Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad [world of reading TXT] 📗

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