'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.'

'"I was saying to myself, 'Sink--curse you! Sink!'" These were the
words with which he began again. He wanted it over. He was severely left
alone, and he formulated in his head this address to the ship in a
tone of imprecation, while at the same time he enjoyed the privilege of
witnessing scenes--as far as I can judge--of low comedy. They were still
at that bolt. The skipper was ordering, "Get under and try to lift"; and
the others naturally shirked. You understand that to be squeezed flat
under the keel of a boat wasn't a desirable position to be caught in if
the ship went down suddenly. "Why don't you--you the strongest?" whined
the little engineer. "Gott-for-dam! I am too thick," spluttered the
skipper in despair. It was funny enough to make angels weep. They stood
idle for a moment, and suddenly the chief engineer rushed again at Jim.

'"Come and help, man! Are you mad to throw your only chance away? Come
and help, man! Man! Look there--look!"

'And at last Jim looked astern where the other pointed with maniacal
insistence. He saw a silent black squall which had eaten up already
one-third of the sky. You know how these squalls come up there about
that time of the year. First you see a darkening of the horizon--no
more; then a cloud rises opaque like a wall. A straight edge of vapour
lined with sickly whitish gleams flies up from the southwest, swallowing
the stars in whole constellations; its shadow flies over the waters, and
confounds sea and sky into one abyss of obscurity. And all is still.
No thunder, no wind, no sound; not a flicker of lightning. Then in
the tenebrous immensity a livid arch appears; a swell or two like
undulations of the very darkness run past, and suddenly, wind and rain
strike together with a peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through
something solid. Such a cloud had come up while they weren't looking.
They had just noticed it, and were perfectly justified in surmising
that if in absolute stillness there was some chance for the ship to keep
afloat a few minutes longer, the least disturbance of the sea would make
an end of her instantly. Her first nod to the swell that precedes the
burst of such a squall would be also her last, would become a plunge,
would, so to speak, be prolonged into a long dive, down, down to the
bottom. Hence these new capers of their fright, these new antics in
which they displayed their extreme aversion to die.

'"It was black, black," pursued Jim with moody steadiness. "It had
sneaked upon us from behind. The infernal thing! I suppose there had
been at the back of my head some hope yet. I don't know. But that was
all over anyhow. It maddened me to see myself caught like this. I was
angry, as though I had been trapped. I _was_ trapped! The night was hot,
too, I remember. Not a breath of air."

'He remembered so well that, gasping in the chair, he seemed to sweat
and choke before my eyes. No doubt it maddened him; it knocked him over
afresh--in a manner of speaking--but it made him also remember that
important purpose which had sent him rushing on that bridge only to slip
clean out of his mind. He had intended to cut the lifeboats clear of the
ship. He whipped out his knife and went to work slashing as though he
had seen nothing, had heard nothing, had known of no one on board. They
thought him hopelessly wrong-headed and crazy, but dared not protest
noisily against this useless loss of time. When he had done he returned
to the very same spot from which he had started. The chief was there,
ready with a clutch at him to whisper close to his head, scathingly, as
though he wanted to bite his ear--

'"You silly fool! do you think you'll get the ghost of a show when all
that lot of brutes is in the water? Why, they will batter your head for
you from these boats."

'He wrung his hands, ignored, at Jim's elbow. The skipper kept up a
nervous shuffle in one place and mumbled, "Hammer! hammer! Mein Gott!
Get a hammer."

'The little engineer whimpered like a child, but, broken arm and all,
he turned out the least craven of the lot as it seems, and, actually,
mustered enough pluck to run an errand to the engine-room. No trifle, it
must be owned in fairness to him. Jim told me he darted desperate looks
like a cornered man, gave one low wail, and dashed off. He was back
instantly clambering, hammer in hand, and without a pause flung himself
at the bolt. The others gave up Jim at once and ran off to assist.
He heard the tap, tap of the hammer, the sound of the released chock
falling over. The boat was clear. Only then he turned to look--only
then. But he kept his distance--he kept his distance. He wanted me to
know he had kept his distance; that there was nothing in common between
him and these men--who had the hammer. Nothing whatever. It is more than
probable he thought himself cut off from them by a space that could
not be traversed, by an obstacle that could not be overcome, by a chasm
without bottom. He was as far as he could get from them--the whole
breadth of the ship.

'His feet were glued to that remote spot and his eyes to their
indistinct group bowed together and swaying strangely in the common
torment of fear. A hand-lamp lashed to a stanchion above a little table
rigged up on the bridge--the Patna had no chart-room amidships--threw a
light on their labouring shoulders, on their arched and bobbing backs.
They pushed at the bow of the boat; they pushed out into the night; they
pushed, and would no more look back at him. They had given him up as if
indeed he had been too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to
be worth an appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to
look back upon his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention.
The boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for
an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their
self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate
exertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit for knockabout clowns
in a farce. They pushed with their hands, with their heads, they pushed
for dear life with all the weight of their bodies, they pushed with all
the might of their souls--only no sooner had they succeeded in canting
the stem clear of the davit than they would leave off like one man and
start a wild scramble into her. As a natural consequence the boat would
swing in abruptly, driving them back, helpless and jostling against each
other. They would stand nonplussed for a while, exchanging in fierce
whispers all the infamous names they could call to mind, and go at it
again. Three times this occurred. He described it to me with morose
thoughtfulness. He hadn't lost a single movement of that comic business.
"I loathed them. I hated them. I had to look at all that," he said
without emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely watchful glance. "Was ever
there any one so shamefully tried?"

