Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad

ESL Easy Read

Reading Comprehension B1 • Original Text • Português Support

AMOSTRA - contém apenas 15% do texto

Copyright

Fonte original - domínio público

Esta edição ESL Easy Read foi adaptada a partir de Lord Jim, de Joseph Conrad, publicado originalmente em 1899.

A obra original encontra-se em domínio público e pode ser utilizada, reproduzida, distribuída e adaptada de acordo com a legislação aplicável.

Autor

Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924)

Estados Unidos

Esta obra foi publicada originalmente em 1899.

Nos Estados Unidos, obras publicadas antes de 1930 encontram-se normalmente em domínio público.

Com base no ano de publicação disponível, esta obra encontra-se em domínio público nos Estados Unidos desde 1º de janeiro de 1995.

Brasil

Autor: Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924)

De acordo com a Lei nº 9.610/1998, os direitos patrimoniais expiram 70 anos após a morte do autor, contados a partir de 1º de janeiro do ano seguinte ao falecimento.

Joseph Conrad faleceu em 1924.

Situação no Brasil: DOMÍNIO PÚBLICO.

Portugal

Autor: Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924)

De acordo com o Código do Direito de Autor e dos Direitos Conexos, a proteção patrimonial dura 70 anos após a morte do autor.

Joseph Conrad faleceu em 1924.

Situação em Portugal: DOMÍNIO PÚBLICO.

Dados da publicação original

Obra original: Lord Jim

Autor: Joseph Conrad

Primeira publicação: 1899

Local: Edinburgh and London

Primeiro editor: William Blackwood and Sons

Verifique você mesmo

As fontes abaixo permitem verificar gratuitamente a identificação da obra, a data de publicação e, no caso do Project Gutenberg, o status de domínio público nos Estados Unidos:

→ Project Gutenberg — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5658

O registro do Project Gutenberg identifica esta obra como domínio público nos Estados Unidos.

→ Internet Archive — https://archive.org/details/lordjim0000jose_i5i7

Preserva digitalizações e registros bibliográficos de edições impressas da obra original.

Esta adaptação ESL Easy Read

Nenhum direito autoral é reivindicado sobre o texto original em domínio público. A estrutura editorial desta edição, as versões de leitura simplificada, as traduções de apoio, o layout, a capa e o aparato pedagógico são protegidos por direitos autorais.

© 2026 MicMac from Las Vegas LLC. Todos os direitos reservados.

Introdução

Como ler este livro

Cada livro desta coleção é apresentado em um nível de leitura simplificada, de acordo com o CEFR - Quadro Europeu Comum de Referência para Línguas.

A2 - Básico: indicado para leitores que já compreendem frases simples, vocabulário frequente e textos curtos sobre situações do cotidiano.

B1 - Intermediário: indicado para leitores que conseguem compreender as ideias principais de textos claros e acompanhar uma narrativa com vocabulário e estruturas de dificuldade moderada.

B2 - Intermediário avançado: indicado para leitores que já conseguem compreender textos mais complexos, acompanhar descrições detalhadas e reconhecer uma variedade maior de vocabulário e estruturas gramaticais.

Este livro foi adaptado para o nível B1.

Você pode começar a lê-lo mesmo sem dominar completamente o inglês. O texto foi simplificado para facilitar a compreensão, preservando a história, os personagens, o ambiente e os principais acontecimentos da obra original.

O objetivo não é substituir a obra original, mas criar uma passagem gradual entre o inglês que você já conhece e a linguagem literária do texto completo.

Como usar En/Pt

No texto simplificado em inglês, En/Pt abre a página correspondente.

A página En/Pt apresenta três camadas independentes, sempre nesta ordem: a tradução em português do texto simplificado; o trecho correspondente do original em inglês; e a tradução em português do original.

No texto original em inglês, Pt abre diretamente o mesmo parágrafo na versão portuguesa. Nessa versão, En retorna ao mesmo parágrafo no texto original em inglês. Na página En/Pt, Original English retorna de Português Integral ao mesmo parágrafo original.

Como usar o glossário

As palavras e expressões incluídas no glossário são marcadas no texto. Clique ou selecione uma delas para abrir a entrada correspondente.

Cada entrada apresenta:

• a palavra ou expressão original em inglês;

• a sua pronúncia fonética;

• a tradução em português;

• um exemplo de uso em português;

• um exemplo de uso em inglês;

• até seis trechos do livro em que a palavra ou expressão aparece, ou todos os trechos disponíveis quando houver menos de seis ocorrências.

Cada ocorrência apresentada no glossário inclui um link direto para o ponto exato do livro em que a palavra ou expressão foi usada.

Depois de consultar uma ocorrência, o leitor pode retornar diretamente ao ponto do texto de onde abriu o glossário ou navegar para qualquer outra ocorrência da mesma palavra ou expressão dentro do livro.

A função da tradução em português

Procuramos oferecer traduções em português claras, naturais e literariamente agradáveis, tanto para o texto simplificado quanto para o texto original.

Ainda assim, a tradução deve ser entendida apenas como instrumento de apoio. Este livro não foi concebido para ser lido principalmente em português: seu objetivo é ajudar você a ler em inglês e recorrer ao português somente quando necessário.

Sempre que possível, tente primeiro compreender o trecho em inglês. Consulte a tradução para confirmar o sentido, esclarecer uma dificuldade ou comparar estruturas; depois, retorne ao texto em inglês.

Sobre este livro

Lord Jim traces the life of a sensitive young sailor whose moment of moral failure - abandoning ship during a crisis - haunts him relentlessly. Through Marlow's narrative, the novel follows Jim's efforts to escape his past by working in Eastern ports, then his journey to the isolated settlement of Patusan. There, Jim becomes a respected leader and virtual ruler, earning the trust of local figures including Doramin and Dain Waris. His success and newfound love seem to offer redemption, but the arrival of the ruthless Brown and his men forces Jim to confront the consequences of his choices, leading to a tragic conclusion that leaves his character ambiguous and his fate uncertain.

Como usar este livro

En/Pt → abre Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1), Original English Version e Tradução Integral em Português no mesmo bloco.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada e Go to the Original English Version retornam ao ponto exato.

Os links pontilhados do glossário voltam diretamente ao uso real da palavra.

Contato

MicMac from Las Vegas LLC
Contato: admin@esleasyread.com

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Reading Comprehension B1

Front Matter

2. Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Contents

Front Matter

En/Pt → **Joseph Conrad**

Author’s Note

En/Pt → When this novel first appeared as a book, some people said that the story had escaped my control. It had begun as a short story, but it became much longer. A few reviewers believed they could prove this from the text, and they seemed amused. They said the way the story was told was not believable: no man could speak for so many hours, and no group could listen for so long.

After thinking about this for nearly sixteen years, I am not so sure. People in both hot and cool countries have often stayed awake for half the night telling stories. Marlow tells only one story, and there are breaks that give the listeners some rest. We must accept that they kept listening because the story was interesting. If I had not believed that, I could never have written it. It was also physically possible. Some speeches in Parliament have lasted almost six hours, while Marlow's whole part can be read aloud in less than three. We may also imagine that the listeners had drinks that night, perhaps a glass of mineral water to help the storyteller continue.

En/Pt → But the truth is that I first planned a short story only about the pilgrim ship. That was a reasonable idea. After writing a few pages, however, I became unhappy with them and put them away. I did not take them out again until the late Mr William Blackwood asked me to write something more for his magazine.

Only then did I see that the event on the pilgrim ship was a good beginning for a free, wandering story. It could also change the whole way a simple and sensitive person felt about life. These first thoughts and feelings were not clear to me then, and they are still not much clearer after so many years.

The pages I had put away still influenced my choice of subject, but I carefully rewrote everything. When I began, I knew it would be a long book. I did not expect, however, that it would fill thirteen issues of Maga.

En/Pt → People have sometimes asked whether this is my favourite book. I strongly dislike favouritism in public life, private life, and even in an author's relationship with his books. As a rule, I have no favourites. Still, I am not hurt or annoyed when some people prefer Lord Jim. I will not even say that I cannot understand them. But one comment about the book once puzzled and surprised me.

A friend returning from Italy had spoken there with a woman who did not like the book. Of course I was sorry, but the reason for her dislike surprised me. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘everything in it is so unhealthy and dark.’

En/Pt → Her comment made me worry for an hour. At last I decided that, because the subject might be outside what women normally feel, the lady could not have been Italian. I even wondered whether she was European. I believed that a Latin person would not see anything unhealthy in a painful awareness of lost honour. That feeling may be right or wrong, and some may call it artificial. Perhaps Jim is not a common type of man. But I can assure my readers that he did not come from cold or twisted thought, and he is not a figure from the northern mists. One sunny morning, in an ordinary eastern harbour, I saw a man like him pass by. He seemed troubled and important, under a shadow, and completely silent. It was my task to find the right words for what he meant, with all the sympathy I had. He was ‘one of us.’

En/Pt → J.C.

En/Pt → 1917.

Chapter 1

En/Pt → He was a little under six feet tall, strong, and he walked straight toward you with his head forward and his shoulders slightly bent. His hard stare from under his brow made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep and loud. He showed a stubborn confidence, but not in an aggressive way. It seemed natural to him, and he seemed to use it as much against himself as against others. He was always perfectly neat, dressed all in white from shoes to hat. In the Eastern ports where he earned his living as a ship-chandler's water-clerk, he was very popular.

En/Pt → A water-clerk does not need to pass any exam, but he must show real ability in practice. His job was to race by sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks to reach any ship about to anchor. He would greet the captain warmly, give him the ship-chandler's business card, and on the captain's first visit ashore guide him firmly but without showing off to a huge shop. That shop had everything needed for life on a ship, from food and drink to tools and supplies, and even gold leaf for decorations. The captain was welcomed like an old friend by a ship-chandler he had never met before. There was a cool sitting room, easy chairs, bottles, cigars, writing tools, harbour rules, and a warm welcome that could soften a sailor's heart after a long voyage. Once the connection began, the water-clerk visited every day while the ship stayed in harbour. He was loyal like a friend, caring like a son, patient, unselfish, and cheerful. Later the bill was sent. It was a kind and useful job, so good water-clerks were rare. If a water-clerk also knew the sea, he was worth a lot of money and had to be treated carefully. Jim always had good wages and plenty of patience from his employers. Even so, he would suddenly quit and leave. His reasons seemed weak to them, and when he was gone they called him a fool. That was their answer to his very sensitive nature.

En/Pt → To the white men in the port business and to ship captains, he was simply Jim. He had another name, but he did not want anyone to say it. His secret identity was full of holes, but it was not meant to hide who he was, only a fact about him. When that fact came out, he would leave the seaport where he was and move to another one, usually farther east. He stayed in seaports because he was a sailor exiled from the sea, and his special ability was only useful as a water-clerk. He moved on in an orderly way toward the rising sun, while the truth followed him, almost by chance but surely. Over the years he was known in Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Penang, and Batavia, and in each place he was only Jim the water-clerk. Later, when his strong sense of what he could not bear finally drove him away from seaports and white men and even into the deep forest, the Malays in the jungle village, where he tried to hide his unfortunate gift, added a title to his name. They called him Tuan Jim, which is like saying Lord Jim.

En/Pt → He originally came from a parsonage. Many fine merchant-ship captains come from such homes of faith and peace. Jim's father had enough religious knowledge to guide poor people without troubling the comfort of those who lived in mansions. The small church on the hill was grey with moss, like a rock seen through leaves. It had stood there for centuries, though the trees around it may have remembered when the first stone was laid. Below it, the red front of the rectory shone warmly among grass, flower beds, and fir trees. There was an orchard behind it, a paved stable yard on the left, and glass greenhouses fixed along a brick wall. The living had been in the family for generations. But Jim was one of five sons, and when his love for the sea appeared after reading light holiday books, he was sent at once to a training-ship for officers of the merchant marine.

En/Pt → There he learned a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. People generally liked him. He came third in navigation and pulled stroke in the first cutter. He had a steady head and a strong body, so he was very quick up in the rigging. His place was in the fore-top, and from there he often looked down on the peaceful city roofs cut by the brown river, and on the factory chimneys on the plain, standing thin against the dirty sky and sending out smoke like volcanoes. He could also see the big ships leaving, the wide ferries always moving, the small boats below, and the faint beauty of the sea in the distance. All this filled him with hope for an exciting life of adventure.

En/Pt → On the lower deck, among the noise of two hundred voices, he forgot himself and imagined the sea life he had read about in books. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, or swimming through rough surf with a rope. He also imagined being a lonely castaway, barefoot and half naked, walking on bare reefs to find shellfish and avoid starvation. He faced wild people on tropical shores, stopped mutiny on the open sea, and in a small boat on the ocean kept up the spirits of desperate men. In every picture, he was loyal to duty and brave like a hero in a story.

"Something is happening. Come on."

He jumped to his feet. The boys were rushing up the ladders. Above him there was a lot of running and shouting, and when he came through the hatchway, he stopped, as if shocked and unable to understand.

En/Pt → It was dusk on a winter day. The storm had grown stronger since noon and had stopped all river traffic. Now it blew like a hurricane in sudden bursts that sounded like great guns firing over the ocean. Rain came down in slanting sheets, then eased for a moment. Between the gusts, Jim could see the rough tide, small boats tossed along the shore, still buildings in the blowing mist, large ferries pitching at anchor, and huge landing-stages rising and falling under spray. Then the next wind would seem to sweep it all away. The air was full of flying water. The storm felt fierce and purposeful, and the screaming wind and wild confusion of earth and sky seemed aimed at him. He stood still in fear and felt as if he were being spun around.

En/Pt → He was shoved aside. "Man the cutter!" Boys ran past him. A coasting ship that was coming in for shelter had hit a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship's instructors had seen it happen. A crowd of boys climbed the rails and gathered round the davits. "Collision. Just ahead of us. Mr. Symons saw it." A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he grabbed a rope. The old training-ship, tied to her moorings, shook all over. She turned her bow gently into the wind, and her thin rigging hummed like the deep voice of her old sea life. "Lower away!" He saw the boat, already crewed, drop quickly below the rail, and he ran after her. He heard a splash. "Let go; clear the falls!" He leaned over. The river beside the ship boiled with foamy streaks. In the darkening light, the cutter could be seen fighting tide and wind, held back for a moment, then tossing beside the ship. A voice shouted from her: "Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save anybody! Keep stroke!" Then suddenly she lifted her bow high, and, with her oars raised over a wave, broke free from the wind and tide.

En/Pt → Jim felt a firm hand on his shoulder. "Too late, youngster," said the captain. He stopped the boy, who seemed ready to jump overboard. Jim looked up, and his eyes showed his clear defeat. The captain smiled kindly. "Better luck next time. This will teach you to be smart."

En/Pt → A loud cheer welcomed the cutter. She came back, moving like a dance, half full of water, with two tired men lying on her bottom boards. At first, Jim had feared the storm and the sea. Now he thought their danger was weak and not worth much. He felt no fear at all. He believed he could face greater danger than this, better than anyone else. Still, that evening he sat apart and thought about it while the boatman of the cutter, a boy with a girl's face and big grey eyes, was praised as a hero. Many eager boys gathered round him. He told them how he had seen a head in the water, thrust his boat-hook down, and caught it in the man's breeches. He nearly went overboard too, but old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed his legs. He said old Symons was a good man, even if he was grumpy and kept swearing. He explained that the big man with a beard had groaned about his leg and fainted like a girl. He even showed the boat-hook and said the man's breeches had held him, not his flesh. There was a lot of blood, of course.

En/Pt → Jim thought this was a sad show of vanity. The storm had created a false heroism, just as it had pretended to be terrible. He was angry that the wild wind and sea had surprised him and stopped his chance to meet danger. Even so, he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, because a smaller deed had already been enough. He felt he had learned more than the men who had done the rescue. He believed that when others feared, he would know how to deal with the fake threat of wind and waves. Seen calmly, it all seemed weak and worthless. He could feel no strong emotion, and after this shocking event he stood away from the noisy boys and felt a new, proud certainty in his love of adventure and his many-sided courage.

Chapter 2

En/Pt → After two years of training, he went to sea. He entered the world he had imagined, but it was strangely empty of adventure. He made many voyages. He knew the strange, repeating life between sky and water. He had to bear other men's criticism, the sea's demands, and the plain hard work that earns bread, but gives its reward only to those who truly love the work. He did not find that reward. Still, he could not go back, because sea life is very tempting, disappointing, and hard to leave. His future was good. He was polite, steady, easy to guide, and knew his duties well. So, while still very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, though he had never been tested by the great sea events that show what a man is truly made of.

En/Pt → Only once in all that time did he again see how serious the sea's anger could be. People do not see this truth as often as they think. Danger and storms have many levels, and only sometimes do they show a dark, deliberate force. Then a man feels that wind and sea are coming at him with cruel purpose. They seem to want to destroy his hope, his fear, his tired body, and his wish for rest. They want to smash everything he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated. They want to take away all that is precious and necessary: sunshine, memories, and the future. In the end, they can wipe out his whole world simply by taking his life.

En/Pt → At the start of a week that his Scottish captain later called "a pairfect meeracle," Jim was hurt by a falling spar. He spent many days lying on his back, dazed, bruised, hopeless, and trapped in deep unrest. When he thought clearly, he told himself he did not care how it ended. Danger, when it is not seen, becomes vague in the human mind. Fear grows dim. Imagination, which is man's enemy and the father of all fears, falls asleep when emotion is exhausted. Jim saw only the mess in his cabin. He lay there shut in the middle of a small ruin and felt secretly glad that he did not have to go on deck. But now and then, sudden pain would seize him, making him gasp and twist under the blankets. Then the cruel fact that a life could hold such suffering filled him with a desperate wish to escape at any cost. After that, good weather returned, and he did not think about it anymore.

En/Pt → But his injury did not heal. When the ship reached an Eastern port, he had to go to the hospital. He recovered slowly, and the ship left without him.

En/Pt → There were only two other patients in the white men's ward. One was the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg when he fell down a hatchway. The other was a kind railway contractor from a nearby province, who had a strange tropical disease. He thought the doctor was a fool and secretly took patent medicine, which his Tamil servant kept bringing in with loyal care. The three men told each other about their lives, played cards a little, or spent the day in pyjamas, yawning in easy chairs and saying nothing. The hospital stood on a hill. A soft breeze came in through the windows, which were always wide open, and brought the quiet sky, the heavy earth, and the lovely smell of Eastern waters into the bare room. There were scents in the air and a feeling of deep rest, like endless dreaming. Every day Jim looked out over gardens, beyond the town roofs, and past the palms by the shore to the busy roadstead that led to the East. There he saw small island shapes with garlands, bright sunshine, tiny ships, and lively movement like a holiday scene, under the calm Eastern sky and the peaceful Eastern sea reaching to the horizon.

En/Pt → As soon as he could walk without a stick, he went down into the town to find a way home. Nothing came up at first, so while he waited, he naturally mixed with the men of his profession in the port. These men were of two kinds. A few, seen only rarely, lived strange lives. They still kept their energy, with pirate-like temper and dreamer's eyes. They seemed to move through a wild maze of plans, hopes, dangers, and journeys, ahead of civilisation and in the dark places of the sea. For them, death was the only event that seemed certain. Most of the others were like Jim. Some accident had brought them there, and they had stayed on as officers in country ships. Now they feared home service, with its harder life, stricter duty, and stormy seas. They loved the peace of the Eastern sky and sea. They liked short trips, comfortable deck-chairs, large native crews, and the special status of being white. They were afraid of hard work and lived uncertain, easy lives, always near dismissal and always near a new job. They served Chinamen, Arabs, and half-castes, and would have served the devil himself if it had been easy enough. They talked endlessly about good luck: how one man got an easy boat on the China coast, how another had a fine post in Japan, and how a third was doing well in the Siamese navy. In what they said, in how they acted, and even in how they looked, Jim could see the weak point: a slow decline and a desire to drift safely through life.

En/Pt → At first, Jim saw that talkative crowd as seamen and thought they were less solid than shadows. But after a while, he was strangely drawn to them, and to the way they seemed to do so well with so little danger and work. Slowly, along with his first contempt, another feeling grew in him. Then, suddenly, he gave up the idea of going home and signed on as chief mate of the Patna.

The Patna was an old local steamer. It was thin like a greyhound and badly covered with rust. A Chinese owner owned her, an Arab had chartered her, and she was commanded by a strange German from New South Wales. He liked to curse his own country in public and acted cruelly toward people he was not afraid of. He had a harsh "blood-and-iron" look, with a purple nose and a red moustache. After she was painted outside and whitewashed inside, about eight hundred pilgrims were driven aboard while she lay with steam up beside a wooden jetty.

En/Pt → They came aboard in streams over three gangways. They came because of faith and the hope of paradise. Their bare feet made a steady shuffling sound, and they said nothing and never looked back. Once they were free of the rails, they spread across the deck and moved forward and aft. Then they poured down the open hatchways and filled the inside of the ship, like water filling a cistern. There were eight hundred men and women, full of faith, hope, love, and memories. They had come from north and south, and from far places in the East, after long journeys through jungle paths, rivers, canoes, and islands. They had faced suffering, strange sights, and strange fears, but one desire kept them going. They came from lonely huts, crowded campongs, and sea villages. For this idea, they had left their forests, their clearings, their rulers, their good fortune or poverty, the places of their youth, and their fathers' graves. They were dusty, sweaty, dirty, and in rags. There were strong men leading families, old men with little hope of return, brave boys, shy girls with untidy hair, and nervous women holding their sleeping babies close to their chests. They were pilgrims, driven by a strict belief.

En/Pt → "Look at dese cattle," said the German skipper to his new chief mate.

An Arab, the leader of that holy journey, came last. He walked slowly aboard, handsome and serious in his white robe and large turban. Servants followed him, carrying his luggage. Then the Patna cast off and moved away from the wharf.

She headed between two small islands, crossed the anchoring area for sailing ships, turned halfway around in the shadow of a hill, and then moved close to a line of foaming reefs. Standing at the back, the Arab said the sea travellers' prayer aloud. He asked the Most High to bless the journey, the men's work, and the secret wishes in their hearts. The steamer thudded through the calm water of the Strait at dusk. Far behind, a lighthouse on a dangerous shoal shone like an eye of fire, as if mocking the ship's faithful mission.

En/Pt → She cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, and went on through the One-degree passage. Then she held a straight course for the Red Sea under a clear, burning sky. The bright sun seemed to drain away thought and strength. Beneath that strange, shining sky, the sea was deep blue and still, with no ripple at all. The Patna moved on with a soft hiss over the smooth, bright water. A black line of smoke trailed behind her, and a white line of foam appeared on the sea, then vanished at once, like the ghost of a track on a dead sea.

En/Pt → Every morning the sun seemed to travel with the pilgrimage. It rose silently at the same distance behind the ship, caught up with her at noon, and burned down on the pilgrims' purpose with its strong rays. Then it moved past as it sank, and every evening it disappeared into the sea ahead of her bows. The five white men on board lived in the middle of the ship, away from the passengers. Awnings covered the deck from end to end like a white roof. Only a faint hum and low murmuring voices showed that many people were there. The days were still, hot, and heavy, one after another, as if they were falling forever into the space behind the ship. Under a thin trail of smoke, the ship went on alone, black and smoking in the bright distance, as if a merciless sky were burning her.

The nights came over her like a blessing.

Chapter 3

En/Pt → A wonderful stillness filled the world. The stars, with their calm light, seemed to promise lasting safety on earth. The young moon, curved and low in the west, looked like a thin shaving cut from a bar of gold. The Arabian Sea lay smooth and cool, like a sheet of ice, stretching to the dark line of the horizon. The propeller turned steadily, as if this safe world had been planned for it. On both sides of the Patna, two deep trails of water followed her. Inside them, a few white swirls of foam, ripples, and small waves broke and then grew calm again. After the ship passed, the sea slowly returned to perfect stillness, with the black shape of the moving hull always at the center.

En/Pt → Jim on the bridge felt a strong sense of safety and peace in the quiet world around him, like the gentle love seen on a mother's face. Below the awnings, the pilgrims trusted the white men and their courage, and they believed in the power of the ship and its iron shell. They slept on mats, blankets, or bare planks, on every deck and in dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloth or dirty rags, with their heads on small bundles and their faces on bent arms. Men, women, and children slept together. Old and young, weak and strong, were equal before sleep, which is death's brother.

En/Pt → A stream of air moved through the dark space between the high sides of the ship and passed over the sleeping passengers. Small lamps gave weak light here and there, and in their shaking circles could be seen many details of the people asleep: faces, hands, bare feet, bent heads, and thin bodies under torn cloth. Rich families had made shelters with heavy boxes and old mats. Poor people lay with all they owned tied in a rag under their heads. Old men slept on their prayer-carpets with their hands over their ears. A father crouched beside a boy sleeping with one arm out. A covered woman held a naked child in each arm. Near the stern, the Arabs' belongings made a dark heap under a cargo lamp. Around them were vague shapes of brass pots, spear blades, a sword, pillows, and a coffee pot. The log on the stern rang once for every mile the ship covered. Above the sleepers came quiet sighs from troubled dreams, while below deck sudden metal noises, shovels, and furnace doors broke the silence. But the ship kept moving forward steadily over the calm sea under the peaceful sky.

En/Pt → Jim walked back and forth. In the great silence his footsteps sounded loud to him, almost as if the stars were hearing him. He looked along the horizon with a hungry wish for something beyond his reach, but he did not see the danger ahead. The only shadow on the sea was the black smoke from the funnel. Two Malays stood almost still at the wheel, one on each side. Their hands moved only when they had to. Jim looked at the compass and the horizon, then stretched until his joints cracked. He felt full of comfort and strength, and the calm sea made him bold. He thought he could face anything that might happen in his life. He also looked at the chart on the small table. The ship's course was marked in a straight line, and Jim thought how steady she moved. He liked to imagine brave actions and great success. These dreams seemed to him the truest part of life. They filled him with confidence and made him feel that nothing was beyond him. Smiling to himself, he kept looking ahead, and behind him he could see the white wake as straight as the pencil line on the chart.

En/Pt → The clanking ash buckets moving through the ventilators told Jim that his watch was almost over. He sighed because he was glad and sorry at the same time. He was sorry to leave that peaceful feeling, which made his adventurous thoughts feel free. He was also getting sleepy, and a warm, pleasant heaviness ran through him. His skipper came up quietly in pajamas and an open sleeping jacket. He was red-faced and only half awake, with one eye partly closed and the other staring blankly. He bent over the chart and scratched himself. Jim found the sight of the man's bare body ugly and shocking. His chest looked greasy and wet, as if he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. The captain said something official in a rough, dead voice. Jim jumped and answered politely. But that ugly, fleshy figure stayed in his memory forever as the image of all that is base and hateful in the world and in people.

En/Pt → The thin moon moved down and was lost on the dark water. The sky seemed to come closer to the earth, with bright stars and a deep dark glow over the flat sea. The ship moved so smoothly that the men on board could not feel its motion. It was like a crowded planet traveling through dark space between the stars. Then a voice said, 'Hot is no name for it down below.'

