Falk

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Falk


One afternoon--as the survivors lay about on the after deck--the
carpenter, a tall man with a black beard, spoke of the last sacrifice.
There was nothing eatable left on board. Nobody said a word to this; but
that company separated quickly, these listless feeble spectres slunk
off one by one to hide in fear of each other. Falk and the carpenter
remained on deck together. Falk liked the big carpenter. He had been the
best man of the lot, helpful and ready as long as there was anything to
do, the longest hopeful, and had preserved to the last some vigour and
decision of mind.

They did not speak to each other. Henceforth no voices were to be heard
conversing sadly on board that ship. After a time the carpenter tottered
away forward; but later on, Falk going to drink at the fresh-water pump,
had the inspiration to turn his head. The carpenter had stolen upon him
from behind, and, summoning all his strength, was aiming with a crowbar
a blow at the back of his skull.

Dodging just in time, Falk made his escape and ran into his cabin. While
he was loading his revolver there, he heard the sound of heavy blows
struck upon the bridge. The locks of the chartroom doors were slight,
they flew open, and the carpenter, possessing himself of the captain's
revolver, fired a shot of defiance.

Falk was about to go on deck and have it out at once, when he remarked
that one of the ports of his cabin commanded the approaches to the
freshwater pump. Instead of going out he remained in and secured the
door. "The best man shall survive," he said to himself--and the other,
he reasoned, must at some time or other come there to drink. These
starving men would drink often to cheat the pangs of their hunger. But
the carpenter too must have noticed the position of the port. They were
the two best men in the ship, and the game was with them. All the rest
of the day Falk saw no one and heard no sound. At night he strained his
eyes. It was dark--he heard a rustling noise once, but he was certain
that no one could have come near the pump. It was to the left of his
deck port, and he could not have failed to see a man, for the night was
clear and starry. He saw nothing; towards morning another faint noise
made him suspicious. Deliberately and quietly he unlocked his door. He
had not slept, and had not given way to the horror of the situation. He
wanted to live.

But during the night the carpenter, without at all trying to approach
the pump, had managed to creep quietly along the starboard bulwark, and,
unseen, had crouched down right under Falk's deck port. When daylight
came he rose up suddenly, looked in, and putting his arm through the
round brass framed opening, fired at Falk within a foot. He missed--and
Falk, instead of attempting to seize the arm holding the weapon, opened
his door unexpectedly, and with the muzzle of his long revolver nearly
touching the other's side, shot him dead.

The best man had survived. Both of them had at the beginning just
strength enough to stand on their feet, and both had displayed pitiless
resolution, endurance, cunning and courage--all the qualities of classic
heroism. At once Falk threw overboard the captain's revolver. He was a
born monopolist. Then after the report of the two shots, followed by a
profound silence, there crept out into the cold, cruel dawn of Antarctic
regions, from various hiding-places, over the deck of that dismantled
corpse of a ship floating on a grey sea ruled by iron necessity and with
a heart of ice--there crept into view one by one, cautious, slow, eager,
glaring, and unclean, a band of hungry and livid skeletons. Falk faced
them, the possessor of the only fire-arm on board, and the second best
man--the carpenter--was lying dead between him and them.

"He was eaten, of course," I said.

He bent his head slowly, shuddered a little, drawing his hands over his
face, and said, "I had never any quarrel with that man. But there were
our lives between him and me."

Why continue the story of that ship, that story before which, with its
fresh-water pump like a spring of death, its man with the weapon, the
sea ruled by iron necessity, its spectral band swayed by terror and
hope, its mute and unhearing heaven?-the fable of the Flying Dutchman
with its convention of crime and its sentimental retribution fades like
a graceful wreath, like a wisp of white mist. What is there to say that
every one of us cannot guess for himself? I believe Falk began by going
through the ship, revolver in hand, to annex all the matches. Those
starving wretches had plenty of matches! He had no mind to have the ship
set on fire under his feet, either from hate or from despair. He lived
in the open, camping on the bridge, commanding all the after deck
and the only approach to the pump. He lived! Some of the others lived
too--concealed, anxious, coming out one by one from their hiding-places
at the seductive sound of a shot. And he was not selfish. They shared,
but only three of them all were alive when a whaler, returning from her
cruising ground, nearly ran over the water-logged hull of the Borgmester
Dahl, which, it seems, in the end had in some way sprung a leak in both
her holds, but being loaded with deals could not sink.

"They all died," Falk said. "These three too, afterwards. But I would
not die. All died, all! under this terrible misfortune. But was I too to
throw away my life? Could I? Tell me, captain? I was alone there, quite
alone, just like the others. Each man was alone. Was I to give up my
revolver? Who to? Or was I to throw it into the sea? What would
have been the good? Only the best man would survive. It was a great,
terrible, and cruel misfortune."

He had survived! I saw him before me as though preserved for a witness
to the mighty truth of an unerring and eternal principle. Great beads
of perspiration stood on his forehead. And suddenly it struck the table
with a heavy blow, as he fell forward throwing his hands out.

"And this is worse," he cried. "This is a worse pain! This is more
terrible."

