The Nigger of the Narcissus quotes

And so it is with the workman of art.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

And thus, doubtful of strength to travel so far, we talk a little about the aim—the aim of art, which, like life itself, is inspiring, difficult—obscured by mists; it is not in the clear logic of a triumphant conclusion;

where he could display his talents for shirking work, for cheating, for cadging; where he could find surely someone to wheedle and someone to bully—and where he would be paid for doing all this. They all knew him.

Is there a spot on earth where such a man is unknown, an ominous survival testifying to the eternal fitness of lies and impudence?

A taciturn long-armed shellback, with hooked fingers, who had been lying on his back smoking, turned in his bed to examine him dispassionately, then, over his head, sent a long jet of clear saliva towards the door. They all knew him!

that, aloft, holds on frantically with both arms and legs, and swears at the wind, the sleet, the darkness; the man who curses the sea while others work. The man who is the last out and the first in when all hands are called.

The man who can’t do most things and won’t do the rest.

The pet of philanthropists and self-seeking landlubbers. The sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship’s company.

The men had approached and stood behind him in a body. He overtopped the tallest by half a head. He said: “I belong to the ship.” He enunciated distinctly, with soft precision. The deep, rolling tones of his voice filled the deck without effort.

He was naturally scornful, unaffectedly condescending, as if from his height of six foot three he had surveyed all the vastness of human folly and had made up his mind not to be too hard on it.

He went on:—“The captain shipped me this morning. I couldn’t get aboard sooner. I saw you all aft as I came up the ladder, and could see directly you were mustering the crew. Naturally I called out my name.

Singleton didn’t stir. A long while after he said, with unmoved face:—“Ship! …

Ships are all right. It is the men in them!

”

He went on smoking in the profound silence.

The wisdom of half a century spent in listening to the thunder of the waves had spoken unconsciously through his old lips.

The cat purred on the windlass. Then James Wait had a fit of roaring, rattling cough, that shook him, tossed him like a hurricane, and flung him panting with staring eyes headlong on his sea-chest. Several men woke up.

the capacity to bear it appeared to them the privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge of a home—and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave.

They were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea.

Their successors are the grown-up children of a discontented earth. They are less naughty, but less innocent; less profane, but perhaps also less believing; and if they have learned how to speak they have also learned how to whine.

Their generation lived inarticulate and indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge of a home—and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea.

Their successors are the grown-up children of a discontented earth. They are less naughty, but less innocent; less profane, but perhaps also less believing; and if they have learned how to speak they have also learned how to whine.

But the others were strong and mute; they were effaced, bowed and enduring, like stone caryatides that hold up in the night the lighted halls of a resplendent and glorious edifice. They are gone now—and it does not matter.

The tug turned short round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes watched her low broad stern crawling languidly over the smooth swell between the two paddle-wheels that turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry.

She resembled an enormous and aquatic black beetle, surprised by the light, overwhelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape with ineffectual effort into the distant gloom of the land.

She left a lingering smudge of smoke on the sky, and two vanishing trails of foam on the water. On the place where she had stopped a round black patch of soot remained, undulating on the swell—an unclean mark of the creature’s rest.

Forward, the lookout man, erect between the flukes of the two anchors, hummed an endless tune, keeping his eyes fixed dutifully ahead in a vacant stare. A multitude of stars coming out into the clear night peopled the emptiness of the sky.

They glittered, as if alive above the sea; they surrounded the running ship on all sides; more intense than the eyes of a staring crowd, and as inscrutable as the souls of men.

The passage had begun, and the ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in an unattainable frontier.

They glittered, as if alive above the sea; they surrounded the running ship on all sides; more intense than the eyes of a staring crowd, and as inscrutable as the souls of men.

The passage had begun, and the ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet.

Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in an unattainable frontier. A great circular solitude moved with her, ever changing and ever the same, always monotonous and always imposing. Now and then another wandering white speck, burdened with life, appeared far off—disappeared;

The august loneliness of her path lent dignity to the sordid inspiration of her pilgrimage. She drove foaming to the southward, as if guided by the courage of a high endeavour. The smiling greatness of the sea dwarfed the extent of time.