'He took his head in his hands for a moment, like a man driven to
distraction by some unspeakable outrage. These were things he could not
explain to the court--and not even to me; but I would have been little
fitted for the reception of his confidences had I not been able at times
to understand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon
his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and
vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal--a
degradation of funny grimaces in the approach of death or dishonour.

'He related facts which I have not forgotten, but at this distance of
time I couldn't recall his very words: I only remember that he managed
wonderfully to convey the brooding rancour of his mind into the bare
recital of events. Twice, he told me, he shut his eyes in the certitude
that the end was upon him already, and twice he had to open them again.
Each time he noted the darkening of the great stillness. The shadow of
the silent cloud had fallen upon the ship from the zenith, and seemed
to have extinguished every sound of her teeming life. He could no longer
hear the voices under the awnings. He told me that each time he closed
his eyes a flash of thought showed him that crowd of bodies, laid out
for death, as plain as daylight. When he opened them, it was to see the
dim struggle of four men fighting like mad with a stubborn boat. "They
would fall back before it time after time, stand swearing at each other,
and suddenly make another rush in a bunch. . . . Enough to make you
die laughing," he commented with downcast eyes; then raising them for a
moment to my face with a dismal smile, "I ought to have a merry life
of it, by God! for I shall see that funny sight a good many times yet
before I die." His eyes fell again. "See and hear. . . . See and hear,"
he repeated twice, at long intervals, filled by vacant staring.

'He roused himself.

'"I made up my mind to keep my eyes shut," he said, "and I couldn't. I
couldn't, and I don't care who knows it. Let them go through that kind
of thing before they talk. Just let them--and do better--that's all. The
second time my eyelids flew open and my mouth too. I had felt the
ship move. She just dipped her bows--and lifted them gently--and slow!
everlastingly slow; and ever so little. She hadn't done that much for
days. The cloud had raced ahead, and this first swell seemed to travel
upon a sea of lead. There was no life in that stir. It managed, though,
to knock over something in my head. What would you have done? You are
sure of yourself--aren't you? What would you do if you felt now--this
minute--the house here move, just move a little under your chair. Leap!
By heavens! you would take one spring from where you sit and land in
that clump of bushes yonder."

'He flung his arm out at the night beyond the stone balustrade. I held
my peace. He looked at me very steadily, very severe. There could be no
mistake: I was being bullied now, and it behoved me to make no sign lest
by a gesture or a word I should be drawn into a fatal admission about
myself which would have had some bearing on the case. I was not disposed
to take any risk of that sort. Don't forget I had him before me, and
really he was too much like one of us not to be dangerous. But if you
want to know I don't mind telling you that I did, with a rapid glance,
estimate the distance to the mass of denser blackness in the middle of
the grass-plot before the verandah. He exaggerated. I would have landed
short by several feet--and that's the only thing of which I am fairly
certain.

'The last moment had come, as he thought, and he did not move. His feet
remained glued to the planks if his thoughts were knocking about loose
in his head. It was at this moment too that he saw one of the men around
the boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the air with raised arms,
totter and collapse. He didn't exactly fall, he only slid gently into a
sitting posture, all hunched up, and with his shoulders propped against
the side of the engine-room skylight. "That was the donkey-man.
A haggard, white-faced chap with a ragged moustache. Acted third
engineer," he explained.

'"Dead," I said. We had heard something of that in court.

'"So they say," he pronounced with sombre indifference. "Of course I
never knew. Weak heart. The man had been complaining of being out of
sorts for some time before. Excitement. Over-exertion. Devil only knows.
Ha! ha! ha! It was easy to see he did not want to die either. Droll,
isn't it? May I be shot if he hadn't been fooled into killing himself!
Fooled--neither more nor less. Fooled into it, by heavens! just as
I . . . Ah! If he had only kept still; if he had only told them to go to
the devil when they came to rush him out of his bunk because the ship
was sinking! If he had only stood by with his hands in his pockets and
called them names!"

'He got up, shook his fist, glared at me, and sat down.

'"A chance missed, eh?" I murmured.

'"Why don't you laugh?" he said. "A joke hatched in hell. Weak
heart! . . . I wish sometimes mine had been."

'This irritated me. "Do you?" I exclaimed with deep-rooted irony. "Yes!
Can't _you_ understand?" he cried. "I don't know what more you could
wish for," I said angrily. He gave me an utterly uncomprehending glance.
This shaft had also gone wide of the mark, and he was not the man to
bother about stray arrows. Upon my word, he was too unsuspecting; he was
not fair game. I was glad that my missile had been thrown away,--that he
had not even heard the twang of the bow.

