Read Online The Shadow-Line by Joseph Conrad - Free Book Online

struck me as rather a cub.
    When we returned below, I sat down on one end of a deep, semi-circular, or, rather, semi-oval settee, upholstered in red plush. It extended right across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sit down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if all this were make-believe and he expected me to get up, burst into a laugh, slap him on the back, and vanish from the cabin.
    There was an odd stress in the situation which began to make me uncomfortable. I tried to react against this vague feeling.
    â€œIt’s only my inexperience,” I thought.
    In the face of that man, several years, I judged, older than myself, I became aware of what I had left already behind me—my youth. And that was indeed poor comfort. Youth is a fine thing, a mighty power—as long as one does not think of it. I felt I was becoming self-conscious. Almost against my will I assumed a moody gravity. I said: “I see you have kept her in very good order, Mr. Burns.”
    Directly I had uttered these words I asked myself angrily why the deuce did I want to say that? Mr. Burns in answer had only blinked at me. What on earth did he mean?
    I fell back on a question which had been in my thoughts for a long time—the most natural question on the lips of any seaman whatever joining a ship. I voiced it (confound this self-consciousness) in a
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é cheerful tone: “I suppose she can travel—what?”
    Now a question like this might have been answered normally, either in accents of apologetic sorrow or with a visibly suppressed pride, in a “I don’t want to boast, but you shall see,” sort of tone. There are sailors, too, who would have been roughly outspoken: “Lazy brute,” or openly delighted: “She’s a flyer.” Two ways, if four manners.
    But Mr. Burns found another way, a way of his own which had, at all events, the merit of saving his breath, if no other.
    Again he did not say anything. He only frowned. And it was an angry frown. I waited. Nothing more came.
    â€œWhat’s the matter? . . . Can’t you tell after being nearly two years in the ship?” I addressed him sharply.
    He looked as startled for a moment as though he had discovered my presence only that very moment. But this passed off almost at once. He put on an air of indifference. But I suppose he thought it better to say something. He said that a ship needed, just like a man, the chance to show the best she could do, and that this ship had never had a chance since he had been on board of her. Not that he could remember. The last captain. . . . He paused.
    â€œHas he been so very unlucky?” I asked with frank incredulity. Mr. Burns turned his eyes away from me. No, the late captain was not an unlucky man. One couldn’t say that. But he had not seemed to want to make use of his luck.
    Mr. Burns—man of enigmatic moods—made this statement with an inanimate face and staring wilfully at the rudder casing. The statement itself was obscurely suggestive. I asked quietly:
    â€œWhere did he die?”
    â€œIn this saloon. Just where you are sitting now,” answered Mr. Burns.
    I repressed a silly impulse to jump up; but upon the whole I was relieved to hear that he had not died in the bed which was now to be mine. I pointed out to the chief mate that what I really wanted to know was where he had buried his late captain.
    Mr. Burns said that it was at the entrance to the gulf. A roomy grave; a sufficient answer. But the mate, overcoming visibly something within him—something like a curious reluctance to believe in my advent (as an irrevocable fact, at any rate), did not stop at that—though, indeed, he may have wished to do so.
    As a compromise with his feelings, I believe, he addressed himself persistently to the rudder-casing, so that to me he had the