The Shadow Line | Page 3

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THE SHADOW LINE
A CONFESSION
By JOSEPH CONRAD

"Worthy of my undying regard"

TO BORYS AND ALL OTHERS WHO, LIKE HIMSELF, HAVE
CROSSED IN EARLY YOUTH THE SHADOW LINE OF THEIR
GENERATION WITH LOVE

PART ONE

THE SHADOW LINE
--D'autre fois, calme plat, grand miroir De mon desespoir.
--BAUDELAIRE
I
ONLY the young have such moments. I don't mean the very young. No.
The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privi-
lege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful
continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.
One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness--and enters an
enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn of the
path has its seduction. And it isn't because it is an undiscovered country.
One knows well enough that all mankind had streamed that way. It is
the charm of universal experience from which one expects an
uncommon or personal sensation-- a bit of one's own.
One goes on recognizing the landmarks of the predecessors, excited,
amused, taking the hard luck and the good luck together--the kicks and
the halfpence, as the saying is--the picturesque common lot that holds
so many possibilities for the deserving or perhaps for the lucky. Yes.
One goes on. And the time, too, goes on--till one perceives ahead a
shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be
left be- hind.
This is the period of life in which such moments of which I have
spoken are likely to come. What moments? Why, the moments of

boredom, of weariness, of dissatisfaction. Rash moments. I mean
moments when the still young are inclined to commit rash actions, such
as getting married suddenly or else throwing up a job for no rea- son.
This is not a marriage story. It wasn't so bad as that with me. My action,
rash as it was, had more the character of divorce--almost of deser- tion.
For no reason on which a sensible person could put a finger I threw up
my job--chucked my berth--left the ship of which the worst that could
be said was that she was a steamship and therefore, perhaps, not
entitled to that blind loyalty which. . . . However, it's no use try- ing to
put a gloss on what even at the time I myself half suspected to be a
caprice.
It was in an Eastern port. She was an Eastern ship, inasmuch as then
she belonged to that port. She traded among dark islands on a blue reef-
scarred sea, with the Red Ensign over the taffrail and at her masthead a
house-flag, also red, but with a green border and with a white crescent
in it. For an Arab owned her, and a Syed at that. Hence the green
border on the flag. He was the head of a great House of Straits Arabs,
but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire as you could find
east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not trouble him at all, but he
had a great occult power amongst his own people.
It was all one to us who owned the ship. He had to employ white men
in the shipping part of his business, and many of those he so employed
had never set eyes on him from the first to the last day. I myself saw
him but once, quite accidentally on a wharf--an old,