Joseph Conrad - The Collected Works of Joseph Conrad - Novels, Short Stories, Letters & Memoirs

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Musaicum Books presents to you this carefully created volume of «The Collected Works of Joseph Conrad.» This ebook has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices.
Content:
Novels
Almayer's Folly
An Outcast of the Islands
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
Heart of Darkness
Lord Jim
The Inheritors
Typhoon & Falk
The End of the Tether
Romance
Nostromo
The Secret Agent
The Nature of a Crime
Under Western Eyes
Chance
Victory
The Shadow Line
The Arrow of Gold
The Rescue
Short Stories
Point of Honor: A Military Tale
Falk: A Reminiscence
Amy Foster
To-morrow
Karain, A Memory
The Idiots
The Outpost of Progress
The Return
Youth
'Twixt Land and Sea
A Smile of Fortune
The Secret Sharer
Freya of the Seven Isles
Gaspar Ruiz
The Informer
The Brute
An Anarchist
The Duel
Il Conde
The Warrior's Soul
Prince Roman
The Tale
The Black Mate
The Planter of Malata
The Partner
The Inn of the Two Witches
Because of the Dollars
Play
One Day More
Memoirs, Letters and Essays
A Personal Record
The Mirror of the Sea
Collected Letters
Notes on My Books
Notes on Life & Letters
Autocracy And War
The Crime Of Partition
A Note On The Polish Problem
Poland Revisited
Reflections On The Loss Of The Titanic
Certain Aspects Of Inquiry
Protection Of Ocean Liners
A Friendly Place
On Red Badge of Courage
Biography and Critical Essays on Conrad
Joseph Conrad (A Biography) by Hugh Walpole
Joseph Conrad by John Albert Macy
A Conrad Miscellany by John Albert Macy
Joseph Conrad & The Athenæum by Arnold Bennett
Joseph Conrad by Virginia Woolf
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is regarded as one of the greatest English novelists. He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe.

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‘They watched in the dark with their heads half turned to windward as if expecting to hear cries. At first he was thankful the night had covered up the scene before his eyes, and then to know of it and yet to have seen and heard nothing appeared somehow the culminating point of an awful misfortune. “Strange, isn’t it?” he murmured, interrupting himself in his disjointed narrative.

‘It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had an unconscious conviction that the reality could not be half as bad, not half as anguishing, appalling, and vengeful as the created terror of his imagination. I believe that, in this first moment, his heart was wrung with all the suffering, that his soul knew the accumulated savour of all the fear, all the horror, all the despair of eight hundred human beings pounced upon in the night by a sudden and violent death, else why should he have said, “It seemed to me that I must jump out of that accursed boat and swim back to see — half a mile — more — any distance — to the very spot . . . “? Why this impulse? Do you see the significance? Why back to the very spot? Why not drown alongside — if he meant drowning? Why back to the very spot, to see — as if his imagination had to be soothed by the assurance that all was over before death could bring relief? I defy any one of you to offer another explanation. It was one of those bizarre and exciting glimpses through the fog. It was an extraordinary disclosure. He let it out as the most natural thing one could say. He fought down that impulse and then he became conscious of the silence. He mentioned this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite immensity still as death around these saved, palpitating lives. “You might have heard a pin drop in the boat,” he said with a queer contraction of his lips, like a man trying to master his sensibilities while relating some extremely moving fact. A silence! God alone, who had willed him as he was, knows what he made of it in his heart. “I didn’t think any spot on earth could be so still,” he said. “You couldn’t distinguish the sea from the sky; there was nothing to see and nothing to hear. Not a glimmer, not a shape, not a sound. You could have believed that every bit of dry land had gone to the bottom; that every man on earth but I and these beggars in the boat had got drowned.” He leaned over the table with his knuckles propped amongst coffee-cups, liqueur-glasses, cigar-ends. “I seemed to believe it. Everything was gone and — all was over . . . ” he fetched a deep sigh . . . “with me.”’

Marlow sat up abruptly and flung away his cheroot with force. It made a darting red trail like a toy rocket fired through the drapery of creepers. Nobody stirred.

