Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Tono-Bungay Book 3 Chapter 4 - Parts 4-7

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Tono-Bungay Book 3 Chapter 4 - Parts 4-7 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, third chapter, fourth parts four to seven of Tono Bungay.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William Tomco Tono Bungay
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Book, third Chapter, fourth parts four
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Speaker 1: to seven four. All these African memories stand by themselves.
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Speaker 1: It was for me an expedition into the realms of
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Speaker 1: undisciplined nature, out of the world that is ruled by men.
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Speaker 1: My first bout with that hot side of our mother
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Speaker 1: that gives you the jungle, that cold SiGe that gives
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Speaker 1: you the air eddy I was beginning to know passing well.
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Speaker 1: They are memories woven upon a fabric of sunshine and
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Speaker 1: heat and a constant, warm smell of decay. They end
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Speaker 1: in rain, such rain as I had never seen before,
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Speaker 1: a vehement, a frantic downpouring of water. But our first
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Speaker 1: slow passage through the channels behind Mordet's Island was in
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Speaker 1: incandescent sunshine. There we go, in my memory, still a blistered,
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Speaker 1: dirty ship with patched sails and a battered mermaid. To
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Speaker 1: present Maud merry sounding and taking thought between high ranks
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Speaker 1: of forest, whose trees come out knee deep. At last
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Speaker 1: in the water. There we go, with a little breeze
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Speaker 1: on our quarter. More dead island rounded and the coop,
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Speaker 1: and might be within a day of us. Here and there,
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Speaker 1: strange blossoms woke the dank intensities of green with a
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Speaker 1: trumpet call of color. Things crept among the jungle and
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Speaker 1: peeped and dashed back, rustling into stillness. Always in the
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Speaker 1: sluggishly drifting opaque waters were eddyings and stirrings. Little rushes
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Speaker 1: of bubbles came chuckling up lightheartedly from this or that
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Speaker 1: submerged conflict and tragedy. Now and again were crocodiles, like
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Speaker 1: a stranded fleet of logs, basking in the sun. Still
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Speaker 1: it was by day a dreary stillness, broken only by
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Speaker 1: insect sounds and the creaking and flapping of our progress,
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Speaker 1: by the calling of the soundings, and the captain's confused shouts.
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Speaker 1: But in the night, as we lay moored to a
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Speaker 1: clump of trees, the darkness brought a thousand swampy things
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Speaker 1: to life, and out of the forest came screaming and howlings,
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Speaker 1: screaming and yells that made us glad to be afloat.
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Speaker 1: And once we saw between the tree stems long blazing fires.
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Speaker 1: We passed two or three villages landward, and brown black
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Speaker 1: women and children came and stared at us and gesticulated.
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Speaker 1: And once a man came out in a boat from
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Speaker 1: a creek and hailed us in an unknown tongue. And
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Speaker 1: so at last we came to a great open place,
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Speaker 1: a broad lake, rimmed with a desolation of mud and
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Speaker 1: bleached refuse, and dead trees, free from crocodiles or water birds,
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Speaker 1: or sight or sound of any living thing. And saw,
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Speaker 1: far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the ruins of
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Speaker 1: the deserted station, and hard by two little leaps of
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Speaker 1: buff hued rubbish under a great rib of rock, the
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Speaker 1: quop the forest receded. The land to the right of
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Speaker 1: us fell away and became barren and far on across notch.
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Speaker 1: In its backbone was surf and the sea. We took
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Speaker 1: the ship in towards those heaps and the ruined jetty,
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Speaker 1: slowly and carefully. The captain came and talked, this is eat,
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Speaker 1: he said, yes, said I is heat for trade. We
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Speaker 1: have come. This was ironical, No said I Gordon Nasmyth
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Speaker 1: would have told me long ago. But the yeast for
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Speaker 1: we have come. I'll tell you now, I said. We
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Speaker 1: are going to lay in as close as we can
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Speaker 1: can to those two heaps of stuff you see them
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Speaker 1: under the rock. Then we are going to chuck all
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Speaker 1: our ballast overboard and take those in. Then we're going home.
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Speaker 1: May I presume to ask, is eat gold? No? I said, incivilly,
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Speaker 1: it isn't. Then what is it? It's stuff of some
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Speaker 1: commercial value. We can't do eat, he said, we can,
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Speaker 1: I answered, reassuringly, we can't. He said, as confidently, I
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Speaker 1: don't mean what you mean. You know so letal, but
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Speaker 1: this is forbidden country. I turned on him, suddenly angry,
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Speaker 1: and met bright, excited eyes. For a minute we scrutinized
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Speaker 1: one another. Then I said that's our risk. Trade is forbidden,
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Speaker 1: but this is in trade. This thing's got to be done.
