The Inn of the Two Witches, Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is a brilliant author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. "The Inn of the Two Witches" (1913) is a good short story that can be found at numerous sources such as Gutenberg.org. This copy, however, comes from Manybooks.com. I have downloaded many books from that source, but a detractor, at least for this short story, is that the tabbing function doesn't work at all.


Conrad begins the story by means of an interesting introduction which tells of how he found the tale. It reminds me a bit of how The Twilight Zone often opens:

The Find was made in a box of books bought in London, in a street which no longer exists, from a second-hand bookseller in the last stage of decay... (the story is) A litter of loose pages at the bottom of the box excited my curiosity but faintly.

I don't know if this was written by him or not. Such casting off of credit is a frequent enough occurrence that it puts authorship in doubt. Most recently, Don Quixote was written by a man who said the entire tale was stitched together from a few different sources. Perhaps for Conrad, this was an attempt at deepening the mystery behind the story. Much of the story is condensed and many details left out that he considers trivial. Perhaps it's a true story rewritten by the master. For, he writes, it's written in a fashion as dull as an inventory manifest.


The story is about a journey in Cuba. Two young men, Edgar Byrne  and Tom Crobin (Cuba Tom), go on this journey, one before the other. On the journey, both come onto a hut which houses three witches: one beautiful (but evil looking) and two ugly and very old. Edgar, as he approaches this cabin, hears the voice of his friend and shipmate giving him warnings, close at hand.

He goes into the house and is told that he can stay there. He's fed some food and then lead to his room. He keeps hearing Tom warning him about something, but he cannot see him anywhere until he searches the armoire. There is Tom, stone cold dead. He examines him as best he can, and cannot find a reasonable cause of death. Just a simple bruise on his forehead and the suggestion that Tom was trying to punch someone or something.

He puts Tom in the bed meant for him, and then watches the top of the bed lower down and basically crush him. After this is done, someone comes to his door. But it is not one of the witches, it is someone who has come to help him. They discover that the reason the young witch was killing people was for the buttons on their jackets.

It's a nice little horror story, perfect before going to bed. Sweet dreams!

Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad

I think I have read a few of Conrad's stories, but I can only recall having read A Heart of Darkness. I wouldn't be surprised if I'd read it at least twice. That was a good enough book to recommend me to this novel, Lord Jim.

Jim is a sailor who seems to fit the mold of the ideal sailor: unafraid of anything the sea can throw at him; large and strong; one who took to the sea because of some reading he had done and consequently fallen in love with the trade.

But, he is unfortunate in that he gets work as a first mate on the Patna. A ship fated by chance to strike a submerged log which severely damages her. She may have survived, but an oncoming storm makes such survival impossible. These two circumstances quickly sink her. The white crew: captain, engineer, and a few of the others, order Jim to not wake up the others. There are many men and few boats. They reason that no one should escape if they should be awakened to the emergency.

Jim is severely caught between his obedience to his captain's orders and his natural courage and chivalry which demands that he shout out to the many crew members who sleep through, oblivious. The crew make their getaway on a row boat. Jim jumps onto the boat, but regrets his decision. Shortly thereafter, The Patna sinks and all the men with her.

The surviving crew members are tried for their desertion, but none of them are punished. But, while the others get away with no repercussions, Jim himself is weighted heavily by his actions. His life from then on is spent escaping the terrible story of the Patna's sinking. People discuss it around him, not even knowing that he was a part of the story, and consequently lose him as a member of their company: Egstrom, one of his employers who runs a company to supply visiting ships says of his work ethic and ability, first, "'That's a reckless sort of a lunatic you've got for water-clerk, Egstrom. I was feeling my way in at daylight under short canvas when there comes flying out of the mist right under my forefoot a boat half under water, sprays going over the mast-head, two frightened niggers on the bottom boards, a yelling fiend at the tiller. Hey!! hey! Ship ahoy! ahoy! Captain!... more like a demon than a man. Never saw a boat handled like that in all my life." and then,  "... it seemed as though he wouldn't mind going a hundred miles out to sea in an old shoe to nab a ship for the firm. If business had been his own and all to make yet, he couldn't have done more in that way." He is a fearless character, but one of extreme sensitivity. Such that, one day when the Patna is mentioned, Egstrom puts out that of the crew of the Patna, "It's a disgrace to human natur'--that's what it is. I would despise being seen in the same room with one of those men." But later, as he is told by the narrator that Jim had been one of those very crew members, he exclaims, "And who the devil cares about that?" as to say, he wouldn't have cared at all. His value as a man of courage and valour had been well established. He would have thought no less of him. But of course, Jim was gone and the damage was already done.

One of my favourite passages in the book I had to copy here which I find so remarkably true of men and women, and how they view themselves: people want to be a saint, and they want to be a devil--and every time they shut their eyes they see themselves as very fine people--so fine as they can never be... In a dream..." Surely this is so very true: human beings like to see themselves as a saint even when they do great evil.

Jim goes through a major shift in his life when he is brought to a remote jungle where he is able to escape his reputation (even if no one knew who he was or how he was related to the abandonment of the sinking vessel). Through the strength of his courage, he wins the emancipation of a small village from a petty tyrant, and his reward is their great respect and the love of a young woman. But, as is the case with life, this new found self respect and love which he longed for comes at a heavy price: the sacrifice of wanderlust; the sailing and adventure that the endless vast ocean offers.

Ultimately, it is a similar sacrifice I think some men make: it's love or the high seas. Conrad puts it wonderfully,

...his wandering days were over. No more horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the forests as solemn as temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscovered Country over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The hour was striking! No more! No more!--

However, his fate is not that of living a long family life amongst a people grown to love him. Rather, it is far less noble. Chance throws a bad cast at him. A ruthless captain, out of desperation, hungry and thirsty, looked to raid his village. He was no match for the village, and only by diplomacy, manages to negotiate a peaceful resolve: an escort back to his ship. On his way back to the ship, led by a traitor, Cornelius, they attack and kill the very men who had lead them to safety. The head of which was the son of the king, Doramin.

Jim, rather than fleeing the jungle with his love, returns to Doramin who exacts his revenge on Jim by killing him.

Why was Jim like this? Was it his father who taught him that there was only one way to live and to die? While Jim may not have subscribed to the same narrative or ideals that his father did, did he not have his own unfaltering script which lead him to his fate?

The first half of the book certainly drags on relentlessly. For awhile through the middle of it, I even considered giving up on it. Once through the it, however, the action and pace pick up. I definitely recommend it.