The Nigger of the Narcissus
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The Nigger of the Narcissus
`There is a girl,' whispered Wait....`Canton Street girl−−She chucked a third engineer of a Rennie boat−−for me. Cooks oysters just as I like....She says−−she would chuck−−any toff−−for a coloured gentleman.... That's me. I am kind to women.' he added a shade louder.
Donkin could hardly believe his ears. He was scandalised.−−`Would she? Yer wouldn't be hany good to 'er,'
he said with unrestrained disgust. Wait was not there to hear him. He was swaggering up the east India Dock Road; saying kindly, `Come along for a treat.' pushing glass swing−doors,, posing with superb assurance in the gaslight above a mahogany counter.−−`D'yer think yer will hever get ashore?' asked Donkin angrily. Wait came back with a start.−−`Ten days,' he said promptly, and returned at once to the regions of memory that know nothing of time. He felt untired, calm , and as if safely withdrawn within himself beyond the reach of every grave incertitude. There was something of the immutable quality of eternity in the slow moments of his complete restfulness. He was very quiet and easy amongst his vivid reminiscences which he mistook joyfully for images of an undoubted future. He cared for no one. Donkin felt this vaguely like a blind man may feel in his darkness the fatal antagonism of all the surrounding existences, that to him shall for ever remain irrealisable, unseen and enviable. He had a desire to assert his importance, to break, to crush; to be even with everybody for everything; to tear the veil, unmask expose, leave no refuge−−a perfidious desire of truthfulness! He laughed in a mocking splutter and said:
`Ten days. Strike me blind if I hever!....You will be dead by this time to−morrow p'r'aps. Ten days!' He waited for a while.`D'ye 'ear me? Blamme if yer don't look dead halready.'
Jimmy must have been collecting his strength for he said almost aloud−−`You're a stinking, cadging liar.
Every one knows you.' And sitting up, against all probability, startled his visitor horribly. But very soon Donkin recovered himself. He blustered, `What? What? Who's a liar? You hare−−the crowd hare−−the skipper−−heverybody. I haint! Putting on hairs! w ho's yer?' He nearly choked himself with indignation.
`Who's yer to put on hairs,' he repeated trembling. `'Ave one−−'ave one, says 'ee−−an' cawn't heat 'em 'isself.
Now I'll 'ave both. By Gawd−−I will! Yer nobody!'
He plunged into the lower bunk, rooted in there and brought to light another dusty biscuit. He held it up before Jimmy−−weethen took a bite defiantly.
`What now?' he asked with feverish impatience. `Yer may take one−−says yer. Why not giv' me both? No.
I'm a mangy dorg. One for a mangy dorg.I'll tyke both. Can yer stop me? Try. Come on. Try.'
Jimmy was clasping his legs and hiding his face on the knees. His shirt clung to him. Every rib was visible.
His emaciated back was shaken in repeated jerks by the panting catches of his breath.
`Yer won't? Yer can't? What did I say?' went on Donkin fiercely. He swallowed another dry mouthful with a hasty effort. The other's silent helplessness, his weakness, his shrinking attitude exasperated him.`Ye're done!'
he cried. `Who's yer to be lied to; to be waited on 'and and foot like a bloomin' hymperor. Yer nobody. Yer no one at all!' he spluttered with such a strength of unerring conviction that it shook him from head to foot in coming out, and left him vibrating like a released string.
Jimmy rallied again. He lifted his head and turned bravely at Donkin, who saw a strange face, an unknown face, a fantastic and grimacing mask of despair and fury. Its lips moved rapidly; and hollow, moaning, whistling sounds filled the cabin with a vague mutter full of menace, complaint and desolation, like the far−off murmur of a rising wind. Wait shook his head; rolled his eyes; he denied, cursed, menaced−−and not a word had the strength to pass beyond the sorrowful pout of those black lips. It was incomprehensible and disturbing; a gibberish of emotions, a frantic dumb show of speech pleading for impossible things, threatening a shadowy vengeance. It sobered Donkin into a scrutinising watchfulness.
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The Nigger of the Narcissus
`Yer can't holler. See? What did I tell yer?' he said slowly after a moment of attentive examination. The other kept on headlong and unheard, nodding passionately, grinning with grotesque and appalling flashes of big white teeth. Donkin, as if fascinated by the dumb eloquence and anger of that black phantom, approached, stretching his neck out with distrustful curiosity; and it seemed to him suddenly that he was looking only at the shadow of a man crouching high in the bunk on the level with his eyes.−−`What? What?' he said. He seemed to catch the shape of some words in the continuous panting hiss. `Yer will tell Belfast! Will yer? Hare yer a bloomin' kid?' He trembled with alarm and rage. `Tell yer gran'mother! Yer afeard! Who's yer ter be afeard more'n hanyone?' His passionate sense of his own importance ran away with a last remnant of caution.
`Tell an' be damned! Tell if yer can!' he cried. Ì've been treated worse'n a dorg by your blooming back−lickers. They 'as set me on, honly to turn against me, I ham the honly man 'ere. They choked me, kicked me−−an' yer laffed−− yer black, rotten incumbrance, you! You will pay fur it. They giv' yer their grub, their water−−yer will pay fur hit to me, by Gawd! Who haxed me ter 'ave a drink of water? They put their bloomin'
rags on yer that night, an' what did they giv' ter me−−a clout on the bloomin' mouth−−blast their....S'elp me!....Yer will pay fur hit with yer money. Hi'm goin' ter 'ave it in a minyte; has soon has ye're dead, yer bloomin' useless fraud. That's the man I ham. An ye're a thing −−−−a bloody thing. Yah−−you corpse!
He flung at Jimmy's head the biscuit he had been all the time clutching hard, but it only grazed, and striking with a loud crack the bulkhead beyond burst like a hand−grenade into flying pieces. James Wait, as though wounded mortally, fell back on the pillow. His lips ceased to move and the rolling eyes became quiet and stared upwards with an intense and steady persistence. Donkin was surprised; he sat suddenly on the chest, and looked down, exhausted and gloomy. After a moment he began to mutter to himself, `Die, you beggar−−
die. Somebody'll come in.....I wish I was drunk....Ten days....Hoysters....' He looked up and spoke louder.
`No....no more for yer....no more bloomin' gals that cook hoysters....Who's yer? Hit's my turn now.... I wish I was drunk; I would soon giv' you a leg up haloft. That's where y er will go. Feet first, through a port....Splash!
Never see yer hany more. Hoverboard! Good 'nuff fur yer.'
Jimmy's head moved slightly and he turned his eyes to Donkin's face; a gaze unbelieving, desolated and appealing, of a child frightened by the menace of being shut up alone in the dark. Donkin observed him from the chest with hopeful eyes; then without rising he tried the lid. Locked. Ì wish I was drunk.' he muttered and getting up listened anxiously to the distant sound of footsteps on the deck. They approached−−ceased. Some one yawned interminably just outside the door, and the footsteps went away shuffling lazily. Donkin's fluttering heart eased its pace, and when he looked towards the bunk again Jimmy was staring as before at the white beam.−−`'Ow d'yer feel now?' he asked. −−`Bad,' breathed out Jimmy.
Donkin sat down patient and purposeful. Every half−hour the bells spoke to one another ringing along the whole length of the ship. Jimmy's respiration was so rapid that it couldn't be counted, so faint that it couldn't be heard. His eyes were terrified as though he had been looking at unspeakable horrors; and by his face one could see that he was thinking of abominable things. Suddenly with an incredibly strong and heart−breaking voice he sobbed out:
Òverboard!....I!....My God!'
Donkin writhed a little on the box. He looked unwillingly. Jimmy was mute. His two long bony hands smoothed the blanket upwards, as though he had wished to gather it all up under his chin. A tear, a big solitary tear, escaped from the corner of his eye and, without
touching the hollow cheek, fell on the pillow, his throat rattled faintly.
And Donkin, watching the end of that hateful nigger, felt the anguishing grasp of a great sorrow on his heart at the thought that he himself, some day, would have to go through it all−−just like this−−perhaps! His eyes became moist. `Poor beggar,' he murmured. The night seemed to go by in a flash; it seemed to him he could hear the irremediable rush of precious minutes. How long would this blooming affair last? Too long surely.
