Joseph Conrad

The Rescue Joseph Conrad

The coast off which the little brig, floating upright above her anchor, seemed to guard the highhull of the yacht has no distinctive features. It is land without form. It stretches away without capeor bluff, long and low-indefinitely; and when the heavy gusts of the northeast monsoon drive thethick rain slanting over the sea, it is seen faintly under the grey sky, black and with a blurred outlinelike the straight edge of a dissolving shore. In the long season of unclouded days, it presents to viewonly a narrow band of earth that appears crushed flat upon the vast level of waters by the weight ofthe sky, whose immense dome rests on it in a line as fine and true as that of the sea horizon itself. Notwithstanding its nearness to the centres of European power, this coast has been known forages to the armed wanderers of these seas as "The Shore of Refuge." It has no specific name on thecharts, and geography manuals don't mention it at all; but the wreckage of many defeats unerringlydrifts into its creeks. Its approaches are extremely difficult for a stranger. Looked at from seaward, the innumerable islets fringing what, on account of its vast size, may be called the mainland, mergeinto a background that presents not a single landmark to point the way through the intricatechannels. It may be said that in a belt of sea twenty miles broad along that low shore there is muchmore coral, mud, sand, and stones than actual sea water. It was amongst the outlying shoals of thisstretch that the yacht had gone ashore and the events consequent upon her stranding took place. The diffused light of the short daybreak showed the open water to the westward, sleeping, smooth and grey, under a faded heaven. The straight coast threw a heavy belt of gloom along theshoals, which, in the calm of expiring night, were unmarked by the slightest ripple. In the faint dawnthe low clumps of bushes on the sandbanks appeared immens