



Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger









FALK

A REMINISCENCE


By Joseph Conrad



Several of us, all more or less connected with the sea, were dining in
a small river-hostelry not more than thirty miles from London, and less
than twenty from that shallow and dangerous puddle to which our coasting
men give the grandiose name of "German Ocean." And through the wide
windows we had a view of the Thames; an enfilading view down the Lower
Hope Reach. But the dinner was execrable, and all the feast was for the
eyes.

That flavour of salt-water which for so many of us had been the very
water of life permeated our talk. He who hath known the bitterness of
the Ocean shall have its taste forever in his mouth. But one or two
of us, pampered by the life of the land, complained of hunger. It was
impossible to swallow any of that stuff. And indeed there was a strange
mustiness in everything. The wooden dining-room stuck out over the mud
of the shore like a lacustrine dwelling; the planks of the floor seemed
rotten; a decrepit old waiter tottered pathetically to and fro before
an antediluvian and worm-eaten sideboard; the chipped plates might have
been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and
the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to
one's mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first
rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh
at a fire of sticks in the company of other good fellows; then, gorged
and happy, sat him back among the gnawed bones to tell his artless tales
of experience--the tales of hunger and hunt--and of women, perhaps!

But luckily the wine happened to be as old as the waiter. So,
comparatively empty, but upon the whole fairly happy, we sat back and
told our artless tales. We talked of the sea and all its works. The
sea never changes, and its works for all the talk of men are wrapped in
mystery. But we agreed that the times were changed. And we talked of old
ships, of sea-accidents, of break-downs, dismastings; and of a man who
brought his ship safe to Liverpool all the way from the River Platte
under a jury rudder. We talked of wrecks, of short rations and of
heroism--or at least of what the newspapers would have called heroism
at sea--a manifestation of virtues quite different from the heroism of
primitive times. And now and then falling silent all together we gazed
at the sights of the river.

A P. & O. boat passed bound down. "One gets jolly good dinners on board
these ships," remarked one of our band. A man with sharp eyes read
out the name on her bows: Arcadia. "What a beautiful model of a ship!"
murmured some of us. She was followed by a small cargo steamer, and the
flag they hauled down aboard while we were looking showed her to be a
Norwegian. She made an awful lot of smoke; and before it had quite blown
away, a high-sided, short, wooden barque, in ballast and towed by a
paddle-tug, appeared in front of the windows. All her hands were forward
busy setting up the headgear; and aft a woman in a red hood, quite alone
with the man at the wheel, paced the length of the poop back and forth,
with the grey wool of some knitting work in her hands.

"German I should think," muttered one. "The skipper has his wife on
board," remarked another; and the light of the crimson sunset all
ablaze behind the London smoke, throwing a glow of Bengal light upon the
barque's spars, faded away from the Hope Reach.

Then one of us, who had not spoken before, a man of over fifty, that had
commanded ships for a quarter of a century, looking after the barque now
gliding far away, all black on the lustre of the river, said:

This reminds me of an absurd episode in my life, now many years ago,
when I got first the command of an iron barque, loading then in a
certain Eastern seaport. It was also the capital of an Eastern kingdom,
lying up a river as might be London lies up this old Thames of ours.
No more need be said of the place; for this sort of thing might have
happened anywhere where there are ships, skippers, tugboats, and orphan
nieces of indescribable splendour. And the absurdity of the episode
concerns only me, my enemy Falk, and my friend Hermann.

There seemed to be something like peculiar emphasis on the words "My
friend Hermann," which caused one of us (for we had just been speaking
of heroism at sea) to say idly and nonchalantly:

"And was this Hermann a hero?"

Not at all, said our grizzled friend. No hero at all. He was a
Schiff-fuhrer: Ship-conductor. That's how they call a Master Mariner
in Germany. I prefer our way. The alliteration is good, and there is
something in the nomenclature that gives to us as a body the sense
of corporate existence: Apprentice, Mate, Master, in the ancient and
honourable craft of the sea. As to my friend Hermann, he might have
been a consummate master of the honourable craft, but he was called
officially Schiff-fuhrer, and had the simple, heavy appearance of a
well-to-do farmer, combined with the good-natured shrewdness of a small
shopkeeper. With his shaven chin, round limbs, and heavy eyelids he did
not look like a toiler, and even less like an adventurer of the sea.
Still, he toiled upon the seas, in his own way, much as a shop