End of the Tether

J >> Joseph Conrad >> End of the Tether


"A trifle. Somebody must lead the way. I just showed that the thing
could be done; but you men brought up to the use of steam cannot
conceive the vast importance of my bit of venturesomeness to the Eastern
trade of the time. Why, that new route reduced the average time of a
southern passage by eleven days for more than half the year. Eleven
days! It's on record. But the remarkable thing--speaking to a sailor--I
should say was . . ."

He talked well, without egotism, professionally. The powerful voice,
produced without effort, filled the bungalow even into the empty rooms
with a deep and limpid resonance, seemed to make a stillness outside;
and Mr. Van Wyk was surprised by the serene quality of its tone, like
the perfection of manly gentleness. Nursing one small foot, in a
silk sock and a patent leather shoe, on his knee, he was immensely
entertained. It was as if nobody could talk like this now, and the
overshadowed eyes, the flowing white beard, the big frame, the
serenity, the whole temper of the man, were an amazing survival from the
prehistoric times of the world coming up to him out of the sea.

Captain Whalley had been also the pioneer of the early trade in the Gulf
of Pe-tchi-li. He even found occasion to mention that he had buried
his "dear wife" there six-and-twenty years ago. Mr. Van Wyk, impassive,
could not help speculating in his mind swiftly as to the sort of woman
that would mate with such a man. Did they make an adventurous and
well-matched pair? No. Very possible she had been small, frail, no
doubt very feminine--or most likely commonplace with domestic instincts,
utterly insignificant. But Captain Whalley was no garrulous bore, and
shaking his head as if to dissipate the momentary gloom that had settled
on his handsome old face, he alluded conversationally to Mr. Van Wyk's
solitude.

Mr. Van Wyk affirmed that sometimes he had more company than he wanted.
He mentioned smilingly some of the peculiarities of his intercourse with
"My Sultan." He made his visits in force. Those people damaged his grass
plot in front (it was not easy to obtain some approach to a lawn in
the tropics) and the other day had broken down some rare bushes he had
planted over there. And Captain Whalley remembered immediately that,
in 'forty-seven, the then Sultan, "this man's grandfather," had been
notorious as a great protector of the piratical fleets of praus from
farther East. They had a safe refuge in the river at Batu Beru. He
financed more especially a Balinini chief called Haji Daman. Captain
Whalley, nodding significantly his bushy white eyebrows, had very good
reason to know something of that. The world had progressed since that
time.

Mr. Van Wyk demurred with unexpected acrimony. Progressed in what? he
wanted to know.

Why, in knowledge of truth, in decency, in justice, in order--in honesty
too, since men harmed each other mostly from ignorance. It was, Captain
Whalley concluded quaintly, more pleasant to live in.

Mr. Van Wyk whimsically would not admit that Mr. Massy, for instance,
was more pleasant naturally than the Balinini pirates.

The river had not gained much by the change. They were in their way
every bit as honest. Massy was less ferocious than Haji Daman no doubt,
but . . .

"And what about you, my good sir?" Captain Whalley laughed a deep soft
laugh. "_You_ are an improvement, surely."

He continued in a vein of pleasantry. A good cigar was better than a
knock on the head--the sort of welcome he would have found on this
river forty or fifty years ago. Then leaning forward slightly, he became
earnestly serious. It seems as if, outside their own sea-gypsy
tribes, these rovers had hated all mankind with an incomprehensible,
bloodthirsty hatred. Meantime their depredations had been stopped, and
what was the consequence? The new generation was orderly, peaceable,
settled in prosperous villages. He could speak from personal knowledge.
And even the few survivors of that time--old men now--had changed so
much, that it would have been unkind to remember against them that they
had ever slit a throat in their lives. He had one especially in his
mind's eye: a dignified, venerable headman of a certain large coast
village about sixty miles sou'west of Tampasuk. It did one's heart
good to see him--to hear that man speak. He might have been a ferocious
savage once. What men wanted was to be checked by superior intelligence,
by superior knowledge, by superior force too--yes, by force held in
trust from God and sanctified by its use in accordance with His declared
will. Captain Whalley believed a disposition for good existed in every
man, even if the world were not a very happy place as a whole. In the
wisdom of men he had not so much confidence. The disposition had to be
helped up pretty sharply sometimes, he admitted. They might be silly,
wrongheaded, unhappy; but naturally evil--no. There was at bottom a
complete harmlessness at least . . .

"Is there?" Mr. Van Wyk snapped acrimoniously.

