Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (best ebook reader for chromebook .txt) 📕

“He did not flinch, and went on with heat, ‘Forget everything, everybody, everybody.’⁠ ⁠… His voice fell.⁠ ⁠… ‘But you,’ he added.

“ ‘Yes⁠—me too⁠—if it would help,’ I said, also in a low tone. After this we remained silent and languid for a time as if exhausted. Then he began again, composedly, and told me that Mr. Stein had instructed him to wait for a month or so, to see whether it was possible for him to remain, before he began building a new house for himself, so as to avoid ‘vain expense.’ He did make use of funny expressions⁠—Stein did. ‘Vain expense’ was good.⁠ ⁠… Remain? Why! of course. He would hang on. Let him only get in⁠—that’s all; he would answer for it he would remain. Never get out. It was easy enough to remain.

“ ‘Don’t be foolhardy,’ I said, rendered uneasy by his threatening tone. ‘If you only live long enough you will want to come back.’

“ ‘Come back to what?’ he asked absently, with his eyes fixed upon the face of a clock on the wall.

“I was silent for a while. ‘Is it to be never, then?’ I said. ‘Never,’ he repeated dreamily without looking at me, and then flew into sudden activity. ‘Jove! Two o’clock, and I sail at four!’

“It was true. A brigantine of Stein’s was leaving for the westward that afternoon, and he had been instructed to take his passage in her, only no orders to delay the sailing had been given. I suppose Stein forgot. He made a rush to get his things while I went aboard my ship, where he promised to call on his way to the outer roadster. He turned up accordingly in a great hurry and with a small leather valise in his hand. This wouldn’t do, and I offered him an old tin trunk of mine supposed to be watertight, or at least damp-tight. He effected the transfer by the simple process of shooting out the contents of his valise as you would empty a sack of wheat. I saw three books in the tumble; two small, in dark covers, and a thick green-and-gold volume⁠—a half-crown complete Shakespeare. ‘You read this?’ I asked. ‘Yes. Best thing to cheer up a fellow,’ he said hastily. I was struck by this appreciation, but there was no time for Shakespearian talk. A heavy revolver and two small boxes of cartridges were lying on the cuddy-table. ‘Pray take this,’ I said. ‘It may help you to remain.’ No sooner were these words out of my mouth than I perceived what grim meaning they could bear. ‘May help you to get in,’ I corrected myself remorsefully. He however was not troubled by obscure meanings; he thanked me effusively and bolted out, calling Goodbye over his shoulder. I heard his voice through the ship’s side urging his boatmen to give way, and looking out of the stern-port I saw the boat rounding under the counter. He sat in her leaning forward, exciting his men with voice and gestures; and as he had kept the revolver in his hand and seemed to be presenting it at their heads, I shall never forget the scared faces of the four Javanese, and the frantic swing of their stroke which snatched that vision from under my eyes. Then turning away, the first thing I saw were the two boxes of cartridges on the cuddy-table. He had forgotten to take them.

“I ordered my gig manned at once; but Jim’s rowers, under the impression that their lives hung on a thread while they had that madman in the boat, made such excellent time that before I had traversed half the distance between the two vessels I caught sight of him clambering over the rail, and of his box being passed up. All the brigantine’s canvas was loose, her mainsail was set, and the windlass was just beginning to clink as I stepped upon her deck: her master, a dapper little half-caste of forty or so, in a blue flannel suit, with lively eyes, his round face the colour of lemon-peel, and with a thin little black moustache drooping on each side of his thick, dark lips, came forward smirking. He turned out, notwithstanding his self-satisfied and cheery exterior, to be of a careworn temperament. In answer to a remark of mine (while Jim had gone below for a moment) he said, ‘Oh yes. Patusan.’ He was going to carry the gentleman to the mouth of the river, but would ‘never ascend.’ His flowing English seemed to be derived from a dictionary compiled by a lunatic. Had Mr. Stein desired him to ‘ascend,’ he would have ‘reverentially’⁠—(I think he wanted to say respectfully⁠—but devil only knows)⁠—‘reverentially made objects for the safety of properties.’ If disregarded, he would have presented ‘resignation to quit.’ Twelve months ago he had made his last voyage there, and though Mr. Cornelius ‘propitiated many offertories’ to Mr. Rajah Allang and the ‘principal populations,’ on conditions which made the trade ‘a snare and ashes in the mouth,’ yet his ship had been fired upon from the woods by ‘irresponsive parties’ all the way down the river; which causing his crew ‘from exposure to limb to remain silent in hidings,’ the brigantine was nearly stranded on a sandbank at the bar, where she ‘would have been perishable beyond the act of man.’ The angry disgust at the recollection, the pride of his fluency, to which he turned an attentive ear, struggled for the possession of his broad simple face. He scowled and beamed at me, and watched with satisfaction the undeniable effect of his phraseology. Dark frowns ran swiftly over the placid sea, and the brigantine, with her fore-topsail to the mast and her main-boom amidships, seemed bewildered amongst the cat’s-paws. He told me further, gnashing his teeth, that the Rajah was a ‘laughable hyaena’ (can’t imagine how he got hold of hyaenas); while somebody else was many times falser than the ‘weapons of a crocodile.’ Keeping one eye