06^ u8 CORNELL LIBRARY THE Joseph Whitmore Barry dramatic library . TKE GIFT ®F ; -^ _ *A T,-\yO FRIENDS' • " OF Cornell University 's "* 1534 OLIN LIBRARY - ClRCULATiON DATE DUE tHM"LI >^ m/j' Lord Jim; a romance. 3 1924 013 598 697 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013598697 LORD JIM ?R hoof CrSSLS OorTAsHT, 1819 ASD 1900^ By JOSEPH CONEAD. 3C0 MR. AND MRS. G. F. W. HOPE WITH GRATEFUL AFFECTION AFTER MANY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP LOED JIM CHAPTER I He was an inch, perhaps tws, under six feet, pewerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship- chandler's water-clerk he was very popular. A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun, but he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practically. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card — the business card of the ship- chandler — and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship ; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern ; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler 1 2 LOED JIM he has never seen before. There is a cool parlour, easy- chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of har- bour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months' passage out of a seaman's heart. The connection thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship remains in harbour, by the daily visits of the water-clerk. To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Later on the bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane occu- pation. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk who possesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of having been brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money and some humouring. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with black ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. To his employers the reasons he gave were obviously inadequate. They said " Confounded fool ! " as soon as his back was turned. This was their criticism on his exquisite sensibility. To the whitajnen in the waterside business and to the captains of ships he was just Jim — nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that it should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality ' but a fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to another — generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed LORD JIM 5 him casually but inevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Ean- goon, in Penang, in Batavia — and in each of these halting- places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say — Lord Jim. Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim's father possessed such certaiu knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. The little church on a hiU had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. It had stood there for centuries, but the trees around probably remem- bered the laying of the first stone. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. The living had belonged to the family for generations , but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, he was sent at once to a "training-ship for officers of the mercantile marine." He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross topgallant yards. He was generally liked. He had the third place in navigation and pulled stroke in the first cutter. ' Having a steady head with an excellent physique, 2 LORD JIM he was very smart aloft. His station was in the foretop, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the sur- rounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belch- ing out smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure. On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving peo- ple from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line ; or as a lonely casta- way, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men — always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book. " Something's up. Come along." He leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got through the hatchway he stood still — as if confounded. It was the dusk of a winter's day. The gale had fresh- ened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and LOED JIM 5 between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the turn, bling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing- stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. The next gust seemed to blow all this away. The air was full of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. He stood st ill. It seemed to him he was whirled around. He was jostled. " Man the cutter ! " Boys rushed past him. A coaster rimning*in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship's instructors had seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. " Collision. Just ahead of us. Mr. Symons saw it." A push made him stagger against the mizzenmast, and he caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. " Lower away ! " He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail, and rushed after her. He heard a splash. " Let go ; clear the falls ! " He leaned over. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter could be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind, that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship, A yelling voice in her reached him faintly : "Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save any- body ! Keep stroke ! " And suddenly she lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide. Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. "Too late, young- 6 LOED JIM ster." The captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the point of leaping oyerboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious defeat in his eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically. "Better luck next time. This will teach you to be smart." A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing back half full of water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contempt- ible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace. Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for the gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so — better than anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Never- theless he brooded apart that eveniag while the bow-man of the cutter — a boy with a face like a girl's and big grey eyes — was the hero of the lower deck. Eager ques- tioners crowded round him. He narrated: "I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went over- board, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs — the boat nearly swamped. Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don't mind a bit him being grumpy with us. He swore at me all the time he held my leg, but that was only his way of telling me to stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully excitable — isn't he? No — not the little fair chap — the other, the big one with a beard. When we pulled him in he groaned, 'Oh, my leg! oh, my leg!' and turned up his eyes. Fancy such a big chap fainting like a girl. Would any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook ? I wouldn't. It went into his leg so far." He showed the boat-hook, which he had carried below for the purpose, LOED JIM ? and produced a sensation. "No, silly! It was not his flesli that held him — his breeches did. Lots of blood, of course." Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own p re- tence of terro r. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Other- wise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement had served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge more than those who had done the work, ^'^en all men flinched, then;:^he,felt sure — he alone would know how to deal with the spurious men- ace of wind and seas. He knew what to think of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible. He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage. CHAPTER II After two years of training he went to sea, and enter- ing the regions so well known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure. He made many voy- ages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between ;j^ky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the Jpxactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily ijtask that gives bread — but whose only reward is in the imperfect love of the work. This reward eluded him. Yet jjme could not go back, because there is nothiiy; more 8 LOED JIM enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Besides, his prospects were good.^ He was gentle- manly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties ; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ^hjp, 7rithoT^eYer_ha£ing-.b£CT_tgsted by those events of the sea that show in the light of day tT^oT;TV;oTr^rn££~A'f "i mc),||^ t.TiP i'"Mief5''^r^s_iemp CTranrihe fibre of his stuff; that rev eal th ejpiaUt^f hisres^taSice and"'£Ee~secfefSuth ot "'^ "~* pretenceg, nn^ rnij^r^^ others --Mt als o to himsel f. Oiiiy once in all that time he had again the glimpse of the earnestness in the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention — that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest : which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he had seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated ; all that is priceless and necessary, — the sunshine, the memories, the future, — which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards/' " Man ! it's a paixfect meeracle to me how she lived througl] it!" spent many days stretched on his back, dazed battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom oi an abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end woulc \ LOED JIM 9 be, and in liis lucid moments overvalued Ms indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy ; and Imagi- nation, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstim- ulated, sinks to rest in the dulness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing but the disorder of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Then fine weather returned, and he thought no more about it. His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an Eastern port he had to go, to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he was left behind. There were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway ; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering .through the windows, always flung wide open, brought '"'uto the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of I he eartlh., the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. I liere.yere perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, lw|atciK of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over 10 LORD JIM / the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, otok; the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadsteaqj which is a thoroughfare to the East, — at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky over-:, head and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. ^ Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended;^ into the town to look for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered just then, and, while waiting, he associated,: naturally with the men of his calling in the port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the dark places of the sea ; and their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasona- ble certitude of achievement. The majority were men who like himself, thrown there by some accident, had remained| as officers of country ships. They ha d now a ho rror of_t hej ^uty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They were attu ned ^to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. T he y love d ^ 2i^L^IP.| SS?^si §^j^l')fe "" !^^^"'-^' •^?''^^ nati^^^^^^£T.