En/Pt → Jim smiled without turning around. The skipper showed only his back. He had the habit of acting as if other people did not exist, unless he wanted to turn suddenly and attack them with angry, filthy words. Now he only gave a bad-tempered grunt. The second engineer stood near the bridge ladder, rubbing a dirty sweat-rag with damp hands, and kept complaining. He said the sailors had an easy life and were useless. He thought the engineers did all the hard work and could do the rest too. The German told him sharply to shut up, but the other man went on. He said that if anything went wrong, they all came to the engineers for help. He was half drunk, he said, and after three days of this work he was ready for hell anyway. The broken-down engine below made terrible noise, and no one could say why he risked his life day and night among such junk. The German asked where he had got drink. Jim kept smiling at the distant horizon, feeling generous and superior. The engineer said the captain was too mean to give a man even a little schnapps. He said the chief had already given him a small drink, but the old man could not be made to leave his bunk because he was sleeping with a bottle of brandy under his pillow. The two engineers had known each other for years. In the home port, people believed they had stolen together more than anyone could imagine. Outwardly, they were very different. One was heavy and cruel-looking, the other thin and bony like an old horse. He had once been sent away from his ship long ago and had later managed to get by in the East. He liked to boast that he was an old hand there. He walked around the engine-room skylight like a man thinking deep thoughts, smoking bad tobacco in a long pipe. Usually he did not like to share his liquor, but that night he had. As a result, his second engineer was very cheerful, bold, and talkative. The German was furious. Jim, a little amused, wanted the watch to end. He was tired of the last ten minutes, which felt slow and irritating. He did not like these men, but he did not truly care about them either. He felt above them. Still, he wondered whether the skipper would attack the engineer. He was so relaxed and so sure of himself that he almost fell asleep while standing.

En/Pt → The second engineer was gradually turning his thoughts to his money and his courage.

'Drunk? Me? No, captain! That is not true. You know the chief is not generous enough to make even a sparrow drunk. I have never been drunk in my life. No drink has been made that could make me drunk. I could drink fire against your whisky, and still stay cool. If I ever thought I was drunk, I would jump overboard and kill myself. I would! And I will not leave the bridge. Where do you expect me to get fresh air on a night like this? On deck with that crowd below? Of course not! And I am not afraid of anything you can do.'

Without speaking, the German raised both heavy fists toward the sky and shook them a little.

En/Pt → 'I don't know what fear is,' the engineer said, full of belief in himself. 'I am not afraid to do all the hard work on this broken ship, by gosh! And it is lucky for you that some of us are not afraid for our lives. Otherwise where would you be, you and this old ship with her plates like brown paper? It is all very fine for you. You get a lot of money from her in different ways. But what do I get? Only a poor hundred and fifty dollars a month, and I have to provide myself. I ask you politely, who would not throw up such a cursed job? It is not safe, by gosh, it is not! But I am one of those fearless fellows...'

En/Pt → He let go of the rail and used big gestures, as if he were showing the size of his bravery in the air. His thin voice rose into long squeaks over the sea. He tiptoed back and forth to stress his words, then suddenly fell head-first, as if someone had hit him from behind. As he fell, he said, 'Damn!' Then there was a short silence after his cry. Jim and the skipper both moved forward at once. They stopped, very stiff and still, and stared in amazement at the sea, which had not changed at all. Then they looked up at the stars.

En/Pt → What had happened? The engine kept thumping on. Had the earth stopped moving? They could not understand it. Suddenly the calm sea and the cloudless sky seemed unsafe and frightening, as if they were balanced above some great destruction. The engineer bounced up straight and fell down again in a loose heap. From that heap came the muffled words, 'What's that?' in a voice full of deep misery. Then a very faint sound, like far-off thunder, passed slowly by. It was more a vibration than a sound. The ship shook in answer, as if the thunder were deep under the water. The two Malays at the wheel looked at the white men, but their dark hands stayed on the spokes. The sharp hull seemed to lift a little again and again along its whole length, as if it had become flexible, and then settle back hard as it cut through the smooth sea. The shaking stopped, and the faint thunder died away at once, as if the ship had crossed a narrow band of vibrating water and humming air.

Chapter 4

En/Pt → A month or so later, when Jim was asked direct questions and tried honestly to tell the truth about what had happened, he said of the ship, 'She went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick.' It was a good comparison. The questions were about facts, and the official inquiry was being held in the police court of an eastern port. Jim stood high in the witness box, his cheeks burning in the cool, high room. Above him, the large punkahs moved gently. Below, many eyes watched him from dark faces, white faces, and red faces, all of them listening closely, as if they were trapped by his voice. His voice sounded very loud to him, and it rang in his ears. It felt like the only sound in the world, because the questions, sharp and painful, seemed to force the answers out of him from inside his own heart, like the questioning of his conscience. Outside, the sun blazed. Inside, the punkahs made a cold wind, his shame made him burn, and the watching eyes felt like knives. The magistrate, clean-shaven and calm, looked deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. A bright window high in the ceiling shone down on the three men, making them stand out strongly in the dim court, where the audience seemed like a mass of staring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.

En/Pt → 'After you had decided that you had struck something floating partly above water, say a waterlogged wreck, your captain ordered you to go forward and see whether there was any damage. From the force of the blow, did you think that was likely?' asked the assessor on the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, sharp cheekbones, and both elbows on the desk. He held his rough hands together before his face and looked at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes. The other assessor was a heavy, scornful man. He leaned back in his seat, stretched out one arm, and tapped softly with his fingertips on a blotting pad. In the middle, the magistrate sat upright in a large armchair, his head tilted a little, his arms folded across his chest, with a few flowers in a glass vase beside his inkstand.

En/Pt → 'I did not,' Jim said. 'I was told not to call anyone and not to make any noise, so that no panic would start. I thought that was sensible. I took one of the lamps hanging under the awnings and went forward. After I opened the forepeak hatch, I heard water splashing inside. Then I lowered the lamp down on its cord and saw that the forepeak was already more than half full of water. I knew then that there must be a big hole below the waterline.' He stopped.

'Yes,' said the big assessor, smiling dreamily at the blotting pad. His fingers kept moving, touching the paper without making a sound.

En/Pt → 'I did not think of danger then. I may have been a little shocked, because everything happened so quietly and so suddenly. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship except the collision bulkhead between the forepeak and the forehold. I went back to tell the captain. At the foot of the bridge ladder I met the second engineer getting up. He looked confused and said he thought his left arm was broken. He had slipped on the top step while getting down as I was going forward. He cried, "My God! That rotten bulkhead will give way in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead." He pushed me away with his right arm and ran ahead of me up the ladder, shouting as he climbed. His left arm hung at his side. I followed in time to see the captain rush at him and knock him flat on his back. The captain did not hit him again. He stood over him, speaking angrily but in a low voice. I think he was asking why the man had not gone to stop the engines instead of making a scene on deck. I heard him say, "Get up! Run! fly!" He swore too. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and ran round the skylight to the engine-room companion on the port side. He was moaning as he ran...'

En/Pt → He spoke slowly, but he remembered very quickly and very clearly. He could almost repeat the engineer's moaning like an echo, to help these men who wanted facts. After his first anger, he had come to believe that only very exact words could show the true horror behind what had happened. The facts they wanted had been real and clear. They could be seen and touched. They had taken place in space and time, and needed a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes on the clock. Yet there was something more than facts. There was also an unseen force of ruin inside the whole event, like a bad soul inside an ugly body. He wanted to make that clear. This had not been an ordinary event. Everything in it mattered greatly, and luckily he remembered everything. He wanted to keep talking for the sake of truth, and perhaps for his own sake too. But while he spoke carefully, his mind raced around the hard circle of facts that surrounded him and cut him off from other people. It was like a trapped animal running round and round inside high stakes, desperate to find a weak point, a crack, a place to climb, or any opening to escape. Because his mind was so active, he sometimes paused in his speech...

En/Pt → 'The captain kept moving around on the bridge. He seemed calm enough, but he stumbled several times. Once, while I was speaking to him, he walked straight into me as if he could not see. He did not give any clear answer to what I told him. He muttered to himself, and I only caught a few words like "confounded steam!" and "infernal steam!" - something about steam. I thought...'

En/Pt → He was becoming less important. A direct question stopped him in mid-speech, like a sharp pain, and he felt deeply discouraged and tired. He had been heading toward this, and now he had to answer with a simple yes or no. He answered honestly, saying, 'Yes, I did.' He was handsome, broad-shouldered, and young, with sad eyes. He stood straight above the box, while inside he suffered. Then he had to answer another very direct but useless question, and he waited again. His mouth was dry and tasteless, as if he had eaten dust. Then it felt salty and bitter, like after drinking sea water. He wiped sweat from his forehead, ran his tongue over his dry lips, and felt a shiver go down his back. The big assessor had lowered his eyelids and sat drumming silently, careless and sad. The eyes of the other man, above his sunburned clasped hands, seemed full of kindness. The magistrate had leaned forward, his pale face near the flowers, and then he dropped to one side, resting his temple in his hand. The punkah wind moved over the heads of the dark-skinned natives wrapped in loose cloth, over the Europeans sitting together in heavy heat in drill suits that fit them tightly like skin, and holding their round pith hats on their knees. Along the walls, the court peons in long white coats moved quickly back and forth on bare toes, with red sashes and red turbans, as quiet as ghosts and alert as retrievers.

En/Pt → Between his answers, Jim's wandering eyes rested on a white man who sat apart from the others. His face looked worn and dark with worry, but his eyes were calm, clear, and interested. Jim answered another question and wanted to cry out, 'What is the point of this? What is the point!' He tapped his foot a little, bit his lip, and looked away over the people's heads. Then he met the white man's eyes. This was not the fascinated stare of the others. It was a steady, thoughtful look. Between two questions, Jim even had time for a thought. This man, he thought, looks at me as if he can see someone or something behind my shoulder. He felt he had seen the man before, maybe in the street. He was sure he had never spoken to him. For days, many days, he had spoken to no one, but only talked silently and endlessly to himself, like a prisoner alone in a cell or a traveller lost in a wilderness. He was now answering questions that did not matter, even if they had a purpose, but he doubted he would ever speak freely again. The sound of his own true answers made him feel that speech was useless now. That man seemed to understand his hopeless trouble. Jim looked at him, then turned away firmly, as if after a final goodbye.

En/Pt → Later, many times, in faraway places around the world, Marlow showed that he was willing to remember Jim, and to remember him at length and in detail when he spoke aloud.

It might happen after dinner, on a verandah covered with still leaves and flowers, in the deep evening light marked by the red ends of cigars. Each long cane chair held a quiet listener. Now and then a small red glow moved suddenly, lighting up the fingers of a lazy hand, part of a face at rest, or throwing a red shine into thoughtful eyes under a smooth forehead. Then, at Marlow's first word, his body, stretched out in the chair, would become very still, as if his spirit had gone back into the past and was speaking through his lips.

Chapter 5

En/Pt → 'Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,' he would say, 'and even now I do not know why I went. I am ready to believe that each of us has a guardian angel, if you all admit that each of us also has a familiar devil. I want you to agree, because I do not like to feel special, and I know I have one too - the devil, I mean. I have never seen him, of course, but I judge by the evidence. He is there, and he is mean, so he gets me into this kind of trouble. What kind? The inquiry trouble, the yellow dog trouble - you would not think a filthy native dog would be allowed to trip people up in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you? - the kind of trouble that, in strange and devilish ways, makes me meet men with soft spots, hard spots, and hidden sickness, by Jove, and makes them tell me their secrets as soon as they see me. It is as if I had no secrets of my own, as if I did not have enough private worries to torment my soul until I die. And I want to know what I have done to deserve this. I am as full of my own troubles as any man, and I have as bad a memory as most people in this valley, so I am not really made to carry other people's confessions. Then why? I cannot tell - unless it is just to help pass the time after dinner. Charley, my dear fellow, your dinner was very good, and because of it these men here think a quiet card game is hard work. They sit in your good chairs and think, "To hell with effort. Let Marlow talk."

En/Pt → 'Talk? So be it. And it is easy enough to talk about Master Jim after a good meal, two hundred feet above sea level, with a box of good cigars near at hand, on a fresh and starlit evening that makes the best of us forget that we are only here on borrowed time and must pick our way carefully, watch every precious minute and every mistake we cannot fix, and hope we will still manage to die well in the end - though we are not sure of that - and with very little help from the people beside us. Of course, there are men here and there for whom all of life feels like the hour after dinner with a cigar: easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps made more lively by some story of struggle that will be forgotten before the end is told - before the end is told - even if there is any end at all.

En/Pt → 'My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know that everyone connected with the sea was there, because the story had been famous for days, ever since that strange cable message came from Aden and made us all laugh. I call it strange because it was strange in a way, even though it stated a plain fact, and the fact was as bare and ugly as any fact could be. Everyone near the waterfront talked about nothing else. In the morning, while I was dressing in my ship cabin, I could hear my Parsee Dubash talking about the Patna with the steward through the wall, while he drank tea in the pantry as a favour. As soon as I went ashore, I would meet someone I knew, and the first thing he would say was, "Did you ever hear of anything worse than this?" Then he would smile bitterly, look sad, or swear. Even strangers would speak to each other like old friends just to get the matter off their minds. Every worthless loafer in town made a lot of drinks out of this affair. You heard about it in the harbour office, at every ship broker's, at your agent's, from white men, natives, mixed-race people, and even from boatmen sitting half naked on the stone steps as you went up. By Jove! There was anger, a good many jokes, and endless talk about what had happened to them. This went on for more than two weeks, and people started to think that whatever was mysterious about it would also turn out to be tragic. Then, one fine morning, while I was standing in the shade by the harbour office steps, I saw four men walking toward me along the quay. For a moment I wondered where they had come from, and then I suddenly shouted to myself, "Here they are!"

En/Pt → They were indeed there, all four of them. Three looked just as they should, and one was much fatter than any living man has any right to be. They had just landed after a good breakfast from an outward-bound Dale Line steamer that had arrived about an hour after sunrise. There could be no mistake. I recognized the cheerful captain of the Patna at once: he was the fattest man in the whole hot tropical world. And about nine months earlier, I had seen him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he spent all day after day drinking beer in De Jongh's back-shop while he cursed the tyrannical German Empire. De Jongh, who charged a guilder for each bottle without even blinking, would call me aside and say in a private way, with his small wrinkled face twisted up, 'Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!'

En/Pt → I watched him from the shade. He was hurrying a little ahead, and the sunlight on him made his size look shocking. He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on its hind legs. He also looked very ridiculous and grand, wearing a dirty sleeping suit with bright green and deep orange stripes, ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and someone else's old pith hat. The hat was very dirty, two sizes too small, and tied on top of his big head with a piece of manila rope. A man like that had almost no chance of borrowing proper clothes. He came on quickly, looking neither left nor right, passed within three feet of me, and, innocent as a child, rushed up the stairs into the harbour office to give his statement or report, or whatever you want to call it.

En/Pt → It seems that he first spoke to the chief shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just arrived and, according to his own story, was about to begin his hard day by scolding his chief clerk. Some of you may have known him: he was a helpful little Portuguese half-caste with a very thin neck, always trying to get food from shipmasters, such as salt pork, biscuits, potatoes, or anything else. I once gave him a live sheep from the last of my ship supplies. I did not need him to do anything for me - he could not, anyway - but I was moved by his childlike belief that he had a sacred right to extras. It was so strong that it was almost beautiful. The race - the two races, really - and the climate... But never mind. I know where I have a friend for life.

En/Pt → Ruthvel says he was giving the man a strong lecture about official morality when he heard a small noise behind him. He turned and saw, to his surprise, a huge round thing in striped flannelette standing upside down in the middle of the office floor. At first he did not even realize it was alive. He stared, wondering how it had been brought there. The archway from the ante-room was full of people craning their necks and almost climbing over each other to see. The man then pulled his hat free and went forward with small bows to Ruthvel, who was so upset that he could hardly understand what this strange figure wanted. The man spoke in a harsh, sad voice, but bravely. Soon Archie understood that this was about the Patna case. As soon as he knew who the man was, he felt sick, but he pulled himself together and told him to go to the Master Attendant and see Captain Elliot instead. Archie jumped up, rushed around the counter, and pushed the man toward the private office. At the door the man hesitated and snorted like a frightened bullock. Archie opened the door without knocking and announced, "The master of the Patna, sir." He then saw the old man stop writing and drop his nose-glasses. The shouting inside was so terrible that Archie could not even remember his own name. He felt as if he had thrown a man to a hungry lion. I heard the noise below, and I believe it was loud enough to be heard across the Esplanade. Old father Elliot had a great store of words and shouted without caring who heard him. He used to say that he had reached the highest point in his job, his pension was safe, and he would rather go home than accept bad ideas of duty. He only wanted to see his daughters married before he died. His three daughters were lovely, though they looked much like him. When he was in a bad mood about their chances of marriage, everyone in the office could see it and feared he would start on someone at breakfast. But that morning he did not eat the man. He tore him apart with words, then threw him out.

En/Pt → In a few moments I saw the man's huge body hurry down and stop on the outer steps. He stood close to me, deep in thought, biting his thumb. After a while he noticed me and gave me an annoyed side glance. The other three men who came with him stood farther away in a small group. One was a pale, mean little man with his arm in a sling. Another was tall and thin, wearing a blue flannel coat, dry as wood, with grey moustaches and a silly, jaunty look. The third was a straight, broad-shouldered young man with his hands in his pockets. He had turned his back on the other two, who seemed to be talking seriously. He stared across the empty Esplanade. A broken-down gharry stopped across from them, and the driver just sat with one foot up, studying his toes. The young man did not move at all. This was my first sight of Jim. He looked as calm and unreachable as only the young can look. He was clean-limbed, clean-faced, and steady on his feet. Looking at him, and knowing what I knew, I felt angry, as if he were trying to cheat me. He had no right to look so trustworthy. I thought, if people like this can go wrong, then... I felt almost ashamed, as I once saw a ship captain dance on his hat because his poor mate got into trouble with the anchors. I wondered whether Jim was foolish or heartless. He seemed ready to whistle a tune. I did not care about the other two men. Their faces matched the story that was already public and would be examined in the official inquiry. Then the captain of the Patna said, "That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound." He may have known me; I think he did. Our eyes met. He glared, and I smiled. "Did he?" I said before I could stop myself. He nodded, bit his thumb again, and muttered a curse. Then he lifted his head and looked at me with rude anger. "The Pacific is big, my friend. You damned Englishmen can do your worst. I know plenty of room for a man like me. I know people in Apia, in Honolulu, and elsewhere..." He stopped, and I could easily imagine the kind of people he knew there. I admit I had known a good many like them myself. Sometimes a man must act as if life is pleasant in any company. I have known such times too. I will not pretend to be shocked, because many of those bad people were more interesting and far more amusing than the usual respectable crooks people invite to dinner out of habit, fear, kindness, or other weak reasons.

En/Pt → "You Englishmen are all rogues," my patriotic man from Flensborg or Stettin went on. I do not even remember now which small Baltic port was the home of that creature. "What right do you have to shout? You tell me. You are no better than other people, and that old rogue made a terrible fuss with me. You English always make a big fuss about anything because I was not born in your country. Take away my certificate. I do not want it. A man like me does not need your cursed certificate. I spit on it." He spat. "I will become an American citizen," he cried, angry and restless, shuffling his feet as if something invisible held his ankles and would not let him leave. He worked himself into such a rage that the top of his round head seemed to smoke. Nothing mysterious kept me there. It was only curiosity. I wanted to see what would happen when the young man heard everything. Jim still stood there with his hands in his pockets, his back to the sidewalk, looking across the Esplanade toward the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel as if he were about to go for a walk once his friend was ready. He looked proud and careless, and I hated it. I waited to see him crushed and shaken, twisted with shame. It is terrible to watch a man who has been found out, not in a crime, but in weakness. Many people are kept from crime by ordinary self-control. But weakness, hidden or only half suspected, can destroy anyone. We are trapped into things that bring shame or even death, and yet the human spirit may survive. And there are also small things that can ruin some of us completely. I watched the young man. I liked how he looked, and I knew he came from the right sort of world. He stood for all the honest people whose courage is not fancy or showy, but simple and natural. I mean the deep ability to face temptation honestly, without posing. It is a quiet strength against dangers inside and outside us, supported by a faith that cannot be shaken by facts, by other people's example, or by ideas. Away with ideas! They are like beggars at the back door of your mind, taking away pieces of your belief in the simple truths you need if you want to live well and die peacefully!

En/Pt → This is not directly about Jim, but he looked like the kind of good, plain person we like to imagine standing on either side of us in life. He seemed like someone you would trust to be in charge of a ship's deck. I know what I am talking about, because I have trained many young men for sea service. The sea taught me much, and I think I also gave it good men. Some of those boys are grown now, and some have already drowned. If I went home tomorrow, I am sure that within two days some sunburned young officer would find me and say, "Do you remember me, sir? I was little So-and-so. It was my first voyage." Then I would remember a small confused boy with a mother or an older sister on the quay, too upset to wave goodbye, or a decent father who came to see his son off and stayed too long, fascinated by the windlass, until he had to rush ashore without time to say farewell. The mud pilot on the poop would shout for a moment to hold the ship steady while a gentleman got ashore. The tugs would take hold, the river would churn, and the man on shore would brush dust from his knees while the steward perhaps threw his umbrella after him. It was all proper. He had made his small sacrifice to the sea, and now he could go home pretending it meant nothing. The young beginner would be seasick by the next morning. Later, after he had learned the small tricks and the one great secret of the sea, he would be ready to live or die as the sea decided. Then the man who helped in this game, where the sea always wins, would be glad to feel a strong hand on his back and hear a cheerful voice say, "Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so."

En/Pt → I tell you this is good, because it proves that once in your life you went about things the right way. I have felt that heavy slap myself, and though it hurt, I was proud of it and felt less alone in the world because of it. Do I not remember the little So-and-so boys? I know what the right kind of look is. I would have trusted that young man with the ship's deck after one glance, and gone to sleep without worry. But that would not have been safe. There was something troubling in him. He looked real and honest, like a new coin, but there was some bad metal mixed in. How much? Only the smallest amount, perhaps just a little cursed drop. Yet standing there with his careless manner, he made you wonder whether he was only brass.

En/Pt → I could hardly believe it. I wanted to see him suffer for the honour of the trade. The other two men, who were not important, saw their captain and slowly came towards us. They talked as they walked, but I did not care at all. One had a broken arm. The tall one with grey moustaches was the chief engineer, a well-known bad character. They came closer. The captain looked down between his feet, as if some terrible illness had swollen him into a strange shape. Then he lifted his head, saw the two men, and opened his mouth to speak, or so I thought. But then he seemed to change his mind. His thick purple lips shut without a sound. He walked quickly and awkwardly to the gharry and pulled at the door handle with wild force, as if he wanted to tear the whole thing over, pony and all. The driver suddenly became terrified and held on tight, staring from his seat at that huge body forcing its way inside. The little carriage shook and rocked. The red neck, the big thighs, and the striped green-and-orange back made the scene look both funny and frightening, like a fever dream. Then he disappeared inside. I thought the roof might split open, but the gharry only sank on its springs and one blind fell down. His shoulders appeared again in the small opening. His head stuck out, huge and sweating, and he shouted angry orders at the driver. The driver whipped the pony, and it leapt forward at a gallop. I did not hear where they were going. In a moment the pony carried him away, and I never saw him again. I do not know if anyone ever did after that. He vanished as if he had flown into the air. The man with the sling began to run after the carriage, calling, "Captain! Captain!" but after a few steps he stopped, lowered his head, and walked back slowly. When the wheels rattled away, the young man turned round where he stood. He did not move again, and he kept facing that new direction after the gharry had gone from sight.

En/Pt → All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell. I am only slowing it down so you can follow it. The next moment, a clerk of mixed race, sent by Archie to look after the poor survivors of the Patna, arrived. He came running out, bareheaded and eager, looking from side to side. He was sure of his purpose, but it would fail with the main man. Still, he spoke to the others in an important way and soon got into a hard argument with the man whose arm was in a sling. That man was ready for a fight. He shouted that nobody would order him about. He would not be frightened by lies from a small, proud half-caste clerk. He would not be bullied, if the story was true or not. He yelled that he wanted to go to bed. Then he cried that if they were not "God-forsaken Portuguee," they would know the hospital was the right place for him. He pushed his good fist under the other man's nose. A crowd began to gather. The clerk, nervous but trying to look calm and respectable, tried to explain what he meant. I left before I saw how it ended.

En/Pt → But by chance I had a man in the hospital at that time. The day before the Inquiry opened, I went there to see him, and in the white men's ward I saw the little chap lying on his back, his arm in splints and his mind confused. To my great surprise, the tall man with the drooping white moustache was there too. I remembered seeing him slip away during the quarrel, moving in a strange half-prance, half-shuffle and trying not to look afraid. He knew the port well, it seems, and in his trouble he went straight to Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Mariani, who had known him before and had helped with his bad habits in other places, welcomed him and hid him upstairs with bottles in a dirty room in his poor house. He seemed to fear for his safety and wanted to stay hidden. Later Mariani told me he would have done even more for him, without asking questions, because of some old bad favor long ago. He beat his chest and cried, "Antonio never forget!" I never learned what the debt was. Still, he was given a place to stay behind locked doors, with a chair, a table, a mattress, and broken plaster on the floor, while he tried to calm himself with the drinks Mariani gave him. This went on until the evening of the third day. Then he screamed horribly and had to run for his life from a swarm of centipedes. He burst the door open, flew down the shaky stairs, landed on Mariani's stomach, got up, and ran like a rabbit into the street. The police found him on a garbage heap the next morning. At first he thought they were taking him to be hanged, so he fought like a hero. But when I sat by his bed, he had been quiet for two days. His thin brown face, with the white moustache, looked calm on the pillow, like an old soldier's face, except for a strange fear in his eyes. Because he seemed so calm, I began to hope he might explain the famous event from his own side. I cannot fully explain why I wanted to dig into such ugly details. Perhaps I was unwell in my curiosity. Perhaps I hoped to find a deep reason, a mercy, or some excuse. Now I see that I was hoping for the impossible: to remove the most stubborn ghost of human life, the doubt that rises like mist and gnaws like a worm, and is colder than death itself. It is the doubt about a fixed standard of right and wrong. It can cause panic and quiet acts of evil. It is the true shadow of disaster. Did I believe in a miracle? Why did I want it so much? Maybe I wanted to find an excuse for that young man, whom I had never met before, but whose face made the whole matter feel personal and frightening, as if it pointed to a dangerous fate waiting for all of us who had once been young like him. I fear that was my hidden reason. Yes, I was looking for a miracle. Now the only miraculous thing to me is how foolish I was. I hoped to get some kind of cure for doubt from that damaged and doubtful sick man. So, after a few polite words which he answered lazily like any decent patient, I brought up Patna in a careful question. I was careful for selfish reasons. I did not want to shock him. I did not care enough for him to feel pity or anger. His story did not matter to me, and neither did his salvation. He was too old in small crimes to make me feel much disgust or sympathy. He repeated, "Patna?" as if thinking. Then he said, "Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down." I was ready to speak angrily about such a stupid lie, when he added calmly, "She was full of reptiles."

En/Pt → This made me stop. What did he mean? The uneasy fear in his staring eyes seemed to freeze and look into mine with a pleading look. "They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking," he continued thoughtfully. Suddenly his voice sounded very strong. I was sorry I had spoken so foolishly. There was no nurse in sight, and far down the ward a brown, thin accident case from a ship in the harbour sat up in bed with a white bandage set at an angle on his forehead. Then my interesting patient shot out a thin arm like a tentacle and grabbed my shoulder. "Only my eyes were good enough to see. I'm famous for my eyesight. That's why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick enough to see her go, but they saw she was gone all right, and they shouted together - like this." Then came a wolf-like howl that seemed to search through my soul. "Oh! make 'im stop," complained the accident case. "You don't believe me, I suppose," the other man said, sounding very proud. "I tell you there are no eyes like mine this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed."

