This reward of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible. He could eluded him. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothdetect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of ing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the at sea. Besides, his prospects were good. He was gentlemanly, noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage. and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself. Only once in al that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often 10

Joseph Conrad

made apparent as people might think. There are many shades has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence father of al terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dul of intention—that indefinable something which forces it ness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing but the disorder upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the midst of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a of a smal devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an on deck. But now and again an uncontrol able rush of anunbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and guish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which the blankets, and then the unintel igent brutality of an existmeans to smash, to destroy, to annihilate al he has seen, known, ence liable to the agony of such sensations fil ed him with a loved, enjoyed, or hated; al that is priceless and necessary—

despairing desire to escape at any cost. Then fine weather the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep returned, and he thought no more about It. the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arsimple and appal ing act of taking his life. rived at an Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. His Jim, disabled by a fal ing spar at the beginning of a week of recovery was slow, and he was left behind. which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg fal ing down many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. He neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropidid not care what the end would be, and in his lucid mocal disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in ments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil ser11

Lord Jim

vant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led each other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with yawning and in pyjamas, lounged through the day in easythe temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They chairs without saying a word. The hospital stood on a hil , appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the dark places of the flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness of sea; and their death was the only event of their fantastic exthe sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of istence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievethe Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of ment. The majority were men who, like himself, thrown there infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every by some accident, had remained as officers of country ships. day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,—at the roadoceans. They were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern stead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, sky and sea.