الفصل الفصل 5 · ‘Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,’ he would say, ‘and to this day I

. ‘Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,’ he would say, ‘and to this day I

haven’t left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each of

us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of

us has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because I don’t

like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--the devil,

I mean. I haven’t seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial

evidence. He is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in

for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry

thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke

would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s

court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly

diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with

hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues

at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth,

I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I

didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my

own soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be

thus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns

as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in

this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of

confessions. Then why? Can’t tell--unless it be to make time pass away

after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and

in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous

occupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves,

“Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk.”

‘Talk? So be it. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a

good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent

cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would

make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to

pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every

irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in

the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to

expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Of course there

are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner

hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some

fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end

is told--even if there happens to be any end to it.

‘My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know

that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the

affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable

message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious,

because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about

as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked

of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my

state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering

about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea,

by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some

acquaintance, and the first remark would be, “Did you ever hear of

anything to beat this?” and according to his kind the man would smile

cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers

would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their

minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for

a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour

office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from

natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on

the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! There was some indignation, not

a few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them,

you know. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion

that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic

as well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing

in the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men

walking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where that

queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself,

“Here they are!”

‘There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one

much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed

with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line

steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. There could be no

mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance:

the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good

old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come

across him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was

abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking

himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop,

till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much

as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little

leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is

business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!”

‘I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurrying on a little in

advance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk in a

startling way. He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking

on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled

sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a

pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off

pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a

manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like

that hasn’t the ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes.

Very well. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed

within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on

pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or

report, or whatever you like to call it.

‘It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to the principal

shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story

goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to

his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little

Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the

hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a

piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One

voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my

sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn’t,

you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to

perquisites quite touched my heart. It was so strong as to be almost

beautiful. The race--the two races rather--and the climate . . .

However, never mind. I know where I have a friend for life.

‘Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official

morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his

back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and

enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in

striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space

in the office. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an

appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still

wondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been

transported in front of his desk. The archway from the ante-room was

crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and

crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost

climbing on each other’s backs. Quite a riot. By that time the fellow

had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with

slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that

for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition

wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and

little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of

the Patna case. He says that as soon as he understood who it was before

him he felt quite unwell--Archie is so sympathetic and easily upset--but

pulled himself together and shouted “Stop! I can’t listen to you. You

must go to the Master Attendant. I can’t possibly listen to you. Captain

Elliot is the man you want to see. This way, this way.” He jumped

up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him,

surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private

office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like

a frightened bullock. “Look here! what’s up? Let go! Look here!” Archie

flung open the door without knocking. “The master of the Patna, sir,”

he shouts. “Go in, captain.” He saw the old man lift his head from some

writing so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and

fled to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature:

but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he

couldn’t collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of

his own name. Archie’s the most sensitive shipping-master in the two

hemispheres. He declares he felt as though he had thrown a man to a

hungry lion. No doubt the noise was great. I heard it down below, and I

have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as

far as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had a great stock of words and

could shout--and didn’t mind who he shouted at either. He would have

shouted at the Viceroy himself. As he used to tell me: “I am as high as

I can get; my pension is safe. I’ve a few pounds laid by, and if they

don’t like my notions of duty I would just as soon go home as not. I am

an old man, and I have always spoken my mind. All I care for now is to

see my girls married before I die.” He was a little crazy on that

point. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him

amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their

matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble,

because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. However,

that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to

carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah!

ejected him again.

‘Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste

and stand still on the outer steps. He had stopped close to me for the

purpose of profound meditation: his large purple cheeks quivered. He

was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed

look. The other three chaps that had landed with him made a little group

waiting at some distance. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap

with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat,

as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey

moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. The

third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his

pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking

together earnestly. He stared across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle

gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the

group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave

himself up to the critical examination of his toes. The young chap,

making no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the

sunshine. This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and

unapproachable as only the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed,

clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone

on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I

was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of

me by false pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I thought

to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt

as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer

mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because

his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a

flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him

there apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? He seemed

ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about

the behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale

that was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official

inquiry. “That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound,” said the

captain of the Patna. I can’t tell whether he recognised me--I rather

think he did; but at any rate our glances met. He glared--I smiled;

hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open

window. “Did he?” I said from some strange inability to hold my tongue.