En/Pt → Of course I bent down at once. Anyone would have done the same. ‘What can you see?’ he asked. ‘Nothing,’ I said, feeling ashamed. He looked at me with wild contempt. ‘Exactly. But if I looked, I could see. No one has eyes like mine.’ He pulled me closer and whispered, ‘Millions of pink toads. It is worse than watching a ship sink. I could watch sinking ships and smoke all day. Why will they not give me my pipe? The ship was full of toads, and someone must watch them.’ He gave me a knowing wink. Sweat fell from my head, and my wet coat stuck to my back. The afternoon wind moved the curtains and empty bedcovers along the hospital ward, but I shook as if a cold winter wind were blowing through an old barn. From far away, the injured patient shouted, ‘Do not let him start screaming, sir!’ The old man pulled my shoulder again. ‘The ship was full of them, so we had to leave very quietly,’ he whispered quickly. ‘They were all pink, as large as great dogs, with one eye on top of the head and claws around their ugly mouths.’ His thin legs jumped under the cover, and he reached for something in the air. His whole body shook. The noble, calm face of an old soldier suddenly became full of secret fear. ‘Quiet! What are they doing down there now?’ he asked, pointing carefully at the floor. I understood his meaning and felt sick at my own cleverness. ‘They are all asleep,’ I answered. Those were the words he wanted. He took a long breath. ‘Good. Stay quiet. I know these animals. Hit the first one that moves. There are too many, and the ship will not float for more than ten minutes.’ Then he suddenly shouted, ‘Hurry! They are all awake - millions of them! They are walking over me! Wait! I will crush them like flies. Help! Help!’ His long scream filled the ward. The injured patient put both hands on his bandaged head, and a nurse appeared far away. I accepted defeat and escaped through a long window into the outside passage. The scream followed me. On an empty landing, everything became quiet, and I went down the bare, shining stairs while I tried to calm my thoughts. In the courtyard, a young doctor stopped me. He said my man might leave the next day. Then he told me that the chief engineer from the pilgrim ship was also there with a terrible case of delirium caused by drink. The engineer had spent three days drinking in a Greek or Italian bar, perhaps four bottles of brandy a day. His mind was gone, but there was a strange line of reason in his wild speech. Most patients saw snakes, the doctor said, but this man saw toads. The doctor had never found such a case so interesting. After that much drink, the man should have been dead, but he was very strong after twenty-four years in the tropics. ‘He is a noble-looking old drunk and a most unusual medical case,’ the doctor said. ‘Will you come and see him?’

En/Pt → Until then I had shown the usual polite interest. Now I pretended to be sorry, said I had no time, and quickly shook his hand. ‘Wait,’ he called after me. ‘He cannot attend the inquiry. Do you think his evidence is important?’

‘Not at all,’ I called back from the gate.

Chapter 6

En/Pt → The authorities clearly agreed. The inquiry was not put off. It was held on the set day to satisfy the law, and many people came because the case was interesting. The facts were not in doubt, at least not the one important fact. No one could discover how the Patna was damaged, and the court did not expect to. No one in the crowd cared much either. Still, as I have said, all the sailors in the port came, and the waterfront business was well represented. Whether they knew it or not, they came for a mental reason: they wanted some deep truth about human feeling, its strength, power, and horror. Of course, nothing like that could be shown. The questioning of the only man who could and would face it only kept circling around the known fact. It was as useful as tapping an iron box with a hammer if you wanted to learn what was inside. But an official inquiry could not be anything else. It was meant not to ask the deep why, but only the surface how.

En/Pt → The young man could have told them. That was what the audience really wanted to know, but the questions pushed him away from the one truth that mattered to me. You cannot expect the authorities to examine a man's soul, or maybe only his liver. Their job was to deal with the results, and honestly, a police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not suited to much else. I do not mean they were stupid. The magistrate was very patient. One assessor was a sailing-ship captain with a red beard and a religious nature. The other was Brierly, Big Brierly. Some of you may have heard of Big Brierly, the captain of the best ship in the Blue Star line. That was him.

En/Pt → He seemed very bored by the honour forced on him. In his whole life he had never made a mistake, never had an accident, never failed, and never been checked in his steady rise. He seemed to be one of those lucky men who never feel doubt or self-mistrust. At thirty-two he had one of the best commands in the Eastern trade, and he knew it. He thought there was nothing like it in the world, and if you had asked him directly, he would probably have said there was no better captain than himself. The right man had been chosen. Everyone else who did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa seemed lesser by comparison. He had saved lives at sea, rescued ships in danger, and received a gold chronometer from the underwriters and binoculars with an inscription from a foreign government to honour his work. He knew his own worth and his rewards very well. I liked him enough, though some kind, gentle men I know could not bear him at all. I am sure he thought himself far above me. Even if you were Emperor of East and West, you could not avoid feeling smaller near him. Yet I could not truly feel offended. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. No doubt it was annoying to have all that put on you. But when I remembered that I shared these disadvantages with twelve hundred million other human beings, I could bear his proud, mocking pity. There was something about him that I found attractive, though I never fully explained it to myself. At times I even envied him. Life's pain could do no more to his calm soul than a pin scratch on smooth rock. That was enviable. As I watched him standing beside the quiet, pale-faced magistrate at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction seemed as hard as granite. He killed himself very soon after.

En/Pt → No wonder Jim's case bored him. I was almost afraid of how deeply he despised the young man under examination, but he was probably holding a silent inquiry into his own case. The verdict must have been complete guilt, and he carried the secret of the evidence with him when he leaped into the sea. From what I know of men, the matter must have been very serious, one of those small things that wake up a thought and make a man unable to live with it. I know it was not money, not drink, and not a woman. He went overboard at sea barely a week after the inquiry ended, and less than three days after leaving port. It was as if he had suddenly seen the gates of the other world open wide for him in that exact place on the water.

En/Pt → Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-haired mate was a first-rate sailor and a pleasant old man with strangers, but with his captain he was the harshest chief officer I have ever seen. He would tell the story with tears in his eyes. It seems that when he came on deck in the morning, Brierly was writing in the chart-room. "It was ten minutes to four," he said, "and the middle watch was not relieved yet, of course. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking to the second mate and called me in. I did not want to go, and that is the truth, Captain Marlow. I could not stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame. We never know what a man is really like. He had been promoted over too many heads, mine included, and he had a terrible way of making you feel small, even when he only said 'Good morning.' I never spoke to him except about duty, and then I had to work hard to stay polite." He was flattering himself there. I often wondered how Brierly put up with his manners for more than half a voyage. "I have a wife and children," he went on, "and I had been with the Company for ten years, always expecting my next command, foolishly enough. He said, just like that, 'Come in here, Mr. Jones,' in that swaggering voice of his. So I went in. 'We'll lay down her position,' he said, bending over the chart with a pair of dividers. By the standing orders, the officer finishing his watch should have done that, but I said nothing and watched him mark the ship's position with a tiny cross and write the date and time. I can still see him writing those neat figures: seventeen, eight, four A.M. The year would have been written in red ink at the top of the chart. Captain Brierly never used a chart for more than a year. I have that chart now. When he finished, he stood looking at the mark and smiling to himself, then looked up at me. 'Thirty-two miles more as she goes,' he said, 'and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.'

En/Pt → "We were passing north of Hector Bank on that voyage. I said, 'All right, sir,' and wondered why he was making such a fuss, since I would have to call him anyway before changing course. Then eight bells rang. We came out on the bridge, and the second mate, before going off, said as usual, 'Seventy-one on the log.' Captain Brierly looked at the compass and then around him. It was dark and clear, and all the stars shone as plainly as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Then he said with a small sigh, 'I am going aft, and I shall set the log at zero for you myself, so there can be no mistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe. Let me see - the correction on the log is six per cent additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once. No use losing any distance - is there?' I had never heard him speak so long without a pause, and it seemed useless to me. I said nothing. He went down the ladder, and the dog, who was always at his heels day and night, followed him, sliding nose first after him. I heard his boot heels tap on the after-deck, then he stopped and spoke to the dog. 'Go back, Rover. On the bridge, boy! Go on - get.' Then he called to me from the dark, 'Shut that dog up in the chart-room, Mr. Jones - will you?'

En/Pt → This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. These were the last words he said in front of any living person. The old man's voice shook. He was afraid the poor animal would jump after him. He said Captain Brierly set the log for me, and even put a drop of oil in it. The oil-feeder was left nearby. The boatswain's mate brought the hose aft to wash down at half-past five, and later he came back to the bridge and said, "Please come aft, Mr. Jones. There is something strange. I do not like to touch it." It was Captain Brierly's gold chronometer watch, carefully hung under the rail by its chain.

En/Pt → When I saw it, I understood at once. My legs went weak. It was as if I had seen him go overboard, and I could tell how far behind he had been left. The taffrail-log showed eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing near the mainmast. I suppose he put them in his pockets to help him sink. But what are four iron pins to a strong man like Captain Brierly? Maybe he lost confidence at the end. That was the only sign of panic he ever showed, I think. But I can say this for him: once he was overboard, he did not try to swim. He would have had the courage to keep afloat all day if he had fallen in by accident. Yes, sir. He was second to none, if he said so himself. He had written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and one to me. He gave me many instructions about the voyage and about how I should behave with our people in Shanghai, so that I would keep command of the Ossa. He wrote like a father to a favorite son, Captain Marlow, though I was twenty-five years older than he was and had gone to sea long before him. In his letter to the owners, which he left open for me to read, he said he had always done his duty by them and was not betraying their trust, because he was leaving the ship to a seaman as capable as could be found, meaning me. He said that if his last act did not destroy his good name with them, they would value my faithful service and his strong recommendation when filling the place left by his death. I could not believe my eyes. It made me feel very strange. You would think he had jumped overboard only so that an unlucky man could get one last chance. After such a terrible and rash act, and after thinking I was a made man because of it, I was almost mad for a week. But no. The captain of the Pelion was moved to the Ossa in Shanghai. He was a little showy man in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. "Aw--I am--aw--your new captain, Mister--Mister--aw--Jones." He was covered in scent. I think my look made him stammer. He mumbled something about my disappointment and said his chief officer had got the promotion to the Pelion. Of course, he had nothing to do with it, and the office knew best. I said, "Don't mind old Jones, sir; damn his soul, he is used to it." He could see at once that he had upset me, and at our first meal together he began to complain about the ship in a nasty way. I had never heard such a voice. I clenched my teeth and kept quiet as long as I could, but at last I had to say something. He jumped up, tiptoeing and puffing himself up like a little fighting cock. "You will find you are dealing with someone different from the late Captain Brierly." "I have found it," I said, trying to stay calm while pretending to eat my steak. "You are an old ruffian, Mister--aw--Jones, and everyone in the company knows it," he squeaked. The crew stood around listening, grinning widely. "I may be rough," I said, "but I will not sit quietly while you sit in Captain Brierly's chair." Then I put down my knife and fork. "You would like to sit in it yourself--that is the real problem," he sneered. I left the saloon, packed my things, and was on the quay with all my bags before the dockworkers had even gone back to work. Yes. Out on the street, after ten years of service, with a wife and four children six thousand miles away depending on my half-pay for food. I left rather than hear Captain Brierly insulted. He left me his night-glasses, and he wanted me to look after the dog. Here he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Where is the captain, Rover?" The dog looked up with sad yellow eyes, gave one lonely bark, and crept under the table.

En/Pt → All this happened more than two years later on board the broken-down Fire-Queen, which Jones had somehow got in charge of, through a strange accident involving Matherson, the mad Matherson they usually called him, the same man who used to stay in Hai-phong before the occupation days. The old man went on sniffing.

Yes, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if nowhere else in the world. I wrote a full letter to his father and did not receive a single word back, not even thank you or go to the devil. Nothing. Perhaps they did not want to know.

Seeing that old Jones, with watery eyes, wiping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, and hearing the dog's sad cry, while the dirty, fly-ridden cabin stood as the only place to honor Brierly's memory, made his remembered figure seem very small and sad. It was fate's last revenge on the man, after his belief in his own greatness had almost protected him from the natural fear of death. Almost. Perhaps completely. Who can say what hopeful idea he had built about his own suicide?

En/Pt → Why did he do such a rash thing, Captain Marlow? Can you guess?" Jones asked, pressing his hands together. "Why? I cannot understand it. Why?" He hit his low, wrinkled forehead. "If he had been poor and old and in debt, and had no future, or if he had been mad. But he was not the kind who goes mad, not him. Trust me. A mate knows things about his skipper that are worth knowing. Young, healthy, rich, with no worries. I sit here sometimes thinking and thinking until my head starts to buzz. There had to be some reason."

"You can be sure of this, Captain Jones," I said. "It was nothing that would have troubled either of us much." Then, as if a light had suddenly come into his confused mind, poor old Jones gave one last thought of great depth. He blew his nose and nodded sadly. "Yes, yes. Neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought very highly of ourselves."

En/Pt → I will put up two hundred rupees if you put up another hundred and promise to make the fellow clear out early tomorrow morning. He is a gentleman, even if he cannot be touched. He will understand. He must. This terrible publicity is too awful. There he sits while all those damned natives, serangs, lascars, and quartermasters give evidence that is enough to burn a man with shame. This is terrible. Marlow, don't you think so too, don't you feel it as a seaman? If he went away, all this would stop at once." Brierly spoke with unusual excitement and began to reach for his wallet. I stopped him and said coldly that the cowardice of those four men did not seem very important to me. "And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose," he said angrily. I told him that was what I called myself, and I hoped I was one. He listened, then made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to erase me as a person and push me back into the crowd. "The worst of it," he said, "is that none of you fellows has any sense of dignity. You do not care enough about what you are supposed to be."

En/Pt → We had been walking slowly, and then we stopped opposite the harbour office, looking at the very place where the huge captain of the Patna had disappeared as completely as a tiny feather in a hurricane. I smiled. Brierly continued, "This is shameful. We have all kinds among us, even some complete scoundrels, but we must keep professional decency or we become no better than loose repairmen wandering around. We are trusted. Do you understand? Trusted. Honestly, I do not care in the least about all the pilgrims who ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this even to a ship full of old rags. We are not a formal organization, and the only thing that holds us together is that kind of decency. Such an affair destroys confidence. A man may go through most of his sea life without any need to show courage. But when the time comes... Ah... if I..."

Original English Text

Front Matter

2. Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Contents

Front Matter

Português → **Joseph Conrad**

Author’s Note

Português → When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got about that I had been bolted away with. Some reviewers maintained that the work starting as a short story had got beyond the writer’s control. One or two discovered internal evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse them. They pointed out the limitations of the narrative form. They argued that no man could have been expected to talk all that time, and other men to listen so long. It was not, they said, very credible.

After thinking it over for something like sixteen years, I am not so sure about that. Men have been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night ‘swapping yarns’. This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions affording some measure of relief; and in regard to the listeners’ endurance, the postulate must be accepted that the story was interesting. It is the necessary preliminary assumption. If I hadn’t believed that it was interesting I could never have begun to write it. As to the mere physical possibility we all know that some speeches in Parliament have taken nearer six than three hours in delivery; whereas all that part of the book which is Marlow’s narrative can be read through aloud, I should say, in less than three hours. Besides--though I have kept strictly all such insignificant details out of the tale--we may presume that there must have been refreshments on that night, a glass of mineral water of some sort to help the narrator on.

Português → But, seriously, the truth of the matter is, that my first thought was of a short story, concerned only with the pilgrim ship episode; nothing more. And that was a legitimate conception. After writing a few pages, however, I became for some reason discontented and I laid them aside for a time. I didn’t take them out of the drawer till the late Mr. William Blackwood suggested I should give something again to his magazine.

It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim ship episode was a good starting-point for a free and wandering tale; that it was an event, too, which could conceivably colour the whole ‘sentiment of existence’ in a simple and sensitive character. But all these preliminary moods and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the time, and they do not appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so many years.

The few pages I had laid aside were not without their weight in the choice of subject. But the whole was re-written deliberately. When I sat down to it I knew it would be a long book, though I didn’t foresee that it would spread itself over thirteen numbers of Maga.

Português → I have been asked at times whether this was not the book of mine I liked best. I am a great foe to favouritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works. As a matter of principle I will have no favourites; but I don’t go so far as to feel grieved and annoyed by the preference some people give to my Lord Jim. I won’t even say that I ‘fail to understand . . .’ No! But once I had occasion to be puzzled and surprised.

A friend of mine returning from Italy had talked with a lady there who did not like the book. I regretted that, of course, but what surprised me was the ground of her dislike. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it is all so morbid.’

Português → The pronouncement gave me food for an hour’s anxious thought. Finally I arrived at the conclusion that, making due allowances for the subject itself being rather foreign to women’s normal sensibilities, the lady could not have been an Italian. I wonder whether she was European at all? In any case, no Latin temperament would have perceived anything morbid in the acute consciousness of lost honour. Such a consciousness may be wrong, or it may be right, or it may be condemned as artificial; and, perhaps, my Jim is not a type of wide commonness. But I can safely assure my readers that he is not the product of coldly perverted thinking. He’s not a figure of Northern Mists either. One sunny morning, in the commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, I saw his form pass by--appealing--significant--under a cloud--perfectly silent. Which is as it should be. It was for me, with all the sympathy of which I was capable, to seek fit words for his meaning. He was ‘one of us’.

Português → J.C.

Português → 1917.

Chapter 1

Português → He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.

Português → A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun, but he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practically. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s heart. The connection thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship remains in harbour, by the daily visits of the water-clerk. To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Later on the bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane occupation. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk who possesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of having been brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money and some humouring. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with black ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. To his employers the reasons he gave were obviously inadequate. They said ‘Confounded fool!’ as soon as his back was turned. This was their criticism on his exquisite sensibility.

Português → To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships he was just Jim--nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that it should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to another--generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but inevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say--Lord Jim.

Português → Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. The little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. It had stood there for centuries, but the trees around probably remembered the laying of the first stone. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. The living had belonged to the family for generations; but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, he was sent at once to a ‘training-ship for officers of the mercantile marine.’

Português → He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. He was generally liked. He had the third place in navigation and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having a steady head with an excellent physique, he was very smart aloft. His station was in the fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belching out smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure.

Português → On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book.

‘Something’s up. Come along.’

He leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded.

Português → It was the dusk of a winter’s day. The gale had freshened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. The next gust seemed to blow all this away. The air was full of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. He stood still. It seemed to him he was whirled around.

Português → He was jostled. ‘Man the cutter!’ Boys rushed past him. A coaster running in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship’s instructors had seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. ‘Collision. Just ahead of us. Mr. Symons saw it.’ A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. ‘Lower away!’ He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail, and rushed after her. He heard a splash. ‘Let go; clear the falls!’ He leaned over. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter could be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind, that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship. A yelling voice in her reached him faintly: ‘Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save anybody! Keep stroke!’ And suddenly she lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide.

Português → Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. ‘Too late, youngster.’ The captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious defeat in his eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically. ‘Better luck next time. This will teach you to be smart.’

Português → A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing back half full of water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace. Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for the gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so--better than anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Nevertheless he brooded apart that evening while the bowman of the cutter--a boy with a face like a girl’s and big grey eyes--was the hero of the lower deck. Eager questioners crowded round him. He narrated: ‘I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped. Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don’t mind a bit him being grumpy with us. He swore at me all the time he held my leg, but that was only his way of telling me to stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully excitable--isn’t he? No--not the little fair chap--the other, the big one with a beard. When we pulled him in he groaned, “Oh, my leg! oh, my leg!” and turned up his eyes. Fancy such a big chap fainting like a girl. Would any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook?--I wouldn’t. It went into his leg so far.’ He showed the boat-hook, which he had carried below for the purpose, and produced a sensation. ‘No, silly! It was not his flesh that held him--his breeches did. Lots of blood, of course.’

Português → Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement had served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge more than those who had done the work. When all men flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone would know how to deal with the spurious menace of wind and seas. He knew what to think of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible. He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage.

Chapter 2

Português → After two years of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so well known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure. He made many voyages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. This reward eluded him. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Besides, his prospects were good. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself.

Português → Only once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life.

Português → Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing but the disorder of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Then fine weather returned, and he thought no more about It.

Português → His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he was left behind.

Português → There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon.

Português → Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended into the town to look for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered just then, and, while waiting, he associated naturally with the men of his calling in the port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement. The majority were men who, like himself, thrown there by some accident, had remained as officers of country ships. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They loved short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the distinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy enough. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in their persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence.

Português → To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found a fascination in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on such a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna.

The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a wooden jetty.

Português → They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from villages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left their forests, their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity, their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their fathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief.

Português → ‘Look at dese cattle,’ said the German skipper to his new chief mate.

An Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. He walked slowly aboard, handsome and grave in his white gown and large turban. A string of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and backed away from the wharf.

She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. The Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by sea. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith.

Português → She cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, continued on her way through the ‘One-degree’ passage. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.

Português → Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.

The nights descended on her like a benediction.

Chapter 3

Português → A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre.

Português → Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s face. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother.

Português → A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. The patent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky.

Português → Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. The only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in the air. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Jim would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull’s-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship’s position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship’s spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. ‘How steady she goes,’ thought Jim with wonder, with something like gratitude for this high peace of sea and sky. At such times his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship’s keel upon the sea as the black line drawn by the pencil upon the chart.

Português → The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running through every limb as though all the blood in his body had turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There was something obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs.

Português → The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. ‘Hot is no name for it down below,’ said a voice.

Português → Jim smiled without looking round. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. The sailors had a good time of it up here, and what was the use of them in the world he would be blowed if he could see. The poor devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they--‘Shut up!’ growled the German stolidly. ‘Oh yes! Shut up--and when anything goes wrong you fly to us, don’t you?’ went on the other. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b’gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. He must have been born reckless, b’gosh. He . . . ‘Where did you get drink?’ inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Jim went on smiling at the retreating horizon; his heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was contemplating his own superiority. ‘Drink!’ repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. ‘Not from you, captain. You’re far too mean, b’gosh. You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of schnapps. That’s what you Germans call economy. Penny wise, pound foolish.’ He became sentimental. The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o’clock--‘only one, s’elp me!’--good old chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn’t do it. Not it. Not to-night anyhow. He was sleeping sweetly like a little child, with a bottle of prime brandy under his pillow. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. He had been stranded out East somewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he probably did not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. He had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly out of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation expanding in these seas and men of his craft being scarce at first, he had ‘got on’ after a sort. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. He was usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren’t bad chaps though. Even the skipper himself . . . His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. The quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life was easy and he was too sure of himself--too sure of himself to . . . The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider’s web.

Português → The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the consideration of his finances and of his courage.

‘Who’s drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won’t do. You ought to know by this time the chief ain’t free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk, b’gosh. I’ve never been the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain’t made yet that would make _me_ drunk. I could drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b’gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. If I thought I was drunk I would jump overboard--do away with myself, b’gosh. I would! Straight! And I won’t go off the bridge. Where do you expect me to take the air on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that vermin down there? Likely--ain’t it! And I am not afraid of anything you can do.’

The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little without a word.

Português → ‘I don’t know what fear is,’ pursued the engineer, with the enthusiasm of sincere conviction. ‘I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin’ work in this rotten hooker, b’gosh! And a jolly good thing for you that there are some of us about the world that aren’t afraid of their lives, or where would you be--you and this old thing here with her plates like brown paper--brown paper, s’elp me? It’s all very fine for you--you get a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about me--what do I get? A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself. I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who wouldn’t chuck a dratted job like this? ‘Tain’t safe, s’elp me, it ain’t! Only I am one of them fearless fellows . . .’

Português → He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. He said ‘Damn!’ as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Then they looked upwards at the stars.

Português → What had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said ‘What’s that?’ in the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air.

Chapter 4

Português → A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed questions, tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said, speaking of the ship: ‘She went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick.’ The illustration was good: the questions were aiming at facts, and the official Inquiry was being held in the police court of an Eastern port. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one’s conscience. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. The light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed composed of staring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!

Português → ‘After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from the force of the blow?’ asked the assessor sitting to the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand.

Português → ‘I did not,’ said Jim. ‘I was told to call no one and to make no noise for fear of creating a panic. I thought the precaution reasonable. I took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water already. I knew then there must be a big hole below the water-line.’ He paused.

‘Yes,’ said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise.

Português → ‘I did not think of danger just then. I might have been a little startled: all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. I went back to tell the captain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on the top step when getting down while I was forward. He exclaimed, “My God! That rotten bulkhead’ll give way in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead.” He pushed me away with his right arm and ran before me up the ladder, shouting as he climbed. His left arm hung by his side. I followed up in time to see the captain rush at him and knock him down flat on his back. He did not strike him again: he stood bending over him and speaking angrily but quite low. I fancy he was asking him why the devil he didn’t go and stop the engines, instead of making a row about it on deck. I heard him say, “Get up! Run! fly!” He swore also. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine-room companion which was on the port side. He moaned as he ran. . . .’

Português → He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men who wanted facts. After his first feeling of revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted to go on talking for truth’s sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. This awful activity of mind made him hesitate at times in his speech. . . .

Português → ‘The captain kept on moving here and there on the bridge; he seemed calm enough, only he stumbled several times; and once as I stood speaking to him he walked right into me as though he had been stone-blind. He made no definite answer to what I had to tell. He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like “confounded steam!” and “infernal steam!”--something about steam. I thought . . .’

Português → He was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut short his speech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely discouraged and weary. He was coming to that, he was coming to that--and now, checked brutally, he had to answer by yes or no. He answered truthfully by a curt ‘Yes, I did’; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. He was made to answer another question so much to the point and so useless, then waited again. His mouth was tastelessly dry, as though he had been eating dust, then salt and bitter as after a drink of sea-water. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run down his back. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers.

Português → Jim’s eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and clear. Jim answered another question and was tempted to cry out, ‘What’s the good of this! what’s the good!’ He tapped with his foot slightly, bit his lip, and looked away over the heads. He met the eyes of the white man. The glance directed at him was not the fascinated stare of the others. It was an act of intelligent volition. Jim between two questions forgot himself so far as to find leisure for a thought. This fellow--ran the thought--looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had come across that man before--in the street perhaps. He was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. At present he was answering questions that did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether he would ever again speak out as long as he lived. The sound of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer. That man there seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty. Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as after a final parting.

Português → And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly.

Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past.

Chapter 5

Português → ‘Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,’ he would say, ‘and to this day I haven’t left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each of us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of us has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because I don’t like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--the devil, I mean. I haven’t seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial evidence. He is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be thus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of confessions. Then why? Can’t tell--unless it be to make time pass away after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous occupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves, “Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk.”

Português → ‘Talk? So be it. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Of course there are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end is told--even if there happens to be any end to it.

Português → ‘My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious, because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, “Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?” and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! There was some indignation, not a few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them, you know. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic as well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing in the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men walking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where that queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself, “Here they are!”

Português → ‘There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. There could be no mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance: the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come across him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!”

Português → ‘I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurrying on a little in advance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk in a startling way. He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like that hasn’t the ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes. Very well. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or report, or whatever you like to call it.

Português → ‘It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to the principal shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn’t, you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. It was so strong as to be almost beautiful. The race--the two races rather--and the climate . . . However, never mind. I know where I have a friend for life.

Português → ‘Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still wondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been transported in front of his desk. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Quite a riot. By that time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of the Patna case. He says that as soon as he understood who it was before him he felt quite unwell--Archie is so sympathetic and easily upset--but pulled himself together and shouted “Stop! I can’t listen to you. You must go to the Master Attendant. I can’t possibly listen to you. Captain Elliot is the man you want to see. This way, this way.” He jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. “Look here! what’s up? Let go! Look here!” Archie flung open the door without knocking. “The master of the Patna, sir,” he shouts. “Go in, captain.” He saw the old man lift his head from some writing so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and fled to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature: but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he couldn’t collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of his own name. Archie’s the most sensitive shipping-master in the two hemispheres. He declares he felt as though he had thrown a man to a hungry lion. No doubt the noise was great. I heard it down below, and I have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as far as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had a great stock of words and could shout--and didn’t mind who he shouted at either. He would have shouted at the Viceroy himself. As he used to tell me: “I am as high as I can get; my pension is safe. I’ve a few pounds laid by, and if they don’t like my notions of duty I would just as soon go home as not. I am an old man, and I have always spoken my mind. All I care for now is to see my girls married before I die.” He was a little crazy on that point. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. However, that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah! ejected him again.