The days raced after one another, brilliant and quick like the flashes of a lighthouse, and the nights, eventful and short, resembled fleeting dreams.

The men had shaken into their places, and the half-hourly voice of the bells ruled their life of unceasing care.

The passage had begun, and the ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in an unattainable frontier.

A great circular solitude moved with her, ever changing and ever the same, always monotonous and always imposing.

Now and then another wandering white speck, burdened with life, appeared far off—disappeared; intent on its own destiny. The sun looked upon her all day, and every morning rose with a burning, round stare of undying curiosity. She had her own future;

He had commanded the Narcissus since she was built. He loved his ship, and drove her unmercifully; for his secret ambition was to make her accomplish some day a brilliantly quick passage which would be mentioned in nautical papers.

He pronounced his owner’s name with a sardonic smile, spoke but seldom to his officers, and reproved errors in a gentle voice, with words that cut to the quick.

His hair was iron-grey, his face hard and of the colour of pump-leather. He shaved every morning of his life—at six—but once (being caught in a fierce hurricane eighty miles southwest of Mauritius) he had missed three consecutive days.

he was overbearing about it, as if no one else in the world had ever been intimate with such a companion; he paraded it unceasingly before us with an affectionate persistence that made its presence indubitable, and at the same time incredible.

No man could be suspected of such monstrous friendship!

Was he a reality—or was he a sham—this ever-expected visitor of Jimmy’s? We hesitated between pity and mistrust, while, on the slightest provocation, he shook before our eyes the bones of his bothersome and infamous skeleton. He was forever trotting him out.

We suspected Jimmy, one another, and even our very selves. We did not know what to do. At every insignificant turn of our humble life we met Jimmy overbearing and blocking the way, arm-in-arm with his awful and veiled familiar.

It was a weird servitude.

It began a week after leaving Bombay and came on us stealthily like any other great misfortune. Everyone had remarked that Jimmy from the first was very slack at his work; but we thought it simply the outcome of his philosophy of life.

The clamorous and sombre stream gives birth to things of beauty that float away into the sunshine of the world to be loved by men.

The Narcissus was one of that perfect brood. Less perfect than many perhaps, but she was ours, and, consequently, incomparable.

We were proud of her. In Bombay, ignorant landlubbers alluded to her as that “pretty grey ship.” Pretty! A scurvy meed of commendation! We knew she was the most magnificent sea-boat ever launched.

He kept his gaze riveted upon her as a loving man watches the unselfish toil of a delicate woman upon the slender thread of whose existence is hung the whole meaning and joy of the world. We all watched her.

She was beautiful and had a weakness. We loved her no less for that.

We admired her qualities aloud, we boasted of them to one another, as though they had been our own, and the consciousness of her only fault we kept buried in the silence of our profound affection.

we hardly gave a thought to Jimmy and his bosom friend. There was no leisure for idle probing of hearts. Sails blew adrift. Things broke loose. Cold and wet, we were washed about the deck while trying to repair damages.

The ship tossed about, shaken furiously, like a toy in the hand of a lunatic.

Just at sunset there was a rush to shorten sail before the menace of a sombre hail cloud. The hard gust of wind came brutal like the blow of a fist. The ship relieved of her canvas in time received it pluckily:

The tin oil-lamp suspended on a long string, smoking, described wide circles; wet clothing made dark heaps on the glistening floor; a thin layer of water rushed to and fro. In the bed-places men lay booted, resting on elbows and with open eyes.

Hung-up suits of oilskin swung out and in, lively and disquieting like reckless ghosts of decapitated seamen dancing in a tempest.

No one spoke and all listened. Outside the night moaned and sobbed to the accompaniment of a continuous loud tremor as of innumerable drums beating far off. Shrieks passed through the air.

Without a word or a glance he lifted his arms one after another to facilitate the operation, and not a muscle moved in his stern, young face. They asked him with solicitude:—“Easier now, sir?” He answered with a curt:—“That’ll do.”

He was a hard young officer, but many of his watch used to say they liked him well enough because he had “such a gentlemanly way of damning us up and down the deck.”

Others unable to discern such fine shades of refinement, respected him for his smartness. For the first time since the ship had gone on her beam ends Captain Allistoun gave a short glance down at his men.

