NOVELS.
TYPHOON.*
JUST as Browning is said to have composed "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" in the one place where it was impossible to have a ride, so we can imagine Mr. Conrad, safely planted on terra firma, creating for himself in imagination all the fearful joys of a storm at sea. The thing has been done a thousand times before, but it is quite safe to say that it has never been done quite in the same way as by Mr. Conrad, who is not only a great artist, but who has the happy gift of invariably avoiding the commonplace, not because he tries to, but because he cannot help it. The setting of the storm described in the• story which gives its name to the collection is quite original. Mr. Conrad, himself most keenly imaginative of writers, has taken for his hero one of the most unimaginative and stolid of skippers, one too, who had reached middle age without ever having been put to a searching ordeal of nerve :— "The sea itself, as if sharing Mr. Jukes' [his chief mate] good- natured forbearance, had never put itself out to startle the silent man, who seldom looked 2p, and wandered innocently over the waters with the only visible purpose of getting food, raiment, and house-room for three people ashore. Dirty weather he had known, of course. He had been made wet, uncomfortable, tired in the usual way, felt at the time and presently forgotten. So that upon the whole he had been justified in reporting fine weather at home. But he had never been given a glimpse of im- measurable strength and of immoderate wrath, the wrath that passes exhausted but never appeased--the wrath and fury of the passionate sea. He knew it existed, as we know that crime and abominations exist ; he had heard of it as a peaceable citizen in a town hears of battles, famines, and floods, and yet knows nothing of what these things mean—though, indeed, he may have been mixed up in a street row, have gone without his dinner once, or been soaked to the skin in a shower. Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror. There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate—or thus disdained by destiny or by the sea."
The sequel tells how Captain MacWhirFs enlightenment came when, with two hundred coolies on board, bound from a, Siamese port for ru-chnu, he steamed into the heart of a typhoon, and in forty-eight awful hours entirely atoned for Typhoon, and other Stories. By Joseph Conrad. 'London : W: neinenuum. Ds.] his long immunity from danger and discomfort. Perhaps the most striking thing in an extraordinarily impressive descrip- tion is the way in which the stupidity of the skipper enables him to win through,—first of all by infecting his officers with his imperturbable confidence, and secondly by providing his crew with occupation at a critical moment when, if left to themselves, they might have given way to panic-. But, after all, such stupidity comes very near being divine, seeing that in Captain MacWhirr's case it was combined with extra- ordinary patience, fortitude, and consideration for others. Psychologically the story is a study of the contagion of calm- ness, rendered all the more effective by the dramatic contrast' of the surroundings, the awful tumult of the storm, and the ittferne of the " 'tween-deck " when the coolies break adrift with their boxes. The climax of the story is reached when the chief mate from the engine-room. informs the Captain on the bridge of the state of affairs in the " 'tween-decks " "Jukes yelled Are you there, sir ?' and listened. Nothing,. Suddenly the roar of the wind fell straight into his ear, but presently a small voice shoved aside the shouting hurricane quietly. You, Jukes F—Well ? ' Jukes was ready to talk : it was only time that seemed to be wanting. It was easy enough to account for everything. He could perfectly imagine the coolies battened down in the reeking 'tween-deck, lying sick and scared between the rows of chests. Then one of these chests—or perhaps several at once—breaking loose in a roll, knocking out others, sides splitting, lids flying open, and all these clumsy Chinamen.rising up in a body to save their property. Afterwards every fling of the ship would hurl that tramping, yelling mob here and there, from side to side, in a whirl of smashed wood, torn clothing, rolling dollars. A struggle once started, they would be unable to stop themselves. Nothing could stop them now except main force. It was a disaster. He had seen it, and that was all he could say. Some of them must be dead, he believed. The rest would go on fighting. . . . He sent up his words, tripping over each other, crowding the narrow tube. They mounted as if into a silence of an enlightened comprehension dwelling alone up there with a storm. And Jukes wanted to be dismissed from the face of that odious trouble intruding on the great need of the ship. He waited. Before his eyes the engines turned with slow labour, that in the moment of going off into a mad fling would stop dead at Mr. Rout's shout, Look out, Beale V They paused in an in- telligent immobility, stilled in mid-stroke, a heavy crank arrested on the cant, as if conscious of danger and the passage of time. Then, with a Now, then !' from the chief, and the sound of a breath expelled through clenched teeth, they would accomplish the interrupted revolution and begin another. There was the prudent sagacity of wisdom and the deliberation of enormous strength in their movements. This was their work—this patient coaxing of a distracted ship over the fury of the waves and into the very eye of the wind. At times Mr. Rout's chin would sink on his breast, and be watched them with knitted eyebrows as if lost in thought. The voice that kept the hurricane out of Jukes' ear began : Take the hands with you. . . and left off unexpectedly. 