 Front Matter and Preface to Nigger of the Narcissus This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad Front Matter and Preface The Nigger of the Narcissus A Tale of the Folk Soul by Joseph Conrad Copyright 1897-1914 by Doubleday Page & Company To Edward Garnett, this tale about my friends of the sea To my readers in America From that evening when James Wade joined the ship, late for the muster of the crew, to the moment when he left us in the open sea, shrouded in sailcloth through the open port, I had much to do with him. He was in my watch. A Negro in a British Folk Soul is a lonely being. He has no chums. Yet James Wade, afraid of death and making her his accomplice, was an imposter of some character, mastering our compassion, scornful of our sentimentalism, triumphing over our suspicions. But in the book he is nothing. He is merely the center of the ship's collective psychology and the pivot of the action. Yet he, who in the family circle and amongst my friends, is familiarly referred to as the Nigger, remains very precious to me. For the book written round him is not the sort of thing that can be attempted more than once in a lifetime. It is the book by which, not as novel as perhaps, but as an artist striving for the utmost sincerity of expression, I am willing to stand or fall. Its pages are the tribute of my unalterable and profound affection for the ships, the seaman, the winds, and the great sea, the molders of my youth, the companions of the best years of my life. After writing the last words of that book in the revulsion of feeling before the accomplished task, I understood that I had done with the sea and that henceforth I had to be a writer. And almost without laying down the pen I wrote a preface trying to express the spirit in which I was entering on the task of my new life. That preface, on advice which I now think was wrong, was never published with the book. But the late W. E. Henley, who had the courage at that time, 1897, to serialize my nigger in the new review, judged it worthy to be printed as an afterward at the end of the last installment of the tale. I am glad that this book, which means so much to me, is coming out again, under its proper title of The Nigger of the Narcissus, and under the auspices of my good friends and publishers, matures double-day page and company into the light of publicity. Half the span of a generation has passed since W. E. Henley, after reading two chapters, sent me a verbal message. Tell Conrad that if the rest is up to the sample, it shall certainly come out in the new review. The most gratifying recollection of my writer's life. And here is the suppressed preface. 1914. Joseph Conrad Preface A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. An art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe by bringing to light the truth, manifold in one, underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colors, in its lights, in its shadow, in the aspects of matter and in the facts of life what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential, their one illuminating and convincing quality, the very truth of their existence. The artist, then, like the thinker or the scientist, seeks the truth and makes his appeal. Impressed by the aspect of the world, the thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts, quents presently. Emerging, they make their appeal to those qualities of our being that fit us best for the hazardous enterprise of living. They speak authoritatively to our common sense, to our intelligence, to our desire of peace, or to our desire of unrest, not seldom to our prejudices, sometimes to our fears, often to our egoism, but always to our credulity. And their words are heard with reverence, for their concern is with weighty matters, with the cultivation of our minds and the proper care of our bodies, with the attainment of our ambitions, with the perfection of the means, and the glorification of our precious aims. It is otherwise with the artist. Confronted by the same enigmatic spectacle, the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to our less obvious capacities. To that part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities, like the vulnerable body within a steel armor. His appeal is less loud, more profound, less distinct, more stirring, and sooner forgotten. Yet its effect endures forever. The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions, facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom, to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition, and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives, to our sense of pity and beauty and pain, to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation, and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams and joy and sorrow, and aspirations and illusions and hope and fear which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity, the dead to the living and the living to the unborn. It is only some such train of thought, or rather a feeling, that can, in a measure, explain the aim of the attempt, made in the tale which follows, to present an unrestful episode in the obscure lives of a few individuals out of all the disregarded multitude of the bewildered, the simple, and the voiceless. For, if any part of truth dwells in the belief confessed above, it becomes evident that there is not a place of splendor or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve if only a passing glance of wonder and pity. The motive, then, may be held to justify the matter of the work, but this preface, which is simply an avowal of endeavor, cannot end here, for the avowal is not yet complete. The fiction, if it at all aspires to be art, appeals to the temperament. And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the other innumerable temperaments, whose subtle and resistuous power endows passing events with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere of the place and time. Such an appeal to be effective must be an impression made through the senses, and, in fact, it cannot be made in any other way, because temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses and its highest desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the color of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music, which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance, it is only through an unremitting, never discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to color, and that light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an effervescent instant over the commonplace surface of words, of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage. The sincere endeavor to accomplish that creative task to go as far on that road as the strength will carry him to go undeterred by faltering, weariness, or reproach is the only valid justification for the worker in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who, in the fullness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consul, amused, who demand to be promptly improved or encouraged or frightened or shocked or charmed, must run thus. My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel, it is before all to make you see, that and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there, according to your desserts, encouragement, consolation, fear, charm, all you demand, and perhaps also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask. To snatch in a moment of courage from the remorseless rush of time a passing phase of life is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its color, its form, and through its movement its form and its color reveal the substance of its truth. Disclosed its inspiring secret, the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortunate, one may perchance attained to such clearness of sincerity that at last the presented vision of regret or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable solidarity, of the solidarity and mysterious origin and toil and joy and hope in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind to the visible world. It is evident that he who, rightly or wrongly, holds by the convictions expressed above cannot be faithful to any one of the temporary formulas of his craft. The enduring part of them, the truth which each only imperfectly veils, should abide with him as the most precious of his possessions, but they all—realism, romanticism, naturalism, even the unofficial sentimentalism, which, like the poor, is exceedingly difficult to get rid of—all these gods must, after a short period of fellowship, abandon him, even on the very threshold of the temple, to the stammerings of his conscience and to the outspoken consciousness of the difficulties of his work. In that uneasy solitude, the supreme cry of art for art itself loses the exciting ring of its apparent immorality. It sounds far off. It is ceased to be a cry and is heard only as a whisper, often incomprehensible, but at times and faintly encouraging. Sometimes, stretched at ease in the shade of a roadside tree, we watch the motions of a laborer in a distant field and, after a time, begin to wonder languidly as to what the fellow might be at. We watch the movements of his body, the waving of his arms. We see him bend down, stand up, hesitate, begin again. It may add to the charm of an idle hour to be told the purpose of his exertions. If we know he is trying to lift a stone, to dig a ditch, to uproot a stump, we look with a more real interest at his efforts. We are disposed to condone the jar of his agitation upon the restfulness of the landscape, and, even if in a brotherly frame of mind, we may bring ourselves to forgive his failure. We understood his object, and, after all, the fellow has tried, and perhaps he had not the strength, and perhaps he had not the knowledge. We forgive, go on our way, and forget. And so it is with the workmen of art. Art is long, and life is short, and success is very far off. And thus, doubtful of strength to travel so far, we talk a little about the aim, the aim of art, which, like life itself, is inspiring, difficult, obscured by mists. It is not in the clear logic of a triumphant conclusion. It is not in the unveiling of one of those heartless secrets which are called laws of nature. It is no less great, but only more difficult. To arrest for the space of a breath the hands busy about the work of the earth and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at this rounding vision of form and color, of sunshine and shadows, to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile, such is the aim, difficult and effervescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished, behold, all the truth of life is there, a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile, and the return to an eternal rest. 1897 J. C. End of Front Matter and Preface Chapter 1 of The Nigger of the Narcissus This library box recording is in the public domain. The Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad. Chapter 1 Mr. Baker, chief maid of the ship Narcissus, stepped in one stride out of his provided cabin into the darkness of the quarter-deck. Above his head, on the break of the poop, the night watchman rang a double-stroke. It was nine o'clock. Mr. Baker, speaking up to the man above him, asked, Are all the hands aboard, Knowles? The man went down the ladder, then said reflectively, I think so, sir. All our old chaps are there, and a lot of new men has come. They must be all there. Tell the Bosun to send all hands aft, on Mr. Baker, and tell one of the youngsters to bring a good lamp here. I want to muster our crowd. The main deck was dark aft, but half-way from forward, through the open doors of the folk-soul, two streaks of brilliant light cut the shadow of the quiet night that lay upon the ship. A hum of voices was heard there, while port and starboard in the illuminated doorways, silhouettes of moving men appeared for a moment very black, without relief, like figures cut out of sheet tin. The ship was ready for sea. The carpenter had driven in the last wedge of the main hatch-batons, and, throwing down his maul, had wiped his face with great deliberation, just on the stroke of five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled, and made ready to heave up the anchor. The big tow-rope lay in long bites along one side of the main deck, with one end carried up and hung over the boughs, and readiness for the tug that would come paddling and hissing noisily, hot and smoky, and the limpid cool quietness of the early morning. The captain was ashore where he had been engaging some new hands to make up his full crew, and the work of the day over. The ship's officers had kept out of the way, glad of a little breathing time. Soon after dark the liberty men and the new hands began to arrive in shoreboats rowed by white-clad Asiatics, who clamored fiercely for payment before coming alongside the gangway ladder. The feverish and shrill babble of eastern language struggled against the masterful tones of Tipsy Seaman, who argued against brazen claims and dishonest hopes by profane shouts. The resplendent and bestowed piece of squalid tatters by howls of rage and shrieks of lament raised over sums ranging from five anas to half a rupee, and every soul of float in Bombay harbor became aware that the new hands were joining the Narcissus. Gradually the distracting noise had subsided. The ships came no longer in splashing clusters of three or four together, but dropped alongside singly of expostulation cut short by, uh, not a piecey more. You go to the devil from some man staggering up the accommodation ladder, a dark figure with a long bag poised on the shoulder. In the folk-soul the newcomers upright and swaying amongst corded boxes and bundles of bedding made friends with the old hands, who sat one above another in the two tears of bunks, gazing at their faces with glances critical but friendly. The two folk-soul lamps were turned up high and shed an intense hard glare. Shore-going round hats were pushed far on the backs of heads or rolled about on the deck amongst the chain cables, white collars undone, stuck out on each side of red faces, big arms and white sleeves gesticulated, the growling voices hum steady among bursts of laughter and hoarse calls. Here, sonny, take that bunk. Don't you do it. What's your last ship? I know her. Three years ago in Fugit Sound. This here birth leaks, I tell you. Come on, give us a chance to swing that chest. Did you bring a bottle, any of you short-offs? Give us a bit of backie. I know her. Her skipper drank himself to death. He was a dandy boy. He liked his lotion inside, he did. No. Hold your row, you chaps. I tell you, you come on board a hooker where they get their money's worth out of a poor jack by a little fellow called Craig, a nickname Belfast, abused the ship violently, romancing on principle just to give the new hand something to think over. Archie, sitting the slant on his sea-chest, kept his knees pushed the needle steadily through a white patch on a pair of blue trousers. Men in black jackets and stand-up collars mixed with men bare-footed, bare-armed, with colored shirts open on hairy chests, pushed against one another in the middle of the folksal. The group swayed, reeled, turned upon itself with the motion of a scrimmage and a haze of tobacco smoke. All were speaking together, a Russian fin wearing a yellow shirt with pink stripes, stared upwards, dreamy-eyed, from under a mop of tumbled hair. Two young giants with smooth baby-faces, two Scandinavians, helped each other to spread their bedding, silent and smiling placidly at the tempest of good-humored and meaningless curses. Old Singleton, the oldest able seaman in the ship, set apart on the deck right under the lamps, stripped to the waist, tattooed like a cannibal chief all over his powerful chest and enormous biceps. Between the blue and red patterns his white skin gleamed like satin, his bareback was propped against the heel of the bowsprit and he held a book at arm's length before his big sunburned face. With his spectacles and a venerable white beard he resembled a learned and savage patriarch, the incarnation of barbarian wisdom serene in the blasphemous turmoil of the world. He was intensely absorbed and as he turned the pages an expression of grey's surprise would pass over his rugged features. He was running palim. The popularity of bull were lightened in the folxel of southern-going ships as a wonderful and bizarre phenomenon. What ideas do as polished and so curiously insincere sentences awaken in the simple minds of the big children who people those dark and wandering places of the earth? What meaning can their rough, inexperienced souls find in the elegant verbiage of his pages? What excitement? What forgetfulness? What appeasement? Mystery. Is it the fascination of the incomprehensible? Is it the charm of the impossible? Or are those beings who exist beyond the pale of life stirred by his tales as by an enigmatic disclosure of a resplendent world that exists within the frontier of infamy and filth within that border of dirt and hunger, of misery and dissipation that comes down on all sides to the water's edge of the incorruptible ocean and is the only thing they know of life, the only thing they see of surrounding land, those lifelong prisoners of mystery. Singleton, who had sailed to the southward since the age of 12, who in the last 45 years had lived, as we had calculated from his papers, no more than 40 months ashore. Old Singleton, who boasted with the mild composure of long years well spent that generally from the day he was paid off from one ship till the day he shipped in another, he was seldom in a condition to have a day light. Old Singleton sat unmoved in the clash of voices and cries spelling through poem with slow labor and lost in an absorption profound enough to resemble a trance. He breathed regularly. Every time he turned the book in his enormous and blackened hands the muscles of his big white arms rolled slightly under the smooth skin. Hidden by the white mustache his lips stained with tobacco juice that trickled down the long beard moved an inward whisper. His blurred eyes gazed fixedly from behind the glitter of black-rimmed glasses. Opposite to him, and on the level with his face, the ship's cat sat on the barrel of the windlass in the pose of a crouching chimera blinking its green eyes at its old friend. It seemed to meditate a leap onto the old man's lap a very seamen who sat at Singleton's feet. Young Charlie was lean and long-necked. The ridge of his backbone made a chain of small heels under the old shirt. His face of a street boy a face precocious, sagacious, and ironic with deep downward folds on each side of the thin, wide mouth hung low over his bony knees. He was learning to make a land-eared knot with a bit of old rope. Small drops of perspiration stood out on his bulging forehead. He sniffed strongly from time to time, glancing out of the corners of his restless eyes at the old seamen who took no notice of the puzzled youngster muttering at his work. The noise increased. Little Belfast seemed in the heavy heat of the folk-soul to boil with a faxious fury. His eyes danced in the crimson of his face comical as a mask. The mouth young black with strange grimaces. Facing him, a half-undressed man held his sides, and throwing his head back laughed with wet eyelashes. Others stared with amazed eyes. Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks, smoked short pipes, swinging bare-brown feet above the heads of those smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over the white rims of births stuck out heads with blinking eyes, but the bodies were lost in the gloom of those places that resembled narrow niches for coffins in a white-washed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder. Archie, with compressed lips, drew himself in, seemed to shrink into a smaller space and sewed steadily, industrious and dumb. He then cast shrieked like an inspired devourish. So I seized to him, boys, seize I, beg in your pardonsor, seize I to that second maid of that steamer, beg in your pardonsor. The board of trade must have been drunk when they granted you your certificate. What do you say, you? Seize he, coming at me like a mad bull, and all on his white clothes, that all over his blamed lovely face and his lovely jacket. Take that, seize I. I am a sailor anyhow, you nosing skipper-licking, useless, superfluous, bridge-stanchin' you. That's the kind of man I am, shouts I. You should have seed him, skip, boys. Drowned, blind with tar, he was. So don't he believe him? He never upset no tar. I was there, shouted somebody. Two Norwegians sat on the chest side by side, alike and placid, resembling a pair of lovebirds on a perch, and with round eyes stared innocently. But the Russian fin in the racket of explosive shouts and rolling laughter remained motionless, limp and dull, like a deaf man without a backbone. Near him Archie smiled at his needle. A broad-chested, slow-eyed newcomer spoke deliberately to Belfast during an exhausted lull in the noise. I wonder any of the mates here are alive yet with such a chap as you on board. I conclude they ain't that bad now if you had the taming of them, sunny. Not bad, not bad, screamed