I
“We got to make a fight for it,” said my uncle. “We got to face the music!”
I remember that even at the sight of him I had a sense of impending1 calamity2. He sat under the electric light with the shadow of his hair making bars down his face. He looked shrunken, and as though his skin had suddenly got loose and yellow. The decorations of the room seemed to have lost freshness, and outside the blinds were up—there was not so much fog as a dun darkness. One saw the dingy4 outlines of the chimneys opposite quite distinctly, and then a sky of such brown as only London can display.
“I saw a placard,” I said: “‘More Ponderevity.’”
“That’s Boom,” he said. “Boom and his damned newspapers. He’s trying to fight me down. Ever since I offered to buy the Daily Decorator he’s been at me. And he thinks consolidating5 Do Ut cut down the ads. He wants everything, damn him! He’s got no sense of dealing6. I’d like to bash his face!”
“Well,” I said, “what’s to be done?”
“Keep going,” said my uncle.
“Nothing else?” I asked.
“We got to keep going. There’s a scare on. Did you notice the rooms? Half the people out there this morning are reporters. And if I talk they touch it up!... They didn’t used to touch things up! Now they put in character touches—insulting you. Don’t know what journalism’s coming to. It’s all Boom’s doing.”
“Well,” said I, “what can he do?”
“Shove us up against time, George; make money tight for us. We been handling a lot of money—and he tightens9 us up.”
“We’re sound?”
“Oh, we’re sound, George. Trust me for that! But all the same—There’s such a lot of imagination in these things.... We’re sound enough. That’s not it.”
“We can’t, I suppose, run close hauled for a bitstop expenditure11?”
“Where?”
“What!” he shouted. “Me stop Crest Hill for Boom!” He waved a fist as if to hit his inkpot, and controlled himself with difficulty. He spoke13 at last in a reasonable voice. “If I did,” he said, “he’d kick up a fuss. It’s no good, even if I wanted to. Everybody’s watching the place. If I was to stop building we’d be down in a week.”
He had an idea. “I wish I could do something to start a strike or something. No such luck. Treat those workmen a sight too well. No, sink or swim, Crest Hill goes on until we’re under water.”
I began to ask questions and irritated him instantly.
“Oh, dash these explanations, George!” he cried; “You only make things look rottener than they are. It’s your way. It isn’t a case of figures. We’re all right—there’s only one thing we got to do.”
“Yes?”
“Show value, George. That’s where this quap comes in; that’s why I fell in so readily with what you brought to me week before last. Here we are, we got our option on the perfect filament14, and all we want’s canadium. Nobody knows there’s more canadium in the world than will go on the edge of a sixpence except me and you. Nobody has an idee the perfect filament’s more than just a bit of theorising. Fifty tons of quap and we’d turn that bit of theorising into something. We’d make the lamp trade sit on its tail and howl. We’d put Ediswan and all of ’em into a parcel without last year’s trousers and a hat, and swap15 ’em off for a pot of geraniums. See? We’d do it through Business Organisations, and there you are! See? Capern’s Patent Filament!
“The Ideal and the Real! George, we’ll do it! We’ll bring it off! And then we’ll give such a facer to Boom, he’ll think for fifty years. He’s laying up for our London and African meeting. Let him. He can turn the whole paper on to us. He says the Business Organisations shares aren’t worth fifty-two and we quote ’em at eighty-four. Well, here we are gettin’ ready for him—loading our gun.”
His pose was triumphant17.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s all right. But I can’t help thinking where should we be if we hadn’t just by accident got Capern’s Perfect Filament. Because, you know it was an accident—my buying up that.”
“And after all, the meeting’s in June, and you haven’t begun to get the quap! After all, we’ve still got to load our gun.”
“They start on Toosday.”
“Have they got the brig?”
“They’ve got a brig.”
“Gordon-Nasmyth!” I doubted.
“Safe as a bank,” he said. “More I see of that man the more I like him. All I wish is we’d got a steamer instead of a sailing ship.”
“And,” I went on, “you seem to overlook what used to weigh with us a bit. This canadium side of the business and the Capern chance has rushed you off your legs. After all—it’s stealing, and in its way an international outrage20. They’ve got two gunboats on the coast.”
I jumped up and went and stared out at the fog.
“And, by Jove, it’s about our only chance! I didn’t dream.”
I turned on him. “I’ve been up in the air,” I said.
“Heaven knows where I haven’t been. And here’s our only chance—and you give it to that adventurous22 lunatic to play in his own way—in a brig!”
“Well, you had a voice—”
“I wish I’d been in this before. We ought to have run out a steamer to Lagos or one of those West Coast places and done it from there. Fancy a brig in the channel at this time of year, if it blows southwest!”
“I dessay you’d have shoved it, George. Still you know, George.... I believe in him.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I believe in him, too. In a way. Still—”
We took up a telegram that was lying on his desk and opened it. His face became a livid yellow. He put the flimsy paper down with a slow, reluctant movement and took off his glasses.
“George,” he said, “the luck’s against us.”
“What?”
“That.”
I took it up and read:
“Motor smash compound fracture of the leg gordon nasmyth what price mordet now”
For a moment neither of us spoke.
“That’s all right,” I said at last.
“Eh?” said my uncle.
II
I had a ridiculous persuasion25 that I was “saving the situation.”
“I’m going,” I said quite consciously and dramatically. I saw the whole affair—how shall I put it?—in American colours.
I sat down beside him. “Give me all the data you’ve got,” I said, “and I’ll pull this thing off.”
“But nobody knows exactly where—”
“Nasmyth does, and he’ll tell me.”
“He’s been very close,” said my uncle, and regarded me.
“He’ll tell me all right, now he’s smashed.”
He thought. “I believe he will.”
“George,” he said, “if you pull this thing off—Once or twice before you’ve stepped in—with that sort of Woosh of yours—”
He left the sentence unfinished.
“Give me that note-book,” I said, “and tell me all you know. Where’s the ship? Where’s Pollack? And where’s that telegram from? If that quap’s to be got, I’ll get it or bust. If you’ll hold on here until I get back with it.”...
And so it was I jumped into the wildest adventure of my life.
I requisitioned my uncle’s best car forthwith. I went down that night to the place of despatch27 named on Nasmyth’s telegram, Bampton S.O. Oxon, routed him out with a little trouble from that centre, made things right with him and got his explicit28 directions; and I was inspecting the Maud Mary with young Pollack, his cousin and aide, the following afternoon. She was rather a shock to me and not at all in my style, a beast of a brig inured29 to the potato trade, and she reeked30 from end to end with the faint, subtle smell of raw potatoes so that it prevailed even over the temporary smell of new paint. She was a beast of a brig, all hold and dirty framework, and they had ballasted her with old iron and old rails and iron sleepers31, and got a miscellaneous lot of spades and iron wheelbarrows against the loading of the quap. I thought her over with Pollack, one of those tall blond young men who smoke pipes and don’t help much, and then by myself, and as a result I did my best to sweep Gravesend clean of wheeling planks33, and got in as much cord and small rope as I could for lashing34. I had an idea we might need to run up a jetty. In addition to much ballast she held, remotely hidden in a sort of inadvertent way a certain number of ambiguous cases which I didn’t examine, but which I gathered were a provision against the need of a trade.
The captain was a most extraordinary creature, under the impression we were after copper35 ore; he was a Roumanian Jew, with twitching36, excitable features, who had made his way to a certificate after some preliminary naval37 experiences in the Black Sea. The mate was an Essex man of impenetrable reserve. The crew were astoundingly ill-clad and destitute38 and dirty; most of them youths, unwashed, out of colliers. One, the cook was a mulatto; and one, the best-built fellow of them all, was a Breton. There was some subterfuge39 about our position on board—I forget the particulars now—I was called the supercargo and Pollack was the steward41. This added to the piratical flavour that insufficient42 funds and Gordon-Nasmyth’s original genius had already given the enterprise.
