Youth, a Narrative Part 1

Youth.

by Joseph Conrad.

This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak--the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amus.e.m.e.nt, of travel, or of bread-winning.

We were sitting round a mahogany table that reflected the bottle, the claret-gla.s.ses, and our faces as we leaned on our elbows. There was a director of companies, an accountant, a lawyer, Marlow, and myself. The director had been a _Conway_ boy, the accountant had served four years at sea, the lawyer--a fine crusted Tory, High Churchman, the best of old fellows, the soul of honour--had been chief officer in the P. & O.

service in the good old days when mail-boats were square-rigged at least on two masts, and used to come down the China Sea before a fair monsoon with stun'-sails set alow and aloft. We all began life in the merchant service. Between the five of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellows.h.i.+p of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm for yachting, cruising, and so on can give, since one is only the amus.e.m.e.nt of life and the other is life itself.

Marlow (at least I think that is how he spelt his name) told the story, or rather the chronicle, of a voyage:

"Yes, I have seen a little of the Eastern seas; but what I remember best is my first voyage there. You fellows know there are those voyages that seem ordered for the ill.u.s.tration of life, that might stand for a symbol of existence. You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish something--and you can't. Not from any fault of yours. You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little--not a thing in the world--not even marry an old maid, or get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of destination.

"It was altogether a memorable affair. It was my first voyage to the East, and my first voyage as second mate; it was also my skipper's first command. You'll admit it was time. He was sixty if a day; a little man, with a broad, not very straight back, with bowed shoulders and one leg more bandy than the other, he had that queer twisted-about appearance you see so often in men who work in the fields. He had a nut-cracker face--chin and nose trying to come together over a sunken mouth--and it was framed in iron-grey fluffy hair, that looked like a chin strap of cotton-wool sprinkled with coal-dust. And he had blue eyes in that old face of his, which were amazingly like a boy's, with that candid expression some quite common men preserve to the end of their days by a rare internal gift of simplicity of heart and rect.i.tude of soul.

What induced him to accept me was a wonder. I had come out of a crack Australian clipper, where I had been third officer, and he seemed to have a prejudice against crack clippers as aristocratic and high-toned.

He said to me, 'You know, in this s.h.i.+p you will have to work.' I said I had to work in every s.h.i.+p I had ever been in. 'Ah, but this is different, and you gentlemen out of them big s.h.i.+ps;... but there! I dare say you will do. Join to-morrow.'

"I joined to-morrow. It was twenty-two years ago; and I was just twenty.

How time pa.s.ses! It was one of the happiest days of my life. Fancy!

Second mate for the first time--a really responsible officer! I wouldn't have thrown up my new billet for a fortune. The mate looked me over carefully. He was also an old chap, but of another stamp. He had a Roman nose, a snow-white, long beard, and his name was Mahon, but he insisted that it should be p.r.o.nounced Mann. He was well connected; yet there was something wrong with his luck, and he had never got on.

"As to the captain, he had been for years in coasters, then in the Mediterranean, and last in the West Indian trade. He had never been round the Capes. He could just write a kind of sketchy hand, and didn't care for writing at all. Both were thorough good seamen of course, and between those two old chaps I felt like a small boy between two grandfathers.

"The s.h.i.+p also was old. Her name was the _Judea_. Queer name, isn't it?

She belonged to a man Wilmer, Wilc.o.x--some name like that; but he has been bankrupt and dead these twenty years or more, and his name don't matter. She had been laid up in Shadwell basin for ever so long. You may imagine her state. She was all rust, dust, grime--soot aloft, dirt on deck. To me it was like coming out of a palace into a ruined cottage.

She was about 400 tons, had a primitive windla.s.s, wooden latches to the doors, not a bit of bra.s.s about her, and a big square stern. There was on it, below her name in big letters, a lot of scroll work, with the gilt off, and some sort of a coat of arms, with the motto 'Do or Die'

underneath. I remember it took my fancy immensely. There was a touch of romance in it, something that made me love the old thing--something that appealed to my youth!