'Of course he could not know at the time the man was dead. The next
minute--his last on board--was crowded with a tumult of events and
sensations which beat about him like the sea upon a rock. I use the
simile advisedly, because from his relation I am forced to believe
he had preserved through it all a strange illusion of passiveness, as
though he had not acted but had suffered himself to be handled by the
infernal powers who had selected him for the victim of their practical
joke. The first thing that came to him was the grinding surge of the
heavy davits swinging out at last--a jar which seemed to enter his body
from the deck through the soles of his feet, and travel up his spine to
the crown of his head. Then, the squall being very near now, another
and a heavier swell lifted the passive hull in a threatening heave that
checked his breath, while his brain and his heart together were pierced
as with daggers by panic-stricken screams. "Let go! For God's sake,
let go! Let go! She's going." Following upon that the boat-falls ripped
through the blocks, and a lot of men began to talk in startled tones
under the awnings. "When these beggars did break out, their yelps were
enough to wake the dead," he said. Next, after the splashing shock
of the boat literally dropped in the water, came the hollow noises of
stamping and tumbling in her, mingled with confused shouts: "Unhook!
Unhook! Shove! Unhook! Shove for your life! Here's the squall down on
us. . . ." He heard, high above his head, the faint muttering of the
wind; he heard below his feet a cry of pain. A lost voice alongside
started cursing a swivel hook. The ship began to buzz fore and aft
like a disturbed hive, and, as quietly as he was telling me of all
this--because just then he was very quiet in attitude, in face, in
voice--he went on to say without the slightest warning as it were, "I
stumbled over his legs."

'This was the first I heard of his having moved at all. I could not
restrain a grunt of surprise. Something had started him off at last, but
of the exact moment, of the cause that tore him out of his immobility,
he knew no more than the uprooted tree knows of the wind that laid it
low. All this had come to him: the sounds, the sights, the legs of the
dead man--by Jove! The infernal joke was being crammed devilishly down
his throat, but--look you--he was not going to admit of any sort of
swallowing motion in his gullet. It's extraordinary how he could cast
upon you the spirit of his illusion. I listened as if to a tale of black
magic at work upon a corpse.

'"He went over sideways, very gently, and this is the last thing I
remember seeing on board," he continued. "I did not care what he did.
It looked as though he were picking himself up: I thought he was picking
himself up, of course: I expected him to bolt past me over the rail and
drop into the boat after the others. I could hear them knocking about
down there, and a voice as if crying up a shaft called out 'George!'
Then three voices together raised a yell. They came to me separately:
one bleated, another screamed, one howled. Ough!"

'He shivered a little, and I beheld him rise slowly as if a steady
hand from above had been pulling him out of the chair by his hair. Up,
slowly--to his full height, and when his knees had locked stiff the hand
let him go, and he swayed a little on his feet. There was a suggestion
of awful stillness in his face, in his movements, in his very voice when
he said "They shouted"--and involuntarily I pricked up my ears for
the ghost of that shout that would be heard directly through the false
effect of silence. "There were eight hundred people in that ship," he
said, impaling me to the back of my seat with an awful blank stare.
"Eight hundred living people, and they were yelling after the one dead
man to come down and be saved. 'Jump, George! Jump! Oh, jump!' I stood
by with my hand on the davit. I was very quiet. It had come over pitch
dark. You could see neither sky nor sea. I heard the boat alongside go
bump, bump, and not another sound down there for a while, but the ship
under me was full of talking noises. Suddenly the skipper howled 'Mein
Gott! The squall! The squall! Shove off!' With the first hiss of rain,
and the first gust of wind, they screamed, 'Jump, George! We'll catch
you! Jump!' The ship began a slow plunge; the rain swept over her like
a broken sea; my cap flew off my head; my breath was driven back into
my throat. I heard as if I had been on the top of a tower another wild
screech, 'Geo-o-o-orge! Oh, jump!' She was going down, down, head first
under me. . . ."

'He raised his hand deliberately to his face, and made picking motions
with his fingers as though he had been bothered with cobwebs, and
afterwards he looked into the open palm for quite half a second before
he blurted out--

'"I had jumped . . ." He checked himself, averted his gaze. . . . "It
seems," he added.

'His clear blue eyes turned to me with a piteous stare, and looking at
him standing before me, dumfounded and hurt, I was oppressed by a sad
sense of resigned wisdom, mingled with the amused and profound pity of
an old man helpless before a childish disaster.

'"Looks like it," I muttered.

'"I knew nothing about it till I looked up," he explained hastily. And
that's possible, too. You had to listen to him as you would to a small
boy in trouble. He didn't know. It had happened somehow. It would never
happen again. He had landed partly on somebody and fallen across a
thwart. He felt as though all his ribs on his left side must be broken;
then he rolled over, and saw vaguely the ship he had deserted uprising
above him, with the red side-light glowing large in the rain like a fire
on the brow of a hill seen through a mist. "She seemed higher than a
wall; she loomed like a cliff over the boat . . . I wished I could die,"
he cried. "There was no going back. It was as if I had jumped into a
well--into an everlasting deep hole. . . ."'