He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his

head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--“Bah! the

Pacific is big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I

know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt

in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without

effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt”

with in those places. I won’t make a secret of it that I had been

“aguaindt” with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when

a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. I’ve

known such a time, and, what’s more, I shan’t now pretend to pull a long

face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from

want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other

equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more

amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask

to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from

cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate

reasons.

‘“You Englishmen are all rogues,” went on my patriotic Flensborg or

Stettin Australian. I really don’t recollect now what decent little

port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that

precious bird. “What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better

than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me.” His

thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it

trembled from head to foot. “That’s what you English always make--make

a tam’ fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your

tam’ country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don’t want the

certificate. A man like me don’t want your verfluchte certificate. I

shpit on it.” He spat. “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried,

fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from

some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away

from that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his bullet head

positively smoked. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away:

curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see

the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands

in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the

grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel

with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is

ready. That’s how he looked, and it was odious. I waited to see him

overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an

impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand

what I mean. Nothing more awful than to watch a man who has been found

out, not in a crime but in a more than criminal weakness. The commonest

sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense;

it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of

the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness

that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully

scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one

of us is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called

names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well

survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! And

there are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of

us are totally and completely undone. I watched the youngster there.

I liked his appearance; I knew his appearance; he came from the right

place; he was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his

kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very

existence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage.

I don’t mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of

courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in

the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without

pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but

priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and

inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption

of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the

contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Hang ideas! They are

tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking

a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief

in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently

and would like to die easy!

‘This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so

typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and

left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of

intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. He was the

kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge

of the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. I say I would,

and I ought to know. Haven’t I turned out youngsters enough in my time,

for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft

whose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet

must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the

component part of every waking thought--till it is present in every

dream of their young sleep! The sea has been good to me, but when I

remember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now

and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don’t

think I have done badly by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet

that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate

would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice

speaking above my hat would ask: “Don’t you remember me, sir? Why!

little So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage.” And I

would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of

this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very

quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides

out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged

father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the

morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays

too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all

to say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl,

“Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. There’s a

gentleman wants to get ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got

carried off to Talcahuano, didn’t you? Now’s your time; easy does

it. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking

like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury;

the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has

shied his umbrella after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of

sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks

nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick

before next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little

mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live

or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this

fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his

back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy

voice: “Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so.”

‘I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least

you had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and I have

winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone

to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump.

Don’t I remember the little So-and-so’s! I tell you I ought to know the

right kind of looks. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on

the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and,

by Jove! it wouldn’t have been safe. There are depths of horror in that

thought. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some

infernal alloy in his metal. How much? The least thing--the least

drop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made

you--standing there with his don’t-care-hang air--he made you wonder

whether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass.

‘I couldn’t believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for

the honour of the craft. The other two no-account chaps spotted their

captain, and began to move slowly towards us. They chatted together as

they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been

visible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other--might have been

exchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw that with one of them it was a

case of a broken arm; and as to the long individual with grey moustaches

he was the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious

personality. They were nobodies. They approached. The skipper gazed

in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an

unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an

unknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting,

opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his

puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to

strike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he

went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the

door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to

see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. The driver,

shaken out of his meditation over the sole of his foot, displayed at

once all the signs of intense terror, and held with both hands, looking

round from his box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his

conveyance. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the

crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs,

the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the

whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s

sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those

grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever.

He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box

on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only

sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind

rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his

head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring,

furious, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious

flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. He roared

at him to be off, to go on. Where? Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver

lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop.

Where? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to

disport himself in, and I did not hear the precise address. A snorting

pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I

never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever

had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside

a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother

of dust. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly

enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for

never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a

lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. The Pacific is

indeed big; but whether he found a place for a display of his talents

in it or not, the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on a

broomstick. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after

the carriage, bleating, “Captain! I say, Captain! I sa-a-ay!”--but after

a few steps stopped short, hung his head, and walked back slowly. At the

sharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where he stood.

