Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fic - Joseph Conrad [132]
“Let go and haul.”
The foreyards ran round with a great noise, amidst cheery cries. And now the frightful whiskers made themselves heard giving various orders. Already the ship was drawing ahead. And I was alone with her. Nothing! no one in the world should stand now between us, throwing a shadow on the way of silent knowledge and mute affection, the perfect communion of a seaman with his first command.
Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very gateway of Erebus—yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.
ENDNOTES
Author’s Note
1 (p.3) three stories in this volume: The volume is Youth: A Narrative; and Two Other Stories (1902). The two other stories are Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether.
2 (p.4) vanity in the Solomonian sense: This is an allusion to the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes, which takes up the subject of vanity at length—for example, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit” (1:14; King James Version [KJV]).
3 (p. 5) The final paragraph of the author’s note has been omitted, as its subject is The End of the Tether, a story not included in this volume.
“Youth”
1 (p.7) a Conway boy: The Conway was a well-known Liverpool-based training ship for naval cadets. Conrad would again refer to the legacy of this ship in “The Secret Sharer,” in which one of the many circumstances binding the narrator to Leggatt is the fact that both have been trained on the Conway.
2 (p. 7) square-rigged ... stun‘-sails ... alow and aloft: A square-rigged ship is one with rectangular sails placed at right angles to the length of the ship; stun’-sails are small auxiliary sails; and alow and aloft refer to the lower and higher portions of a ship, respectively.
3 (p. 8) coasters ... the Capes: Coasters are small vessels used to sail along a coast; the Capes is a reference to the Cape of Good Hope, at the southwestern tip of Africa.
4 (p. 8) the Judea: The ship Conrad served on as second mate from 1881 to 1883 and that he used as the model for the Judea was actually named the Palestine. Although the events of “Youth” are loosely based on Conrad’s experiences, the story is not (Conrad’s own claims notwithstanding) a work of autobiography. See the introductory essay to this volume for a discussion of the significance of some of Conrad’s alterations of the facts in writing the story.
5 (p.9) “Do or Die”: The Judea’s motto is based on a well-known phrase that had been in circulation at least since the 1621 play The Island Princess, by John Fletcher (1579-1625): “Let’s meet, and either doe or dye” (act 2, scene 2). The phrase had been used famously, in slightly altered form, in the 1854 poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” by the British poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892): “Their’s not to reason why, / Their’s but to do and die.” The poem sings the praises of a group of English soldiers dutifully engaged in a hopeless battle against the Russians during the Crimean War (1853—1856). The fact that this war heightened the regard for Britain of Polish nationalists—particularly those who lived in Russian-occupied Poland, such as Conrad’s family—adds additional resonance to this allusion.
6 (p. 9) Yarmouth Roads... Dogger Bank: The first reference is to a seaway outside the port of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk; the second is to a sandbank in the North Sea.
7 (p.10) Sartor Resartus and Burnaby’s Ride to Khiva: Sartor Resartus (1834) was by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). A Ride to Khiva: Travels and Adventures in Central Asia (1876) was by Captain Frederick Burnaby (1842-1885). It is consistent with Marlow