"We left London in ballast--sand ballast--to load a cargo of coal in a northern port for Bankok. Bankok! I thrilled. I had been six years at sea, but had only seen Melbourne and Sydney, very good places, charming places in their way--but Bankok!

"We worked out of the Thames under canvas, with a North Sea pilot on board. His name was Jermyn, and he dodged all day long about the galley drying his handkerchief before the stove. Apparently he never slept.

He was a dismal man, with a perpetual tear sparkling at the end of his nose, who either had been in trouble, or was in trouble, or expected to be in trouble--couldn't be happy unless something went wrong. He mistrusted my youth, my common-sense, and my seamans.h.i.+p, and made a point of showing it in a hundred little ways. I dare say he was right.

It seems to me I knew very little then, and I know not much more now; but I cherish a hate for that Jermyn to this day.

"We were a week working up as far as Yarmouth Roads, and then we got into a gale--the famous October gale of twenty-two years ago. It was wind, lightning, sleet, snow, and a terrific sea. We were flying light, and you may imagine how bad it was when I tell you we had smashed bulwarks and a flooded deck. On the second night she s.h.i.+fted her ballast into the lee bow, and by that time we had been blown off somewhere on the Dogger Bank. There was nothing for it but go below with shovels and try to right her, and there we were in that vast hold, gloomy like a cavern, the tallow dips stuck and flickering on the beams, the gale howling above, the s.h.i.+p tossing about like mad on her side; there we all were, Jermyn, the captain, everyone, hardly able to keep our feet, engaged on that gravedigger's work, and trying to toss shovelfuls of wet sand up to windward. At every tumble of the s.h.i.+p you could see vaguely in the dim light men falling down with a great flourish of shovels.

One of the s.h.i.+p's boys (we had two), impressed by the weirdness of the scene, wept as if his heart would break. We could hear him blubbering somewhere in the shadows.

"On the third day the gale died out, and by-and-by a north-country tug picked us up. We took sixteen days in all to get from London to the Tyne! When we got into dock we had lost our turn for loading, and they hauled us off to a tier where we remained for a month. Mrs. Beard (the captain's name was Beard) came from Colchester to see the old man. She lived on board. The crew of runners had left, and there remained only the officers, one boy, and the steward, a mulatto who answered to the name of Abraham. Mrs. Beard was an old woman, with a face all wrinkled and ruddy like a winter apple, and the figure of a young girl. She caught sight of me once, sewing on a b.u.t.ton, and insisted on having my s.h.i.+rts to repair. This was something different from the captains' wives I had known on board crack clippers. When I brought her the s.h.i.+rts, she said: 'And the socks? They want mending, I am sure, and John's--Captain Beard's--things are all in order now. I would be glad of something to do.' Bless the old woman! She overhauled my outfit for me, and meantime I read for the first time _Sartor Resartus_ and Burnaby's _Ride to Khiva_. I didn't understand much of the first then; but I remember I preferred the soldier to the philosopher at the time; a preference which life has only confirmed. One was a man, and the other was either more--or less. However, they are both dead, and Mrs. Beard is dead, and youth, strength, genius, thoughts, achievements, simple hearts--all dies .... No matter.

"They loaded us at last. We s.h.i.+pped a crew. Eight able seamen and two boys. We hauled off one evening to the buoys at the dock-gates, ready to go out, and with a fair prospect of beginning the voyage next day. Mrs.

Beard was to start for home by a late train. When the s.h.i.+p was fast we went to tea. We sat rather silent through the meal--Mahon, the old couple, and I. I finished first, and slipped away for a smoke, my cabin being in a deck-house just against the p.o.o.p. It was high water, blowing fresh with a drizzle; the double dock-gates were opened, and the steam colliers were going in and out in the darkness with their lights burning bright, a great plas.h.i.+ng of propellers, rattling of winches, and a lot of hailing on the pier-heads. I watched the procession of head-lights gliding high and of green lights gliding low in the night, when suddenly a red gleam flashed at me, vanished, came into view again, and remained.