Those two days of bustle43 at Gravesend, under dingy skies, in narrow, dirty streets, were a new experience for me. It is like nothing else in my life. I realised that I was a modern and a civilised man. I found the food filthy44 and the coffee horrible; the whole town stank46 in my nostrils47, the landlord of the Good Intent on the quay48 had a stand-up quarrel with us before I could get even a hot bath, and the bedroom I slept in was infested49 by a quantity of exotic but voracious50 flat parasites51 called locally “bugs52,” in the walls, in the woodwork, everywhere. I fought them with insect powder, and found them comatose53 in the morning. I was dipping down into the dingy underworld of the contemporary state, and I liked it no better than I did my first dip into it when I stayed with my Uncle Nicodemus Frapp at the bakery at Chatham—where, by-the-by, we had to deal with cockroaches54 of a smaller, darker variety, and also with bugs of sorts.
Let me confess that through all this time before we started I was immensely self-conscious, and that Beatrice played the part of audience in my imagination throughout. I was, as I say, “saving the situation,” and I was acutely aware of that. The evening before we sailed, instead of revising our medicine-chest as I had intended, I took the car and ran across country to Lady Grove55 to tell my aunt of the journey I was making, dress, and astonish Lady Osprey by an after dinner call.
The two ladies were at home and alone beside a big fire that seemed wonderfully cheerful after the winter night. I remember the effect of the little parlour in which they sat as very bright and domestic. Lady Osprey, in a costume of mauve and lace, sat on a chintz sofa and played an elaborately spread-out patience by the light of a tall shaded lamp; Beatrice, in a whiteness that showed her throat, smoked a cigarette in an armchair and read with a lamp at her elbow. The room was white-panelled and chintz-curtained. About those two bright centres of light were warm dark shadow, in which a circular mirror shone like a pool of brown water. I carried off my raid by behaving like a slave of etiquette56. There were moments when I think I really made Lady Osprey believe that my call was an unavoidable necessity, that it would have been negligent57 of me not to call just how and when I did. But at the best those were transitory moments.
They received me with disciplined amazement58. Lady Osprey was interested in my face and scrutinised the scar. Beatrice stood behind her solicitude59. Our eyes met, and in hers I could see startled interrogations.
“I’m going,” I said, “to the west coast of Africa.”
They asked questions, but it suited my mood to be vague.
“We’ve interests there. It is urgent I should go. I don’t know when I may return.”
The conversation was rather difficult. I embarked61 upon lengthy62 thanks for their kindness to me after my accident. I tried to understand Lady Osprey’s game of patience, but it didn’t appear that Lady Osprey was anxious for me to understand her patience. I came to the verge63 of taking my leave.
She walked across to the piano, took a pile of music from the cabinet near, surveyed Lady Osprey’s back, and with a gesture to me dropped it all deliberately65 on to the floor.
“Must talk,” she said, kneeling close to me as I helped her to pick it up. “Turn my pages. At the piano.”
“I can’t read music.”
“Turn my pages.”
Presently we were at the piano, and Beatrice was playing with noisy inaccuracy. She glanced over her shoulder and Lady Osprey had resumed her patience. The old lady was very pink, and appeared to be absorbed in some attempt to cheat herself without our observing it.
Beatrice asked these questions in a low voice and gave me no chance to answer. Then taking a rhythm from the music before her, she said—
“At the back of the house is a garden—a door in the wall—on the lane. Understand?”
I turned over the pages without any effect on her playing.
“When?” I asked.
She dealt in chords. “I wish I could play this!” she said. “Midnight.”
She gave her attention to the music for a time.
“You may have to wait.”
“I’ll wait.”
She brought her playing to an end by—as school boys say—“stashing it up.”
“I can’t play to-night,” she said, standing67 up and meeting my eyes. “I wanted to give you a parting voluntary.”
“Was that Wagner, Beatrice?” asked Lady Osprey looking up from her cards. “It sounded very confused.”
I took my leave. I had a curious twinge of conscience as I parted from Lady Osprey. Either a first intimation of middle-age or my inexperience in romantic affairs was to blame, but I felt a very distinct objection to the prospect68 of invading this good lady’s premises69 from the garden door. I motored up to the pavilion, found Cothope reading in bed, told him for the first time of West Africa, spent an hour with him in settling all the outstanding details of Lord Roberts β, and left that in his hands to finish against my return. I sent the motor back to Lady Grove, and still wearing my fur coat—for the January night was damp and bitterly cold—walked to Bedley Corner. I found the lane to the back of the Dower House without any difficulty, and was at the door in the wall with ten minutes to spare. I lit a cigar and fell to walking up and down. This queer flavour of intrigue70, this nocturnal garden-door business, had taken me by surprise and changed my mental altitudes. I was startled out of my egotistical pose and thinking intently of Beatrice, of that elfin quality in her that always pleased me, that always took me by surprise, that had made her for example so instantly conceive this meeting.
She came within a minute of midnight; the door opened softly and she appeared, a short, grey figure in a motor-coat of sheepskin, bareheaded to the cold drizzle71. She flitted up to me, and her eyes were shadows in her dusky face.
“Why are you going to West Africa?” she asked at once.
“Business crisis. I have to go.”
“You’re not going—? You’re coming back?”
“Three or four months,” I said, “at most.”
“Then, it’s nothing to do with me?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Why should it have?”
“Oh, that’s all right. One never knows what people think or what people fancy.” She took me by the arm, “Let’s go for a walk,” she said.
I looked about me at darkness and rain.
“That’s all right,” she laughed. “We can go along the lane and into the Old Woking Road. Do you mind? Of course you don’t. My head. It doesn’t matter. One never meets anybody.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve wandered like this before.... Of course. Did you think”—she nodded her head back at her home—“that’s all?”
“No, by Jove!” I cried; “it’s manifest it isn’t.”
She took my arm and turned me down the lane. “Night’s my time,” she said by my side. “There’s a touch of the werewolf in my blood. One never knows in these old families.... I’ve wondered often.... Here we are, anyhow, alone in the world. Just darkness and cold and a sky of clouds and wet. And we—together.
“I like the wet on my face and hair, don’t you? When do you sail?”
I told her to-morrow.
“Oh, well, there’s no to-morrow now. You and I!” She stopped and confronted me.
“You don’t say a word except to answer!”
“No,” I said.
“Last time you did all the talking.”
“Like a fool. Now—”
We looked at each other’s two dim faces. “You’re glad to be here?”
“I’m glad—I’m beginning to be—it’s more than glad.”
She put her hands on my shoulders and drew me down to kiss her.
“Ah!” she said, and for a moment or so we just clung to one another.
“That’s all,” she said, releasing herself. “What bundles of clothes we are to-night. I felt we should kiss some day again. Always. The last time was ages ago.”
“Among the fern stalks.”
“Among the bracken. You remember. And your lips were cold. Were mine? The same lips—after so long—after so much!... And now let’s trudge72 through this blotted73-out world together for a time. Yes, let me take your arm. Just trudge. See? Hold tight to me because I know the way—and don’t talk—don’t talk. Unless you want to talk.... Let me tell you things! You see, dear, the whole world is blotted out—it’s dead and gone, and we’re in this place. This dark wild place.... We’re dead. Or all the world is dead. No! We’re dead. No one can see us. We’re shadows. We’ve got out of our positions, out of our bodies—and together. That’s the good thing of it—together. But that’s why the world can’t see us and why we hardly see the world. Sssh! Is it all right?”
“It’s all right,” I said.
We stumbled along for a time in a close silence. We passed a dim-lit, rain-veiled window.
“The silly world,” she said, “the silly world! It eats and sleeps. If the wet didn’t patter so from the trees we’d hear it snoring. It’s dreaming such stupid things—stupid judgments74. It doesn’t know we are passing, we two—free of it—clear of it. You and I!”
We pressed against each other reassuringly75.
