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Typhoon-Part3_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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countenance made her stop and stare.



"Solomon. . . . Oh! . . . Mrs. Rout," stuttered the young man,

very red in the face, "I must say . . . I don't. . . ."



"He's my husband," she announced in a great shout, throwing

herself back in the chair. Perceiving the joke, she laughed



immoderately with a handkerchief to her eyes, while he sat

wearing a forced smile, and, from his inexperience of jolly



women, fully persuaded that she must be deplorably insane. They

were excellent friends afterwards; for, absolving her from



irreverent intention, he came to think she was a very worthy

person indeed; and he learned in time to receive without



flinching other scraps of Solomon's wisdom.

"For my part," Solomon was reported by his wife to have said



once, "give me the dullest ass for a skipper before a rogue.

There is a way to take a fool; but a rogue is smart and



slippery." This was an airy generalization drawn from the

particular case of Captain MacWhirr's honesty, which, in itself,



had the heavy obviousness of a lump of clay. On the other hand,

Mr. Jukes, unable to generalize, unmarried, and unengaged, was in



the habit of opening his heart after another fashion to an old

chum and former shipmate, actually serving as second officer on



board an Atlantic liner.

First of all he would insist upon the advantages of the Eastern



trade, hinting at its superiority to the Western ocean service.

He extolled the sky, the seas, the ships, and the easy life of



the Far East. The NanShan, he affirmed, was second to none as a

sea-boat.



"We have no brass-bound uniforms, but then we are like brothers

here," he wrote. "We all mess together and live like



fighting-cocks. . . . All the chaps of the black-squad are as

decent as they make that kind, and old Sol, the Chief, is a dry



stick. We are good friends. As to our old man, you could not

find a quieter skipper. Sometimes you would think he hadn't



sense enough to see anything wrong. And yet it isn't that. Can't

be. He has been in command for a good few years now. He doesn't



do anything actually foolish, and gets his ship along all right

without worrying anybody. I believe he hasn't brains enough to



enjoy kicking up a row. I don't take advantage of him. I would

scorn it. Outside the routine of duty he doesn't seem to



understand more than half of what you tell him. We get a laugh

out of this at times; but it is dull, too, to be with a man like



this -- in the long-run. Old Sol says he hasn't much

conversation. Conversation! O Lord! He never talks. The other



day I had been yarning under the bridge with one of the

engineers, and he must have heard us. When I came up to take my



watch, he steps out of the chart-room and has a good look all

round, peeps over at the sidelights, glances at the compass,



squints upward at the stars. That's his regular performance.

By-and-by he says: 'Was that you talking just now in the port



alleyway?' 'Yes, sir.' 'With the third engineer?' 'Yes, sir.'

He walks off to starboard, and sits under the dodger on a little



campstool of his, and for half an hour perhaps he makes no sound,

except that I heard him sneeze once. Then after a while I hear



him getting up over there, and he strolls across to port, where I

was. 'I can't understand what you can find to talk about,' says



he. 'Two solid hours. I am not blaming you. I see people ashore

at it all day long, and then in the evening they sit down and



keep at it over the drinks. Must be saying the same things over

and over again. I can't understand.'



"Did you ever hear anything like that? And he was so patient

about it. It made me quite sorry for him. But he is



exasperating, too, sometimes. Of course one would not do

anything to vex him even if it were worth while. But it isn't.



He's so jolly innocent that if you were to put your thumb to your

nose and wave your fingers at him he would only wonder gravely to



himself what got into you. He told me once quite simply that he

found it very difficult to make out what made people always act



so queerly. He's too dense to trouble about, and that's the

truth."



Thus wrote Mr. Jukes to his chum in the Western ocean trade, out

of the fulness of his heart and the liveliness of his fancy.



He had expressed his honest opinion. It was not worthwhile

trying to impress a man of that sort. If the world had been full






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