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'Twixt Land & Sea-Part14_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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"You're a Conway boy?"

"I am," he said, as if startled. Then, slowly . . . "Perhaps you



too - "

It was so; but being a couple of years older I had left before he



joined. After a quick interchange of dates a silence fell; and I

thought suddenly of my absurd mate with his terrific whiskers and



the "Bless my soul - you don't say so" type of intellect. My

double gave me an inkling of his thoughts by saying:



"My father's a parson in Norfolk. Do you see me before a judge and

jury on that charge? For myself I can't see the necessity. There



are fellows that an angel from heaven - And I am not that. He was

one of those creatures that are just simmering all the time with a



silly sort of wickedness. Miserable devils that have no business

to live at all. He wouldn't do his duty and wouldn't let anybody



else do theirs. But what's the good of talking! You know well

enough the sort of ill-conditioned snarling cur - "



He appealed to me as if our experiences had been as identical as

our clothes. And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such



a character where there are no means of legal repression. And I

knew well enough also that my double there was no homicidal



ruffian. I did not think of asking him for details, and he told me

the story roughly in brusque, disconnected sentences. I needed no



more. I saw it all going on as though I were myself inside that

other sleeping-suit.



"It happened while we were setting a reefed foresail, at dusk.

Reefed foresail! You understand the sort of weather. The only



sail we had left to keep the ship running; so you may guess what it

had been like for days. Anxious sort of job, that. He gave me



some of his cursed insolence at the sheet. I tell you I was

overdone with this terrific weather that seemed to have no end to



it. Terrific, I tell you - and a deep ship. I believe the fellow

himself was half crazed with funk. It was no time for gentlemanly



reproof, so I turned round and felled him like an ox. He up and at

me. We closed just as an awful sea made for the ship. All hands



saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him by the throat,

and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us yelling, "Look



out! look out!" Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on my head.

They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen



of the ship - just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head

and of the poop all awash driving along in a smother of foam. It



was a miracle that they found us, jammed together behind the

forebits. It's clear that I meant business, because I was holding



him by the throat still when they picked us up. He was black in

the face. It was too much for them. It seems they rushed us aft



together, gripped as we were, screaming "Murder!" like a lot of

lunatics, and broke into the cuddy. And the ship running for her



life, touch and go all the time, any minute her last in a sea fit

to turn your hair grey only a-looking at it. I understand that the



skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them. The man had

been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this



sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out

of his mind. I wonder they didn't fling me overboard after getting



the carcass of their precious ship-mate out of my fingers. They

had rather a job to separate us, I've been told. A sufficiently



fierce story to make an old judge and a respectable jury sit up a

bit. The first thing I heard when I came to myself was the



maddening howling of that endless gale, and on that the voice of

the old man. He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face



out of his sou'wester.

"'Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer as



chief mate of this ship.'"

His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous. He rested a



hand on the end of the skylight to steady himself with, and all

that time did not stir a limb, so far as I could see. "Nice little



tale for a quiet tea-party," he concluded in the same tone.

One of my hands, too, rested on the end of the skylight; neither



did I stir a limb, so far as I knew. We stood less than a foot

from each other. It occurred to me that if old "Bless my soul -



you don't say so" were to put his head up the companion and catch

sight of us, he would think he was seeing double, or imagine



himself come upon a scene of weird witchcraft; the strange captain

having a quiet confabulation by the wheel with his own grey ghost.



I became very much concerned to prevent anything of the sort. I

heard the other's soothing undertone.



"My father's a parson in Norfolk," it said. Evidently he had




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