He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in

the new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight.

‘All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am

trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of

visual impressions. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie

to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the

scene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and

very full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the

principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy

importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent

altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who

turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn’t going to be

ordered about--“not he, b’gosh.” He wouldn’t be terrified with a pack

of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. He was not going to be

bullied by “no object of that sort,” if the story were true “ever so”!

He bawled his wish, his desire, his determination to go to bed. “If you

weren’t a God-forsaken Portuguee,” I heard him yell, “you would know

that the hospital is the right place for me.” He pushed the fist of

his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began to collect; the

half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to

explain his intentions. I went away without waiting to see the end.

‘But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and

going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry,

I saw in the white men’s ward that little chap tossing on his back, with

his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the

other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also

found his way there. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during

the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not

to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his

distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room

and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who

had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other

places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and

shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous

hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal

safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time

after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price

of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking

any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very

many years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny

chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears:

“Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise

nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may,

he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a

chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster

on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker

with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of

the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found

himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes.

He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy

little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani’s stomach, picked himself up,

and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off

a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were

carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but

when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean

bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow,

like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not

been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of

his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently

behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to

indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the

famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into

the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me

no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a

community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of

conduct, I can’t explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you

like; but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps,

unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and

redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an

excuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the

laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the

uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and

more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign

power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing

to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good

little quiet villainies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe

in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own

sake that I wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young

fellow whom I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a

touch of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of

his weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint of a

destructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had resembled

his youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. I was,

and no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at

this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my

imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady

invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must have been

pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent

and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as

any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a

delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly;

I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not

furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance,

his redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor

iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated

Patna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and

said: “Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down.” I

made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added

smoothly, “She was full of reptiles.”

‘This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror

behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine

wistfully. “They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look

at her sinking,” he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded

alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was

no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the

perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty

iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown

and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my

interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed

my shoulder. “Only my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my

eyesight. That’s why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick

enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and

sang out together--like this.” . . . A wolfish howl searched the very

recesses of my soul. “Oh! make ‘im dry up,” whined the accident case

irritably. “You don’t believe me, I suppose,” went on the other, with

an air of ineffable conceit. “I tell you there are no such eyes as mine

this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed.”

‘Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so.

“What can you see?” he asked. “Nothing,” I said, feeling awfully ashamed

of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt.

“Just so,” he said, “but if I were to look I could see--there’s no eyes

like mine, I tell you.” Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his

eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. “Millions

of pink toads. There’s no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It’s

worse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke

my pipe all day long. Why don’t they give me back my pipe? I would get

a smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They’ve

got to be watched, you know.” He winked facetiously. The perspiration

dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the

afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff

folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the

covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all

along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the

tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter’s gale in an old

barn at home. “Don’t you let him start his hollering, mister,” hailed

from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came

ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The

clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. “The ship

was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,”

he whispered with extreme rapidity. “All pink. All pink--as big as

mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their

ugly mouths. Ough! Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed

under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let

go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled

tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the

spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face

of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed

before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable

caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--“Ssh! what are they

doing now down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic

precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a

lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. “They are all asleep,”

I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That’s what he wanted

to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long

breath. “Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them

brutes. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There’s too many of

them, and she won’t swim more than ten minutes.” He panted again. “Hurry

up,” he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: “They are all

awake--millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait!

I’ll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!” An

interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in

the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his

bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the

vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I

confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out

through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The

howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and

suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended

the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my

distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons

who was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. “Been to see your man,

Captain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no

notion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we’ve got the chief

engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.’s of the worst

kind. He has been drinking hard in that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop

for three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy

a day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I

should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious

part is there’s some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to

find out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium.

Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn’t. Good old

tradition’s at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are batrachian.

Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case

of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don’t you know, after such a

festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of

the tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking

old boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever met--medically, of course.

Won’t you?”

‘I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest,

but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook

hands in a hurry. “I say,” he cried after me; “he can’t attend that

inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?”

‘“Not in the least,” I called back from the gateway.’