Belfast. If it wasn't for us sticking together, not bad, they ain't never bad when they ain't got a chance, bless their black arts. He foamed, whirling his arms, then suddenly grinned and taking the tablet of black tobacco out of his pocket, bit a piece off with a funny show of ferocity. Another new hand, a man with shifty eyes and a yellow hatchet face, who had been listening open-mouthed in the shadow of the midship locker, observed in a squeaky voice. Well, it's a oh-more trip anyhow. Good or bad, I can do it on my head, as long as I get home. And I can look after my rights. I will show them. All the heads turned towards him. Only the ordinary seamen and the cat took no notice. He stood with arms of Kimbo, a little fellow with white eyelashes. He looked as if he had known all the degradations and all the furies. He looked as if he had been cuffed, kicked, rolled in the mud. He looked as if he had been scratched, spat upon, pelted with unmentionable filth. And he smiled with a sense of security at the faces around. His ears were bending down under the weight of his battered felt hat. The torn tails of his black coat flapped in fringes about the calves of his legs. He unbuttoned the only two buttons that remained, and everyone saw that he had no shirt under it. It was his deserved misfortune that those rags which nobody could possibly be supposed to own looked on him as if they had been stolen. His neck was long and thin. His eyelids were red. Rare hairs hung about his jaws. His shoulders were peaked and drooped like the broken wings of a bird. All his left side was caked with mud which showed he had lately slept in a wet ditch. He had saved his inefficient carcass from violent destruction by running into an American ship where, in a moment of forgetful folly, he had dared to engage himself and he had knocked about for a fortnight a shore in the native quarter, catching for drinks, starving, sleeping on rubbish heaps, wandering in sunshine, a startling visitor from a world of nightmares. He stood repulsive and smiling in the sudden silence. This clean white fork-sole was his refuge, the place where he could be lazy, where he could wallow and lie and eat and curse the food he ate, where he could display his talents for shirking work, for cheating, for caging, where he could surely find someone to wheedle and someone to bully and where he could be paid for doing all this. They all knew him. His error of spot on earth where such a man is unknown, an ominous survival testifying to the final fitness of lies and impudence, a taciturn long-arm shell-back with hooked fingers who had been lying on his back smoking, turned in his bed to examine him dispassionately, then over his head sent a long jet of clear saliva towards the door. They all knew him. He was the man that cannot steer, that cannot splice, that dodges the work on dark nights, that aloft holds on frantically with both arms and legs, and swears at the wind, the sweet, the darkness, the man who curses the sea while others work, the man who is the last out in the first inn when all hands are called, the man who can't do most things and won't do the rest, the pet of philanthropists and self-seeking land-lovers, the sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship's company, the independent offspring of ignoble freedom of the slums full of disdain and hate for the austere servitude in the sea. Someone cried at him. What's your name? Duncan, he said, looking around with cheerful effrontery. What are you? asked another voice. Why, a sailor, like you, was the calm man, he replied, in a tone that meant to be hardy but was impudent. Blimey, if you don't look, a blamesight worse than a broken-down fireman was the calm man and a convinced mutter. Charley lifted his head and piped in a cheeky voice. He is a man and a sailor, then wiping his nose with the back of his hand bent down industriously over his bit of rope. A few laughed. The newcomer was indignant. That's the fine way to welcome a chap into a folksal, he snarled. Are you men or a lot of artless candy balls? Don't take your shirt off for a word shipmate, called out Belfast, jumping up in front fiery, menacing and friendly at the same time. Is that air bloke blind? Asked the indomitable scarecrow looking right and left with affected surprise. Can't you see I haven't got no shirt? He held both his arms out crossways and shook the rags that hung over his bones with dramatic effect. Cause why, he continued very loud. The bloody Yankees been trying to jump my guts out, cause I stood up for my rights like a goodin'. I am an Englishman, I am. They sat upon me and I had to run, that's why. You never see a man art up? Yeah, what kind of bloom ship is this? I'm dead broke. I haven't got nothing. No bag, no bed, no blanket, no shirt. Not a blooming rag, but what I stand in. But I add the art to stand up against them Yankees. As any of you art enough to spare a pair of old pants for a chum? He knew how to conquer the naive instincts of that crowd. In a moment they gave him their compassion, jocularly, contemptuously, or surerly, and at first it took the shape of a blanket thrown at him as he stood there with the white skin of his limbs showing his human kinship through the black fantasy of his rags. Then a pair of old shoes followed his muddy feet. With a cry from under, a rolled up pair of canvas trousers, heavy with tar stains, struck him on the shoulder. The gusts of their benevolent sent a wave of sentimental pity through their doubting hearts. They were cast by their own readiness to alleviate a shipmate's misery. Voices cried, We will fit you out, old man, murmurs. Never seed such a hard case, poor beggar. I've got an old singlet. Will that be of any use to you? Take it, mighty. Those friendly murmurs filled the fork-soul. He pawed around with his naked foot, gathering things in a heap, and looking about for more. Our cheap perfunctorily contributed to the pile and old cloth cap with the peak torn off. Old Singleton lost in the serene ridges of fiction read on unheeding. Charlie, pitiless with the wisdom of youth, squeaked, If you want brass buttons for your new uniform, I've got two for you. The filthy object of universal charity shook his fist at the youngster. I'll make you keep this ear-focussial clean, or he snarled viciously. Never you fear, I will learn you to be civil to enable seamen, you ignorant ass. He glared harmfully, but saw Singleton shot his book, and his little BDIs began to roam from birth to birth. Take that bunk by the door there. It's pretty fair, suggested Belfast. So advised he gathered the gift at his feet, pressed them in a bundle against his chest, then looked at the Russian Finn, who stood on one side with an unconscious gaze, contemplating, perhaps, one of those weird visions that haunt the men of his race. Get out of my road, Duchy, said the victim of Yankee brutality. The Finn did not move. Did not hear. Get out, Blastie, shouted the other, shoving him aside with his elbow. Get out, you blank deaf and dumb fool. Get out! The man staggered, recovered himself, and gazed at the speaker in silence. Those damn ferns should be kept under. O, pine, the amiable donkin to the forksle. If you don't teach them their place, they will put you on like anything. He flung all his worldly possessions into the empty bed-space, gauged with another shrewd look at the risk of the proceeding, then leaped up to the Finn who swelled about. He yelled, I'll plug your eyes for you, you blooming square-head. Most of the men were now in their bunks, and the two had the forksle clear to themselves. The development of the destitute donkin aroused interest. He danced all in tatters before the amazed Finn, squaring from a distance at the heavy unmoving face. One or two men cried encouragingly. Go to it, Whitechapel, to survey the fight. Others shouted, Shut your row. Go and put your head in the bag. The hubbub was recommencing. Suddenly many heavy blows struck with a hand-spike on the deck above, boomed like discharges of small cannon through the forksle. Then the Bosun's voice rose outside the door with an authoritative note in its drawl. Do you hear there below there? Lay aft. Lay aft a muster all hands. End of Part 1 of Chapter 1. Chapter 1, Part 2 of The Nigger of the Narcissus. This library of ox recording is in the public domain. The Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad. Chapter 1, Part 2 There was a moment of surprised stillness. Then the forksle floor disappeared under men whose bare feet flopped on the planks spraying clear out of their berths. Caps were rooted for among stumble-blankets. Some yawning, buttoned waist bands. Half-smoked pipes were knocked hurriedly against woodwork and stuffed under pillows. Voices growled, What's up? Is there no rest for us? Don't can yelp. If that's the way of this ship, we'll have to change all that. You leave me alone. I will soon. None of the crowd noticed him. They were lurching in twos and threes through the door, after the manner of merchant-jacks who cannot go out of a door fairly, like mere landsmen. The votary of changed followed them. Singleton, struggling into his jacket, came last. Tall and fatherly, bearing high his head of a weather-beaten sage on the body of an old athlete. Only Charlie remained alone in the white glare of the empty place, sitting between the two rows of iron links that stretched into the narrow gloom forward. He pulled hard at the strands in a hurried endeavor to finish his knot. Suddenly he started up, flung the rope at the cat, and skipped after the black tom, which went off, leaping sedately over chained compressors with its tail carried stiff and upright, like a small flagpole. Outside the glare of the steaming folksle, the serene purity of the night enveloped the seaman with its soothing breath, with its tepid breath flowing under the stars that hung countless above the mastheads in a thin cloud of luminous dust. On the townside the blackness of the water was streaked with trails of light which undulated gently on slight ripples, similar to filaments that float rooted to the shore. Rows of other lights stood away in straight lines as if drawn up on parade buildings. But on the other side of the harbour, somber hills arched high, there's black spines on which, here and there, the point of a star resembled a spark fallen from the sky. Far off, by coal away, the electric lamps at the dock gate shone on the end of lofty standards with a glow blinding and frigid like captive ghosts of some evil moons. Scattered all over the dark fallowish of the roadstead, the ships at anchor floated in perfect stillness under the feeble gleam