“I’m glad we’re dead,” she whispered. “I’m glad we’re dead. I was tired of it, dear. I was so tired of it, dear, and so entangled76.”
She stopped abruptly.
“Look here!” I cried. “I want to help you beyond measure. You are entangled. What is the trouble? I asked you to marry me. You said you would. But there’s something.”
My thoughts sounded clumsy as I said them.
“Is it something about my position?... Or is it something—perhaps—about some other man?”
“You’ve puzzled me so. At first—I mean quite early—I thought you meant to make me marry you.”
“I did.”
“And then?”
“To-night,” she said after a long pause, “I can’t explain. No! I can’t explain. I love you! But—explanations! To-night my dear, here we are in the world alone—and the world doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Here I am in the cold with you and my bed away there deserted80. I’d tell you—I will tell you when things enable me to tell you, and soon enough they will. But to-night—I won’t—I won’t.”
She left my side and went in front of me.
She turned upon me. “Look here,” she said, “I insist upon your being dead. Do you understand? I’m not joking. To-night you and I are out of life. It’s our time together. There may be other times, but this we won’t spoil. We’re—in Hades if you like. Where there’s nothing to hide and nothing to tell. No bodies even. No bothers. We loved each other—down there—and were kept apart, but now it doesn’t matter. It’s over.... If you won’t agree to that—I will go home.”
“I wanted,” I began.
“I know. Oh! my dear, if you’d only understand I understand. If you’d only not care—and love me to-night.”
“I do love you,” I said.
“Then love me,” she answered, “and leave all the things that bother you. Love me! Here I am!”
“But!—”
“No!” she said.
“Well, have your way.”
So she carried her point, and we wandered into the night together and Beatrice talked to me of love....
I’d never heard a woman before in all my life who could talk of love, who could lay bare and develop and touch with imagination all that mass of fine emotion every woman, it may be, hides. She had read of love, she had thought of love, a thousand sweet lyrics81 had sounded through her brain and left fine fragments in her memory; she poured it out, all of it, shamelessly, skilfully82, for me. I cannot give any sense of that talk, I cannot even tell how much of the delight of it was the magic of her voice, the glow of her near presence. And always we walked swathed warmly through a chilly83 air, along dim, interminable greasy84 roads—with never a soul abroad it seemed to us, never a beast in the fields.
“Why do people love each other?” I said.
“Why not?”
“But why do I love you? Why is your voice better than any voice, your face sweeter than any face?”
“And why do I love you?” she asked; “not only what is fine in you, but what isn’t? Why do I love your dullness, your arrogance85? For I do. To—night I love the very raindrops on the fur of your coat!”...
So we talked; and at last very wet, still glowing but a little tired, we parted at the garden door. We had been wandering for two hours in our strange irrational86 community of happiness, and all the world about us, and particularly Lady Osprey and her household, had been asleep—and dreaming of anything rather than Beatrice in the night and rain.
“Come back,” she whispered. “I shall wait for you.”
She hesitated.
She touched the lapel of my coat. “I love you NOW,” she said, and lifted her face to mine.
I held her to me and was atremble from top to toe. “O God!” I cried. “And I must go!”
She slipped from my arms and paused, regarding me. For an instant the world seemed full of fantastic possibilities.
“Yes, Go!” she said, and vanished and slammed the door upon me, leaving me alone like a man new fallen from fairyland in the black darkness of the night.
III
That expedition to Mordet Island stands apart from all the rest of my life, detached, a piece by itself with an atmosphere of its own. It would, I suppose, make a book by itself—it has made a fairly voluminous official report—but so far as this novel of mine goes it is merely an episode, a contributory experience, and I mean to keep it at that.
Vile weather, an impatient fretting90 against unbearable91 slowness and delay, sea—sickness, general discomfort92 and humiliating self—revelation are the master values of these memories.
I was sick all through the journey out. I don’t know why. It was the only time I was ever sea-sick, and I have seen some pretty bad weather since I became a boat-builder. But that phantom93 smell of potatoes was peculiarly vile to me. Coming back on the brig we were all ill, every one of us, so soon as we got to sea, poisoned, I firmly believe, by quap. On the way out most of the others recovered in a few days, but the stuffiness94 below, the coarse food, the cramped96 dirty accommodation kept me, if not actually sea-sick, in a state of acute physical wretchedness the whole time. The ship abounded97 in cockroaches and more intimate vermin. I was cold all the time until after we passed Cape16 Verde, then I became steamily hot; I had been too preoccupied98 with Beatrice and my keen desire to get the Maud Mary under way at once, to consider a proper wardrobe for myself, and in particular I lacked a coat. Heavens! how I lacked that coat! And, moreover, I was cooped up with two of the worst bores in Christendom, Pollack and the captain. Pollack, after conducting his illness in a style better adapted to the capacity of an opera house than a small compartment99, suddenly got insupportably well and breezy, and produced a manly100 pipe in which he smoked a tobacco as blond as himself, and divided his time almost equally between smoking it and trying to clean it. “There’s only three things you can clean a pipe with,” he used to remark with a twist of paper in hand. “The best’s a feather, the second’s a straw, and the third’s a girl’s hairpin101. I never see such a ship. You can’t find any of ’em. Last time I came this way I did find hairpins102 anyway, and found ’em on the floor of the captain’s cabin. Regular deposit. Eh?... Feelin’ better?”
At which I usually swore.
“Oh, you’ll be all right soon. Don’t mind my puffin’ a bit? Eh?”
He never tired of asking me to “have a hand at Nap. Good game. Makes you forget it, and that’s half the battle.”
He would sit swaying with the rolling of the ship and suck at his pipe of blond tobacco and look with an inexpressibly sage103 but somnolent104 blue eye at the captain by the hour together. “Captain’s a Card,” he would say over and over again as the outcome of these meditations105. “He’d like to know what we’re up to. He’d like to know—no end.”
That did seem to be the captain’s ruling idea. But he also wanted to impress me with the notion that he was a gentleman of good family and to air a number of views adverse106 to the English, to English literature, to the English constitution, and the like.
He had learnt the sea in the Roumanian navy, and English out of a book; he would still at times pronounce the e’s at the end of “there” and “here”; he was a naturalised Englishman, and he drove me into a reluctant and uncongenial patriotism107 by his everlasting108 carping at things English. Pollack would set himself to “draw him out.” Heaven alone can tell how near I came to murder.
Fifty-three days I had outward, cooped up with these two and a shy and profoundly depressed109 mate who read the Bible on Sundays and spent the rest of his leisure in lethargy, three and fifty days of life cooped up in a perpetual smell, in a persistent110 sick hunger that turned from the sight of food, in darkness, cold and wet, in a lightly ballasted ship that rolled and pitched and swayed. And all the time the sands in the hour-glass of my uncle’s fortunes were streaming out. Misery111! Amidst it all I remember only one thing brightly, one morning of sunshine in the Bay of Biscay and a vision of frothing waves, sapphire112 green, a bird following our wake and our masts rolling about the sky. Then wind and rain close in on us again.
You must not imagine they were ordinary days, days, I mean, of an average length; they were not so much days as long damp slabs113 of time that stretched each one to the horizon, and much of that length was night. One paraded the staggering deck in a borrowed sou’-wester hour after hour in the chilly, windy, splashing and spitting darkness, or sat in the cabin, bored and ill, and looked at the faces of those inseparable companions by the help of a lamp that gave smell rather than light. Then one would see going up, up, up, and then sinking down, down, down, Pollack, extinct pipe in mouth, humorously observant, bringing his mind slowly to the seventy-seventh decision that the captain was a Card, while the words flowed from the latter in a nimble incessant114 good. “Dis England eet is not a country aristocratic, no! Eet is a glorified115 bourgeoisie! Eet is plutocratic116. In England dere is no aristocracy since de Wars of Roses. In the rest of Europe east of the Latins, yes; in England, no.