Captain Whalley laughed at the interjection, in the good humor of large,
tolerating certitude. He could look back at half a century, he pointed
out. The smoke oozed placidly through the white hairs hiding his kindly
lips.

"At all events," he resumed after a pause, "I am glad that they've had
no time to do you much harm as yet."

This allusion to his comparative youthfulness did not offend Mr. Van
Wyk, who got up and wriggled his shoulders with an enigmatic half-smile.
They walked out together amicably into the starry night towards the
river-side. Their footsteps resounded unequally on the dark path. At the
shore end of the gangway the lantern, hung low to the handrail, threw
a vivid light on the white legs and the big black feet of Mr. Massy
waiting about anxiously. From the waist upwards he remained shadowy,
with a row of buttons gleaming up to the vague outline of his chin.

"You may thank Captain Whalley for this," Mr. Van Wyk said curtly to him
before turning away.

The lamps on the veranda flung three long squares of light between
the uprights far over the grass. A bat flitted before his face like a
circling flake of velvety blackness. Along the jasmine hedge the night
air seemed heavy with the fall of perfumed dew; flowerbeds bordered the
path; the clipped bushes uprose in dark rounded clumps here and there
before the house; the dense foliage of creepers filtered the sheen of
the lamplight within in a soft glow all along the front; and everything
near and far stood still in a great immobility, in a great sweetness.

Mr. Van Wyk (a few years before he had had occasion to imagine himself
treated more badly than anybody alive had ever been by a woman) felt
for Captain Whalley's optimistic views the disdain of a man who had once
been credulous himself. His disgust with the world (the woman for a
time had filled it for him completely) had taken the form of activity
in retirement, because, though capable of great depth of feeling, he was
energetic and essentially practical. But there was in that uncommon old
sailor, drifting on the outskirts of his busy solitude, something that
fascinated his skepticism. His very simplicity (amusing enough) was like
a delicate refinement of an upright character. The striking dignity
of manner could be nothing else, in a man reduced to such a humble
position, but the expression of something essentially noble in the
character. With all his trust in mankind he was no fool; the serenity
of his temper at the end of so many years, since it could not obviously
have been appeased by success, wore an air of profound wisdom. Mr. Van
Wyk was amused at it sometimes. Even the very physical traits of the
old captain of the Sofala, his powerful frame, his reposeful mien, his
intelligent, handsome face, the big limbs, the benign courtesy, the
touch of rugged severity in the shaggy eyebrows, made up a seductive
personality. Mr. Van Wyk disliked littleness of every kind, but there
was nothing small about that man, and in the exemplary regularity of
many trips an intimacy had grown up between them, a warm feeling
at bottom under a kindly stateliness of forms agreeable to his
fastidiousness.

They kept their respective opinions on all worldly matters. His other
convictions Captain Whalley never intruded. The difference of their
ages was like another bond between them. Once, when twitted with the
uncharitableness of his youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over the
vast proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly banter--

"Oh. You'll come to my way of thinking yet. You'll have plenty of time.
Don't call yourself old: you look good for a round hundred."

But he could not help his stinging incisiveness, and though moderating
it by an almost affectionate smile, he added--

"And by then you will probably consent to die from sheer disgust."

Captain Whalley, smiling too, shook his head. "God forbid!"

He thought that perhaps on the whole he deserved something better than
to die in such sentiments. The time of course would have to come, and he
trusted to his Maker to provide a manner of going out of which he need
not be ashamed. For the rest he hoped he would live to a hundred if need
be: other men had been known; it would be no miracle. He expected no
miracles.

The pronounced, argumentative tone caused Mr. Van Wyk to raise his head
and look at him steadily. Captain Whalley was gazing fixedly with a rapt
expression, as though he had seen his Creator's favorable decree written
in mysterious characters on the wall. He kept perfectly motionless for
a few seconds, then got his vast bulk on to his feet so impetuously that
Mr. Van Wyk was startled.

He struck first a heavy blow on his inflated chest: and, throwing out
horizontally a big arm that remained steady, extended in the air like
the limb of a tree on a windless day--

"Not a pain or an ache there. Can you see this shake in the least?"

His voice was low, in an awing, confident contrast with the headlong
emphasis of his movements. He sat down abruptly.

"This isn't to boast of it, you know. I am nothing," he said in his
effortless strong voice, that seemed to come out as naturally as a river
flows. He picked up the stump of the cigar he had laid aside, and added
peacefully, with a slight nod, "As it happens, my life is necessary; it
isn't my own, it isn't--God knows."