of their riding lights looming up, opaque and bulky like strange and monumental structures abandoned by men to an everlasting repose. Before the cabin door Mr. Baker was mustering the crew. As they stumbled and lurched along past the main mast they could see aft his round broad face with a white paper before it and beside his shoulder the sleepy head with dropped eyelids of a boy who held suspended at the end of his raised arm the luminous globe of a lamp. Even before the shuffle of naked souls had ceased along the decks the mate began to call over the names. He called distinctly in a serious tone befitting this roll call to unquiet loneliness, to inglorious and obscure struggle or to the more trying endurance of small privations and worrisome duties. As the mate read out a name one of the men would answer yes sir or here and detaching himself from the shadowy mob of heads visible above the blackness of starboard bollocks would step barefooted into the circle of light and in two noiseless strides pass into the shadows of the port side of the quarter-deck. They answered in diverse tones in thick mutters in clear ringing voices and some as if the whole thing had been an outrage on their feelings used an injured intonation for a discipline is not ceremonious in merchant ships where the sense of hierarchy is weak and where all feel themselves equal before the unconcerned immensity of the sea and the exacting appeal of the work. Mr. Baker read unsteadily. Hanson Campbell Smith Womibo Now then Womibo, why don't you answer? I always got to call your name twice. The fin emitted a last and uncouth grunt and stepping out past through the patch of light, weird and gaunty with the face of a man marching through a dream. The mate went on faster. Craig, Singleton, Donkin oh lord, he involuntarily ejaculated as the incredibly dilapidated figure appeared in the light. It stopped. It uncovered pale gums and long upper teeth and a malevolent grin. Is there any taint wrong with me, Mr. Mate? It asked, with the flavor of insolence in the force simplicity of its tone. On both sides of the deck subdued titters were heard. That'll do. Go over, growled Mr. Baker, fixing the new hand with steady blue eyes. And Donkin vanished suddenly out of the light into the dark group of mustard men to be slapped on the back and to hear flattering whispers. He ain't afeard. He'll give sport to him, see if he don't. Regular Punch and Judy show. Did you see the mate started him? Well, damn, if I ever. The last man had gone over and there was a moment of silence while the mate peered at his list. Sixteen. Seventeen, he muttered. Damn, one hand short, poston, he said aloud. The big west country men at his elbow swarthy and bearded like a gigantic spaniard said in a rumbling bass. There's no one left forward, sir. I ought to look round. He ain't a-bored, but he may turn up before daylight. I, he may or he may not, commented the mate. Can't make out the last name. It's all smudge. That'll do, men. Go below. The distinct and motionless group stirred, broke up, and began to move forward. Wait! called a deep ringing voice. All stood still. Mr. Baker, who had turned away yawning, spun around open-mouthed. At last furious, he blurted out, What's this? Who said Wait? What? But he saw a tall figure standing on the rail. It came down and pushed through the crowd, marching heavy tread towards the light on the quarter-deck. Then again the sonorous voice said with insistence, Wait! The lamp-light lit up the man's body. He was tall. His head was a way up in the shadows of lifeboats that stood on skids above the deck. The whites of his eyes and his teeth gleamed distinctly, but the face was indistinguishable. His hands were big and seemed gloved. Mr. Baker advanced intrepidly. Who are you? How dare you? he began. The boy, amazed like the rest, raised the light to the man's face. It was black. A surprised hum, a faint hum that sounded like the suppressed mutter of the word nigger, ran along the deck and escaped out into the night. The nigger seemed not to hear. He balanced himself where he stood with a swagger that marked time. After a while he said calmly, my name is Wait. James Wait. Oh, said Mr. Baker. Then, after a few seconds of smoldering silence, his temper blazed out. Ah, your name is Wait. What of that? What do you want? What do you mean coming shouting here? The nigger was calm, cool, towering, superb. The men had approached and stood behind him in a body. He overtopped the tallest half ahead. He said, I belong to the ship. He enunciated distinctly with soft precision. The deep, rolling tones of his voice filled the deck without effort. He was naturally scornful, unaffectedly condescending, as if from his height of six-foot-three he had surveyed all the vastness of human folly and had made up his mind not to be too hard on it. He went on, aft and shipped me this morning. I couldn't get aboard sooner. I saw you all aft as I came up the ladder and could see directly you were mustering the crew. Naturally I called out my name. I thought you had it on your list and would understand. You misapprehended. He stopped short. The folly around him was confounded. He was right as ever and is ever ready to forgive. The disdainful tones had ceased and breathing heavily he stood still, surrounded by all these white men. He held his head up in the glare of the lamp, a head vigorously modeled into deep shadows and shining lights, a head powerful and misshapen with the tormented and flattened face, a face pathetic and brutal, the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of a nigger's soul. Mr. Baker, recovering his composure, looked at the paper close. Oh, yes, that's so. All right, wait. Take your gear forward, he said. Suddenly the nigger's eyes rolled wildly, became all whites. He put his hand to his side and coughed twice. He coughed metallic, hollow and tremendously loud. It resounded like two explosions in a vault. The dome of the sky rang to it and the iron plates of the ship's bulwarks seemed to vibrate in unison. Then he marched off forward with the others. The officers lingering by the cabin door could hear him say, won't some of you chaps lend a hand with my donage? I've got a chest in a bag. The words spoken sonorously with an even intonation were heard all over the ship and the question was put in a manner that made refusal impossible. The short, quick shuffle of men carrying something heavy went away forward with the tall figure of the nigger lingered by the main hatch in a knot of smaller shapes. Again he was heard asking, is your cook a color, gentlemen? Then a disappointed and disapproving ah, ahem, was his comment upon the information that the cook happened to be a mere white man. Yet as they went all together towards the folk soul, Khan descended to put his head through the galley door Good evening, doctor, that made all the saucepans ring. In the dim light the cook dozed on the coal locker in front of the captain's supper. He jumped up as if he had been cut with a whip and dashed wildly on deck to see the backs of several men going away laughing. Afterwards, when talking about that voyage he used to say, the poor fellow had scared me. I thought I had seen the devil. The cook had been seven years with a whip with the same captain. He was a serious-minded man with a wife and three children whose society he enjoyed on average one month out of twelve. When on shore he took his family to church twice every Sunday. At sea he went to sleep every evening with his lamp turned up full, a pipe in his mouth and an open Bible in his hand. Someone had always to go during the night to put out the light, take the book from his hand and bring the pipe from between his teeth. Four, Belfast used to say, irritated and complaining, some night you stupid cookie you'll swallow your old clay and we will have no cook. Ah, Sonny, I am ready for my maker's call. Wish you all were. The other would answer with benign serenity that was altogether imbecile and touching. Belfast outside the golly door danced with vexation. You holy fool, I don't want you to die, he howled, looking up with furious quivering face and tender eyes. What's the hurry? You blessed wooden-headed old heretic, the devil will have you soon enough. Think of us. Of us. Of us. And he would go away stamping, spitting aside, disgusted and worried. While the other stepping out hot, begrimed and placid, watched with a superior cocksure smile the back of his queer little man reeling in a rage. They were great friends. Mr. Baker, lounging over the after-hatch, sniffed the humid air in the company of the second mate. Those West Indian niggers run fine and large, some of them. Ah, don't they? A fine big man that, Mr. Bacon, feel him on a rope. Hey? I will take him into my watch, I think. The second mate, a fair, gentlemanly young fellow with a resolute face and splendid physique, observed quietly that it was just about what he expected. There could be felt in his tone some slight bitterness which Mr. Baker very kindly set himself to argue away. Come, come, young man, he said, grunning between the words. Come, don't be too greedy. You had that big fin in your watch all the voyage. I will do what's fair. You may have those two young Scandinavians and I— I get the nigger and we'll take that that cheeky Custermonger chap in the black frock coat. I'll make him— make him to the mark or my— name isn't Baker. He grunted hock. He grunted thrice ferociously. He had that trick of grunning so between his words and at the end of his sentences. It was a fine effective grunt that went well with his menacing utterance, with his heavy bull-necked frame, his jerky rolling gate, with his big, seemed face, his steady eyes, and sardonic mouth. But its effect had been long ago intended by the men. They liked him, Belfast, who was a favorite and knew it, mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charlie, but with greater caution, imitated his rolling gate. Some of his sayings became established daily quotations in the folk soul. Popularity can go no farther. Besides, all hands were ready to admit that on a fitting occasion the mate could jump down a fellow's throat in a regular western ocean style. Now he was giving his last orders. Ock! You! Knowles! Call all hands at four. I want Ock! to heave short before the tug comes. Look out for the captain. I am going to lie down in my clothes. Ock! Call me when you see the boat coming. Ock! Ock! The old man is sure to have something to say when he gets aboard. He remarked to Crichton, well, good night. Ock! A long day before us tomorrow. Ock! Better turn in now. Ock! Ock! Upon the dark deck a band