'He locked his fingers together and tore them apart. Nothing could be
more true: he had indeed jumped into an everlasting deep hole. He had
tumbled from a height he could never scale again. By that time the boat
had gone driving forward past the bows. It was too dark just then
for them to see each other, and, moreover, they were blinded and half
drowned with rain. He told me it was like being swept by a flood through
a cavern. They turned their backs to the squall; the skipper, it seems,
got an oar over the stern to keep the boat before it, and for two or
three minutes the end of the world had come through a deluge in a pitchy
blackness. The sea hissed "like twenty thousand kettles." That's his
simile, not mine. I fancy there was not much wind after the first gust;
and he himself had admitted at the inquiry that the sea never got up
that night to any extent. He crouched down in the bows and stole a
furtive glance back. He saw just one yellow gleam of the mast-head light
high up and blurred like a last star ready to dissolve. "It terrified me
to see it still there," he said. That's what he said. What terrified him
was the thought that the drowning was not over yet. No doubt he wanted
to be done with that abomination as quickly as possible. Nobody in the
boat made a sound. In the dark she seemed to fly, but of course she
could not have had much way. Then the shower swept ahead, and the great,
distracting, hissing noise followed the rain into distance and died out.
There was nothing to be heard then but the slight wash about the boat's
sides. Somebody's teeth were chattering violently. A hand touched his
back. A faint voice said, "You there?" Another cried out shakily,
"She's gone!" and they all stood up together to look astern. They saw no
lights. All was black. A thin cold drizzle was driving into their faces.
The boat lurched slightly. The teeth chattered faster, stopped, and
began again twice before the man could master his shiver sufficiently to
say, "Ju-ju-st in ti-ti-me. . . . Brrrr." He recognised the voice of the
chief engineer saying surlily, "I saw her go down. I happened to turn my
head." The wind had dropped almost completely.

'They watched in the dark with their heads half turned to windward as if
expecting to hear cries. At first he was thankful the night had covered
up the scene before his eyes, and then to know of it and yet to have
seen and heard nothing appeared somehow the culminating point of an
awful misfortune. "Strange, isn't it?" he murmured, interrupting himself
in his disjointed narrative.

'It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had an unconscious
conviction that the reality could not be half as bad, not half as
anguishing, appalling, and vengeful as the created terror of his
imagination. I believe that, in this first moment, his heart was wrung
with all the suffering, that his soul knew the accumulated savour of all
the fear, all the horror, all the despair of eight hundred human beings
pounced upon in the night by a sudden and violent death, else why should
he have said, "It seemed to me that I must jump out of that accursed
boat and swim back to see--half a mile--more--any distance--to the very
spot . . ."? Why this impulse? Do you see the significance? Why back to
the very spot? Why not drown alongside--if he meant drowning? Why back
to the very spot, to see--as if his imagination had to be soothed by the
assurance that all was over before death could bring relief? I defy any
one of you to offer another explanation. It was one of those bizarre and
exciting glimpses through the fog. It was an extraordinary disclosure.
He let it out as the most natural thing one could say. He fought down
that impulse and then he became conscious of the silence. He mentioned
this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite
immensity still as death around these saved, palpitating lives.
"You might have heard a pin drop in the boat," he said with a queer
contraction of his lips, like a man trying to master his sensibilities
while relating some extremely moving fact. A silence! God alone, who had
willed him as he was, knows what he made of it in his heart. "I didn't
think any spot on earth could be so still," he said. "You couldn't
distinguish the sea from the sky; there was nothing to see and nothing
to hear. Not a glimmer, not a shape, not a sound. You could have
believed that every bit of dry land had gone to the bottom; that every
man on earth but I and these beggars in the boat had got drowned." He
leaned over the table with his knuckles propped amongst coffee-cups,
liqueur-glasses, cigar-ends. "I seemed to believe it. Everything was
gone and--all was over . . ." he fetched a deep sigh . . . "with me."'

Marlow sat up abruptly and flung away his cheroot with force. It made
a darting red trail like a toy rocket fired through the drapery of
creepers. Nobody stirred.

'Hey, what do you think of it?' he cried with sudden animation. 'Wasn't
he true to himself, wasn't he? His saved life was over for want of
ground under his feet, for want of sights for his eyes, for want of
voices in his ears. Annihilation--hey! And all the time it was only a
clouded sky, a sea that did not break, the air that did not stir. Only a
night; only a silence.

'It lasted for a while, and then they were suddenly and unanimously
moved to make a noise over their escape. "I knew from the first she
would go." "Not a minute too soon." "A narrow squeak, b'gosh!" He said
nothing, but the breeze that had dropped came back, a gentle draught
freshened steadily, and the sea joined its murmuring voice to this
talkative reaction succeeding the dumb moments of awe. She was gone! She
was gone! Not a doubt of it. Nobody could have helped. They repeated the
same words over and over again as though they couldn't stop themselves.
Never doubted she would go. The lights were gone. No mistake. The
lights were gone. Couldn't expect anything else. She had to go. . . . He
noticed that they talked as though they had left behind them nothing but
an empty ship. They concluded she would not have been long when she once
started. It seemed to cause them some sort of satisfaction. They assured
each other that she couldn't have been long about it--"Just shot down
like a flat-iron." The chief engineer declared that the mast-head light
at the moment of sinking seemed to drop "like a lighted match you throw
down." At this the second laughed hysterically. "I am g-g-glad, I am
gla-a-a-d." His teeth went on "like an electric rattle," said Jim,
"and all at once he began to cry. He wept and blubbered like a child,
catching his breath and sobbing 'Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!' He would
be quiet for a while and start suddenly, 'Oh, my poor arm! oh, my poor
a-a-a-arm!' I felt I could knock him down. Some of them sat in the
stern-sheets. I could just make out their shapes. Voices came to me,
mumble, mumble, grunt, grunt. All this seemed very hard to bear. I was
cold too. And I could do nothing. I thought that if I moved I would have
to go over the side and . . ."

