finished_summaries/novelguide/Lord Jim/section_3_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 6-8
chapters 6-8
{"name": "Chapters 6-8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210215030710/https://www.novelguide.com/lord-jim/summaries/chapter6-8", "summary": "Seven and Eight . The authorities allow the inquiry to go ahead with just hearing Jim's account of events. It is impossible to find out now what damaged the ship, but nobody there wants to know this anyway. Whether those attending know it or not, they are drawn by psychological interests. There is the expectation 'of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the horror, of human emotions', but of course 'nothing of the kind could be disclosed'. An official inquiry could not be expected 'to inquire into the state of a man's soul'. . . One of the assessors, Brierly, is described by Marlow as aloof and superior. Marlow also admits to admiring his apparent complacency. He presents a surface 'as hard as granite', but committed suicide barely a week after the inquiry finished. Brierly's mate, Mr Jones, tells Marlow that Brierly charted their position at sea and left a letter of instructions for him and a letter for the ship owners. The narrative deviates further as Jones describes his new captain. After arguing with him, Jones left his ship and is still looking after Brierly's dog. . . The narrative then returns to the inquiry and the last time Brierly spoke to Marlow. At this time, Marlow notes with surprise that Brierly is in a state of irritation about the inquiry and tells Marlow he feels like a fool. He wonders why they are tormenting Jim and he replies he does not know, 'unless it be that he lets you'. Brierly also wonders why Jim cannot see that he is 'done for' now the skipper has fled and tells Marlow he would have done so too. He says he does not care for Jim's sort of courage and will put up 200 rupees if Marlow will give another 100 for Jim to run away. Brierly says that his 'people' know Jim's and will give Marlow 200 rupees now to pass on to Jim. Marlow does not do as he is asked and attends the inquiry the next day instead. On the way out, a man walking with Marlow trips over a dog and calls it a 'wretched cur'. Jim spins around and bars Marlow's way. Jim accuses him of saying something to him, which Marlow denies, and then asks why he has been staring at him; he also asks who is a 'cur' now. Marlow realizes the mistake and points to the dog and Jim flushes with embarrassment. The chapter ends with Marlow inviting Jim to dinner. . . At dinner, in Chapter Seven, Jim relaxes a little and Marlow sees him as being of 'the right sort' and 'one of us'. He appears to be self-controlled until Marlow asks him about the inquiry and Jim clutches his hand and tells him it is hell. He adds that he cannot go home now and face his father as he will have read about the incident by now. Jim is not sure what to do after the inquiry as his certificate has been taken and he also has no money. . . The discussion turns to the events on the Patna and Jim asks Marlow if he knows what he would have done. Jim says it was all about him not being ready and looks ahead as he speaks. He tells Marlow that afterwards, he and the other crew had been picked up by a steamer and had been 'looked askance upon' from that day. Marlow takes pity on him, and then Jim suddenly blazes out, 'what a chance missed'. It is implied that he has missed the chance of being heroic. . . Jim explains that he saw the bulkhead bulge  and noticed rust as large as the palm of his hand come off it. He also explains that there were many more times the amount of people on board than there were lifeboats. He confesses his legs wobbled as he stood on the foredeck looking at the sleeping crowd. He believed the ship would go down at any moment and that the rusted ship plates would give way like a dam. Jim saw clearly that he could do nothing about it and this seemed to take the life out of his limbs. He kept thinking of the 800 people and seven boats. He also swears to Marlow that he was not frightened of death. Marlow thinks he was not afraid of death perhaps, but he was afraid of the emergency: Jim's 'confounded imagination' had evoked all the 'horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams ....' . . In Chapter Eight, Marlow describes how he thinks Jim stood 'stock-still' for a couple of minutes. He decided to cut the boats so they would not go down with the ship and tells Marlow he knew his duty. Whilst Jim ran to do this, a beggar stopped him to ask for water. He thought the man would begin shouting and start a panic, and so he hit him with his lamp. He half-throttled him before he realized he wanted water for his sick child. There was confusion in the dark and Jim questioned the skipper if he was going to do anything. He replied, yes, 'clear out'. Jim thought of shoring up the bulkhead, but asks Marlow where would he have got the men to do it and would he  have had the courage to swing the maul to strike the first blow. Jim also says he could not save those people singlehandedly. . . Marlow tells his listeners of his mixed emotions and that Jim wanted him to 'comprehend the Inconceivable'. Jim has told him how he has been preparing himself since a child, 'for all the difficulties that can beset one on land and water'. Marlow feels that everything betrayed Jim and he had been tricked into 'that sort of high-minded resignation' which prevented him from doing anything. The other three men saw clearly that they had to release a boat and sweated and struggled to do so. Two Malay men continued to hold on to the wheel. We are told that at the inquiry Brierly asked one of them what he thought about it and he said he thought nothing. On the ship, Jim continued to stand still and one of the engineers asked him to help release the boat. Jim hit him and the engineer called him a coward for not wanting to save his own life. .", "analysis": "Seven and Eight . The events on the Patna are revealed only gradually to the readers in these chapters, but it is evident that Jim continues to torment himself for his inadequacy long after the event. He is the only witness of the four main crewmen who is willing or able to stand and even gains the sympathy of Brierly . He demonstrates a loyalty to the truth and it is as though he wants the chance to explain his actions to clear himself of feelings of guilt. . . The fate of the ship and the people on it has still not been made explicit and the readers are drawn into the narrative web as Marlow deviates from the inquiry, to Brierly's suicide and then on to Jim's 'confession' at dinner. Hints are made to various outcomes - as it is clear the Malay men working on the ship survived to attend the inquiry  - and this has the effect of tantalizing the reader to guess about the devastation that may have occurred."}
'The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry was not
adjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law, and it
was well attended because of its human interest, no doubt. There was no
incertitude as to facts--as to the one material fact, I mean. How the
Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the court did not
expect to find out; and in the whole audience there was not a man who
cared. Yet, as I've told you, all the sailors in the port attended, and
the waterside business was fully represented. Whether they knew it or
not, the interest that drew them here was purely psychological--the
expectation of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power,
the horror, of human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be
disclosed. The examination of the only man able and willing to face
it was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of
questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on
an iron box, were the object to find out what's inside. However, an
official inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the
fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair.

'The young chap could have told them, and, though that very thing
was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put to him
necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance, would have
been the only truth worth knowing. You can't expect the constituted
authorities to inquire into the state of a man's soul--or is it only of
his liver? Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and
frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not
much good for anything else. I don't mean to imply these fellows were
stupid. The magistrate was very patient. One of the assessors was a
sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition.
Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some of you must have heard of Big
Brierly--the captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line. That's the
man.

'He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him. He had never
in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap,
never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky
fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust.
At thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern
trade--and, what's more, he thought a lot of what he had. There was
nothing like it in the world, and I suppose if you had asked him
point-blank he would have confessed that in his opinion there was not
such another commander. The choice had fallen upon the right man. The
rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa
were rather poor creatures. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued
ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the
underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from
some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. He was
acutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough,
though some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn't stand him at
any price. I haven't the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my
superior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West, you could not
have ignored your inferiority in his presence--but I couldn't get up any
real sentiment of offence. He did not despise me for anything I could
help, for anything I was--don't you know? I was a negligible quantity
simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague
Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold
chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the
excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed
of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and
worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never
was such a man loved thus by such a dog. No doubt, to have all this
forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that 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 per cent. 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
after-deck, 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 poor brute would jump after him, don't you see?" he pursued with
a quaver. "Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he--would you
believe it?--he put a drop of oil in it too. There was the oil-feeder
where he left it near by. The boat-swain's mate got the hose along aft
to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on
the bridge--'Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,' he says. 'There's a
funny thing. I don't like to touch it.' It was Captain Brierly's gold
chronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain.