He did not say much for the rest of the evening, but several times Mr.
Van Wyk detected a faint smile of assurance flitting under the heavy
mustache.

Later on Captain Whalley would now and then consent to dine "at the
house." He could even be induced to drink a glass of wine. "Don't think
I am afraid of it, my good sir," he explained. "There was a very good
reason why I should give it up."

On another occasion, leaning back at ease, he remarked, "You have
treated me most--most humanely, my dear Mr. Van Wyk, from the very
first."

"You'll admit there was some merit," Mr. Van Wyk hinted slyly. "An
associate of that excellent Massy. . . . Well, well, my dear captain, I
won't say a word against him."

"It would be no use your saying anything against him," Captain Whalley
affirmed a little moodily. "As I've told you before, my life--my work,
is necessary, not for myself alone. I can't choose" . . . He paused,
turned the glass before him right round. . . . "I have an only child--a
daughter."

The ample downward sweep of his arm over the table seemed to suggest
a small girl at a vast distance. "I hope to see her once more before I
die. Meantime it's enough to know that she has me sound and solid, thank
God. You can't understand how one feels. Bone of my bone, flesh of my
flesh; the very image of my poor wife. Well, she . . ."

Again he paused, then pronounced stoically the words, "She has a hard
struggle."

And his head fell on his breast, his eyebrows remained knitted, as by
an effort of meditation. But generally his mind seemed steeped in the
serenity of boundless trust in a higher power. Mr. Van Wyk wondered
sometimes how much of it was due to the splendid vitality of the man,
to the bodily vigor which seems to impart something of its force to the
soul. But he had learned to like him very much.


XIII

This was the reason why Mr. Sterne's confidential communication,
delivered hurriedly on the shore alongside the dark silent ship,
had disturbed his equanimity. It was the most incomprehensible and
unexpected thing that could happen; and the perturbation of his spirit
was so great that, forgetting all about his letters, he ran rapidly up
the bridge ladder.

The portable table was being put together for dinner to the left of the
wheel by two pig-tailed "boys," who as usual snarled at each other
over the job, while another, a doleful, burly, very yellow Chinaman,
resembling Mr. Massy, waited apathetically with the cloth over his arm
and a pile of thick dinner-plates against his chest. A common cabin lamp
with its globe missing, brought up from below, had been hooked to the
wooden framework of the awning; the side-screens had been lowered all
round; Captain Whalley filling the depths of the wicker-chair seemed to
sit benumbed in a canvas tent crudely lighted, and used for the storing
of nautical objects; a shabby steering-wheel, a battered brass binnacle
on a stout mahogany stand, two dingy life-buoys, an old cork fender
lying in a corner, dilapidated deck-lockers with loops of thin rope
instead of door-handles.

He shook off the appearance of numbness to return Mr. Van Wyk's
unusually brisk greeting, but relapsed directly afterwards. To accept
a pressing invitation to dinner "up at the house" cost him another very
visible physical effort. Mr. Van Wyk, perplexed, folded his arms, and
leaning back against the rail, with his little, black, shiny feet well
out, examined him covertly.

"I've noticed of late that you are not quite yourself, old friend."

He put an affectionate gentleness into the last two words. The real
intimacy of their intercourse had never been so vividly expressed
before.

"Tut, tut, tut!"

The wicker-chair creaked heavily.

"Irritable," commented Mr. Van Wyk to himself; and aloud, "I'll expect
to see you in half an hour, then," he said negligently, moving off.

"In half an hour," Captain Whalley's rigid silvery head repeated behind
him as if out of a trance.

Amidships, below, two voices, close against the engineroom, could be
heard answering each other--one angry and slow, the other alert.

"I tell you the beast has locked himself in to get drunk."

"Can't help it now, Mr. Massy. After all, a man has a right to shut
himself up in his cabin in his own time."

"Not to get drunk."

"I heard him swear that the worry with the boilers was enough to drive
any man to drink," Sterne said maliciously.

Massy hissed out something about bursting the door in. Mr. Van Wyk, to
avoid them, crossed in the dark to the other side of the deserted deck.
The planking of the little wharf rattled faintly under his hasty feet.

"Mr. Van Wyk! Mr. Van Wyk!"

He walked on: somebody was running on the path. "You've forgotten to get
your mail."

Sterne, holding a bundle of papers in his hand, caught up with him.

"Oh, thanks."

