The Secret Sharer

J >> Joseph Conrad >> The Secret Sharer

THE SECRET SHARER

by Joseph Conrad



I


On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a
mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in
its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if
abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other
end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as
the eye could reach. To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting
ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations set
in a blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie
below my feet; even the track of light from the westering sun shone
smoothly, without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible
ripple. And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug
which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line
of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect
and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor half brown, half blue under
the enormous dome of the sky. Corresponding in their insignificance to
the islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on each side of
the only fault in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river
Meinam we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward
journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass,
the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on
which the eye could rest from the vain task of exploring the monotonous
sweep of the horizon. Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces
of silver marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest of
them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land became
lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive
earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor. My eye
followed the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there, above the
plain, according to the devious curves of the stream, but always fainter
and farther away, till I lost it at last behind the miter-shaped hill
of the great pagoda. And then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at
the head of the Gulf of Siam.

She floated at the starting point of a long journey, very still in an
immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by
the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not
a sound in her--and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe
on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky. In this
breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be
measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed
task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes,
with only sky and sea for spectators and for judges.

There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one's
sight, because it was only just before the sun left us that my roaming
eyes made out beyond the highest ridges of the principal islet of the
group something which did away with the solemnity of perfect solitude.
The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness a
swarm of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet,
my hand resting lightly on my ship's rail as if on the shoulder of a
trusted friend. But, with all that multitude of celestial bodies staring
down at one, the comfort of quiet communion with her was gone for good.
And there were also disturbing sounds by this time--voices, footsteps
forward; the steward flitted along the main-deck, a busily ministering
spirit; a hand bell tinkled urgently under the poop deck....

I found my two officers waiting for me near the supper table, in the
lighted cuddy. We sat down at once, and as I helped the chief mate, I
said:

"Are you aware that there is a ship anchored inside the islands? I saw
her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down."

He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth of
whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: "Bless my soul, sir! You
don't say so!"

My second mate was a round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond his
years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I detected a slight
quiver on his lips. I looked down at once. It was not my part to
encourage sneering on board my ship. It must be said, too, that I knew
very little of my officers. In consequence of certain events of no
particular significance, except to myself, I had been appointed to the
command only a fortnight before. Neither did I know much of the hands
forward. All these people had been together for eighteen months or so,
and my position was that of the only stranger on board. I mention this
because it has some bearing on what is to follow. But what I felt most
was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must be
told, I was somewhat of a stranger to myself. The youngest man on board
(barring the second mate), and untried as yet by a position of the
fullest responsibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others
for granted. They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I wondered
how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own
personality every man sets up for himself secretly.

Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of collaboration
on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers, was trying to
evolve a theory of the anchored ship. His dominant trait was to take all
things into earnest consideration. He was of a painstaking turn of mind.
As he used to say, he "liked to account to himself" for practically
everything that came in his way, down to a miserable scorpion he had
found in his cabin a week before. The why and the wherefore of that
scorpion--how it got on board and came to select his room rather than
the pantry (which was a dark place and more what a scorpion would be
partial to), and how on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell
of his writing desk--had exercised him infinitely. The ship within the
islands was much more easily accounted for; and just as we were about
to rise from table he made his pronouncement. She was, he doubted not, a
ship from home lately arrived. Probably she drew too much water to cross
the bar except at the top of spring tides. Therefore she went into that
natural harbor to wait for a few days in preference to remaining in an
open roadstead.

"That's so," confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in his slightly hoarse
voice. "She draws over twenty feet. She's the Liverpool ship Sephora
with a cargo of coal. Hundred and twenty-three days from Cardiff."

We looked at him in surprise.

"The tugboat skipper told me when he came on board for your letters,
sir," explained the young man. "He expects to take her up the river the
day after tomorrow."

After thus overwhelming us with the extent of his information he slipped
out of the cabin. The mate observed regretfully that he "could not
account for that young fellow's whims." What prevented him telling us
all about it at once, he wanted to know.

I detained him as he was making a move. For the last two days the crew
had had plenty of hard work, and the night before they had very little
sleep. I felt painfully that I--a stranger--was doing something unusual
when I directed him to let all hands turn in without setting an
anchor watch. I proposed to keep on deck myself till one o'clock or
thereabouts. I would get the second mate to relieve me at that hour.

"He will turn out the cook and the steward at four," I concluded, "and
then give you a call. Of course at the slightest sign of any sort of
wind we'll have the hands up and make a start at once."