“Eet is all middle-class, youra England. Everything you look at, middle-class. Respectable! Everything good—eet is, you say, shocking. Madame Grundy! Eet is all limited and computing117 and self-seeking. Dat is why your art is so limited, youra fiction, your philosophin, why you are all so inartistic. You want nothing but profit! What will pay! What would you?”...
He had all those violent adjuncts to speech we Western Europeans have abandoned, shruggings of the shoulders, waving of the arms, thrusting out of the face, wonderful grimaces119 and twiddlings of the hands under your nose until you wanted to hit them away. Day after day it went on, and I had to keep any anger to myself, to reserve myself for the time ahead when it would be necessary to see the quap was got aboard and stowed—knee deep in this man’s astonishment120. I knew he would make a thousand objections to all we had before us. He talked like a drugged man. It ran glibly121 over his tongue. And all the time one could see his seamanship fretting him, he was gnawed122 by responsibility, perpetually uneasy about the ship’s position, perpetually imagining dangers. If a sea hit us exceptionally hard he’d be out of the cabin in an instant making an outcry of inquiries123, and he was pursued by a dread124 of the hold, of ballast shifting, of insidious125 wicked leaks. As we drew near the African coast his fear of rocks and shoals became infectious.
“I do not know dis coast,” he used to say. “I cama hera because Gordon-Nasmyth was coming too. Den3 he does not come!”
“Fortunes of war,” I said, and tried to think in vain if any motive126 but sheer haphazard127 could have guided Gordon-Nasmyth in the choice of these two men. I think perhaps Gordon-Nasmyth had the artistic118 temperament128 and wanted contrasts, and also that the captain helped him to express his own malignant129 Anti-Britishism.
He was indeed an exceptionally inefficient130 captain. On the whole I was glad I had come even at the eleventh hour to see to things.
(The captain, by-the-by, did at last, out of sheer nervousness, get aground at the end of Mordet’s Island, but we got off in an hour or so with a swell131 and a little hard work in the boat.)
I suspected the mate of his opinion of the captain long before he expressed it. He was, I say, a taciturn man, but one day speech broke through him. He had been sitting at the table with his arms folded on it, musing132 drearily133, pipe in mouth, and the voice of the captain drifted down from above.
The mate lifted his heavy eyes to me and regarded me for a moment. Then he began to heave with the beginnings of speech. He disembarrassed himself of his pipe. I cowered134 with expectation. Speech was coming at last. Before he spoke he nodded reassuringly once or twice.
“E—”
He moved his head strangely and mysteriously, but a child might have known he spoke of the captain.
“E’s a foreigner.”
He regarded me doubtfully for a time, and at last decided135 for the sake of lucidity136 to clench137 the matter.
“That’s what E is—a Dago!”
He nodded like a man who gives a last tap to a nail, and I could see he considered his remark well and truly laid. His face, though still resolute138, became as tranquil139 and uneventful as a huge hall after a public meeting has dispersed140 out of it, and finally he closed and locked it with his pipe.
“Roumanian Jew, isn’t he?” I said.
He nodded darkly and almost forbiddingly.
More would have been too much. The thing was said. But from that time forth26 I knew I could depend upon him and that he and I were friends. It happens I never did have to depend upon him, but that does not affect our relationship.
Forward the crew lived lives very much after the fashion of ours, more crowded, more cramped and dirty, wetter, steamier, more verminous. The coarse food they had was still not so coarse but that they did not think they were living “like fighting cocks.” So far as I could make out they were all nearly destitute men; hardly any of them had a proper sea outfit141, and what small possessions they had were a source of mutual142 distrust. And as we pitched and floundered southward they gambled and fought, were brutal143 to one another, argued and wrangled144 loudly, until we protested at the uproar145.
There’s no romance about the sea in a small sailing ship as I saw it. The romance is in the mind of the landsman dreamer. These brigs and schooners146 and brigantines that still stand out from every little port are relics147 from an age of petty trade, as rotten and obsolescent148 as a Georgian house that has sunken into a slum. They are indeed just floating fragments of slum, much as icebergs149 are floating fragments of glacier150. The civilised man who has learnt to wash, who has developed a sense of physical honour, of cleanly temperate151 feeding, of time, can endure them no more. They pass, and the clanking coal-wasting steamers will follow them, giving place to cleaner, finer things....
But so it was I made my voyage to Africa, and came at last into a world of steamy fogs and a hot smell of vegetable decay, and into sound and sight of surf and distant intermittent152 glimpses of the coast. I lived a strange concentrated life through all that time, such a life as a creature must do that has fallen in a well. All my former ways ceased, all my old vistas153 became memories.
The situation I was saving was very small and distant now; I felt its urgency no more. Beatrice and Lady Grove, my uncle and the Hardingham, my soaring in the air and my habitual154 wide vision of swift effectual things, became as remote as if they were in some world I had left for ever....
IV
All these African memories stand by themselves. It was for me an expedition into the realms of undisciplined nature out of the world that is ruled by men, my first bout21 with that hot side of our mother that gives you the jungle—that cold side that gives you the air-eddy I was beginning to know passing well. They are memories woven upon a fabric155 of sunshine and heat and a constant warm smell of decay. They end in rain—such rain as I had never seen before, a vehement156, a frantic157 downpouring of water, but our first slow passage through the channels behind Mordet’s Island was in incandescent158 sunshine.
There we go in my memory still, a blistered159 dirty ship with patched sails and a battered160 mermaid161 to present Maud Mary, sounding and taking thought between high ranks of forest whose trees come out knee-deep at last in the water. There we go with a little breeze on our quarter, Mordet Island rounded and the quap, it might be within a day of us.
Here and there strange blossoms woke the dank intensities162 of green with a trumpet163 call of colour. Things crept among the jungle and peeped and dashed back rustling164 into stillness. Always in the sluggishly165 drifting, opaque166 water were eddyings and stirrings; little rushes of bubbles came chuckling167 up light-heartedly from this or that submerged conflict and tragedy; now and again were crocodiles like a stranded168 fleet of logs basking170 in the sun. Still it was by day, a dreary171 stillness broken only by insect sounds and the creaking and flapping of our progress, by the calling of the soundings and the captain’s confused shouts; but in the night as we lay moored172 to a clump173 of trees the darkness brought a thousand swampy174 things to life and out of the forest came screaming and howlings, screaming and yells that made us glad to be afloat. And once we saw between the tree stems long blazing fires. We passed two or three villages landward, and brown-black women and children came and stared at us and gesticulated, and once a man came out in a boat from a creek175 and hailed us in an unknown tongue; and so at last we came to a great open place, a broad lake rimmed176 with a desolation of mud and bleached177 refuse and dead trees, free from crocodiles or water birds or sight or sound of any living thing, and saw far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the ruins of the deserted station, and hard by two little heaps of buff-hued rubbish under a great rib45 of rock, the quap! The forest receded178. The land to the right of us fell away and became barren, and far on across notch179 in its backbone180 was surf and the sea.
We took the ship in towards those heaps and the ruined jetty slowly and carefully. The captain came and talked.
“This is eet?” he said.
“Yes,” said I.
“Is eet for trade we have come?”
“No,” said I.
“Gordon-Nasmyth would haf told me long ago what it ees for we haf come.”
“I’ll tell you now,” I said. “We are going to lay in as close as we can to those two heaps of stuff—you see them?—under the rock. Then we are going to chuck all our ballast overboard and take those in. Then we’re going home.”
“May I presume to ask—is eet gold?”
“No,” I said incivilly, “it isn’t.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s stuff—of some commercial value.”
“We can’t do eet,” he said.
“We can,” I answered reassuringly.
“We can’t,” he said as confidently. “I don’t mean what you mean. You know so liddle—But—dis is forbidden country.”
I turned on him suddenly angry and met bright excited eyes. For a minute we scrutinised one another. Then I said, “That’s our risk. Trade is forbidden. But this isn’t trade.... This thing’s got to be done.”