But, as the other continued at his elbow, Mr. Van Wyk stopped short.
The overhanging eaves, descending low upon the lighted front of the
bungalow, threw their black straight-edged shadow into the great body of
the night on that side. Everything was very still. A tinkle of cutlery
and a slight jingle of glasses were heard. Mr. Van Wyk's servants were
laying the table for two on the veranda.

"I'm afraid you give me no credit whatever for my good intentions in the
matter I've spoken to you about," said Sterne.

"I simply don't understand you."

"Captain Whalley is a very audacious man, but he will understand that
his game is up. That's all that anybody need ever know of it from me.
Believe me, I am very considerate in this, but duty is duty. I don't
want to make a fuss. All I ask you, as his friend, is to tell him from
me that the game's up. That will be sufficient."

Mr. Van Wyk felt a loathsome dismay at this queer privilege of
friendship. He would not demean himself by asking for the slightest
explanation; to drive the other away with contumely he did not think
prudent--as yet, at any rate. So much assurance staggered him. Who
could tell what there could be in it, he thought? His regard for Captain
Whalley had the tenacity of a disinterested sentiment, and his practical
instinct coming to his aid, he concealed his scorn.

"I gather, then, that this is something grave."

"Very grave," Sterne assented solemnly, delighted at having produced
an effect at last. He was ready to add some effusive protestations
of regret at the "unavoidable necessity," but Mr. Van Wyk cut him
short--very civilly, however.

Once on the veranda Mr. Van Wyk put his hands in his pockets, and,
straddling his legs, stared down at a black panther skin lying on the
floor before a rocking-chair. "It looks as if the fellow had not the
pluck to play his own precious game openly," he thought.

This was true enough. In the face of Massy's last rebuff Sterne dared
not declare his knowledge. His object was simply to get charge of the
steamer and keep it for some time. Massy would never forgive him for
forcing himself on; but if Captain Whalley left the ship of his own
accord, the command would devolve upon him for the rest of the trip;
so he hit upon the brilliant idea of scaring the old man away. A vague
menace, a mere hint, would be enough in such a brazen case; and, with
a strange admixture of compassion, he thought that Batu Beru was a
very good place for throwing up the sponge. The skipper could go ashore
quietly, and stay with that Dutchman of his. Weren't these two as thick
as thieves together? And on reflection he seemed to see that there was a
way to work the whole thing through that great friend of the old
man's. This was another brilliant idea. He had an inborn preference for
circuitous methods. In this particular case he desired to remain in the
background as much as possible, to avoid exasperating Massy needlessly.
No fuss! Let it all happen naturally.

Mr. Van Wyk all through the dinner was conscious of a sense of isolation
that invades sometimes the closeness of human intercourse. Captain
Whalley failed lamentably and obviously in his attempts to eat
something. He seemed overcome by a strange absentmindedness. His hand
would hover irresolutely, as if left without guidance by a preoccupied
mind. Mr. Van Wyk had heard him coming up from a long way off in the
profound stillness of the river-side, and had noticed the irresolute
character of the footfalls. The toe of his boot had struck the bottom
stair as though he had come along mooning with his head in the air
right up to the steps of the veranda. Had the captain of the Sofala been
another sort of man he would have suspected the work of age there. But
one glance at him was enough. Time--after, indeed, marking him for its
own--had given him up to his usefulness, in which his simple faith would
see a proof of Divine mercy. "How could I contrive to warn him?" Mr. Van
Wyk wondered, as if Captain Whalley had been miles and miles away, out
of sight and earshot of all evil. He was sickened by an immense disgust
of Sterne. To even mention his threat to a man like Whalley would be
positively indecent. There was something more vile and insulting in
its hint than in a definite charge of crime--the debasing taint of
blackmailing. "What could anyone bring against him?" he asked himself.
This was a limpid personality. "And for what object?" The Power that man
trusted had thought fit to leave him nothing on earth that envy could
lay hold of, except a bare crust of bread.

"Won't you try some of this?" he asked, pushing a dish slightly.
Suddenly it seemed to Mr. Van Wyk that Sterne might possibly be coveting
the command of the Sofala. His cynicism was quite startled by what
looked like a proof that no man may count himself safe from his kind
unless in the very abyss of misery. An intrigue of that sort was hardly
worth troubling about, he judged; but still, with such a fool as Massy
to deal with, Whalley ought to and must be warned.