He concealed his astonishment. "Very well, sir." Outside the cuddy he
put his head in the second mate's door to inform him of my unheard-of
caprice to take a five hours' anchor watch on myself. I heard the other
raise his voice incredulously--"What? The Captain himself?" Then a few
more murmurs, a door closed, then another. A few moments later I went on
deck.

My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that
unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary hours
of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I knew nothing,
manned by men of whom I knew very little more. Fast alongside a wharf,
littered like any ship in port with a tangle of unrelated things,
invaded by unrelated shore people, I had hardly seen her yet properly.
Now, as she lay cleared for sea, the stretch of her main-deck seemed to
me very find under the stars. Very fine, very roomy for her size,
and very inviting. I descended the poop and paced the waist, my mind
picturing to myself the coming passage through the Malay Archipelago,
down the Indian Ocean, and up the Atlantic. All its phases were familiar
enough to me, every characteristic, all the alternatives which were
likely to face me on the high seas--everything! . . . except the novel
responsibility of command. But I took heart from the reasonable thought
that the ship was like other ships, the men like other men, and that
the sea was not likely to keep any special surprises expressly for my
discomfiture.

Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a cigar and
went below to get it. All was still down there. Everybody at the
after end of the ship was sleeping profoundly. I came out again on
the quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my sleeping suit on that warm
breathless night, barefooted, a glowing cigar in my teeth, and, going
forward, I was met by the profound silence of the fore end of the ship.
Only as I passed the door of the forecastle, I heard a deep, quiet,
trustful sigh of some sleeper inside. And suddenly I rejoiced in the
great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in
my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting
problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute
straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

The riding light in the forerigging burned with a clear, untroubled, as
if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the mysterious shades of
the night. Passing on my way aft along the other side of the ship, I
observed that the rope side ladder, put over, no doubt, for the master
of the tug when he came to fetch away our letters, had not been hauled
in as it should have been. I became annoyed at this, for exactitude in
some small matters is the very soul of discipline. Then I reflected that
I had myself peremptorily dismissed my officers from duty, and by my
own act had prevented the anchor watch being formally set and things
properly attended to. I asked myself whether it was wise ever to
interfere with the established routine of duties even from the kindest
of motives. My action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness only
knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would "account" for my conduct,
and what the whole ship thought of that informality of their new
captain. I was vexed with myself.

Not from compunction certainly, but, as it were mechanically, I
proceeded to get the ladder in myself. Now a side ladder of that sort
is a light affair and comes in easily, yet my vigorous tug, which should
have brought it flying on board, merely recoiled upon my body in a
totally unexpected jerk. What the devil! . . . I was so astounded by
the immovableness of that ladder that I remained stockstill, trying to
account for it to myself like that imbecile mate of mine. In the end, of
course, I put my head over the rail.

The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling
glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and
pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a
faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly
from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the
elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I
saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid
back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One
hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete
but for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping
mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute
stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his
face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship's side. But even then
I could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired
head. However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation
which had gripped me about the chest to pass off. The moment of vain
exclamations was past, too. I only climbed on the spare spar and leaned
over the rail as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer to that mystery
floating alongside.

As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea lightning
played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it ghastly,
silvery, fishlike. He remained as mute as a fish, too. He made no motion
to get out of the water, either. It was inconceivable that he should
not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect that
perhaps he did not want to. And my first words were prompted by just
that troubled incertitude.

"What's the matter?" I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the
face upturned exactly under mine.

"Cramp," it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, "I say, no need
to call anyone."

"I was not going to," I said.

"Are you alone on deck?"

"Yes."

I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the
ladder to swim away beyond my ken--mysterious as he came. But, for the
moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the
sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship) wanted only to know
the time. I told him. And he, down there, tentatively:

"I suppose your captain's turned in?"

"I am sure he isn't," I said.

He seemed to struggle with himself, for I heard something like the low,
bitter murmur of doubt. "What's the good?" His next words came out with
a hesitating effort.

"Look here, my man. Could you call him out quietly?"

I thought the time Had come to declare myself.

"I am the captain."

I heard a "By Jove!" whispered at the level of the water. The
phosphorescence flashed in the swirl of the water all about his limbs,
his other hand seized the ladder.

"My name's Leggatt."

The voice was calm and resolute. A good voice. The self-possession of
that man had somehow induced a corresponding state in myself. It was
very quietly that I remarked:

"You must be a good swimmer."

"Yes. I've been in the water practically since nine o'clock. The
question for me now is whether I am to let go this ladder and go on
swimming till I sink from exhaustion, or--to come on board here."