'"As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew, sir. My
legs got soft under me. It was as if I had seen him go over; and I could
tell how far behind he was left too. The taffrail-log marked eighteen
miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round
the mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help him down, I suppose; but,
Lord! what's four iron pins to a powerful man like Captain Brierly.
Maybe his confidence in himself was just shook a bit at the last. That's
the only sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but
I am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try to swim a
stroke, the same as he would have had pluck enough to keep up all day
long on the bare chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir.
He was second to none--if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He
had written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and the
other to me. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--I had
been in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end of hints
as to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I should keep the
command of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would to a favourite son,
Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years his senior and had
tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched. In his letter to the
owners--it was left open for me to see--he said that he had always done
his duty by them--up to that moment--and even now he was not betraying
their confidence, since he was leaving the ship to as competent a seaman
as could be found--meaning me, sir, meaning me! He told them that if
the last act of his life didn't take away all his credit with them, they
would give weight to my faithful service and to his warm recommendation,
when about to fill the vacancy made by his death. And much more like
this, sir. I couldn't believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all over,"
went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something
in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula.
"You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only to give an unlucky
man a last show to get on. What with the shock of him going in this
awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was
nearly off my chump for a week. But no fear. The captain of the Pelion
was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay,
sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. 'Aw--I
am--aw--your new captain, Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.' He was drowned in
scent--fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look
I gave him that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural
disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got
the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of
course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Says I, 'Don't
you mind old Jones, sir; dam' his soul, he's used to it.' I could see
directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first
tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and
that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy
show. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held my
peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something. Up
he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little
fighting-cock. 'You'll find you have a different person to deal with
than the late Captain Brierly.' 'I've found it,' says I, very glum, but
pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. 'You are an old ruffian,
Mister--aw--Jones; and what's more, you are known for an old ruffian
in the employ,' he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers stood about
listening with their mouths stretched from ear to ear. 'I may be a hard
case,' answers I, 'but I ain't so far gone as to put up with the sight
of you sitting in Captain Brierly's chair.' With that I lay down my
knife and fork. 'You would like to sit in it yourself--that's where the
shoe pinches,' he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and
was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the
stevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift--on shore--after ten years'
service--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles
off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir!
I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his
night-glasses--here they are; and he wished me to take care of the
dog--here he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Where's the captain, Rover?"
The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate
bark, and crept under the table.

'All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board
that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite
by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally
called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before
the occupation days. The old chap snuffled on--

'"Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there's no other
place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in
reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing! Perhaps they
did not want to know."

'The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a
red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of
that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a
veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly's remembered figure, the
posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which
had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Almost! Perhaps
wholly. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take
of his own suicide?

'"Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you think?" asked
Jones, pressing his palms together. "Why? It beats me! Why?" He slapped
his low and wrinkled forehead. "If he had been poor and old and in
debt--and never a show--or else mad. But he wasn't of the kind that
goes mad, not he. You trust me. What a mate don't know about his skipper
isn't worth knowing. Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit
here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz.
There was some reason."

'"You may depend on it, Captain Jones," said I, "it wasn't anything that
would have disturbed much either of us two," I said; and then, as if
a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones
found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me
dolefully: "Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of
ourselves."

'Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is
tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. I
spoke with him for the last time during the progress of the inquiry. It
was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street.
He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his
usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly
cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his
interlocutor had been a rather good joke. "They caught me for that
inquiry, you see," he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon
the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. "And goodness knows how
long it will last. Three days, I suppose." I heard him out in silence;
in my then opinion it was a way as good as another of putting on side.
"What's the use of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine," he
pursued hotly. I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me
with a sort of pent-up violence. "I feel like a fool all the time." I
looked up at him. This was going very far--for Brierly--when talking of
Brierly. He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it
a slight tug. "Why are we tormenting that young chap?" he asked. This
question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine
that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered
at once, "Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you." I was
astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance,
which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said angrily, "Why, yes.
Can't he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared out? What does he
expect to happen? Nothing can save him. He's done for." We walked on
in silence a few steps. "Why eat all that dirt?" he exclaimed, with an
oriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can
find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. I wondered greatly at the
direction of his thoughts, but now I strongly suspect it was strictly in
character: at bottom poor Brierly must have been thinking of himself.
I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have
feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the
means of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was
keeping him in the Sailors' Home for the time being, and probably he
hadn't a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some money
to run away. "Does it? Not always," he said, with a bitter laugh, and
to some further remark of mine--"Well, then, let him creep twenty feet
underground and stay there! By heavens! _I_ would." I don't know why his
tone provoked me, and I said, "There is a kind of courage in facing
it out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away nobody would
trouble to run after him." "Courage be hanged!" growled Brierly. "That
sort of courage is of no use to keep a man straight, and I don't care
a snap for such courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice
now--of softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if
you put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out
early to-morrow morning. The fellow's a gentleman if he ain't fit to
be touched--he will understand. He must! This infernal publicity is too
shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs,
lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that's enough to burn a man
to ashes with shame. This is abominable. Why, Marlow, don't you think,
don't you feel, that this is abominable; don't you now--come--as a
seaman? If he went away all this would stop at once." Brierly said these
words with a most unusual animation, and made as if to reach after his
pocket-book. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice
of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance.
"And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose," he pronounced angrily. I
said that's what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard me
out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of
my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. "The worst of it," he
said, "is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity; you don't think
enough of what you are supposed to be."

'We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped opposite the
harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which the immense captain
of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a
hurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: "This is a disgrace. We've got all
kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we
must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many
tinkers going about loose. We are trusted. Do you understand?--trusted!
Frankly, I don't care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of
Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo
of old rags in bales. We aren't an organised body of men, and the only
thing that holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency.
Such an affair destroys one's confidence. A man may go pretty near
through his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip.
But when the call comes . . . Aha! . . . If I . . ."

'He broke off, and in a changed tone, "I'll give you two hundred rupees
now, Marlow, and you just talk to that chap. Confound him! I wish he had
never come out here. Fact is, I rather think some of my people know his.
The old man's a parson, and I remember now I met him once when staying
with my cousin in Essex last year. If I am not mistaken, the old
chap seemed rather to fancy his sailor son. Horrible. I can't do it
myself--but you . . ."

'Thus, apropos of Jim, I had a glimpse of the real Brierly a few days
before he committed his reality and his sham together to the keeping of
the sea. Of course I declined to meddle. The tone of this last "but
you" (poor Brierly couldn't help it), that seemed to imply I was no
more noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the proposal with
indignation, and on account of that provocation, or for some other
reason, I became positive in my mind that the inquiry was a severe
punishment to that Jim, and that his facing it--practically of his own
free will--was a redeeming feature in his abominable case. I hadn't been
so sure of it before. Brierly went off in a huff. At the time his state
of mind was more of a mystery to me than it is now.

'Next day, coming into court late, I sat by myself. Of course I could
not forget the conversation I had with Brierly, and now I had them both
under my eyes. The demeanour of one suggested gloomy impudence and of
the other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude might not have been
truer than the other, and I was aware that one was not true. Brierly was
not bored--he was exasperated; and if so, then Jim might not have been
impudent. According to my theory he was not. I imagined he was hopeless.
Then it was that our glances met. They met, and the look he gave me was
discouraging of any intention I might have had to speak to him. Upon
either hypothesis--insolence or despair--I felt I could be of no use to
him. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very soon after that
exchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the next day. The
white men began to troop out at once. Jim had been told to stand down
some time before, and was able to leave amongst the first. I saw his
broad shoulders and his head outlined in the light of the door, and
while I made my way slowly out talking with some one--some stranger who
had addressed me casually--I could see him from within the court-room
resting both elbows on the balustrade of the verandah and turning his
back on the small stream of people trickling down the few steps. There
was a murmur of voices and a shuffle of boots.