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Speaker 1: His eyes glittered and he shook his head. The brig
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Speaker 1: stood in slowly through the twilight toward the strange, scorched
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Speaker 1: and blistered stretch of beech, and the man at the
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Speaker 1: wheel strained his ears to listening the low voiced, angry
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Speaker 1: argument that began between myself and the captain that was
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Speaker 1: presently joined by Pollock. We moored at last within a
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Speaker 1: hundred yards of our goal, and all through our dinner
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Speaker 1: and fair into the night, we argued intermittently and fiercely
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Speaker 1: with the Captain about our right to load just what
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Speaker 1: we pleased. I will have nothing to do with eat,
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Speaker 1: he persisted. I wash my hands. It seemed that night
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Speaker 1: as though we argued in vain. If it is not trade,
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Speaker 1: he said, it is prospecting and mining, that is worse.
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Speaker 1: Any One who knows anything outside England knows that is worse.
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Speaker 1: We argued, and I lost my temper and swore at him.
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Speaker 1: Pollock kept cooler and chewed his pipe, watchfully with the
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Speaker 1: blue eye of his upon the Captain's gestures. Finally I
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Speaker 1: went on deck to cool. The sky was overcast. I
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Speaker 1: discovered all the men were in a knot forward, staring
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Speaker 1: at the faint, quivering luminosity that had spread over the
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Speaker 1: heaps of quap a phosphorescence such as one cease at
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Speaker 1: times on rotting wood, and about the beach east and west,
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Speaker 1: there were patches and streaks of something like diluted moonshine.
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Speaker 1: In the small hours, I was still awake and turning
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Speaker 1: over scheme after scheme in my mind whereby I might
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Speaker 1: circumvent the Captain's opposition. I meant to get that quop aboard,
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Speaker 1: if I had to kill some one to do it.
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Speaker 1: Never in my life had I been so thwarted. After
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Speaker 1: this intolerable voyage, there came a rap at my cabin door,
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Speaker 1: and then it opened, and I made out a bearded face.
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Speaker 1: Come in, I said, And a black, valuable figure I
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Speaker 1: could just see obscurely came in to talk in my
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Speaker 1: private ear and fill my cabin with its whisperings and gestures.
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Speaker 1: It was the captain. He too had been awake and
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Speaker 1: thinking things over. He had come to explain enormously. I
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Speaker 1: lay there, hating him, and wondering if I and Pollock
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Speaker 1: could lock him in his cabin and run the ship
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Speaker 1: without him. I do not want to spoil this expedition
7:16
Speaker 1: emerged from a cloud of protestations, and then I was
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Speaker 1: able to disentangle a commission shush, a small commission for
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Speaker 1: special risks. Special risks became frequent. I let him explain
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Speaker 1: himself out. It appeared he was also demanding an apology
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Speaker 1: for something I had said. No doubt I had insulted
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Speaker 1: him generously. At last came definite offers. I broke my
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Speaker 1: silence and bargained Pollock. I cried and hammered the partition.
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Speaker 1: What's up, asked Pollock. I stated the case concisely. There
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Speaker 1: came a silence. He's a card, said Pollock. Let's give
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Speaker 1: him his commission. I'd mind, eh, I cried. I said
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Speaker 1: he was a card, that's all, said Pollock. I'm coming.
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Speaker 1: He appeared in my doorway. A faint white figure joined
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Speaker 1: our vehement whisperings. We had to buy the captain off.
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Speaker 1: We ought to promise him ten percent of our problematical profits.
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Speaker 1: We were to give him ten percent on what we
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Speaker 1: sold the cargo for over and above his legitimate pay.
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Speaker 1: And I found in my out bargained and disordered state
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Speaker 1: small consolation in the thought that I, as the gordon
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Speaker 1: nasmyth expedition was to sell the stuff to myself as
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Speaker 1: business organizations. And he further exasperated me by insisting on
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Speaker 1: having our bargain in writing in the form of a letter.
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Speaker 1: He insisted, all right, I acquiesced, and the form of
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Speaker 1: a letter here goes get a light and the apology
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Speaker 1: he said, folding up the letter. All right, I said, apology.
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Speaker 1: My hand shook with anger as I wrote, and afterwards
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Speaker 1: I could not sleep for hate of him. At last
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Speaker 1: I got up, I suffered, I found from an unusual clumsiness.
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Speaker 1: I struck my foot against the cabin door and cut
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Speaker 1: myself as I shaved. I found myself at last pacing
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Speaker 1: the deck under the dawn, in a mood of extreme exasperation.
