The Project Gutenberg EBook of Typhoon, by Joseph Conrad

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Title: Typhoon

Author: Joseph Conrad

Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #1142]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TYPHOON ***

Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger

[The other stories included in this volume ("Amy Foster," "Falk: A
Reminiscence," and "To-morrow") being already available in another
volume, have not been entered here.]

TYPHOON

BY JOSEPH CONRAD

Far as the mariner on highest mast Can see all around upon the calmed
vast, So wide was Neptune's hall . . . -- KEATS

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The main characteristic of this volume consists in this, that all the
stories composing it belong not only to the same period but have been
written one after another in the order in which they appear in the book.

The period is that which follows on my connection with Blackwood's
Magazine. I had just finished writing "The End of the Tether" and was
casting about for some subject which could be developed in a shorter
form than the tales in the volume of "Youth" when the instance of a
steamship full of returning coolies from Singapore to some port in
northern China occurred to my recollection. Years before I had heard
it being talked about in the East as a recent occurrence. It was for us
merely one subject of conversation amongst many others of the kind. Men
earning their bread in any very specialized occupation will talk shop,
not only because it is the most vital interest of their lives but also
because they have not much knowledge of other subjects. They have never
had the time to get acquainted with them. Life, for most of us, is not
so much a hard as an exacting taskmaster.

I never met anybody personally concerned in this affair, the interest of
which for us was, of course, not the bad weather but the extraordinary
complication brought into the ship's life at a moment of exceptional
stress by the human element below her deck. Neither was the story itself
ever enlarged upon in my hearing. In that company each of us could
imagine easily what the whole thing was like. The financial difficulty
of it, presenting also a