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Notes on Life and Letters-Part22_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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us from the fore-deck in a state of intense elation. "Hurrah," he



cried under his breath. "The first German light! Hurrah!"

And those two American citizens shook hands on it with the greatest



fervour, while I turned away and received full in the eyes the

brilliant wink of the Borkum lighthouse squatting low down in the



darkness. The shade of the night had settled on the North Sea.

I do not think I have ever seen before a night so full of lights.



The great change of sea life since my time was brought home to me.

I had been conscious all day of an interminableprocession of



steamers. They went on and on as if in chase of each other, the

Baltic trade, the trade of Scandinavia, of Denmark, of Germany,



pitching heavily into a head sea and bound for the gateway of Dover

Straits. Singly, and in small companies of two and three, they



emerged from the dull, colourless, sunless distances ahead as if

the supply of rather roughly finished mechanical toys were



inexhaustible in some mysterious cheap store away there, below the

grey curve of the earth. Cargo steam vessels have reached by this



time a height of utilitarian ugliness which, when one reflects that

it is the product of human ingenuity, strikes hopeless awe into



one. These dismal creations look still uglier at sea than in port,

and with an added touch of the ridiculous. Their rolling waddle



when seen at a certain angle, their abrupt clockwork nodding in a

sea-way, so unlike the soaring lift and swing of a craft under



sail, have in them something caricatural, a suggestion of a low

parody directed at noble predecessors by an improved generation of



dull, mechanical toilers, conceited and without grace.

When they switched on (each of these unlovely cargo tanks carried



tame lightning within its slab-sided body), when they switched on

their lamps they spangled the night with the cheap, electric, shop-



glitter, here, there, and everywhere, as of some High Street,

broken up and washed out to sea. Later, Heligoland cut into the



overhead darkness with its powerful beam, infinitely prolonged out

of unfathomable night under the clouds.



I remained on deck until we stopped and a steam pilot-boat, so

overlighted amidships that one could not make out her complete



shape, glided across our bows and sent a pilot on board. I fear

that the oar, as a workingimplement, will become presently as



obsolete as the sail. The pilot boarded us in a motor-dinghy.

More and more is mankind reducing its physical activities to



pulling levers and twirling little wheels. Progress! Yet the

older methods of meeting natural forces demanded intelligence too;



an equally fine readiness of wits. And readiness of wits working

in combination with the strength of muscles made a more complete



man.

It was really a surprisingly small dinghy and it ran to and fro



like a water-insect fussing noisily down there with immense self-

importance. Within hail of us the hull of the Elbe lightship



floated all dark and silent under its enormous round, service

lantern; a faithful black shadow watching the broad estuary full of



lights.

Such was my first view of the Elbe approached under the wings of



peace ready for flight away from the luckless shores of Europe.

Our visual impressions remain with us so persistently that I find



it extremely difficult to hold fast to the rationalbelief that now

everything is dark over there, that the Elbe lightship has been



towed away from its post of duty, the triumphant beam of Heligoland

extinguished, and the pilot-boat laid up, or turned to warlike uses



for lack of its proper work to do. And obviously it must be so.

Any trickle of oversea trade that passes yet that way must be



creeping along cautiously with the unlighted, war-blighted black




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