Del
origen de Jim, su formación como marinero, y de sus sueños de ser un héroe. Cómo
se empieza a formar una tormenta que provoca una gran conmoción. Lord Jim, novela de Joseph Conrad
Originally he
came from a parsonage. Many
commanders of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim's father possessed such certain
knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages
without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. The little church
on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of
leaves. It had stood there for centuries, but the trees around probably
remembered the laying of the first stone. Below, the red front of the rectory
gleamed with a warm tint in the
midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back,
a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked
along a wall of bricks. The living had belonged to the family for generations;
but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday
literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, he was sent at once to
a 'training-ship for officers of the mercantile marine.'
He learned there
a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. He was generally
liked. He had the third place in navigation and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having a steady head with an
excellent physique, he was very smart aloft.
His station was in the fore-top, and
often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine
in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the
brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding
plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender
like a pencil, and belching out
smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move,
the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of
adventure.
On the lower
deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand
live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people
from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely
castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of
shellfish to stave off starvation.
He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled
mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the
hearts of despairing men—always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book.
'Something's up.
Come along.'
He leaped to his
feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when
he got through the hatchway he stood
still—as if confounded.
It was the dusk
of a winter's day. The gale had freshened since noon, stopping the traffic on
the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that
boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. The rain slanted in
sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled
and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the
broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast
landing-stages heaving up and down
and smothered in sprays. The next
gust seemed to blow all this away. The air was full of flying water. There was
a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind,
in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made
him hold his breath in awe. He stood still. It seemed to him he was whirled
around.
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