But he is sure of one thing: it is through the struggle with it and such as it that man alone can become Man. It is through facing the horrors of a dead calm, with a sick crew on board and no medicine, that the young master of the sailing-vessel in the Pacific crosses successfully the Shadow Line that divides youth from manhood. And it is through facing the unleashed fury of the tornado that the old captain of the 'full-powered steam-ship' in Typhoon shows what he has in him, compassion and kindness as well as shrewd knowledge of men, expert seamanship, and indomitable heroism. The whole thing is driven home with a power, an incisiveness, and a delicate irradiating humour which I should despair of conveying by mere criticism. The book must be read for itself, and read again and again. It is told, in one way, simply as a sailor's yarn, but it awakes in us the feeling that the struggle is a symbol of man's life.
Threatened by the advancing cyclone, Captain MacWhirr, 'the stupid man' of no imagination, decides, almost instinctively, that the only thing to be done is to keep up steam and face the wind. By sheer force of personality he holds the crew together and carries the ship through. And in the desperate struggle, every nerve on the strain for hours that seem unending, MacWhirr finds time to care for the miserable pack of terrified coolies on board, who have given way to panic and are fighting madly in the hold. MacWhirr stops this, brings about order and a chance for the Chinese, when the rest of his men, fine men as most of them are, can think of nothing but the safety of the ship. 'Had to do what's fair for all,' he mumbles stolidly to his clever grumbling mate, Jukes, during a dead lull in the storm—'they are only Chinamen. Give them the same chance with ourselves' ... 'Couldn't let that go on in my ship, if I knew she hadn't five minutes to live. Couldn't bear it, Mr. Jukes.' He does not know whether the ship will be lost or not—(and we do not know whether mankind will be lost or not)—what he does know is how he must act. But also he never loses hope. 'She may come out of it yet': that is the kind of answer the taciturn man gives when driven to speech. The chief mate, locked in his captain's arms to brace himself against the hurricane, scarcely able to make the other hear in the terrific gale though he shouts close to his head, gets back such answers, and with them the power to endure. He tells him the boats are gone: the captain yells back sensibly, 'Can't be helped.'
And so noble is the power with which Conrad uses our tongue, the tongue he has made his own by adoption and genius, that I must let him speak for himself, and can find no better close for my own lame words. Jukes has been shouting to his captain again:
'And again he heard that voice, forced and ringing feebly, but with a penetrating effect of quietness in the enormous discord of noises, as if sent out from some remote spot of peace beyond the black wastes of the gale; again he heard a man's voice—the frail and indomitable sound that can be made to carry an infinity of thought, resolution, and purpose, that shall be pronouncing confident words on the last day, when heavens fall and justice is done—again he heard it, and it was crying to him, as if from very, very far—"All right."'
FOOTNOTES:
[72] Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre, Bk. 8, c. 5.
[73] By M.P. Follett (Longmans).
[74] Professor A.C. Bradley, to whom also is due the passage about Schubert and the parallel drawn between Beethoven, Hegel, and Wordsworth.
[75] From The Will to Believe, quoted in Bridges' The Spirit of Man, No. 425.