Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.
They wont know how to begin. I always thought the station
on this river useless, and they just fit the station!
They will form themselves there, said the old stager with a quiet
smile.
At any rate, I am rid of them for six months, retorted the director.
The two men watched the steamer round the bend, then, ascending arm in
arm the slope of the bank, returned to the station. They had been in
this vast and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always
in the midst of other white men, under the eye and guidance of their
superiors. And now, dull as they were to the subtle influences of
surroundings, they felt themselves very much alone, when suddenly left
unassisted to face the wilderness; a wilderness rendered more strange,
more incomprehensible by the mysterious glimpses of the vigorous life
it contained. They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable
individuals, whose existence is only rendered possible through the high
organization of civilized crowds. Few men realize that their life,
the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their
audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of
their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the
emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought
belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that
believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and
of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But
the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and
primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. To the
sentiment of being alone of ones kind, to the clear perception of the
loneliness of ones thoughts, of ones sensations--to the negation
of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of
the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague,
uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the
imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise
alike.
Kayerts and Carlier walked arm in arm, drawing close to one another
as children do in the dark; and they had the same, not altogether
unpleasant, sense of danger which one half suspects to be imaginary.
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.
It must strenuously aspire to the
plasticity of sculpture, to the colour 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 colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be
brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface
of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless
usage.
The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on
that road as his 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 fulness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand
specifically to be edified, consoled, 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 deserts: 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 colour, its form; and through its movement, its form,
and its colour, reveal the substance of its truth--disclose 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 attain 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 in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in
hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind
to the visible world.
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.
The last star, blurred,
enlarged, as if returning to the fiery mist of its beginning, struggled
with the colossal depth of blackness hanging over the ship--and went
out.
“Now for it!” muttered Captain MacWhirr. “Mr. Jukes.”
“Here, sir.”
The two men were growing indistinct to each other.
“We must trust her to go through it and come out on the other side.
That's plain and straight. There's no room for Captain Wilson's
storm-strategy here.”
“No, sir.”
“She will be smothered and swept again for hours,” mumbled the Captain.
“There's not much left by this time above deck for the sea to take
away--unless you or me.”
“Both, sir,” whispered Jukes, breathlessly.
“You are always meeting trouble half way, Jukes,” Captain MacWhirr
remonstrated quaintly. “Though it's a fact that the second mate is no
good. D'ye hear, Mr. Jukes? You would be left alone if. . . .”
Captain MacWhirr interrupted himself, and Jukes, glancing on all sides,
remained silent.
“Don't you be put out by anything,” the Captain continued, mumbling
rather fast. “Keep her facing it. They may say what they like, but the
heaviest seas run with the wind. Facing it--always facing it--that's the
way to get through. You are a young sailor. Face it. That's enough for
any man. Keep a cool head.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jukes, with a flutter of the heart.
In the next few seconds the Captain spoke to the engine-room and got an
answer.
For some reason Jukes experienced an access of confidence, a sensation
that came from outside like a warm breath, and made him feel equal to
every demand. The distant muttering of the darkness stole into his ears.
He noted it unmoved, out of that sudden belief in himself, as a man safe
in a shirt of mail would watch a point.
The ship laboured without intermission amongst the black hills of water,
paying with this hard tumbling the price of her life. She rumbled in
her depths, shaking a white plummet of steam into the night, and
Jukes' thought skimmed like a bird through the engine-room, where Mr.
Rout--good man--was ready. When the rumbling ceased it seemed to him
that there was a pause of every sound, a dead pause in which Captain
MacWhirr's voice rang out startlingly.
By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick.
Anyway, it could not be found there and as
it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me
what he was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. However,
they were all waiting—all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them—for
something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation,
from the way they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them
was disease—as far as I could see. They beguiled the time by
back-biting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way.
There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of
it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else—as the philanthropic
pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as
their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed
to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn
percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on
that account—but as to effectually lifting a little finger—oh, no. By
heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to
steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse
straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there
is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable
of saints into a kick.
“I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there
it suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something—in
fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was
supposed to know there—putting leading questions as to my acquaintances
in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica
discs—with curiosity—though he tried to keep up a bit of
superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became
awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn’t
possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was
very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was
full only of chills, and my head had nothing in it but that wretched
steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless
prevaricator. At last he got angry, and, to conceal a movement of
furious annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in
oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded,
carrying a lighted torch.
All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.
The mother, with her feet
propped up on a stool, seemed to be trying to get to the bottom of that
answer, whose feminine profundity had struck her all of a heap. She had
never really understood why Winnie had married Mr Verloc. It was very
sensible of her, and evidently had turned out for the best, but her girl
might have naturally hoped to find somebody of a more suitable age.
There had been a steady young fellow, only son of a butcher in the next
street, helping his father in business, with whom Winnie had been walking
out with obvious gusto. He was dependent on his father, it is true; but
the business was good, and his prospects excellent. He took her girl to
the theatre on several evenings. Then just as she began to dread to hear
of their engagement (for what could she have done with that big house
alone, with Stevie on her hands), that romance came to an abrupt end, and
Winnie went about looking very dull. But Mr Verloc, turning up
providentially to occupy the first-floor front bedroom, there had been no
more question of the young butcher. It was clearly providential.