'The next case was that of assault and battery committed upon a
money-lender, I believe; and the defendant--a venerable villager with a
straight white beard--sat on a mat just outside the door with his sons,
daughters, sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think, half the
population of his village besides, squatting or standing around him. A
slim dark woman, with part of her back and one black shoulder bared,
and with a thin gold ring in her nose, suddenly began to talk in a
high-pitched, shrewish tone. The man with me instinctively looked up
at her. We were then just through the door, passing behind Jim's burly
back.

'Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog with them, I don't
know. Anyhow, a dog was there, weaving himself in and out amongst
people's legs in that mute stealthy way native dogs have, and my
companion stumbled over him. The dog leaped away without a sound; the
man, raising his voice a little, said with a slow laugh, "Look at that
wretched cur," and directly afterwards we became separated by a lot of
people pushing in. I stood back for a moment against the wall while the
stranger managed to get down the steps and disappeared. I saw Jim spin
round. He made a step forward and barred my way. We were alone; he
glared at me with an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware I was
being held up, so to speak, as if in a wood. The verandah was empty by
then, the noise and movement in court had ceased: a great silence fell
upon the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice
began to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak in
at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.

'"Did you speak to me?" asked Jim very low, and bending forward, not so
much towards me but at me, if you know what I mean. I said "No" at once.
Something in the sound of that quiet tone of his warned me to be on my
defence. I watched him. It was very much like a meeting in a wood, only
more uncertain in its issue, since he could possibly want neither my
money nor my life--nothing that I could simply give up or defend with
a clear conscience. "You say you didn't," he said, very sombre. "But I
heard." "Some mistake," I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking
my eyes off him. To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky
before a clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the
doom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.

'"As far as I know, I haven't opened my lips in your hearing," I
affirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a little angry, too, at the
absurdity of this encounter. It strikes me now I have never in my life
been so near a beating--I mean it literally; a beating with fists. I
suppose I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in the
air. Not that he was actively threatening me. On the contrary, he was
strangely passive--don't you know? but he was lowering, and, though not
exceptionally big, he looked generally fit to demolish a wall. The
most reassuring symptom I noticed was a kind of slow and ponderous
hesitation, which I took as a tribute to the evident sincerity of my
manner and of my tone. We faced each other. In the court the assault
case was proceeding. I caught the words: "Well--buffalo--stick--in the
greatness of my fear. . . ."

'"What did you mean by staring at me all the morning?" said Jim at last.
He looked up and looked down again. "Did you expect us all to sit with
downcast eyes out of regard for your susceptibilities?" I retorted
sharply. I was not going to submit meekly to any of his nonsense. He
raised his eyes again, and this time continued to look me straight
in the face. "No. That's all right," he pronounced with an air of
deliberating with himself upon the truth of this statement--"that's all
right. I am going through with that. Only"--and there he spoke a little
faster--"I won't let any man call me names outside this court. There was
a fellow with you. You spoke to him--oh yes--I know; 'tis all very fine.
You spoke to him, but you meant me to hear. . . ."

'I assured him he was under some extraordinary delusion. I had no
conception how it came about. "You thought I would be afraid to resent
this," he said, with just a faint tinge of bitterness. I was interested
enough to discern the slightest shades of expression, but I was not in
the least enlightened; yet I don't know what in these words, or perhaps
just the intonation of that phrase, induced me suddenly to make all
possible allowances for him. I ceased to be annoyed at my unexpected
predicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I
had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate
nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as
one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence.
The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations
of the higher order I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to
the possibility--nay, likelihood--of this encounter ending in some
disreputable brawl which could not possibly be explained, and would make
me ridiculous. I did not hanker after a three days' celebrity as the man
who got a black eye or something of the sort from the mate of the Patna.
He, in all probability, did not care what he did, or at any rate would
be fully justified in his own eyes. It took no magician to see he was
amazingly angry about something, for all his quiet and even torpid
demeanour. I don't deny I was extremely desirous to pacify him at all
costs, had I only known what to do. But I didn't know, as you may well
imagine. It was a blackness without a single gleam. We confronted each
other in silence. He hung fire for about fifteen seconds, then made a
step nearer, and I made ready to ward off a blow, though I don't think I
moved a muscle. "If you were as big as two men and as strong as six,"
he said very softly, "I would tell you what I think of you. You . . ."
"Stop!" I exclaimed. This checked him for a second. "Before you tell me
what you think of me," I went on quickly, "will you kindly tell me what
it is I've said or done?" During the pause that ensued he surveyed me
with indignation, while I made supernatural efforts of memory, in which
I was hindered by the oriental voice within the court-room expostulating
with impassioned volubility against a charge of falsehood. Then we spoke
almost together. "I will soon show you I am not," he said, in a tone
suggestive of a crisis. "I declare I don't know," I protested earnestly
at the same time. He tried to crush me by the scorn of his glance.
"Now that you see I am not afraid you try to crawl out of it," he said.
"Who's a cur now--hey?" Then, at last, I understood.

'He had been scanning my features as though looking for a place where
he would plant his fist. "I will allow no man," . . . he mumbled
threateningly. It was, indeed, a hideous mistake; he had given himself
away utterly. I can't give you an idea how shocked I was. I suppose he
saw some reflection of my feelings in my face, because his expression
changed just a little. "Good God!" I stammered, "you don't think
I . . ." "But I am sure I've heard," he persisted, raising his voice for
the first time since the beginning of this deplorable scene. Then with a
shade of disdain he added, "It wasn't you, then? Very well; I'll find
the other." "Don't be a fool," I cried in exasperation; "it wasn't that
at all." "I've heard," he said again with an unshaken and sombre
perseverance.

'There may be those who could have laughed at his pertinacity; I didn't.
Oh, I didn't! There had never been a man so mercilessly shown up by
his own natural impulse. A single word had stripped him of his
discretion--of that discretion which is more necessary to the decencies
of our inner being than clothing is to the decorum of our body. "Don't
be a fool," I repeated. "But the other man said it, you don't deny
that?" he pronounced distinctly, and looking in my face without
flinching. "No, I don't deny," said I, returning his gaze. At last his
eyes followed downwards the direction of my pointing finger. He appeared
at first uncomprehending, then confounded, and at last amazed and scared
as though a dog had been a monster and he had never seen a dog before.
"Nobody dreamt of insulting you," I said.

'He contemplated the wretched animal, that moved no more than an effigy:
it sat with ears pricked and its sharp muzzle pointed into the doorway,
and suddenly snapped at a fly like a piece of mechanism.

'I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened
suddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead, spread to
the roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely crimson, and even
the clear blue of his eyes was darkened many shades by the rush of blood
to his head. His lips pouted a little, trembling as though he had been
on the point of bursting into tears. I perceived he was incapable
of pronouncing a word from the excess of his humiliation. From
disappointment too--who knows? Perhaps he looked forward to that
hammering he was going to give me for rehabilitation, for appeasement?
Who can tell what relief he expected from this chance of a row? He
was naive enough to expect anything; but he had given himself away for
nothing in this case. He had been frank with himself--let alone
with me--in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective
refutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an
inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a
blow on the head. It was pitiful.

'I didn't catch up again with him till well outside the gate. I had even
to trot a bit at the last, but when, out of breath at his elbow, I taxed
him with running away, he said, "Never!" and at once turned at bay. I
explained I never meant to say he was running away from _me_. "From no
man--from not a single man on earth," he affirmed with a stubborn mien.
I forbore to point out the one obvious exception which would hold good
for the bravest of us; I thought he would find out by himself very soon.
He looked at me patiently while I was thinking of something to say, but
I could find nothing on the spur of the moment, and he began to walk on.
I kept up, and anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn't
think of leaving him under a false impression of my--of my--I stammered.
The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish
it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the
logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He
cut it short by saying, with courteous placidity that argued an
immense power of self-control or else a wonderful elasticity of
spirits--"Altogether my mistake." I marvelled greatly at this
expression: he might have been alluding to some trifling occurrence.
Hadn't he understood its deplorable meaning? "You may well forgive me,"
he continued, and went on a little moodily, "All these staring people in
court seemed such fools that--that it might have been as I supposed."