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Speaker 1: The sun rose abruptly and splashed light blindingly into my eyes,
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Speaker 1: and I swore at the sun. I found myself imagining
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Speaker 1: fresh obstacles with the men, and talking aloud in anticipatory
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Speaker 1: rehearsal of the consequent rao. The malaria of the quap
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Speaker 1: was already in my blood. Five Sooner or later, the
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Speaker 1: ridiculous embargo that now lies upon all the coast eastward
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Speaker 1: of Mordett Island will be lifted, and the reality of
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Speaker 1: the deposits of Quap ascertained. I am sure that we
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Speaker 1: were merely taking the outcrop of a stratum of nodulated
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Speaker 1: deposits that dip steeply seaward. Those heaps were merely the
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Speaker 1: crumbled out contents of two irregular cavities in the rock,
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Speaker 1: they are as natural as any talus or heap of
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Speaker 1: that kind. And the mud along the edge of the water,
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Speaker 1: for miles is mixed with quap and is radioactive and
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Speaker 1: lifeless and faintly phosphorescent at night. But the reader will
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Speaker 1: find the full particulars of my impression of all this
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Speaker 1: in the Geological Magazine for October nineteen o five, and
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Speaker 1: to that I must refer him. There too, he will
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Speaker 1: find my unconfirmed theories of its nature. If I am right,
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Speaker 1: it is something far more significant from the scientific point
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Speaker 1: of view than those incidental constituents of various rare metals, pitch, blend,
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Speaker 1: routeel and the like upon which the revolutionary discoveries of
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Speaker 1: the last decade are based. Those are just little molecular
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Speaker 1: centers of disintegration of that mysterious decay and rotting of
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Speaker 1: those elements, elements once regarded as the most stable things
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Speaker 1: in nature. But there is something. The only word that
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Speaker 1: comes near it is cancerous, and that is not very
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Speaker 1: near about the whole of quop, something that creeps and
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Speaker 1: lives as a disease, lives by destroying an elemental stirring
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Speaker 1: and disarrangement incalculably maleficent and strange. This is no imaginative
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Speaker 1: comparison of mind. To my mind, radioactivity is a real
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Speaker 1: disease of matter. Moreover, it is a contagious disease. It spreads.
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Speaker 1: You bring those debased and crumbling atoms near others, and
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Speaker 1: those too presently catch the trick of swinging themselves out
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Speaker 1: of coherent existence. It is in matter exactly what the
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Speaker 1: decay of our old culture is in society, a loss
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Speaker 1: of traditions and distinctions and assured reactions. When I think
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Speaker 1: of these inexplicable dissolvent centers that have come into being
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Speaker 1: in our globe, these quop heaps are surely by far
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Speaker 1: the largest that have yet been found in the world,
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Speaker 1: the rest as yet mere specks in grains and crystals.
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Speaker 1: I am haunted by a grotesque fancy of the ultimate
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Speaker 1: eating away and dry rotting and dispersal of all our world,
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Speaker 1: so that, while man still struggles and dreams, is very
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Speaker 1: substance will change and crumble from beneath him. I mention
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Speaker 1: this here as a queer persistent fancy. Suppose indeed, that
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Speaker 1: is to be the end of our planet. No splendid
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Speaker 1: climax and finale, no towering accumulation of achievements, but just
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Speaker 1: atomic decay. I add that to the ideas of the
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Speaker 1: suffocating comet, the dark body out of space, the burning
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Speaker 1: out of the Sun, the distorted orbit as a new
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Speaker 1: and far more possible end, as science can see, ends
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Speaker 1: to this strange byplay of matter that we call human life.
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Speaker 1: I do not believe this can be the end. No
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Speaker 1: human soul can believe in such an end and go
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Speaker 1: on living. But to it science points as a possible thing.
