The Shadow Line: A Confession

by Joseph Conrad

  "I strongly advise you to get this prescription made up for yourself ashore. Unless I am much mistaken you will need it this evening."

  "What is it, then?" I asked with suspicion.

  "Sleeping draught," answered the surgeon curtly; and moving with an air of interest toward Mr. Burns he engaged him in conversation.

  As I went below to dress to go ashore, Ransome followed me. He begged my pardon; he wished, too, to be sent ashore and paid off.

  I looked at him in surprise. He was waiting for my answer with an air of anxiety.

  "You don't mean to leave the ship!" I cried out.

  "I do really, sir. I want to go and be quiet somewhere. Anywhere. The hospital will do."

  "But, Ransome," I said. "I hate the idea of parting with you."

  "I must go," he broke in. "I have a right!" . . . He gasped and a look of almost savage determination passed over his face. For an instant he was another being. And I saw under the worth and the comeliness of the man the humble reality of things. Life was a boon to him—this precarious hard life, and he was thoroughly alarmed about himself.

  "Of course I shall pay you off if you wish it," I hastened to say. "Only I must ask you to remain on board till this afternoon. I can't leave Mr. Burns absolutely by himself in the ship for hours."

  He softened at once and assured me with a smile and in his natural pleasant voice that he understood that very well.

  When I returned on deck everything was ready for the removal of the men. It was the last ordeal of that episode which had been maturing and tempering my character—though I did not know it.

  It was awful. They passed under my eyes one after another—each of them an embodied reproach of the bitterest kind, till I felt a sort of revolt wake up in me. Poor Frenchy had gone suddenly under. He was carried past me insensible, his comic face horribly flushed and as if swollen, breathing stertorously. He looked more like Mr. Punch than ever; a disgracefully intoxicated Mr. Punch.

  The austere Gambril, on the contrary, had improved temporarily. He insisted on walking on his own feet to the rail—of course with assistance on each side of him. But he gave way to a sudden panic at the moment of being swung over the side and began to wail pitifully:

  "Don't let them drop me, sir. Don't let them drop me, sir!" While I kept on shouting to him in most soothing accents: "All right, Gambril. They won't! They won't!"

  It was no doubt very ridiculous. The blue-jackets on our deck were grinning quietly, while even Ransome himself (much to the fore in lending a hand) had to enlarge his wistful smile for a fleeting moment.

  I left for the shore in the steam pinnace, and on looking back beheld Mr. Burns actually standing up by the taffrail, still in his enormous woolly overcoat. The bright sunlight brought out his weirdness amazingly. He looked like a frightful and elaborate scarecrow set up on the poop of a death-stricken ship, set up to keep the seabirds from the corpses.

  Our story had got about already in town and everybody on shore was most kind. The Marine Office let me off the port dues, and as there happened to be a shipwrecked crew staying in the Home I had no difficulty in obtaining as many men as I wanted. But when I inquired if I could see Captain Ellis for a moment I was told in accents of pity for my ignorance that our deputy-Neptune had retired and gone home on a pension about three weeks after I left the port. So I suppose that my appointment was the last act, outside the daily routine, of his official life.

  It is strange how on coming ashore I was struck by the springy step, the lively eyes, the strong vitality of every one I met. It impressed me enormously. And amongst those I met there was Captain Giles, of course. It would have been very extraordinary if I had not met him. A prolonged stroll in the business part of the town was the regular employment of all his mornings when he was ashore.

  I caught the glitter of the gold watch-chain across his chest ever so far away. He radiated benevolence.

  "What is it I hear?" he queried with a "kind uncle" smile, after shaking hands. "Twenty-one days from Bangkok?"

  "Is this all you've heard?" I said. "You must come to tiffin with me. I want you to know exactly what you have let me in for."

  He hesitated for almost a minute.

  "Well—I will," he said condescendingly at last.

  We turned into the hotel. I found to my surprise that I could eat quite a lot. Then over the cleared table-cloth I unfolded to Captain Giles the history of these twenty days in all its professional and emotional aspects, while he smoked patiently the big cigar I had given him.

  Then he observed sagely:

  "You must feel jolly well tired by this time."

  "No," I said. "Not tired. But I'll tell you, Captain Giles, how I feel. I feel old. And I must be. All of you on shore look to me just a lot of skittish youngsters that have never known a care in the world."

  He didn't smile. He looked insufferably exemplary. He declared:

  "That will pass. But you do look older—it's a fact."

  "Aha!" I said.

  "No! No! The truth is that one must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad."

  "Live at half-speed," I murmured perversely. "Not everybody can do that."

  "You'll be glad enough presently if you can keep going even at that rate," he retorted with his air of conscious virtue. "And there's another thing: a man should stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience and all that sort of thing. Why—what else would you have to fight against."

  I kept silent. I don't know what he saw in my face but he asked abruptly:

  "Why—you aren't faint-hearted?"

  "God only knows, Captain Giles," was my sincere answer.

  "That's all right," he said calmly. "You will learn soon how not to be faint-hearted. A man has got to learn everything—and that's what so many of them youngsters don't understand."

  "Well, I am no longer a youngster."

  "No," he conceded. "Are you leaving soon?"

  "I am going on board directly," I said. "I shall pick up one of my anchors and heave in to half-cable on the other directly my new crew comes on board and I shall be off at daylight to-morrow!"

  "You will," grunted Captain Giles approvingly. "that's the way. You'll do."

  "What did you think? That I would want to take a week ashore for a rest?" I said, irritated by his tone. "There's no rest for me till she's out in the Indian Ocean and not much of it even then."

  He puffed at his cigar moodily, as if transformed.

  "Yes. That's what it amounts to," he said in a musing tone. It was as if a ponderous curtain had rolled up disclosing an unexpected Captain Giles. But it was only for a moment, just the time to let him add, "Precious little rest in life for anybody. Better not think of it."

  We rose, left the hotel, and parted from each other in the street with a warm handshake, just as he began to interest me for the first time in our intercourse.

  The first thing I saw when I got back to the ship was Ransome on the quarter-deck sitting quietly on his neatly lashed sea-chest.

  I beckoned him to follow me into the saloon where I sat down to write a letter of recommendation for him to a man I knew on shore.

  When finished I pushed it across the table. "It may be of some good to you when you leave the hospital."

  He took it, put it in his pocket. His eyes were looking away from me—nowhere. His face was anxiously set.

  "How are you feeling now?" I asked.

  "I don't feel bad now, sir," he answered stiffly. "But I am afraid of its coming on. . . ." The wistful smile came back on his lips for a moment. "I—I am in a blue funk about my heart, sir."

  I approached him with extended hand. His eyes not looking at me had a strained expression. He was like a man listening for a warning call.

  "Won't you shake hands, Ransome?" I said gently.

  He exclaimed, flushed up dusky red, gave my hand a hard wrench—and next moment, left alone in the cabin, I listened to him going up the companion stairs cautiously, step by step, in mortal
fear of starting into sudden anger our common enemy it was his hard fate to carry consciously within his faithful breast.

  THE END