Português → ‘Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste and stand still on the outer steps. He had stopped close to me for the purpose of profound meditation: his large purple cheeks quivered. He was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed look. The other three chaps that had landed with him made a little group waiting at some distance. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly. He stared across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes. The young chap, making no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the sunshine. This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as only the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of me by false pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about the behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale that was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official inquiry. “That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound,” said the captain of the Patna. I can’t tell whether he recognised me--I rather think he did; but at any rate our glances met. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open window. “Did he?” I said from some strange inability to hold my tongue. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--“Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt” with in those places. I won’t make a secret of it that I had been “aguaindt” with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. I’ve known such a time, and, what’s more, I shan’t now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons.

Português → ‘“You Englishmen are all rogues,” went on my patriotic Flensborg or Stettin Australian. I really don’t recollect now what decent little port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that precious bird. “What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me.” His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. “That’s what you English always make--make a tam’ fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your tam’ country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don’t want the certificate. A man like me don’t want your verfluchte certificate. I shpit on it.” He spat. “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his bullet head positively smoked. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. That’s how he looked, and it was odious. I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand what I mean. Nothing more awful than to watch a man who has been found out, not in a crime but in a more than criminal weakness. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of us are totally and completely undone. I watched the youngster there. I liked his appearance; I knew his appearance; he came from the right place; he was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very existence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage. I don’t mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!

Português → ‘This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. He was the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. I say I would, and I ought to know. Haven’t I turned out youngsters enough in my time, for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft whose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the component part of every waking thought--till it is present in every dream of their young sleep! The sea has been good to me, but when I remember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don’t think I have done badly by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice speaking above my hat would ask: “Don’t you remember me, sir? Why! little So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl, “Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. There’s a gentleman wants to get ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got carried off to Talcahuano, didn’t you? Now’s your time; easy does it. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick before next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy voice: “Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so.”

Português → ‘I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least you had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump. Don’t I remember the little So-and-so’s! I tell you I ought to know the right kind of looks. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and, by Jove! it wouldn’t have been safe. There are depths of horror in that thought. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some infernal alloy in his metal. How much? The least thing--the least drop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made you--standing there with his don’t-care-hang air--he made you wonder whether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass.

Português → ‘I couldn’t believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for the honour of the craft. The other two no-account chaps spotted their captain, and began to move slowly towards us. They chatted together as they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been visible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other--might have been exchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw that with one of them it was a case of a broken arm; and as to the long individual with grey moustaches he was the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious personality. They were nobodies. They approached. The skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to strike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. The driver, shaken out of his meditation over the sole of his foot, displayed at once all the signs of intense terror, and held with both hands, looking round from his box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his conveyance. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. He roared at him to be off, to go on. Where? Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Where? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to disport himself in, and I did not hear the precise address. A snorting pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. The Pacific is indeed big; but whether he found a place for a display of his talents in it or not, the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on a broomstick. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after the carriage, bleating, “Captain! I say, Captain! I sa-a-ay!”--but after a few steps stopped short, hung his head, and walked back slowly. At the sharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where he stood. He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in the new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight.

Português → ‘All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the scene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and very full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn’t going to be ordered about--“not he, b’gosh.” He wouldn’t be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. He was not going to be bullied by “no object of that sort,” if the story were true “ever so”! He bawled his wish, his desire, his determination to go to bed. “If you weren’t a God-forsaken Portuguee,” I heard him yell, “you would know that the hospital is the right place for me.” He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. I went away without waiting to see the end.

Português → ‘But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry, I saw in the white men’s ward that little chap tossing on his back, with his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also found his way there. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes. He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani’s stomach, picked himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct, I can’t explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you like; but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps, unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an excuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own sake that I wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young fellow whom I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a touch of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of his weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint of a destructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had resembled his youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. I was, and no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must have been pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated Patna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and said: “Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down.” I made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added smoothly, “She was full of reptiles.”

Português → ‘This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine wistfully. “They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking,” he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. “Only my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my eyesight. That’s why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and sang out together--like this.” . . . A wolfish howl searched the very recesses of my soul. “Oh! make ‘im dry up,” whined the accident case irritably. “You don’t believe me, I suppose,” went on the other, with an air of ineffable conceit. “I tell you there are no such eyes as mine this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed.”

Português → ‘Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so. “What can you see?” he asked. “Nothing,” I said, feeling awfully ashamed of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt. “Just so,” he said, “but if I were to look I could see--there’s no eyes like mine, I tell you.” Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. “Millions of pink toads. There’s no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It’s worse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke my pipe all day long. Why don’t they give me back my pipe? I would get a smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They’ve got to be watched, you know.” He winked facetiously. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter’s gale in an old barn at home. “Don’t you let him start his hollering, mister,” hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. “The ship was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,” he whispered with extreme rapidity. “All pink. All pink--as big as mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their ugly mouths. Ough! Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--“Ssh! what are they doing now down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. “They are all asleep,” I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That’s what he wanted to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long breath. “Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them brutes. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There’s too many of them, and she won’t swim more than ten minutes.” He panted again. “Hurry up,” he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: “They are all awake--millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait! I’ll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!” An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons who was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. “Been to see your man, Captain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no notion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we’ve got the chief engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.’s of the worst kind. He has been drinking hard in that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop for three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy a day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious part is there’s some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to find out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium. Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn’t. Good old tradition’s at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are batrachian. Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don’t you know, after such a festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of the tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking old boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever met--medically, of course. Won’t you?”

Português → ‘I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest, but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. “I say,” he cried after me; “he can’t attend that inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?”

‘“Not in the least,” I called back from the gateway.’

Chapter 6

Português → ‘The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry was not adjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law, and it was well attended because of its human interest, no doubt. There was no incertitude as to facts--as to the one material fact, I mean. How the Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the court did not expect to find out; and in the whole audience there was not a man who cared. Yet, as I’ve told you, all the sailors in the port attended, and the waterside business was fully represented. Whether they knew it or not, the interest that drew them here was purely psychological--the expectation of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the horror, of human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be disclosed. The examination of the only man able and willing to face it was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on an iron box, were the object to find out what’s inside. However, an official inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair.

Português → ‘The young chap could have told them, and, though that very thing was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put to him necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance, would have been the only truth worth knowing. You can’t expect the constituted authorities to inquire into the state of a man’s soul--or is it only of his liver? Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not much good for anything else. I don’t mean to imply these fellows were stupid. The magistrate was very patient. One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition. Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some of you must have heard of Big Brierly--the captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line. That’s the man.

Português → ‘He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him. He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust. At thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern trade--and, what’s more, he thought a lot of what he had. There was nothing like it in the world, and I suppose if you had asked him point-blank he would have confessed that in his opinion there was not such another commander. The choice had fallen upon the right man. The rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. He was acutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough, though some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn’t stand him at any price. I haven’t the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my superior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West, you could not have ignored your inferiority in his presence--but I couldn’t get up any real sentiment of offence. He did not despise me for anything I could help, for anything I was--don’t you know? I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. No doubt, to have all this forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. I have never defined to myself this attraction, but there were moments when I envied him. The sting of life could do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. This was enviable. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite. He committed suicide very soon after.

Português → ‘No wonder Jim’s case bored him, and while I thought with something akin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the young man under examination, he was probably holding silent inquiry into his own case. The verdict must have been of unmitigated guilt, and he took the secret of the evidence with him in that leap into the sea. If I understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am in a position to know that it wasn’t money, and it wasn’t drink, and it wasn’t woman. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of the inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward passage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he had suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open wide for his reception.

Português → ‘Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with his commander the surliest chief officer I’ve ever seen, would tell the story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came on deck in the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room. “It was ten minutes to four,” he said, “and the middle watch was not relieved yet of course. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking to the second mate, and called me in. I was loth to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow--I couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of. He had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but by the way he said ‘Good morning.’ I never addressed him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep a civil tongue in my head.” (He flattered himself there. I often wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half a voyage.) “I’ve a wife and children,” he went on, “and I had been ten years in the Company, always expecting the next command--more fool I. Says he, just like this: ‘Come in here, Mr. Jones,’ in that swagger voice of his--‘Come in here, Mr. Jones.’ In I went. ‘We’ll lay down her position,’ says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand. By the standing orders, the officer going off duty would have done that at the end of his watch. However, I said nothing, and looked on while he marked off the ship’s position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and the time. I can see him this moment writing his neat figures: seventeen, eight, four A.M. The year would be written in red ink at the top of the chart. He never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly didn’t. I’ve the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down at the mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me. ‘Thirty-two miles more as she goes,’ says he, ‘and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.’

Português → ‘“We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage. I said, ‘All right, sir,’ wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to call him before altering the course anyhow. Just then eight bells were struck: we came out on the bridge, and the second mate before going off mentions in the usual way--‘Seventy-one on the log.’ Captain Brierly looks at the compass and then all round. It was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh: ‘I am going aft, and shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no mistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe. Let’s see--the correction on the log is six per cent. additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once. No use losing any distance--is there?’ I had never heard him talk so much at a stretch, and to no purpose as it seemed to me. I said nothing. He went down the ladder, and the dog, that was always at his heels whenever he moved, night or day, followed, sliding nose first, after him. I heard his boot-heels tap, tap on the after-deck, then he stopped and spoke to the dog--‘Go back, Rover. On the bridge, boy! Go on--get.’ Then he calls out to me from the dark, ‘Shut that dog up in the chart-room, Mr. Jones--will you?’

Português → ‘“This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir.” At this point the old chap’s voice got quite unsteady. “He was afraid the poor brute would jump after him, don’t you see?” he pursued with a quaver. “Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he--would you believe it?--he put a drop of oil in it too. There was the oil-feeder where he left it near by. The boat-swain’s mate got the hose along aft to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on the bridge--‘Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,’ he says. ‘There’s a funny thing. I don’t like to touch it.’ It was Captain Brierly’s gold chronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain.

Português → ‘“As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew, sir. My legs got soft under me. It was as if I had seen him go over; and I could tell how far behind he was left too. The taffrail-log marked eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round the mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help him down, I suppose; but, Lord! what’s four iron pins to a powerful man like Captain Brierly. Maybe his confidence in himself was just shook a bit at the last. That’s the only sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but I am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try to swim a stroke, the same as he would have had pluck enough to keep up all day long on the bare chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir. He was second to none--if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He had written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and the other to me. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--I had been in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end of hints as to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I should keep the command of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would to a favourite son, Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years his senior and had tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched. In his letter to the owners--it was left open for me to see--he said that he had always done his duty by them--up to that moment--and even now he was not betraying their confidence, since he was leaving the ship to as competent a seaman as could be found--meaning me, sir, meaning me! He told them that if the last act of his life didn’t take away all his credit with them, they would give weight to my faithful service and to his warm recommendation, when about to fill the vacancy made by his death. And much more like this, sir. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all over,” went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula. “You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only to give an unlucky man a last show to get on. What with the shock of him going in this awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was nearly off my chump for a week. But no fear. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. ‘Aw--I am--aw--your new captain, Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.’ He was drowned in scent--fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look I gave him that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Says I, ‘Don’t you mind old Jones, sir; dam’ his soul, he’s used to it.’ I could see directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy show. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held my peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something. Up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little fighting-cock. ‘You’ll find you have a different person to deal with than the late Captain Brierly.’ ‘I’ve found it,’ says I, very glum, but pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. ‘You are an old ruffian, Mister--aw--Jones; and what’s more, you are known for an old ruffian in the employ,’ he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers stood about listening with their mouths stretched from ear to ear. ‘I may be a hard case,’ answers I, ‘but I ain’t so far gone as to put up with the sight of you sitting in Captain Brierly’s chair.’ With that I lay down my knife and fork. ‘You would like to sit in it yourself--that’s where the shoe pinches,’ he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift--on shore--after ten years’ service--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir! I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his night-glasses--here they are; and he wished me to take care of the dog--here he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Where’s the captain, Rover?” The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under the table.

Português → ‘All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. The old chap snuffled on--

‘“Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there’s no other place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing! Perhaps they did not want to know.”

‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Almost! Perhaps wholly. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide?

Português → ‘“Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you think?” asked Jones, pressing his palms together. “Why? It beats me! Why?” He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead. “If he had been poor and old and in debt--and never a show--or else mad. But he wasn’t of the kind that goes mad, not he. You trust me. What a mate don’t know about his skipper isn’t worth knowing. Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason.”

‘“You may depend on it, Captain Jones,” said I, “it wasn’t anything that would have disturbed much either of us two,” I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me dolefully: “Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of ourselves.”

Português → ‘Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. I spoke with him for the last time during the progress of the inquiry. It was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street. He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. “They caught me for that inquiry, you see,” he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. “And goodness knows how long it will last. Three days, I suppose.” I heard him out in silence; in my then opinion it was a way as good as another of putting on side. “What’s the use of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine,” he pursued hotly. I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me with a sort of pent-up violence. “I feel like a fool all the time.” I looked up at him. This was going very far--for Brierly--when talking of Brierly. He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it a slight tug. “Why are we tormenting that young chap?” he asked. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said angrily, “Why, yes. Can’t he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared out? What does he expect to happen? Nothing can save him. He’s done for.” We walked on in silence a few steps. “Why eat all that dirt?” he exclaimed, with an oriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. I wondered greatly at the direction of his thoughts, but now I strongly suspect it was strictly in character: at bottom poor Brierly must have been thinking of himself. I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the means of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was keeping him in the Sailors’ Home for the time being, and probably he hadn’t a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some money to run away. “Does it? Not always,” he said, with a bitter laugh, and to some further remark of mine--“Well, then, let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there! By heavens! _I_ would.” I don’t know why his tone provoked me, and I said, “There is a kind of courage in facing it out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away nobody would trouble to run after him.” “Courage be hanged!” growled Brierly. “That sort of courage is of no use to keep a man straight, and I don’t care a snap for such courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice now--of softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if you put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out early to-morrow morning. The fellow’s a gentleman if he ain’t fit to be touched--he will understand. He must! This infernal publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. This is abominable. Why, Marlow, don’t you think, don’t you feel, that this is abominable; don’t you now--come--as a seaman? If he went away all this would stop at once.” Brierly said these words with a most unusual animation, and made as if to reach after his pocket-book. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance. “And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose,” he pronounced angrily. I said that’s what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. “The worst of it,” he said, “is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity; you don’t think enough of what you are supposed to be.”

Português → ‘We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped opposite the harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which the immense captain of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a hurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: “This is a disgrace. We’ve got all kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many tinkers going about loose. We are trusted. Do you understand?--trusted! Frankly, I don’t care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of old rags in bales. We aren’t an organised body of men, and the only thing that holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency. Such an affair destroys one’s confidence. A man may go pretty near through his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip. But when the call comes . . . Aha! . . . If I . . .”

Versão em Português B1

Páginas Iniciais

2. Nota do Autor

Capítulo 1

Capítulo 2

Capítulo 3

Capítulo 4

Capítulo 5

Capítulo 6

Contents

Páginas Iniciais

English → **Joseph Conrad**

Nota do Autor

English → Quando este romance apareceu pela primeira vez em forma de livro, algumas pessoas disseram que a história havia escapado do meu controle. Ela começara como um conto, mas ficou muito mais longa. Alguns críticos acreditavam que podiam provar isso pelo texto e pareciam achar graça. Disseram que a maneira de contar a história não era convincente: nenhum homem poderia falar por tantas horas, e nenhum grupo poderia escutar por tanto tempo.

Depois de pensar nisso por quase dezesseis anos, já não tenho tanta certeza. Em países quentes e frios, muitas pessoas já passaram metade da noite acordadas contando histórias. Marlow conta apenas uma história, e há pausas que dão algum descanso aos ouvintes. Precisamos aceitar que eles continuaram escutando porque a história era interessante. Se eu não acreditasse nisso, jamais poderia tê-la escrito. Também era fisicamente possível. Alguns discursos no Parlamento duraram quase seis horas, enquanto toda a parte narrada por Marlow pode ser lida em voz alta em menos de três. Também podemos imaginar que os ouvintes tomaram alguma bebida naquela noite, talvez um copo de água mineral para ajudar o narrador a continuar.

English → Mas a verdade é que, no início, planejei apenas um conto sobre o navio de peregrinos. Era uma ideia razoável. Depois de escrever algumas páginas, porém, fiquei insatisfeito com elas e as guardei. Só voltei a tirá-las da gaveta quando o falecido Sr. William Blackwood me pediu que escrevesse mais alguma coisa para sua revista.

Só então percebi que o acontecimento no navio de peregrinos era um bom começo para uma história livre e errante. Ele também poderia mudar toda a maneira como uma pessoa simples e sensível sentia a vida. Esses primeiros pensamentos e sentimentos não eram claros para mim naquela época e, depois de tantos anos, ainda não são muito mais claros.

As páginas que eu havia guardado ainda influenciaram minha escolha do tema, mas reescrevi tudo com cuidado. Quando comecei, sabia que seria um livro longo. No entanto, não esperava que ele ocupasse treze edições da Maga.

English → Às vezes me perguntaram se este é o meu livro favorito. Não gosto de favoritismo na vida pública, na vida privada nem mesmo na relação de um autor com seus livros. Por princípio, não tenho favoritos. Ainda assim, não fico magoado nem irritado quando algumas pessoas preferem Lord Jim. Nem sequer direi que não consigo entendê-las. Mas certa vez um comentário sobre o livro me deixou confuso e surpreso.

Um amigo que voltava da Itália havia conversado lá com uma mulher que não gostava do livro. É claro que lamentei, mas o motivo da antipatia dela me surpreendeu. ‘Sabe’, disse ela, ‘tudo nele é tão doentio e sombrio.’

English → O comentário dela me deixou preocupado por uma hora. Por fim, decidi que, como o assunto talvez estivesse fora do que as mulheres normalmente sentem, aquela senhora não podia ser italiana. Cheguei a me perguntar se ela era europeia. Eu acreditava que uma pessoa latina não veria nada de doentio numa dolorosa consciência da honra perdida. Esse sentimento pode estar certo ou errado, e alguns podem chamá-lo de artificial. Talvez Jim não seja um tipo comum de homem. Mas posso garantir aos leitores que ele não nasceu de um pensamento frio ou distorcido e que não é uma figura das brumas do norte. Numa manhã ensolarada, num porto comum do Oriente, vi passar um homem como ele. Parecia aflito e importante, sob uma sombra e em completo silêncio. Minha tarefa era encontrar as palavras certas para explicar o que ele significava, com toda a compreensão de que eu era capaz. Ele era ‘um de nós’.

English → J.C.

English → 1917.

Capítulo 1

English → Ele tinha pouco menos de um metro e oitenta, era forte e caminhava diretamente para você, com a cabeça à frente e os ombros um pouco curvados. Seu olhar duro, por baixo da testa, lembrava um touro avançando. A voz era profunda e alta. Mostrava uma confiança teimosa, mas sem agressividade. Parecia natural e dirigida tanto contra si mesmo quanto contra os outros. Estava sempre impecável, vestido de branco dos sapatos ao chapéu. Nos portos orientais, onde trabalhava como agente marítimo de um fornecedor de navios, era muito popular.

English → Um agente marítimo não precisa passar em prova alguma, mas deve demonstrar capacidade na prática. Seu trabalho era competir a vela, vapor ou remo com outros agentes para chegar primeiro a um navio prestes a ancorar. Recebia o capitão com alegria, entregava o cartão do fornecedor e, na primeira ida do capitão a terra, conduzia-o com firmeza e discrição a uma loja enorme. Ali havia tudo para a vida a bordo, de alimentos e bebidas a ferramentas e materiais, até folhas de ouro para decoração. Um fornecedor desconhecido recebia o capitão como velho amigo. Havia uma sala fresca, poltronas, garrafas, charutos, material de escrita, regulamentos do porto e uma acolhida capaz de enternecer um marinheiro após longa viagem. O agente visitava o navio todos os dias enquanto permanecesse no porto. Era leal como amigo, cuidadoso como filho, paciente, generoso e alegre. Depois vinha a conta. Era uma profissão gentil e útil, por isso bons agentes eram raros. Quem também conhecia o mar valia muito e precisava ser bem tratado. Jim sempre recebia bom salário e muita paciência dos patrões. Mesmo assim, de repente pedia demissão e partia. Suas razões pareciam fracas, e, depois que saía, chamavam-no de tolo. Era a resposta deles à sua extrema sensibilidade.

English → Para os brancos do comércio portuário e os capitães, ele era simplesmente Jim. Tinha outro nome, mas não queria ouvi-lo. Seu disfarce era cheio de falhas e ocultava não sua identidade, mas um fato. Quando esse fato aparecia, deixava o porto e seguia para outro, geralmente mais a leste. Permanecia nos portos porque era um marinheiro exilado do mar, e sua habilidade só servia ao trabalho de agente. Recuava ordenadamente em direção ao sol nascente, enquanto a verdade o seguia por acaso e de forma inevitável. Ao longo dos anos, foi conhecido em Bombaim, Calcutá, Rangum, Penang e Batávia, sempre apenas como Jim, o agente marítimo. Mais tarde, quando sua percepção do insuportável o afastou dos portos e dos brancos até a floresta profunda, os malaios da aldeia onde tentou esconder seu infeliz dom acrescentaram um título. Chamaram-no Tuan Jim, isto é, Lorde Jim.

English → Ele vinha da casa de um pastor. Muitos bons capitães mercantes saem desses lares de fé e paz. O pai de Jim possuía conhecimento religioso suficiente para orientar os pobres sem perturbar o conforto dos moradores de mansões. A pequena igreja no morro, cinzenta de musgo, parecia uma rocha entre folhas. Estava ali havia séculos, embora as árvores talvez se lembrassem da primeira pedra. Abaixo, a fachada vermelha da casa paroquial brilhava entre gramados, flores e pinheiros. Atrás havia um pomar; à esquerda, um pátio de estábulos; junto ao muro de tijolos, estufas de vidro. O benefício eclesiástico pertencia à família havia gerações. Mas Jim era um de cinco filhos e, quando livros leves de férias despertaram seu amor pelo mar, foi enviado a um navio-escola para oficiais da marinha mercante.

English → Ali aprendeu um pouco de trigonometria e a atravessar as vergas superiores. Em geral, todos gostavam dele. Ficou em terceiro lugar em navegação e remava na posição principal do primeiro escaler. Tinha cabeça firme e corpo forte, por isso era rápido no cordame. Seu posto era na gávea de vante, de onde observava os telhados tranquilos cortados pelo rio marrom e as chaminés finas contra o céu sujo, soltando fumaça como vulcões. Via também grandes navios partindo, balsas em movimento, pequenos barcos e a beleza distante do mar. Tudo o enchia de esperança por uma vida emocionante de aventuras.

English → No convés inferior, entre duzentas vozes, esquecia-se de si e imaginava a vida marítima dos livros. Via-se salvando náufragos, cortando mastros num furacão ou atravessando a arrebentação com uma corda. Imaginava-se náufrago solitário, descalço e seminu, buscando mariscos nos recifes para não morrer de fome. Enfrentava povos selvagens, impedia motins e, num pequeno barco no oceano, sustentava o ânimo de homens desesperados. Em todas as cenas, era fiel ao dever e corajoso como um herói.

- Algo está acontecendo. Vamos.

Ele se levantou de um salto. Os rapazes corriam pelas escadas. Acima havia correria e gritos; ao passar pela escotilha, Jim parou, chocado e incapaz de compreender.

English → Era o anoitecer de um dia de inverno. A tempestade, mais forte desde o meio-dia, interrompera o tráfego no rio. Agora soprava em rajadas como canhões disparando sobre o oceano. A chuva caía inclinada e depois diminuía por um instante. Entre as rajadas, Jim via a maré revolta, pequenos barcos lançados junto à margem, prédios imóveis na névoa, grandes balsas balançando nas âncoras e plataformas subindo e descendo sob a espuma. O vento seguinte parecia varrer tudo. O ar estava cheio de água voadora. A tempestade parecia feroz e decidida, e a confusão da terra e do céu parecia dirigida contra ele. Jim ficou imóvel de medo, como se girasse.

English → Alguém o empurrou. - Tripulem o escaler! Os rapazes passaram correndo. Um navio costeiro em busca de abrigo atingira uma escuna ancorada, e um instrutor vira a colisão. Os rapazes subiram ao corrimão e se reuniram junto aos turcos. Um empurrão lançou Jim contra o mastro de mezena, e ele agarrou uma corda. O velho navio-escola estremecia nas amarras, voltando suavemente a proa ao vento, enquanto o cordame fino vibrava como a voz profunda de sua antiga vida. - Baixem! O barco tripulado caiu abaixo do corrimão, e Jim correu atrás. Ouviu o mergulho. Inclinou-se sobre o rio, que fervia em espuma. Na luz que sumia, o escaler lutava contra maré e vento. Uma voz gritou: - Mantenham a remada, seus moleques, se querem salvar alguém! De repente, a proa se ergueu e o barco, com os remos suspensos sobre uma onda, libertou-se do vento e da corrente.

English → Uma mão firme pousou no ombro de Jim. - Tarde demais, rapaz - disse o capitão, impedindo-o de saltar. Jim ergueu os olhos, mostrando claramente a derrota. O capitão sorriu com bondade. - Mais sorte na próxima vez. Isso o ensinará a ser rápido.

English → Um grande aplauso recebeu o escaler. Ele voltou dançando, meio cheio de água, com dois homens exaustos deitados no fundo. Primeiro, Jim temera a tempestade e o mar; agora achava o perigo fraco e sem importância. Não sentia medo. Acreditava poder enfrentar perigos maiores melhor que qualquer um. Mesmo assim, naquela noite ficou sozinho pensando enquanto o chefe do escaler, rapaz de rosto delicado e grandes olhos cinzentos, era elogiado como herói. Cercado por jovens, contou como vira uma cabeça na água, enfiara o croque e o prendera nas calças do homem. Quase caíra também, mas o velho Symons largara o leme e agarrara suas pernas. Disse que Symons era bom, embora mal-humorado e cheio de palavrões. O homem grande de barba gemera por causa da perna e desmaiara como uma moça. Mostrou o croque e explicou que as calças o haviam sustentado, não a carne. Naturalmente, havia muito sangue.

English → Jim considerou aquilo uma triste exibição de vaidade. A tempestade criara um falso heroísmo, assim como fingira ser terrível. Irritava-o que vento e mar o tivessem surpreendido e lhe tirado a chance de enfrentar o perigo. Contudo, ficou contente por não entrar no escaler, pois uma ação menor bastara. Sentia ter aprendido mais que os homens do resgate. Quando os outros tivessem medo, saberia enfrentar a falsa ameaça do vento e das ondas. Visto com calma, tudo parecia fraco e sem valor. Depois do choque, afastou-se dos rapazes barulhentos, com uma nova e orgulhosa certeza em seu amor pela aventura e em sua coragem de muitas formas.

Capítulo 2

English → Após dois anos de treinamento, foi para o mar. Entrou no mundo imaginado, estranhamente vazio de aventuras. Fez muitas viagens e conheceu a vida repetitiva entre céu e água. Suportou críticas, exigências do mar e o trabalho duro que garante o pão, mas recompensa apenas quem o ama de verdade. Jim não encontrou essa recompensa. Mesmo assim, não podia voltar, pois a vida no mar é sedutora, decepcionante e difícil de abandonar. Seu futuro parecia bom: era educado, firme, obediente e conhecia o dever. Ainda jovem, tornou-se imediato de um bom navio, sem jamais ser testado pelos grandes acontecimentos que revelam a verdadeira natureza de um homem.

