Lord Jim | Page 7

cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, continued on her way through
the 'One-degree' passage. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a
serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor
of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all
impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of
that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir,
without a ripple, without a wrinkle-- viscous, stagnant, dead. The Patna,
with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth,
unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the
water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of
a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.
Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the
progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly
at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon,
pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the
men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea
evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her
advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated
from the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof
from stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone
revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the
ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one
into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the
ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast
way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by
a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.
The nights descended on her like a benediction.

CHAPTER 3
A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with
the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance
of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in
the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and
the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice,
extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The
propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the
scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds
of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed
within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam
bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations
that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the
passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into
the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the
moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre.
Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded
safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like
the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother's
face. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white
men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the
iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on
mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners,
wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting
on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men,
the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the
lusty--all equal before sleep, death's brother.
A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed
steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over
the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung
short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of
light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of

the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with
silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back,
a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the
knife. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy
boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had
on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with
drawn-up legs, upon