A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed¹ questions, tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said, speaking of the ship: 'She went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick.' The illustration was good: the questions were aiming at facts, and the official Inquiry² was being held in the police court of an Eastern port. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive³, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination⁴ of his voice. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted⁵ his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish⁶ and pain within his breast, -came to him poignant⁷ and silent like the terrible questioning of one's conscience. Outside the court the sun blazed -- within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. The face of the presiding magistrate⁸, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical⁹ assessors. The light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed composed of staring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!

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