'This opened suddenly a new view of him to my wonder. I looked at him
curiously and met his unabashed and impenetrable eyes. "I can't put up
with this kind of thing," he said, very simply, "and I don't mean to. In
court it's different; I've got to stand that--and I can do it too."

'I don't pretend I understood him. The views he let me have of himself
were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog--bits
of vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected idea of the general
aspect of a country. They fed one's curiosity without satisfying it;
they were no good for purposes of orientation. Upon the whole he was
misleading. That's how I summed him up to myself after he left me late
in the evening. I had been staying at the Malabar House for a few days,
and on my pressing invitation he dined with me there.''An outward-bound mail-boat had come in that afternoon, and the
big dining-room of the hotel was more than half full of people with
a-hundred-pounds-round-the-world tickets in their pockets. There were
married couples looking domesticated and bored with each other in the
midst of their travels; there were small parties and large parties,
and lone individuals dining solemnly or feasting boisterously, but all
thinking, conversing, joking, or scowling as was their wont at home;
and just as intelligently receptive of new impressions as their trunks
upstairs. Henceforth they would be labelled as having passed through
this and that place, and so would be their luggage. They would cherish
this distinction of their persons, and preserve the gummed tickets on
their portmanteaus as documentary evidence, as the only permanent trace
of their improving enterprise. The dark-faced servants tripped without
noise over the vast and polished floor; now and then a girl's laugh
would be heard, as innocent and empty as her mind, or, in a sudden hush
of crockery, a few words in an affected drawl from some wit embroidering
for the benefit of a grinning tableful the last funny story of shipboard
scandal. Two nomadic old maids, dressed up to kill, worked acrimoniously
through the bill of fare, whispering to each other with faded lips,
wooden-faced and bizarre, like two sumptuous scarecrows. A little wine
opened Jim's heart and loosened his tongue. His appetite was good, too,
I noticed. He seemed to have buried somewhere the opening episode of
our acquaintance. It was like a thing of which there would be no more
question in this world. And all the time I had before me these blue,
boyish eyes looking straight into mine, this young face, these capable
shoulders, the open bronzed forehead with a white line under the roots
of clustering fair hair, this appearance appealing at sight to all
my sympathies: this frank aspect, the artless smile, the youthful
seriousness. He was of the right sort; he was one of us. He talked
soberly, with a sort of composed unreserve, and with a quiet bearing
that might have been the outcome of manly self-control, of impudence, of
callousness, of a colossal unconsciousness, of a gigantic deception. Who
can tell! From our tone we might have been discussing a third person,
a football match, last year's weather. My mind floated in a sea of
conjectures till the turn of the conversation enabled me, without being
offensive, to remark that, upon the whole, this inquiry must have been
pretty trying to him. He darted his arm across the tablecloth, and
clutching my hand by the side of my plate, glared fixedly. I was
startled. "It must be awfully hard," I stammered, confused by this
display of speechless feeling. "It is--hell," he burst out in a muffled
voice.

'This movement and these words caused two well-groomed male
globe-trotters at a neighbouring table to look up in alarm from their
iced pudding. I rose, and we passed into the front gallery for coffee
and cigars.

'On little octagon tables candles burned in glass globes; clumps of
stiff-leaved plants separated sets of cosy wicker chairs; and between
the pairs of columns, whose reddish shafts caught in a long row the
sheen from the tall windows, the night, glittering and sombre, seemed
to hang like a splendid drapery. The riding lights of ships winked afar
like setting stars, and the hills across the roadstead resembled rounded
black masses of arrested thunder-clouds.

'"I couldn't clear out," Jim began. "The skipper did--that's all very
well for him. I couldn't, and I wouldn't. They all got out of it in one
way or another, but it wouldn't do for me."

'I listened with concentrated attention, not daring to stir in my chair;
I wanted to know--and to this day I don't know, I can only guess. He
would be confident and depressed all in the same breath, as if some
conviction of innate blamelessness had checked the truth writhing within
him at every turn. He began by saying, in the tone in which a man would
admit his inability to jump a twenty-foot wall, that he could never
go home now; and this declaration recalled to my mind what Brierly had
said, "that the old parson in Essex seemed to fancy his sailor son not a
little."

'I can't tell you whether Jim knew he was especially "fancied," but the
tone of his references to "my Dad" was calculated to give me a notion
that the good old rural dean was about the finest man that ever had been
worried by the cares of a large family since the beginning of the world.
This, though never stated, was implied with an anxiety that there should
be no mistake about it, which was really very true and charming, but
added a poignant sense of lives far off to the other elements of the
story. "He has seen it all in the home papers by this time," said Jim.
"I can never face the poor old chap." I did not dare to lift my eyes
at this till I heard him add, "I could never explain. He wouldn't
understand." Then I looked up. He was smoking reflectively, and after
a moment, rousing himself, began to talk again. He discovered at once
a desire that I should not confound him with his partners in--in crime,
let us call it. He was not one of them; he was altogether of another
sort. I gave no sign of dissent. I had no intention, for the sake of
barren truth, to rob him of the smallest particle of any saving grace
that would come in his way. I didn't know how much of it he believed
himself. I didn't know what he was playing up to--if he was playing up
to anything at all--and I suspect he did not know either; for it is my
belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape
from the grim shadow of self-knowledge. I made no sound all the time
he was wondering what he had better do after "that stupid inquiry was
over."

'Apparently he shared Brierly's contemptuous opinion of these
proceedings ordained by law. He would not know where to turn, he
confessed, clearly thinking aloud rather than talking to me. Certificate
gone, career broken, no money to get away, no work that he could obtain
as far as he could see. At home he could perhaps get something; but it
meant going to his people for help, and that he would not do. He
saw nothing for it but ship before the mast--could get perhaps a
quartermaster's billet in some steamer. Would do for a quartermaster.
. . . "Do you think you would?" I asked pitilessly. He jumped up, and
going to the stone balustrade looked out into the night. In a moment he
was back, towering above my chair with his youthful face clouded yet by
the pain of a conquered emotion. He had understood very well I did not
doubt his ability to steer a ship. In a voice that quavered a bit he
asked me why did I say that? I had been "no end kind" to him. I had not
even laughed at him when--here he began to mumble--"that mistake, you
know--made a confounded ass of myself." I broke in by saying rather
warmly that for me such a mistake was not a matter to laugh at. He sat
down and drank deliberately some coffee, emptying the small cup to the
last drop. "That does not mean I admit for a moment the cap fitted,"
he declared distinctly. "No?" I said. "No," he affirmed with quiet
decision. "Do you know what _you_ would have done? Do you? And you
don't think yourself" . . . he gulped something . . . "you don't think
yourself a--a--cur?"

'And with this--upon my honour!--he looked up at me inquisitively. It
was a question it appears--a bona fide question! However, he didn't wait
for an answer. Before I could recover he went on, with his eyes straight
before him, as if reading off something written on the body of the
night. "It is all in being ready. I wasn't; not--not then. I don't want
to excuse myself; but I would like to explain--I would like somebody to
understand--somebody--one person at least! You! Why not you?"

