Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (767 page)

And, besides, there were the scares.  On the second day out, for instance, coming off the deck in the afternoon (I had straw slippers on my bare feet) I stopped at the open pantry door and spoke to the steward.  He was doing something there with his back to me.  At the sound of my voice he nearly jumped out of his skin, as the saying is, and incidentally broke a cup.

“What on earth’s the matter with you?” I asked, astonished.

He was extremely confused.  “Beg your pardon, sir.  I made sure you were in your cabin.”

“You see I wasn’t.”

“No, sir.  I could have sworn I had heard you moving in there not a moment ago.  It’s most extraordinary . . . very sorry, sir.”

I passed on with an inward shudder.  I was so identified with my secret double that I did not even mention the fact in those scanty, fearful whispers we exchanged.  I suppose he had made some slight noise of some kind or other.  It would have been miraculous if he hadn’t at one time or another.  And yet, haggard as he appeared, he looked always perfectly self-controlled, more than calm — almost invulnerable.  On my suggestion he remained almost entirely in the bathroom, which, upon the whole, was the safest place.  There could be really no shadow of an excuse for any one ever wanting to go in there, once the steward had done with it.  It was a very tiny place.  Sometimes he reclined on the floor, his legs bent, his head sustained on one elbow.  At others I would find him on the camp-stool, sitting in his grey sleeping-suit and with his cropped dark hair like a patient, unmoved convict.  At night I would smuggle him into my bed-place, and we would whisper together, with the regular footfalls of the officer of the watch passing and repassing over our heads.  It was an infinitely miserable time.  It was lucky that some tins of fine preserves were stowed in a locker in my stateroom; hard bread I could always get hold of; and so he lived on stewed chicken, paté de foie gras, asparagus, cooked oysters, sardines — on all sorts of abominable sham delicacies out of tins.  My early morning coffee he always drank; and it was all I dared do for him in that respect.

Every day there was the horrible manoeuvring to go through so that my room and then the bath-room should be done in the usual way.  I came to hate the sight of the steward, to abhor the voice of that harmless man.  I felt that it was he who would bring on the disaster of discovery.  It hung like a sword over our heads.

The fourth day out, I think (we were then working down the east side of the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in light winds and smooth water) — the fourth day, I say, of this miserable juggling with the unavoidable, as we sat at our evening meal, that man, whose slightest movement I dreaded, after putting down the dishes ran up on deck busily.  This could not be dangerous.  Presently he came down again; and then it appeared that he had remembered a coat of mine which I had thrown over a rail to dry after having been wetted in a shower which had passed over the ship in the afternoon.  Sitting stolidly at the head of the table I became terrified at the sight of the garment on his arm.  Of course he made for my door.  There was no time to lose.

“Steward,” I thundered.  My nerves were so shaken that I could not govern my voice and conceal my agitation.  This was the sort of thing that made my terrifically whiskered mate tap his forehead with his forefinger.  I had detected him using that gesture while talking on deck with a confidential air to the carpenter.  It was too far to hear a word, but I had no doubt that this pantomime could only refer to the strange new captain.

“Yes, sir,” the pale-faced steward turned resignedly to me.  It was this maddening course of being shouted at, checked without rhyme or reason, arbitrarily chased out of my cabin, suddenly called into it, sent flying out of his pantry on incomprehensible errands, that accounted for the growing wretchedness of his expression.

“Where are you going with that coat?”

“To your room, sir.”

“Is there another shower coming?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.  Shall I go up again and see, sir?”

“No! never mind.”

My object was attained, as of course my other self in there would have heard everything that passed.  During this interlude my two officers never raised their eyes off their respective plates; but the lip of that confounded cub, the second mate, quivered visibly.

I expected the steward to hook my coat on and come out at once.  He was very slow about it; but I dominated my nervousness sufficiently not to shout after him.  Suddenly I became aware (it could be heard plainly enough) that the fellow for some reason or other was opening the door of the bath-room.  It was the end.  The place was literally not big enough to swing a cat in.  My voice died in my throat and I went stony all over.  I expected to hear a yell of surprise and terror, and made a movement, but had not the strength to get on my legs.  Everything remained still.  Had my second self taken the poor wretch by the throat?  I don’t know what I would have done next moment if I had not seen the steward come out of my room, close the door, and then stand quietly by the sideboard.

