird situation, by something in me that reminded him of the man he was seeking — suggested a mysterious similitude to the young fellow he had distrusted and disliked from the first.

However that might have been, the silence was not very prolonged.  He took another oblique step.

“I reckon I had no more than a two-mile pull to your ship.  Not a bit more.”

“And quite enough, too, in this awful heat,” I said.

Another pause full of mistrust followed.  Necessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.  And I was afraid he would ask me point-blank for news of my other self.

“Nice little saloon, isn’t it?” I remarked, as if noticing for the first time the way his eyes roamed from one closed door to the other.  “And very well fitted out too.  Here, for instance,” I continued, reaching over the back of my seat negligently and flinging the door open, “is my bath-room.”

He made an eager movement, but hardly gave it a glance.  I got up, shut the door of the bath-room, and invited him to have a look round, as if I were very proud of my accommodation.  He had to rise and be shown round, but he went through the business without any raptures whatever.

“And now we’ll have a look at my stateroom,” I declared, in a voice as loud as I dared to make it, crossing the cabin to the starboard side with purposely heavy steps.

He followed me in and gazed around.  My intelligent double had vanished.  I played my part.

“Very convenient — isn’t it?”

“Very nice.  Very comf. . . “  He didn’t finish, and went out brusquely as if to escape from some unrighteous wiles of mine.  But it was not to be.  I had been too frightened not to feel vengeful; I felt I had him on the run, and I meant to keep him on the run.  My polite insistence must have had something menacing in it, because he gave in suddenly.  And I did not let him off a single item; mate’s room, pantry, storerooms, the very sail-locker which was also under the poop — he had to look into them all.  When at last I showed him out on the quarter-deck he drew a long, spiritless sigh, and mumbled dismally that he must really be going back to his ship now.  I desired my mate, who had joined us, to see to the captain’s boat.

The man of whiskers gave a blast on the whistle which he used to wear hanging round his neck, and yelled, “Sephoras away!”  My double down there in my cabin must have heard, and certainly could not feel more relieved than I.  Four fellows came running out from somewhere forward and went over the side, while my own men, appearing on deck too, lined the rail.  I escorted my visitor to the gangway ceremoniously, and nearly overdid it.  He was a tenacious beast.  On the very ladder he lingered, and in that unique, guiltily conscientious manner of sticking to the point:

“I say . . . you . . . you don’t think that — ”

I covered his voice loudly:

“Certainly not. . . . I am delighted.  Good-bye.”

I had an idea of what he meant to say, and just saved myself by the privilege of defective hearing.  He was too shaken generally to insist, but my mate, close witness of that parting, looked mystified and his face took on a thoughtful cast.  As I did not want to appear as if I wished to avoid all communication with my officers, he had the opportunity to address me.

“Seems a very nice man.  His boat’s crew told our chaps a very extraordinary story, if what I am told by the steward is true.  I suppose you had it from the captain, sir?”

“Yes.  I had a story from the captain.”

“A very horrible affair — isn’t it, sir?”

“It is.”

“Beats all these tales we hear about murders in Yankee ships.”

“I don’t think it beats them.  I don’t think it resembles them in the least.”

“Bless my soul — you don’t say so!  But of course I’ve no acquaintance whatever with American ships, not I, so I couldn’t go against your knowledge.  It’s horrible enough for me. . . . But the queerest part is that those fellows seemed to have some idea the man was hidden aboard here.  They had really.  Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

“Preposterous — isn’t it?”

We were walking to and fro athwart the quarterdeck.  No one of the crew forward could be seen (the day was Sunday), and the mate pursued:

“There was some little dispute about it.  Our chaps took offence.  ‘As if we would harbour a thing like that,’ they said.  ‘Wouldn’t you like to look for him in our coal-hole?’  Quite a tiff.  But they made it up in the end.  I suppose he did drown himself.  Don’t you, sir?”

“I don’t suppose anything.”

“You have no doubt in the matter, sir?”

“None whatever.”