'His hand groped stealthily, came in contact with a liqueur-glass, and
was withdrawn suddenly as if it had touched a red-hot coal. I pushed the
bottle slightly. "Won't you have some more?" I asked. He looked at me
angrily. "Don't you think I can tell you what there is to tell without
screwing myself up?" he asked. The squad of globe-trotters had gone to
bed. We were alone but for a vague white form erect in the shadow, that,
being looked at, cringed forward, hesitated, backed away silently. It
was getting late, but I did not hurry my guest.

'In the midst of his forlorn state he heard his companions begin to
abuse some one. "What kept you from jumping, you lunatic?" said a
scolding voice. The chief engineer left the stern-sheets, and could
be heard clambering forward as if with hostile intentions against "the
greatest idiot that ever was." The skipper shouted with rasping effort
offensive epithets from where he sat at the oar. He lifted his head
at that uproar, and heard the name "George," while a hand in the dark
struck him on the breast. "What have you got to say for yourself, you
fool?" queried somebody, with a sort of virtuous fury. "They were after
me," he said. "They were abusing me--abusing me . . . by the name of
George."

'He paused to stare, tried to smile, turned his eyes away and went on.
"That little second puts his head right under my nose, 'Why, it's that
blasted mate!' 'What!' howls the skipper from the other end of the boat.
'No!' shrieks the chief. And he too stooped to look at my face."

'The wind had left the boat suddenly. The rain began to fall again, and
the soft, uninterrupted, a little mysterious sound with which the sea
receives a shower arose on all sides in the night. "They were too taken
aback to say anything more at first," he narrated steadily, "and what
could I have to say to them?" He faltered for a moment, and made an
effort to go on. "They called me horrible names." His voice, sinking to
a whisper, now and then would leap up suddenly, hardened by the passion
of scorn, as though he had been talking of secret abominations. "Never
mind what they called me," he said grimly. "I could hear hate in their
voices. A good thing too. They could not forgive me for being in that
boat. They hated it. It made them mad. . . ." He laughed short. . . .
"But it kept me from--Look! I was sitting with my arms crossed, on the
gunwale! . . ." He perched himself smartly on the edge of the table and
crossed his arms. . . . "Like this--see? One little tilt backwards and
I would have been gone--after the others. One little tilt--the least
bit--the least bit." He frowned, and tapping his forehead with the tip
of his middle finger, "It was there all the time," he said impressively.
"All the time--that notion. And the rain--cold, thick, cold as melted
snow--colder--on my thin cotton clothes--I'll never be so cold again in
my life, I know. And the sky was black too--all black. Not a star, not
a light anywhere. Nothing outside that confounded boat and those two
yapping before me like a couple of mean mongrels at a tree'd thief. Yap!
yap! 'What you doing here? You're a fine sort! Too much of a bloomin'
gentleman to put your hand to it. Come out of your trance, did you? To
sneak in? Did you?' Yap! yap! 'You ain't fit to live!' Yap! yap! Two of
them together trying to out-bark each other. The other would bay from
the stern through the rain--couldn't see him--couldn't make it out--some
of his filthy jargon. Yap! yap! Bow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Yap! yap! It was sweet
to hear them; it kept me alive, I tell you. It saved my life. At it they
went, as if trying to drive me overboard with the noise! . . . 'I wonder
you had pluck enough to jump. You ain't wanted here. If I had known who
it was, I would have tipped you over--you skunk! What have you done with
the other? Where did you get the pluck to jump--you coward? What's to
prevent us three from firing you overboard?' . . . They were out of
breath; the shower passed away upon the sea. Then nothing. There was
nothing round the boat, not even a sound. Wanted to see me overboard,
did they? Upon my soul! I think they would have had their wish if they
had only kept quiet. Fire me overboard! Would they? 'Try,' I said. 'I
would for twopence.' 'Too good for you,' they screeched together. It was
so dark that it was only when one or the other of them moved that I was
quite sure of seeing him. By heavens! I only wish they had tried."

'I couldn't help exclaiming, "What an extraordinary affair!"