His eyes glittered and he shook his head....
The brig stood in slowly through the twilight182 toward this strange scorched183 and blistered stretch of beach, and the man at the wheel strained his ears to listening the low-voiced angry argument that began between myself and the captain, that was presently joined by Pollack. We moored at last within a hundred yards of our goal, and all through our dinner and far into the night we argued intermittently184 and fiercely with the captain about our right to load just what we pleased. “I will haf nothing to do with eet,” he persisted. “I wash my hands.” It seemed that night as though we argued in vain. “If it is not trade,” he said, “it is prospecting185 and mining. That is worse. Any one who knows anything—outside England—knows that is worse.”
We argued and I lost my temper and swore at him. Pollack kept cooler and chewed his pipe watchfully186 with that blue eye of his upon the captain’s gestures. Finally I went on deck to cool. The sky was overcast187 I discovered all the men were in a knot forward, staring at the faint quivering luminosity that had spread over the heaps of quap, a phosphorescence such as one sees at times on rotting wood. And about the beach east and west there were patches and streaks188 of something like diluted189 moonshine....
In the small hours I was still awake and turning over scheme after scheme in my mind whereby I might circumvent190 the captain’s opposition191. I meant to get that quap aboard if I had to kill some one to do it. Never in my life had I been so thwarted192! After this intolerable voyage! There came a rap at my cabin door and then it opened and I made out a bearded face. “Come in,” I said, and a black voluble figure I could just see obscurely came in to talk in my private ear and fill my cabin with its whisperings and gestures. It was the captain. He, too, had been awake and thinking things over. He had come to explain—enormously. I lay there hating him and wondering if I and Pollack could lock him in his cabin and run the ship without him. “I do not want to spoil dis expedition,” emerged from a cloud of protestations, and then I was able to disentangle “a commission—shush a small commission—for special risks!” “Special risks” became frequent. I let him explain himself out. It appeared he was also demanding an apology for something I had said. No doubt I had insulted him generously. At last came definite offers. I broke my silence and bargained.
“Pollack!” I cried and hammered the partition.
“What’s up?” asked Pollack.
There came a silence.
“He’s a Card,” said Pollack. “Let’s give him his commission. I don’t mind.”
“Eh?” I cried.
“I said he was a Card, that’s all,” said Pollack. “I’m coming.”
He appeared in my doorway a faint white figure joined our vehement whisperings.
We had to buy the captain off; we had to promise him ten per cent. of our problematical profits. We were to give him ten per cent. on what we sold the cargo40 for over and above his legitimate194 pay, and I found in my out-bargained and disordered state small consolation195 in the thought that I, as the Gordon-Nasmyth expedition, was to sell the stuff to myself as Business Organisations. And he further exasperated196 me by insisting on having our bargain in writing. “In the form of a letter,” he insisted.
“All right,” I acquiesced197, “in the form of a letter. Here goes! Get a light!”
“And the apology,” he said, folding up the letter.
“All right,” I said; “Apology.”
My hand shook with anger as I wrote, and afterwards I could not sleep for hate of him. At last I got up. I suffered, I found, from an unusual clumsiness. I struck my toe against my cabin door, and cut myself as I shaved. I found myself at last pacing the deck under the dawn in a mood of extreme exasperation198. The sun rose abruptly and splashed light blindingly into my eyes and I swore at the sun. I found myself imagining fresh obstacles with the men and talking aloud in anticipatory199 rehearsal200 of the consequent row.
V
Sooner or later the ridiculous embargo202 that now lies upon all the coast eastward203 of Mordet Island will be lifted and the reality of the deposits of quap ascertained204. I am sure that we were merely taking the outcrop of a stratum205 of nodulated deposits that dip steeply seaward. Those heaps were merely the crumbled207 out contents of two irregular cavities in the rock; they are as natural as any talus or heap of that kind, and the mud along the edge of the water for miles is mixed with quap, and is radio-active and lifeless and faintly phosphorescent at night. But the reader will find the full particulars of my impression of all this in the Geological Magazine for October, 1905, and to that I must refer him. There, too, he will find my unconfirmed theories of its nature. If I am right it is something far more significant from the scientific point of view than those incidental constituents208 of various rare metals, pitchblende, rutile, and the like, upon which the revolutionary discoveries of the last decade are based. Those are just little molecular209 centres of disintegration210, of that mysterious decay and rotting of those elements, elements once regarded as the most stable things in nature. But there is something—the only word that comes near it is cancerous—and that is not very near, about the whole of quap, something that creeps and lives as a disease lives by destroying; an elemental stirring and disarrangement, incalculably maleficent and strange.
This is no imaginative comparison of mine. To my mind radio-activity is a real disease of matter. Moreover, it is a contagious211 disease. It spreads. You bring those debased and crumbling212 atoms near others and those too presently catch the trick of swinging themselves out of coherent existence. It is in matter exactly what the decay of our old culture is in society, a loss of traditions and distinctions and assured reactions. When I think of these inexplicable213 dissolvent centres that have come into being in our globe—these quap heaps are surely by far the largest that have yet been found in the world; the rest as yet mere89 specks214 in grains and crystals—I am haunted by a grotesque215 fancy of the ultimate eating away and dry-rotting and dispersal of all our world. So that while man still struggles and dreams his very substance will change and crumble206 from beneath him. I mention this here as a queer persistent fancy. Suppose, indeed, that is to be the end of our planet; no splendid climax216 and finale, no towering accumulation of achievements, but just—atomic decay! I add that to the ideas of the suffocating217 comet, the dark body out of space, the burning out of the sun, the distorted orbit, as a new and far more possible end—as Science can see ends—to this strange by-play of matter that we call human life. I do not believe this can be the end; no human soul can believe in such an end and go on living, but to it science points as a possible thing, science and reason alike. If single human beings—if one single ricketty infant—can be born as it were by accident and die futile218, why not the whole race? These are questions I have never answered, that now I never attempt to answer, but the thought of quap and its mysteries brings them back to me.
I can witness that the beach and mud for two miles or more either way was a lifeless beach—lifeless as I could have imagined no tropical mud could ever be, and all the dead branches and leaves and rotting dead fish and so forth that drifted ashore219 became presently shrivelled and white. Sometimes crocodiles would come up out of the water and bask169, and now and then water birds would explore the mud and rocky ribs220 that rose out of it, in a mood of transitory speculation221. That was its utmost admiration222. And the air felt at once hot and austere223, dry and blistering224, and altogether different the warm moist embrace that had met us at our first African landfall and to which we had grown accustomed.
I believe that the primary influence of the quap upon us was to increase the conductivity of our nerves, but that is a mere unjustifiable speculation on my part. At any rate it gave a sort of east wind effect to life. We all became irritable225, clumsy, languid and disposed to be impatient with our languor226. We moored the brig to the rocks with difficulty, and got aground on mud and decided to stick there and tow off when we had done—the bottom was as greasy as butter. Our efforts to fix up planks and sleepers in order to wheel the quap aboard were as ill-conceived as that sort of work can be—and that sort of work can at times be very ill-conceived. The captain had a superstitious228 fear of his hold: he became wildly gesticulatory and expository and incompetent229 at the bare thought of it. His shouts still echo in my memory, becoming as each crisis approached less and less like any known tongue.
But I cannot now write the history of those days of blundering and toil230: of how Milton, one of the boys, fell from a plank32 to the beach, thirty feet perhaps, with his barrow and broke his arm and I believe a rib, of how I and Pollack set the limb and nursed him through the fever that followed, of how one man after another succumbed231 to a feverish232 malaria, and how I—by virtue233 of my scientific reputation—was obliged to play the part of doctor and dose them with quinine, and then finding that worse than nothing, with rum and small doses of Easton’s Syrup234, of which there chanced to be a case of bottles aboard—Heaven and Gordon-Nasmyth know why. For three long days we lay in misery and never shipped a barrow-load. Then, when they resumed, the men’s hands broke out into sores. There were no gloves available; and I tried to get them, while they shovelled235 and wheeled, to cover their hands with stockings or greased rags. They would not do this on account of the heat and discomfort. This attempt of mine did, however, direct their attention to the quap as the source of their illness and precipitated236 what in the end finished our lading, an informal strike. “We’ve had enough of this,” they said, and they meant it. They came aft to say as much. They cowed the captain.