'It was solemn, and a little ridiculous too, as they always are, those
struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what
his moral identity should be, this precious notion of a convention, only
one of the rules of the game, nothing more, but all the same so terribly
effective by its assumption of unlimited power over natural instincts,
by the awful penalties of its failure. He began his story quietly
enough. On board that Dale Line steamer that had picked up these four
floating in a boat upon the discreet sunset glow of the sea, they had
been after the first day looked askance upon. The fat skipper told some
story, the others had been silent, and at first it had been accepted.
You don't cross-examine poor castaways you had the good luck to save,
if not from cruel death, then at least from cruel suffering. Afterwards,
with time to think it over, it might have struck the officers of the
Avondale that there was "something fishy" in the affair; but of course
they would keep their doubts to themselves. They had picked up the
captain, the mate, and two engineers of the steamer Patna sunk at sea,
and that, very properly, was enough for them. I did not ask Jim about
the nature of his feelings during the ten days he spent on board. From
the way he narrated that part I was at liberty to infer he was partly
stunned by the discovery he had made--the discovery about himself--and
no doubt was at work trying to explain it away to the only man who
was capable of appreciating all its tremendous magnitude. You must
understand he did not try to minimise its importance. Of that I am sure;
and therein lies his distinction. As to what sensations he experienced
when he got ashore and heard the unforeseen conclusion of the tale in
which he had taken such a pitiful part, he told me nothing of them, and
it is difficult to imagine.

'I wonder whether he felt the ground cut from under his feet? I wonder?
But no doubt he managed to get a fresh foothold very soon. He was ashore
a whole fortnight waiting in the Sailors' Home, and as there were six or
seven men staying there at the time, I had heard of him a little.
Their languid opinion seemed to be that, in addition to his other
shortcomings, he was a sulky brute. He had passed these days on the
verandah, buried in a long chair, and coming out of his place of
sepulture only at meal-times or late at night, when he wandered on the
quays all by himself, detached from his surroundings, irresolute and
silent, like a ghost without a home to haunt. "I don't think I've spoken
three words to a living soul in all that time," he said, making me very
sorry for him; and directly he added, "One of these fellows would have
been sure to blurt out something I had made up my mind not to put up
with, and I didn't want a row. No! Not then. I was too--too . . . I
had no heart for it." "So that bulkhead held out after all," I remarked
cheerfully. "Yes," he murmured, "it held. And yet I swear to you I felt
it bulge under my hand." "It's extraordinary what strains old iron will
stand sometimes," I said. Thrown back in his seat, his legs stiffly out
and arms hanging down, he nodded slightly several times. You could not
conceive a sadder spectacle. Suddenly he lifted his head; he sat up;
he slapped his thigh. "Ah! what a chance missed! My God! what a chance
missed!" he blazed out, but the ring of the last "missed" resembled a
cry wrung out by pain.

'He was silent again with a still, far-away look of fierce yearning
after that missed distinction, with his nostrils for an instant dilated,
sniffing the intoxicating breath of that wasted opportunity. If you
think I was either surprised or shocked you do me an injustice in more
ways than one! Ah, he was an imaginative beggar! He would give himself
away; he would give himself up. I could see in his glance darted into
the night all his inner being carried on, projected headlong into the
fanciful realm of recklessly heroic aspirations. He had no leisure to
regret what he had lost, he was so wholly and naturally concerned for
what he had failed to obtain. He was very far away from me who watched
him across three feet of space. With every instant he was penetrating
deeper into the impossible world of romantic achievements. He got to
the heart of it at last! A strange look of beatitude overspread his
features, his eyes sparkled in the light of the candle burning between
us; he positively smiled! He had penetrated to the very heart--to
the very heart. It was an ecstatic smile that your faces--or mine
either--will never wear, my dear boys. I whisked him back by saying, "If
you had stuck to the ship, you mean!"

'He turned upon me, his eyes suddenly amazed and full of pain, with a
bewildered, startled, suffering face, as though he had tumbled down
from a star. Neither you nor I will ever look like this on any man. He
shuddered profoundly, as if a cold finger-tip had touched his heart.
Last of all he sighed.

'I was not in a merciful mood. He provoked one by his contradictory
indiscretions. "It is unfortunate you didn't know beforehand!" I
said with every unkind intention; but the perfidious shaft fell
harmless--dropped at his feet like a spent arrow, as it were, and he did
not think of picking it up. Perhaps he had not even seen it. Presently,
lolling at ease, he said, "Dash it all! I tell you it bulged. I was
holding up my lamp along the angle-iron in the lower deck when a
flake of rust as big as the palm of my hand fell off the plate, all of
itself." He passed his hand over his forehead. "The thing stirred and
jumped off like something alive while I was looking at it." "That made
you feel pretty bad," I observed casually. "Do you suppose," he said,
"that I was thinking of myself, with a hundred and sixty people at my
back, all fast asleep in that fore-'tween-deck alone--and more of them
aft; more on the deck--sleeping--knowing nothing about it--three times
as many as there were boats for, even if there had been time? I expected
to see the iron open out as I stood there and the rush of water going
over them as they lay. . . . What could I do--what?"

'I can easily picture him to myself in the peopled gloom of the
cavernous place, with the light of the globe-lamp falling on a small
portion of the bulkhead that had the weight of the ocean on the other
side, and the breathing of unconscious sleepers in his ears. I can see
him glaring at the iron, startled by the falling rust, overburdened by
the knowledge of an imminent death. This, I gathered, was the second
time he had been sent forward by that skipper of his, who, I rather
think, wanted to keep him away from the bridge. He told me that his
first impulse was to shout and straightway make all those people
leap out of sleep into terror; but such an overwhelming sense of his
helplessness came over him that he was not able to produce a sound. This
is, I suppose, what people mean by the tongue cleaving to the roof of
the mouth. "Too dry," was the concise expression he used in reference to
this state. Without a sound, then, he scrambled out on deck through
the number one hatch. A windsail rigged down there swung against him
accidentally, and he remembered that the light touch of the canvas on
his face nearly knocked him off the hatchway ladder.

'He confessed that his knees wobbled a good deal as he stood on the
foredeck looking at another sleeping crowd. The engines having been
stopped by that time, the steam was blowing off. Its deep rumble made
the whole night vibrate like a bass string. The ship trembled to it.

'He saw here and there a head lifted off a mat, a vague form uprise in
sitting posture, listen sleepily for a moment, sink down again into the
billowy confusion of boxes, steam-winches, ventilators. He was aware
all these people did not know enough to take intelligent notice of
that strange noise. The ship of iron, the men with white faces, all the
sights, all the sounds, everything on board to that ignorant and pious
multitude was strange alike, and as trustworthy as it would for ever
remain incomprehensible. It occurred to him that the fact was fortunate.
The idea of it was simply terrible.

'You must remember he believed, as any other man would have done in
his place, that the ship would go down at any moment; the bulging,
rust-eaten plates that kept back the ocean, fatally must give way, all
at once like an undermined dam, and let in a sudden and overwhelming
flood. He stood still looking at these recumbent bodies, a doomed man
aware of his fate, surveying the silent company of the dead. They _were_
dead! Nothing could save them! There were boats enough for half of them
perhaps, but there was no time. No time! No time! It did not seem worth
while to open his lips, to stir hand or foot. Before he could shout
three words, or make three steps, he would be floundering in a sea
whitened awfully by the desperate struggles of human beings, clamorous
with the distress of cries for help. There was no help. He imagined
what would happen perfectly; he went through it all motionless by the
hatchway with the lamp in his hand--he went through it to the very last
harrowing detail. I think he went through it again while he was telling
me these things he could not tell the court.

'"I saw as clearly as I see you now that there was nothing I could do.
It seemed to take all life out of my limbs. I thought I might just as
well stand where I was and wait. I did not think I had many
seconds. . . ." Suddenly the steam ceased blowing off. The noise, he
remarked, had been distracting, but the silence at once became
intolerably oppressive.

'"I thought I would choke before I got drowned," he said.

'He protested he did not think of saving himself. The only distinct
thought formed, vanishing, and re-forming in his brain, was: eight
hundred people and seven boats; eight hundred people and seven boats.