“Saved,” I thought.  “But, no!  Lost!  Gone!  He was gone!”

I laid my knife and fork down and leaned back in my chair.  My head swam.  After a while, when sufficiently recovered to speak in a steady voice, I instructed my mate to put the ship round at eight o’clock himself.

“I won’t come on deck,” I went on.  “I think I’ll turn in, and unless the wind shifts I don’t want to be disturbed before midnight.  I feel a bit seedy.”

“You did look middling bad a little while ago,” the chief mate remarked without showing any great concern.

They both went out, and I stared at the steward clearing the table.  There was nothing to be read on that wretched man’s face.  But why did he avoid my eyes I asked myself.  Then I thought I should like to hear the sound of his voice.

“Steward!”

“Sir!”  Startled as usual.

“Where did you hang up that coat?”

“In the bath-room, sir.”  The usual anxious tone.  “It’s not quite dry yet, sir.”

For some time longer I sat in the cuddy.  Had my double vanished as he had come?  But of his coming there was an explanation, whereas his disappearance would be inexplicable. . . . I went slowly into my dark room, shut the door, lighted the lamp, and for a time dared not turn round.  When at last I did I saw him standing bolt-upright in the narrow recessed part.  It would not be true to say I had a shock, but an irresistible doubt of his bodily existence flitted through my mind.  Can it be, I asked myself, that he is not visible to other eyes than mine?  It was like being haunted.  Motionless, with a grave face, he raised his hands slightly at me in a gesture which meant clearly, “Heavens! what a narrow escape!”  Narrow indeed.  I think I had come creeping quietly as near insanity as any man who has not actually gone over the border.  That gesture restrained me, so to speak.

The mate with the terrific whiskers was now putting the ship on the other tack.  In the moment of profound silence which follows upon the hands going to their stations I heard on the poop his raised voice: “Hard alee!” and the distant shout of the order repeated on the maindeck.  The sails, in that light breeze, made but a faint fluttering noise.  It ceased.  The ship was coming round slowly; I held my breath in the renewed stillness of expectation; one wouldn’t have thought that there was a single living soul on her decks.  A sudden brisk shout, “Mainsail haul!” broke the spell, and in the noisy cries and rush overhead of the men running away with the main-brace we two, down in my cabin, came together in our usual position by the bed-place.

He did not wait for my question.  “I heard him fumbling here and just managed to squat myself down in the bath,” he whispered to me.  “The fellow only opened the door and put his arm in to hang the coat up.  All the same — ”

“I never thought of that,” I whispered back, even more appalled than before at the closeness of the shave, and marvelling at that something unyielding in his character which was carrying him through so finely.  There was no agitation in his whisper.  Whoever was being driven distracted, it was not he.  He was sane.  And the proof of his sanity was continued when he took up the whispering again.

“It would never do for me to come to life again.”

It was something that a ghost might have said.  But what he was alluding to was his old captain’s reluctant admission of the theory of suicide.  It would obviously serve his turn — if I had understood at all the view which seemed to govern the unalterable purpose of his action.

“You must maroon me as soon as ever you can get amongst these islands off the Cambodje shore,” he went on.

“Maroon you!  We are not living in a boy’s adventure tale,” I protested.  His scornful whispering took me up.

“We aren’t indeed!  There’s nothing of a boy’s tale in this.  But there’s nothing else for it.  I want no more.  You don’t suppose I am afraid of what can be done to me?  Prison or gallows or whatever they may please.  But you don’t see me coming back to explain such things to an old fellow in a wig and twelve respectable tradesmen, do you?  What can they know whether I am guilty or not — or of what I am guilty, either?  That’s my affair.  What does the Bible say?  ‘Driven off the face of the earth.’  Very well.  I am off the face of the earth now.  As I came at night so I shall go.”

“Impossible!” I murmured.  “You can’t.”

“Can’t? . . . Not naked like a soul on the Day of Judgment.  I shall freeze on to this sleeping-suit.  The Last Day is not yet — and you have understood thoroughly.  Didn’t you?”

I felt suddenly ashamed of myself.  I may say truly that I understood — and my hesitation in letting that man swim away from my ship’s side had been a mere sham sentiment, a sort of cowardice.

“It can’t be done now till next night,” I breathed out.  “The ship is on the off-shore tack and the wind may fail us.”

“As long as I know that you understand,” he whispered.  “But of course you do.  It’s a great satisfaction to have got somebody to understand.  You seem to have been there on purpose.”  And in the same whisper, as if we two whenever we talked had to say things to each other which were not fit for the world to hear, he added, “It’s very wonderful.”  We remained side by side talking in our secret way — but sometimes silent or just exchanging a whispered word or two at long intervals.  And as usual he stared through the port.  A breath of wind came now and again into our faces.  The ship might have been moored in dock, so gently and on an even keel she slipped through the water, that did not murmur even at our passage, shadowy and silent like a phantom sea.

At midnight I went on deck, and to my mate’s great surprise put the ship round on the other tack.  His terrible whiskers flitted round me in silent criticism.  I certainly should not have done it if it had been only a question of getting out of that sleepy gulf as quickly as possible.  I believe he told the second mate, who relieved him, that it was a great want of judgment.  The other only yawned.  That intolerable cub shuffled about so sleepily and lolled against the rails in such a slack, improper fashion that I came down on him sharply.

“Aren’t you properly awake yet?”

“Yes, sir!  I am awake.”

“Well, then, be good enough to hold yourself as if you were.  And keep a look-out.  If there’s any current we’ll be closing with some islands before daylight.”

The east side of the gulf is fringed with islands, some solitary, others in groups.  On the blue background of the high coast they seem to float on silvery patches of calm water, arid and grey, or dark green and rounded like clumps of evergreen bushes, with the larger ones, a mile or two long, showing the outlines of ridges, ribs of grey rock under the dank mantle of matted leafage.  Unknown to trade, to travel, almost to geography, the manner of life they harbour is an unsolved secret.  There must be villages — settlements of fishermen at least — on the largest of them, and some communication with the world is probably kept up by native craft.  But all that forenoon, as we headed for them, fanned along by the faintest of breezes, I saw no sign of man or canoe in the field of the telescope I kept on pointing at the scattered group.

At noon I gave no orders for a change of course, and the mate’s whiskers became much concerned and seemed to be offering themselves unduly to my notice.  At last I said:

“I am going to stand right in.  Quite in — as far as I can take her.”

The stare of extreme surprise imparted an air of ferocity also to his eyes, and he looked truly terrific for a moment.

“We’re not doing well in the middle of the gulf,” I continued, casually.  “I am going to look for the land breezes to-night.”

“Bless my soul!  Do you mean, sir, in the dark amongst the lot of all them islands and reefs and shoals?”

“Well — if there are any regular land breezes at all on this coast one must get close inshore to find them, mustn’t one?”

“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed again under his breath.  All that afternoon he wore a dreamy, contemplative appearance which in him was a mark of perplexity.  After dinner I went into my stateroom as if I meant to take some rest.  There we two bent our dark heads over a half-unrolled chart lying on my bed.

“There,” I said.  “It’s got to be Koh-ring.  I’ve been looking at it ever since sunrise.  It has got two hills and a low point.  It must be inhabited.  And on the coast opposite there is what looks like the mouth of a biggish river — with some town, no doubt, not far up.  It’s the best chance for you that I can see.”

“Anything.  Koh-ring let it be.”

He looked thoughtfully at the chart as if surveying chances and distances from a lofty height — and following with his eyes his own figure wandering on the blank land of Cochin-China, and then passing off that piece of paper clean out of sight into uncharted regions.  And it was as if the ship had two captains to plan her course for her.  I had been so worried and restless running up and down that I had not had the patience to dress that day.  I had remained in my sleeping-suit, with straw slippers and a soft floppy hat.  The closeness of the heat in the gulf had been most oppressive, and the crew were used to see me wandering in that airy attire.