The fore-end of a steamer loomed up close. I shouted down the cabin, 'Come up, quick!' and then heard a startled voice saying afar in the dark, 'Stop her, sir.' A bell jingled. Another voice cried warningly, 'We are going right into that barque, sir.' The answer to this was a gruff 'All right,' and the next thing was a heavy crash as the steamer struck a glancing blow with the bluff of her bow about our fore-rigging.

There was a moment of confusion, yelling, and running about. Steam roared. Then somebody was heard saying, 'All clear, sir.'... 'Are you all right?' asked the gruff voice. I had jumped forward to see the damage, and hailed back, 'I think so.' 'Easy astern,' said the gruff voice. A bell jingled. 'What steamer is that?' screamed Mahon. By that time she was no more to us than a bulky shadow maneuvering a little way off. They shouted at us some name--a woman's name, Miranda or Melissa--or some such thing. 'This means another month in this beastly hole,' said Mahon to me, as we peered with lamps about the splintered bulwarks and broken braces. 'But where's the captain?'

"We had not heard or seen anything of him all that time. We went aft to look. A doleful voice arose hailing somewhere in the middle of the dock, '_Judea_ ahoy!'... How the devil did he get there?... 'Hallo!' we shouted. 'I am adrift in our boat without oars,' he cried. A belated waterman offered his services, and Mahon struck a bargain with him for half-a-crown to tow our skipper alongside; but it was Mrs. Beard that came up the ladder first. They had been floating about the dock in that mizzly cold rain for nearly an hour. I was never so surprised in my life.

"It appears that when he heard my shout 'Come up,' he understood at once what was the matter, caught up his wife, ran on deck, and across, and down into our boat, which was fast to the ladder. Not bad for a sixty-year-old. Just imagine that old fellow saving heroically in his arms that old woman--the woman of his life. He set her down on a thwart, and was ready to climb back on board when the painter came adrift somehow, and away they went together. Of course in the confusion we did not hear him shouting. He looked abashed. She said cheerfully, 'I suppose it does not matter my losing the train now?' 'No, Jenny--you go below and get warm,' he growled. Then to us: 'A sailor has no business with a wife--I say. There I was, out of the s.h.i.+p. Well, no harm done this time. Let's go and look at what that fool of a steamer smashed.'

"It wasn't much, but it delayed us three weeks. At the end of that time, the captain being engaged with his agents, I carried Mrs. Beard's bag to the railway-station and put her all comfy into a third-cla.s.s carriage.

She lowered the window to say, 'You are a good young man. If you see John--Captain Beard--without his m.u.f.fler at night, just remind him from me to keep his throat well wrapped up.' 'Certainly, Mrs. Beard,' I said.

'You are a good young man; I noticed how attentive you are to John--to Captain--' The train pulled out suddenly; I took my cap off to the old woman: I never saw her again... Pa.s.s the bottle.

"We went to sea next day. When we made that start for Bankok we had been already three months out of London. We had expected to be a fortnight or so--at the outside.

"It was January, and the weather was beautiful--the beautiful sunny winter weather that has more charm than in the summer-time, because it is unexpected, and crisp, and you know it won't, it can't, last long.

It's like a windfall, like a G.o.dsend, like an unexpected piece of luck.

"It lasted all down the North Sea, all down Channel; and it lasted till we were three hundred miles or so to the westward of the Lizards: then the wind went round to the sou'west and began to pipe up. In two days it blew a gale. The _Judea_, hove to, wallowed on the Atlantic like an old candlebox. It blew day after day: it blew with spite, without interval, without mercy, without rest. The world was nothing but an immensity of great foaming waves rus.h.i.+ng at us, under a sky low enough to touch with the hand and dirty like a smoked ceiling. In the stormy s.p.a.ce surrounding us there was as much flying spray as air. Day after day and night after night there was nothing round the s.h.i.+p but the howl of the wind, the tumult of the sea, the noise of water pouring over her deck.

There was no rest for her and no rest for us. She tossed, she pitched, she stood on her head, she sat on her tail, she rolled, she groaned, and we had to hold on while on deck and cling to our bunks when below, in a constant effort of body and worry of mind.