I left him suddenly.  I felt I was producing a bad impression, but with my double down there it was most trying to be on deck.  And it was almost as trying to be below.  Altogether a nerve-trying situation.  But on the whole I felt less torn in two when I was with him.  There was no one in the whole ship whom I dared take into my confidence.  Since the hands had got to know his story, it would have been impossible to pass him off for any one else, and an accidental discovery was to be dreaded now more than ever. . . .

The steward being engaged in laying the table for dinner, we could talk only with our eyes when I first went down.  Later in the afternoon we had a cautious try at whispering.  The Sunday quietness of the ship was against us; the stillness of air and water around her was against us; the elements, the men were against us — everything was against us in our secret partnership; time itself — for this could not go on forever.  The very trust in Providence was, I suppose, denied to his guilt.  Shall I confess that this thought cast me down very much?  And as to the chapter of accidents which counts for so much in the book of success, I could only hope that it was closed.  For what favourable accident could be expected?

“Did you hear everything?” were my first words as soon as we took up our position side by side, leaning over my bed-place.

He had.  And the proof of it was his earnest whisper, “The man told you he hardly dared to give the order.”

I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail.

“Yes.  He was afraid of it being lost in the setting.”

“I assure you he never gave the order.  He may think he did, but he never gave it.  He stood there with me on the break of the poop after the maintopsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope — positively whimpered about it and nothing else — and the night coming on!  To hear one’s skipper go on like that in such weather was enough to drive any fellow out of his mind.  It worked me up into a sort of desperation.  I just took it into my own hands and went away from him, boiling, and — But what’s the use telling you?  You know! . . . Do you think that if I had not been pretty fierce with them I should have got the men to do anything?  Not it!  The bo’s’n perhaps?  Perhaps!  It wasn’t a heavy sea — it was a sea gone mad!  I suppose the end of the world will be something like that; and a man may have the heart to see it coming once and be done with it — but to have to face it day after day — I don’t blame anybody.  I was precious little better than the rest.  Only — I was an officer of that old coal-waggon, anyhow — ”

“I quite understand,” I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear.  He was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly.  It was all very simple.  The same strung-up force which had given twenty-four men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of recoil, crushed an unworthy mutinous existence.

But I had no leisure to weigh the merits of the matter — footsteps in the saloon, a heavy knock.  “There’s enough wind to get under way with, sir.”  Here was the call of a new claim upon my thoughts and even upon my feelings.

“Turn the hands up,” I cried through the door.  “I’ll be on deck directly.”

I was going out to make the acquaintance of my ship.  Before I left the cabin our eyes met — the eyes of the only two strangers on board.  I pointed to the recessed part where the little camp-stool awaited him and laid my finger on my lips.  He made a gesture — somewhat vague — a little mysterious, accompanied by a faint smile, as if of regret.

This is not the place to enlarge upon the sensations of a man who feels for the first time a ship move under his feet to his own independent word.  In my case they were not unalloyed.  I was not wholly alone with my command; for there was that stranger in my cabin.  Or rather, I was not completely and wholly with her.  Part of me was absent.  That mental feeling of being in two places at once affected me physically as if the mood of secrecy had penetrated my very soul.  Before an hour had elapsed since the ship had begun to move, having occasion to ask the mate (he stood by my side) to take a compass bearing of the Pagoda, I caught myself reaching up to his ear in whispers.  I say I caught myself, but enough had escaped to startle the man.  I can’t describe it otherwise than by saying that he shied.  A grave, preoccupied manner, as though he were in possession of some perplexing intelligence, did not leave him henceforth.  A little later I moved away from the rail to look at the compass with such a stealthy gait that the helmsman noticed it — and I could not help noticing the unusual roundness of his eyes.  These are trifling instances, though it’s to no commander’s advantage to be suspected of ludicrous eccentricities.  But I was also more seriously affected.  There are to a seaman certain words, gestures, that should in given conditions come as naturally, as instinctively as the winking of a menaced eye.  A certain order should spring on to his lips without thinking; a certain sign should get itself made, so to speak, without reflection.  But all unconscious alertness had abandoned me.  I had to make an effort of will to recall myself back (from the cabin) to the conditions of the moment.  I felt that I was appearing an irresolute commander to those people who were watching me more or less critically.