Through all these days the weather was variously vile, first a furnace heat under a sky of a scowling237 intensity238 of blue, then a hot fog that stuck in one’s throat like wool and turned the men on the planks into colourless figures of giants, then a wild burst of thunderstorms, mad elemental uproar and rain. Through it all, against illness, heat, confusion of mind, one master impetus239 prevailed with me, to keep the shipping240 going, to maintain one motif241 at least, whatever else arose or ceased, the chuff of the spades, the squeaking242 and shriek243 of the barrows, the pluppa, pluppa, pluppa, as the men came trotting244 along the swinging high planks, and then at last, the dollop, dollop, as the stuff shot into the hold. “Another barrow-load, thank God! Another fifteen hundred, or it may be two thousand pounds, for the saving of Ponderevo!...”
I found out many things about myself and humanity in those weeks of effort behind Mordet Island. I understand now the heart of the sweater, of the harsh employer, of the nigger-driver. I had brought these men into a danger they didn’t understand, I was fiercely resolved to overcome their opposition and bend and use them for my purpose, and I hated the men. But I hated all humanity during the time that the quap was near me.
And my mind was pervaded245, too, by a sense of urgency and by the fear that we should be discovered and our proceedings246 stopped. I wanted to get out to sea again—to be beating up northward247 with our plunder248. I was afraid our masts showed to seaward and might betray us to some curious passer on the high sea. And one evening near the end I saw a canoe with three natives far off down the lake; I got field-glasses from the captain and scrutinised them, and I could see them staring at us. One man might have been a half-breed and was dressed in white. They watched us for some time very quietly and then paddled off into some channel in the forest shadows.
And for three nights running, so that it took a painful grip upon my inflamed249 imagination, I dreamt of my uncle’s face, only that it was ghastly white like a clown’s, and the throat was cut from ear to ear—a long ochreous cut. “Too late,” he said; “Too late!...”
VI
A day or so after we had got to work upon the quap I found myself so sleepless250 and miserable251 that the ship became unendurable. Just before the rush of sunrise I borrowed Pollack’s gun, walked down the planks, clambered over the quap heaps and prowled along the beach. I went perhaps a mile and a half that day and some distance beyond the ruins of the old station. I became interested in the desolation about me, and found when I returned that I was able to sleep for nearly an hour. It was delightful252 to have been alone for so long,—no captain, no Pollack, no one. Accordingly I repeated this expedition the next morning and the next until it became a custom with me. There was little for me to do once the digging and wheeling was organised, and so these prowlings of mine grew longer and longer, and presently I began to take food with me.
I pushed these walks far beyond the area desolated253 by the quap. On the edges of that was first a zone of stunted254 vegetation, then a sort of swampy jungle that was difficult to penetrate255, and then the beginnings of the forest, a scene of huge tree stems and tangled77 creeper ropes and roots mingled256 with oozy257 mud. Here I used to loaf in a state between botanising and reverie—always very anxious to know what was up above in the sunlight—and here it was I murdered a man.
It was the most unmeaning and purposeless murder imaginable. Even as I write down its well-remembered particulars there comes again the sense of its strangeness, its pointlessness, its incompatibility258 with any of the neat and definite theories people hold about life and the meaning of the world. I did this thing and I want to tell of my doing it, but why I did it and particularly why I should be held responsible for it I cannot explain.
That morning I had come upon a track in the forest, and it had occurred to me as a disagreeable idea that this was a human pathway. I didn’t want to come upon any human beings. The less our expedition saw of the African population the better for its prospects259. Thus far we had been singularly free from native pestering260. So I turned back and was making my way over mud and roots and dead fronds261 and petals262 scattered263 from the green world above when abruptly I saw my victim.
I became aware of him perhaps forty feet off standing quite still and regarding me.
He wasn’t by any means a pretty figure. He was very black and naked except for a dirty loin-cloth, his legs were ill-shaped and his toes spread wide and the upper edge of his cloth and a girdle of string cut his clumsy abdomen264 into folds. His forehead was low, his nose very flat and his lower lip swollen265 and purplish-red. His hair was short and fuzzy, and about his neck was a string and a little purse of skin. He carried a musket266, and a powder-flask was stuck in his girdle. It was a curious confrontation267. There opposed to him stood I, a little soiled, perhaps, but still a rather elaborately civilised human being, born, bred and trained in a vague tradition. In my hand was an unaccustomed gun. And each of us was essentially268 a teeming269, vivid brain, tensely excited by the encounter, quite unaware270 of the other’s mental content or what to do with him.
He stepped back a pace or so, stumbled and turned to run.
“Stop,” I cried; “stop, you fool!” and started to run after him, shouting such things in English. But I was no match for him over the roots and mud.
I had a preposterous271 idea. “He mustn’t get away and tell them!”
And with that instantly I brought both feet together, raised my gun, aimed quite coolly, drew the trigger carefully and shot him neatly272 in the back.
I saw, and saw with a leap of pure exaltation, the smash of my bullet between his shoulder blades. “Got him,” said I, dropping my gun and down he flopped273 and died without a groan274. “By Jove!” I cried with note of surprise, “I’ve killed him!” I looked about me and then went forward cautiously, in a mood between curiosity and astonishment, to look at this man whose soul I had flung so unceremoniously out of our common world. I went to him, not as one goes to something one has made or done, but as one approaches something found.
He was frightfully smashed out in front; he must have died in the instant. I stooped and raised him by his shoulder and realised that. I dropped him, and stood about and peered about me through the trees. “My word!” I said. He was the second dead human being—apart, I mean, from surgical275 properties and mummies and common shows of that sort—that I have ever seen. I stood over him wondering, wondering beyond measure.
A practical idea came into that confusion. Had any one heard the gun?
I reloaded.
After a time I felt securer, and gave my mind again to the dead I had killed. What must I do?
It occurred to me that perhaps I ought to bury him. At any rate, I ought to hide him. I reflected coolly, and then put my gun within easy reach and dragged him by the arm towards a place where the mud seemed soft, and thrust him in. His powder-flask slipped from his loin-cloth, and I went back to get it. Then I pressed him down with the butt227 of my rifle.
Afterwards this all seemed to me most horrible, but at the time it was entirely276 a matter-of-fact transaction. I looked round for any other visible evidence of his fate, looked round as one does when one packs one’s portmanteau in an hotel bedroom.
When I got my bearings, and carefully returned towards the ship. I had the mood of grave concentration of a boy who has lapsed277 into poaching. And the business only began to assume proper proportions for me as I got near the ship, to seem any other kind of thing than the killing278 of a bird or rabbit.
In the night, however, it took on enormous and portentous279 forms. “By God!” I cried suddenly, starting wide awake; “but it was murder!”
I lay after that wide awake, staring at my memories. In some odd way these visions mixed up with my dream of in my uncle in his despair. The black body which saw now damaged and partly buried, but which, nevertheless, I no longer felt was dead but acutely alive and perceiving, I mixed up with the ochreous slash280 under my uncle’s face. I tried to dismiss this horrible obsession281 from my mind, but it prevailed over all my efforts.
The next day was utterly282 black with my sense of that ugly creature’s body. I am the least superstitious of men, but it drew me. It drew me back into those thickets283 to the very place where I had hidden him.
Some evil and detestable beast had been at him, and he lay disinterred.
