Joseph Conrad

Typhoon Joseph Conrad

Observing the steady fall of the barometer, Captain MacWhirr thought, "There's somedirty weather knocking about." This is precisely what he thought. He had had an experienceof moderately dirty weather-the term dirty as applied to the weather implying onlymoderate discomfort to the seaman. Had he been informed by an indisputable authoritythat the end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic disturbance ofthe atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information under the simple idea of dirtyweather, and no other, because he had no experience of cataclysms, and belief does notnecessarily imply comprehension. The wisdom of his county had pronounced by means ofan Act of Parliament that before he could be considered as fit to take charge of a ship heshould be able to answer certain simple questions on the subject of circular storms such ashurricanes, cyclones, typhoons; and apparently he had answered them, since he was now incommand of the Nan-Shan in the China seas during the season of typhoons. But if he hadanswered he remembered nothing of it. He was, however, conscious of being madeuncomfortable by the clammy heat. He came out on the bridge, and found no relief to thisoppression. The air seemed thick. He gasped like a fish, and began to believe himself greatlyout of sorts. The Nan-Shan was ploughing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of the sea that had thesurface and the shimmer of an undulating piece of gray silk. The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in a strangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lyingprostrate about the decks. Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were like the faces ofbilious invalids. Captain MacWhirr noticed two of them especially, stretched out on theirbacks below the bridge. As soon as they had closed their eyes they seemed dead. Threeothers, however, were quarrelling barbarously away forward; and one big fellow, halfnaked, with herculean shoulders, was hanging limply over a winch; another, sitting on thedeck, his knees up and his head drooping sideways in a girlish attitude, was plaiting hispigtail with infinite languor depicted in his whole person and in the very movement of hisfingers. The smoke struggled with difficulty out of the funnel, and instead of streamingaway spread itself out like an infernal sort of cloud, smelling of sulphur and raining soot allover the decks