'"Not bad--eh?" he said, as if in some sort astounded. "They pretended
to think I had done away with that donkey-man for some reason or other.
Why should I? And how the devil was I to know? Didn't I get somehow
into that boat? into that boat--I . . ." The muscles round his lips
contracted into an unconscious grimace that tore through the mask of his
usual expression--something violent, short-lived and illuminating like
a twist of lightning that admits the eye for an instant into the secret
convolutions of a cloud. "I did. I was plainly there with them--wasn't
I? Isn't it awful a man should be driven to do a thing like that--and be
responsible? What did I know about their George they were howling after?
I remembered I had seen him curled up on the deck. 'Murdering coward!'
the chief kept on calling me. He didn't seem able to remember any other
two words. I didn't care, only his noise began to worry me. 'Shut up,' I
said. At that he collected himself for a confounded screech. 'You killed
him! You killed him!' 'No,' I shouted, 'but I will kill you directly.' I
jumped up, and he fell backwards over a thwart with an awful loud thump.
I don't know why. Too dark. Tried to step back I suppose. I stood still
facing aft, and the wretched little second began to whine, 'You
ain't going to hit a chap with a broken arm--and you call yourself a
gentleman, too.' I heard a heavy tramp--one--two--and wheezy grunting.
The other beast was coming at me, clattering his oar over the stern. I
saw him moving, big, big--as you see a man in a mist, in a dream. 'Come
on,' I cried. I would have tumbled him over like a bale of shakings. He
stopped, muttered to himself, and went back. Perhaps he had heard the
wind. I didn't. It was the last heavy gust we had. He went back to his
oar. I was sorry. I would have tried to--to . . ."

'He opened and closed his curved fingers, and his hands had an eager and
cruel flutter. "Steady, steady," I murmured.

'"Eh? What? I am not excited," he remonstrated, awfully hurt, and with
a convulsive jerk of his elbow knocked over the cognac bottle. I started
forward, scraping my chair. He bounced off the table as if a mine had
been exploded behind his back, and half turned before he alighted,
crouching on his feet to show me a startled pair of eyes and a face
white about the nostrils. A look of intense annoyance succeeded.
"Awfully sorry. How clumsy of me!" he mumbled, very vexed, while the
pungent odour of spilt alcohol enveloped us suddenly with an atmosphere
of a low drinking-bout in the cool, pure darkness of the night. The
lights had been put out in the dining-hall; our candle glimmered
solitary in the long gallery, and the columns had turned black from
pediment to capital. On the vivid stars the high corner of the Harbour
Office stood out distinct across the Esplanade, as though the sombre
pile had glided nearer to see and hear.

'He assumed an air of indifference.

'"I dare say I am less calm now than I was then. I was ready for
anything. These were trifles. . . ."

'"You had a lively time of it in that boat," I remarked

'"I was ready," he repeated. "After the ship's lights had gone, anything
might have happened in that boat--anything in the world--and the world
no wiser. I felt this, and I was pleased. It was just dark enough too.
We were like men walled up quick in a roomy grave. No concern with
anything on earth. Nobody to pass an opinion. Nothing mattered." For the
third time during this conversation he laughed harshly, but there was
no one about to suspect him of being only drunk. "No fear, no law, no
sounds, no eyes--not even our own, till--till sunrise at least."

'I was struck by the suggestive truth of his words. There is something
peculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea. Over the lives borne from
under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.
When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world
that made you, restrained you, took care of you. It is as if the souls
of men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set
free for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination. Of course, as
with belief, thought, love, hate, conviction, or even the visual aspect
of material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are men, and
in this one there was something abject which made the isolation more
complete--there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off
more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had
never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were
exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on
them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal
revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust
a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the
bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was part of
the burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea that
they did not come to blows. It was all threats, all a terribly effective
feint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the tremendous disdain
of the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph,
are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of men. I asked, after
waiting for a while, "Well, what happened?" A futile question. I knew
too much already to hope for the grace of a single uplifting touch, for
the favour of hinted madness, of shadowed horror. "Nothing," he said. "I
meant business, but they meant noise only. Nothing happened."

'And the rising sun found him just as he had jumped up first in the bows
of the boat. What a persistence of readiness! He had been holding the
tiller in his hand, too, all the night. They had dropped the rudder
overboard while attempting to ship it, and I suppose the tiller got
kicked forward somehow while they were rushing up and down that boat
trying to do all sorts of things at once so as to get clear of the
side. It was a long heavy piece of hard wood, and apparently he had been
clutching it for six hours or so. If you don't call that being ready!
Can you imagine him, silent and on his feet half the night, his face to
the gusts of rain, staring at sombre forms watchful of vague movements,
straining his ears to catch rare low murmurs in the stern-sheets!
Firmness of courage or effort of fear? What do you think? And the
endurance is undeniable too. Six hours more or less on the defensive;
six hours of alert immobility while the boat drove slowly or floated
arrested, according to the caprice of the wind; while the sea, calmed,
slept at last; while the clouds passed above his head; while the sky
from an immensity lustreless and black, diminished to a sombre and
lustrous vault, scintillated with a greater brilliance, faded to the
east, paled at the zenith; while the dark shapes blotting the low
stars astern got outlines, relief became shoulders, heads, faces,
features,--confronted him with dreary stares, had dishevelled hair, torn
clothes, blinked red eyelids at the white dawn. "They looked as though
they had been knocking about drunk in gutters for a week," he described
graphically; and then he muttered something about the sunrise being of a
kind that foretells a calm day. You know that sailor habit of referring
to the weather in every connection. And on my side his few mumbled words
were enough to make me see the lower limb of the sun clearing the
line of the horizon, the tremble of a vast ripple running over all the
visible expanse of the sea, as if the waters had shuddered, giving birth
to the globe of light, while the last puff of the breeze would stir the
air in a sigh of relief.