At this moment Captain Whalley, bolt upright, the deep cavities of the
eyes overhung by a bushy frown, and one large brown hand resting on each
side of his empty plate, spoke across the tablecloth abruptly--"Mr. Van
Wyk, you've always treated me with the most humane consideration."

"My dear captain, you make too much of a simple fact that I am not
a savage." Mr. Van Wyk, utterly revolted by the thought of Sterne's
obscure attempt, raised his voice incisively, as if the mate had been
hiding somewhere within earshot. "Any consideration I have been able to
show was no more than the rightful due of a character I've learned to
regard by this time with an esteem that nothing can shake."

A slight ring of glass made him lift his eyes from the slice of
pine-apple he was cutting into small pieces on his plate. In changing
his position Captain Whalley had contrived to upset an empty tumbler.

Without looking that way, leaning sideways on his elbow, his other
hand shading his brow, he groped shakily for it, then desisted. Van Wyk
stared blankly, as if something momentous had happened all at once.
He did not know why he should feel so startled; but he forgot Sterne
utterly for the moment.

"Why, what's the matter?"

And Captain Whalley, half-averted, in a deadened, agitated voice,
muttered--

"Esteem!"

"And I may add something more," Mr. Van Wyk, very steady-eyed,
pronounced slowly.

"Hold! Enough!" Captain Whalley did not change his attitude or raise his
voice. "Say no more! I can make you no return. I am too poor even for
that now. Your esteem is worth having. You are not a man that would
stoop to deceive the poorest sort of devil on earth, or make a ship
unseaworthy every time he takes her to sea."

Mr. Van Wyk, leaning forward, his face gone pink all over, with the
starched table-napkin over his knees, was inclined to mistrust his
senses, his power of comprehension, the sanity of his guest.

"Where? Why? In the name of God!--what's this? What ship? I don't
understand who . . ."

"Then, in the name of God, it is I! A ship's unseaworthy when her
captain can't see. I am going blind."

Mr. Van Wyk made a slight movement, and sat very still afterwards for
a few seconds; then, with the thought of Sterne's "The game's up," he
ducked under the table to pick up the napkin which had slipped off his
knees. This was the game that was up. And at the same time the muffled
voice of Captain Whalley passed over him--

"I've deceived them all. Nobody knows."

He emerged flushed to the eyes. Captain Whalley, motionless under the
full blaze of the lamp, shaded his face with his hand.

"And you had that courage?"

"Call it by what name you like. But you are a humane
man--a--a--gentleman, Mr. Van Wyk. You may have asked me what I had done
with my conscience."

He seemed to muse, profoundly silent, very still in his mournful pose.

"I began to tamper with it in my pride. You begin to see a lot of things
when you are going blind. I could not be frank with an old chum even.
I was not frank with Massy--no, not altogether. I knew he took me for
a wealthy sailor fool, and I let him. I wanted to keep up my
importance--because there was poor Ivy away there--my daughter. What did
I want to trade on his misery for? I did trade on it--for her. And now,
what mercy could I expect from him? He would trade on mine if he knew
it. He would hunt the old fraud out, and stick to the money for a year.
Ivy's money. And I haven't kept a penny for myself. How am I going to
live for a year. A year! In a year there will be no sun in the sky for
her father."

His deep voice came out, awfully veiled, as though he had been
overwhelmed by the earth of a landslide, and talking to you of the
thoughts that haunt the dead in their graves. A cold shudder ran down
Mr. Van Wyk's back.

"And how long is it since you have . . .?" he began.

"It was a long time before I could bring myself to believe in this--this
visitation." Captain Whalley spoke with gloomy patience from under his
hand.

He had not thought he had deserved it. He had begun by deceiving himself
from day to day, from week to week. He had the Serang at hand there--an
old servant. It came on gradually, and when he could no longer deceive
himself . . .

His voice died out almost.

"Rather than give her up I set myself to deceive you all."

"It's incredible," whispered Mr. Van Wyk. Captain Whalley's appalling
murmur flowed on.

"Not even the sign of God's anger could make me forget her. How could I
forsake my child, feeling my vigor all the time--the blood warm within
me? Warm as yours. It seems to me that, like the blinded Samson, I
would find the strength to shake down a temple upon my head. She's a
struggling woman--my own child that we used to pray over together, my
poor wife and I. Do you remember that day I as well as told you that I
believed God would let me live to a hundred for her sake? What sin is
there in loving your child? Do you see it? I was ready for her sake
to live for ever. I half believed I would. I've been praying for death
since. Ha! Presumptuous man--you wanted to live . . ."