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The Floating Press - Joseph Conrad

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110 pages

English

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Ranked by critics and literary experts as one of the most important English writers, Joseph Conrad contributed to the Western canon with such masterpieces as Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. A master of intricate psychological portraiture, Conrad brings this skill to bear in "The End of the Tether," a story about an elderly man's attempt to come to grips with his own mortality.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 janvier 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775451020
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE END OF THE TETHER
* * *
JOSEPH CONRAD

*

The End of the Tether First published in 1902 ISBN 978-1-775451-02-0 © 2011 The Floating Press While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV
I
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For a long time after the course of the steamer Sofala had beenaltered for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearanceof a mere smudge of darkness beyond a belt of glitter. The sunraysseemed to fall violently upon the calm sea—seemed to shatter themselvesupon an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vaporof light that blinded the eye and wearied the brain with its unsteadybrightness.
Captain Whalley did not look at it. When his Serang, approaching theroomy cane arm-chair which he filled capably, had informed him in a lowvoice that the course was to be altered, he had risen at once and hadremained on his feet, face forward, while the head of his ship swungthrough a quarter of a circle. He had not uttered a single word, noteven the word to steady the helm. It was the Serang, an elderly, alert,little Malay, with a very dark skin, who murmured the order to thehelmsman. And then slowly Captain Whalley sat down again in thearm-chair on the bridge and fixed his eyes on the deck between his feet.
He could not hope to see anything new upon this lane of the sea. He hadbeen on these coasts for the last three years. From Low Cape to Malantanthe distance was fifty miles, six hours' steaming for the old ship withthe tide, or seven against. Then you steered straight for the land, andby-and-by three palms would appear on the sky, tall and slim, and withtheir disheveled heads in a bunch, as if in confidential criticism ofthe dark mangroves. The Sofala would be headed towards the somberstrip of the coast, which at a given moment, as the ship closed withit obliquely, would show several clean shining fractures—the brimfulestuary of a river. Then on through a brown liquid, three parts waterand one part black earth, on and on between the low shores, three partsblack earth and one part brackish water, the Sofala would plow her wayup-stream, as she had done once every month for these seven years ormore, long before he was aware of her existence, long before he had everthought of having anything to do with her and her invariable voyages.The old ship ought to have known the road better than her men, who hadnot been kept so long at it without a change; better than the faithfulSerang, whom he had brought over from his last ship to keep thecaptain's watch; better than he himself, who had been her captain forthe last three years only. She could always be depended upon to make hercourses. Her compasses were never out. She was no trouble at all totake 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, simply byreckoning the days and the hours he could tell where he was—the precisespot of the beat. He knew it well too, this monotonous huckster'sround, up and down the Straits; he knew its order and its sights and itspeople. Malacca to begin with, in at daylight and out at dusk, to crossover with a rigid phosphorescent wake this highway of the Far East.Darkness and gleams on the water, clear stars on a black sky, perhapsthe lights of a home steamer keeping her unswerving course in themiddle, or maybe the elusive shadow of a native craft with her mat sailsflitting by silently—and the low land on the other side in sightat daylight. At noon the three palms of the next place of call, up asluggish river. The only white man residing there was a retired youngsailor, with whom he had become friendly in the course of many voyages.Sixty miles farther on there was another place of call, a deep bay withonly a couple of houses on the beach. And so on, in and out, pickingup coastwise cargo here and there, and finishing with a hundred miles'steady steaming through the maze of an archipelago of small islands upto a large native town at the end of the beat. There was a three days'rest for the old ship before he started her again in inverse order,seeing the same shores from another bearing, hearing the same voicesin the same places, back again to the Sofala's port of registry onthe great highway