'What could I do with them, sir ?' A harsh, abrupt, imperious clang exploded suddenly. The three pairs of eyes flew up to the telegraph dial to see the hand jump from Fem. to STOP, as if snatched by a devil. And then these three men in the en„oine-room had the intimate sensation of a check upon the ship, of a strange shrinking, as if she had gathered herself for a desperate leap. Stop her!' bellowed Mr. Rout. Nobody—not even Captain MacWhirr, who alone on deck had caught sight of a white line of foam coming on at such a height that he couldn't , believe his eyes—nobody was to know the steepness of that sea and the awful depth of the hollow the hurricane had scooped out behind the running wall of water. It raced to n,ieet the ship, and, with a pause, as of girding the loins, the Nan-Shan lifted her bows and leaped. The flames in all the lamps sank, darkening the engine-room. One went out With a tearing crash and a swirling, raving tumult, tons of water fell upon the deck, as , though the ship had darted under the foot of a cataract. Down there they looked at each other, stunned. Swept from end to end, by God!' bawled Jukes. She dipped into the hollow straight down, as if going over the edge of the world. The engine-room toppled forward menacingly, like the inside of a tower nodding in an earthquake. An awful racket, of iron things falling, came from the stokehold. She hung on this appalling slant long enough for Beale to drop on his hands and knees and begin to crawl as if he meant to fly on all fours out of the engine-room, and for Mr. Rout to turn his head slowly, rigid, cavernous, with the lower jaw dropping. Jukes had shut his eyes, and his face in a moment became hopelessly blank and gentle, like the face of a blind man. At last she rose slowly, staggering, as if she had to lift a mountain with her bows. Mr. Rout shut his mouth ; Jukes blinked ; and little Beale stood up hastily. Another one like this, and that's the last of her,' cried the chief. He and Jukes looked at each other, and the same thought came into their heads. The Captain ! Everything must have been swept away. Steering gear gone—ship like a log. All over directly. 'Rush!' ejaculated Mr. Rout thickly, glaring with enlarged, doubtful eyes at Jukes, who answered him by an irresolute glance. The clang of the telegraph. gong soothed them instantly. The black hand dropped in a flash from STOP to FULL. Now then, Beale !' cried Mr. Rout. The steam hissed low. The piston-rods slid in and, out. Jukes put his ear to the tube. The voice was, ready for him. It said : Pick up all the money. Bear a hand now. I'll want you up here.' And that was all. ` Sir ?' called up Jukes. There was no answer. He staggered away like a defeated man from the field of battle. He had got, in some way or other, a cut above his left eyebrow- s cut to the bone. He was not aware of it in the least : quantities of the China Sea, large enough to break his neck for him, had gone over his head, had cleaned, washed, and salted that wound. It did not bleed, but only gaped red ; and this gash over the eye, his dishevelled hair, the disorder of his clothes, gave him the aspect of a man worsted in a fight with fists. 'Got to pick up the dollars.' He appealed to Mr. Rout, smiling pitifully at random.
What's that ?' asked Mr. Rout wildly. Pick up. . ? I don't care. . . .' Then, quivering in every muscle, but with an exaggeration of paternal tone, Go away now, for God's sake. You deck people'll drive me silly. There's that second mate been going for the old man. Don't you know ? You fellows are going wrong for want of something to do. . . "
The glimpses that Mr. Conrad gives us of the home belongings of the Captain and the chief engineer—the selfish Mrs. MacWhirr comfortably installed by the exertions of the husband she and his children despise in a garish villa, and the genial Mrs. Rout regaling her old mother-in-law with excerpts from her husband's letters—add to the impressive- ness of the narrative, while the portraits of the ill-conditioned second mate, who loses his nerve, the boatswain, and others of the crew, as revealed by the stress of a great emergency, vividly recall the famous lines of Lucretius :— ". . . in dubiis hominem spectare periclis Convenit, adversisque in rebus noscere qui sit.
Nam verae voces turn denium pectore ab imo Ejiciuntur et eripitnr persona, menet res."
The impression of " Typhoon " is so overpowering as some- what to eclipse the stories in the book, remarkable as they would be in any other context. We may note, how- ever, in "Amy Foster" a touching romance of a ship- wrecked Polish emigrant, the victim of fraud, ignorance, and misunderstanding, which vividly recalls more than one variation of a similar theme by Sienkiewicz.
Previous page