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Speaker 1: Science and reason alike. If single human beings, if one
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Speaker 1: singly rickety infant can be borne as it were by
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Speaker 1: accident and die futile, why not the whole race? These
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Speaker 1: are questions I have never answered that now I never
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Speaker 1: attempt to answer, but the thought of Quop and its
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Speaker 1: mysteries brings them back to me. I can witness that
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Speaker 1: the beach and mud, for two miles or more either way,
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Speaker 1: was a lifeless beach, lifeless as I could have imagined
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Speaker 1: no tropical mud could ever be, and all the dead
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Speaker 1: branches and leaves and rotting dead fish and so forth
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Speaker 1: that drifted ashore became persisible, shriveled and white. Sometimes crocodiles
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Speaker 1: would come up out of the water and bask and
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Speaker 1: now and then water birds would explore the mud and
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Speaker 1: rocky ribs that rose out of it in a mood
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Speaker 1: of transitory speculation that was its utmost admiration. And the
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Speaker 1: air felt at once hot and austere, dry and blistering,
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Speaker 1: and altogether different the warm, moist embrace that had met
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Speaker 1: us at our first African landfall, and to which we
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Speaker 1: had grown accustomed. I believe that the primary influence of
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Speaker 1: the clop upon us was to increase the conductivity of
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Speaker 1: our nerves, and that is a mere unjustifiable speculation on
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Speaker 1: my part. At any rate, it gave a sort of
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Speaker 1: east wind effect to life. We all became irritable, clumsy, languid,
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Speaker 1: and disposed to be impatient with our languor. We wore
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Speaker 1: the brig to the rocks with difficulty, and got a
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Speaker 1: ground on mud, and decided to stick there and tow off.
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Speaker 1: When we had done, the bottom was as greasy as butter.
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Speaker 1: Our efforts to fix up planks and sleepers in order
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Speaker 1: to wheel the clop aboard were as ill conceived as
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Speaker 1: that sort of work can be, and that sort of
15:14
Speaker 1: work can at times be very ill conceived. The captain
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Speaker 1: had a superstitious fear of his hold. He became wildly gesticulatory,
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Speaker 1: and expository, and incompetent at the bare thought of it.
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Speaker 1: His shouts still echo in my memory, becoming as each
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Speaker 1: crisis approached, less and less like any known tongue. But
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Speaker 1: I cannot now write the history of those days of
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Speaker 1: blundering and toil. Of how Milton, one of the boys,
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Speaker 1: fell from a plank to the beach, thirty feet perhaps
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Speaker 1: with his barrow, and broke his arm, And I believe
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Speaker 1: a rib of how I and Pollock set the limb
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Speaker 1: and nursed him through the fever that followed, Of how
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Speaker 1: one man after another succumbed to a feverish malaria, and
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Speaker 1: how I, by nature of my scientific reputation, was obliged
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Speaker 1: to play the part of doctor and dose them with quinine,
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Speaker 1: and then finding that worse than nothing, with rum and
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Speaker 1: small doses of Eastern syrup, of which there chanced to
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Speaker 1: be a case of bottles aboard heaven. And Gordon nasmyth
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Speaker 1: know why for three long days we lay in misery
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Speaker 1: and never shipped a barrel load. Then when they resumed,
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Speaker 1: the men's hands broke out into sores. There were no
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Speaker 1: gloves available, and I tried to get them while they
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Speaker 1: shoveled and wheeled to cover their hands with stockings or
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Speaker 1: greased rags. They would not do this on account of
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Speaker 1: the heat and discomfort. This attempt of mine did, however,
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Speaker 1: direct their attention to the clop as the source of
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Speaker 1: their illness, and precipitated what, in the end finished our
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Speaker 1: lading and informal strike. We've had enough of this, they said,
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Speaker 1: and they meant it. They came aft to say as much.
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Speaker 1: They cowed the captain. Through all these days the weather
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Speaker 1: was variously vile. First a furnace heat under a sky
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Speaker 1: of scowling intensity of blue. Then a hot fog that
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Speaker 1: stuck in one's throat like wool and turned the men
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Speaker 1: on the planks into colorless figures of giants. Then a
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Speaker 1: wild burst of thunder storms, mad elemental uproar and rain.
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Speaker 1: Through it all, against illness, heat, confusion of mind, one
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Speaker 1: master Impetus prevailed with me to keep the shipping going,
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Speaker 1: to maintain one motive at least, whatever else arose or ceased.
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Speaker 1: The chuff of the spades, the squeaking and shriek of
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Speaker 1: the barrows, the pluppa, pluppa, pluppa, as the men came
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Speaker 1: trotting along the swinging high planks, and then at last
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Speaker 1: the dollop, dollop, as the stuff shot into the hold
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Speaker 1: another barrow load. Thank god, another fifteen hundred, or it
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Speaker 1: may be two thousand pounds for the saving of Ponderevo.
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Speaker 1: I found out many things about myself and humanity in
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Speaker 1: those weeks of effort behind Mordet Island. I understand now
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Speaker 1: the heart of the sweater, of the harsh employer, of
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Speaker 1: the nigger driver. I had brought these men into a
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Speaker 1: danger they didn't understand. I was fiercely resolved to overcome
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Speaker 1: their opposition and bend and use them for my purpose.