'"Somebody was speaking aloud inside my head," he said a little wildly.
"Eight hundred people and seven boats--and no time! Just think of it."
He leaned towards me across the little table, and I tried to avoid his
stare. "Do you think I was afraid of death?" he asked in a voice very
fierce and low. He brought down his open hand with a bang that made the
coffee-cups dance. "I am ready to swear I was not--I was not. . . . By
God--no!" He hitched himself upright and crossed his arms; his chin fell
on his breast.

'The soft clashes of crockery reached us faintly through the high
windows. There was a burst of voices, and several men came out in high
good-humour into the gallery. They were exchanging jocular reminiscences
of the donkeys in Cairo. A pale anxious youth stepping softly on long
legs was being chaffed by a strutting and rubicund globe-trotter about
his purchases in the bazaar. "No, really--do you think I've been done
to that extent?" he inquired very earnest and deliberate. The band moved
away, dropping into chairs as they went; matches flared, illuminating
for a second faces without the ghost of an expression and the flat glaze
of white shirt-fronts; the hum of many conversations animated with the
ardour of feasting sounded to me absurd and infinitely remote.

'"Some of the crew were sleeping on the number one hatch within reach of
my arm," began Jim again.

'You must know they kept Kalashee watch in that ship, all hands sleeping
through the night, and only the reliefs of quartermasters and look-out
men being called. He was tempted to grip and shake the shoulder of the
nearest lascar, but he didn't. Something held his arms down along his
sides. He was not afraid--oh no! only he just couldn't--that's all. He
was not afraid of death perhaps, but I'll tell you what, he was afraid
of the emergency. His confounded imagination had evoked for him all
the horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams, boats
swamped--all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea he had ever
heard of. He might have been resigned to die but I suspect he wanted
to die without added terrors, quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance. A
certain readiness to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom
that you meet men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of
resolution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last; the desire
of peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last it conquers the
very desire of life. Which of us here has not observed this, or maybe
experienced something of that feeling in his own person--this extreme
weariness of emotions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest?
Those striving with unreasonable forces know it well,--the shipwrecked
castaways in boats, wanderers lost in a desert, men battling against the
unthinking might of nature, or the stupid brutality of crowds.'


'How long he stood stock-still by the hatch expecting every moment to
feel the ship dip under his feet and the rush of water take him at the
back and toss him like a chip, I cannot say. Not very long--two minutes
perhaps. A couple of men he could not make out began to converse
drowsily, and also, he could not tell where, he detected a curious
noise of shuffling feet. Above these faint sounds there was that awful
stillness preceding a catastrophe, that trying silence of the moment
before the crash; then it came into his head that perhaps he would have
time to rush along and cut all the lanyards of the gripes, so that the
boats would float as the ship went down.

'The Patna had a long bridge, and all the boats were up there, four on
one side and three on the other--the smallest of them on the port-side
and nearly abreast of the steering gear. He assured me, with evident
anxiety to be believed, that he had been most careful to keep them ready
for instant service. He knew his duty. I dare say he was a good enough
mate as far as that went. "I always believed in being prepared for the
worst," he commented, staring anxiously in my face. I nodded my approval
of the sound principle, averting my eyes before the subtle unsoundness
of the man.

'He started unsteadily to run. He had to step over legs, avoid stumbling
against the heads. Suddenly some one caught hold of his coat from below,
and a distressed voice spoke under his elbow. The light of the lamp he
carried in his right hand fell upon an upturned dark face whose eyes
entreated him together with the voice. He had picked up enough of the
language to understand the word water, repeated several times in a tone
of insistence, of prayer, almost of despair. He gave a jerk to get away,
and felt an arm embrace his leg.

'"The beggar clung to me like a drowning man," he said impressively.
"Water, water! What water did he mean? What did he know? As calmly as
I could I ordered him to let go. He was stopping me, time was pressing,
other men began to stir; I wanted time--time to cut the boats adrift.
He got hold of my hand now, and I felt that he would begin to shout. It
flashed upon me it was enough to start a panic, and I hauled off with
my free arm and slung the lamp in his face. The glass jingled, the light
went out, but the blow made him let go, and I ran off--I wanted to get
at the boats; I wanted to get at the boats. He leaped after me from
behind. I turned on him. He would not keep quiet; he tried to shout; I
had half throttled him before I made out what he wanted. He wanted some
water--water to drink; they were on strict allowance, you know, and
he had with him a young boy I had noticed several times. His child was
sick--and thirsty. He had caught sight of me as I passed by, and was
begging for a little water. That's all. We were under the bridge, in
the dark. He kept on snatching at my wrists; there was no getting rid of
him. I dashed into my berth, grabbed my water-bottle, and thrust it into
his hands. He vanished. I didn't find out till then how much I was in
want of a drink myself." He leaned on one elbow with a hand over his
eyes.

'I felt a creepy sensation all down my backbone; there was something
peculiar in all this. The fingers of the hand that shaded his brow
trembled slightly. He broke the short silence.

'"These things happen only once to a man and . . . Ah! well! When I got
on the bridge at last the beggars were getting one of the boats off the
chocks. A boat! I was running up the ladder when a heavy blow fell on
my shoulder, just missing my head. It didn't stop me, and the chief
engineer--they had got him out of his bunk by then--raised the
boat-stretcher again. Somehow I had no mind to be surprised at anything.
All this seemed natural--and awful--and awful. I dodged that miserable
maniac, lifted him off the deck as though he had been a little child,
and he started whispering in my arms: 'Don't! don't! I thought you were
one of them niggers.' I flung him away, he skidded along the bridge and
knocked the legs from under the little chap--the second. The skipper,
busy about the boat, looked round and came at me head down, growling
like a wild beast. I flinched no more than a stone. I was as solid
standing there as this," he tapped lightly with his knuckles the wall
beside his chair. "It was as though I had heard it all, seen it all,
gone through it all twenty times already. I wasn't afraid of them. I
drew back my fist and he stopped short, muttering--

'"'Ah! it's you. Lend a hand quick.'

'"That's what he said. Quick! As if anybody could be quick enough.
'Aren't you going to do something?' I asked. 'Yes. Clear out,' he
snarled over his shoulder.

'"I don't think I understood then what he meant. The other two had
picked themselves up by that time, and they rushed together to the boat.
They tramped, they wheezed, they shoved, they cursed the boat, the ship,
each other--cursed me. All in mutters. I didn't move, I didn't speak.
I watched the slant of the ship. She was as still as if landed on the
blocks in a dry dock--only she was like this," He held up his hand,
palm under, the tips of the fingers inclined downwards. "Like this," he
repeated. "I could see the line of the horizon before me, as clear as a
bell, above her stem-head; I could see the water far off there black
and sparkling, and still--still as a-pond, deadly still, more still than
ever sea was before--more still than I could bear to look at. Have you
watched a ship floating head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old
iron too rotten to stand being shored up? Have you? Oh yes, shored up? I
thought of that--I thought of every mortal thing; but can you shore up a
bulkhead in five minutes--or in fifty for that matter? Where was I going
to get men that would go down below? And the timber--the timber! Would
you have had the courage to swing the maul for the first blow if you
had seen that bulkhead? Don't say you would: you had not seen it; nobody
would. Hang it--to do a thing like that you must believe there is a
chance, one in a thousand, at least, some ghost of a chance; and you
would not have believed. Nobody would have believed. You think me a
cur for standing there, but what would you have done? What! You can't
tell--nobody can tell. One must have time to turn round. What would you
have me do? Where was the kindness in making crazy with fright all those
people I could not save single-handed--that nothing could save? Look
here! As true as I sit on this chair before you . . ."