'"They sat in the stern shoulder to shoulder, with the skipper in the
middle, like three dirty owls, and stared at me," I heard him say
with an intention of hate that distilled a corrosive virtue into the
commonplace words like a drop of powerful poison falling into a glass
of water; but my thoughts dwelt upon that sunrise. I could imagine
under the pellucid emptiness of the sky these four men imprisoned in the
solitude of the sea, the lonely sun, regardless of the speck of life,
ascending the clear curve of the heaven as if to gaze ardently from a
greater height at his own splendour reflected in the still ocean. "They
called out to me from aft," said Jim, "as though we had been chums
together. I heard them. They were begging me to be sensible and drop
that 'blooming piece of wood.' Why _would_ I carry on so? They hadn't
done me any harm--had they? There had been no harm. . . . No harm!"

'His face crimsoned as though he could not get rid of the air in his
lungs.

'"No harm!" he burst out. "I leave it to you. You can understand. Can't
you? You see it--don't you? No harm! Good God! What more could they have
done? Oh yes, I know very well--I jumped. Certainly. I jumped! I told
you I jumped; but I tell you they were too much for any man. It was
their doing as plainly as if they had reached up with a boat-hook and
pulled me over. Can't you see it? You must see it. Come. Speak--straight
out."

'His uneasy eyes fastened upon mine, questioned, begged, challenged,
entreated. For the life of me I couldn't help murmuring, "You've been
tried." "More than is fair," he caught up swiftly. "I wasn't given half
a chance--with a gang like that. And now they were friendly--oh, so
damnably friendly! Chums, shipmates. All in the same boat. Make the best
of it. They hadn't meant anything. They didn't care a hang for George.
George had gone back to his berth for something at the last moment and
got caught. The man was a manifest fool. Very sad, of course. . . .
Their eyes looked at me; their lips moved; they wagged their heads at
the other end of the boat--three of them; they beckoned--to me. Why
not? Hadn't I jumped? I said nothing. There are no words for the sort of
things I wanted to say. If I had opened my lips just then I would have
simply howled like an animal. I was asking myself when I would wake up.
They urged me aloud to come aft and hear quietly what the skipper had to
say. We were sure to be picked up before the evening--right in the track
of all the Canal traffic; there was smoke to the north-west now.

'"It gave me an awful shock to see this faint, faint blur, this low
trail of brown mist through which you could see the boundary of sea and
sky. I called out to them that I could hear very well where I was. The
skipper started swearing, as hoarse as a crow. He wasn't going to talk
at the top of his voice for _my_ accommodation. 'Are you afraid they
will hear you on shore?' I asked. He glared as if he would have liked to
claw me to pieces. The chief engineer advised him to humour me. He
said I wasn't right in my head yet. The other rose astern, like a thick
pillar of flesh--and talked--talked. . . ."

'Jim remained thoughtful. "Well?" I said. "What did I care what story
they agreed to make up?" he cried recklessly. "They could tell what they
jolly well liked. It was their business. I knew the story. Nothing
they could make people believe could alter it for me. I let him talk,
argue--talk, argue. He went on and on and on. Suddenly I felt my legs
give way under me. I was sick, tired--tired to death. I let fall the
tiller, turned my back on them, and sat down on the foremost thwart. I
had enough. They called to me to know if I understood--wasn't it true,
every word of it? It was true, by God! after their fashion. I did not
turn my head. I heard them palavering together. 'The silly ass won't say
anything.' 'Oh, he understands well enough.' 'Let him be; he will be all
right.' 'What can he do?' What could I do? Weren't we all in the same
boat? I tried to be deaf. The smoke had disappeared to the northward.
It was a dead calm. They had a drink from the water-breaker, and I drank
too. Afterwards they made a great business of spreading the boat-sail
over the gunwales. Would I keep a look-out? They crept under, out of my
sight, thank God! I felt weary, weary, done up, as if I hadn't had one
hour's sleep since the day I was born. I couldn't see the water for the
glitter of the sunshine. From time to time one of them would creep out,
stand up to take a look all round, and get under again. I could hear
spells of snoring below the sail. Some of them could sleep. One of them
at least. I couldn't! All was light, light, and the boat seemed to be
falling through it. Now and then I would feel quite surprised to find
myself sitting on a thwart. . . ."

'He began to walk with measured steps to and fro before my chair, one
hand in his trousers-pocket, his head bent thoughtfully, and his right
arm at long intervals raised for a gesture that seemed to put out of his
way an invisible intruder.

'"I suppose you think I was going mad," he began in a changed tone. "And
well you may, if you remember I had lost my cap. The sun crept all the
way from east to west over my bare head, but that day I could not come
to any harm, I suppose. The sun could not make me mad. . . ." His right
arm put aside the idea of madness. . . . "Neither could it kill
me. . . ." Again his arm repulsed a shadow. . . . "_That_ rested with
me."

'"Did it?" I said, inexpressibly amazed at this new turn, and I looked
at him with the same sort of feeling I might be fairly conceived to
experience had he, after spinning round on his heel, presented an
altogether new face.