English → Apenas uma vez viu novamente a seriedade da fúria do mar. As pessoas não enxergam essa verdade com tanta frequência quanto imaginam. Há muitos graus de perigo e tempestade; só às vezes surge uma força sombria e deliberada. Então vento e mar parecem atacar com crueldade, desejando destruir esperança, medo, corpo cansado e desejo de descanso. Querem esmagar tudo o que o homem viu, conheceu, amou, apreciou ou odiou e tomar o que lhe é precioso: sol, lembranças e futuro. No fim, podem apagar seu mundo inteiro simplesmente tirando-lhe a vida.

English → No início de uma semana que o capitão escocês chamaria de "um milagre perfeito", Jim foi atingido por uma verga. Passou dias de costas, atordoado, machucado, sem esperança e inquieto. Nos momentos de clareza, dizia não se importar com o fim. O perigo invisível se torna vago; o medo enfraquece; a imaginação, inimiga do homem e mãe de todos os temores, adormece quando a emoção se esgota. Jim via apenas a desordem da cabine e sentia alívio secreto por não precisar subir ao convés. Às vezes, uma dor repentina o fazia ofegar e se contorcer. Então o fato cruel de que a vida podia conter tanto sofrimento lhe dava vontade desesperada de escapar a qualquer preço. Depois, o bom tempo voltou, e ele deixou de pensar nisso.

English → Mas o ferimento não sarou. Quando o navio chegou a um porto oriental, Jim precisou ir ao hospital. Recuperou-se devagar, e o navio partiu sem ele.

English → Havia apenas outros dois pacientes na ala dos brancos. Um era o tesoureiro de uma canhoneira, que quebrara a perna ao cair por uma escotilha. O outro, um bondoso empreiteiro ferroviário de uma província próxima, sofria de estranha doença tropical. Achava o médico um tolo e tomava escondido um remédio patenteado trazido com lealdade pelo criado tâmil. Os três contavam suas vidas, jogavam um pouco ou passavam o dia de pijama, bocejando em poltronas e sem falar. O hospital ficava num morro. Uma brisa suave entrava pelas janelas sempre abertas, trazendo o céu tranquilo, a terra pesada e o belo cheiro das águas orientais para a sala vazia. Havia perfumes e uma sensação de repouso profundo, como um sonho infinito. Todos os dias, Jim olhava além dos jardins e telhados, depois das palmeiras, para o ancoradouro movimentado que levava ao Oriente. Via pequenas ilhas enfeitadas, sol forte, navios minúsculos e movimento alegre como uma festa, sob o céu calmo e o mar pacífico até o horizonte.

English → Assim que pôde andar sem bengala, foi à cidade procurar passagem para casa. Nada apareceu e, enquanto esperava, juntou-se aos homens de sua profissão. Havia dois tipos. Uns poucos, raramente vistos, levavam vidas estranhas e conservavam energia, temperamento de pirata e olhos de sonhador. Moviam-se por um labirinto de planos, esperanças, perigos e viagens, à frente da civilização e nas partes escuras do mar. Para eles, apenas a morte parecia certa. A maioria era como Jim: algum acidente os levara até ali, e ficaram como oficiais de navios locais. Temiam o serviço em casa, mais duro, disciplinado e tempestuoso. Amavam a paz do céu e do mar orientais, viagens curtas, cadeiras confortáveis, grandes tripulações nativas e o prestígio de serem brancos. Temiam trabalho e viviam de modo fácil e incerto, sempre perto da demissão e de outro emprego. Serviam chineses, árabes e mestiços e serviriam ao próprio diabo se fosse bastante fácil. Falavam sem parar sobre sorte: o barco tranquilo de um na costa chinesa, o bom posto de outro no Japão, o sucesso de um terceiro na marinha siamesa. Em suas palavras, gestos e rostos, Jim via o ponto fraco: lenta decadência e desejo de atravessar a vida à deriva e em segurança.

English → No início, Jim via aquela multidão falante como marinheiros menos sólidos que sombras. Com o tempo, sentiu-se estranhamente atraído por eles e por seu sucesso com tão pouco perigo e trabalho. Ao desprezo inicial juntou-se outro sentimento. Então abandonou de repente a ideia de voltar para casa e embarcou como imediato do Patna.

O Patna era um velho vapor local, estreito como galgo e coberto de ferrugem. Pertencia a um chinês, fora fretado por um árabe e era comandado por um estranho alemão de Nova Gales do Sul. Ele insultava publicamente o próprio país e tratava com crueldade quem não temia. Tinha expressão dura, nariz roxo e bigode vermelho. Depois de pintado por fora e caiado por dentro, recebeu cerca de oitocentos peregrinos enquanto mantinha vapor junto ao cais de madeira.

English → Eles entraram em corrente por três passarelas, movidos pela fé e pela esperança do paraíso. Seus pés descalços produziam um arrastar constante; não falavam nem olhavam para trás. Livres das grades, espalhavam-se pelo convés, iam à proa e à popa e desciam pelas escotilhas, enchendo o interior como água numa cisterna. Eram oitocentos homens e mulheres cheios de fé, esperança, amor e lembranças. Vinham do norte, do sul e de lugares orientais distantes, depois de longas viagens por trilhas, rios, canoas e ilhas. Enfrentaram sofrimento, visões e medos estranhos, guiados por um único desejo. Haviam deixado cabanas solitárias, aldeias cheias, povoados marítimos, florestas, governantes, riqueza ou pobreza, lugares da juventude e túmulos dos pais. Estavam empoeirados, suados, sujos e cobertos de trapos. Havia homens fortes conduzindo famílias, velhos com pouca esperança de retorno, rapazes corajosos, moças tímidas de cabelos desarrumados e mulheres nervosas apertando bebês adormecidos contra o peito. Eram peregrinos conduzidos por uma crença rigorosa.

English → - Olhe para esse gado - disse o capitão alemão ao novo imediato.

Um árabe, chefe daquela viagem sagrada, embarcou por último. Caminhava devagar, belo e sério em sua túnica branca e grande turbante. Criados levavam sua bagagem. Então o Patna soltou as amarras e se afastou do cais.

Passou entre duas pequenas ilhas, cruzou a área de ancoragem, virou na sombra de um morro e seguiu junto a uma linha de recifes espumantes. Na popa, o árabe recitou a oração dos viajantes do mar, pedindo ao Altíssimo que abençoasse a viagem, o trabalho dos homens e os desejos secretos de seus corações. Ao anoitecer, o vapor avançava pelas águas calmas do estreito. Muito atrás, um farol num banco perigoso brilhava como olho de fogo, parecendo zombar da missão dos fiéis.

English → O navio saiu do estreito, cruzou a baía, passou pela Passagem de Um Grau e tomou rumo direto ao Mar Vermelho sob um céu claro e ardente. O sol parecia esgotar pensamento e força. Sob aquele brilho estranho, o mar era azul-escuro e imóvel. O Patna avançava com um leve assobio sobre a água lisa. Uma linha negra de fumaça seguia atrás, e uma faixa branca de espuma surgia e desaparecia como o fantasma de uma trilha num mar morto.

English → Toda manhã, o sol parecia viajar com a peregrinação. Nascia silencioso à mesma distância atrás do navio, alcançava-o ao meio-dia e queimava o propósito dos peregrinos com seus raios. Depois passava e desaparecia todas as noites no mar diante da proa. Os cinco brancos viviam no centro, separados dos passageiros. Toldos cobriam o convés como um teto branco. Apenas um leve rumor revelava a multidão. Os dias imóveis, quentes e pesados seguiam uns aos outros, caindo para sempre no espaço atrás do navio. Sob uma fina faixa de fumaça, o Patna prosseguia sozinho, negro e fumegante na distância brilhante, como se um céu impiedoso o queimasse.

As noites desciam sobre o navio como uma bênção.

Capítulo 3

English → Uma imobilidade maravilhosa preenchia o mundo. As estrelas, com luz calma, pareciam prometer segurança duradoura na Terra. A lua jovem, curva e baixa no oeste, parecia uma lasca de uma barra de ouro. O Mar da Arábia se estendia liso e fresco como gelo até a linha escura do horizonte. A hélice girava constantemente, como se aquele mundo seguro tivesse sido criado para ela. Dois rastros profundos seguiam o Patna; dentro deles, redemoinhos brancos, ondulações e pequenas ondas se quebravam e logo se acalmavam. Depois da passagem, o mar voltava lentamente à perfeita imobilidade, com a forma negra do casco sempre no centro.

English → Na ponte, Jim sentia profunda segurança e paz no mundo silencioso, como o amor gentil no rosto de uma mãe. Sob os toldos, os peregrinos confiavam nos brancos, em sua coragem e no poder do casco de ferro. Dormiam em esteiras, cobertores ou tábuas, em todos os conveses e cantos escuros, envoltos em tecidos coloridos ou trapos, com a cabeça sobre pequenos embrulhos e o rosto no braço dobrado. Homens, mulheres e crianças dormiam juntos. Velhos e jovens, fracos e fortes eram iguais diante do sono, irmão da morte.

English → Uma corrente de ar atravessava o espaço escuro entre as laterais altas do navio e passava sobre os passageiros adormecidos. Pequenas lâmpadas lançavam luz fraca sobre rostos, mãos, pés descalços, cabeças curvadas e corpos magros sob tecidos rasgados. Famílias ricas fizeram abrigos com caixas e esteiras; pobres dormiam com tudo o que possuíam amarrado num pano sob a cabeça. Velhos deitavam nos tapetes de oração com as mãos sobre as orelhas. Um pai se agachava junto ao filho; uma mulher coberta segurava duas crianças nuas. Perto da popa, os pertences dos árabes formavam uma pilha escura entre potes de latão, lanças, espada, almofadas e cafeteira. O sino da barquinha de velocidade soava a cada milha. Suspiros de sonhos inquietos vinham dos dormentes; sob o convés, ruídos de metal, pás e portas das fornalhas rompiam o silêncio. O navio prosseguia firmemente sobre o mar calmo sob o céu pacífico.

English → Jim caminhava de um lado para o outro. No grande silêncio, seus passos pareciam altos, como se as estrelas o ouvissem. Olhava o horizonte desejando algo inalcançável, sem ver o perigo à frente. A única sombra no mar era a fumaça negra da chaminé. Dois malaios permaneciam quase imóveis ao leme. Jim olhou bússola e horizonte, depois se espreguiçou até as juntas estalarem. Sentia conforto e força; o mar calmo o tornava ousado. Acreditava poder enfrentar qualquer coisa. Consultou a carta, onde a rota era uma linha reta, e apreciou o avanço firme. Gostava de imaginar ações corajosas e grandes sucessos. Esses sonhos lhe pareciam a parte mais verdadeira da vida, enchendo-o de confiança. Sorrindo, continuou a olhar à frente; atrás, a esteira branca era tão reta quanto a linha de lápis na carta.

English → O ruído dos baldes de cinzas nos ventiladores anunciou o fim do turno. Jim suspirou, feliz e triste: lamentava deixar aquela paz que libertava seus sonhos, mas estava sonolento. O capitão subiu silencioso, de pijama e casaco aberto, rosto vermelho, meio adormecido. Curvou-se sobre a carta e se coçou. Jim achou repulsivo seu corpo nu, o peito gorduroso e úmido como se o sono tivesse derretido a gordura. O capitão disse algo oficial com voz áspera. Jim respondeu educadamente. Mas aquela figura carnal ficou para sempre em sua memória como imagem de tudo o que era baixo e odioso no mundo e nos homens.

English → A lua fina desceu e sumiu na água escura. O céu parecia aproximar-se da Terra, cheio de estrelas sobre o mar plano. O navio avançava tão suavemente que ninguém sentia o movimento, como um planeta lotado viajando entre estrelas. Então uma voz disse: - Lá embaixo, "quente" nem começa a descrever.

English → Jim sorriu sem se virar. O capitão mostrava as costas e costumava fingir que os outros não existiam, salvo quando os atacava com palavrões. Agora apenas grunhiu. Junto à escada, o segundo engenheiro esfregava um pano sujo nas mãos úmidas e reclamava. Dizia que marinheiros levavam vida fácil e inútil, enquanto engenheiros faziam todo o trabalho. O alemão mandou-o calar, mas ele continuou: quando algo dava errado, todos procuravam os engenheiros. Estava meio bêbado e, depois de três dias naquele inferno, pronto para qualquer coisa. A máquina arruinada fazia barulho terrível, e ninguém explicava por que arriscava a vida naquela sucata. O alemão perguntou onde conseguira bebida. Jim sorria para o horizonte, sentindo-se generoso e superior. O engenheiro respondeu que o capitão era mesquinho demais para dar-lhe aguardente. O chefe lhe dera um pouco, mas não saía da cama, onde dormia com conhaque sob o travesseiro. Os dois engenheiros se conheciam havia anos e eram suspeitos de grandes roubos. Um era pesado e cruel; o outro, magro como cavalo velho. Expulso de um navio muito antes, sobrevivia no Oriente e se gabava de sua experiência. Caminhava junto à claraboia fumando tabaco ruim. Não costumava dividir bebida, mas naquela noite o fizera; por isso o segundo estava alegre, ousado e falante. O alemão estava furioso. Jim, divertido, desejava o fim do turno. Não gostava deles, mas se sentia acima. Relaxado e seguro, quase adormeceu em pé.

English → O segundo engenheiro passou a falar de seu salário e de sua coragem.

- Bêbado? Eu? Não, capitão! O chefe não é generoso o bastante para embriagar um pardal. Nunca fiquei bêbado. Não existe bebida capaz disso. Eu beberia fogo contra seu uísque e continuaria sóbrio. Se achasse que estava bêbado, saltaria ao mar e me mataria. E não sairei da ponte. Onde respiraria ar fresco nesta noite? No convés com aquela multidão? Claro que não! E não tenho medo de nada que você possa fazer.

Sem falar, o alemão ergueu os dois punhos pesados ao céu e os sacudiu.

English → - Não sei o que é medo - continuou o engenheiro, convencido. - Não temo fazer todo o trabalho duro neste navio quebrado. É sorte sua que alguns de nós não temam pela vida. Caso contrário, onde estariam você e este casco de chapas como papel? Você ganha muito dinheiro com ele; eu recebo apenas cento e cinquenta dólares por mês e pago minhas despesas. Quem não abandonaria este emprego maldito? Não é seguro. Mas sou um desses homens sem medo...

English → Soltou o corrimão e gesticulou, como se desenhasse no ar o tamanho de sua coragem. A voz fina guinchava sobre o mar. Caminhou nas pontas dos pés e, de repente, caiu de cabeça, como se atingido por trás. Ao cair, disse: - Maldição! Seguiu-se breve silêncio. Jim e o capitão avançaram, pararam rígidos e olharam espantados o mar inalterado, depois as estrelas.

English → O que acontecera? A máquina continuava. A Terra parara? O mar calmo e o céu limpo de repente pareceram inseguros, equilibrados sobre uma destruição. O engenheiro se ergueu e voltou a cair, perguntando abafado: - O que foi isso? Um som muito fraco, como trovão distante, passou lentamente - mais vibração que ruído. O navio respondeu com um tremor, como se o trovão estivesse sob a água. Os malaios olharam para os brancos sem largar o leme. O casco pareceu levantar-se repetidamente em todo o comprimento, como se fosse flexível, e tornar a cair enquanto cortava o mar. Então o tremor e o trovão desapareceram, como se o navio atravessasse uma estreita faixa de água vibrante e ar sonoro.

Capítulo 4

English → Cerca de um mês depois, durante o interrogatório, Jim tentou contar honestamente: - Ela passou por cima daquilo com a facilidade de uma cobra rastejando sobre um graveto. Era boa comparação. O inquérito oficial ocorria no tribunal policial de um porto oriental. Jim estava no alto do banco das testemunhas, as faces ardendo na sala fresca. Grandes leques se moviam acima; muitos olhos em rostos escuros, brancos e vermelhos escutavam. Sua voz lhe parecia o único som do mundo, pois as perguntas dolorosas arrancavam respostas de seu coração como sua própria consciência. Fora, o sol queimava; dentro, o vento era frio, a vergonha ardia, e os olhos pareciam facas. O magistrado pálido estava entre dois assessores náuticos de rostos vermelhos. Uma janela iluminava os três, enquanto o público era uma massa de sombras. Queriam fatos. Fatos! Como se fatos explicassem alguma coisa.

English → - Depois de concluir que haviam atingido algo parcialmente submerso, talvez um destroço alagado, seu capitão mandou-o verificar danos à vante. Pela força do choque, julgou isso provável? - perguntou o assessor à esquerda, de barba fina em ferradura e olhos azuis atentos, com as mãos ásperas unidas diante do rosto. O outro era pesado e desdenhoso, recostado e batendo os dedos num mata-borrão. No meio, o magistrado estava ereto numa grande poltrona, cabeça inclinada e braços cruzados, com flores junto ao tinteiro.

English → - Não - disse Jim. - Mandaram-me não chamar ninguém nem fazer barulho para evitar pânico. Achei sensato. Peguei uma lâmpada sob os toldos e fui à proa. Ao abrir a escotilha do pique, ouvi água. Baixei a lâmpada pela corda e vi que o compartimento estava mais da metade cheio. Soube que havia um grande rombo abaixo da linha-d'água. Ele parou.

- Sim - disse o assessor grande, sorrindo distraído para o mata-borrão enquanto os dedos continuavam a tocá-lo.

English → - Naquele momento não pensei no perigo. Talvez estivesse chocado, porque tudo aconteceu em silêncio e depressa. Sabia que o único anteparo era o de colisão entre o pique e o porão de vante. Voltei para avisar o capitão. Ao pé da escada encontrei o segundo engenheiro se levantando, confuso, dizendo que quebrara o braço esquerdo ao escorregar. Ele gritou: "Meu Deus! Aquele anteparo podre cederá em um minuto, e esta coisa afundará como chumbo." Empurrou-me com o braço direito e subiu correndo, com o esquerdo pendurado. Vi o capitão derrubá-lo. Não tornou a bater, mas falou zangado em voz baixa, perguntando por que não fora parar as máquinas em vez de causar uma cena. Ouvi: "Levante! Corra! Voe!" O engenheiro desceu a escada de estibordo e correu até a entrada da casa de máquinas a bombordo, gemendo...

English → Jim falava devagar, mas lembrava tudo rápida e claramente. Quase poderia imitar os gemidos para ajudar os homens que queriam fatos. Passada a raiva inicial, acreditara que apenas palavras exatas mostrariam o horror. Os fatos eram reais, visíveis e palpáveis; exigiram um vapor de mil e quatrocentas toneladas e vinte e sete minutos. Mas havia algo além: uma força invisível de ruína, como alma má num corpo feio. Queria deixar claro que não fora um acontecimento comum e que cada detalhe importava. Felizmente lembrava tudo. Desejava continuar por amor à verdade e talvez por si mesmo. Enquanto falava, porém, sua mente corria dentro do círculo de fatos que o isolava, como animal preso procurando uma fresta, um ponto fraco ou qualquer saída. Por isso, às vezes fazia pausas...

English → - O capitão andava pela ponte. Parecia calmo, mas tropeçou várias vezes. Uma vez veio direto contra mim, como se não me visse. Não respondeu claramente. Murmurava, e ouvi "vapor maldito", "vapor infernal" - algo sobre vapor. Eu pensei...

English → Uma pergunta direta o interrompeu como dor aguda, deixando-o cansado e desanimado. Tudo o levara àquele simples sim ou não. - Sim, pensei - respondeu honestamente. Jovem, belo e de ombros largos, permaneceu ereto enquanto sofria por dentro. Outra pergunta inútil veio. Sua boca estava seca como poeira, depois salgada e amarga como água do mar. Limpou o suor, passou a língua nos lábios e estremeceu. O assessor grande tamborilava distraído; os olhos do outro pareciam bondosos. O magistrado inclinara o rosto pálido junto às flores e apoiara a cabeça na mão. O vento dos leques passava sobre nativos de roupas soltas, europeus em ternos pesados e funcionários descalços de casacos brancos, faixas e turbantes vermelhos, silenciosos como fantasmas.

English → Entre respostas, os olhos de Jim pousaram num branco sentado separado. Seu rosto parecia gasto pela preocupação, mas os olhos eram calmos e interessados. Jim quis gritar: "Qual é o sentido?" Bateu o pé, mordeu o lábio e olhou sobre as cabeças, encontrando o olhar do homem. Não era a fascinação dos outros, mas atenção firme e pensativa. Jim achou que ele olhava alguém ou algo atrás de seu ombro. Talvez o tivesse visto na rua; nunca falara com ele. Havia dias não conversava com ninguém, apenas consigo mesmo, como prisioneiro numa cela ou viajante perdido. Agora respondia perguntas sem importância e duvidava que voltasse a falar livremente. Suas próprias respostas mostravam a inutilidade das palavras. Aquele homem parecia compreender seu sofrimento sem esperança. Jim o fitou e desviou-se como após uma despedida final.

English → Mais tarde, em muitos lugares distantes, Marlow mostrou-se disposto a recordar Jim longa e detalhadamente em voz alta.

Podia acontecer depois do jantar, numa varanda coberta de folhas e flores imóveis, à luz profunda da noite marcada pelas pontas vermelhas dos charutos. Cada cadeira de vime continha um ouvinte quieto. Às vezes um pequeno brilho iluminava dedos preguiçosos, parte de um rosto em repouso ou olhos pensativos. À primeira palavra de Marlow, seu corpo estendido ficava imóvel, como se o espírito retornasse ao passado e falasse por seus lábios.

Capítulo 5

English → - Sim, estive no inquérito - diria. - Até hoje não sei por quê. Estou pronto a acreditar que cada um tem um anjo da guarda, se admitirem também um demônio familiar. Não gosto de me sentir especial, e sei que tenho o meu - o demônio. Nunca o vi, mas julgo pelas provas. Ele é mesquinho e me mete nesse tipo de problema: o inquérito, o cão amarelo - quem imaginaria um cão nativo imundo fazendo pessoas tropeçarem na varanda do tribunal? - problemas que, de maneira diabólica, me fazem encontrar homens com fraquezas, durezas e doenças ocultas e levá-los a confessar seus segredos, como se eu não tivesse os meus e preocupações suficientes até morrer. O que fiz para merecer isso? Tenho problemas como qualquer um e memória tão ruim quanto a maioria; não fui feito para carregar confissões. Então por quê? Talvez para passar o tempo depois do jantar. Charley, seu jantar foi excelente e, por causa dele, estes homens acham um jogo de cartas trabalho demais. Sentam em suas boas cadeiras e pensam: "Ao diabo o esforço. Deixem Marlow falar."

English → - Falar? Pois bem. É fácil falar de Mestre Jim depois de boa refeição, duzentos pés acima do mar, com bons charutos e uma noite fresca e estrelada que nos faz esquecer que vivemos de tempo emprestado, devemos caminhar com cuidado, vigiar cada minuto e cada erro irreparável e esperar morrer bem no fim - embora nem disso tenhamos certeza - , com pouca ajuda dos companheiros. Há homens para quem a vida inteira parece a hora após o jantar com charuto: fácil, agradável, vazia, talvez animada por alguma história de luta esquecida antes do final - antes do final, se é que existe um.

English → - Nossos olhos se encontraram pela primeira vez no inquérito. Todos ligados ao mar estavam lá, pois a história era famosa desde o estranho telegrama de Áden que nos fizera rir. Era estranho, embora declarasse um fato nu e feio. Ninguém na zona portuária falava de outra coisa. Ao me vestir na cabine, ouvia meu dubash parse conversar com o comissário sobre o Patna. Em terra, todo conhecido perguntava: "Já ouviu coisa pior?" e sorria amargamente, entristecia ou praguejava. Até desconhecidos conversavam para aliviar a mente. Todo vagabundo da cidade conseguiu muitas bebidas com o caso. Ouvia-se no porto, nos corretores, agentes, entre brancos, nativos, mestiços e barqueiros seminus. Havia raiva, piadas e conversa interminável sobre o que lhes acontecera. Depois de duas semanas, pensávamos que o mistério também seria trágico. Uma manhã, à sombra dos degraus do porto, vi quatro homens vindo pelo cais. Perguntei de onde vinham e então pensei: "Aqui estão eles!"

English → - Eram os quatro. Três pareciam como deviam; um era mais gordo do que qualquer homem deveria ser. Tinham acabado de desembarcar, depois de bom café da manhã, de um vapor da Dale Line. Reconheci o alegre capitão do Patna, o homem mais gordo dos trópicos. Nove meses antes o vira em Samarang. Seu navio carregava na enseada, e ele passava os dias bebendo cerveja no fundo da loja de De Jongh e amaldiçoando o Império Alemão. De Jongh cobrava um florim por garrafa e dizia em particular, torcendo o rosto enrugado: "Negócio é negócio, mas este homem me deixa doente. Tfui!"

English → - Observei-o da sombra. Ele vinha depressa, enorme sob o sol, como um filhote de elefante treinado a andar nas patas traseiras. Parecia ridículo e grandioso num traje de dormir sujo, listrado de verde e laranja, chinelos de palha rasgados e um velho capacete de outra pessoa, imundo, dois números menor e amarrado à cabeça com corda de manilha. Um homem assim dificilmente conseguiria roupas emprestadas. Passou a menos de um metro e, inocente como criança, subiu correndo ao escritório para entregar sua declaração.

English → - Parece que falou primeiro com o chefe de navegação. Archie Ruthvel chegara e ia começar o dia repreendendo seu principal funcionário, um pequeno mestiço português de pescoço fino que sempre tentava conseguir carne salgada, biscoitos ou batatas dos capitães. Certa vez lhe dei uma ovelha viva, não por precisar dele - ele não podia ajudar - , mas por sua fé infantil no direito sagrado a presentes. Era quase bela. A raça - ou as duas raças - e o clima... Não importa. Sei onde tenho um amigo para a vida toda.

English → - Ruthvel contou que repreendia o homem sobre moralidade oficial quando ouviu um ruído. Virou-se e viu uma enorme coisa redonda, de flanela listrada, de cabeça para baixo no meio do escritório. Primeiro nem percebeu que estava viva. O arco da antessala estava cheio de curiosos. O homem soltou o chapéu e avançou curvando-se. Falava com voz áspera e triste, mas corajosa. Archie entendeu que era o caso Patna e, ao descobrir quem era, sentiu-se mal. Mandou-o procurar o capitão Elliot, o Master Attendant, e o empurrou ao escritório particular. Na porta, o homem hesitou e bufou como boi assustado. Archie abriu sem bater e anunciou: "O comandante do Patna, senhor." O velho largou os óculos, e a gritaria foi tão terrível que Archie esqueceu o próprio nome. Parecia ter lançado alguém a um leão faminto. O barulho devia alcançar a Esplanada. Elliot tinha enorme reserva de palavras e não se importava com quem ouvia. Dizia ter chegado ao topo, ter pensão segura e preferir voltar para casa a aceitar ideias ruins sobre dever. Só queria ver as três belas filhas casadas, embora se parecessem com ele. Quando estava pessimista sobre o casamento delas, todos temiam que atacasse alguém antes do café. Naquela manhã, não devorou o homem: despedaçou-o com palavras e o expulsou.

English → - Vi o enorme corpo descer correndo e parar nos degraus, perto de mim, pensativo e mordendo o polegar. Notou-me e lançou um olhar irritado. Os outros três estavam afastados. Um era pequeno, pálido e mesquinho, com o braço numa tipoia. Outro era alto e magro, de casaco azul, seco como madeira, bigode grisalho e ar alegre e tolo. O terceiro, jovem, ereto e de ombros largos, tinha as mãos nos bolsos e dava as costas aos companheiros, olhando a Esplanada vazia. Uma carruagem arruinada parou diante deles; o cocheiro estudava os dedos do pé. O jovem não se movia. Foi minha primeira visão de Jim. Parecia calmo e inalcançável como só os jovens conseguem. Tinha corpo e rosto limpos e postura firme. Sabendo o que sabia, senti raiva, como se tentasse me enganar. Não tinha direito de parecer tão confiável. Pensei: se pessoas assim podem falhar... Senti quase vergonha. Perguntei-me se era tolo ou insensível. Parecia pronto para assobiar. Os outros combinavam com a história pública que seria examinada. Então o capitão disse: "Aquele velho louco lá em cima me chamou de cão." Talvez me conhecesse. Nossos olhos se encontraram; ele me encarou, e eu sorri. "Chamou?" respondi. Ele assentiu, praguejou e disse: "O Pacífico é grande, meu amigo. Vocês, ingleses malditos, podem fazer o pior. Há muito espaço para um homem como eu. Conheço gente em Apia, Honolulu e outros lugares..." Parou, e imaginei facilmente que gente era. Também conheci muitos assim. Às vezes é preciso fingir que a vida é agradável em qualquer companhia. Não finjo choque: vários eram mais interessantes e divertidos que os respeitáveis canalhas convidados para jantar por hábito, medo, bondade ou fraqueza.

