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LORD JIM: A SKETCH.1

BY JOSEPH CONRAD.

CHAPTER VIII.

"How long he stood stockstill by the hatch expecting every moment to feel the ship dip under his feet and the rush of water take him at the back and toss him like a chip, I cannot say. Not very long-two minutes perhaps. A couple of men he could not make out began to converse drowsily, and also, he could not tell where, he detected a curious noise of shuffling feet. Above these faint sounds there was that awful stillness preceding catastrophe, that trying silence of the moment before the crash; then it came into his head that perhaps he would have time to rush along and cut all the lanyards of the gripes, so that the boats would float off as the ship went down.

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"The Patna had a long bridge, and all the boats were up there, four on one side and three on the other-the 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 daresay he was a good enough mate as far as that went. 'I always believed in being prepared for the worst,' he commented, staring anxiously in

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avoid 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.

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"The beggar clung to me like a drowning man,' he said impressively. Water, 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 time-time 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

Copyright, 1899, by S. S. M'Clure Co., in the United States of America.

face. The glass jingled, the light went out, but the blow made him let go, and I ran off -I 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 water-water 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 sickand thirsty. He had caught sight of me as I passed by, and was begging for a little water. That's 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, snatched out my water-bottle, and thrust it into his hands. He vanished. I didn't find out till then how much I was in want of a drink myself.' He leaned on one elbow with a hand over his eyes.

"I felt a creepy sensation all down my backbone; there was something peculiar in all this; it savoured of the impossible and at the same time carried conviction, extorted a wondering assent. The fingers of the hand that shaded his brow trembled slightly. He broke the short silence. "These things happen only once to a man and ... Ah! 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 didn't stop me, and the chief engineer- they had got him out of his bunk by then-raised the boat-stretcher again. Somehow I had no mind to be surprised at anything. All this seemed natural-and awful- and awful. and awful. I dodged that miserable maniac, lifted him off the deck as though he had been a little child, and he started screeching in my arms: "Don't! don't! I thought you were one of them niggers." I flung him away, he skidded along the bridge and knocked the legs from under the little chap-the 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,' he tapped lightly with his knuckles the wall beside his chair. 'It was as though I had heard it all, seen it all, gone through it all twenty times already. I wasn't afraid of them. I drew back my fist and he stopped short, muttering"6" Ah! Lend a hand quick.”

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move, I didn't speak. I watched single-handed that nothing the slant of the ship. She was could save? Look here! As true as I sit on this chair before you "He 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 existence another 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 possession-to the reputable that had its claims and to the disreputable that had its exigencies. I can't explain to you who haven't 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 Inconceivable-and 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 once, to the side turned perpetually to the light of day, and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon, exists

as still as if landed on the blocks
in a dry dock-only she was
like this.' He held up his hand,
palm under, the tips of the
fingers inclined downwards.
'Like this,' he repeated. 'I
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 still-still
as a pond, deadly still, more
still than ever sea was before
more 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
Have
you? Oh yes, shored up? I
thought of that-I thought of
every mortal thing; but can
you shore up a bulkhead in five
minutes or in fifty for that
matter? Where was I going
to get men that would go down
below? Would you have had
the courage to swing the maul
for the first blow if you had
seen that bulkhead? Don't say
you would you had not seen
it; nobody would. Hang it
to 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 stand-
ing there, but what would you
have done? What! You can't
tell nobody 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

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, insignificantwhat you will: a lost youngster, one in a million-but then he was one of us; an incident as completely devoid of importance as the flooding of an antheap, 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 mankind's conception of itself. . . ."

Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring cheroot, seemed to forget all about the story, and abruptly began again.

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"My fault of course. One has no business really to get interested. It's a weakness of mine. His was of another kind. My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental for the externals, no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next man. Next man that's it. I have met so many men," he pursued, with momentary sadness-"met them too with a certain-certain-impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance-and 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!

It's a failing; it's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too indolent for whist -and a story..

He paused again to wait for an encouraging remark, perhaps, but nobody spoke; only the host, as if reluctantly performing a duty, murmured

"You are so subtle, Marlow." "Who? I?" said Marlow in a low voice. "Oh no!" But he was; and try as I may for the success of this yarn I am missing innumerable shades-they were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words. Because he complicated matters by being so simple, too- the simplest poor devil! . . . By Jove! he was amazing. There he sat telling me that just as I saw him before my eyes he wouldn't be afraid to face anything-and 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, 'on the square, mind!' there was nothing he couldn't meet. Ever since he had been 'so high'-'quite a little chap,' 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 of his sagacity crowning every day of his inner life. He forgot himself; his eyes shone; and with every word my heart, searched by the light of his absurdity, was growing heavier in my breast. I had no mind to laugh, and lest I should smile I made for myself a stolid face. He gave signs of irritation.

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is always the unexpected that happens,' I said in a propitiatory tone. My obtuseness provoked him into a contemptuous Pshaw!' I suppose he meant that the unexpected couldn't touch him; nothing less than the unconceivable itself could get over his perfect state of preparation. He had been taken unawares— and he whispered to himself a malediction upon the waters and the firmament, upon the ship, upon the men. Every thing had betrayed him! He had been tricked into that sort of high-minded resignation which prevented him lifting as much as his little finger, while these others who had a very clear perception of the actual necessity were tumbling against each other and sweating desperately over that boat business. Something had gone wrong there at the last moment. It appears that in their flurry they had contrived in some mysterious way to get the sliding bolt of the foremost boatchock jammed tight, and forthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds over the deadly nature of that accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce industry of these beggars toiling on a

motionless ship that floated quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time for the freeing of that boat, grovelling on all fours, standing up in despair, tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill, ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh yes! It must have been a pretty sight. He saw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and bitterness; he had a minute knowledge of it by means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because he swore to me he had remained apart without a glance at them and at the boat-without one single glance. And I believe him. I should think he was too busy watching the threatening slant of the ship, the suspended menace discovered in the midst of the most perfect securityfascinated by the sword hanging by a hair over his imaginative head.

"Nothing in the world moved before his eyes, and he could depict to himself without hindrance the sudden swing upwards of the dark sky-line, the sudden tilt up of the vast plain of the sea, the swift still rise, the brutal fling, the grasp of the abyss, the struggle without hope, the starlight closing over his head for ever like the vault of a tomb

the revolt of his young lifethe black end. He could! By Jove! who couldn't? And you must remember he was a finished artist in that peculiar way, he was a gifted poor devil

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