CHAPTER III
“ . . . All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take
away its character of complexity—it is to destroy it. Leave that to the
moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in
their heads. The ideas that are born in their consciousness play an
insignificant part in the march of events. History is dominated and
determined by the tool and the production—by the force of economic
conditions. Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by the
capitalism for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism.
No one can tell what form the social organisation may take in the future.
Then why indulge in prophetic phantasies? At best they can only
interpret the mind of the prophet, and can have no objective value.
Leave that pastime to the moralists, my boy.”
Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle, was speaking in an even voice, a
voice that wheezed as if deadened and oppressed by the layer of fat on
his chest. He had come out of a highly hygienic prison round like a tub,
with an enormous stomach and distended cheeks of a pale, semi-transparent
complexion, as though for fifteen years the servants of an outraged
society had made a point of stuffing him with fattening foods in a damp
and lightless cellar.
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort /to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires /and expires, too soon, too soon /before life itself
Next day I
sat steering my cockle-shell--my first command--with nothing but water
and sky around me. I did sight in the afternoon the upper sails of a
ship far away, but said nothing, and my men did not notice her. You see
I was afraid she might be homeward bound, and I had no mind to turn back
from the portals of the East. I was steering for Java--another blessed
name--like Bankok, you know. I steered many days.
“I need not tell you what it is to be knocking about in an open boat. I
remember nights and days of calm when we pulled, we pulled, and the
boat seemed to stand still, as if bewitched within the circle of the sea
horizon. I remember the heat, the deluge of rain-squalls that kept us
baling for dear life (but filled our water-cask), and I remember sixteen
hours on end with a mouth dry as a cinder and a steering-oar over the
stern to keep my first command head on to a breaking sea. I did not know
how good a man I was till then. I remember the drawn faces, the dejected
figures of my two men, and I remember my youth and the feeling that
will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last for ever,
outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that
lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort--to death; the
triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of
dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold,
grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon--before life itself.
“And this is how I see the East. I have seen its secret places and have
looked into its very soul; but now I see it always from a small boat, a
high outline of mountains, blue and afar in the morning; like faint mist
at noon; a jagged wall of purple at sunset. I have the feel of the oar
in my hand, the vision of a scorching blue sea in my eyes. And I see a
bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished like ice, shimmering in
the dark. A red light burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and
the night is soft and warm. We drag at the oars with aching arms, and
suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange
odors of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night--the
first sigh of the East on my face. That I can never forget. It was
impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of
mysterious delight.
“We had been pulling this finishing spell for eleven hours. Two pulled,
and he whose turn it was to rest sat at the tiller.
One must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad.
Twenty-one days from Bangkok?"
"Is this all you've heard?" I said. "You must come to tiffin with me. I
want you to know exactly what you have let me in for."
He hesitated for almost a minute.
"Well--I will," he said condescendingly at last.
We turned into the hotel. I found to my surprise that I could eat quite
a lot. Then over the cleared table-cloth I unfolded to Captain Giles
the history of these twenty days in all its professional and emotional
aspects, while he smoked patiently the big cigar I had given him.
Then he observed sagely:
"You must feel jolly well tired by this time."
"No," I said. "Not tired. But I'll tell you, Captain Giles, how I feel.
I feel old. And I must be. All of you on shore look to me just a lot of
skittish youngsters that have never known a care in the world."
He didn't smile. He looked insufferably exemplary. He declared:
"That will pass. But you do look older--it's a fact."
"Aha!" I said.
"No! No! The truth is that one must not make too much of anything in
life, good or bad."
"Live at half-speed," I murmured perversely. "Not everybody can do
that."
"You'll be glad enough presently if you can keep going even at that
rate," he retorted with his air of conscious virtue. "And there's
another thing: a man should stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes,
to his conscience and all that sort of thing. Why--what else would you
have to fight against."
I kept silent. I don't know what he saw in my face but he asked
abruptly:
"Why--you aren't faint-hearted?"
"God only knows, Captain Giles," was my sincere answer.
"That's all right," he said calmly. "You will learn soon how not to be
faint-hearted. A man has got to learn everything--and that's what so
many of them youngsters don't understand."
"Well, I am no longer a youngster."
"No," he conceded. "Are you leaving soon?"
"I am going on board directly," I said. "I shall pick up one of my
anchors and heave in to half-cable on the other directly my new crew
comes on board and I shall be off at daylight to-morrow!
“Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.”
“A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.”
“How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?”
“It is respectable to have no illusions - and safe - and profitable, and dull”
“You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.”
“I dont like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.”
“God is for men and religion is for women”
“Its extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps its just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.”
“I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go.”
“This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still...”
“The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind”
“It is respectable to have illusions - and safe - and profitable, and dull”