‘Hey, what do you think of it?’ he cried with sudden animation. ‘Wasn’t he true to himself, wasn’t he? His saved life was over for want of ground under his feet, for want of sights for his eyes, for want of voices in his ears. Annihilation — hey! And all the time it was only a clouded sky, a sea that did not break, the air that did not stir. Only a night; only a silence.

‘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 . . . ”

‘His hand groped stealthily, came in contact with a liqueur-glass, and was withdrawn suddenly as if it had touched a red-hot coal. I pushed the bottle slightly. “Won’t you have some more?” I asked. He looked at me angrily. “Don’t you think I can tell you what there is to tell without screwing myself up?” he asked. The squad of globe-trotters had gone to bed. We were alone but for a vague white form erect in the shadow, that, being looked at, cringed forward, hesitated, backed away silently. It was getting late, but I did not hurry my guest.

‘In the midst of his forlorn state he heard his companions begin to abuse some one. “What kept you from jumping, you lunatic?” said a scolding voice. The chief engineer left the stern-sheets, and could be heard clambering forward as if with hostile intentions against “the greatest idiot that ever was.” The skipper shouted with rasping effort offensive epithets from where he sat at the oar. He lifted his head at that uproar, and heard the name “George,” while a hand in the dark struck him on the breast. “What have you got to say for yourself, you fool?” queried somebody, with a sort of virtuous fury. “They were after me,” he said. “They were abusing me — abusing me . . . by the name of George.”

‘He paused to stare, tried to smile, turned his eyes away and went on. “That little second puts his head right under my nose, ‘Why, it’s that blasted mate!’ ‘What!’ howls the skipper from the other end of the boat. ‘No!’ shrieks the chief. And he too stooped to look at my face.”

‘The wind had left the boat suddenly. The rain began to fall again, and the soft, uninterrupted, a little mysterious sound with which the sea receives a shower arose on all sides in the night. “They were too taken aback to say anything more at first,” he narrated steadily, “and what could I have to say to them?” He faltered for a moment, and made an effort to go on. “They called me horrible names.” His voice, sinking to a whisper, now and then would leap up suddenly, hardened by the passion of scorn, as though he had been talking of secret abominations. “Never mind what they called me,” he said grimly. “I could hear hate in their voices. A good thing too. They could not forgive me for being in that boat. They hated it. It made them mad. . . . ” He laughed short. . . . “But it kept me from — Look! I was sitting with my arms crossed, on the gunwale! . . . ” He perched himself smartly on the edge of the table and crossed his arms. . . . “Like this — see? One little tilt backwards and I would have been gone — after the others. One little tilt — the least bit — the least bit.” He frowned, and tapping his forehead with the tip of his middle finger, “It was there all the time,” he said impressively. “All the time — that notion. And the rain — cold, thick, cold as melted snow — colder — on my thin cotton clothes — I’ll never be so cold again in my life, I know. And the sky was black too — all black. Not a star, not a light anywhere. Nothing outside that confounded boat and those two yapping before me like a couple of mean mongrels at a tree’d thief. Yap! yap! ‘What you doing here? You’re a fine sort! Too much of a bloomin’ gentleman to put your hand to it. Come out of your trance, did you? To sneak in? Did you?’ Yap! yap! ‘You ain’t fit to live!’ Yap! yap! Two of them together trying to out-bark each other. The other would bay from the stern through the rain — couldn’t see him — couldn’t make it out — some of his filthy jargon. Yap! yap! Bow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Yap! yap! It was sweet to hear them; it kept me alive, I tell you. It saved my life. At it they went, as if trying to drive me overboard with the noise! . . . ‘I wonder you had pluck enough to jump. You ain’t wanted here. If I had known who it was, I would have tipped you over — you skunk! What have you done with the other? Where did you get the pluck to jump — you coward? What’s to prevent us three from firing you overboard?’ . . . They were out of breath; the shower passed away upon the sea. Then nothing. There was nothing round the boat, not even a sound. Wanted to see me overboard, did they? Upon my soul! I think they would have had their wish if they had only kept quiet. Fire me overboard! Would they? ‘Try,’ I said. ‘I would for twopence.’ ‘Too good for you,’ they screeched together. It was so dark that it was only when one or the other of them moved that I was quite sure of seeing him. By heavens! I only wish they had tried.”

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