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The Nigger of the Narcissus
No luck. He could not restrain himself. He got up and approached the bunk. Wait did not stir. Only his eyes appeared alive and his hands continued their smoothing movement with a horrible and tireless industry.
Donkin bent over.
`Jimmy,' he called low. There was no answer, but the rattle stopped. `D'yer see me?' he asked trembling.
Jimmy's chest heaved. Donkin, looking away, bent his ear to Jimmy's lips and heard a sound like the rustle of a single dry leaf driven along the smooth sand of a beach. It shaped itself.
`Light....the lamp....and....go.' breathed out Wait.
Donkin, instinctively, glanced over his shoulder at the blazing flame; then, still looking away, felt under the pillow for a key. he got it at once and for the next few minutes was shakily but swiftly busy about the box.
when he got up, his face−−for the fist time in his life−−had a pink flush−−perhaps of triumph.
He slipped the key under the pillow again, avoiding to glance at Jimmy, who had not moved. He turned his back squarely from the bunk and started to the door as though he were going to walk a mile. At his second stride he had his nose against it. He clutched the handle cautiously, but at that moment he received the irresistible impression of something happening behind his back. He spun round as though he had been tapped on the shoulder. He was just in time to see Jimmy's eyes blaze up and go out at once like two lamps overturned together by a sweeping blow. Something resembling a scarlet thread hung down his chin out of t he corner of his lips−−and he had ceased to breathe.
Donkin closed the door behind him gently but firmly. Sleeping men, huddled under jackets, made on the lighted deck shapeless dark mounds that had the appearance of neglected graves. Nothing had been done all through the night and he hadn't been missed. He stood motionless and perfectly astounded to find the world outside as he had left it; there was the sea, the ship−−sleeping men; and he wondered absurdly at it, as though he had expected to find the men dead, familiar things gone for ever; as though, like a wanderer returning after many years, he had expected to see bewildering changes. He shuddered a little in the penetrating freshness of the air, and hugged himself forlornly. The declining moon drooped sadly in the western board as if withered by the cold touch of a pale dawn. The ship slept. And the immortal sea stretched away, immense and hazy, like the image of life with a glittering surface and lightless depths; promising, empty inspiring−−terrible.
Donkin gave it a defiant glance and slunk off noiselessly as if judged and cast out by the august silence of its might.
Jimmy's death, after all, came as a tremendous surprise. We did not know till then how much faith we had put in his delusions. We had taken his chances of life so much at his own valuation that his death, like the death of an old belief shook the foundations of our society. A common bond was gone; the strong, effective and respectable bond of a sentimental lie. All that day we mooned at our work, with suspicious looks and a disabused air. In our hearts we thought that in the matter of his departure Jimmy had acted in a perverse and unfriendly manner. He didn't back us up, as a shipmate should. In going he took away with himself the gloomy and solemn shadow in which our folly had posed, with human satisfaction, as a tender arbiter of fate.
And now we saw it was no such thing. It was just common foolishness; a silly and ineffectual meddling with issues of majestic import−−that is, if Podmore was right. Perhaps he was? Doubt survived Jimmy; and, like a community of banded criminals disintegrated by a touch of grace, we were profoundly scandalised with each other. Men spoke unkindly to their best chums. Others refused to speak at all. Singleton only was not surprised. `Dead−−is he? Of course,' he said, pointing at the island right abeam: for the calm still held the ship spell−bound within sight of Flores. Dead−−of course. He wasn't surprised. Here was the land, and there, on the forehatch and waiting for the sailmaker−−there was that corpse. Cause and effect. And for the fist time that voyage, the old seaman became quite cheery and garrulous, explaining and illustrating from the stores of experience how, in sickness, the sight of an island (even a very small one) is generally more fatal than the view of a continent. But he couldn't explain why.