English → "Vocês, ingleses, são todos uns patifes", continuou meu patriota de Flensborg ou Stettin. Já nem me lembro qual pequeno porto do Báltico era a terra natal daquela criatura. "Que direito você tem de gritar? Diga. Vocês não são melhores que os outros, e aquele velho patife fez um escândalo terrível comigo. Vocês, ingleses, sempre fazem um grande escândalo por qualquer coisa porque eu não nasci no país de vocês. Podem tirar meu certificado. Não o quero. Um homem como eu não precisa do seu maldito certificado. Cuspo nele." E cuspiu. "Vou me tornar cidadão americano", gritou, furioso e inquieto, arrastando os pés como se algo invisível segurasse seus tornozelos e não o deixasse partir. Ficou tão enfurecido que o alto de sua cabeça redonda parecia soltar fumaça. Nada misterioso me prendia ali. Era apenas curiosidade. Eu queria ver o que aconteceria quando o jovem ouvisse tudo. Jim ainda estava ali, com as mãos nos bolsos e de costas para a calçada, olhando através da Esplanada para o pórtico amarelo do Hotel Malabar, como se fosse sair para passear assim que seu amigo estivesse pronto. Parecia orgulhoso e despreocupado, e eu odiei aquilo. Esperei vê-lo esmagado e abalado, retorcido de vergonha. É terrível observar um homem que foi descoberto, não em um crime, mas em uma fraqueza. Muitas pessoas são afastadas do crime por um autocontrole comum. Mas uma fraqueza, escondida ou apenas meio suspeitada, pode destruir qualquer pessoa. Somos levados a situações que trazem vergonha ou até a morte, e mesmo assim o espírito humano pode sobreviver. E também existem pequenas coisas que podem arruinar completamente alguns de nós. Observei o jovem. Gostei de sua aparência e sabia que vinha do tipo certo de mundo. Ele representava todas as pessoas honestas cuja coragem não é elegante nem exibida, mas simples e natural. Quero dizer a profunda capacidade de enfrentar a tentação com honestidade, sem fingimento. É uma força tranquila contra os perigos dentro e fora de nós, sustentada por uma fé que não pode ser abalada pelos fatos, pelo exemplo dos outros ou pelas ideias. Fora com as ideias! Elas são como mendigos na porta dos fundos da mente, levando embora pedaços de sua crença nas verdades simples de que você precisa para viver bem e morrer em paz!

English → Isso não diz respeito diretamente a Jim, mas ele parecia o tipo de pessoa boa e simples que gostamos de imaginar ao nosso lado durante a vida. Parecia alguém a quem confiaríamos o comando do convés de um navio. Sei do que estou falando, pois treinei muitos jovens para o serviço no mar. O mar me ensinou muito, e acho que também lhe dei bons homens. Alguns daqueles rapazes já cresceram, e alguns já morreram afogados. Se eu voltasse para casa amanhã, tenho certeza de que, em dois dias, algum jovem oficial queimado de sol me encontraria e diria: "Lembra-se de mim, senhor? Eu era o pequeno Fulano. Foi minha primeira viagem." Então eu me lembraria de um garotinho confuso, com uma mãe ou irmã mais velha no cais, emocionada demais para acenar em despedida, ou de um pai respeitável que fora acompanhar o filho e ficara tempo demais, fascinado pelo cabrestante, até precisar correr para terra sem tempo de se despedir. O prático do porto, na popa, gritaria para manter o navio firme por um momento enquanto um cavalheiro desembarcava. Os rebocadores puxariam, o rio se agitaria, e o homem em terra tiraria a poeira dos joelhos enquanto o comissário talvez jogasse seu guarda-chuva para ele. Tudo estaria em ordem. Ele fizera seu pequeno sacrifício ao mar e agora podia voltar para casa fingindo que aquilo não significava nada. Na manhã seguinte, o jovem principiante estaria enjoado. Mais tarde, depois de aprender os pequenos truques e o único grande segredo do mar, estaria pronto para viver ou morrer conforme o mar decidisse. Então o homem que ajudara nesse jogo, no qual o mar sempre vence, ficaria feliz ao sentir uma mão forte bater em suas costas e ouvir uma voz alegre dizer: "Lembra-se de mim, senhor? O pequeno Fulano."

English → Digo que isso é bom porque prova que, pelo menos uma vez na vida, você fez as coisas da maneira certa. Eu mesmo já recebi aquele tapa pesado e, embora tenha doído, senti orgulho e me achei menos sozinho no mundo. Será que não me lembro dos pequenos Fulanos? Sei reconhecer a aparência certa. Depois de um único olhar, eu teria confiado o convés do navio àquele jovem e ido dormir sem preocupação. Mas isso não teria sido seguro. Havia algo inquietante nele. Parecia verdadeiro e honesto, como uma moeda nova, mas havia algum metal ruim misturado. Quanto? Talvez a menor quantidade possível, apenas uma maldita gotinha. Mesmo assim, parado ali com seu jeito despreocupado, ele nos fazia pensar se não era apenas latão.

English → Eu mal conseguia acreditar. Queria vê-lo sofrer pela honra da profissão. Os outros dois homens, que não eram importantes, viram o capitão e vieram devagar em nossa direção. Conversavam enquanto caminhavam, mas não me importei nem um pouco. Um deles estava com o braço quebrado. O homem alto de bigodes grisalhos era o chefe de máquinas, um sujeito conhecido por seu mau caráter. Eles se aproximaram. O capitão olhava para baixo, entre os próprios pés, como se alguma doença terrível o tivesse feito inchar até assumir uma forma estranha. Então ergueu a cabeça, viu os dois homens e abriu a boca para falar, ou assim pensei. Mas pareceu mudar de ideia. Seus grossos lábios roxos se fecharam sem emitir som. Ele caminhou depressa e sem jeito até a carruagem e puxou a maçaneta com uma força selvagem, como se quisesse virar tudo, pônei e carruagem. O cocheiro ficou apavorado de repente e se segurou com força, olhando de seu assento para aquele corpo enorme que tentava entrar. A pequena carruagem tremia e balançava. O pescoço vermelho, as coxas enormes e as costas com listras verdes e alaranjadas tornavam a cena engraçada e assustadora, como um sonho causado pela febre. Então ele desapareceu lá dentro. Achei que o teto fosse se abrir, mas a carruagem apenas afundou sobre as molas e uma persiana caiu. Seus ombros apareceram de novo na pequena abertura. Sua cabeça saiu para fora, enorme e suada, e ele gritou ordens furiosas ao cocheiro. O homem chicoteou o pônei, que partiu a galope. Não ouvi para onde iam. Em um instante, o pônei o levou embora, e nunca mais o vi. Não sei se alguém o viu depois disso. Ele desapareceu como se tivesse voado pelos ares. O homem com a tipoia começou a correr atrás da carruagem, chamando: "Capitão! Capitão!" Mas, depois de alguns passos, parou, baixou a cabeça e voltou devagar. Quando o ruído das rodas se afastou, o jovem se virou no lugar em que estava. Não tornou a se mexer e continuou olhando naquela nova direção mesmo depois que a carruagem desapareceu de vista.

English → Tudo isso aconteceu em muito menos tempo do que se leva para contar. Só estou narrando devagar para que vocês possam acompanhar. No momento seguinte, chegou um escriturário mestiço enviado por Archie para cuidar dos pobres sobreviventes do Patna. Ele saiu correndo, sem chapéu e cheio de energia, olhando de um lado para o outro. Estava seguro de seu objetivo, mas não teria sucesso com o homem principal. Mesmo assim, falou com os outros de maneira importante e logo entrou em uma discussão difícil com o homem cujo braço estava em uma tipoia. Aquele homem estava pronto para brigar. Gritou que ninguém lhe daria ordens. Não se deixaria assustar pelas mentiras de um pequeno e orgulhoso escriturário mestiço. Não seria intimidado, fosse a história verdadeira ou não. Berrou que queria ir para a cama. Depois gritou que, se eles não fossem "portugueses abandonados por Deus", saberiam que o hospital era o lugar certo para ele. Enfiou o punho bom debaixo do nariz do outro homem. Uma multidão começou a se reunir. O escriturário, nervoso, mas tentando parecer calmo e respeitável, procurou explicar o que queria dizer. Fui embora antes de ver como aquilo terminou.

English → Por acaso, porém, eu tinha um homem internado no hospital naquela época. Na véspera da abertura do inquérito, fui visitá-lo e, na enfermaria dos brancos, vi o homenzinho deitado de costas, com o braço preso em talas e a mente confusa. Para minha grande surpresa, o homem alto de bigode branco caído também estava ali. Lembrei-me de vê-lo escapar durante a discussão, movendo-se num estranho passo, metade dança e metade arrastar de pés, e tentando não parecer assustado. Pelo visto, conhecia bem o porto e, em sua dificuldade, foi direto à sala de bilhar e taverna de Mariani, perto do bazar. Mariani, que já o conhecia e havia ajudado em seus maus hábitos em outros lugares, recebeu-o e o escondeu no andar de cima, com garrafas, num quarto sujo de sua pobre casa. Ele parecia temer por sua segurança e queria continuar escondido. Mais tarde, Mariani me disse que teria feito ainda mais por ele, sem fazer perguntas, por causa de algum antigo favor vergonhoso. Bateu no peito e gritou: "Antonio nunca esquece!" Nunca descobri qual era a dívida. Mesmo assim, deram-lhe um lugar atrás de portas trancadas, com uma cadeira, uma mesa, um colchão e pedaços de reboco no chão, enquanto tentava se acalmar com as bebidas que Mariani lhe fornecia. Isso continuou até a noite do terceiro dia. Então ele deu gritos horríveis e precisou fugir para salvar a vida de um enxame de centopeias. Arrombou a porta, voou pela escada frágil, caiu sobre a barriga de Mariani, levantou-se e correu para a rua como um coelho. Na manhã seguinte, a polícia o encontrou sobre um monte de lixo. A princípio, pensou que o levavam para ser enforcado e lutou como um herói. Mas, quando me sentei ao lado de sua cama, já estava quieto havia dois dias. Seu rosto magro e moreno, com o bigode branco, parecia calmo sobre o travesseiro, como o rosto de um velho soldado, exceto por um medo estranho em seus olhos. Como parecia tão tranquilo, comecei a ter esperança de que explicasse o famoso acontecimento do ponto de vista dele. Não consigo explicar totalmente por que eu queria investigar detalhes tão desagradáveis. Talvez minha curiosidade estivesse doente. Talvez eu esperasse encontrar uma razão profunda, alguma misericórdia ou desculpa. Agora vejo que esperava o impossível: afastar o fantasma mais persistente da vida humana, a dúvida que sobe como neblina, rói como um verme e é mais fria que a própria morte. É a dúvida sobre uma regra firme do certo e do errado. Ela pode causar pânico e atos silenciosos de maldade. É a verdadeira sombra do desastre. Eu acreditava num milagre? Por que o desejava tanto? Talvez quisesse encontrar uma desculpa para aquele jovem, que eu nunca conhecera, mas cujo rosto fazia toda a questão parecer pessoal e assustadora, como se apontasse para um destino perigoso à espera de todos nós que um dia fomos jovens como ele. Temo que essa fosse minha razão secreta. Sim, eu procurava um milagre. Agora, a única coisa milagrosa para mim é a dimensão da minha tolice. Eu esperava conseguir algum remédio para a dúvida com aquele homem doente, arruinado e cheio de dúvidas. Assim, depois de algumas palavras educadas, às quais ele respondeu com a indiferença de qualquer paciente respeitável, mencionei o Patna numa pergunta cuidadosa. Fui cuidadoso por motivos egoístas. Não queria chocá-lo. Não me importava o bastante com ele para sentir pena ou raiva. Sua história não tinha importância para mim, nem sua salvação. Ele já estava velho demais em seus pequenos crimes para despertar em mim muito nojo ou compaixão. "Patna?", repetiu, como se pensasse. Depois disse: "Exatamente. Sou um velho experiente por estas bandas. Eu a vi afundar." Eu estava pronto para falar com raiva sobre uma mentira tão estúpida quando ele acrescentou, com calma: "Ela estava cheia de répteis."

English → Aquilo me fez parar. O que ele queria dizer? O medo inquieto em seus olhos arregalados pareceu congelar e encarar os meus com uma expressão de súplica. "Eles me tiraram da cama no turno da meia-noite para vê-la afundar", continuou pensativo. De repente, sua voz soou muito forte. Arrependi-me de ter falado de maneira tão tola. Não havia enfermeira à vista e, bem longe na enfermaria, um homem moreno e magro, ferido num acidente a bordo de um navio no porto, estava sentado na cama com uma faixa branca inclinada sobre a testa. Então meu interessante paciente estendeu um braço fino como um tentáculo e agarrou meu ombro. "Só meus olhos eram bons o bastante para ver. Sou famoso por minha visão. Deve ter sido por isso que me chamaram. Nenhum deles foi rápido o bastante para vê-la partir, mas viram muito bem que ela havia desaparecido e gritaram todos juntos, assim." Então veio um uivo de lobo que pareceu vasculhar minha alma. "Ah! Faça ele parar", reclamou o homem acidentado. "Acho que você não acredita em mim", disse o outro, com grande orgulho na voz. "Eu lhe digo que não existem olhos como os meus deste lado do Golfo Pérsico. Olhe debaixo da cama."

English → É claro que me abaixei imediatamente. Qualquer pessoa teria feito o mesmo. ‘O que o senhor consegue ver?’, perguntou ele. ‘Nada’, respondi, envergonhado. Ele me olhou com um desprezo feroz. ‘Exatamente. Mas, se eu olhasse, conseguiria ver. Ninguém tem olhos como os meus.’ Puxou-me para mais perto e sussurrou: ‘Milhões de sapos cor-de-rosa. É pior do que ver um navio afundar. Eu poderia passar o dia vendo navios afundarem e fumando. Por que não devolvem meu cachimbo? O navio estava cheio de sapos, e alguém precisa vigiá-los.’ Ele piscou para mim como se dividisse um segredo. O suor caía da minha cabeça, e meu casaco molhado grudava nas costas. O vento da tarde movia as cortinas e as cobertas das camas vazias pela enfermaria, mas eu tremia como se um vento frio de inverno atravessasse um velho celeiro. De longe, o paciente ferido gritou: ‘Não deixe ele começar a berrar, senhor!’ O velho tornou a puxar meu ombro. ‘O navio estava cheio deles, por isso tivemos de sair em absoluto silêncio’, sussurrou depressa. ‘Eram todos cor-de-rosa, grandes como cães enormes, com um olho no alto da cabeça e garras ao redor da boca horrenda.’ As pernas magras dele saltavam sob a coberta, e ele tentava agarrar alguma coisa no ar. Seu corpo inteiro tremia. O rosto nobre e sereno de um velho soldado de repente se encheu de um medo secreto. ‘Silêncio! O que eles estão fazendo lá embaixo agora?’, perguntou, apontando com cuidado para o chão. Entendi o que ele queria dizer e fiquei enojado com minha própria esperteza. ‘Estão todos dormindo’, respondi. Eram as palavras que ele queria ouvir. Respirou fundo. ‘Ótimo. Fique quieto. Conheço esses animais. Bata no primeiro que se mexer. São muitos, e o navio não vai flutuar por mais de dez minutos.’ Então ele gritou de repente: ‘Depressa! Estão todos acordados - milhões deles! Estão passando por cima de mim! Esperem! Vou esmagá-los como moscas. Socorro! Socorro!’ Seu longo grito encheu a enfermaria. O paciente ferido pôs as duas mãos na cabeça enfaixada, e um enfermeiro apareceu ao longe. Admiti minha derrota e escapei por uma janela comprida até a passagem externa. O grito me perseguiu. Num patamar vazio, tudo ficou em silêncio, e desci a escada nua e brilhante enquanto tentava acalmar os pensamentos. No pátio, um jovem médico me deteve. Disse que meu homem talvez pudesse sair no dia seguinte. Depois contou que o chefe de máquinas do navio de peregrinos também estava ali, com um caso terrível de delírio causado pela bebida. O engenheiro passara três dias bebendo num bar de um grego ou italiano, talvez quatro garrafas de conhaque por dia. Sua mente estava perdida, mas havia uma estranha linha de raciocínio em sua fala descontrolada. A maioria dos pacientes via cobras, explicou o médico, mas aquele homem via sapos. O médico nunca achara um caso tão interessante. Depois de tanta bebida, o homem já deveria estar morto, mas era muito resistente após vinte e quatro anos nos trópicos. ‘É um velho bêbado de aparência nobre e um caso médico muito incomum’, disse o médico. ‘Quer vir vê-lo?’

English → Até então eu havia demonstrado o interesse educado de costume. Naquele momento, fingi estar arrependido, disse que não tinha tempo e apertei a mão dele depressa. ‘Espere’, gritou atrás de mim. ‘Ele não pode comparecer ao inquérito. O senhor acha que o depoimento dele é importante?’

‘De modo algum’, respondi do portão.

Capítulo 6

English → As autoridades claramente concordaram. O inquérito não foi adiado. Foi realizado no dia marcado para cumprir a lei, e muitas pessoas compareceram porque o caso era interessante. Não havia dúvida sobre os fatos, pelo menos não sobre o único fato importante. Ninguém conseguia descobrir como o Patna fora danificado, e o tribunal não esperava descobrir. Ninguém na multidão se importava muito com isso. Ainda assim, como já disse, todos os marinheiros do porto compareceram, e o comércio da zona portuária estava bem representado. Soube ou não, cada um deles foi por uma razão mental: queriam alguma verdade profunda sobre o sentimento humano, sua força, seu poder e seu horror. É claro que nada assim poderia ser revelado. O interrogatório do único homem que podia e queria enfrentar a questão apenas continuava girando em torno do fato conhecido. Era tão útil quanto bater com um martelo numa caixa de ferro para descobrir o que havia dentro. Mas um inquérito oficial não podia ser diferente. Sua função não era perguntar o profundo porquê, mas apenas o superficial como.

English → O jovem poderia ter contado a eles. Era isso que o público realmente queria saber, mas as perguntas o afastavam da única verdade que importava para mim. Não se pode esperar que as autoridades examinem a alma de um homem, ou talvez apenas seu fígado. O trabalho delas era lidar com os resultados e, sinceramente, um magistrado de polícia e dois assessores náuticos não servem para muito mais. Não quero dizer que fossem estúpidos. O magistrado era muito paciente. Um dos assessores era capitão de um veleiro, tinha barba ruiva e natureza religiosa. O outro era Brierly, o Grande Brierly. Talvez alguns de vocês já tenham ouvido falar do Grande Brierly, capitão do melhor navio da companhia Blue Star. Era ele.

English → Ele parecia muito entediado com a honra que lhe haviam imposto. Em toda a sua vida, nunca cometera um erro, nunca sofrera um acidente, nunca fracassara e nunca fora impedido em sua subida constante. Parecia um daqueles homens de sorte que jamais sentem dúvida ou desconfiança de si mesmos. Aos trinta e dois anos, tinha um dos melhores comandos do comércio oriental, e sabia disso. Achava que nada no mundo se comparava àquilo e, se alguém lhe perguntasse diretamente, provavelmente diria que não havia capitão melhor do que ele. Tinham escolhido o homem certo. Todos os outros, que não comandavam o vapor de aço Ossa, capaz de dezesseis nós, pareciam inferiores em comparação. Ele salvara vidas no mar, resgatara navios em perigo e recebera um cronômetro de ouro das seguradoras e binóculos com uma inscrição de um governo estrangeiro em homenagem ao seu trabalho. Conhecia muito bem o próprio valor e suas recompensas. Eu gostava bastante dele, embora alguns homens bondosos e gentis que conheço não pudessem suportá-lo. Tenho certeza de que se considerava muito superior a mim. Mesmo que você fosse imperador do Oriente e do Ocidente, não conseguiria evitar sentir-se menor perto dele. Ainda assim, eu não conseguia me sentir realmente ofendido. Ele não me desprezava por algo que eu fizera ou por quem eu era; apenas me via como alguém sem importância porque eu não era o homem de sorte do mundo, não era Montague Brierly no comando do Ossa, não era o dono do cronômetro de ouro e dos binóculos com detalhes de prata que elogiavam minha habilidade no mar e minha coragem, nem um homem com um orgulhoso senso do próprio mérito e das próprias recompensas, além do amor de um retriever preto, o exemplar mais extraordinário de sua raça. Sem dúvida era irritante ter tudo aquilo colocado diante de você. Mas, quando me lembrava de que partilhava essas desvantagens com outros mil e duzentos milhões de seres humanos, conseguia suportar sua piedade orgulhosa e irônica. Havia nele algo que me atraía, embora eu nunca tenha conseguido explicar completamente. Às vezes eu até o invejava. O sofrimento da vida não conseguia fazer mais em sua alma calma do que o risco de um alfinete numa pedra lisa. Isso era invejável. Enquanto eu o observava ao lado do magistrado tranquilo e de rosto pálido durante o inquérito, sua satisfação consigo mesmo parecia dura como granito. Pouco tempo depois, ele se matou.

English → Não era de admirar que o caso de Jim o entediasse. Eu quase temia a profundidade do desprezo que ele sentia pelo jovem interrogado, mas talvez estivesse realizando em silêncio um inquérito sobre seu próprio caso. O veredito deve ter sido de culpa completa, e ele levou consigo o segredo das provas quando se lançou ao mar. Pelo que sei dos homens, a questão deve ter sido muito séria, uma daquelas pequenas coisas que despertam um pensamento e tornam um homem incapaz de conviver com ele. Sei que não foi dinheiro, bebida nem uma mulher. Ele caiu no mar pouco mais de uma semana depois do fim do inquérito e menos de três dias após sair do porto. Foi como se, de repente, tivesse visto os portões do outro mundo se abrirem para ele naquele ponto exato do oceano.

English → Mesmo assim, não foi um impulso repentino. Seu imediato de cabelos grisalhos era um marinheiro de primeira e um velho agradável com estranhos, mas, com seu capitão, era o oficial mais grosseiro que já vi. Contava a história com lágrimas nos olhos. Parece que, quando subiu ao convés pela manhã, Brierly estava escrevendo na sala de navegação. "Faltavam dez minutos para as quatro", disse ele, "e o turno da meia-noite ainda não havia sido substituído, é claro. Ele ouviu minha voz na ponte falando com o segundo oficial e me chamou para entrar. Eu não queria ir, e essa é a verdade, capitão Marlow. Eu não suportava o pobre capitão Brierly, digo isso com vergonha. Nunca sabemos como um homem realmente é. Ele havia sido promovido passando à frente de muitos, inclusive de mim, e tinha uma maneira terrível de fazer você se sentir pequeno, mesmo quando dizia apenas 'Bom dia'. Nunca falava com ele, exceto sobre o serviço, e mesmo assim precisava me esforçar para continuar educado." Ele estava elogiando a si mesmo. Muitas vezes me perguntei como Brierly suportou seus modos por mais de meia viagem. "Tenho esposa e filhos", continuou, "e estava na Companhia havia dez anos, sempre esperando receber meu próximo comando, como um tolo. Ele disse, assim mesmo: 'Entre aqui, senhor Jones', com aquela sua voz arrogante. Então entrei. 'Vamos marcar a posição do navio', disse ele, curvando-se sobre a carta náutica com um compasso. Segundo as ordens permanentes, o oficial que terminava seu turno deveria ter feito aquilo, mas não disse nada e o observei marcar a posição do navio com uma pequena cruz e escrever a data e a hora. Ainda consigo vê-lo escrevendo aqueles números bem-feitos: dezessete, oito, quatro da manhã. O ano estaria escrito em tinta vermelha na parte superior da carta. O capitão Brierly nunca usava uma carta náutica por mais de um ano. Ainda tenho aquela carta. Quando terminou, ficou olhando para a marca e sorrindo sozinho, depois ergueu os olhos para mim. 'Mais trinta e duas milhas como ela segue', disse, 'e então estaremos livres, e você poderá mudar o rumo vinte graus para o sul.'"

English → "Naquela viagem, passávamos ao norte do Banco Hector. Eu disse: 'Muito bem, senhor', e me perguntei por que ele fazia tanto caso, pois eu teria de chamá-lo antes de mudar o rumo. Então soaram oito badaladas. Saímos para a ponte e o segundo oficial, antes de partir, disse como sempre: 'Setenta e um no odômetro.' O capitão Brierly olhou para a bússola e depois ao redor. A noite estava escura e limpa, e todas as estrelas brilhavam com a mesma clareza de uma noite gelada em altas latitudes. Então ele disse com um pequeno suspiro: 'Vou até a popa e eu mesmo colocarei o odômetro em zero para você, para não haver engano. Mais trinta e duas milhas neste rumo e estaremos seguros. Deixe-me ver: a correção do odômetro é de seis por cento para mais; então digamos trinta no mostrador, e você pode virar vinte graus para estibordo imediatamente. Não adianta perder distância, não é?' Eu nunca o ouvira falar tanto sem fazer uma pausa, e aquilo me pareceu inútil. Não disse nada. Ele desceu a escada, e o cão, que sempre o seguia dia e noite, foi atrás, escorregando com o focinho à frente. Ouvi os saltos de suas botas baterem no convés de popa. Então ele parou e falou com o cão. 'Volte, Rover. Para a ponte, garoto! Vá, saia daqui.' Depois me chamou da escuridão: 'Prenda esse cão na sala de navegação, senhor Jones, por favor.'"

English → Essa foi a última vez que ouvi sua voz, capitão Marlow. Foram as últimas palavras que ele disse diante de qualquer pessoa viva. A voz do velho tremeu. Ele temia que o pobre animal saltasse atrás dele. Disse que o capitão Brierly ajustou o odômetro para mim e até colocou nele uma gota de óleo. O lubrificador ficou ali perto. Às cinco e meia, o ajudante do contramestre levou a mangueira à popa para lavar o convés e, mais tarde, voltou à ponte e disse: "Por favor, venha à popa, senhor Jones. Há algo estranho. Não quero tocar nisso." Era o relógio cronômetro de ouro do capitão Brierly, cuidadosamente pendurado pela corrente sob o corrimão.

