Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (763 page)

AN EPISODE FROM THE COAST

CHAPTER I

On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach.  To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations set in a blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even the track of light from the westering sun shone smoothly, without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple.  And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of the sky.  Corresponding in their insignificance to the islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the horizon.  Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces of silver marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest of them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land became lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor.  My eye followed the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there, above the plain, according to the devious curves of the stream, but always fainter and farther away, till I lost it at last behind the mitre-shaped hill of the great pagoda.  And then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam.

She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting sun.  At that moment I was alone on her decks.  There was not a sound in her — and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky.  In this breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for spectators and for judges.

There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one’s sight, because it was only just before the sun left us that my roaming eyes made out beyond the highest ridge of the principal islet of the group something which did away with the solemnity of perfect solitude.  The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness a swarm of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet, my hand resting lightly on my ship’s rail as if on the shoulder of a trusted friend.  But, with all that multitude of celestial bodies staring down at one, the comfort of quiet communion with her was gone for good.  And there were also disturbing sounds by this time — voices, footsteps forward; the steward flitted along the maindeck, a busily ministering spirit; a hand-bell tinkled urgently under the poop-deck. . . .

I found my two officers waiting for me near the supper table, in the lighted cuddy.  We sat down at once, and as I helped the chief mate, I said:

“Are you aware that there is a ship anchored inside the islands?  I saw her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down.”

He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth of whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: “Bless my soul, sir!  You don’t say so!”

My second mate was a round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond his years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I detected a slight quiver on his lips.  I looked down at once.  It was not my part to encourage sneering on board my ship.  It must be said, too, that I knew very little of my officers.  In consequence of certain events of no particular significance, except to myself, I had been appointed to the command only a fortnight before.  Neither did I know much of the hands forward.  All these people had been together for eighteen months or so, and my position was that of the only stranger on board.  I mention this because it has some bearing on what is to follow.  But what I felt most was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must be told, I was somewhat of a stranger to myself.  The youngest man on board (barring the second mate), and untried as yet by a position of the fullest responsibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others for granted.  They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.

Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of collaboration on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers, was trying to evolve a theory of the anchored ship.  His dominant trait was to take all things into earnest consideration.  He was of a painstaking turn of mind.  As he used to say, he “liked to account to himself” for practically everything that came in his way, down to a miserable scorpion he had found in his cabin a week before.  The why and the wherefore of that scorpion — how it got on board and came to select his room rather than the pantry (which was a dark place and more what a scorpion would be partial to), and how on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell of his writing-desk — had exercised him infinitely.  The ship within the islands was much more easily accounted for; and just as we were about to rise from table he made his pronouncement.  She was, he doubted not, a ship from home lately arrived.  Probably she drew too much water to cross the bar except at the top of spring tides.  Therefore she went into that natural harbour to wait for a few days in preference to remaining in an open roadstead.

“That’s so,” confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in his slightly hoarse voice.  “She draws over twenty feet.  She’s the Liverpool ship Sephora with a cargo of coal.  Hundred and twenty-three days from Cardiff.”

We looked at him in surprise.

“The tugboat skipper told me when he came on board for your letters, sir,” explained the young man.  “He expects to take her up the river the day after to-morrow.”

After thus overwhelming us with the extent of his information he slipped out of the cabin.  The mate observed regretfully that he “could not account for that young fellow’s whims.”  What prevented him telling us all about it at once, he wanted to know.

I detained him as he was making a move.  For the last two days the crew had had plenty of hard work, and the night before they had very little sleep.  I felt painfully that I — a stranger — was doing something unusual when I directed him to let all hands turn in without setting an anchor-watch.  I proposed to keep on deck myself till one o’clock or thereabouts.  I would get the second mate to relieve me at that hour.

“He will turn out the cook and the steward at four,” I concluded, “and then give you a call.  Of course at the slightest sign of any sort of wind we’ll have the hands up and make a start at once.”

He concealed his astonishment.  “Very well, sir.”  Outside the cuddy he put his head in the second mate’s door to inform him of my unheard-of caprice to take a five hours’ anchor-watch on myself.  I heard the other raise his voice incredulously — ”What?  The captain himself?”  Then a few more murmurs, a door closed, then another.  A few moments later I went on deck.