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Speaker 1: And I hated the men, but I hated all humanity
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Speaker 1: during the time that the quap was near me, but
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Speaker 1: my mind was pervaded too by a sense of urgency,
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Speaker 1: and by the fear that we should be discovered and
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Speaker 1: our proceedings stopped. I wanted to get out to sea again,
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Speaker 1: to be beating up northward with our plunder. I was
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Speaker 1: afraid our masts showed to seaward and might betray us
18:48
Speaker 1: to some curious passer on the high sea. And one
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Speaker 1: evening near the end, I saw a canoe with three
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Speaker 1: natives far off down the lake. I got field glasses
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Speaker 1: from the captain and scrutinized them, and I could see
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Speaker 1: them staring at us. One man might have been a
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Speaker 1: half breed and was dressed in white. They watched us
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Speaker 1: for some time, very quietly, and then paddled off into
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Speaker 1: some channel in the forest shadows, and for three nights
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Speaker 1: running so that it took a painful grip upon my
19:18
Speaker 1: inflamed imagination. I dreamt of my uncle's face, only that
19:23
Speaker 1: it was ghastly white, like a clown's, and the throat
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Speaker 1: was cut from ear to ear a long ochus cut
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Speaker 1: Too late, he said, too late. Six a day or
19:37
Speaker 1: so after we had got to work upon the coop,
19:39
Speaker 1: I found myself so sleepless and miserable that the ship
19:43
Speaker 1: became unendurable. Just before the rush of sunrise, I borrowed
19:47
Speaker 1: Pollock's gun, walked down the planks, clambered over the coop heaps,
19:52
Speaker 1: and prowled along the beach. I went perhaps a mile
19:55
Speaker 1: and a half that day, and some distance beyond the
19:58
Speaker 1: ruins of the old station. I became interested in the
20:01
Speaker 1: desolation about me, and found when I returned that I
20:05
Speaker 1: was able to sleep for nearly an hour. It was
20:07
Speaker 1: delightful to have been alone for so long. No captain,
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Speaker 1: no pollock, no one. Accordingly, I repeated this expedition the
20:16
Speaker 1: next morning and the next, until it became accustomed with me.
20:20
Speaker 1: There was little for me to do once the digging
20:22
Speaker 1: and wheeling was organized, and so these prowlings of mine
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Speaker 1: grew longer and longer, and presently I began to take
20:29
Speaker 1: food with me. I pushed these walks far beyond the
20:33
Speaker 1: area desolated by the quop. On the edges of that
20:37
Speaker 1: was first a zone of stunted vegetation, then a sort
20:40
Speaker 1: of swampy jungle that was difficult to penetrate, and then
20:44
Speaker 1: the beginnings of the forest, a scene of huge tree
20:48
Speaker 1: stems entangled creeper ropes and roots mingled with oozy mud.
20:53
Speaker 1: Here I used to loaf in a state between botanizing
20:56
Speaker 1: and reverie, always very anxious to know what was up
21:00
Speaker 1: above in the sunlight. And here it was I murdered
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Speaker 1: a man. It was the most unmeaning and purposeless murder imaginable.
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Speaker 1: Even as I write down its well remembered particulars, there
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Speaker 1: comes again the sense of its strangeness, its pointlessness, its
21:17
Speaker 1: incompatibility with any of the neat and definite theories people
21:21
Speaker 1: hold about life and the meaning of the world. I
21:25
Speaker 1: did this thing, and I want to tell of my
21:27
Speaker 1: doing it. But why I did it, and particularly why
21:30
Speaker 1: I should be held responsible for it, I cannot explain.
21:35
Speaker 1: That morning I had come upon a track in the forest,
21:38
Speaker 1: and it had occurred to me as a disagreeable idea
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Speaker 1: that this was a human pathway. I didn't want to
21:44
Speaker 1: come upon any human beings. The less our expeditions saw
21:48
Speaker 1: of the African population, the better for its prospects. Thus far,
21:53
Speaker 1: we had been singularly free from native pestering. So I
21:57
Speaker 1: turned back and was making my way over mud and
22:00
Speaker 1: roots and dead fronds and petals scattered from the green
22:03
Speaker 1: world above, when abruptly I saw my victim. I became
22:07
Speaker 1: aware of him, perhaps forty feet off, standing quite still
22:11
Speaker 1: and regarding me. He wasn't by any means a pretty figure.
22:16
Speaker 1: He was very black and naked except for a dirty
22:19
Speaker 1: loin cloth. His legs were ill shaped, and his toes
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Speaker 1: spread wide, and the upper edge of his cloth and
22:26
Speaker 1: a girdle of string cut his clumsy abdomen into folds.
