Lord Jim
his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began to collect; the
half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to
explain his intentions. I went away without waiting to see the end.
‘But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and
going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry,
I saw in the white men’s ward that little chap tossing on his back, with
his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the
other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also
found his way there. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during
the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not
to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his
distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room
and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who
had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other
places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and
shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous
hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal
safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time
after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price
of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking
any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very
many years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny
chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears:
“Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise
nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may,
he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a
chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster
on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker
with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of
the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found
himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes.
He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy
little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani’s stomach, picked himself up,
and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off
a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were
carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but
when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean
bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow,
like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not
been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of
his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently
behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to
indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the
famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into
the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me
no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a
community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of
conduct, I can’t explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you
like; but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps,
unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and
redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an
excuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the
laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the
uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and
more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign
power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing
to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good
little quiet villainies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe
in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own
sake that I wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young
fellow whom I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a
touch of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of
his weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint of a
destructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had resembled
his youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. I was,
and no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at
this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my
imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady
invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must have been
pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent
and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as
any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a
delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly;
I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not
furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance,
his redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor
iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated
Patna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and
said: “Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down.” I
made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added
smoothly, “She was full of reptiles.”
‘This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror
behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine
wistfully. “They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look
at her sinking,” he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded
alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was
no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the
perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty
iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown
and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my
interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed
my shoulder. “Only my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my
eyesight. That’s why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick
enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and
sang out together--like this.” . . . A wolfish howl searched the very
recesses of my soul. “Oh! make ‘im dry up,” whined the accident case
irritably. “You don’t believe me, I suppose,” went on the other, with
an air of ineffable conceit. “I tell you there are no such eyes as mine
this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed.”
‘Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so.
“What can you see?” he asked. “Nothing,” I said, feeling awfully ashamed
of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt.
“Just so,” he said, “but if I were to look I could see--there’s no eyes
like mine, I tell you.” Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his
eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. “Millions
of pink toads. There’s no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It’s
worse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke
my pipe all day long. Why don’t they give me back my pipe? I would get
a smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They’ve
got to be watched, you know.” He winked facetiously. The perspiration
dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the
afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff
folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the
covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all
along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the
tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter’s gale in an old
barn at home. “Don’t you let him start his hollering, mister,” hailed
from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came
ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The
clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. “The ship
was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,”
he whispered with extreme rapidity. “All pink. All pink--as big as
mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their
ugly mouths. Ough! Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed
under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let
go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled
tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the
spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face
of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed
before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable
caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--“Ssh! what are they
doing now down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic
precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a
lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. “They are all asleep,”
I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That’s what he wanted
to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long
breath. “Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them
brutes. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There’s too many of
them, and she won’t swim more than ten minutes.” He panted again. “Hurry
up,” he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: “They are all
awake--millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait!
I’ll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!” An
interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in
the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his
bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the
vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I
confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out
through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The
howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and
suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended
the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my
distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons
who was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. “Been to see your man,
Captain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no
notion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we’ve got the chief
engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.’s of the worst
kind. He has been drinking hard in that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop
for three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy
a day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I
should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious
part is there’s some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to
find out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium.
Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn’t. Good old
tradition’s at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are batrachian.
Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case
of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don’t you know, after such a
festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of
the tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking