Bab Bab 1 · He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he

. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he

advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head

forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging

bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of

dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed

a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at

anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white

from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his

living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.

A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun,

but he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practically.

His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other

water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain

cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the

ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but

without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things

that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything

to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her

cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where

her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never

seen before. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars,

writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of

welcome that melts the salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s

heart. The connection thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship remains

in harbour, by the daily visits of the water-clerk. To the captain he

is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience

of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon

companion. Later on the bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane

occupation. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk

who possesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of having

been brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money

and some humouring. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring

as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with black

ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. To his

employers the reasons he gave were obviously inadequate. They said

‘Confounded fool!’ as soon as his back was turned. This was their

criticism on his exquisite sensibility.

To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships

he was just Jim--nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he

was anxious that it should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had

as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a

fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave

suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to

another--generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a

seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is

good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good

order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but

inevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in

Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of

these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his

keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports

and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle

village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a

word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as

one might say--Lord Jim.

Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders of fine

merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim’s father

possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the

righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind

of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. The

little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a

ragged screen of leaves. It had stood there for centuries, but the trees

around probably remembered the laying of the first stone. Below, the

red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of

grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back,

a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses

tacked along a wall of bricks. The living had belonged to the family for

generations; but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of

light holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself,

he was sent at once to a ‘training-ship for officers of the mercantile

marine.’

He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant

yards. He was generally liked. He had the third place in navigation

and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having a steady head with an

excellent physique, he was very smart aloft. His station was in the

fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a

man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude

of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered

on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose

perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and

belching out smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships departing,

the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats

floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the

distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure.

On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget

himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light

literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting

away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a

lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs

in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on

tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat

upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example

of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book.

‘Something’s up. Come along.’

He leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Above

could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got

through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded.

It was the dusk of a winter’s day. The gale had freshened since noon,

stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a

hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing

over the ocean. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided,

and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide,

the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless

buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching

ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and

smothered in sprays. The next gust seemed to blow all this away. The

air was full of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a

furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of

earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath

in awe. He stood still. It seemed to him he was whirled around.

He was jostled. ‘Man the cutter!’ Boys rushed past him. A coaster

running in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor, and one

of the ship’s instructors had seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered

on the rails, clustered round the davits. ‘Collision. Just ahead of us.

Mr. Symons saw it.’ A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and

he caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings

quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty

rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea.

‘Lower away!’ He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail,

and rushed after her. He heard a splash. ‘Let go; clear the falls!’ He

leaned over. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter

could be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind,

that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship.

A yelling voice in her reached him faintly: ‘Keep stroke, you young

whelps, if you want to save anybody! Keep stroke!’ And suddenly she

lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke

the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide.

Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. ‘Too late, youngster.’ The captain

of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the

point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious

defeat in his eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically. ‘Better luck

next time. This will teach you to be smart.’

A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing back half full of

water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards.

The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible

to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace.

Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for

the gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so--better than

anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Nevertheless he brooded apart

that evening while the bowman of the cutter--a boy with a face like

a girl’s and big grey eyes--was the hero of the lower deck. Eager

questioners crowded round him. He narrated: ‘I just saw his head

bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. It caught in his

breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old

Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped.

Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don’t mind a bit him being grumpy with

us. He swore at me all the time he held my leg, but that was only his

way of telling me to stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully

excitable--isn’t he? No--not the little fair chap--the other, the big

one with a beard. When we pulled him in he groaned, “Oh, my leg! oh,

my leg!” and turned up his eyes. Fancy such a big chap fainting like

a girl. Would any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook?--I

wouldn’t. It went into his leg so far.’ He showed the boat-hook, which

he had carried below for the purpose, and produced a sensation. ‘No,

silly! It was not his flesh that held him--his breeches did. Lots of

blood, of course.’

Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered to

a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with

the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking

unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was

rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement

had served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge more than those who

had done the work. When all men flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone

would know how to deal with the spurious menace of wind and seas. He

knew what to think of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible.

He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of

a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of

boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and

in a sense of many-sided courage.