Had we (by an incredible hypothesis) undergone similar toil and trouble for an empty cask, that cask would have become as precious to us as Jimmy was. More precious, in fact, because we would have had no reason to hate the cask.

And we hated James Wait.

We could not get rid of the monstrous suspicion that this astounding black-man was shamming sick, had been malingering heartlessly in the face of our toil, of our scorn, of our patience—and now was malingering in the face of our devotion—in the face of death.

And we hated him because of the suspicion; we detested him because of the doubt. We could not scorn him safely—neither could we pity him without risk to our dignity.

So we hated him and passed him carefully from hand to hand.

We cried, “Got him?”—“Yes. All right. Let go.”

This time he mumbled peevishly, “It took you some time to come! I began to think the whole smart lot of you had been washed overboard. What kept you back? Hey? Funk?” We said nothing. With sighs we started again to drag him up.

The secret and ardent desire of our hearts was the desire to beat him viciously with our fists about the head; and we handled him as tenderly as though he had been made of glass.

…

Mr. Baker left his insecure place, and crawled, with stoppages, along the poop.

In the dark and on all fours he resembled some carnivorous animal prowling amongst corpses.

At the break, propped to windward of a stanchion, he looked down on the main deck. It seemed to him that the ship had a tendency to stand up a little more.

Hallo! Look out! Look out!” The cook struggled.—“Not you, sir—not you!” He began to scramble to windward. “Galley! … my business!” he shouted.—“Cook’s going crazy now,” said several voices. He yelled:—“Crazy, am I? I am more ready to die than any of you, officers incloosive—there!

As long as she swims I will cook!

I will get you coffee.”—“Cook, ye are a gentleman!” cried Belfast. But the cook was already going over the weather-ladder. He stopped for a moment to shout back on the poop:—“As long as she swims I will cook!”

Had we been saved by his recklessness or his agility, we could have at length become reconciled to the fact; but to admit our obligation to anybody’s virtue and holiness alone was as difficult for us as for any other handful of mankind.

Like many benefactors of humanity, the cook took himself too seriously, and reaped the reward of irreverence.

We were not un-ungrateful, however. He remained heroic. His saying—the saying of his life—became proverbial in the mouth of men as are the sayings of conquerors or sages.

On men reprieved by its disdainful mercy, the immortal sea confers in its justice the full privilege of desired unrest.

Through the perfect wisdom of its grace they are not permitted to meditate at ease upon the complicated and acrid savour of existence.

Severe, sunburnt faces were propped meditatively on tattooed forearms. Veined, brown fists held in their knotted grip the dirty white clay of smouldering pipes. They listened, impenetrable, broad-backed, with bent shoulders, and in grim silence. He talked with ardour, despised and irrefutable.

His picturesque and filthy loquacity flowed like a troubled stream from a poisoned source.

His beady little eyes danced, glancing right and left, ever on the watch for the approach of an officer. Sometimes Mr. Baker going forward to take a look at the head sheets would roll with his uncouth gait through the sudden stillness of the men;

they stood astride the doorstep discoursing, or sat in silent couples on his sea-chest; while against the bulwark along the spare topmast, three or four in a row stared meditatively, with their simple faces lit up by the projected glare of Jimmy’s lamp.

The little place, repainted white, had, in the night, the brilliance of a silver shrine where a black idol, reclining stiffly under a blanket, blinked its weary eyes and received our homage.

Donkin officiated. He had the air of a demonstrator showing a phenomenon, a manifestation bizarre, simple, and meritorious that, to the beholders, should be a profound and an everlasting lesson. “Just look at ’im, ’ee knows what’s what—never fear!”

cried a loud voice, as if to cover with a menacing hint an inglorious retreat. And then only orders were heard, the falling of heavy coils of rope, the rattling of blocks.

Singleton’s white head flitted here and there in the night, high above the deck, like the ghost of a bird.

—“Going off, sir!” shouted Mr. Creighton from aft.—“Full again.”—“All right …”—“Ease off the head sheets. That will do the braces. Coil the ropes up,” grunted Mr. Baker, bustling about.

Baker’s growling argumentation, to Creighton’s interjected and severe remarks, while looking down on the deck he weighed in his hand the iron belaying-pin—that a moment ago had just missed his head—as if it had been the only tangible fact of the whole transaction.

He was one of those commanders who speak little, seem to hear nothing, look at no one⁠—and know everything, hear every whisper, see every fleeting shadow of their ship’s life.

His two big officers towered above his lean, short figure; they talked over his head; they were dismayed, surprised, and angry, while between them the little quiet man seemed to have found his taciturn serenity in the profound depths of a larger experience.

Donkin sat down heavily; he blew with force through quivering nostrils, he ground and snapped his teeth, and, with the chin pressed hard against the breast, he seemed busy gnawing his way through it, as if to get at the heart within. …

In the morning the ship, beginning another day of her wandering life, had an aspect of sumptuous freshness, like the springtime of the earth.

The washed decks glistened in a long clear stretch;

The sails slept, hushed by a gentle breeze.

The sun, rising lonely and splendid in the blue sky, saw a solitary ship gliding close-hauled on the blue sea.

The men pressed three deep abreast of the mainmast and opposite the cabin-door. They shuffled, pushed, had an irresolute mien and stolid faces. At every slight movement Knowles lurched heavily on his short leg.

He was so utterly wrong about himself that one could not but suspect him of having access to some source of supernatural knowledge.

He was absurd to the point of inspiration.

He was unique, and as fascinating as only something inhuman could be; he seemed to shout his denials already from beyond the awful border. He was becoming immaterial like an apparition; his cheekbones rose, the forehead slanted more;

We had the air of being initiated in some infamous mysteries; we had the profound grimaces of conspirators, exchanged meaning glances, significant short words.

We were inexpressibly vile and very much pleased with ourselves.

We lied to him with gravity, with emotion, with unction, as if performing some moral trick with a view to an eternal reward.

And in the confused current of impotent thoughts that set unceasingly this way and that through bodies of men, Jimmy bobbed up upon the surface, compelling attention, like a black buoy chained to the bottom of a muddy stream.

Falsehood triumphed. It triumphed through doubt, through stupidity, through pity, through sentimentalism.

We set ourselves to bolster it up from compassion, from recklessness, from a sense of fun.

was as gentle as a woman, as tenderly gay as an old philanthropist, as sentimentally careful of his nigger as a model slave-owner. But outside he was irritable, explosive as gunpowder, sombre, suspicious, and never more brutal than when most sorrowful.

With him it was a tear and a blow: a tear for Jimmy, a blow for anyone who did not seem to take a scrupulously orthodox view of Jimmy’s case.

We talked about nothing else. The two Scandinavians, even, discussed the situation—but it was impossible to know in what spirit, because they quarrelled in their own language.

“Yes, but if you think I am going to let them put me in irons just to show you sport. … Well, no. … It ruins my health, this lying-up, it does. You don’t care.” We were as abashed as if it had been true.

His superb impudence carried all before it.

We would not have dared to revolt. We didn’t want to, really. We wanted to keep him alive till home—to the end of the voyage.

the tormentor of waking moments, the disturber of dreams. We looked to windward for signs of change. Every few hours of night and day we put her round with the hope that she would come up on that tack at last! She didn’t.

She seemed to have forgotten the way home; she rushed to and fro, heading northwest, heading east; she ran backwards and forwards, distracted, like a timid creature at the foot of a wall.

Sometimes, as if tired to death, she would wallow languidly for a day in the smooth swell of an unruffled sea. All up the swinging masts the sails thrashed furiously through the hot stillness of the calm. We were weary, hungry, thirsty;

but we looked to the westward over the rail with longing eyes for a sign of hope, for a sign of fair wind; even if its first breath should bring death to our reluctant Jimmy. In vain!

The universe conspired with James Wait.

Light airs from the northward sprang up again; the sky remained clear; and round our weariness the glittering sea, touched by the breeze, basked voluptuously in the great sunshine, as though it had forgotten our life and trouble.

A week afterwards the Narcissus entered the chops of the Channel.

Under white wings she skimmed low over the blue sea like a great tired bird speeding to its nest.

The clouds raced with her mastheads; they rose astern enormous and white, soared to the zenith, flew past, and falling down the wide curve of the sky, seemed to dash headlong into the sea—the clouds swifter than the ship, more free, but without a home.