'He drew quick breaths at every few words and shot quick glances at my
face, as though in his anguish he were watchful of the effect. He was
not speaking to me, he was only speaking before me, in a dispute with
an invisible personality, an antagonistic and inseparable partner of his
existence--another possessor of his soul. These were issues beyond the
competency of a court of inquiry: it was a subtle and momentous quarrel
as to the true essence of life, and did not want a judge. He wanted
an ally, a helper, an accomplice. I felt the risk I ran of being
circumvented, blinded, decoyed, bullied, perhaps, into taking a definite
part in a dispute impossible of decision if one had to be fair to all
the phantoms in possession--to the reputable that had its claims and
to the disreputable that had its exigencies. I can't explain to you who
haven't seen him and who hear his words only at second hand the mixed
nature of my feelings. It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend
the Inconceivable--and I know of nothing to compare with the discomfort
of such a sensation. I was made to look at the convention that lurks in
all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to
all sides at once--to the side turned perpetually to the light of day,
and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon,
exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light
falling at times on the edge. He swayed me. I own to it, I own up. The
occasion was obscure, insignificant--what you will: a lost youngster,
one in a million--but then he was one of us; an incident as completely
devoid of importance as the flooding of an ant-heap, and yet the mystery
of his attitude got hold of me as though he had been an individual
in the forefront of his kind, as if the obscure truth involved were
momentous enough to affect mankind's conception of itself. . . .'

Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring cheroot, seemed to
forget all about the story, and abruptly began again.

'My fault of course. One has no business really to get interested. It's
a weakness of mine. His was of another kind. My weakness consists in not
having a discriminating eye for the incidental--for the externals--no
eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next man.
Next man--that's it. I have met so many men,' he pursued, with momentary
sadness--'met them too with a certain--certain--impact, let us say; like
this fellow, for instance--and in each case all I could see was merely
the human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be
better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me, I can
assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen. But
I never could get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh! it's a
failing; it's a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of men too
indolent for whist--and a story. . . .'

He paused again to wait for an encouraging remark, perhaps, but nobody
spoke; only the host, as if reluctantly performing a duty, murmured--

'You are so subtle, Marlow.'

'Who? I?' said Marlow in a low voice. 'Oh no! But _he_ was; and try as I
may for the success of this yarn, I am missing innumerable shades--they
were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words. Because he
complicated matters by being so simple, too--the simplest poor
devil! . . . By Jove! he was amazing. There he sat telling me that just
as I saw him before my eyes he wouldn't be afraid to face anything--and
believing in it too. I tell you it was fabulously innocent and it was
enormous, enormous! I watched him covertly, just as though I had
suspected him of an intention to take a jolly good rise out of me. He
was confident that, on the square, "on the square, mind!" there was
nothing he couldn't meet. Ever since he had been "so high"--"quite a
little chap," he had been preparing himself for all the difficulties
that can beset one on land and water. He confessed proudly to this kind
of foresight. He had been elaborating dangers and defences, expecting
the worst, rehearsing his best. He must have led a most exalted
existence. Can you fancy it? A succession of adventures, so much glory,
such a victorious progress! and the deep sense of his sagacity crowning
every day of his inner life. He forgot himself; his eyes shone; and with
every word my heart, searched by the light of his absurdity, was growing
heavier in my breast. I had no mind to laugh, and lest I should smile I
made for myself a stolid face. He gave signs of irritation.

'"It is always the unexpected that happens," I said in a propitiatory
tone. My obtuseness provoked him into a contemptuous "Pshaw!" I suppose
he meant that the unexpected couldn't touch him; nothing less than the
unconceivable itself could get over his perfect state of preparation. He
had been taken unawares--and he whispered to himself a malediction upon
the waters and the firmament, upon the ship, upon the men. Everything
had betrayed him! He had been tricked into that sort of high-minded
resignation which prevented him lifting as much as his little finger,
while these others who had a very clear perception of the actual
necessity were tumbling against each other and sweating desperately over
that boat business. Something had gone wrong there at the last moment.
It appears that in their flurry they had contrived in some mysterious
way to get the sliding bolt of the foremost boat-chock jammed tight, and
forthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds over the deadly
nature of that accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce
industry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that floated
quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time for the
freeing of that boat, grovelling on all-fours, standing up in despair,
tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill,
ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by
the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and
cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh yes! It must have been a pretty sight. He
saw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and bitterness; he had a
minute knowledge of it by means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because
he swore to me he had remained apart without a glance at them and at the
boat--without one single glance. And I believe him. I should think he
was too busy watching the threatening slant of the ship, the suspended
menace discovered in the midst of the most perfect security--fascinated
by the sword hanging by a hair over his imaginative head.

'Nothing in the world moved before his eyes, and he could depict to
himself without hindrance the sudden swing upwards of the dark sky-line,
the sudden tilt up of the vast plain of the sea, the swift still rise,
the brutal fling, the grasp of the abyss, the struggle without hope, the
starlight closing over his head for ever like the vault of a tomb--the
revolt of his young life--the black end. He could! By Jove! who
couldn't? And you must remember he was a finished artist in that
peculiar way, he was a gifted poor devil with the faculty of swift and
forestalling vision. The sights it showed him had turned him into cold
stone from the soles of his feet to the nape of his neck; but there
was a hot dance of thoughts in his head, a dance of lame, blind, mute
thoughts--a whirl of awful cripples. Didn't I tell you he confessed
himself before me as though I had the power to bind and to loose? He
burrowed deep, deep, in the hope of my absolution, which would have been
of no good to him. This was one of those cases which no solemn deception
can palliate, where no man can help; where his very Maker seems to
abandon a sinner to his own devices.

'He stood on the starboard side of the bridge, as far as he could get
from the struggle for the boat, which went on with the agitation
of madness and the stealthiness of a conspiracy. The two Malays had
meantime remained holding to the wheel. Just picture to yourselves
the actors in that, thank God! unique, episode of the sea, four beside
themselves with fierce and secret exertions, and three looking on in
complete immobility, above the awnings covering the profound ignorance
of hundreds of human beings, with their weariness, with their dreams,
with their hopes, arrested, held by an invisible hand on the brink of
annihilation. For that they were so, makes no doubt to me: given the
state of the ship, this was the deadliest possible description of
accident that could happen. These beggars by the boat had every reason
to go distracted with funk. Frankly, had I been there, I would not have
given as much as a counterfeit farthing for the ship's chance to keep
above water to the end of each successive second. And still she
floated! These sleeping pilgrims were destined to accomplish their
whole pilgrimage to the bitterness of some other end. It was as if the
Omnipotence whose mercy they confessed had needed their humble testimony
on earth for a while longer, and had looked down to make a sign,
"Thou shalt not!" to the ocean. Their escape would trouble me as a
prodigiously inexplicable event, did I not know how tough old iron can
be--as tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then,
worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life. Not the least
wonder of these twenty minutes, to my mind, is the behaviour of the two
helmsmen. They were amongst the native batch of all sorts brought over
from Aden to give evidence at the inquiry. One of them, labouring under
intense bashfulness, was very young, and with his smooth, yellow,
cheery countenance looked even younger than he was. I remember perfectly
Brierly asking him, through the interpreter, what he thought of it at
the time, and the interpreter, after a short colloquy, turning to the
court with an important air--

'"He says he thought nothing."

'The other, with patient blinking eyes, a blue cotton handkerchief,
faded with much washing, bound with a smart twist over a lot of grey
wisps, his face shrunk into grim hollows, his brown skin made darker by
a mesh of wrinkles, explained that he had a knowledge of some evil thing
befalling the ship, but there had been no order; he could not remember
an order; why should he leave the helm? To some further questions he
jerked back his spare shoulders, and declared it never came into his
mind then that the white men were about to leave the ship through
fear of death. He did not believe it now. There might have been secret
reasons. He wagged his old chin knowingly. Aha! secret reasons. He was
a man of great experience, and he wanted _that_ white Tuan to know--he
turned towards Brierly, who didn't raise his head--that he had acquired
a knowledge of many things by serving white men on the sea for a great
number of years--and, suddenly, with shaky excitement he poured upon
our spellbound attention a lot of queer-sounding names, names of
dead-and-gone skippers, names of forgotten country ships, names of
familiar and distorted sound, as if the hand of dumb time had been at
work on them for ages. They stopped him at last. A silence fell upon
the court,--a silence that remained unbroken for at least a minute, and
passed gently into a deep murmur. This episode was the sensation of
the second day's proceedings--affecting all the audience, affecting
everybody except Jim, who was sitting moodily at the end of the first
bench, and never looked up at this extraordinary and damning witness
that seemed possessed of some mysterious theory of defence.