to the East, where he would take up a berth nearlyopposite the big stone pile of the harbor office till it was time tostart again on the old round of 1600 miles and thirty days. Not a veryenterprising life, this, for Captain Whalley, Henry Whalley, otherwiseDare-devil Harry—Whalley of the Condor, a famous clipper in her day.No. Not a very enterprising life for a man who had served famous firms,who had sailed famous ships (more than one or two of them his own); whohad made famous passages, had been the pioneer of new routes and newtrades; who had steered across the unsurveyed tracts of the South Seas,and had seen 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 generation ofshipowners and merchants in all the ports from Bombay clear over towhere the East merges into the West upon the coast of the two Americas.His fame remained writ, not very large but plain enough, on theAdmiralty charts. Was there not somewhere between Australia and China aWhalley Island and a Condor Reef? On that dangerous coral formation thecelebrated clipper had hung stranded for three days, her captain andcrew throwing her cargo overboard with one hand and with the other, asit were, keeping off her a flotilla of savage war-canoes. At that timeneither the island nor the reef had any official existence. Later theofficers of her Majesty's steam vessel Fusilier, dispatched to make asurvey of the route, recognized in the adoption of these two names theenterprise of the man and the solidity of the ship. Besides, as anyonewho cares may see, the "General Directory," vol. ii. p. 410, begins thedescription of the "Malotu or Whalley Passage" with the words: "Thisadvantageous route, first discovered in 1850 by Captain Whalley in theship Condor," &c., and ends by recommending it warmly to sailing vesselsleaving the China ports for the south in the months from December toApril inclusive.
This was the clearest gain he had out of life. Nothing could rob himof this kind of fame. The piercing of the Isthmus of Suez, like thebreaking of a dam, had let in upon the East a flood of new ships, newmen, new methods of trade. It had changed the face of the Eastern seasand the very spirit of their life; so that his early experiences meantnothing whatever to the new generation of seamen.
In those bygone days he had handled many thousands of pounds of hisemployers' money and of his own; he had attended faithfully, as by lawa shipmaster is expected to do, to the conflicting interests of owners,charterers, and underwriters. He had never lost a ship or consented toa shady transaction; and he had lasted well, outlasting in the end theconditions that had gone to the making of his name. He had buried hiswife (in the Gulf of Petchili), had married off his daughter to the manof her unlucky choice, and had lost more than an ample competence in thecrash of the notorious Travancore and Deccan Banking Corporation, whosedownfall had shaken the East like an earthquake. And he was sixty-fiveyears old.
II
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His age sat lightly enough on him; and of his ruin he was not ashamed.He had not been alone to believe in the stability of the BankingCorporation. Men whose judgment in matters of finance was as expert ashis seamanship had commended the prudence of his investments, and hadthemselves lost much money in the great failure. The only differencebetween him and them was that he had lost his all. And yet not his all.There had remained to him from his lost fortune a very pretty littlebark, Fair Maid, which he had bought to occupy his leisure of a retiredsailor—"to play with," as he expressed it himself.
He had formally declared himself tired of the sea the year preceding hisdaughter's marriage. But after the young couple had gone to settle inMelbourne he found out that he could not make himself happy on shore. Hewas too much of a merchant sea-captain for mere yachting to satisfy him.He wanted the illusion of affairs; and his acquisition of the FairMaid preserved the continuity of his life. He introduced her to hisacquaintances in various ports as "my last command." When he grew tooold to be trusted with a ship, he would lay her up and go ashore to beburied, leaving directions in his will to have the bark towed out andscuttled decently in deep water on the day of the funeral. His daughterwould not grudge him the satisfaction of knowing that no stranger wouldhandle his last command after him. With the fortune he was able to leaveher, the value of a 500-ton bark was neither here nor there. All thiswould be said with a jocular twinkle in his eye: the vigorous old manhad too much vitality for the sentimentalism of regret; and a littlewistfully withal, because he was at home in life, taking a genuinepleasure in its feelings and its possessions; in the dignity of hisreputation and his wealth, in his love for his daughter, and in hissatisfaction with the ship—the plaything of his lonely leisure.
He had the cabin arranged in accorda