'"I didn't get brain fever, I did not drop dead either," he went on. "I
didn't bother myself at all about the sun over my head. I was thinking
as coolly as any man that ever sat thinking in the shade. That greasy
beast of a skipper poked his big cropped head from under the canvas
and screwed his fishy eyes up at me. 'Donnerwetter! you will die,' he
growled, and drew in like a turtle. I had seen him. I had heard him. He
didn't interrupt me. I was thinking just then that I wouldn't."

'He tried to sound my thought with an attentive glance dropped on me
in passing. "Do you mean to say you had been deliberating with yourself
whether you would die?" I asked in as impenetrable a tone as I could
command. He nodded without stopping. "Yes, it had come to that as I sat
there alone," he said. He passed on a few steps to the imaginary end
of his beat, and when he flung round to come back both his hands were
thrust deep into his pockets. He stopped short in front of my chair and
looked down. "Don't you believe it?" he inquired with tense curiosity.
I was moved to make a solemn declaration of my readiness to believe
implicitly anything he thought fit to tell me.'

Jim now tells his story to Marlow, who, in turn, is telling his audience. The boats, according to Jim, were tied all along the bridge of the Patna. He knew his duty, and he was considering it when a passenger, one of the Muslims, said something about "water," again and again. Jim feared that the worst was becoming known, but he soon realized that the man was asking for water for his young, ill son. Jim gave him the water and immediately regretted his own lack, wanting a drink then himself. The skipper said to "Clear out," and Jim stood frozen, indecisive. He did not know what to do, but he insists that to do anything, "you must believe there is a chance." He held little faith in the iron of the ship. On the second day of the proceedings, one of the men with Jim began rattling off all the names of the dead skippers and ships he had known that had been lost--lost from life, but not quite from the memories of those gathered. That was a moment that struck Marlow. The story now returns to the dining hall, where Jim begins to laugh openly and with bitterness, drawing the attention of those around them. A silence falls, and Marlow chastises Jim, who responds that they will believe he is only drunk. Marlow continues: according to Jim, he intended to cut the lifeboats so they wouldn't sink with the steamer. The others managed to push a single boat into the water, ignoring Jim's "passive heroism" . He was frozen by visions of the bodies, laid out for death--he asks Marlow, "What would you have done?" . The other men jumped into the boat, and they were calling for George to jump also. Jim jumped instead, almost beyond his volition. After he tells Marlow that he jumped, he adds the perfunctory, "It seems"; he was aware that there would be no going back. He jumped into a well, "an everlasting deep hole" . From the sea in the little boat, the yellow gleam of the steamer's masthead looked like the last star, and then it went out. On the little boat, the men were thinking of the ship sinking with all of its passengers, without a sound--sparing them the voices of human struggle in the waters. The man named George, they realized, never made it. He apparently had turned back for something and had gone down with the ship. As the sun rose, Jim admits, he was deliberating with himself about whether or not he would die. The captain insisted that he would die; Jim countered that he would not.

As Jim explains what happened on the night of the incident, he finds in Marlow an attentive listener.  He explains, first, how the fear began to rise within him.  Marlow notes that Jim does not want a judge or an "official Inquiry" but rather "an ally, a helper, an accomplice" .  He is looking for sympathy, a sense that his reaction to the situation was a human reaction.  In this way, his "testimony" to Marlow in their conversation contrasts with the testimony he gave earlier on the witness stand.  This begins the more significant inquiry, the inquiry into Jim's soul, and this kind of inquiry, the novel implies, requires a kind of sympathy and understanding from the likes of "an ally" or "accomplice." The steamship becomes a symbol, its iron metal something that Marlow refers to as being as "tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then, worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life" .  In other words, the ship becomes representative of the human condition, struggling to survive, featuring both age and experience.  The crew, including Jim, misjudges the steamship's ability to stay afloat, and the trick of the eye in the perception that the light of the ship was going out, together with the conclusion that the ship has sunk, stands for a series of misjudgments about human nature in the novel.  When Jim leaps from the ship into the lifeboat, Marlow comments: "your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, taken care of you" .  In other words, the steamer, figuring "iron" as the metal of man's endurance, as well as the world that has "taken care of you," becomes a lesson regarding the strength latent in human beings.  The key point is that the ship did not actually fail Jim.  To the contrary, Jim failed his ship. For the remainder of the novel, Jim will attempt to rectify this misjudgment by maintaining a faith within himself that he is, in spite of it all, capable of doing something great with his life--capable of achieving his dreams. The situation on the Patna is unique, however, and Marlow recognizes that no man knows how he would respond in that situation.  Jim asks him pointedly, "What would you have done?" but what can one really expect of oneself in the hypothetical place of another?  Brierly, the narrative implies, had imagined the situation himself and had arrived at an answer that had deeply disappointed him.  In being absolutely honest with himself, he possibly had perceived a deep hypocrisy.  Marlow, in contrast, simply does not answer Jim's question. Another detail to keep in mind is that Jim's "jump" into the lifeboat is an action that is described as a kind of reflex.  The instinct to survive may be strong enough to counter a possible display of courage.  Does such an action then truly reflect a person's character?  The ambiguity here seems to be that to stay behind and risk sinking with the ship would be counter to the human impulse to struggle and survive.