’I slept little, hurried over my breakfast,
and after a slight hesitation gave up my early morning
visit to my ship. It was really very wrong of
me, because, though my chief mate was an excellent
man all round, he was the victim of such black imaginings
that if he did not get a letter from his wife at the
expected time he would go quite distracted with rage
and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, quarrel with
all hands, and either weep in his cabin or develop
such a ferocity of temper as all but drove the crew
to the verge of mutiny. The thing had always
seemed inexplicable to me: they had been married
thirteen years; I had a glimpse of her once, and,
honestly, I couldn’t conceive a man abandoned
enough to plunge into sin for the sake of such an unattractive
person. I don’t know whether I have not
done wrong by refraining from putting that view before
poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth
for himself, and I also suffered indirectly, but some
sort of, no doubt, false delicacy prevented me.
The marital relations of seamen would make an interesting
subject, and I could tell you instances.
. . .
However, this is not the place, nor the time, and
we are concerned with Jim—who was unmarried.
If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all
the extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were
the disastrous familiars of his youth would not let
him run away from the block, I, who of course can’t
be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled
to go and see his head roll off. I wended my
way towards the court. I didn’t hope to
be very much impressed or edified, or interested or
even frightened—though, as long as there
is any life before one, a jolly good fright now and
then is a salutary discipline. But neither did
I expect to be so awfully depressed. The bitterness
of his punishment was in its chill and mean atmosphere.
The real significance of crime is in its being a breach
of faith with the community of mankind, and from that
point of view he was no mean traitor, but his execution
was a hole-and-corner affair. There was no high
scaffolding, no scarlet cloth (did they have scarlet
cloth on Tower Hill? They should have had), no
awe-stricken multitude to be horrified at his guilt
and be moved to tears at his fate—no air
of sombre retribution. There was, as I walked
along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate
to be consoling, the streets full of jumbled bits
of colour like a damaged kaleidoscope: yellow,
green, blue, dazzling white, the brown nudity of an
undraped shoulder, a bullock-cart with a red canopy,
a company of native infantry in a drab body with dark
heads marching in dusty laced boots, a native policeman
in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and belted in patent
leather, who looked up at me with orientally pitiful
eyes as though his migrating spirit were suffering
exceedingly from that unforeseen—what d’ye
call ’em?—avatar—incarnation.