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Speaker 1: His forehead was low, his nose very flat, and his
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Speaker 1: lower lip swollen and purplish red. His hair was short
22:38
Speaker 1: and fuzzy, and about his neck was a string and
22:42
Speaker 1: a little purse of skin. He carried a musket, and
22:45
Speaker 1: a powder flask was stuck in his girdle. It was
22:48
Speaker 1: a curious confrontation. There opposed to him stood I, a
22:52
Speaker 1: little soiled, perhaps, but still a rather elaborately civilized human being, born, bred,
22:58
Speaker 1: and trained in a vague tradition. In my hand was
23:02
Speaker 1: an unaccustomed gun, and each of us was essentially a teeming,
23:07
Speaker 1: vivid brain, tensely excited by the encounter, quite unaware of
23:11
Speaker 1: the other's mental content or what to do with him.
23:15
Speaker 1: He stepped back a pace or so, stumbled and turned
23:18
Speaker 1: to run. Stop. I cried, stop, you fool, and started
23:23
Speaker 1: to run after him, shouting such things in English. But
23:26
Speaker 1: I was no match for him over the roots and mud.
23:30
Speaker 1: I had a preposterous idea he mustn't get away and
23:34
Speaker 1: tell them, And with that, instantly I brought both feet together,
23:38
Speaker 1: raised my gun, aimed quite coolly, drew the trigger carefully,
23:42
Speaker 1: and shot him neatly in the back. I saw, and
23:46
Speaker 1: saw with a leap of pure exaltation. The smash of
23:50
Speaker 1: my bullet between his shoulder blades got him, said, I
23:54
Speaker 1: dropping my gun, and down he flopped and died without
23:57
Speaker 1: a groan. By jove, I cried, with note of surprise,
24:01
Speaker 1: I've killed him. I looked about me, and then went forward, cautiously,
24:06
Speaker 1: in a mood between curiosity and astonishment, to look at
24:10
Speaker 1: this man whose soul I had flung so unceremoniously out
24:14
Speaker 1: of our common world. I went to him, not as
24:17
Speaker 1: one goes to something one has made or done, but
24:20
Speaker 1: as one approaches something found. He was frightfully smashed out
24:25
Speaker 1: in front. He must have died in the instant. I
24:28
Speaker 1: stooped and raised him by his shoulder, and realized that
24:32
Speaker 1: I dropped him, and stood about and peered about me
24:34
Speaker 1: through the trees. My word, I said, he was the
24:39
Speaker 1: second dead human being apart I mean from surgical properties
24:43
Speaker 1: and mummies and common shows of that sort that I
24:46
Speaker 1: have ever seen. I stood over him, wondering, wondering beyond measure.
24:52
Speaker 1: A practical idea came into that confusion. Had any one
24:56
Speaker 1: heard the gun? I reloaded. After a time, I felt
25:01
Speaker 1: secure and gave my mind again to the dead I
25:04
Speaker 1: had killed. What must I do? It occurred to me
25:08
Speaker 1: that perhaps I ought to bury him. At any rate,
25:12
Speaker 1: I ought to hide him, I reflected coolly, and then
25:15
Speaker 1: put my gun with an easy reach, and dragged him
25:18
Speaker 1: by the arm towards a place where the mud seemed soft,
25:22
Speaker 1: and thrust him in. His powder flask slipped from his
25:25
Speaker 1: loin cloth, and I went back to get it. Then
25:28
Speaker 1: I pressed him down with the butt of my rifle.
25:31
Speaker 1: Afterwards this all seemed to me most horrible, but at
25:35
Speaker 1: the time it was entirely a matter of fact transaction.
25:39
Speaker 1: I looked round for any other visible evidence of his fate,
25:43
Speaker 1: looked round as one does when one packs one's portmanteau
25:46
Speaker 1: in an hotel bedroom. When I got my bearings and
25:50
Speaker 1: carefully returned towards the ship, I had the mood of
25:53
Speaker 1: grave concentration of a boy who has lapsed into poaching.
25:58
Speaker 1: And the business only began to assume proper proportions for
26:01
Speaker 1: me as I got near the ship to seem any
26:04
Speaker 1: other kind of thing than the killing of a bird
26:06
Speaker 1: or rabbit in the night, however, it took on enormous
26:11
Speaker 1: and portentous forms. By God, I cried, suddenly, starting wide awake,
26:17
Speaker 1: but it was murder. I lay after that, wide awake,
26:22
Speaker 1: staring at my memories. In some odd way, these visions
26:26
Speaker 1: mixed up with my dream of in my uncle in
26:29
Speaker 1: his despair. The black body which I saw, now damaged
26:34
Speaker 1: and partly buried, but which nevertheless I no longer felt
26:38
Speaker 1: was dead, but acutely alive and perceiving, I mixed up
26:43
Speaker 1: with the ochuous slash under my uncle's face. I tried
26:47
Speaker 1: to dismiss this horrible obsession from my mind, but it
26:50
Speaker 1: prevailed over all my efforts. The next day was utterly
26:55
Speaker 1: black with my sense of that ugly creature's body. I
26:58
Speaker 1: am the least superstitious men, but it drew me. It
27:02
Speaker 1: drew me back into those thickets, to the very place
27:05
Speaker 1: where I had hidden him. Some evil and detestable beast
27:09
Speaker 1: had been at him, and he lay disinterred methodically. I
27:14
Speaker 1: buried his swollen and mangled carcass again and returned to
27:18
Speaker 1: the ship for another night of dreams. Next day, for
27:21
Speaker 1: all the morning I resisted the impulse to go to him,
27:24
Speaker 1: and played nap with Pollock, with my secret gnawing at me,
27:28
Speaker 1: and in the evening started to go and was never benighted.
27:33
Speaker 1: I never told a soul of them of this thing
27:35
Speaker 1: I had done. Next day I went early, and he
27:39
Speaker 1: had gone, and there were human footmarks and ugly stains
27:43
Speaker 1: round the muddy hole from which he had been dragged.
27:46
Speaker 1: I returned to the ship disconcerted and perplexed. That day
27:51
Speaker 1: it was the men came aft with blistered hands and
27:54
Speaker 1: faces and sullen eyes. When they proclaimed through Edwards their spokesman,
27:59
Speaker 1: we've had enough of this, and we mean it, I answered,
28:03
Speaker 1: very readily, so have I. Let's go seven. We were
28:10
Speaker 1: none too soon. People had been reconnoitering us, the telegraph
28:14
Speaker 1: had been at work, and we were not four hours
28:17
Speaker 1: at sea before we ran against the gunboat that had
28:20
Speaker 1: been sent down the coast to look for us, and
28:23
Speaker 1: that would have caught us behind the island like a
28:25
Speaker 1: beast in a trap. It was a night of driving
28:28
Speaker 1: cloud that gave intermittent gleams of moonlight. The wind and
28:31
Speaker 1: sea were strong, and we were rolling along through a
28:34
Speaker 1: drift of rails and mist. Suddenly the world was white
28:38
Speaker 1: with moonshine. The gunboat came out as a long, dark shape,
28:42
Speaker 1: wallowing on the water to the east. She sighted the
28:45
Speaker 1: maud mary at once and fired some sort of pop
28:48
Speaker 1: gun to arrest us. The mate turned to me, shall
28:52
Speaker 1: I tell the captain? The captain be damned, said I,
28:56
Speaker 1: and we let him sleep through two hours of chase
28:59
Speaker 1: till a rain storm swallowed us up. Then we changed
29:02
Speaker 1: our course and sailed right across them, and by morning
29:06
Speaker 1: only your smoke was showing. We were clear of Africa,
29:10
Speaker 1: and with the booty aboard, I did not see what
29:13
Speaker 1: stood between us and home. For the first time since
29:17
Speaker 1: I had fallen sick in the Thames, my spirits rose.
29:21
Speaker 1: I was sea sick and physically disgusted, of course, but
29:24
Speaker 1: I felt kindly in spite of my qualms. So far
29:28
Speaker 1: as I could calculate. Then the situation was saved. I
29:32
Speaker 1: saw myself returning triumphantly into the Thames, and nothing on
29:35
Speaker 1: earth to prevent old Captain's perfect filament going on the market.
29:40
Speaker 1: In fortnight, I had the monopoly of electric lamps beneath
29:44
Speaker 1: my feet. I was released from the spell of that
29:48
Speaker 1: blood stained black body, all mixed up with gray black mud.
29:52
Speaker 1: I was going back to baths and decent food and
29:54
Speaker 1: aeronautics and beatrice. I was going back to Beatrice and
29:59
Speaker 1: my rear life again out of this well into which
30:02
Speaker 1: I had fallen. It would have needed something more than
30:06
Speaker 1: sea sickness and quap fever to prevent my spirits rising.