My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary hours of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I knew nothing, manned by men of whom I knew very little more.  Fast alongside a wharf, littered like any ship in port with a tangle of unrelated things, invaded by unrelated shore people, I had hardly seen her yet properly.  Now, as she lay cleared for sea, the stretch of her maindeck seemed to me very fine under the stars.  Very fine, very roomy for her size, and very inviting.  I descended the poop and paced the waist, my mind picturing to myself the coming passage through the Malay Archipelago, down the Indian Ocean, and up the Atlantic.  All its phases were familiar enough to me, every characteristic, all the alternatives which were likely to face me on the high seas — everything! . . . except the novel responsibility of command.  But I took heart from the reasonable thought that the ship was like other ships, the men like other men, and that the sea was not likely to keep any special surprises expressly for my discomfiture.

Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a cigar and went below to get it.  All was still down there.  Everybody at the after end of the ship was sleeping profoundly.  I came out again on the quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my sleeping-suit on that warm breathless night, barefooted, a glowing cigar in my teeth, and, going forward, I was met by the profound silence of the fore end of the ship.  Only as I passed the door of the forecastle I heard a deep, quiet, trustful sigh of some sleeper inside.  And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

The riding-light in the fore-rigging burned with a clear, untroubled, as if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the mysterious shades of the night.  Passing on my way aft along the other side of the ship, I observed that the rope side-ladder, put over, no doubt, for the master of the tug when he came to fetch away our letters, had not been hauled in as it should have been.  I became annoyed at this, for exactitude in small matters is the very soul of discipline.  Then I reflected that I had myself peremptorily dismissed my officers from duty, and by my own act had prevented the anchor-watch being formally set and things properly attended to.  I asked myself whether it was wise ever to interfere with the established routine of duties even from the kindest of motives.  My action might have made me appear eccentric.  Goodness only knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would “account” for my conduct, and what the whole ship thought of that informality of their new captain.  I was vexed with myself.

Not from compunction certainly, but, as it were mechanically, I proceeded to get the ladder in myself.  Now a side-ladder of that sort is a light affair and comes in easily, yet my vigorous tug, which should have brought it flying on board, merely recoiled upon my body in a totally unexpected jerk.  What the devil! . . . I was so astounded by the immovableness of that ladder that I remained stock-still, trying to account for it to myself like that imbecile mate of mine.  In the end, of course, I put my head over the rail.

The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea.  But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder.  Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night sky.  With a gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow.  One hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder.  He was complete but for the head.  A headless corpse!  The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness of all things under heaven.  At that I suppose he raised up his face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship’s side.  But even then I could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired head.  However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation which had gripped me about the chest to pass off.  The moment of vain exclamations was past, too.  I only climbed on the spare spar and leaned over the rail as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer to that mystery floating alongside.

As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea-lightning played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it ghastly, silvery, fish-like.  He remained as mute as a fish, too.  He made no motion to get out of the water, either.  It was inconceivable that he should not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect that perhaps he did not want to.  And my first words were prompted by just that troubled incertitude.

“What’s the matter?” I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the face upturned exactly under mine.

“Cramp,” it answered, no louder.  Then slightly anxious, “I say, no need to call any one.”

“I was not going to,” I said.

“Are you alone on deck?”

“Yes.”

I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the ladder to swim away beyond my ken — mysterious as he came.  But, for the moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship) wanted only to know the time.  I told him.  And he, down there, tentatively:

“I suppose your captain’s turned in?”

“I am sure he isn’t,” I said.

He seemed to struggle with himself, for I heard something like the low, bitter murmur of doubt.  “What’s the good?”  His next words came out with a hesitating effort.

“Look here, my man.  Could you call him out quietly?”

I thought the time had come to declare myself.

“I am the captain.”

I heard a “By Jove!” whispered at the level of the water.  The phosphorescence flashed in the swirl of the water all about his limbs, his other hand seized the ladder.

“My name’s Leggatt.”

The voice was calm and resolute.  A good voice.  The self-possession of that man had somehow induced a corresponding state in myself.  It was very quietly that I remarked: