"Conrad, Joseph - The Secret Sharer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

fortnight before. Neither did I know much of the hands
forward. All these people had been together for eight-
een months or so, and my position was that of the only
stranger on board. I mention this because it has some
bearing on what is to follow. But what I felt most was
my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must
be told, I was somewhat of a stranger to myself. The
youngest man on board (barring the second mate),
and untried as yet by a position of the fullest respon-
sibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others
for granted. They had simply to be equal to their tasks;
but I wondered how far I should turn out faithful
to that ideal conception of one's own personality every
man sets up for himself secretly.


Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect
of collaboration on the part of his round eyes and
frightful whiskers, was trying to evolve a theory of the
anchored ship. His dominant trait was to take all things
into earnest consideration. He was of a painstaking turn
of mind. As he used to say, he "liked to account to
himself" for practically everything that came in his way,
down to a miserable scorpion he had found in his cabin
a week before. The why and the wherefore of that
scorpion--how it got on board and came to select his
room rather than the pantry (which was a dark place
and more what a scorpion would be partial to), and
how on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell
of his writing desk--had exercised him infinitely. The
ship within the islands was much more easily accounted
for; and just as we were about to rise from table he
made his pronouncement. She was, he doubted not, a
ship from home lately arrived. Probably she drew too
much water to cross the bar except at the top of spring
tides. Therefore she went into that natural harbor to
wait for a few days in preference to remaining in an
open roadstead.

"That's so," confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in
his slightly hoarse voice. "She draws over twenty feet.
She's the Liverpool ship Sephora with a cargo of coal.
Hundred and twenty-three days from Cardiff."

We looked at him in surprise.

"The tugboat skipper told me when he came on board
for your letters, sir," explained the young man. "He ex-
pects to take her up the river the day after tomorrow."