30:11
Speaker 1: I told the captain that I agreed with him that
30:14
Speaker 1: the British were the scum of Europe, the westward drift
30:17
Speaker 1: of all the people a disgusting rabble. And I lost
30:20
Speaker 1: three pounds by attenuating retail to pollock at Haypenny, Nap
30:25
Speaker 1: and Yucher. And then you know, as we got out
30:30
Speaker 1: into the Atlantic, this side of Cape Verde, the ship
30:33
Speaker 1: began to go to pieces. I don't pretend for one
30:36
Speaker 1: moment to understand what happened, but I think Griffan Hagen's
30:40
Speaker 1: recent work on the efforts of radium upon ligneous tissue
30:45
Speaker 1: does rather carry out my idea that emanations from quap
30:49
Speaker 1: have rapid rotting effect upon woody fiber. From the first
30:53
Speaker 1: there had been a different feel about the ship, and
30:56
Speaker 1: as the big winds and waves began to strain her,
30:59
Speaker 1: she commenced leaking. Soon she was leaking than at any
31:03
Speaker 1: particular point, but everywhere she did not spring a leak.
31:07
Speaker 1: I mean, but water came in first of all near
31:10
Speaker 1: the decaying edges of her planks, and then through them.
31:15
Speaker 1: I firmly believed the water came through the wood. First
31:18
Speaker 1: it began to ooze, then to trickle. It was like
31:22
Speaker 1: trying to carry moist sugar in a thin paper bag.
31:26
Speaker 1: Soon we were taking in water as though we had
31:29
Speaker 1: opened a door in her bottom. Once it began, the
31:32
Speaker 1: thing went ahead beyond all fighting. For a day or
31:36
Speaker 1: so we did our best, and I can still remember
31:38
Speaker 1: in my limbs and back, the pumping, the fatigue in
31:42
Speaker 1: my arms, and the memory of a clear little dribble
31:45
Speaker 1: of water that jerked as one pumped, and of knocking off,
31:49
Speaker 1: and the being awakened to go on again, and the
31:52
Speaker 1: fatigue piling upon fatigue. At last we ceased to think
31:56
Speaker 1: of anything but pumping. One became a thing of torment,
31:59
Speaker 1: in chanted, doomed to pump forever. I still remember it
32:04
Speaker 1: as pure relief. When at last Pollock came to me,
32:08
Speaker 1: pipe in mouth. The captain says, the damn thing's going
32:12
Speaker 1: to go down right now, he remarked, chewing his mouthpiece. Eh,
32:17
Speaker 1: good idea, I said. One can't go on pumping forever,
32:21
Speaker 1: and without hurry or alacrity, suddenly and wearily, we got
32:26
Speaker 1: into the boats and pulled away from the maud Mary
32:29
Speaker 1: until we were clear of her. And then we stayed
32:32
Speaker 1: resting on our oars, motionless upon a glassy sea, waiting
32:36
Speaker 1: for her to sink. We were all silent. Even the
32:40
Speaker 1: captain was silent until she went down, and then he
32:43
Speaker 1: spoke quite mildly in an undertone. That is the first
32:48
Speaker 1: ship I have ever lost. And it was not a
32:50
Speaker 1: fair game. It was not a cargo any man should take. No.
32:57
Speaker 1: I stared at the slow eddies that circled above the
32:59
Speaker 1: department at maud Mary, and the last chance of business organizations.
33:04
Speaker 1: I felt weary, beyond emotion. I thought of my heroics
33:07
Speaker 1: to Beatrice and my uncle, of my prompt I'll go,
33:12
Speaker 1: and of all the ineffectual months I had spent after
33:15
Speaker 1: the headlong decision. I was moved to laughter at myself
33:19
Speaker 1: and fate. But the captain and the men did not laugh.
33:23
Speaker 1: The men scowled at me, and rubbed their sore and
33:26
Speaker 1: blistered hands and set themselves to row. As all the
33:30
Speaker 1: world knows, we were picked up by the Union Castle
33:33
Speaker 1: liner Portland Castle. The hairdresser aboard was a wonderful man,
33:38
Speaker 1: and he even improvised me a dress suit and produced
33:42
Speaker 1: a clean shirt and warm underclothing. I had a hot bath,
33:46
Speaker 1: and dressed, and dined and drank a bottle of burgundy. Now,
33:50
Speaker 1: I said, are there any newspapers? I want to know
33:53
Speaker 1: what's been happening in the world. My Steward gave me
33:57
Speaker 1: what he had, But I landed at Plymouth, still largely
34:00
Speaker 1: ignorant of the course of events. I shook off Pollock
34:04
Speaker 1: and left the captain and mate in an hotel and
34:08
Speaker 1: the men in a sailor's home until I could send
34:11
Speaker 1: to pay them off. And I made my way to
34:13
Speaker 1: the station the newspapers I bought the placards I saw
34:18
Speaker 1: all England indeed resounded to my uncle's bankruptcy. End of book,
34:26
Speaker 1: third chapter, fourth parts four to seven. Recording by William
34:32
Speaker 1: tom Co