the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in
the air. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each
side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval
of light thrown out by the binnacle. Now and then a hand, with black
fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes,
appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily
in the grooves of the barrel. Jim would glance at the compass, would
glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his
joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess
of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the
peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end
of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged
out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the
steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea
presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to
a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of
the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the
ship's position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and
the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course
of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of
salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp
end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship's
spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. 'How steady she goes,'
thought Jim with wonder, with something like gratitude for this high
peace of sea and sky. At such times his thoughts would be full of
valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary
achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its
hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness,
they passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away
with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded