The Shadow-Line by Joseph Conrad Page A

men snared in the river by silly commercial complications, as if in some poisonous trap.
    However, I had nearly fought my way out. Out to sea. The sea—which was pure, safe, and friendly. Three days more.
    That thought sustained and carried me on my way back to the ship. In the saloon the doctor’s voice greeted me, and his large form followed his voice, issuing out of the starboard spare cabin where the ship’s medicine chest was kept securely lashed in the bed-place.
    Finding that I was not on board he had gone in there, he said, to inspect the supply of drugs, bandages, and so on. Everything was completed and in order.
    I thanked him; I had just been thinking of asking him to do that very thing, as in a couple of days, as he knew, we were going to sea, where all our troubles of every sort would be over at last.
    He listened gravely and made no answer. But when I opened to him my mind as to Mr. Burns he sat down by my side, and, laying his hand on my knee amicably, begged me to think what it was I was exposing myself to.
    The man was just strong enough to bear being moved and no more. But he couldn’t stand a return of the fever. I had before me a passage of sixty days perhaps, beginning with intricate navigation and ending probably with a lot of bad weather. Could I run the risk of having to go through it single-handed, with no chief officer and with a second quite a youth? . . .
    He might have added that it was my first command, too. He did probably think of that fact, for he checked himself. It was very present to my mind.
    He advised me earnestly to cable to Singapore for a chief officer, even if I had to delay my sailing for a week.
    â€œNever,” I said. The very thought gave me the shivers. The hands seemed fairly fit, all of them, and this was the time to get them away. Once at sea I was not afraid of facing anything. The sea was now the only remedy for all my troubles.
    The doctor’s glasses were directed at me like two lamps searching the genuineness of my resolution. He opened his lips as if to argue further, but shut them again without saying anything. I had a vision so vivid of poor Burns in his exhaustion, helplessness, and anguish, that it moved me more than the reality I had come away from only an hour before. It was purged from the drawbacks of his personality, and I could not resist it.
    â€œLook here,” I said. “Unless you tell me officially that the man must not be moved I’ll make arrangements to have him brought on board tomorrow, and shall take the ship out of the river next morning, even if I have to anchor outside the bar for a couple of days to get her ready for sea.”
    â€œOh! I’ll make all the arrangements myself,” said the doctor at once. “I spoke as I did only as a friend—as a well-wisher, and that sort of thing.”
    He rose in his dignified simplicity and gave me a warm handshake, rather solemnly, I thought. But he was as good as his word. When Mr. Burns appeared at the gangway carried on a stretcher, the doctor himself walked by its side. The programme had been altered in so far that this transportation had been left to the last moment, on the very morning of our departure.
    It was barely an hour after sunrise. The doctor waved his big arm to me from the shore and walked back at once to his trap, which had followed him empty to the riverside. Mr. Burns, carried across the quarterdeck, had the appearance of being absolutely lifeless. Ransome went down to settle him in his cabin. I had to remain on deck to look after the ship, for the tug had got hold of our towrope already.
    The splash of our shore-fasts falling in the water produced a complete change of feeling in me. It was like the imperfect relief of awakening from a nightmare. But when the ship’s head swung down the river away from that town, Oriental and squalid, I missed the expected elation of that striven-for moment. What there was, undoubtedly, was a relaxation