English → Quando o vi, entendi imediatamente. Minhas pernas ficaram fracas. Foi como se eu o tivesse visto cair no mar, e eu podia calcular a distância que ele já havia ficado para trás. O odômetro de popa marcava dezoito milhas e três quartos, e faltavam quatro pinos de amarração de ferro perto do mastro principal. Suponho que os colocou nos bolsos para ajudá-lo a afundar. Mas o que são quatro pinos de ferro para um homem forte como o capitão Brierly? Talvez tenha perdido a confiança no fim. Acho que esse foi o único sinal de pânico que mostrou na vida. Mas posso dizer uma coisa a seu favor: depois de cair no mar, não tentou nadar. Teria tido coragem para se manter flutuando o dia inteiro se tivesse caído por acidente. Sim, senhor. Ele não era inferior a ninguém, como ele próprio dizia. Escrevera duas cartas durante o turno da meia-noite, uma para a Companhia e outra para mim. Deu-me muitas instruções sobre a viagem e sobre como eu deveria me comportar com nosso pessoal em Xangai, para que eu conservasse o comando do Ossa. Escreveu como um pai para o filho favorito, capitão Marlow, embora eu fosse vinte e cinco anos mais velho e tivesse ido para o mar muito antes dele. Na carta aos proprietários, que deixou aberta para eu ler, dizia que sempre cumprira seu dever para com eles e não traía sua confiança, porque deixava o navio nas mãos de um marinheiro tão capaz quanto se poderia encontrar, referindo-se a mim. Dizia que, se seu último ato não destruísse a boa reputação que tinha com eles, deveriam valorizar meus serviços fiéis e sua forte recomendação ao preencherem o posto aberto por sua morte. Eu não conseguia acreditar no que lia. Aquilo me fez sentir muito estranho. Era possível pensar que ele saltara ao mar apenas para dar uma última oportunidade a um homem sem sorte. Depois de um ato tão terrível e impensado, e depois de imaginar que aquilo havia garantido meu futuro, fiquei quase louco por uma semana. Mas não. O capitão do Pelion foi transferido para o Ossa em Xangai. Era um homenzinho exibido, vestido com um terno xadrez cinza e com o cabelo repartido ao meio. "Ah... eu sou... ah... seu novo capitão, senhor... senhor... ah... Jones." Estava coberto de perfume. Acho que meu olhar o fez gaguejar. Murmurou algo sobre minha decepção e disse que seu imediato recebera a promoção para o Pelion. É claro que ele não tinha culpa, e o escritório sabia o que era melhor. Eu disse: "Não se preocupe com o velho Jones, senhor. Que sua alma seja amaldiçoada, ele está acostumado." Percebeu logo que me aborrecera e, em nossa primeira refeição juntos, começou a reclamar do navio de maneira desagradável. Eu nunca ouvira uma voz daquelas. Cerrei os dentes e fiquei calado enquanto pude, mas por fim precisei dizer alguma coisa. Ele se levantou de um salto, andando nas pontas dos pés e estufando o peito como um pequeno galo de briga. "Você descobrirá que está lidando com alguém diferente do falecido capitão Brierly." "Já descobri", respondi, tentando manter a calma enquanto fingia comer meu bife. "Você é um velho grosseiro, senhor... ah... Jones, e todos na companhia sabem disso", guinchou. Os tripulantes estavam em volta, ouvindo e sorrindo muito. "Posso ser grosseiro", eu disse, "mas não ficarei sentado em silêncio enquanto o senhor ocupa a cadeira do capitão Brierly." Então larguei a faca e o garfo. "Você mesmo gostaria de se sentar nela. Esse é o verdadeiro problema", zombou ele. Saí do salão, arrumei minhas coisas e estava no cais com toda a bagagem antes mesmo que os trabalhadores das docas voltassem ao serviço. Sim. Fui parar na rua depois de dez anos de trabalho, com esposa e quatro filhos a dez mil quilômetros de distância, dependendo da metade do meu salário para comer. Fui embora para não ouvir o capitão Brierly ser insultado. Ele me deixou seus binóculos noturnos e queria que eu cuidasse do cão. Aqui está ele. Olá, Rover, pobre garoto. Onde está o capitão, Rover?" O cão ergueu os olhos amarelos e tristes, soltou um único latido solitário e se arrastou para debaixo da mesa.

English → Tudo isso aconteceu mais de dois anos depois, a bordo do velho e maltratado Fire-Queen, que Jones conseguira comandar de algum modo, por meio de um estranho acidente envolvendo Matherson - o louco Matherson, como costumavam chamá-lo - , o mesmo homem que vivia em Haiphong antes dos tempos da ocupação. O velho continuou fungando.

Sim, senhor, o capitão Brierly será lembrado aqui, se não for lembrado em nenhum outro lugar do mundo. Escrevi uma carta completa ao pai dele e não recebi uma única palavra em resposta, nem mesmo um obrigado ou um vá para o inferno. Nada. Talvez não quisessem saber.

Ver o velho Jones, com os olhos úmidos, enxugando a cabeça calva com um lenço vermelho de algodão, e ouvir o gemido triste do cão, enquanto aquela cabine suja e cheia de moscas era o único lugar que honrava a memória de Brierly, fazia com que sua figura lembrada parecesse muito pequena e triste. Era a última vingança do destino contra aquele homem, depois que a crença em sua própria grandeza quase o protegera do medo natural da morte. Quase. Talvez por completo. Quem pode dizer que ideia cheia de esperança ele havia criado sobre o próprio suicídio?

English → "Por que ele fez algo tão impensado, capitão Marlow? Consegue imaginar?", perguntou Jones, apertando as mãos. "Por quê? Não consigo entender. Por quê?" Bateu na testa baixa e enrugada. "Se fosse pobre, velho, cheio de dívidas e sem futuro, ou se fosse louco... Mas ele não era do tipo que enlouquece. Ele, não. Acredite em mim. Um imediato sabe coisas importantes sobre seu capitão. Jovem, saudável, rico, sem preocupações. Às vezes fico aqui sentado, pensando e pensando, até minha cabeça começar a zumbir. Devia haver algum motivo."

"Pode ter certeza de uma coisa, capitão Jones", eu disse. "Não foi nada que incomodaria muito a qualquer um de nós." Então, como se uma luz tivesse entrado de repente em sua mente confusa, o pobre e velho Jones teve um último pensamento muito profundo. Assoou o nariz e assentiu com tristeza. "Sim, sim. Nem o senhor nem eu jamais tivemos uma opinião muito elevada sobre nós mesmos."

English → "Eu colocarei duzentas rúpias se você colocar outras cem e prometer fazer o sujeito partir amanhã cedo. Ele é um cavalheiro, mesmo que não se possa tocá-lo. Vai entender. Precisa entender. Esta terrível publicidade é horrível demais. Lá está ele sentado enquanto todos aqueles malditos nativos, serangs, lascars e contramestres dão depoimentos suficientes para queimar um homem de vergonha. Isto é terrível. Marlow, você também não acha? Não sente isso como marinheiro? Se ele fosse embora, tudo isso terminaria imediatamente." Brierly falava com uma agitação fora do comum e começou a procurar a carteira. Eu o detive e disse friamente que a covardia daqueles quatro homens não me parecia muito importante. "E você se chama de marinheiro, suponho", disse ele com raiva. Respondi que era assim que eu me chamava e esperava ser um. Ele ouviu e então fez um gesto com o braço grande, que pareceu me apagar como pessoa e me empurrar de volta para a multidão. "O pior", disse ele, "é que nenhum de vocês tem qualquer senso de dignidade. Vocês não se importam o bastante com o que deveriam ser."

English → Estávamos caminhando devagar e então paramos diante da administração do porto, olhando para o mesmo lugar onde o enorme capitão do Patna desaparecera tão completamente quanto uma pequena pena num furacão. Sorri. Brierly continuou: "Isto é vergonhoso. Temos todo tipo de pessoa entre nós, até alguns completos patifes, mas precisamos manter a dignidade profissional ou não seremos melhores que mecânicos soltos andando de um lado para o outro. Confiam em nós. Entende? Confiam. Sinceramente, não me importo nem um pouco com todos os peregrinos que já saíram da Ásia, mas um homem respeitável não teria se comportado assim nem mesmo com um navio cheio de trapos velhos. Não somos uma organização formal, e a única coisa que nos mantém unidos é esse tipo de dignidade. Um caso assim destrói a confiança. Um homem pode passar a maior parte da vida no mar sem precisar mostrar coragem. Mas, quando chega o momento... Ah... se eu..."

Front Matter

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

**Joseph Conrad**

Original English Version

**Joseph Conrad**

Tradução Integral em Português

**Joseph Conrad**

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Author’s Note

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Quando este romance apareceu pela primeira vez em forma de livro, algumas pessoas disseram que a história havia escapado do meu controle. Ela começara como um conto, mas ficou muito mais longa. Alguns críticos acreditavam que podiam provar isso pelo texto e pareciam achar graça. Disseram que a maneira de contar a história não era convincente: nenhum homem poderia falar por tantas horas, e nenhum grupo poderia escutar por tanto tempo.

Depois de pensar nisso por quase dezesseis anos, já não tenho tanta certeza. Em países quentes e frios, muitas pessoas já passaram metade da noite acordadas contando histórias. Marlow conta apenas uma história, e há pausas que dão algum descanso aos ouvintes. Precisamos aceitar que eles continuaram escutando porque a história era interessante. Se eu não acreditasse nisso, jamais poderia tê-la escrito. Também era fisicamente possível. Alguns discursos no Parlamento duraram quase seis horas, enquanto toda a parte narrada por Marlow pode ser lida em voz alta em menos de três. Também podemos imaginar que os ouvintes tomaram alguma bebida naquela noite, talvez um copo de água mineral para ajudar o narrador a continuar.

Original English Version

When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got about that I had been bolted away with. Some reviewers maintained that the work starting as a short story had got beyond the writer’s control. One or two discovered internal evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse them. They pointed out the limitations of the narrative form. They argued that no man could have been expected to talk all that time, and other men to listen so long. It was not, they said, very credible.

After thinking it over for something like sixteen years, I am not so sure about that. Men have been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night ‘swapping yarns’. This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions affording some measure of relief; and in regard to the listeners’ endurance, the postulate must be accepted that the story was interesting. It is the necessary preliminary assumption. If I hadn’t believed that it was interesting I could never have begun to write it. As to the mere physical possibility we all know that some speeches in Parliament have taken nearer six than three hours in delivery; whereas all that part of the book which is Marlow’s narrative can be read through aloud, I should say, in less than three hours. Besides--though I have kept strictly all such insignificant details out of the tale--we may presume that there must have been refreshments on that night, a glass of mineral water of some sort to help the narrator on.

Tradução Integral em Português

Quando este romance apareceu pela primeira vez em livro, correu a ideia de que eu me deixara levar por ele numa disparada. Alguns críticos sustentaram que a obra, começada como um conto, escapara ao controle do escritor. Um ou dois descobriram no próprio texto indícios disso, o que pareceu diverti-los. Apontaram as limitações da forma narrativa. Argumentaram que não era de esperar que homem algum falasse por tanto tempo, nem que outros homens o escutassem por tantas horas. Não era muito verossímil, diziam.

Depois de refletir sobre o assunto por coisa de dezesseis anos, já não tenho tanta certeza. Sabe-se de homens que, tanto nos trópicos como na zona temperada, passaram metade da noite acordados, “trocando histórias”. Esta, contudo, é uma única história, embora entremeada de interrupções que proporcionam algum alívio; e, quanto à resistência dos ouvintes, é preciso aceitar o postulado de que a história era interessante. Essa é a indispensável premissa inicial. Se eu não acreditasse que ela era interessante, jamais teria começado a escrevê-la. Quanto à mera possibilidade física, todos sabemos que certos discursos no Parlamento levaram mais perto de seis horas do que de três para ser proferidos; ao passo que toda a parte do livro constituída pela narrativa de Marlow pode ser lida em voz alta, eu diria, em menos de três horas. Além disso - embora eu tenha excluído rigorosamente da história todos esses pormenores insignificantes - , podemos presumir que naquela noite houve algum refresco, um copo de água mineral de uma espécie ou de outra para ajudar o narrador a prosseguir.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Mas a verdade é que, no início, planejei apenas um conto sobre o navio de peregrinos. Era uma ideia razoável. Depois de escrever algumas páginas, porém, fiquei insatisfeito com elas e as guardei. Só voltei a tirá-las da gaveta quando o falecido Sr. William Blackwood me pediu que escrevesse mais alguma coisa para sua revista.

Só então percebi que o acontecimento no navio de peregrinos era um bom começo para uma história livre e errante. Ele também poderia mudar toda a maneira como uma pessoa simples e sensível sentia a vida. Esses primeiros pensamentos e sentimentos não eram claros para mim naquela época e, depois de tantos anos, ainda não são muito mais claros.

As páginas que eu havia guardado ainda influenciaram minha escolha do tema, mas reescrevi tudo com cuidado. Quando comecei, sabia que seria um livro longo. No entanto, não esperava que ele ocupasse treze edições da Maga.

Original English Version

But, seriously, the truth of the matter is, that my first thought was of a short story, concerned only with the pilgrim ship episode; nothing more. And that was a legitimate conception. After writing a few pages, however, I became for some reason discontented and I laid them aside for a time. I didn’t take them out of the drawer till the late Mr. William Blackwood suggested I should give something again to his magazine.

It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim ship episode was a good starting-point for a free and wandering tale; that it was an event, too, which could conceivably colour the whole ‘sentiment of existence’ in a simple and sensitive character. But all these preliminary moods and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the time, and they do not appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so many years.

The few pages I had laid aside were not without their weight in the choice of subject. But the whole was re-written deliberately. When I sat down to it I knew it would be a long book, though I didn’t foresee that it would spread itself over thirteen numbers of Maga.

Tradução Integral em Português

Mas, falando sério, a verdade é que minha primeira ideia foi a de um conto, limitado ao episódio do navio de peregrinos; nada mais. E essa era uma concepção legítima. Depois de escrever algumas páginas, porém, fiquei por algum motivo insatisfeito e as pus de lado por algum tempo. Não voltei a tirá-las da gaveta até que o falecido Sr. William Blackwood sugeriu que eu tornasse a dar alguma coisa à sua revista.

Foi somente então que percebi que o episódio do navio de peregrinos constituía um bom ponto de partida para uma narrativa livre e errante; que era também um acontecimento capaz, concebivelmente, de tingir todo o “sentimento da existência” de um caráter simples e sensível. Mas esses estados de espírito preliminares e essas agitações da alma eram bastante obscuros na época, e não me parecem mais claros agora, depois de transcorridos tantos anos.

As poucas páginas que eu deixara de lado não deixaram de pesar na escolha do tema. Mas o conjunto foi deliberadamente reescrito. Quando me sentei para fazê-lo, sabia que seria um livro longo, embora não previsse que se estenderia por treze números da Maga.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Às vezes me perguntaram se este é o meu livro favorito. Não gosto de favoritismo na vida pública, na vida privada nem mesmo na relação de um autor com seus livros. Por princípio, não tenho favoritos. Ainda assim, não fico magoado nem irritado quando algumas pessoas preferem Lord Jim. Nem sequer direi que não consigo entendê-las. Mas certa vez um comentário sobre o livro me deixou confuso e surpreso.

Um amigo que voltava da Itália havia conversado lá com uma mulher que não gostava do livro. É claro que lamentei, mas o motivo da antipatia dela me surpreendeu. ‘Sabe’, disse ela, ‘tudo nele é tão doentio e sombrio.’

Original English Version

I have been asked at times whether this was not the book of mine I liked best. I am a great foe to favouritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works. As a matter of principle I will have no favourites; but I don’t go so far as to feel grieved and annoyed by the preference some people give to my Lord Jim. I won’t even say that I ‘fail to understand . . .’ No! But once I had occasion to be puzzled and surprised.

A friend of mine returning from Italy had talked with a lady there who did not like the book. I regretted that, of course, but what surprised me was the ground of her dislike. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it is all so morbid.’

Tradução Integral em Português

Perguntaram-me algumas vezes se este não era, dentre os meus livros, aquele de que eu mais gostava. Sou grande inimigo do favoritismo na vida pública, na vida privada e até na delicada relação entre um autor e suas obras. Por princípio, não terei favoritos; mas não chego ao ponto de me sentir magoado e contrariado pela preferência que algumas pessoas dão ao meu Lorde Jim. Nem sequer direi que “não consigo compreender...” Não! Houve, porém, uma ocasião em que tive motivo para ficar perplexo e surpreso.

Um amigo meu, de volta da Itália, conversara lá com uma senhora que não gostava do livro. Lamentei, naturalmente, mas o que me surpreendeu foi a razão da antipatia. “Sabe”, disse ela, “é tudo tão mórbido.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

O comentário dela me deixou preocupado por uma hora. Por fim, decidi que, como o assunto talvez estivesse fora do que as mulheres normalmente sentem, aquela senhora não podia ser italiana. Cheguei a me perguntar se ela era europeia. Eu acreditava que uma pessoa latina não veria nada de doentio numa dolorosa consciência da honra perdida. Esse sentimento pode estar certo ou errado, e alguns podem chamá-lo de artificial. Talvez Jim não seja um tipo comum de homem. Mas posso garantir aos leitores que ele não nasceu de um pensamento frio ou distorcido e que não é uma figura das brumas do norte. Numa manhã ensolarada, num porto comum do Oriente, vi passar um homem como ele. Parecia aflito e importante, sob uma sombra e em completo silêncio. Minha tarefa era encontrar as palavras certas para explicar o que ele significava, com toda a compreensão de que eu era capaz. Ele era ‘um de nós’.

Original English Version

The pronouncement gave me food for an hour’s anxious thought. Finally I arrived at the conclusion that, making due allowances for the subject itself being rather foreign to women’s normal sensibilities, the lady could not have been an Italian. I wonder whether she was European at all? In any case, no Latin temperament would have perceived anything morbid in the acute consciousness of lost honour. Such a consciousness may be wrong, or it may be right, or it may be condemned as artificial; and, perhaps, my Jim is not a type of wide commonness. But I can safely assure my readers that he is not the product of coldly perverted thinking. He’s not a figure of Northern Mists either. One sunny morning, in the commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, I saw his form pass by--appealing--significant--under a cloud--perfectly silent. Which is as it should be. It was for me, with all the sympathy of which I was capable, to seek fit words for his meaning. He was ‘one of us’.

Tradução Integral em Português

O pronunciamento deu matéria a uma hora de reflexão angustiada. Por fim, cheguei à conclusão de que, feitas as devidas concessões ao fato de o próprio tema ser um tanto alheio à sensibilidade normal das mulheres, aquela senhora não podia ser italiana. Pergunto-me se seria sequer europeia. De todo modo, nenhum temperamento latino teria percebido coisa alguma de mórbido na consciência aguda da honra perdida. Tal consciência pode estar errada, ou pode estar certa, ou pode ser condenada como artificial; e talvez o meu Jim não seja um tipo de ocorrência muito comum. Posso, contudo, assegurar com toda a tranquilidade aos meus leitores que ele não é produto de um pensamento friamente pervertido. Tampouco é uma figura das Brumas do Norte. Numa manhã ensolarada, no cenário banal de um ancoradouro do Oriente, vi passar sua figura - suplicante - significativa - sob uma nuvem - perfeitamente silenciosa. Como deve ser. Cabia a mim, com toda a compaixão de que era capaz, buscar palavras adequadas ao que ele significava. Era “um de nós”.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

J.C.

Original English Version

J.C.

Tradução Integral em Português

J.C.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

1917.

Original English Version

1917.

Tradução Integral em Português

1917.

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Chapter 1

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Ele tinha pouco menos de um metro e oitenta, era forte e caminhava diretamente para você, com a cabeça à frente e os ombros um pouco curvados. Seu olhar duro, por baixo da testa, lembrava um touro avançando. A voz era profunda e alta. Mostrava uma confiança teimosa, mas sem agressividade. Parecia natural e dirigida tanto contra si mesmo quanto contra os outros. Estava sempre impecável, vestido de branco dos sapatos ao chapéu. Nos portos orientais, onde trabalhava como agente marítimo de um fornecedor de navios, era muito popular.

Original English Version

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.

Tradução Integral em Português

Faltava-lhe uma polegada, talvez duas, para chegar aos seis pés; tinha compleição vigorosa e avançava diretamente para a pessoa, os ombros um pouco curvados, a cabeça projetada para a frente e um olhar fixo lançado de baixo que fazia pensar num touro em carga. Sua voz era grave e forte, e seus modos revelavam uma espécie de obstinada afirmação de si que nada tinha de agressiva. Parecia uma necessidade, dirigida, ao que tudo indicava, tanto a ele próprio quanto a qualquer outra pessoa. Era de um asseio impecável, vestido de branco imaculado dos sapatos ao chapéu, e gozava de grande popularidade nos vários portos do Oriente onde ganhava a vida como caixeiro marítimo de um fornecedor de navios.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Um agente marítimo não precisa passar em prova alguma, mas deve demonstrar capacidade na prática. Seu trabalho era competir a vela, vapor ou remo com outros agentes para chegar primeiro a um navio prestes a ancorar. Recebia o capitão com alegria, entregava o cartão do fornecedor e, na primeira ida do capitão a terra, conduzia-o com firmeza e discrição a uma loja enorme. Ali havia tudo para a vida a bordo, de alimentos e bebidas a ferramentas e materiais, até folhas de ouro para decoração. Um fornecedor desconhecido recebia o capitão como velho amigo. Havia uma sala fresca, poltronas, garrafas, charutos, material de escrita, regulamentos do porto e uma acolhida capaz de enternecer um marinheiro após longa viagem. O agente visitava o navio todos os dias enquanto permanecesse no porto. Era leal como amigo, cuidadoso como filho, paciente, generoso e alegre. Depois vinha a conta. Era uma profissão gentil e útil, por isso bons agentes eram raros. Quem também conhecia o mar valia muito e precisava ser bem tratado. Jim sempre recebia bom salário e muita paciência dos patrões. Mesmo assim, de repente pedia demissão e partia. Suas razões pareciam fracas, e, depois que saía, chamavam-no de tolo. Era a resposta deles à sua extrema sensibilidade.

Original English Version

A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun, but he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practically. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s heart. The connection thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship remains in harbour, by the daily visits of the water-clerk. To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Later on the bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane occupation. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk who possesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of having been brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money and some humouring. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with black ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. To his employers the reasons he gave were obviously inadequate. They said ‘Confounded fool!’ as soon as his back was turned. This was their criticism on his exquisite sensibility.

Tradução Integral em Português

Um caixeiro marítimo não precisa prestar exame de coisa alguma sob o sol, mas deve possuir Capacidade em abstrato e demonstrá-la na prática. Seu trabalho consiste em disputar, a vela, a vapor ou a remos, com outros caixeiros marítimos a chegada a qualquer navio prestes a fundear; saudar alegremente o capitão; impingir-lhe um cartão - o cartão comercial do fornecedor naval - ; e, na primeira ida do capitão a terra, conduzi-lo com firmeza, mas sem ostentação, a uma loja vasta como uma caverna, repleta de tudo quanto se come e se bebe a bordo; onde se pode obter tudo o que torne o navio apto a navegar e belo, desde um jogo de ganchos para a amarra até uma caderneta de folhas de ouro para as talhas da popa; e onde seu comandante é recebido como irmão por um fornecedor de navios a quem jamais viu. Há uma saleta fresca, poltronas, garrafas, charutos, material de escrita, um exemplar dos regulamentos do porto e um calor de acolhida que derrete no coração do marinheiro o sal de uma travessia de três meses. A relação assim iniciada é mantida, enquanto o navio permanece no porto, pelas visitas diárias do caixeiro marítimo. Para o capitão, ele é fiel como um amigo e atencioso como um filho, com a paciência de Jó, a devoção abnegada de uma mulher e a jovialidade de um companheiro de farras. Mais tarde, apresenta-se a conta. É uma ocupação bela e humana. Por isso são raros os bons caixeiros marítimos. Quando um caixeiro marítimo que possui Capacidade em abstrato conta ainda com a vantagem de ter sido criado no mar, vale para o patrão muito dinheiro e alguma condescendência. Jim sempre teve bons salários e tanta condescendência quanto bastaria para comprar a fidelidade de um demônio. Não obstante, com negra ingratidão, abandonava de repente o emprego e partia. Para seus patrões, as razões que dava eram manifestamente insuficientes. “Maldito idiota!”, diziam assim que ele virava as costas. Essa era a crítica deles à sua sensibilidade requintada.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Para os brancos do comércio portuário e os capitães, ele era simplesmente Jim. Tinha outro nome, mas não queria ouvi-lo. Seu disfarce era cheio de falhas e ocultava não sua identidade, mas um fato. Quando esse fato aparecia, deixava o porto e seguia para outro, geralmente mais a leste. Permanecia nos portos porque era um marinheiro exilado do mar, e sua habilidade só servia ao trabalho de agente. Recuava ordenadamente em direção ao sol nascente, enquanto a verdade o seguia por acaso e de forma inevitável. Ao longo dos anos, foi conhecido em Bombaim, Calcutá, Rangum, Penang e Batávia, sempre apenas como Jim, o agente marítimo. Mais tarde, quando sua percepção do insuportável o afastou dos portos e dos brancos até a floresta profunda, os malaios da aldeia onde tentou esconder seu infeliz dom acrescentaram um título. Chamaram-no Tuan Jim, isto é, Lorde Jim.

Original English Version

To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships he was just Jim--nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that it should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to another--generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but inevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say--Lord Jim.

Tradução Integral em Português

Para os homens brancos ligados aos negócios do cais e para os capitães de navio, ele era apenas Jim - nada mais. Tinha, é claro, outro nome, mas fazia questão de que não fosse pronunciado. Seu incógnito, furado como uma peneira, não se destinava a ocultar uma personalidade, e sim um fato. Quando o fato irrompia através do incógnito, ele deixava subitamente o porto marítimo onde por acaso se encontrava e seguia para outro - em geral mais para o leste. Mantinha-se nos portos porque era um marinheiro exilado do mar e possuía Capacidade em abstrato, que não serve para nenhum outro trabalho senão o de caixeiro marítimo. Recuava em boa ordem na direção do sol nascente, e o fato o seguia de modo casual, porém inevitável. Assim, no decorrer dos anos, foi conhecido sucessivamente em Bombaim, Calcutá, Rangum, Penang e Batávia - e, em cada uma dessas escalas, era apenas Jim, o caixeiro marítimo. Mais tarde, quando sua percepção aguda do Intolerável o expulsou definitivamente dos portos e do convívio dos brancos, levando-o até a floresta virgem, os malaios da aldeia na selva, onde ele escolhera ocultar sua deplorável faculdade, acrescentaram uma palavra ao monossílabo de seu incógnito. Chamavam-no Tuan Jim: > **Tradução do malaio:** Senhor Jim. como quem dissesse - Lorde Jim.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Ele vinha da casa de um pastor. Muitos bons capitães mercantes saem desses lares de fé e paz. O pai de Jim possuía conhecimento religioso suficiente para orientar os pobres sem perturbar o conforto dos moradores de mansões. A pequena igreja no morro, cinzenta de musgo, parecia uma rocha entre folhas. Estava ali havia séculos, embora as árvores talvez se lembrassem da primeira pedra. Abaixo, a fachada vermelha da casa paroquial brilhava entre gramados, flores e pinheiros. Atrás havia um pomar; à esquerda, um pátio de estábulos; junto ao muro de tijolos, estufas de vidro. O benefício eclesiástico pertencia à família havia gerações. Mas Jim era um de cinco filhos e, quando livros leves de férias despertaram seu amor pelo mar, foi enviado a um navio-escola para oficiais da marinha mercante.

Original English Version

Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. The little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. It had stood there for centuries, but the trees around probably remembered the laying of the first stone. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. The living had belonged to the family for generations; but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, he was sent at once to a ‘training-ship for officers of the mercantile marine.’