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The Nigger of the Narcissus
Jimmy was to be buried at five, and it was a long day till then−−a day of mental disquiet and even of physical disturbance. We took no interest in our work and, very properly, were rebuked for it. This, in our constant state of hungry irritation, was exasperating. Donkin worked with his brow bound in a dirty rag, and looked so ghastly that Mr. Baker was touched with compassion at the sight of this plucky suffering.−−Òugh! You, Donkin! Put down your work and go lay−up this watch. You look ill.'−−`Hi ham, sir−−in my 'ead,' he said in a subdued voice, and vanished speedily. This annoyed many, and they thought the matèbloomin' soft to−day.' Captain Allistoun could be seen on the poop watching the sky cloud over from the south−west, and it soon got to be known about the decks that the barometer had begun to fall in the night and that a breeze might be expected before long. This, by a subtle association of ideas, led to violent quarrelling as to the exact moment of Jimmy's death. Was it before or after `that 'ere glass started down'? It was impossible to know and it caused much contemptuous growling at one another. All of a sudden there was a great tumult forward.
Pacific Knowles and good−tempered Davies had come to blows over it. The watch below interfered with spirit, and for ten minutes there was a noisy scrimmage round the hatch, where, in the balancing shade of the sails, Jimmy's body, wrapped up in a white blanket, was watched over by the sorrowful Belfast, who, in his desolation, disdained the fray. When the noise had ceased, and the passions had calmed into surly silence, he stood up at the head of the swathed body, and lifting both arms on high, cried with pained indignation:−−`You ought to be ashamed of your−selves!....' We were.
Belfast took his bereavement very hard. He gave proofs of unextinguishable devotion. It was he, and no other man, who would help the sailmaker to prepare what was left of Jimmy for a solemn surrender to the insatiable sea. He arranged the weights carefully at the feet; two holystones, an old anchor−shackle without its pin, some broken links of a worn−out stream cable. He arranged them this way, then that. `Bless my soul!
you aren't afraid he will chafe his heel?' said the sailmaker, who hated the job. He pushed the needle, puffing furiously, with his head in a cloud of tobacco smoke; he turned the flaps over, pulled at the stitches, stretched the canvas.−−`Lift his shoulders....Pull to you a bit....So−−o−−o−−. Steady.' Belfast obeyed, pulled, lifted, overcome with sorrow, dropping tears on the tarred twine.−−`Don't you drag the canvas too taut over his poor face, Sails,' he entreated tearfully.−−`What are you fashing yourself for? He will be comfortable enough,'
assured the sailmaker, cutting the thread after the last stitch, that came about the middle of Jimmy's forehead.
He rolled up the remaining canvas, put away the needles. `What makes you take on so?' he asked. Belfast looked down at the long package of grey sailcloth.−−Ì pulled him out,' he whispered, ànd he did not want to go. If I had sat up with him last night he would have kept alive for me....but something made me tired.' The sailmaker took vigorous draws at his pipe and mumbled:−−`When I....West India Station....In the Blanche frigate....Yellow Jack....sewed in twenty men a day....Portsmouth??
?−Devonport men−−townies−−knew their fathers, mothers−−sisters−−the whole boiling of 'em. Thought nothing of it. And these niggers like this one−−you don't know where it comes from. Got nobody. No use to nobody. Who will miss him?'−−Ì do−−I pulled him out,' mourned Belfast dismally.
On two planks nailed together, and apparently resigned and still under the folds of the Union Jack with a white border, James Wait, carried aft by four men, was deposited slowly, with his feet pointing at an open port. A swell had set in from the westward, and following on the roll of the ship, the red ensign, at half−mast, darted out and collapsed again on the grey sky, like a tongue of flickering fire; Charley tolled the bell; and at every swing to starboard the whole vast semi−circle of steely waters visible on that side seemed to come up with a rush to the edge of the port, as if impatient to get at our Jimmy. Every one was there but Donkin, who was too ill to come; the Captain and Mr. Creighton stood bareheaded on the break of the poop; Mr. Baker, directed by the master, who had said to him gravely:−−`You know more about the prayer book than I do,'
came out of the cabin door quickly and a little embarrassed. All the caps went off. He began to read in a low tone, and with his usual harmlessly menacing utterance, as though he had been for the last time reproving confidentially that dead seaman at his feet. The men listened in scattered groups; they leaned on the fife rail, gazing on the deck; they held their chins in their hands thoughtfully, or, with crossed arms and one knee slightly bent, hung their heads in an attitude of upright meditation. Wamibo dreamed. Mr. Baker read on, grunting reverently at the turn of every page. The words, missing the unsteady hearts of men, rolled out to The Nigger of the Narcissus