I felt this was no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real
alternative in the view of a strong soul. I should have gathered from
this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are ever
confronted by such clear issues. But at the time it was pure intuition
on my part. A mysterious communication was established already between
us two--in the face of that silent, darkened tropical sea. I was
young, too; young enough to make no comment. The man in the water began
suddenly to climb up the ladder, and I hastened away from the rail to
fetch some clothes.

Before entering the cabin I stood still, listening in the lobby at the
foot of the stairs. A faint snore came through the closed door of the
chief mate's room. The second mate's door was on the hook, but the
darkness in there was absolutely soundless. He, too, was young and could
sleep like a stone. Remained the steward, but he was not likely to
wake up before he was called. I got a sleeping suit out of my room and,
coming back on deck, saw the naked man from the sea sitting on the main
hatch, glimmering white in the darkness, his elbows on his knees and
his head in his hands. In a moment he had concealed his damp body in a
sleeping suit of the same gray-stripe pattern as the one I was wearing
and followed me like my double on the poop. Together we moved right aft,
barefooted, silent.

"What is it?" I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp out
of the binnacle, and raising it to his face.

"An ugly business."

He had rather regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under somewhat
heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth on his
cheeks; a small, brown mustache, and a well-shaped, round chin. His
expression was concentrated, meditative, under the inspecting light of
the lamp I held up to his face; such as a man thinking hard in solitude
might wear. My sleeping suit was just right for his size. A well-knit
young fellow of twenty-five at most. He caught his lower lip with the
edge of white, even teeth.

"Yes," I said, replacing the lamp in the binnacle. The warm, heavy
tropical night closed upon his head again.

"There's a ship over there," he murmured.

"Yes, I know. The Sephora. Did you know of us?"

"Hadn't the slightest idea. I am the mate of her--" He paused and
corrected himself. "I should say I _was_."

"Aha! Something wrong?"

"Yes. Very wrong indeed. I've killed a man."

"What do you mean? Just now?"

"No, on the passage. Weeks ago. Thirty-nine south. When I say a man--"

"Fit of temper," I suggested, confidently.

The shadowy, dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly above the
ghostly gray of my sleeping suit. It was, in the night, as though I had
been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a somber and immense
mirror.

"A pretty thing to have to own up to for a Conway boy," murmured my
double, distinctly.

"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 forebitts. 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 gray 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 shipmate 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 gray 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 forgotten
he had told me this important fact before. Truly a nice little tale.

"You had better slip down into my stateroom now," I said, moving off
stealthily. My double followed my movements; our bare feet made no
sound; I let him in, closed the door with care, and, after giving a call
to the second mate, returned on deck for my relief.

"Not much sign of any wind yet," I remarked when he approached.

"No, sir. Not much," he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice, with
just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn.

"Well, that's all you have to look out for. You have got your orders."

"Yes, sir."

I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position face
forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen rigging before I
went below. The mate's faint snoring was still going on peacefully.
The cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which stood a vase with
flowers, a polite attention from the ship's provision merchant--the
last flowers we should see for the next three months at the very least.
Two bunches of bananas hung from the beam symmetrically, one on each
side of the rudder casing. Everything was as before in the ship--except
that two of her captain's sleeping suits were simultaneously in use, one
motionless in the cuddy, the other keeping very still in the captain's
stateroom.

It must be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital
letter L, the door being within the angle and opening into the short
part of the letter. A couch was to the left, the bed place to the right;
my writing desk and the chronometers' table faced the door. But anyone
opening it, unless he stepped right inside, had no view of what I call
the long (or vertical) part of the letter. It contained some lockers
surmounted by a bookcase; and a few clothes, a thick jacket or two,
caps, oilskin coat, and such like, hung on hooks. There was at the
bottom of that part a door opening into my bathroom, which could be
entered also directly from the saloon. But that way was never used.

The mysterious arrival had discovered the advantage of this particular
shape. Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big bulkhead lamp swung
on gimbals above my writing desk, I did not see him anywhere till he
stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung in the recessed part.

"I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once," he
whispered.

I, too, spoke under my breath.

"Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting
permission."

He nodded. His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he had
been ill. And no wonder. He had been, I heard presently, kept under
arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks. But there was nothing sickly
in his eyes or in his expression. He was not a bit like me, really; yet,
as we stood leaning over my bed place, whispering side by side, with our
dark heads together and our backs to the door, anybody bold enough to
open it stealthily would have been treated to the uncanny sight of a
double captain busy talking in whispers with his other self.