of light flashed, then the door slammed, and Mr. Baker was gone into his neat cabin. Young Crichton stood leaning over the rail and looked dreamily into the night of the east. And he saw in it a long country lane, a lane of waving leaves and dancing sunshine. He saw stirring boughs of old trees outspread and framing in their arch the tender, the caressing blueness of an English sky. And through the arch a girl in a light dress smiling under a sunshade seemed to be stepping out of the tender sky. At the other end of the ship the folk soul, with only one lamp burning now, was going to sleep and dim emptiness traversed by loud breathings by sudden short sighs. The double row of berths young black like graves teneted by uneasy corpses. Here and there a curtain of gaudy chins half drawn marked the resting place of a cyber-ite. A leg hung over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight out with the dark palm turned up and closed, two light snores that did not synchronize quarreled in funny dialogue. Singleton stripped again the old man suffered much from prickly heat, stood cooling his back in the doorway with his arms crossed on his bare and adorned chest. His head touched the beam of the deck above. The nigger half undressed was busy casting the drift the lishing of his box and in an upper berth. He moved about in his socks tall and noiseless with a pair of brices beating about his calves. Amongst the shadows of stanchions and bough-spread, Duncan munched a piece of hard-chips bread sitting on the deck with upturned feet and restless eyes. He held the biscuit up before his mouth in the whole fist and snapped his jaws at it with a raging face. Then he got up. Where's our water-cask? He asked in the contained voice. Singleton, without a word, pointed with a big hand that held a short smoldering pipe. Duncan bent over the cask, drank out of the tin, splishing the water, turned round and noticed the nigger looking at him over the shoulder with calm loftiness. He moved up sideways. There's a bloomin' supper he whispered bitterly. My target home wouldn't have it. It's fit enough for you and me. Here's a big ship's folk-soul, not a bloomin' scrap of meat in the kids. I've looked in all the lockers. The nigger stared like a man addressed unexpectedly in a foreign language. Duncan changed his tone. Give us a bit of backy, mate, he breathed out confidentially. I haven't had smoke or chew for the last month. Crampin' mad for it. Come on, old man. Don't be familiar, said the nigger. Duncan started and sat down on a chest nearby out of sheer surprise. We haven't kept pigs together, continued James' weight in the deep undertone. Here's your tobacco. Then, after a pause, he inquired. What ship? Golden State, muttered Duncan indistinctly, biting the tobacco. The nigger whistled low. Ran, he said, curtly. Duncan nodded. One of his cheeks bulged out. In course I ran, he mummled. They booted the life out of one dago chap on the passage ear, then started on me. I cleared out ear. Left you donnage behind? Yes, donnage and money, answered Duncan, raising his voice a little. I got nothing. No clothes, no bed. A bandy-legged little high-rish chap gave me a blanket. Think I'll go and sleep in the four-top-mass stay-sale tonight. He went on deck trailing behind his back a corner of the blanket. Singleton, without a glance, moves slightly aside to let him pass. The nigger put away his shore-togs and sat in clean working clothes on his box, one arm stretched over his knees. After staring at Singleton for some time, he asked without emphasis, what kind of ship is this? Pretty fair, eh? Singleton didn't stir. After a long while, he said with unmoved face, ship. Ships are all right. It is the men in them. He went on smoking in profound silence. The wisdom of half a century spent in listening to the thunder of waves that spoke unconsciously through his old lips. The cat purred on the windless. Then James Waite had a fit of roaring, rattling cough that shook him, tossed him like a hurricane and flung him panning with staring eyes headlong on his sea-chest. Several men woke up. One said sweepily out of his bunk. Shruth, what a blamed row! I have a cold in my chest, yast Waite. Cold, you call it, grumbled the man. Should think to a something more. Oh, you think so? Said the nigger upright and loftily scornful again. He climbed into his berth and began coughing persistently while he put his head out to glare all round the folk-soul. There was no further protest. He fell back on the pillow and could be heard there wheezing regularly like a man oppressed in his sleep. Singleton stood at the door with his face to the light and alone in the dim emptiness of the sleeping folk-soul he appeared bigger, colossal, very old, old as Father Time himself who should have come there into this place as quiet as a sepulcher to contemplate with patient eyes the short victory of sleep, the consoler. Yet he was only a child of time, a lonely relic of a devoured and forgotten generation. He stood still strong as ever unthinking, a ready man with a vast empty past and with no future, with his childlike impulses and his man's passions already dead within his tattooed breast. The men who could understand his silence were gone, those men who knew how to exist beyond the pale of life and within sight of eternity. They had been strong as those are strong who know neither doubt nor hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent these men's as whining over every mouthful of their food as going about their work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew toil, privation, violence, debauchery, but knew not fear and had no desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to inspire. Voiceless men. But men enough to scorn in their hearts the sentimental voices that bewail the hardness of their fate. It was a fate unique and their own. The capacity to bear it appeared to them the privilege of the chosen. Their generation lived inarticulate and indispensable without knowing the sweetness of affections of the refuge of a home that died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea. Their successors are the grown-up children of a discontented earth. They are less naughty, but less innocent, less profane, but perhaps also less believing. And if they have learned how to speak they have also learned how to whine. But the others were strong and mute. They had been enduring like stone karyatides that hold up in the night the blighted halls of a resplendent and glorious edifice. They are gone now and it does not matter. The sea and the earth are unfaithful to their children. A truth, a faith, a generation of men goes and is forgotten and it does not matter. Except, perhaps, or loved the men. A breeze was coming. The ship that had been laying tide-road swung to a heavier puff and suddenly the slack of the chain-cable between the wind-list and the hose-pipe clinked, slipped forward an inch and rose gently off the deck with a startling suggestion as of unsuspected life that had been lurking stealthily in the iron. In the hose-pipe the grinding-link sent through the ship a man's sign under a burden. The strain came on the wind-list, the chain-tottened like a string, vibrated, and the handle of the screw-break moved in slight jerks. Singleton stepped forward. Till then he had been standing meditative and unthinking, reposeful and hopeless, with a face grim and blank, a 60-year-old child of the mysterious sea. The thoughts of all his lifetime could have been expressed in six words, but the stir of those things that were as much part of his existence as his beating heart called up a gleam of alert understanding under the sternness of his aged face. The flame of the lamp swayed and the old man with knitted and bushy eyebrows stood over the break, watchful and motionless in the wild sarabande of dancing shadows. Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged to head slightly and eased the strain. The cable relieved, hung down, and, after swaying imperceptibly to and fro, dropped with a loud tap on the hardwood planks. Singleton seized the high lever and, by a violent throw forward of his body, wrung out another half-turn from the break. He recovered himself, breathed largely, a powerful and compact engine that squatted on the deck at his feet like some quiet monster. A creature amazing and tame. You hold. He growled at it masterfully in the occult tangle of his white beard. End of chapter 1 Chapter 2 of the Nigger of the Narcissus This library box recording is in the public domain. Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad Chapter 2 Part 1 Next morning, at daylight, the Narcissus went to sea. A slight haze blurred the horizon. Outside the harbor the measuriless expanse of smooth water lay sparkling like a floor of jewels and as empty as the sky. The short black tub gave a pluck to windward in the usual way. Then let go the rope and hovered for a moment on the quarter with her engine stop while the slim long hull of the ship moved ahead slowly under lower top sails. The loose upper canvas blew out in the breeze with soft round contours resembling small white clouds snared in the maze of ropes. Then the sheets were hauled home, the yards hoisted, and the ship became a high and lonely pyramid gliding all shining in white through the sunlit mist. The tug turned short round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes watched her low, broad stern crawling languidly over the smooth swell between the two paddle wheels that turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry. She resembled an enormous and aquatic black beetle surprised by the light, overwhelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape with ineffectual effort into the distant loom of the land. She left a lingering smudge of smoke on the sky and two vanishing trails of foam on the water. On the place where she had stopped a round black patch of soot remained, undulating on the swell an unclean mark of the creature's rest. The Narcissus left alone heading south, seemed to stand resplendent and still upon the restless sea under the moving sun. Flakes of foam swept past her sides in the water-strucker with flashing blows. The land glided away, slowly fading. A few birds screamed on motionless wings over the swaying mast-eads. But soon the land disappeared, the birds went away, and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab dowel running for Bombay rose triangular and upright above the sharp edge of the horizon, lingered and vanished like an illusion. Then the ship's wake, long and straight, stretched itself out through a day of immense solitude. The setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below the blackness of heavy rain-clouds. The sunset squall, coming up from behind dissolved itself into the short-day luge of a hissing shower. It left the ship glistening from trunks to land and with darkened sails. She ran easily before a pheromone soon, with her decks cleared for the night and moving along with her was heard the sustained and monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers of men mustered aft for the setting of watches, the short planks of some block aloft, or now and then, a loud sigh of wind. Mr. Baker, coming out of his cabin, called out the first name sharply before closing the door behind him. He was going to take charge of the deck. On the homeward trip, according to an old custom of the sea, the chief officers takes the first night watch from eight till midnight. So Mr. Baker, after he had heard the last yes, sir, said mootily, relieved the wheel and look out, and climbed with heavy feet the poop ladder to windward. Soon after Mr. Crichton came down, whistling softly, and went into the cabin. On the doorstep, the steward lounged in slippers, meditative, and with his shirt sleeves rolled up to the armpits. On the main deck, the cook locking up the galley doors had an altercation with young Charlie about a pair of socks. He could be heard saying impressively in the darkness of bedships, you don't deserve a kindness. I've been drawing them for you, and now you complain about the holes. And you swear, too. Right in front of me, if I hadn't been a Christian, which you ain't, you young ruffian, I would give you a cloud on the head. Go away. Men in couples or threes did pencey for move silently along the bulwarks in the waist. The first busy day of a homeward passage was sinking into the dull piece of resumed routine. On the high poop, Mr. Baker walked shuffling and grunted to himself in the pauses of his thoughts. Forward, the lookout man erected between the flukes of the two anchors, hummed an endless tune, keeping his eyes fixed dutifully ahead in a vacant stare. A multitude of stars coming out into the clear night peopled the emptiness of the sky. They glittered as if alive above the sea. They surrounded the running ship on all sides more intense than the eyes of a stirring crowd, and as inscrutable as the souls of men. The passage had begun, and the ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift, like a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in an unattainable frontier. A great circular solitude moved with her ever-changing and ever the same, always monotonous and always imposing. Now and then another wandering white speck, burdened with life, appeared far off, disappeared, intent on its own destiny. The sun looked upon her all day, and every morning rose with a burning, round stare of undying curiosity. She had her own future. She was alive with the lives of those beings who trod her decks, like that earth which threw her up to the sea. She had an intolerable load of regrets and hopes. On her lived timid truth and audacious lies, and like the earth she was unconscious, fair to see, and condemned my men to an ignoble fate. The august loneliness of her path went dignity to the sordid inspiration of her pilgrimage. She drove foaming to the southward as if guided by endeavor. The smiling greatness of the sea dwarfed the extent of time. The days raced one after another brilliant and quick like the flashes of a lighthouse and the nights eventful and short resembled fleeting dreams. The men had shaken into their places, and the half-hourly voice of the bells ruled their life of unceasing care. Night and day the head and shoulders of a seaman could be lost by the wheel, outlined high against sunshine or starlight, very steady above the stir of revolving spokes. The faces changed, passing in rotation. Youthful faces, bearded faces, dark faces, faces serene or faces moody, but all akin with the brotherhood of the sea, all with the same attendee of expression of eyes, carefully watching the compass or the gallstone, serious and with an old red muffler around his throat, all day long pervaded the poop. At night, many times he rose out of the darkness of the companions such as a phantom above a grave, and stood watchful and mute under the stars, his night shirt fluttering like a flag. Then, without a sound, sank down again. He was born on the shores of the Pentloth Firth. In his youth he had whalers. When he spoke of that time his restless grey eyes became still cold like the limb of ice. Afterwards he went into the East Indian trade for the sake of change. He had commended the narcissist since she was built. He loved his ship and drove her unmercifully. For his secret ambition was to make her accomplish some day a brilliantly quick passage which would be mentioned in his life. He pronounced his owner's name with his sardonic smile, spoke but seldom to his officers, and reproved errors in a gentle voice with words that cut to the quick. His hair was iron grey, his face hard, and the color of pump leather. He shaved every morning of his life, at six, but once, being caught in a fierce hurricane eighty miles southwest of Martice, he had missed days. He feared not but an unforgiving God and wished to end his days in the little house with a plot of land detached, far in the country, out of sight of the sea. He, the ruler of that minute world, seldom descended from the Olympian heights of his poop. Below him, at his feet so to speak, common mortals led their busy and insignificant lives. Along the main deck Mr. Baker grunted in a manner of bloodthirsty and innocuous, and kept all our noses to the grindstone, bane, as he once remarked, paid for doing that very thing. Men working about the deck were healthy and contented, as most seem and are, when once well out to sea. The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land, and when he sends there the messengers of his might it is not in against crime, presumption, and folly, but paternally to chasten simple hearts, ignorant hearts that know nothing of life, and beat undisturbed by envy or greed. In the evening the cleared decks had a reposeful aspect resembling the autumn of the earth. The sun was sinking to rest, wrapped in a mantle of warm clouds. Forward, on the end of the spare spars, the boats and the carpenter sat together with crossed arms, two men friendly, powerful, and deep chested. Beside them the short, dumpy sailmaker, who had been in the navy, related between the whiffs of his pipe, impossible stories about admirals. Couples tramped backwards and forwards keeping step and balance without effort in a confined space. Pigs grunted in the big pigsty. Belfast leaning thoughtfully on his elbow, above the bars, communed with them through the silence of his meditation. Fellows with shirts wide open on sun-burnt breasts sat upon the mooring beds, and all up the steps of the folksal ladders. By the foremast, a few discussed in a circle the characteristics of a gentleman. One said, It's money is, does it? Another maintained, No, it's the way they speak. Lame-nolls stumped up with an unwashed face. He had the distinction of being the dirty man of the folksal. And showing a few yellow fangs in a shrewd smile, explained craftily that he had seen some of their pants. The backsides of them, he had observed, were thinner than paper, from constant sitting down in offices, yet otherwise they looked first rate and would last for years. It was all appearance. It was, he said, bloom and easy to be a gentleman when you had a clean job for life. They disputed endlessly, obstinate and childish. They repeated in shouts and within flames faces their amazing arguments, while the soft breeze eddying down the enormous cavity of the foresail, distended above their bare heads, stirred the tumble hair with a touch passing in light like an indulgent caress. They were forgetting their toil, forgetting themselves. The cook approached to hear and stood by, beaming with the inward consciousness of his faith, like a conceded saint, unable to forget his glorious reward. Donkin, solitaire and brooding over his wrongs on the folksal head, moved closer to catch the drift of the discussion below him. He turned his shallow face to the sea, and his thin nostrils moved, sniffing as he lunged negligently by the rail. In the glow of sunset, faces shown with interest, teeth flashed, eyes sparkled. The walking couple stood still suddenly with broad grins, a man bending over a wash tub set up entranced with the soap suds flaking his wet arms. Even the three petty officers listened the leaning back comfortably propped and with their mouths. Belfast left off scratching the ear of his favorite pig, and, open mouthed, tried with eager eyes to have his say. He lifted his arms, grimacing and baffled. From a distance Charlie screamed at the ring, I know about gentlemen more than any of you I have been intimate with them. I have blackened their boots. The cook, graining his neck to hear them. Keep your mouth shut when your elders speak. You impotent young heathen you. All right, old hallelujah, I'm done," answered Charlie soothingly. At some opinion of dirty knolls delivered with an air of supernatural cunning, a ripple of laughter ran along, rose like a wave, burst with a startling roar. They stamped with both feet, they turned their shouting faces spluttering, slapped their thighs, while one or two bent double-gassed, hugging themselves with both arms like men in pain. The carpenter and boatson, without changing their attitude, shook with laughter where they sat. The sailmaker, charged with an antidote about a Commodore, looked sulky. The cook was wiping his eyes with a greasy rag, and lame knolls, astonished at his own success, stood in midst, showing a slow smile. Suddenly the face of Duncan, leaning high-shouldered over the after-rail, became grave. Something like a weak rattle was heard through the folksal door. It became a murmur, it ended with a sign grown. The washerman plunged both his hands into the tub abruptly. The cook became more crestfallen than an exposed back slider. The boatson moved his shoulders and the carpenter got up with a spring and walked away. While the sailmaker seemed mentally to give a story up and begin to puff at his pipe with somber determination. In the blackness of the doorway a pair of eyes glimmered white and big and staring. Then James Wait's head, protruding, became visible, as if suspended between the two hands that grasped a doorpost on each side of the face. A woollen nightcap cocked forward danced gaily over his left eyelid. He stepped out in a tottering stride. He looked