Lord Jim | Page 5

worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of
his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of
his pretences, not only to others but also to himself.
Only once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in
the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people
might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and
gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts
a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which
forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of
accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of
malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that
means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue
and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate
all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless
and necessary-- the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to
sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the
simple and appalling act of taking his life.
Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his
Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle to
me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched on his back,
dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss
of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid
moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has
the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy;
and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors,
unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim
saw nothing but the disorder of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened
down in the midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had

not to go on deck. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish
would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets,
and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony
of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any
cost. Then fine weather returned, and he thought no more about It.
His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an
Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he
was left behind.
There were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser
of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a
kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by
some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and
indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil
servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each
other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in
pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word.
The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the
windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the
softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of
the Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite
repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the
thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of
palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare
to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by
festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a
holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead
and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as
the horizon.
Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended into the town to
look for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered just then, and,
while waiting, he associated naturally with the men of his calling in the
port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but
seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with
the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to

live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of
civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the only
event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable
certitude of achievement. The majority were men who, like himself,
thrown there by some accident, had remained as officers