Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

spot of this earth, the thing would pop up between them as sure as fate, before they parted. I had never seen that Frenchman before, and at the end of an hour we had done with each other for life: he did not seem particularly talkative either; he was a quiet, massive chap in a creased uniform, sitting drowsily over a tumbler half full of some dark liquid. His shoulder-straps were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved cheeks were large and sallow; he looked like a man who would be given to taking snuff—don't you know? I won't say he did; but the habit would have fitted that kind of man. It all began by his handing me a number of ‘Home News,’ 3 which I didn't want, across the marble table. I said ‘ Merci .’ We exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly, before I knew how it had come about, we were in the midst of it, and he was telling me how much they had been ‘intrigued by that corpse.’ It turned out he had been one of the boarding officers.
    â€œIn the establishment where we sat one could get a variety of foreign drinks which were kept for the visiting naval officers, and he took a sip of the dark medical-looking stuff, which probably was nothing more nasty than cassis à l'eau , and glancing with one eye into the tumbler, shook his head slightly. ‘ Impossible de comprendre — vous concevez ,’ he said, with a curious mixture of unconcern and thoughtfulness. I could very easily conceive how impossible it had been for them to understand. Nobody in the gunboat knew enough English to get hold of the story as told by the serang. There was a good deal of noise, too, round the two officers. ‘They crowded upon us. There was a circle round that dead man ( autour de ce mort ),’ he described. ‘One had to attend to the most pressing. These people were beginning to agitate themselves 4 — Parbleu! A mob like that—don't you see?’ he interjected with philosophic indulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the safest thing was to leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at. They got two hawsers on board promptly ( en toute hate ) and took the Patna in tow—stern foremost at that—which, under the circumstances, was not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of the water to be of any great use for steering, and this manœeuvre eased the strain on the bulkhead, whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded the greatest care ( exigeait les plus grands managements ). I could not help thinking that my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of these arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active, and he was seamanlike too, in a way, though as he sat there, with his thick fingers clasped lightly on his stomach, he reminded you of one of those snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are poured the sins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations, on whose faces the placid and simple expression is like a veil thrown overthe mystery of pain and distress. He ought to have had a threadbare black soutane buttoned smoothly up to his ample chin, instead of a frock-coat with shoulder-straps and brass buttons. His broad bosom heaved regularly while he went on telling me that it had been the very devil of a job, as doubtless ( sans doute ) I could figure to myself in my quality of a seaman ( en votre qualité de marin ). At the end of the period he inclined his body slightly towards me, and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the air to escape with a gentle hiss. ‘Luckily,’ he continued, ‘the sea was level like this table, and there was no more wind than there is here.’… The place struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy, and very hot; my face burned as though I had been young enough to be embarrassed and blushing. They had directed their course, he pursued, to the nearest English port ‘ naturellement ,’ where their responsibility ceased,