powerful as ever, but showed a strange and affected unsteadiness in his gait. His face was perhaps a trifle thinner and his eyes appeared rather startlingly prominent. He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence. The setting sun dipped sharply as though seen before our nigger. A black mist emanated from him a subtle and dismal influence, a something cold and gloomy that floated out and settled on all the faces like a morning veil. The circle broke up. The joy of laughter died on stiffened lips. There was not a smile left among all the ship's company. Not a word was spoken. Many turned their backs, trying to look unconcerned. Others had, sent half-relectant glances out of the corners of their eyes. They resembled criminals, conscious of misdeeds more than honest men distracted by doubt. Only two or three stared frankly but stupidly with lips slightly open. All expected James wait to say something, and at the same time had the error of knowing beforehand what he would say. He leaned his back against the doorpost, and with heavy eyes swept over them a glance domineering and pained like a sick tyrant over-awing a crowd of abject but untrustworthy slaves. No one went away. They waited in fascinated dread. He said, ironically, with gasps between the words, Thank you, chaps. You are nice and quiet. You are. Yelling so far the door. He made a longer pause during which he worked his ribs in an exaggerated labor of breathing. He was intolerable. Feet were shuffled. Belfast let out a groan, but Duncan above blinked as red eyelids with invisible eyelashes and smiled bitterly over the nigger's head. The nigger went on again with surprising ease. He gasped no more, and his voice rang hollow and loud, as though he had been talking in an empty cavern. He was contemptuously angry. I tried to get a wink of sleep. You know I can't sleep at nights, and you come jabbering near the door here like a blooming lot of old women. You think yourselves good shipmates, do you? Much you care for a dying man. Belfast spun away from the pigsty. Jimmy, he cried tremulously, if you hadn't been sick I would. He stopped. The nigger waited a while, then said in a gloomy tone, you would? What? Go and fight another one such as yourself. Leave me alone. It won't be for long. I'll soon die. It's coming, right enough. Men stood around very still and with exasperated eyes. It was just what they had expected and hated to hear. The idea of a stocking death thrusteth him many times today like a boast and like a menace by this obnoxious nigger. He seemed to take a pride in that death which so far had attended only upon the ease of his life. He was overbearing about it as if no one in the world had ever been intimate with such a companion. He paraded it unceasingly before us with an affectionate persistence that made its presence and at the same time incredible. No man could be suspected of such monstrous friendship. Was he a reality or was he a sham? This ever-expected visitor of Jimmy's. We hesitated between pity and mistrust while, on the slightest provocation, he shook before our eyes the bones of his bothersome and infamous skeleton. He was forever trotting him out. He would talk of that coming death as though it had been already there as if it had been walking the deck outside as if it would presently come in to sleep in the only empty bunk as if it had sat by his side at every meal. It interfered daily with our occupations, with our leisure, with our amusements. We had no songs and no music in the evening because Jimmy, we all livingly called him Jimmy to conceal his accomplice, had managed, with that perspective decease of his, to disturb even Archie's mental balance. Archie was the owner of the Constantina, but after a couple of stinging lectures from Jimmy he refused to play any more. He said, Yon's an uncounted joker. I did not ken what's wrong with him, but there's something very wrong, very wrong. It's no matter of use asking Jimmy, I won't play. Our singers became mute because Jimmy was a dying man. For the same reason, no chap as Noel's remarked, could drive in a nail to hang his few poor rags upon, without being made aware of the enormity he committed in disturbing Jimmy's interminable last moments. At night, instead of the cheerful yell, one bell turn out, do you hear there? Hey, hey, hey, show leg! The watchers were called man by man and whispers, so as not to interfere with Jimmy's possibly last slumber on earth. True, he was always awake and managed as we sneaked out on deck to plant in our back some cutting remark that, for the moment, made us feel as if we had been brutes, and afterwards made us suspect ourselves of being fools. We spoke in low tones within folksle as though it had been a church. We ate our meals in silence and dread. For Jimmy was capricious with his food and reeled bitterly at the salt meat, at the biscuits, at the tea, as at articles unfit for human consumption, let alone for a dying man. He would say, can't you find a better slice of meat for a sick man who's trying to get home to be cured or buried? But there, you fellows would do away with it. You would poison me. Look at what you have given me. We served him in his bed with rage and humility, as though we had been the base cardeers of a hated prince, and he rewarded it as by his unconciliating criticism. He had found the secret of keeping forever on the run the fundamental imbecility of mankind. He had the secret of life that count founded himself master of every moment of our existence. We grew desperate and remained submissive. Emotional little Belfast was forever on the verge of assault or on the verge of tears. One evening he confided to Archie, for off-bending I would knock his ugly black head off, this gulking dodger, and straightforward Archie pretended to be shocked. Such was the infernal spell when Kett's nigger had cast upon our guileless manhood. But the same night Belfast stole from the golly the officer's Sunday fruit pie to tempt the fastidious appetite of Jimmy. He endangered not only his long friendship with the cook, but also, as it appeared, his eternal welfare. The cook was overwhelmed with grief. He did not know the culprit, but he knew that wickedness flourished. He knew that Satan was against those men who he looked upon as in some way under a spiritual care. Whenever he saw three or four of us standing together he would leave his stove to run out and preach. We fled from him, and only Charlie, who knew the thief, affronted the cook with a candid gaze which irritated the good man. It's you, I believe, he grown sorrowful, and with a patch of soot on his chin. It's you. You are a brand for the burning. No more of your socks in my golly. Soon, unofficially, the information was spread about that should there be another case of stealing, our marmalade and extra allowance, half a pound per man, would be stopped. Mr. Baker ceased to heap jocular abuse upon his favorites and grunted suspiciously at all. The captain's cold eyes, high up on the poop, glittered mistrustful as he surveyed his trooping in a small mob from Halyard's Debraces for the usual evening pull at all the ropes. Such stealing in a merchant's ship is difficult to check, and may be taken as a declaration by men of their dislike for their officers. It is a bad symptom. It may end in God knows what trouble. The narcissist was still a peaceful ship, but mutual confidence was shaken. Duncan chose delight. We were dismayed. CHAPTER II PART II Then illogical Belfast reproached our nigger with great fury. James Waite, with his elbow on the pillow choked, gasped out. Did I ask you to bone the dreaded thing? Blow your blamed pie. It has made me worse. You little Irish lunatic you. Belfast with scarlet face and trembling lips made a dash at him. Every man in the folk so rose with a shout. There was a moment of wild tumult. Someone shrieked piercingly. Easy Belfast, easy. We expected Belfast to strangle Waite without more ado. Dust flew. We heard through it the niggers cough metallic and explosive like a gong. Next moment we saw Belfast hanging over him. He was saying plaintively, Don't don't Jimmy. Don't be like that. An angel couldn't put up with he, sick as you are. He looked round at us from Jimmy's bedside his comical mouth twitching tearful eyes. Then he tried to put straight the disarranged blankets. The unceasing whisper of the sea filled the folk soul. Was James Waite frightened, or touched, or repentant? He lay on his back with a hand to his side and as motionless as if his expected visitor had come at last. Belfast fumbled about his feet repeating with emotion. Yes, we know he are bad but just say what he want done and we all know he are bad. Very bad. No. Decidedly James Waite was not touched or repentant. Truth to say he seemed rather startled. He sat up with incredible suddenness and ease. Ah, you think I am bad, do you? He said gloomily in his clearest baritone voice to hear him speak sometimes you would never think there was that man. Do you? Well, act accordingly. Some of you haven't sense enough to put a blanket ship-shape over a sick man. There, leave it alone. I can die anyhow. Belfast turned away limply with a gesture of discouragement. In the silence of the folk soul full of interested men, Duncan pronounced distinctly. Well, I am blowed and sniggered. Waite looked at him. In a quite friendly manner. Nobody could tell what would please our incomprehensible invalid, but for us the scorn of that snigger was hard to bear. Duncan's position in the folk soul was distinguished but unsafe. He stood on the bad eminence of a general dislike. He was left alone and in his isolation he could do nothing but think of the gales of the Cape of Good Hope and envy us the possession of wine and water-proofs. Our sea-boots, our oil-skin coats, our well-filled sea-chests worked to him so many causes for bitter meditation. He had none of those things, and he felt instinctively that no man when the need arose would offer to share them with him. He was impudently cringing to us and systematically insulin to the officers. He anticipated the best results for himself from such a line of conduct and was mistaken. Such natures forget that under extreme provocation men will be just whether they want to be so or not. Duncan's insolence to long suffering Mr. Baker became at last intolerable to us and we rejoiced when the mate one dark night tamed him for good. It was done neatly with great decency and decorum and with little noise. We had been called, just before midnight, to trim the yards and Duncan, as usual, made insulting remarks. We stood sleepily in a row with a forebrace in our hands waiting for the