Quotation from: Lord Jim

Written by: Joseph Conrad


'The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quickly in that river,
and the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in smoke, began to drift back
stern foremost. Along both shores the smoke thickened also, lying below
the roofs in a level streak as you may see a long cloud cutting the
slope of a mountain. A tumult of war-cries, the vibrating clang
of gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage, crashes of
volley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat confounded but
steady at the tiller, working himself into a fury of hate and rage
against those people who dared to defend themselves. Two of his men
had been wounded, and he saw his retreat cut off below the town by some
boats that had put off from Tunku Allang's stockade. There were six of
them, full of men. While he was thus beset he perceived the entrance of
the narrow creek (the same which Jim had jumped at low water). It was
then brim full. Steering the long-boat in, they landed, and, to make a
long story short, they established themselves on a little knoll about
900 yards from the stockade, which, in fact, they commanded from that
position. The slopes of the knoll were bare, but there were a few trees
on the summit. They went to work cutting these down for a breastwork,
and were fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah's boats
remained in the river with curious neutrality. When the sun set the glue
of many brushwood blazes lighted on the river-front, and between the
double line of houses on the land side threw into black relief the
roofs, the groups of slender palms, the heavy clumps of fruit trees.
Brown ordered the grass round his position to be fired; a low ring of
thin flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled rapidly down the
slopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush caught with a tall,
vicious roar. The conflagration made a clear zone of fire for the rifles
of the small party, and expired smouldering on the edge of the forests
and along the muddy bank of the creek. A strip of jungle luxuriating in
a damp hollow between the knoll and the Rajah's stockade stopped it
on that side with a great crackling and detonations of bursting bamboo
stems. The sky was sombre, velvety, and swarming with stars. The
blackened ground smoked quietly with low creeping wisps, till a little
breeze came on and blew everything away. Brown expected an attack to
be delivered as soon as the tide had flowed enough again to enable the
war-boats which had cut off his retreat to enter the creek. At any rate
he was sure there would be an attempt to carry off his long-boat,
which lay below the hill, a dark high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet
mud-flat. But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the river.
Over the stockade and the Rajah's buildings Brown saw their lights on
the water. They seemed to be anchored across the stream. Other lights
afloat were moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to
side. There were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of
houses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others
isolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs,
black piles as far as he could see. It was an immense place. The
fourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised
their chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend
up-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. They did not
speak to each other. Now and then they would hear a loud yell, or a
single shot rang out, fired very far somewhere. But round their position
everything was still, dark, silent. They seemed to be forgotten, as if
the excitement keeping awake all the population had nothing to do with
them, as if they had been dead already.'

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