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88 pages

English

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. For a long time after the course of the steamer Sofala had been altered for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearance of a mere smudge of darkness beyond a belt of glitter. The sunrays seemed to fall violently upon the calm sea- seemed to shatter themselves upon an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vapor of light that blinded the eye and wearied the brain with its unsteady brightness.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	27 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819927501
Langue	English

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THE END OF THE TETHER
By Joseph Conrad
I
For a long time after the course of the steamer Sofala had been altered for the land, the low swampy coasthad retained its appearance of a mere smudge of darkness beyond abelt of glitter. The sunrays seemed to fall violently upon the calmsea— seemed to shatter themselves upon an adamantine surface intosparkling dust, into a dazzling vapor of light that blinded the eyeand wearied the brain with its unsteady brightness.
Captain Whalley did not look at it. When his Serang,approaching the roomy cane arm-chair which he filled capably, hadinformed him in a low voice that the course was to be altered, hehad risen at once and had remained on his feet, face forward, whilethe head of his ship swung through a quarter of a circle. He hadnot uttered a single word, not even the word to steady the helm. Itwas the Serang, an elderly, alert, little Malay, with a very darkskin, who murmured the order to the helmsman. And then slowlyCaptain Whalley sat down again in the arm-chair on the bridge andfixed his eyes on the deck between his feet.
He could not hope to see anything new upon this laneof the sea. He had been on these coasts for the last three years.From Low Cape to Malantan the distance was fifty miles, six hours'steaming for the old ship with the tide, or seven against. Then yousteered straight for the land, and by-and-by three palms wouldappear on the sky, tall and slim, and with their disheveled headsin a bunch, as if in confidential criticism of the dark mangroves.The Sofala would be headed towards the somber strip of the coast,which at a given moment, as the ship closed with it obliquely,would show several clean shining fractures— the brimful estuary ofa river. Then on through a brown liquid, three parts water and onepart black earth, on and on between the low shores, three partsblack earth and one part brackish water, the Sofala would plow herway up-stream, as she had done once every month for these sevenyears or more, long before he was aware of her existence, longbefore he had ever thought of having anything to do with her andher invariable voyages. The old ship ought to have known the roadbetter than her men, who had not been kept so long at it without achange; better than the faithful Serang, whom he had brought overfrom his last ship to keep the captain's watch; better than hehimself, who had been her captain for the last three years only.She could always be depended upon to make her courses. Hercompasses were never out. She was no trouble at all to take about,as if her great age had given her knowledge, wisdom, andsteadiness. She made her landfalls to a degree of the bearing, andalmost to a minute of her allowed time. At any moment, as he sat onthe bridge without looking up, or lay sleepless in his bed, simplyby reckoning the days and the hours he could tell where he was— theprecise spot of the beat. He knew it well too, this monotonoushuckster's round, up and down the Straits; he knew its order andits sights and its people. Malacca to begin with, in at daylightand out at dusk, to cross over with a rigid phosphorescent wakethis highway of the Far East. Darkness and gleams on the water,clear stars on a black sky, perhaps the lights of a home steamerkeeping her unswerving course in the middle, or maybe the elusiveshadow of a native craft with her mat sails flitting by silently—and the low land on the other side in sight at daylight. At noonthe three palms of the next place of call, up a sluggish river. Theonly white man residing there was a retired young sailor, with whomhe had become friendly in the course of many voyages. Sixty milesfarther on there was another place of call, a deep bay with only acouple of houses on the beach. And so on, in and out, picking upcoastwise cargo here and there, and finishing with a hundred miles'steady steaming through the maze of an archipelago of small islandsup to a large native town at the end of the beat. There was a threedays' rest for the old ship before he started her again in inverseorder, seeing the same shores from another bearing, hearing thesame voices in the same places, back again to the Sofala's port ofregistry on the great highway to the East, where he would take up aberth nearly opposite the big stone pile of the harbor office tillit was time to start again on the old round of 1600 miles andthirty days. Not a very enterprising life, this, for CaptainWhalley, Henry Whalley, otherwise Dare-devil Harry— Whalley of theCondor, a famous clipper in her day. No. Not a very enterprisinglife for a man who had served famous firms, who had sailed famousships (more than one or two of them his own); who had made famouspassages, had been the pioneer of new routes and new trades; whohad steered across the unsurveyed tracts of the South Seas, and hadseen the sun rise on uncharted islands. Fifty years at sea, andforty out in the East (“a pretty thorough apprenticeship, ” he usedto remark smilingly), had made him honorably known to a generationof shipowners and merchants in all the ports from Bombay clear overto where the East merges into the West upon the coast of the twoAmericas. His fame remained writ, not very large but plain enough,on the Admiralty charts. Was there not somewhere between Australiaand China a Whalley Island and a Condor Reef? On that dangerouscoral formation the celebrated clipper had hung stranded for threedays, her captain and crew throwing her cargo overboard with onehand and with the other, as it were, keeping off her a flotilla ofsavage war-canoes. At that time neither the island nor the reef hadany official existence. Later the officers of her Majesty's steamvessel Fusilier, dispatched to make a survey of the route,recognized in the adoption of these two names the enterprise of theman and the solidity of the ship. Besides, as anyone who cares maysee, the “General Directory, ” vol. ii. p. 410, begins thedescription of the “Malotu or Whalley Passage” with the words:“This advantageous route, first discovered in 1850 by CaptainWhalley in the ship Condor, ” and c. , and ends by recommending itwarmly to sailing vessels leaving the China ports for the south inthe months from December to April inclusive.
This was the clearest gain he had out of life.Nothing could rob him of this kind of fame. The piercing of theIsthmus of Suez, like the breaking of a dam, had let in upon theEast a flood of new ships, new men, new methods of trade. It hadchanged the face of the Eastern seas and the very spirit of theirlife; so that his early experiences meant nothing whatever to thenew generation of seamen.
In those bygone days he had handled many thousandsof pounds of his employers' money and of his own; he had attendedfaithfully, as by law a shipmaster is expected to do, to theconflicting interests of owners, charterers, and underwriters. Hehad never lost a ship or consented to a shady transaction; and hehad lasted well, outlasting in the end the conditions that had goneto the making of his name. He had buried his wife (in the Gulf ofPetchili), had married off his daughter to the man of her unluckychoice, and had lost more than an ample competence in the crash ofthe notorious Travancore and Deccan Banking Corporation, whosedownfall had shaken the East like an earthquake. And he wassixty-five years old.
II
His age sat lightly enough on him; and of his ruinhe was not ashamed. He had not been alone to believe in thestability of the Banking Corporation. Men whose judgment in mattersof finance was as expert as his seamanship had commended theprudence of his investments, and had themselves lost much money inthe great failure. The only difference between him and them wasthat he had lost his all. And yet not his all. There had remainedto him from his lost fortune a very pretty little bark, Fair Maid,which he had bought to occupy his leisure of a retired sailor— “toplay with, ” as he expressed it himself.
He had formally declared himself tired of the seathe year preceding his daughter's marriage. But after the youngcouple had gone to settle in Melbourne he found out that he couldnot make himself happy on shore. He was too much of a merchantsea-captain for mere yachting to satisfy him. He wanted theillusion of affairs; and his acquisition of the Fair Maid preservedthe continuity of his life. He introduced her to his acquaintancesin various ports as “my last command. ” When he grew too old to betrusted with a ship, he would lay her up and go ashore to beburied, leaving directions in his will to have the bark towed outand scuttled decently in deep water on the day of the funeral. Hisdaughter would not grudge him the satisfaction of knowing that nostranger would handle his last command after him. With the fortunehe was able to leave her, the value of a 500-ton bark was neitherhere nor there. All this would be said with a jocular twinkle inhis eye: the vigorous old man had too much vitality for thesentimentalism of regret; and a little wistfully withal, because hewas at home in life, taking a genuine pleasure in its feelings andits possessions; in the dignity of his reputation and his wealth,in his love for his daughter, and in his satisfaction with theship— the plaything of his lonely leisure.
He had the cabin arranged in accordance with hissimple ideal of comfort at sea. A big bookcase (he was a greatreader) occupied one side of his stateroom; the portrait of hislate wife, a flat bituminous oil-painting representing the profileand one long black ringlet of a young woman, faced his bed-place.Three chronometers ticked him to sleep and greeted him on wakingwith the tiny competition of their beats. He rose at five everyday. The officer of the morning watch, drinking his early cup ofcoffee aft by the wheel, would hear through the wide orifice of thecopper ventilators all the splashings, blowings, and splutteringsof his captain's toilet. These noises would be followed by asustained deep murmur of the Lord's Prayer recited in a loudearnes