"One night Mahon spoke through the small window of my berth. It opened right into my very bed, and I was lying there sleepless, in my boots, feeling as though I had not slept for years, and could not if I tried.

He said excitedly--

"'You got the sounding-rod in here, Marlow? I can't get the pumps to suck. By G.o.d! it's no child's play.'

"I gave him the sounding-rod and lay down again, trying to think of various things--but I thought only of the pumps. When I came on deck they were still at it, and my watch relieved at the pumps. By the light of the lantern brought on deck to examine the sounding-rod I caught a glimpse of their weary, serious faces. We pumped all the four hours.

We pumped all night, all day, all the week,--watch and watch. She was working herself loose, and leaked badly--not enough to drown us at once, but enough to kill us with the work at the pumps. And while we pumped the s.h.i.+p was going from us piecemeal: the bulwarks went, the stanchions were torn out, the ventilators smashed, the cabin-door burst in. There was not a dry spot in the s.h.i.+p. She was being gutted bit by bit. The long-boat changed, as if by magic, into matchwood where she stood in her gripes. I had lashed her myself, and was rather proud of my handiwork, which had withstood so long the malice of the sea. And we pumped. And there was no break in the weather. The sea was white like a sheet of foam, like a caldron of boiling milk; there was not a break in the clouds, no--not the size of a man's hand--no, not for so much as ten seconds. There was for us no sky, there were for us no stars, no sun, no universe--nothing but angry clouds and an infuriated sea. We pumped watch and watch, for dear life; and it seemed to last for months, for years, for all eternity, as though we had been dead and gone to a h.e.l.l for sailors. We forgot the day of the week, the name of the month, what year it was, and whether we had ever been ash.o.r.e. The sails blew away, she lay broadside on under a weather-cloth, the ocean poured over her, and we did not care. We turned those handles, and had the eyes of idiots. As soon as we had crawled on deck I used to take a round turn with a rope about the men, the pumps, and the mainmast, and we turned, we turned incessantly, with the water to our waists, to our necks, over our heads. It was all one. We had forgotten how it felt to be dry.

"And there was somewhere in me the thought: By Jove! this is the deuce of an adventure--something you read about; and it is my first voyage as second mate--and I am only twenty--and here I am lasting it out as well as any of these men, and keeping my chaps up to the mark. I was pleased.

I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments of exultation. Whenever the old dismantled craft pitched heavily with her counter high in the air, she seemed to me to throw up, like an appeal, like a defiance, like a cry to the clouds without mercy, the words written on her stern: '_Judea_, London. Do or Die.'

"O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattle-trap carting about the world a lot of coal for a freight--to me she was the endeavour, the test, the trial of life.

I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret--as you would think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her....

Pa.s.s the bottle.

"One night when tied to the mast, as I explained, we were pumping on, deafened with the wind, and without spirit enough in us to wish ourselves dead, a heavy sea crashed aboard and swept clean over us. As soon as I got my breath I shouted, as in duty bound, 'Keep on, boys!'

when suddenly I felt something hard floating on deck strike the calf of my leg. I made a grab at it and missed. It was so dark we could not see each other's faces within a foot--you understand.

"After that thump the s.h.i.+p kept quiet for a while, and the thing, whatever it was, struck my leg again. This time I caught it--and it was a saucepan. At first, being stupid with fatigue and thinking of nothing but the pumps, I did not understand what I had in my hand. Suddenly it dawned upon me, and I shouted, 'Boys, the house on deck is gone. Leave this, and let's look for the cook.'

"There was a deck-house forward, which contained the galley, the cook's berth, and the quarters of the crew. As we had expected for days to see it swept away, the hands had been ordered to sleep in the cabin--the only safe place in the s.h.i.+p. The steward, Abraham, however, persisted in clinging to his berth, stupidly, like a mule--from sheer fright I believe, like an animal that won't leave a stable falling in an earthquake. So we went to look for him. It was chancing death, since once out of our las.h.i.+ngs we were as exposed as if on a raft. But we went. The house was shattered as if a sh.e.l.l had exploded inside. Most of it had gone overboard--stove, men's quarters, and their property, all was gone; but two posts, holding a portion of the bulkhead to which Abraham's bunk was attached, remained as if by a miracle. We groped in the ruins and came upon this, and there he was, sitting in his bunk, surrounded by foam and wreckage, jabbering cheerfully to himself. He was out of his mind; completely and for ever mad, with this sudden shock coming upon the f.a.g-end of his endurance. We s.n.a.t.c.hed him up, lugged him aft, and pitched him head-first down the cabin companion. You understand there was no time to carry him down with infinite precautions and wait to see how he got on. Those below would pick him up at the bottom of the stairs all right. We were in a hurry to go back to the pumps. That business could not wait. A bad leak is an inhuman thing.