He made my heart thump with the profound conviction of his cries. And
after he had left me alone I called up before my mental eye the image
of the girl weeping silently, abundantly, patiently, and as if
irresistibly. I thought of her tawny hair. I thought how, if unplaited,
it would have covered her all round as low as the hips, like the hair of
a siren. And she had bewitched him. Fancy a man who would guard his
own life with the inflexibility of a pitiless and immovable fate, being
brought to lament that once a crowbar had missed his skull! The sirens
sing and lure to death, but this one had been weeping silently as if
for the pity of his life. She was the tender and voiceless siren of this
appalling navigator. He evidently wanted to live his whole conception
of life. Nothing else would do. And she too was a servant of that
life that, in the midst of death, cries aloud to our senses. She was
eminently fitted to interpret for him its feminine side. And in her own
way, and with her own profusion of sensuous charms, she also seemed
to illustrate the eternal truth of an unerring principle. I don't know
though what sort of principle Hermann illustrated when he turned up
early on board my ship with a most perplexed air. It struck me, however,
that he too would do his best to survive. He seemed greatly calmed on
the subject of Falk, but still very full of it.

"What is it you said I was last night? You know," he asked after some
preliminary talk. "Too--too--I don't know. A very funny word."

"Squeamish?" I suggested.

"Yes. What does it mean?"

"That you exaggerate things--to yourself. Without inquiry, and so on."

He seemed to turn it over in his mind. We went on talking. This Falk was
the plague of his life. Upsetting everybody like this! Mrs. Hermann was
unwell rather this morning. His niece was crying still. There was nobody
to look after the children. He struck his umbrella on the deck. She
would be like that for months. Fancy carrying all the way home, second
class, a perfectly useless girl who is crying all the time. It was
bad for Lena too, he observed; but on what grounds I could not guess.
Perhaps of the bad example. That child was already sorrowing and crying
enough over the rag doll. Nicholas was really the least sentimental
person of the family.

"Why does she weep?" I asked.

"From pity," cried Hermann.

It was impossible to make out women. Mrs. Hermann was the only one he
pretended to understand. She was very, very upset and doubtful.

"Doubtful about what?" I asked.

He averted his eyes and did not answer this. It was impossible to make
them out. For instance, his niece was weeping for Falk. Now he (Hermann)
would like to wring his neck--but then . . . He supposed he had too
tender a heart. "Frankly," he asked at last, "what do you think of what
we heard last night, captain?"

"In all these tales," I observed, "there is always a good deal of
exaggeration."

And not letting him recover from his surprise I assured him that I knew
all the details. He begged me not to repeat them. His heart was too
tender. They made him feel unwell. Then, looking at his feet and
speaking very slowly, he supposed that he need not see much of them
after they were married. For, indeed, he could not bear the sight of
Falk. On the other hand it was ridiculous to take home a girl with her
head turned. A girl that weeps all the time and is of no help to her
aunt.

"Now you will be able to do with one cabin only on your passage home," I
said.

"Yes, I had thought of that," he said brightly, almost. "Yes! Himself,
his wife, four children--one cabin might do. Whereas if his niece went
. . ."

"And what does Mrs. Hermann say to it?" I inquired.

Mrs. Hermann did not know whether a man of that sort could make a girl
happy--she had been greatly deceived in Captain Falk. She had been very
upset last night.

Those good people did not seem to be able to retain an impression for a
whole twelve hours. I assured him on my own personal knowledge that
Falk possessed in himself all the qualities to make his niece's future
prosperous. He said he was glad to hear this, and that he would tell his
wife. Then the object of the visit came out. He wished me to help him to
resume relations with Falk. His niece, he said, had expressed the hope I
would do so in my kindness. He was evidently anxious that I should,
for though he seemed to have forgotten nine-tenths of his last night's
opinions and the whole of his indignation, yet he evidently feared to
be sent to the right-about. "You told me he was very much in love," he
concluded slyly, and leered in a sort of bucolic way.

As soon as he had left my ship I called Falk on board by signal--the
tug still lying at the anchorage. He took the news with calm gravity,
as though he had all along expected the stars to fight for him in their
courses.

I saw them once more together, and only once--on the quarter-deck of the
Diana. Hermann sat smoking with a shirt-sleeved elbow hooked over the
back of his chair. Mrs. Hermann was sewing alone. As Falk stepped over
the gangway, Hermann's niece, with a slight swish of the skirt and a
swift friendly nod to me, glided past my chair.

They met in sunshine abreast of the mainmast. He held her hands and
looked down at them, and she looked up at him with her candid and
unseeing glance. It seemed to me they had come together as if attracted,
drawn and guided to each other by a mysterious influence. They were a
complete couple. In her grey frock, palpitating with life, generous of
form, olympian and simple, she was indeed the siren to fascinate that
dark navigator, this ruthless lover of the five senses. From afar I
seemed to feel the masculine strength with which he grasped those hands
she had extended to him with a womanly swiftness. Lena, a little pale,
nursing her beloved lump of dirty rags, ran towards her big friend; and
then in the drowsy silence of the good old ship Mrs. Hermann's voice
rang out so changed that it made me spin round in my chair to see what
was the matter.

"Lena, come here!" she screamed. And this good-natured matron gave me a
wavering glance, dark and full of fearsome distrust. The child ran
back, surprised to her knee. But the two, standing before each other in
sunlight with clasped hands, had heard nothing, had seen nothing and no
one. Three feet away from them in the shade a seaman sat on a spar, very
busy splicing a strop, and dipping his fingers into a tar-pot, as if
utterly unaware of their existence.

When I returned in command of another ship, some five years afterwards,
Mr. and Mrs. Falk had left the place. I should not wonder if Schomberg's
tongue had succeeded at last in scaring Falk away for good; and,
indubitably, there was a tale still going about the town of a certain
Falk, owner of a tug, who had won his wife at cards from the captain of
an English ship.


THE END