They threatened to kill him, and Jim had to grab a tiller to ward off their advances. Jim would tell he was a witness to their cowardice. He had stood apart while they struggled with the lifeboat, and during the night, he had overheard them plotting their alibis for deserting the ship. They were enraged to see Jim he was not one of them.
During the confusion of the night, they had believed that it was their fellow crewman George, the "donkey-man," who escaped from the ship. The other crewmen also saw the Patna's light, as well, and they also saw Jim. The rain ceased, and he saw the masthead light of the Patna. Jim also remembered that dawn lightened the sky above the tiny lifeboat. In his imagination, the Patna's engines had already exploded and the shipful of praying religious pilgrims had already perished. He left 800 helpless Moslems to drown in the black smoke, the scalding steam, and the freezing sea. Jim remembered that he heard the sea "hissing like twenty thousand kettles." He was so horrified that finally he jumped to save himself. Bobbing violently in the pitch blackness and the pelting rain, the lifeboat drifted away from the Patna.
0 kommentar(er)
