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    Youth
    Youth
    Youth
    Ebook48 pages48 minutes

    Youth

    By Joseph Conrad

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    About this ebook

    Charles Marlow embarks on his first seafaring journey to the East as a young man on board the Judea, a barque headed towards Bangkok under the command of Captain John Beard. The Judea sets sail on a journey that is meant to take about 150 days, but bad luck and danger follow the vessel wherever she goes. "Youth" is a semi-autobiographical short story based on author Joseph Conrad's own experiences aboard the ship the Palestine in 1882. Much of the plot and some of the characters, such as Captain Beard, were based on actual people and events. The narrator, Charles Marlow, serves as the protagonist in other of Conrad's works, including Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Chance.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Classics
    Release dateNov 21, 2013
    ISBN9781627937146
    Author

    Joseph Conrad

    Polish-born Joseph Conrad is regarded as a highly influential author, and his works are seen as a precursor to modernist literature. His often tragic insight into the human condition in novels such as Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent is unrivalled by his contemporaries.

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    • 3/5
      "Youth! Ah me, youth! the splendour and the mad beauty of youth! Too soon fled, too quickly wilted, is there any mountain we would not climb to get just one more sweet hit of that hangoverless ambosia called YOOOOUUUUTH!?!" Etc.

    Book preview

    Youth - Joseph Conrad

    YOUTH

    By JOSEPH CONRAD

    Start Publishing LLC

    Copyright © 2013 by Start Publishing LLC

    All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

    First Start Publishing eBook edition October 2013

    Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    ISBN 978-1-62793-714-6

    . . . But the Dwarf answered: No; something human is dearer to me than the wealth of all the world.

    GRIMM'S TALES.

    TO MY WIFE

    YOUTH

    THIS could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak--the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men know- ing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.

    We were sitting round a mahogany table that reflected the bottle, the claret-glasses, and our faces as we leaned on our elbows. There was a director of companies, an accountant, a lawyer, Marlow, and myself. The direc- tor had been a CONWAY boy, the accountant had served four years at sea, the lawyer--a fine crusted Tory, High Churchman, the best of old fellows, the soul of honor-- had been chief officer in the P. & O. service in the good old days when mail-boats were square-rigged at least on two masts, and used to come down the China Sea before a fair monsoon with stun'-sails set alow and aloft. We all began life in the merchant service. Between the five of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm for yachting, cruising, and so on can give, since one is only the amusement of life and the other is life itself.

    Marlow (at least I think that is how he spelt his name) told the story, or rather the chronicle, of a voyage:

    "Yes, I have seen a little of the Eastern seas; but what I remember best is my first voyage there. You fellows know there are those voyages that seem ordered for the illustration of life, that might stand for a symbol of existence. You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish some- thing--and you can't. Not from any fault of yours. You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little-- not a thing in the world--not even marry an old maid, or get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of desti- nation.

    "It was altogether a memorable affair. It was my first voyage to the East, and my first voyage as second mate; it was also my skipper's first command. You'll admit it was time. He was sixty if a day; a little man, with a broad, not very straight back, with bowed shoul- ders and one leg more bandy than the other, he had that queer twisted-about appearance you see so often in men who work in the fields. He had a nut-cracker face--chin and nose trying to come together over a sunken mouth-- and it was framed in iron-gray fluffy hair, that looked like a chin strap of cotton-wool sprinkled with coal-dust. And he had blue eyes in that old face of his, which were amazingly like a boy's, with that candid expression some quite common men preserve to the end of their days by a rare internal gift of simplicity of heart and rectitude of soul. What induced him to accept me was a wonder. I had come out of a crack Australian clipper, where I had been third officer, and he seemed to have a prejudice against crack clippers as aristocratic and high-toned. He said to me, 'You know, in this ship you will have to work.' I said I had to work in every ship I had ever been in. 'Ah, but this is different, and you gentlemen

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