'So these two lascars stuck to the helm of that ship without
steerage-way, where death would have found them if such had been their
destiny. The whites did not give them half a glance, had probably
forgotten their existence. Assuredly Jim did not remember it. He
remembered he could do nothing; he could do nothing, now he was alone.
There was nothing to do but to sink with the ship. No use making a
disturbance about it. Was there? He waited upstanding, without a sound,
stiffened in the idea of some sort of heroic discretion. The first
engineer ran cautiously across the bridge to tug at his sleeve.

'"Come and help! For God's sake, come and help!"

'He ran back to the boat on the points of his toes, and returned
directly to worry at his sleeve, begging and cursing at the same time.

'"I believe he would have kissed my hands," said Jim savagely, "and,
next moment, he starts foaming and whispering in my face, 'If I had
the time I would like to crack your skull for you.' I pushed him away.
Suddenly he caught hold of me round the neck. Damn him! I hit him. I
hit out without looking. 'Won't you save your own life--you infernal
coward?' he sobs. Coward! He called me an infernal coward! Ha! ha! ha!
ha! He called me--ha! ha! ha! . . ."

'He had thrown himself back and was shaking with laughter. I had never
in my life heard anything so bitter as that noise. It fell like a blight
on all the merriment about donkeys, pyramids, bazaars, or what not.
Along the whole dim length of the gallery the voices dropped, the pale
blotches of faces turned our way with one accord, and the silence
became so profound that the clear tinkle of a teaspoon falling on
the tesselated floor of the verandah rang out like a tiny and silvery
scream.

'"You mustn't laugh like this, with all these people about," I
remonstrated. "It isn't nice for them, you know."

'He gave no sign of having heard at first, but after a while, with a
stare that, missing me altogether, seemed to probe the heart of some
awful vision, he muttered carelessly--"Oh! they'll think I am drunk."

'And after that you would have thought from his appearance he would
never make a sound again. But--no fear! He could no more stop telling
now than he could have stopped living by the mere exertion of his will.'



Chapters 6-8
Seven and Eight . The authorities allow the inquiry to go ahead with just hearing Jim's account of events. It is impossible to find out now what damaged the ship, but nobody there wants to know this anyway. Whether those attending know it or not, they are drawn by psychological interests. There is the expectation 'of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the horror, of human emotions', but of course 'nothing of the kind could be disclosed'. An official inquiry could not be expected 'to inquire into the state of a man's soul'. . . One of the assessors, Brierly, is described by Marlow as aloof and superior. Marlow also admits to admiring his apparent complacency. He presents a surface 'as hard as granite', but committed suicide barely a week after the inquiry finished. Brierly's mate, Mr Jones, tells Marlow that Brierly charted their position at sea and left a letter of instructions for him and a letter for the ship owners. The narrative deviates further as Jones describes his new captain. After arguing with him, Jones left his ship and is still looking after Brierly's dog. . . The narrative then returns to the inquiry and the last time Brierly spoke to Marlow. At this time, Marlow notes with surprise that Brierly is in a state of irritation about the inquiry and tells Marlow he feels like a fool. He wonders why they are tormenting Jim and he replies he does not know, 'unless it be that he lets you'. Brierly also wonders why Jim cannot see that he is 'done for' now the skipper has fled and tells Marlow he would have done so too. He says he does not care for Jim's sort of courage and will put up 200 rupees if Marlow will give another 100 for Jim to run away. Brierly says that his 'people' know Jim's and will give Marlow 200 rupees now to pass on to Jim. Marlow does not do as he is asked and attends the inquiry the next day instead. On the way out, a man walking with Marlow trips over a dog and calls it a 'wretched cur'. Jim spins around and bars Marlow's way. Jim accuses him of saying something to him, which Marlow denies, and then asks why he has been staring at him; he also asks who is a 'cur' now. Marlow realizes the mistake and points to the dog and Jim flushes with embarrassment. The chapter ends with Marlow inviting Jim to dinner. . . At dinner, in Chapter Seven, Jim relaxes a little and Marlow sees him as being of 'the right sort' and 'one of us'. He appears to be self-controlled until Marlow asks him about the inquiry and Jim clutches his hand and tells him it is hell. He adds that he cannot go home now and face his father as he will have read about the incident by now. Jim is not sure what to do after the inquiry as his certificate has been taken and he also has no money. . . The discussion turns to the events on the Patna and Jim asks Marlow if he knows what he would have done. Jim says it was all about him not being ready and looks ahead as he speaks. He tells Marlow that afterwards, he and the other crew had been picked up by a steamer and had been 'looked askance upon' from that day. Marlow takes pity on him, and then Jim suddenly blazes out, 'what a chance missed'. It is implied that he has missed the chance of being heroic. . . Jim explains that he saw the bulkhead bulge  and noticed rust as large as the palm of his hand come off it. He also explains that there were many more times the amount of people on board than there were lifeboats. He confesses his legs wobbled as he stood on the foredeck looking at the sleeping crowd. He believed the ship would go down at any moment and that the rusted ship plates would give way like a dam. Jim saw clearly that he could do nothing about it and this seemed to take the life out of his limbs. He kept thinking of the 800 people and seven boats. He also swears to Marlow that he was not frightened of death. Marlow thinks he was not afraid of death perhaps, but he was afraid of the emergency: Jim's 'confounded imagination' had evoked all the 'horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams ....' . . In Chapter Eight, Marlow describes how he thinks Jim stood 'stock-still' for a couple of minutes. He decided to cut the boats so they would not go down with the ship and tells Marlow he knew his duty. Whilst Jim ran to do this, a beggar stopped him to ask for water. He thought the man would begin shouting and start a panic, and so he hit him with his lamp. He half-throttled him before he realized he wanted water for his sick child. There was confusion in the dark and Jim questioned the skipper if he was going to do anything. He replied, yes, 'clear out'. Jim thought of shoring up the bulkhead, but asks Marlow where would he have got the men to do it and would he  have had the courage to swing the maul to strike the first blow. Jim also says he could not save those people singlehandedly. . . Marlow tells his listeners of his mixed emotions and that Jim wanted him to 'comprehend the Inconceivable'. Jim has told him how he has been preparing himself since a child, 'for all the difficulties that can beset one on land and water'. Marlow feels that everything betrayed Jim and he had been tricked into 'that sort of high-minded resignation' which prevented him from doing anything. The other three men saw clearly that they had to release a boat and sweated and struggled to do so. Two Malay men continued to hold on to the wheel. We are told that at the inquiry Brierly asked one of them what he thought about it and he said he thought nothing. On the ship, Jim continued to stand still and one of the engineers asked him to help release the boat. Jim hit him and the engineer called him a coward for not wanting to save his own life. .
Seven and Eight . The events on the Patna are revealed only gradually to the readers in these chapters, but it is evident that Jim continues to torment himself for his inadequacy long after the event. He is the only witness of the four main crewmen who is willing or able to stand and even gains the sympathy of Brierly . He demonstrates a loyalty to the truth and it is as though he wants the chance to explain his actions to clear himself of feelings of guilt. . . The fate of the ship and the people on it has still not been made explicit and the readers are drawn into the narrative web as Marlow deviates from the inquiry, to Brierly's suicide and then on to Jim's 'confession' at dinner. Hints are made to various outcomes - as it is clear the Malay men working on the ship survived to attend the inquiry  - and this has the effect of tantalizing the reader to guess about the devastation that may have occurred.