YOUTH
By JOSEPH CONRAD
". . . But the Dwarf answered: No;
something human is dearer to me than the
wealth of all the world." GRIMM'S TALES.
TO MY WIFE
CONTENTS
YOUTH: A NARRATIVE
YOUTH
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 amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.
We were sitting round a mahogany table that reflected
the bottle, the claret-glasses, 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 honor-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
fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm
for yachting, cruising, and so on can give, since one is
only the amusement 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
illustration 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-gray 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 boys, 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 rectitude
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 ship you will have to
work.I said I had to work in every ship I had ever
been in. 'Ah, but this is different, and you gentlemen
out of them big ships; . . . 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 passes! 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 pronounced 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 ship also was old. Her name was the Judea.
Queer name, isn't it? She belonged to a man Wilmer,
Wilcox--some name like that; but he has been bankrupt
and dead these twenty years or more, and his name matter. She had been laid up in Shadwell basin for ever
so long. You can 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 windlass, wooden
latches to the doors, not a bit of brass 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 seamanship, 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 shifted 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
ship 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 ship you could see vaguely in the
dim light men falling down with a great flourish of shovels. One of the 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 race all wrinkled and ruddy like a winter
apple, and the figure of a young girl. She caught sight
of me once, sewing ...
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