Methodically I buried his swollen and mangled284 carcass again, and returned to the ship for another night of dreams. Next day for all the morning I resisted the impulse to go to him, and played nap with Pollack with my secret gnawing285 at me, and in the evening started to go and was near benighted286. I never told a soul of them of this thing I had done.
Next day I went early, and he had gone, and there were human footmarks and ugly stains round the muddy hole from which he had been dragged.
I returned to the ship, disconcerted and perplexed287. That day it was the men came aft, with blistered hands and faces, and sullen288 eyes. When they proclaimed, through Edwards, their spokesman, “We’ve had enough of this, and we mean it,” I answered very readily, “So have I. Let’s go.”
VII
We were none too soon. People had been reconnoitring us, the telegraph had been at work, and we were not four hours at sea before we ran against the gunboat that had been sent down the coast to look for us and that would have caught us behind the island like a beast in a trap. It was a night of driving cloud that gave intermittent gleams of moonlight; the wind and sea were strong and we were rolling along through a drift of rails and mist. Suddenly the world was white with moonshine. The gunboat came out as a long dark shape wallowing on the water to the east.
She sighted the Maud Mary at once, and fired some sort of popgun to arrest us.
The mate turned to me.
“Shall I tell the captain?”
“The captain be damned” said I, and we let him sleep through two hours of chase till a rainstorm swallowed us up. Then we changed our course and sailed right across them, and by morning only her smoke was showing.
We were clear of Africa—and with the booty aboard I did not see what stood between us and home.
For the first time since I had fallen sick in the Thames my spirits rose. I was sea-sick and physically289 disgusted, of course, but I felt kindly290 in spite of my qualms291. So far as I could calculate then the situation was saved. I saw myself returning triumphantly292 into the Thames, and nothing on earth to prevent old Capern’s Perfect Filament going on the market in fortnight. I had the monopoly of electric lamps beneath my feet.
I was released from the spell of that bloodstained black body all mixed up with grey-black mud. I was going back to baths and decent food and aeronautics293 and Beatrice. I was going back to Beatrice and my real life again—out of this well into which I had fallen. It would have needed something more than sea-sickness and quap fever to prevent my spirits rising.
I told the captain that I agreed with him that the British were the scum of Europe, the westward294 drift of all the people, a disgusting rabble295, and I lost three pounds by attenuated296 retail297 to Pollack at ha’penny nap and euchre.
And then you know, as we got out into the Atlantic this side of Cape Verde, the ship began to go to pieces. I don’t pretend for one moment to understand what happened. But I think Greiffenhagen’s recent work on the effects of radium upon ligneous298 tissue does rather carry out my idea that emanations from quap have rapid rotting effect upon woody fibre.
From the first there had been a different feel about the ship, and as the big winds and waves began to strain her she commenced leaking. Soon she was leaking—not at any particular point, but everywhere. She did not spring a leak, I mean, but water came in first of all near the decaying edges of her planks, and then through them.
I firmly believe the water came through the wood. First it began to ooze299, then to trickle300. It was like trying to carry moist sugar in a thin paper bag. Soon we were taking in water as though we had opened a door in her bottom.
Once it began, the thing went ahead beyond all fighting. For a day or so we did our best, and I can still remember in my limbs and back the pumping—the fatigue301 in my arms and the memory of a clear little dribble302 of water that jerked as one pumped, and of knocking off and the being awakened303 to go on again, and of fatigue piling up upon fatigue. At last we ceased to think of anything but pumping; one became a thing of torment304 enchanted305, doomed306 to pump for ever. I still remember it as pure relief when at last Pollack came to me pipe in mouth.
“The captain says the damned thing’s going down right now;” he remarked, chewing his mouthpiece. “Eh?”
“Good idea!” I said. “One can’t go on pumping for ever.”
And without hurry or alacrity307, sullenly308 and wearily we got into the boats and pulled away from the Maud Mary until we were clear of her, and then we stayed resting on our oars95, motionless upon a glassy sea, waiting for her to sink. We were all silent, even the captain was silent until she went down. And then he spoke quite mildly in an undertone.
“Dat is the first ship I haf ever lost.... And it was not a fair game! It wass not a cargo any man should take. No!”
I stared at the slow eddies309 that circled above the departed Maud Mary, and the last chance of Business Organisations. I felt weary beyond emotion. I thought of my heroics to Beatrice and my uncle, of my prompt “I’ll go,” and of all the ineffectual months I had spent after this headlong decision. I was moved to laughter at myself and fate.
But the captain and the men did not laugh. The men scowled310 at me and rubbed their sore and blistered hands, and set themselves to row....
As all the world knows we were picked up by the union Castle liner, Portland Castle.
The hairdresser aboard was a wonderful man, and he even improvised311 me a dress suit, and produced a clean shirt and warm underclothing. I had a hot bath, and dressed and dined and drank a bottle of Burgundy.
“Now,” I said, “are there any newspapers? I want to know what’s been happening in the world.”
My steward gave me what he had, but I landed at Plymouth still largely ignorant of the course of events. I shook off Pollack, and left the captain and mate in an hotel, and the men in a Sailor’s Home until I could send to pay them off, and I made my way to the station.
The newspapers I bought, the placards I saw, all England indeed resounded312 to my uncle’s bankruptcy313.
《时间机器 The Time Machine》
《隐身人 The Invisible Man》
《The Sleeper Awakes》
《时间机器 The Time Machine》
《隐身人 The Invisible Man》
《The Sleeper Awakes》
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impending
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calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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dingy
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consolidating
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dealing
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savagery
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tightens
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| 收紧( tighten的第三人称单数 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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10
defiantly
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| adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地 | |
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11
expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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12
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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13
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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14
filament
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| n.细丝；长丝；灯丝 | |
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15
swap
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| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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16
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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17
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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18
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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19
unreasonableness
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| 无理性； 横逆 | |
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20
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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21
bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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22
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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23
grimaced
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| v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24
bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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25
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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26
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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27
despatch
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| n./v.(dispatch)派遣；发送；n.急件；新闻报道 | |
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28
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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29
inured
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| adj.坚强的，习惯的 | |
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30
reeked
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的过去式和过去分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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31
sleepers
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| n.卧铺（通常以复数形式出现）；卧车( sleeper的名词复数 )；轨枕；睡觉（呈某种状态）的人；小耳环 | |
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32
plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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33
planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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34
lashing
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| n.鞭打；痛斥；大量；许多v.鞭打( lash的现在分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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35
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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36
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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37
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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38
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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39
subterfuge
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| n.诡计；藉口 | |
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40
cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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41
steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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42
insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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43
bustle
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| v.喧扰地忙乱，匆忙，奔忙；n.忙碌；喧闹 | |
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44
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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45
rib
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| n.肋骨，肋状物 | |
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46
stank
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| n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
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47
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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48
quay
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| n.码头，靠岸处 | |
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49
infested
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| adj.为患的，大批滋生的（常与with搭配）v.害虫、野兽大批出没于( infest的过去式和过去分词 )；遍布于 | |
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50
voracious
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| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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51
parasites
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| 寄生物( parasite的名词复数 )； 靠他人为生的人； 诸虫 | |
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52
bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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53
comatose
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| adj.昏睡的，昏迷不醒的 | |
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54
cockroaches
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| n.蟑螂( cockroach的名词复数 ) | |
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55
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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56
etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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57
negligent
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| adj.疏忽的；玩忽的；粗心大意的 | |
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58
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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59
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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60
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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61
embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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62
lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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63
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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64
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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65
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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66
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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67
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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68
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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69
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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70
intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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71
drizzle
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| v.下毛毛雨；n.毛毛雨，蒙蒙细雨 | |
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72
trudge
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| v.步履艰难地走；n.跋涉，费力艰难的步行 | |
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73
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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74
judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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75
reassuringly
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| ad.安心，可靠 | |
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76
entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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77
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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78
puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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79
assenting
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| 同意，赞成( assent的现在分词 ) | |
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80
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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81
lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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82
skilfully
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| adv. (美skillfully)熟练地 | |
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83
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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84
greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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85
arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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86
irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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87
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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88
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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89
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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90
fretting
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| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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91
unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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92
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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93
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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94
stuffiness
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| n.不通风，闷热；不通气 | |
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95
oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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96
cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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97
abounded
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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98
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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99
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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100
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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101
hairpin
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| n.簪,束发夹，夹发针 | |
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102
hairpins
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| n.发夹( hairpin的名词复数 ) | |
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103
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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104
somnolent
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| adj.想睡的，催眠的；adv.瞌睡地；昏昏欲睡地；使人瞌睡地 | |
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105
meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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106
adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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107
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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108
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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109
depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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110
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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111
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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112
sapphire
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| n.青玉，蓝宝石；adj.天蓝色的 | |
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113
slabs
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| n.厚板，平板，厚片( slab的名词复数 )；厚胶片 | |
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114
incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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115
glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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116
plutocratic
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| adj.富豪的，有钱的 | |
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117
computing
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| n.计算 | |
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118
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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119
grimaces
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| n.（表蔑视、厌恶等）面部扭曲，鬼脸( grimace的名词复数 )v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的第三人称单数 ) | |
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120
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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121
glibly
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| adv.流利地，流畅地；满口 | |
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122
gnawed
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| 咬( gnaw的过去式和过去分词 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
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123
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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124
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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125
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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126
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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127
haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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128
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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129
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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130
inefficient
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| adj.效率低的，无效的 | |
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131
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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132
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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133
drearily
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| 沉寂地，厌倦地，可怕地 | |
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134
cowered
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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135
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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136
lucidity
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| n.明朗，清晰，透明 | |
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137
clench
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| vt.捏紧（拳头等），咬紧（牙齿等），紧紧握住 | |
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138
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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139
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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140
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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141
outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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142
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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143
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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144
wrangled
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| v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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145
uproar
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| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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146
schooners
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| n.（有两个以上桅杆的）纵帆船( schooner的名词复数 ) | |
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147
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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148
obsolescent
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| adj.过时的，难管束的 | |
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149
icebergs
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| n.冰山，流冰( iceberg的名词复数 ) | |
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150
glacier
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| n.冰川，冰河 | |
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151
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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152
intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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153
vistas
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| 长条形景色( vista的名词复数 )； 回顾； 展望； （未来可能发生的）一系列情景 | |
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154
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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155
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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156
vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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157
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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158
incandescent
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| adj.遇热发光的， 白炽的，感情强烈的 | |
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159
blistered
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| adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂 | |
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160
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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161
mermaid
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| n.美人鱼 | |
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162
intensities
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| n.强烈( intensity的名词复数 )；（感情的）强烈程度；强度；烈度 | |
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163
trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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164
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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165
sluggishly
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| adv.懒惰地；缓慢地 | |
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166
opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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167
chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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168
stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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169
bask
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| vt.取暖，晒太阳，沐浴于 | |
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170
basking
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的现在分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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171
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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172
moored
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| adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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173
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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174
swampy
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| adj.沼泽的，湿地的 | |
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175
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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176
rimmed
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| adj.有边缘的，有框的v.沿…边缘滚动；给…镶边 | |
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177
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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178
receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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179
notch
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| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
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180
backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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181
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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182
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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183
scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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184
intermittently
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| adv.间歇地；断断续续 | |
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185
prospecting
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| n.探矿 | |
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186
watchfully
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| 警惕地，留心地 | |
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187
overcast
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| adj.阴天的，阴暗的，愁闷的；v.遮盖，（使）变暗，包边缝；n.覆盖，阴天 | |
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188
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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189
diluted
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| 无力的，冲淡的 | |
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190
circumvent
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| vt.环绕，包围；对…用计取胜，智胜 | |
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191
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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192
thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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193
concisely
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| adv.简明地 | |
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194
legitimate
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|
| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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195
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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196
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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197
acquiesced
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| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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198
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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199
anticipatory
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| adj.预想的，预期的 | |
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200
rehearsal
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| n.排练，排演；练习 | |
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201
malaria
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| n.疟疾 | |
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202
embargo
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| n.禁运（令）；vt.对...实行禁运，禁止（通商） | |
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203
eastward
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|
| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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204
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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205
stratum
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| n.地层，社会阶层 | |
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206
crumble
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| vi.碎裂，崩溃；vt.弄碎，摧毁 | |
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207
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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208
constituents
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| n.选民( constituent的名词复数 )；成分；构成部分；要素 | |
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209
molecular
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| adj.分子的；克分子的 | |
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210
disintegration
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| n.分散，解体 | |
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211
contagious
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| adj.传染性的，有感染力的 | |
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212
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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213
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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214
specks
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| n.眼镜；斑点，微粒，污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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215
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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216
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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217
suffocating
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| a.使人窒息的 | |
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218
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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219
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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220
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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221
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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222
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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223
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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224
blistering
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| adj.酷热的；猛烈的；使起疱的；可恶的v.起水疱；起气泡；使受暴晒n.[涂料] 起泡 | |
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225
irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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226
languor
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| n.无精力，倦怠 | |
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227
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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228
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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229
incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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230
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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231
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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232
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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233
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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234
syrup
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| n.糖浆，糖水 | |
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235
shovelled
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| v.铲子( shovel的过去式和过去分词 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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236
precipitated
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| v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀 | |
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237
scowling
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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238
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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239
impetus
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| n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力 | |
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240
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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241
motif
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| n.(图案的)基本花纹，(衣服的)花边；主题 | |
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242
squeaking
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的现在分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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243
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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244
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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245
pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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246
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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247
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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248
plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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249
inflamed
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| adj.发炎的，红肿的v.（使）变红，发怒，过热( inflame的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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250
sleepless
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|
| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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251
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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252
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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253
desolated
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| adj.荒凉的，荒废的 | |
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254
stunted
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| adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的 | |
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255
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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256
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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257
oozy
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| adj.软泥的 | |
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258
incompatibility
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| n.不兼容 | |
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259
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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pestering
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| 使烦恼，纠缠( pester的现在分词 ) | |
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261
fronds
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| n.蕨类或棕榈类植物的叶子( frond的名词复数 ) | |
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petals
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| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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263
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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264
abdomen
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| n.腹，下腹(胸部到腿部的部分) | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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266
musket
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| n.滑膛枪 | |
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267
confrontation
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| n.对抗，对峙，冲突 | |
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268
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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270
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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271
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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flopped
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| v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的过去式和过去分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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lapsed
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| adj.流失的，堕落的v.退步( lapse的过去式和过去分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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278
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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280
slash
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| vi.大幅度削减；vt.猛砍，尖锐抨击，大幅减少；n.猛砍，斜线，长切口，衣衩 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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283
thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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284
mangled
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| vt.乱砍（mangle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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285
gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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286
benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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287
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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288
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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qualms
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| n.不安；内疚 | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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293
aeronautics
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| n.航空术，航空学 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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attenuated
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| v.（使）变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）变薄；（使）变小；减弱 | |
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retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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298
ligneous
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| adj.木质的，木头的 | |
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299
ooze
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| n.软泥，渗出物；vi.渗出，泄漏；vt.慢慢渗出，流露 | |
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trickle
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| vi.淌，滴，流出，慢慢移动，逐渐消散 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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dribble
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| v.点滴留下，流口水；n.口水 | |
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303
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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304
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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306
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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307
alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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308
sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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309
eddies
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| （水、烟等的）漩涡，涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
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310
scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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311
improvised
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| a.即席而作的,即兴的 | |
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312
resounded
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| v.（指声音等）回荡于某处( resound的过去式和过去分词 )；产生回响；（指某处）回荡着声音 | |
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313
bankruptcy
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| n.破产；无偿付能力 | |
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