The Secret Sharer and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad Page B

Godforsaken port other men would fear to be stranded in, and go ashore in company of a shabby sea chest, corded like a treasure box, and with an air of shaking the ship’s dust off their feet.
    â€œYou wait,” he repeated, balanced in great swings with his back to Jukes, motionless and implacable.
    â€œDo you mean to say we are going to catch it hot?” asked Jukes with boyish interest.
    â€œSay? . . . I say nothing. You don’t catch me,” snapped the little second mate, with a mixture of pride, scorn, and cunning, as if Jukes’ question had been a trap cleverly detected. “Oh, no! None of you here shall make a fool of me if I know it,” he mumbled to himself.
    Jukes reflected rapidly that this second mate was a mean little beast, and in his heart he wished poor Jack Allen had never smashed himself up in the coal lighter. The far-off blackness ahead of the ship was like another night seen through the starry night of the earth—the starless night of the immensities beyond the created universe, revealed in its appalling stillness through a low fissure in the glittering sphere of which the earth is the kernel.
    â€œWhatever there might be about,” said Jukes, “we are steaming straight into it.”
    â€œYou’ve said it,” caught up the second mate, always with his back to Jukes. “You’ve said it, mind—not I.”
    â€œOh, go to Jericho!” said Jukes, frankly; and the other emitted a triumphant little chuckle.
    â€œYou’ve said it,” he repeated.
    â€œAnd what of that?”
    â€œI’ve known some real good men get into trouble with their skippers for saying a dam’ sight less,” answered the second mate feverishly. “Oh, no! You don’t catch me.”
    â€œYou seem deucedly anxious not to give yourself away,” said Jukes, completely soured by such absurdity. “I wouldn’t be afraid to say what I think.”
    â€œAye, to me! That’s no great trick. I am nobody, and well I know it.”
    The ship, after a pause of comparative steadiness, started upon a series of rolls, one worse than the other, and for a time Jukes, preserving his equilibrium, was too busy to open his mouth. As soon as the violent swinging had quieted down somewhat, he said: “This is a bit too much of a good thing. Whether anything is coming or not I think she ought to be put head on to that swell. The old man is just gone in to lie down. Hang me if I don’t speak to him.”
    But when he opened the door of the chart room he saw his captain reading a book. Captain MacWhirr was not lying down: he was standing up with one hand grasping the edge of the bookshelf and the other holding open before his face a thick volume. The lamp wriggled in the gimbals, the loosened books toppled from side to side on the shelf, the long barometer swung in jerky circles, the table altered its slant every moment. In the midst of all this stir and movement Captain MacWhirr, holding on, showed his eyes above the upper edge, and asked, “What’s the matter?”
    â€œSwell getting worse, sir.”
    â€œNoticed that in here,” muttered Captain MacWhirr. “Anything wrong?”
    Jukes, inwardly disconcerted by the seriousness of the eyes looking at him over the top of the book, produced an embarrassed grin.
    â€œRolling like old boots,” he said, sheepishly.
    â€œAye! Very heavy—very heavy. What do you want?”
    At this Jukes lost his footing and began to flounder.
    â€œI was thinking of our passengers,” he said, in the manner of a man clutching at a straw.
    â€œPassengers?” wondered the Captain, gravely. “What passengers?”
    â€œWhy, the Chinamen, sir,” explained Jukes, very sick of this conversation.
    â€œThe Chinamen! Why don’t you speak plainly? Couldn’t tell what you meant. Never heard a lot of coolies spoken of as passengers before. Passengers, indeed!