"One would think that the sole purpose of that fiendish gale had been to make a lunatic of that poor devil of a mulatto. It eased before morning, and next day the sky cleared, and as the sea went down the leak took up.

When it came to bending a fresh set of sails the crew demanded to put back--and really there was nothing else to do. Boats gone, decks swept clean, cabin gutted, men without a st.i.tch but what they stood in, stores spoiled, s.h.i.+p strained. We put her head for home, and--would you believe it? The wind came east right in our teeth. It blew fresh, it blew continuously. We had to beat up every inch of the way, but she did not leak so badly, the water keeping comparatively smooth. Two hours'

pumping in every four is no joke--but it kept her afloat as far as Falmouth.

"The good people there live on casualties of the sea, and no doubt were glad to see us. A hungry crowd of s.h.i.+pwrights sharpened their chisels at the sight of that carca.s.s of a s.h.i.+p. And, by Jove! they had pretty pickings off us before they were done. I fancy the owner was already in a tight place. There were delays. Then it was decided to take part of the cargo out and calk her topsides. This was done, the repairs finished, cargo re-s.h.i.+pped; a new crew came on board, and we went out--for Bankok. At the end of a week we were back again. The crew said they weren't going to Bankok--a hundred and fifty days' pa.s.sage--in a something hooker that wanted pumping eight hours out of the twenty-four; and the nautical papers inserted again the little paragraph: _'Judea_.

Barque. Tyne to Bankok; coals; put back to Falmouth leaky and with crew refusing duty.'

"There were more delays--more tinkering. The owner came down for a day, and said she was as right as a little fiddle. Poor old Captain Beard looked like the ghost of a Geordie skipper--through the worry and humiliation of it. Remember he was sixty, and it was his first command.

Mahon said it was a foolish business, and would end badly. I loved the s.h.i.+p more than ever, and wanted awfully to get to Bankok. To Bankok!

Magic name, blessed name. Mesopotamia wasn't a patch on it. Remember I was twenty, and it was my first second mate's billet, and the East was waiting for me.

"We went out and anch.o.r.ed in the outer roads with a fresh crew--the third. She leaked worse than ever. It was as if those confounded s.h.i.+pwrights had actually made a hole in her. This time we did not even go outside. The crew simply refused to man the windla.s.s.

"They towed us back to the inner harbour, and we became a fixture, a feature, an inst.i.tution of the place. People pointed us out to visitors as 'That 'ere bark that's going to Bankok--has been here six months--put back three times.' On holidays the small boys pulling about in boats would hail, '_Judea_, ahoy!' and if a head showed above the rail shouted, 'Where you bound to?--Bankok?' and jeered. We were only three on board. The poor old skipper mooned in the cabin. Mahon undertook the cooking, and unexpectedly developed all a Frenchman's genius for preparing nice little messes. I looked languidly after the rigging. We became citizens of Falmouth. Every shopkeeper knew us. At the barber's or tobacconist's they asked familiarly, 'Do you think you will ever get to Bankok?' Meantime the owner, the underwriters, and the charterers squabbled amongst themselves in London, and our pay went on.... Pa.s.s the bottle.

"It was horrid. Morally it was worse than pumping for life. It seemed as though we had been forgotten by the world, belonged to n.o.body, would get nowhere; it seemed that, as if bewitched, we would have to live for ever and ever in that inner harbour, a derision and a by-word to generations of long-sh.o.r.e loafers and dishonest boatmen. I obtained three months'