"Conrad, Josph - Youth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

all began life in the merchant service. Between the five
of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and also the
fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm
for yachting, cruising, and so on can give, since one is
only the amusement of life and the other is life itself.

Marlow (at least I think that is how he spelt his name)
told the story, or rather the chronicle, of a voyage:

"Yes, I have seen a little of the Eastern seas; but what
I remember best is my first voyage there. You fellows
know there are those voyages that seem ordered for the
illustration of life, that might stand for a symbol of
existence. You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself,
sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish some-
thing--and you can't. Not from any fault of yours.
You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little--
not a thing in the world--not even marry an old maid, or
get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of desti-
nation.

"It was altogether a memorable affair. It was my
first voyage to the East, and my first voyage as second
mate; it was also my skipper's first command. You'll
admit it was time. He was sixty if a day; a little man,
with a broad, not very straight back, with bowed shoul-
ders and one leg more bandy than the other, he had that
queer twisted-about appearance you see so often in men
who work in the fields. He had a nut-cracker face--chin
and nose trying to come together over a sunken mouth--
and it was framed in iron-gray fluffy hair, that looked
like a chin strap of cotton-wool sprinkled with coal-dust.
And he had blue eyes in that old face of his, which were
amazingly like a boy's, with that candid expression some
quite common men preserve to the end of their days by
a rare internal gift of simplicity of heart and rectitude
of soul. What induced him to accept me was a wonder.
I had come out of a crack Australian clipper, where I
had been third officer, and he seemed to have a prejudice
against crack clippers as aristocratic and high-toned.
He said to me, 'You know, in this ship you will have to
work.' I said I had to work in every ship I had ever
been in. 'Ah, but this is different, and you gentlemen
out of them big ships; . . . but there! I dare say you
will do. Join to-morrow.'

"I joined to-morrow. It was twenty-two years ago;
and I was just twenty. How time passes! It was one
of the happiest days of my life. Fancy! Second mate
for the first time--a really responsible officer! I wouldn't