next order and heard in the darkness this gruffly trampling of feet an exclamation of surprise, sounds of cuffs and slaps suppressed hissing whispers. Ah, will you! Don't! Don't! Then behave! Oh! Oh! Afterwards there were soft thuds mixed with the rattle of iron thins as if a man's body had been tumbling helplessly among the main pump rods. Before we could realize the situation Mr. Baker's voice was heard very near and a little impatient. All the way, men, lay back on that rope and we did lay back on the rope with great alacrity, as if nothing had happened the chief mate went on trimming the yards with his usual and exasperating fastidiousness. We didn't at the time see anything of Duncan and did not care. Had the chief officer thrown an overboard, no man would have said so much as, hallo, he's gone! But in truth no great harm was done even if Duncan did lose one of his front teeth. We did this in the morning and preserved a ceremonious silence. The etiquette of the folks who commanded us to be blind and dumb in such a case and we cherished the decencies of our life more than ordinary landsmen respect theirs. Charlie, with unpardonable want of Sevoire of Beirve, yelled out, have you been to your dentist? Hurt ye, didn't it? He got a box on the ear the boy was surprised and remained plunged in grief for at least three hours. We were sorry for him but youth requires even more discipline than age. Duncan grinned vehemently. From that day he became pitiless told Jimmy that he was a black fraud hinted to us that we were an imbecile lot daily taken in by a vulgar nigger and Jimmy seemed to like the fellow. Singleton lived untouched by human emotions. To ascertain an unsmiling he breathed amongst us in that alone resembling the rest of the crowd. We were trying to be decent chaps and found it jolly difficult. We oscillated between the desires of virtue and the fear of ridicule. We wished to save ourselves from the pain of remorse but did not want to be made the contemptible dupes of our sentiment. As in pure breath undreamt of subtleties into our hearts we were disturbed and cowardly that we knew. Singleton seemed to know nothing understand nothing. We had thought him till then as wise as he looked but now we dared at times suspect him of being stupid from old age. One day however at dinner as we sat on our boxes round a tin dish that stood low of our feet. Jimmy expressed his general disgust with men and things in words that were particularly disgusting. Singleton lifted his head. We became mute. The old man addressing Jimmy asked, Are you dying? Thus interrogated James Waite appeared horribly startled and confused. We all were startled. Mouths remained open, a drop tin fork rattled in the dish. A man rose as if to go out and stood still. In less than a minute Jimmy pulled himself together. Why, can't you see I am? He answered shakily. Singleton lifted a piece of soaked biscuit. His teeth, he declared, had no edge on them now. To his lips. Well, get on with you dying he said with venerable mildness. Don't raise a blamed fuss with us over that job. We can't help you. Jimmy fell back on his bunk and for a long time lay very still wiping the perspiration off his chin. The dinner tins were put away quickly. On deck we discussed the incident and whispers. Some showed a chuckling exultation. Many looked grave. Momevo, after long periods of stirring dreaminess, gave smiles, and one of the young Scandinavians much tormented by doubt ventured in the second dog-watch to approach Singleton. The old man did not encourage as much to speak to him and asked sheepishly. You think he will die? Singleton looked up. Why, of course he will die, he said deliberately. This seemed decisive. It was promptly imparted that he would die, and eager he would step up and with averted gaze recite his formula. Old Singleton says he will die. It was a relief. At last we knew that our compassion would not be misplaced and we could again smile without misgivings. But we reckoned without Duncan. Duncan didn't want to have no truck with them dirty foreigners. He answered him by a spiteful, and so will you, you fat-headed Dutchman, wish you Dutchmen were all dead, instead come and take our money and enter your starving country. We were appalled. We perceived that after all Singleton's answer met nothing. We began to hate him for making fun of us. All our certitudes were going. We were on doubtful terms with our officers. At last we had overheard the Bosun's opinion that we were a crowd of softies. We suspected Jimmy, one another, and even our very selves. We did not know what to do. At every insignificant turn of our humble life we met Jimmy overbearing and blocking away, arm-in-arm with his awful and veiled familiar. It was a weird servitude. It was deathly like any other great misfortune. Everyone had remarked that Jimmy from the first was very slack at his work, but we thought it simply the outcome of his philosophy of life. Duncan said, you put no more weight on a rope than a bloody sparer. He disdained him. Belfast, ready for a fight, exclaimed provokingly, you don't kill yourself, old man. He was tired. One morning, as we were washing decks, Mr. Baker called to him. Bring your broom over here, wait. He strolled languidly. Move yourself! Grunted Mr. Baker, what's the matter with your hind legs? He stopped dead short. He gazed slowly with eyes that bulged out with an expression audacious and sad. It isn't my legs, he said. It's my lungs. Everybody listened. What's wrong with them, inquired Mr. Baker. All the watch stood around on the wet deck, grinning and with brooms or buckets in their hands. He said mournfully, going or gone. Can't you see I'm a dying man? I know it. Mr. Baker was disgusted. Then why the devil did you ship aboard here? I must live till I die, the grins became audible. Go off my deck. Get out of my sight, said Mr. Baker. He was nonplussed. It was a unique experience. James Waite, obedient, dropped his broom and walked slowly forward. A burst of laughter followed him. It was too funny. All hands laughed. They laughed. Alas! He became the tormentor worse than a nightmare. You couldn't see that there was anything wrong with him. A nigger does not show. He was not very fat, certainly, but then he was no leaner than other niggers we had known. He coughed often, but the most prejudiced person could perceive that mostly. He coughed when it suited his purpose. He wouldn't or couldn't do his work and he wouldn't lie up. One day he would with the best of them and next time we would be obliged to risk our lives to get his limp body down. He was reported, he was examined, he was remonstrated with threatened, cajoled, lectured. He was called into the cabin to enter for you, the captain. There were wild rumors. It was said he had cheeked the old man. It was said he had frightened him. Charlie maintained that the skipper, weeping, was in him as blessings and a potted jam. Knowles had it from the steward that the unspeakable Jimmy had been reeling against the cabin furniture, that he had groaned, that he had complained of general brutality and disbelief, and had ended by coughing all over the old man's meteorological journals, which were then spread on the table. At any rate weight returned forward supported by the steward, who, in a pained and shocked voice untreated us. Here, catch hold of him, one of you. He is to lie up. Jimmy drank a tin mug full of coffee and, after bullying, first one and then another went to bed. He remained there most of the time, but when it suited him would come on deck and appear amongst us. He was scornful and brooding. He looked ahead upon the sea, and no one could tell what was the meaning of that black man sitting apart in a meditative attitude and as motionless as a carving. He refused steadily all medicine. He threw sego and cornflour overboard until the steward got tired of bringing it to him. He asked for paragory. They sent him a big bottle enough to poison a wilderness of babies. He kept it between his mattress and the deal-lining of the ship's side, and no one ever saw him take a dose. Duncan abused him to his face, jeered at him while he gave him gasp, and the same day weight would lend him a warm jersey. Once Duncan reviled him for half an hour, reproached him with the extra work his millingering gave to the watch, and ended by calling him a black-faced swine. Under the spell of our accursed perversity we were horrors struck, but Jimmy positively seemed to revel in that abuse. It made him look cheerful, like a pair of old sea-boots thrown at him. Here, you east-and-trash, boomed-weight, you may have that. At last Mr. Baker had to tell the captain that James Waite was disturbing the peace of the ship. Knocked discipline on the head, he will, ah, grunted Mr. Baker. As a matter of fact the starboard watch came as near as possible to refusing duty to the vessel. It appears Jimmy objected to a wet floor, and that morning we were in a compassionate mood. We thought the bosom of brute and practically told him so. Only Mr. Baker's delicate tact prevented an all-fired row. He refused to take us seriously. He came bustling forward and called us many unpolite names, but in such a hearty and seamen-like manner that we began to feel ashamed in truth we thought him much too good a sailor to annoy him willingly, and after all Jimmy might have been a fraud. Probably was. The folks all got a clean-up that morning, but in the afternoon a sick bay was fitted up in the deck-house. It was a nice little cabin opening on deck and with two berths. Jimmy's belongings were transported there, and then notwithstanding his protests, Jimmy himself. He said he couldn't walk. Four men carried him on a blanket. He complained that he would have to die there alone, like a dog. We grieved for him and were delighted to have him removed from the folk-soul. We attended him as before. The galley was next door in the cook licked in many times a day. Wait became a little more cheerful. Knowles affirmed having heard him laugh to himself in peels one day. Others had seen him walking about on deck at night. His little place with the door ajar on a long hook was always full of tobacco smoke. We spoke through the crack cheerfully, sometimes abusively, as we passed by, intent on our work. He fascinated us. He would never let doubt die. He overshadowed the ship. In vulnerable in his promise of speedy corruption he trampled on our self-respect. Finally our want of moral courage he tainted our lives. Had we been a miserable gang of wretched immortals unholy to like by hope and fear he could not have lorded it over us with a more pitiless assertion of his sublime privilege.