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

I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. I have never defined to myself this attraction, but there were moments when I envied him. The sting of life could do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. This was enviable. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite. He committed suicide very soon after.

“No wonder Jim’s case bored him, and while I thought with something akin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the young man under examination, he was probably holding silent inquiry into his own case. The verdict must have been of unmitigated guilt, and he took the secret of the evidence with him in that leap into the sea. If I understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken ideas⁠—start into life some thought with which a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am in a position to know that it wasn’t money, and it wasn’t drink, and it wasn’t woman. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of the inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward passage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he had suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open wide for his reception.

“Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with his commander the surliest chief officer I’ve ever seen, would tell the story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came on deck in the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room. ‘It was ten minutes to four,’ he said, ‘and the middle watch was not relieved yet of course. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking to the second mate, and called me in. I was loth to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow⁠—I couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of. He had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but by the way he said “Good morning.” I never addressed him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep a civil tongue in my head.’ (He flattered himself there. I often wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half a voyage.) ‘I’ve a wife and children,’ he went on, ‘and I had been ten years in the Company, always expecting the next command⁠—more fool I. Says he, just like this: “Come in here, Mr. Jones,” in that swagger voice of his⁠—“Come in here, Mr. Jones.” In I went. “We’ll lay down her position,” says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand. By the standing orders, the officer going off duty would have done that at the end of his watch. However, I said nothing, and looked on while he marked off the ship’s position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and the time. I can see him this moment writing his neat figures: seventeen, eight, four a.m. The year would be written in red ink at the top of the chart. He never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly didn’t. I’ve the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down at the mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me. “Thirty-two miles more as she goes,” says he, “and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.”

“ ‘We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage. I said, “All right, sir,” wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to call him before altering the course anyhow. Just then eight bells were struck: we came out on the bridge, and the second mate before going off mentions in the usual way⁠—“Seventy-one on the log.” Captain Brierly looks at the compass and then all round. It was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh: “I am going aft, and shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no mistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe. Let’s see⁠—the correction on the log is six percent additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once. No use losing any distance⁠—is there?” I had never heard him talk so much at a stretch, and to no purpose as it seemed to me. I said nothing. He went down the ladder, and the dog, that was always at his heels whenever he moved, night or day, followed, sliding nose first, after him. I heard his boot-heels tap, tap on the afterdeck, then he stopped and spoke to the dog⁠—“Go back, Rover. On the bridge, boy! Go on⁠—get.” Then he calls out to me from the dark, “Shut that dog up in the chart-room, Mr. Jones⁠—will you?”

“ ‘This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir.’ At this point the old chap’s voice got quite unsteady. ‘He was afraid the