Quotation from: Lord Jim

Written by: Joseph Conrad


'It lasted for a while, and then they were suddenly and unanimously
moved to make a noise over their escape. "I knew from the first she
would go." "Not a minute too soon." "A narrow squeak, b'gosh!" He said
nothing, but the breeze that had dropped came back, a gentle draught
freshened steadily, and the sea joined its murmuring voice to this
talkative reaction succeeding the dumb moments of awe. She was gone! She
was gone! Not a doubt of it. Nobody could have helped. They repeated the
same words over and over again as though they couldn't stop themselves.
Never doubted she would go. The lights were gone. No mistake. The
lights were gone. Couldn't expect anything else. She had to go. . . . He
noticed that they talked as though they had left behind them nothing but
an empty ship. They concluded she would not have been long when she once
started. It seemed to cause them some sort of satisfaction. They assured
each other that she couldn't have been long about it--"Just shot down
like a flat-iron." The chief engineer declared that the mast-head light
at the moment of sinking seemed to drop "like a lighted match you throw
down." At this the second laughed hysterically. "I am g-g-glad, I am
gla-a-a-d." His teeth went on "like an electric rattle," said Jim,
"and all at once he began to cry. He wept and blubbered like a child,
catching his breath and sobbing 'Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!' He would
be quiet for a while and start suddenly, 'Oh, my poor arm! oh, my poor
a-a-a-arm!' I felt I could knock him down. Some of them sat in the
stern-sheets. I could just make out their shapes. Voices came to me,
mumble, mumble, grunt, grunt. All this seemed very hard to bear. I was
cold too. And I could do nothing. I thought that if I moved I would have
to go over the side and . . ."

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
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Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.