



Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger





THE END OF THE TETHER


By Joseph Conrad




I

For a long time after the course of the steamer _Sofala_ had been
altered for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearance
of a mere smudge of darkness beyond a belt of glitter. The sunrays
seemed to fall violently upon the calm sea--seemed to shatter themselves
upon an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vapor
of light that blinded the eye and wearied the brain with its unsteady
brightness.

Captain Whalley did not look at it. When his Serang, approaching the
roomy cane arm-chair which he filled capably, had informed him in a low
voice that the course was to be altered, he had risen at once and had
remained on his feet, face forward, while the head of his ship swung
through a quarter of a circle. He had not uttered a single word, not
even the word to steady the helm. It was the Serang, an elderly, alert,
little Malay, with a very dark skin, who murmured the order to the
helmsman. And then slowly Captain Whalley sat down again in the
arm-chair on the bridge and fixed his eyes on the deck between his feet.

He could not hope to see anything new upon this lane of the sea. He had
been on these coasts for the last three years. From Low Cape to Malantan
the distance was fifty miles, six hours' steaming for the old ship with
the tide, or seven against. Then you steered straight for the land, and
by-and-by three palms would appear on the sky, tall and slim, and with
their disheveled heads in a bunch, as if in confidential criticism of
the dark mangroves. The Sofala would be headed towards the somber
strip of the coast, which at a given moment, as the ship closed with
it obliquely, would show several clean shining fractures--the brimful
estuary of a river. Then on through a brown liquid, three parts water
and one part black earth, on and on between the low shores, three parts
black earth and one part brackish water, the Sofala would plow her way
up-stream, as she had done once every month for these seven years or
more, long before he was aware of her existence, long before he had ever
thought of having anything to do with her and her invariable voyages.
The old ship ought to have known the road better than her men, who had
not been kept so long at it without a change; better than the faithful
Serang, whom he had brought over from his last ship to keep the
captain's watch; better than he himself, who had been her captain for
the last three years only. She could always be depended upon to make her
courses. Her compasses were never out. She was no trouble at all to
take about, as if her great age had given her knowledge, wisdom, and
steadiness. She made her landfalls to a degree of the bearing, and
almost to a minute of her allowed time. At any moment, as he sat on
the bridge without looking up, or lay sleepless in his bed, simply by
reckoning the days and the hours he could tell where he was--the precise
spot of the beat. He knew it well too, this monotonous huckster's
round, up and down the Straits; he knew its order and its sights and its
people. Malacca to begin with, in at daylight and out at dusk, to cross
over with a rigid phosphorescent wake this highway of the Far East.
Darkness and gleams on the water, clear stars on a black sky, perhaps
the lights of a home steamer keeping her unswerving course in the
middle, or maybe the elusive shadow of a native craft with her mat sails
flitting by silently--and the low land on the other side in sight
at daylight. At noon the three palms of the next place of call, up a
sluggish river. The only white man residing there was a retired young
sailor, with whom he had become friendly in the course of many voyages.
Sixty miles farther on there was another place of call, a deep bay with
only a couple of houses on the beach. And so on, in and out, picking
up coastwise cargo here and there, and finishing with a hundred miles'
steady steaming through the maze of an archipelago of small islands up
to a large native town at the end of the beat. There was a three days'
rest for the old ship before