Tradução Integral em Português

Ele provinha, originalmente, de uma casa paroquial. Muitos comandantes de belos navios mercantes vêm dessas moradas de piedade e paz. O pai de Jim possuía um conhecimento tão seguro do Incognoscível que promovia a retidão dos habitantes dos casebres sem perturbar a tranquilidade de espírito daqueles a quem uma Providência infalível permite viver em mansões. A pequena igreja no alto de uma colina tinha o cinza musgoso de uma rocha vista através de uma tela irregular de folhagem. Erguia-se ali havia séculos, mas as árvores ao redor provavelmente se lembravam do assentamento da primeira pedra. Mais abaixo, a fachada vermelha da casa paroquial brilhava num tom quente entre gramados, canteiros de flores e pinheiros, com um pomar nos fundos, um pátio de estábulos calçado à esquerda e os vidros inclinados de estufas presos ao longo de um muro de tijolos. O benefício eclesiástico pertencera à família por gerações; mas Jim era um de cinco filhos e, quando, depois de uma dieta de literatura ligeira nas férias, sua vocação para o mar se declarou, mandaram-no imediatamente para um “navio-escola de oficiais da marinha mercante”.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Ali aprendeu um pouco de trigonometria e a atravessar as vergas superiores. Em geral, todos gostavam dele. Ficou em terceiro lugar em navegação e remava na posição principal do primeiro escaler. Tinha cabeça firme e corpo forte, por isso era rápido no cordame. Seu posto era na gávea de vante, de onde observava os telhados tranquilos cortados pelo rio marrom e as chaminés finas contra o céu sujo, soltando fumaça como vulcões. Via também grandes navios partindo, balsas em movimento, pequenos barcos e a beleza distante do mar. Tudo o enchia de esperança por uma vida emocionante de aventuras.

Original English Version

He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. He was generally liked. He had the third place in navigation and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having a steady head with an excellent physique, he was very smart aloft. His station was in the fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belching out smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure.

Tradução Integral em Português

Ali aprendeu um pouco de trigonometria e a cruzar as vergas dos joanetes. Era estimado por todos. Ficou em terceiro lugar em navegação e era o voga do primeiro escaler. Como não sofria de vertigens e possuía excelente constituição física, mostrava grande agilidade no alto. Seu posto era na gávea do traquete, e muitas vezes, dali, olhava para baixo, com o desdém de um homem destinado a brilhar em meio aos perigos, para a multidão pacífica de telhados cortada em duas pela maré parda do rio, enquanto, dispersas nos limites da planície circundante, as chaminés das fábricas se erguiam perpendiculares contra um céu encardido, cada qual fina como um lápis e arrotando fumaça como um vulcão. Podia ver os grandes navios partindo, as balsas de boca larga em movimento incessante, os pequenos barcos flutuando muito abaixo de seus pés, com o esplendor enevoado do mar ao longe e a esperança de uma vida vibrante no mundo da aventura.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

No convés inferior, entre duzentas vozes, esquecia-se de si e imaginava a vida marítima dos livros. Via-se salvando náufragos, cortando mastros num furacão ou atravessando a arrebentação com uma corda. Imaginava-se náufrago solitário, descalço e seminu, buscando mariscos nos recifes para não morrer de fome. Enfrentava povos selvagens, impedia motins e, num pequeno barco no oceano, sustentava o ânimo de homens desesperados. Em todas as cenas, era fiel ao dever e corajoso como um herói.

- Algo está acontecendo. Vamos.

Ele se levantou de um salto. Os rapazes corriam pelas escadas. Acima havia correria e gritos; ao passar pela escotilha, Jim parou, chocado e incapaz de compreender.

Original English Version

On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book.

‘Something’s up. Come along.’

He leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded.

Tradução Integral em Português

No convés inferior, em meio ao babel de duzentas vozes, esquecia-se de si e vivia antecipadamente, na imaginação, a vida marítima da literatura ligeira. Via-se salvando pessoas de navios que afundavam, cortando mastros num furacão, atravessando a arrebentação a nado com um cabo; ou então, náufrago solitário, descalço e seminu, caminhando por recifes descobertos em busca de mariscos para afastar a fome. Enfrentava selvagens em praias tropicais, sufocava motins em alto-mar e, num pequeno barco em pleno oceano, sustentava o ânimo de homens desesperados - sempre um exemplo de devoção ao dever, tão impávido quanto um herói de livro.

“Há alguma coisa acontecendo. Venha.”

Ele saltou de pé. Os rapazes subiam as escadas em torrente. Lá em cima ouvia-se um grande corre-corre acompanhado de gritos e, quando passou pela escotilha, ele parou - como que atônito.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Era o anoitecer de um dia de inverno. A tempestade, mais forte desde o meio-dia, interrompera o tráfego no rio. Agora soprava em rajadas como canhões disparando sobre o oceano. A chuva caía inclinada e depois diminuía por um instante. Entre as rajadas, Jim via a maré revolta, pequenos barcos lançados junto à margem, prédios imóveis na névoa, grandes balsas balançando nas âncoras e plataformas subindo e descendo sob a espuma. O vento seguinte parecia varrer tudo. O ar estava cheio de água voadora. A tempestade parecia feroz e decidida, e a confusão da terra e do céu parecia dirigida contra ele. Jim ficou imóvel de medo, como se girasse.

Original English Version

It was the dusk of a winter’s day. The gale had freshened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. The next gust seemed to blow all this away. The air was full of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. He stood still. It seemed to him he was whirled around.

Tradução Integral em Português

Era o crepúsculo de um dia de inverno. A ventania se intensificara desde o meio-dia, interrompendo o tráfego no rio, e agora soprava com a força de um furacão em rajadas intermitentes, que ribombavam como salvas de grandes canhões disparando sobre o oceano. A chuva caía oblíqua em lençóis que chicoteavam e amainavam, e nos intervalos Jim tinha vislumbres ameaçadores da maré revolta, das pequenas embarcações amontoadas e sacudidas junto à margem, dos edifícios imóveis na névoa açoitada pelo vento, das largas balsas arfando pesadamente nas amarras, dos vastos pontões de desembarque subindo e descendo, sufocados pela água pulverizada. A rajada seguinte parecia varrer tudo aquilo. O ar estava repleto de água voadora. Havia na ventania um propósito feroz, uma determinação furiosa no guincho do vento, no tumulto brutal da terra e do céu, que parecia voltar-se contra ele e o fazia prender a respiração, assombrado. Permaneceu imóvel. Parecia-lhe estar rodopiando.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Alguém o empurrou. - Tripulem o escaler! Os rapazes passaram correndo. Um navio costeiro em busca de abrigo atingira uma escuna ancorada, e um instrutor vira a colisão. Os rapazes subiram ao corrimão e se reuniram junto aos turcos. Um empurrão lançou Jim contra o mastro de mezena, e ele agarrou uma corda. O velho navio-escola estremecia nas amarras, voltando suavemente a proa ao vento, enquanto o cordame fino vibrava como a voz profunda de sua antiga vida. - Baixem! O barco tripulado caiu abaixo do corrimão, e Jim correu atrás. Ouviu o mergulho. Inclinou-se sobre o rio, que fervia em espuma. Na luz que sumia, o escaler lutava contra maré e vento. Uma voz gritou: - Mantenham a remada, seus moleques, se querem salvar alguém! De repente, a proa se ergueu e o barco, com os remos suspensos sobre uma onda, libertou-se do vento e da corrente.

Original English Version

He was jostled. ‘Man the cutter!’ Boys rushed past him. A coaster running in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship’s instructors had seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. ‘Collision. Just ahead of us. Mr. Symons saw it.’ A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. ‘Lower away!’ He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail, and rushed after her. He heard a splash. ‘Let go; clear the falls!’ He leaned over. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter could be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind, that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship. A yelling voice in her reached him faintly: ‘Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save anybody! Keep stroke!’ And suddenly she lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide.

Tradução Integral em Português

Foi empurrado. “Guarneçam o escaler!” Os rapazes passaram correndo por ele. Um navio de cabotagem que buscava abrigo abalroara uma escuna fundeada, e um dos instrutores do navio vira o acidente. Uma multidão de rapazes trepou nas amuradas e se aglomerou em torno dos turcos. “Colisão. Bem à nossa frente. O Sr. Symons viu.” Um empurrão o fez cambalear contra o mastro da mezena, e ele se agarrou a um cabo. O velho navio-escola, acorrentado às amarras, estremeceu por inteiro, curvando-se suavemente de proa para o vento, enquanto seu escasso aparelho entoava num baixo profundo a canção ofegante de sua juventude no mar. “Arriem!” Ele viu o barco, já guarnecido, descer depressa por baixo da amurada e correu atrás dele. Ouviu um mergulho. “Larguem; livrem as talhas!” Inclinou-se sobre a borda. O rio fervilhava ao costado em faixas de espuma. Podia-se ver o escaler na escuridão crescente, sob o sortilégio da maré e do vento, que por um instante o mantiveram preso e saltitando ao través do navio. Uma voz aos berros chegou-lhe debilmente do barco: “Mantenham a cadência, seus moleques, se querem salvar alguém! Mantenham a cadência!” E de repente o escaler ergueu alto a proa e, saltando sobre uma onda com os remos levantados, rompeu o sortilégio lançado pelo vento e pela maré.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Uma mão firme pousou no ombro de Jim. - Tarde demais, rapaz - disse o capitão, impedindo-o de saltar. Jim ergueu os olhos, mostrando claramente a derrota. O capitão sorriu com bondade. - Mais sorte na próxima vez. Isso o ensinará a ser rápido.

Original English Version

Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. ‘Too late, youngster.’ The captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious defeat in his eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically. ‘Better luck next time. This will teach you to be smart.’

Tradução Integral em Português

Jim sentiu uma mão apertar-lhe o ombro com firmeza. “Tarde demais, rapaz.” O capitão do navio pousou uma mão repressora naquele menino, que parecia prestes a saltar pela borda, e Jim ergueu os olhos, trazendo neles a dor de uma derrota consciente. O capitão sorriu com simpatia. “Mais sorte da próxima vez. Isto vai ensiná-lo a ser rápido.”

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Um grande aplauso recebeu o escaler. Ele voltou dançando, meio cheio de água, com dois homens exaustos deitados no fundo. Primeiro, Jim temera a tempestade e o mar; agora achava o perigo fraco e sem importância. Não sentia medo. Acreditava poder enfrentar perigos maiores melhor que qualquer um. Mesmo assim, naquela noite ficou sozinho pensando enquanto o chefe do escaler, rapaz de rosto delicado e grandes olhos cinzentos, era elogiado como herói. Cercado por jovens, contou como vira uma cabeça na água, enfiara o croque e o prendera nas calças do homem. Quase caíra também, mas o velho Symons largara o leme e agarrara suas pernas. Disse que Symons era bom, embora mal-humorado e cheio de palavrões. O homem grande de barba gemera por causa da perna e desmaiara como uma moça. Mostrou o croque e explicou que as calças o haviam sustentado, não a carne. Naturalmente, havia muito sangue.

Original English Version

A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing back half full of water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace. Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for the gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so--better than anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Nevertheless he brooded apart that evening while the bowman of the cutter--a boy with a face like a girl’s and big grey eyes--was the hero of the lower deck. Eager questioners crowded round him. He narrated: ‘I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped. Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don’t mind a bit him being grumpy with us. He swore at me all the time he held my leg, but that was only his way of telling me to stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully excitable--isn’t he? No--not the little fair chap--the other, the big one with a beard. When we pulled him in he groaned, “Oh, my leg! oh, my leg!” and turned up his eyes. Fancy such a big chap fainting like a girl. Would any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook?--I wouldn’t. It went into his leg so far.’ He showed the boat-hook, which he had carried below for the purpose, and produced a sensation. ‘No, silly! It was not his flesh that held him--his breeches did. Lots of blood, of course.’

Tradução Integral em Português

Um viva estridente saudou o escaler. Ele voltou dançando, meio cheio de água, com dois homens exaustos rolando sobre os estrados do fundo. O tumulto e a ameaça do vento e do mar agora pareciam inteiramente desprezíveis a Jim, agravando seu pesar por ter sentido assombro diante de uma ameaça tão ineficaz. Agora sabia o que pensar daquilo. Parecia-lhe que a ventania não lhe importava nem um pouco. Podia enfrentar perigos maiores. E o faria - melhor do que qualquer um. Não restava uma só partícula de medo. Não obstante, naquela noite ficou cismando à parte, enquanto o proeiro do escaler - um menino de rosto semelhante ao de uma garota e grandes olhos cinzentos - era o herói do convés inferior. Perguntadores ávidos se apinhavam ao redor dele. O menino contou: “Eu só vi a cabeça dele boiando e enfiei o croque na água. Prendeu-se nas calças dele e eu quase caí pela borda, achei mesmo que ia cair, mas o velho Symons largou o leme e agarrou minhas pernas - o barco quase virou. O velho Symons é um sujeito e tanto. Não me incomoda nem um pouco ele ser rabugento com a gente. Ficou me xingando enquanto segurava minha perna, mas era só o jeito dele de dizer que eu não largasse o croque. O velho Symons é terrivelmente nervoso, não é? Não - não o sujeito pequeno e louro - o outro, o grandão de barba. Quando nós o puxamos para dentro, ele gemeu: ‘Ai, minha perna! Ai, minha perna!’, e revirou os olhos. Imaginem um sujeito daquele tamanho desmaiar como uma menina. Algum de vocês desmaiaria por causa de uma espetada de croque? Eu não. Entrou muito fundo na perna dele.” Mostrou o croque, que levara para baixo com esse propósito, e causou sensação. “Não, seu bobo! Não foi a carne dele que o segurou - foram as calças. Um monte de sangue, é claro.”

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Jim considerou aquilo uma triste exibição de vaidade. A tempestade criara um falso heroísmo, assim como fingira ser terrível. Irritava-o que vento e mar o tivessem surpreendido e lhe tirado a chance de enfrentar o perigo. Contudo, ficou contente por não entrar no escaler, pois uma ação menor bastara. Sentia ter aprendido mais que os homens do resgate. Quando os outros tivessem medo, saberia enfrentar a falsa ameaça do vento e das ondas. Visto com calma, tudo parecia fraco e sem valor. Depois do choque, afastou-se dos rapazes barulhentos, com uma nova e orgulhosa certeza em seu amor pela aventura e em sua coragem de muitas formas.

Original English Version

Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement had served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge more than those who had done the work. When all men flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone would know how to deal with the spurious menace of wind and seas. He knew what to think of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible. He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage.

Tradução Integral em Português

Jim julgou aquilo uma exibição lastimável de vaidade. A ventania servira a um heroísmo tão falso quanto sua própria pretensão de infundir terror. Ele se irritava com o tumulto brutal da terra e do céu por tê-lo apanhado desprevenido e refreado injustamente uma generosa disposição para arrostar perigos por um fio. De resto, sentia-se bastante satisfeito por não ter entrado no escaler, já que uma façanha inferior bastara para a ocasião. Ampliara seus conhecimentos mais do que os que haviam realizado o trabalho. Quando todos os homens recuassem, então - tinha certeza - só ele saberia como lidar com a ameaça ilusória do vento e dos mares. Sabia o que pensar daquilo. Visto sem paixão, parecia desprezível. Não conseguia detectar em si nenhum vestígio de emoção, e o efeito final de um acontecimento assombroso foi que, despercebido e apartado da multidão ruidosa de rapazes, exultou com renovada certeza em sua avidez por aventuras e na convicção de possuir uma coragem de muitas faces.

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Chapter 2

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Após dois anos de treinamento, foi para o mar. Entrou no mundo imaginado, estranhamente vazio de aventuras. Fez muitas viagens e conheceu a vida repetitiva entre céu e água. Suportou críticas, exigências do mar e o trabalho duro que garante o pão, mas recompensa apenas quem o ama de verdade. Jim não encontrou essa recompensa. Mesmo assim, não podia voltar, pois a vida no mar é sedutora, decepcionante e difícil de abandonar. Seu futuro parecia bom: era educado, firme, obediente e conhecia o dever. Ainda jovem, tornou-se imediato de um bom navio, sem jamais ser testado pelos grandes acontecimentos que revelam a verdadeira natureza de um homem.

Original English Version

After two years of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so well known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure. He made many voyages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. This reward eluded him. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Besides, his prospects were good. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself.

Tradução Integral em Português

Depois de dois anos de treinamento, fez-se ao mar e, ao entrar nas regiões tão familiares à sua imaginação, achou-as estranhamente desprovidas de aventura. Fez muitas viagens. Conheceu a monotonia mágica da existência entre o céu e a água: teve de suportar a crítica dos homens, as exigências do mar e a severidade prosaica da tarefa diária que dá o pão - mas cuja única recompensa está no amor perfeito pelo trabalho. Essa recompensa lhe escapava. Ainda assim, não podia voltar atrás, porque nada existe de mais sedutor, desencantador e escravizante do que a vida no mar. Além disso, suas perspectivas eram boas. Tinha maneiras de cavalheiro, era firme, dócil e conhecia a fundo seus deveres; e, com o tempo, ainda muito jovem, tornou-se imediato de um belo navio, sem jamais ter sido posto à prova por aqueles acontecimentos do mar que expõem à luz do dia o valor íntimo de um homem, a têmpera de seu caráter e a fibra de que é feito; que revelam a qualidade de sua resistência e a verdade secreta de suas pretensões, não apenas aos outros, mas também a si mesmo.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Apenas uma vez viu novamente a seriedade da fúria do mar. As pessoas não enxergam essa verdade com tanta frequência quanto imaginam. Há muitos graus de perigo e tempestade; só às vezes surge uma força sombria e deliberada. Então vento e mar parecem atacar com crueldade, desejando destruir esperança, medo, corpo cansado e desejo de descanso. Querem esmagar tudo o que o homem viu, conheceu, amou, apreciou ou odiou e tomar o que lhe é precioso: sol, lembranças e futuro. No fim, podem apagar seu mundo inteiro simplesmente tirando-lhe a vida.

Original English Version

Only once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life.

Tradução Integral em Português

Uma única vez, em todos aqueles anos, ele tornou a vislumbrar a determinação contida na cólera do mar. Essa verdade não se manifesta com tanta frequência quanto se poderia imaginar. Há muitos matizes no perigo das aventuras e das tormentas, e só de vez em quando surge na face dos fatos uma sinistra violência de intenção - esse algo indefinível que impõe à mente e ao coração de um homem a certeza de que tal emaranhado de acidentes ou tais fúrias elementares avançam contra ele com um propósito malévolo, com uma força impossível de dominar, com uma crueldade desenfreada que pretende arrancar-lhe a esperança e o medo, a dor do cansaço e o anseio de repouso; que pretende despedaçar, destruir, aniquilar tudo o que ele viu, conheceu, amou, desfrutou ou odiou; tudo o que é inestimável e necessário - a luz do sol, as lembranças, o futuro; que pretende varrer por completo de sua vista o mundo precioso inteiro pelo simples e aterrador ato de tirar-lhe a vida.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

No início de uma semana que o capitão escocês chamaria de "um milagre perfeito", Jim foi atingido por uma verga. Passou dias de costas, atordoado, machucado, sem esperança e inquieto. Nos momentos de clareza, dizia não se importar com o fim. O perigo invisível se torna vago; o medo enfraquece; a imaginação, inimiga do homem e mãe de todos os temores, adormece quando a emoção se esgota. Jim via apenas a desordem da cabine e sentia alívio secreto por não precisar subir ao convés. Às vezes, uma dor repentina o fazia ofegar e se contorcer. Então o fato cruel de que a vida podia conter tanto sofrimento lhe dava vontade desesperada de escapar a qualquer preço. Depois, o bom tempo voltou, e ele deixou de pensar nisso.

Original English Version

Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing but the disorder of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Then fine weather returned, and he thought no more about It.

Tradução Integral em Português

Jim, incapacitado pela queda de uma verga no início de uma semana sobre a qual seu capitão escocês costumava dizer mais tarde: “Homem! Para mim é um perfeito milagre que ela tenha sobrevivido!”, passou muitos dias estendido de costas, atordoado, contundido, sem esperança e atormentado como se estivesse no fundo de um abismo de inquietação. Não lhe importava qual seria o fim e, nos momentos de lucidez, atribuía valor excessivo à própria indiferença. Quando não é visto, o perigo tem a vaga imperfeição do pensamento humano. O medo se torna indistinto; e a Imaginação, inimiga dos homens, mãe de todos os terrores, sem estímulo, adormece no torpor da emoção exaurida. Jim não via senão a desordem da cabine sacudida. Jazia ali, trancado sob as escotilhas, em meio a uma pequena devastação, e sentia-se secretamente contente por não precisar subir ao convés. Mas, de tempos em tempos, uma onda incontrolável de angústia o agarrava pelo corpo, fazia-o arfar e contorcer-se sob os cobertores; então a brutalidade insensata de uma existência sujeita à agonia de semelhantes sensações enchia-o de um desejo desesperado de escapar a qualquer preço. Depois o bom tempo voltou, e ele não tornou a pensar Naquilo.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Mas o ferimento não sarou. Quando o navio chegou a um porto oriental, Jim precisou ir ao hospital. Recuperou-se devagar, e o navio partiu sem ele.

Original English Version

His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he was left behind.

Tradução Integral em Português

Sua claudicação, contudo, persistiu e, quando o navio chegou a um porto do Oriente, ele teve de ir para o hospital. Sua recuperação foi lenta, e ele ficou para trás.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Havia apenas outros dois pacientes na ala dos brancos. Um era o tesoureiro de uma canhoneira, que quebrara a perna ao cair por uma escotilha. O outro, um bondoso empreiteiro ferroviário de uma província próxima, sofria de estranha doença tropical. Achava o médico um tolo e tomava escondido um remédio patenteado trazido com lealdade pelo criado tâmil. Os três contavam suas vidas, jogavam um pouco ou passavam o dia de pijama, bocejando em poltronas e sem falar. O hospital ficava num morro. Uma brisa suave entrava pelas janelas sempre abertas, trazendo o céu tranquilo, a terra pesada e o belo cheiro das águas orientais para a sala vazia. Havia perfumes e uma sensação de repouso profundo, como um sonho infinito. Todos os dias, Jim olhava além dos jardins e telhados, depois das palmeiras, para o ancoradouro movimentado que levava ao Oriente. Via pequenas ilhas enfeitadas, sol forte, navios minúsculos e movimento alegre como uma festa, sob o céu calmo e o mar pacífico até o horizonte.

Original English Version

There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon.

Tradução Integral em Português

Havia apenas dois outros pacientes na enfermaria dos brancos: o comissário de uma canhoneira, que quebrara a perna ao cair por uma escotilha; e uma espécie de empreiteiro ferroviário de uma província vizinha, acometido de alguma misteriosa doença tropical, que considerava o médico um asno e se entregava a orgias clandestinas de remédios de marca que seu criado tâmil contrabandeava para dentro com devoção incansável. Contavam uns aos outros a história de suas vidas, jogavam um pouco de cartas ou, bocejando de pijama, passavam o dia largados em poltronas sem dizer palavra. O hospital ficava numa colina, e uma brisa suave que entrava pelas janelas, sempre escancaradas, trazia para o quarto nu a brandura do céu, o langor da terra, o sopro enfeitiçador das águas do Oriente. Havia nela perfumes, sugestões de repouso infinito, a dádiva de sonhos intermináveis. Todos os dias Jim contemplava, para além das moitas dos jardins, dos telhados da cidade e das frondes das palmeiras que cresciam na praia, aquele ancoradouro que é uma via de passagem para o Oriente - o ancoradouro pontilhado de ilhotas engrinaldadas, iluminado por um sol de festa, com navios semelhantes a brinquedos, uma atividade fulgurante que lembrava um cortejo festivo, a serenidade eterna do céu oriental acima de tudo e a paz sorridente dos mares do Oriente ocupando o espaço até o horizonte.

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Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Assim que pôde andar sem bengala, foi à cidade procurar passagem para casa. Nada apareceu e, enquanto esperava, juntou-se aos homens de sua profissão. Havia dois tipos. Uns poucos, raramente vistos, levavam vidas estranhas e conservavam energia, temperamento de pirata e olhos de sonhador. Moviam-se por um labirinto de planos, esperanças, perigos e viagens, à frente da civilização e nas partes escuras do mar. Para eles, apenas a morte parecia certa. A maioria era como Jim: algum acidente os levara até ali, e ficaram como oficiais de navios locais. Temiam o serviço em casa, mais duro, disciplinado e tempestuoso. Amavam a paz do céu e do mar orientais, viagens curtas, cadeiras confortáveis, grandes tripulações nativas e o prestígio de serem brancos. Temiam trabalho e viviam de modo fácil e incerto, sempre perto da demissão e de outro emprego. Serviam chineses, árabes e mestiços e serviriam ao próprio diabo se fosse bastante fácil. Falavam sem parar sobre sorte: o barco tranquilo de um na costa chinesa, o bom posto de outro no Japão, o sucesso de um terceiro na marinha siamesa. Em suas palavras, gestos e rostos, Jim via o ponto fraco: lenta decadência e desejo de atravessar a vida à deriva e em segurança.

Original English Version

Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended into the town to look for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered just then, and, while waiting, he associated naturally with the men of his calling in the port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement. The majority were men who, like himself, thrown there by some accident, had remained as officers of country ships. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They loved short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the distinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy enough. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in their persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence.

Tradução Integral em Português

Assim que conseguiu andar sem bengala, desceu à cidade para procurar uma oportunidade de voltar para casa. Nada se apresentou naquele momento e, enquanto esperava, passou naturalmente a conviver com os homens de seu ofício no porto. Eram de duas espécies. Alguns, pouquíssimos e raramente vistos ali, levavam vidas misteriosas; haviam conservado intacta a energia, com o temperamento de bucaneiros e os olhos de sonhadores. Pareciam viver num labirinto delirante de planos, esperanças, perigos e empreendimentos, à frente da civilização, nos lugares obscuros do mar; e a morte era o único acontecimento de sua existência fantástica cuja realização parecia contar com razoável certeza. A maioria era composta de homens que, como ele, lançados ali por algum acidente, tinham permanecido como oficiais de navios locais. Agora sentiam horror ao serviço nas linhas da pátria, com suas condições mais duras, sua concepção mais severa do dever e o risco de oceanos tempestuosos. Haviam-se afinado à paz eterna do céu e do mar orientais. Gostavam de travessias curtas, boas cadeiras de convés, grandes tripulações nativas e da distinção de serem brancos. Estremeciam à ideia do trabalho árduo e levavam vidas precariamente fáceis, sempre à beira de uma demissão, sempre à beira de um contrato, servindo chineses, árabes, mestiços - teriam servido ao próprio diabo, se ele lhes facilitasse bastante as coisas. Falavam eternamente de golpes de sorte: de como Fulano conseguira o comando de um barco na costa da China - uma mamata; de como este tinha um posto tranquilo em algum lugar do Japão e aquele se saía bem na marinha siamesa; e, em tudo o que diziam - nos atos, nos olhares, nas próprias pessoas - , podia-se detectar o ponto mole, o lugar da deterioração, a determinação de atravessar a existência em segura ociosidade.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

No início, Jim via aquela multidão falante como marinheiros menos sólidos que sombras. Com o tempo, sentiu-se estranhamente atraído por eles e por seu sucesso com tão pouco perigo e trabalho. Ao desprezo inicial juntou-se outro sentimento. Então abandonou de repente a ideia de voltar para casa e embarcou como imediato do Patna.

O Patna era um velho vapor local, estreito como galgo e coberto de ferrugem. Pertencia a um chinês, fora fretado por um árabe e era comandado por um estranho alemão de Nova Gales do Sul. Ele insultava publicamente o próprio país e tratava com crueldade quem não temia. Tinha expressão dura, nariz roxo e bigode vermelho. Depois de pintado por fora e caiado por dentro, recebeu cerca de oitocentos peregrinos enquanto mantinha vapor junto ao cais de madeira.

Original English Version

To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found a fascination in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on such a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna.

The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a wooden jetty.

Tradução Integral em Português

Aos olhos de Jim, aquela multidão tagarela, considerada como um grupo de marinheiros, pareceu a princípio mais inconsistente do que outras tantas sombras. Por fim, porém, ele descobriu certo fascínio na visão daqueles homens, na aparência de se saírem tão bem com uma parcela tão pequena de perigo e labuta. Com o tempo, ao lado do desdém inicial, outro sentimento foi crescendo devagar; e, de repente, abandonando a ideia de voltar para casa, aceitou o posto de imediato do Patna.

O Patna era um vapor local velho como as colinas, esguio como um galgo e mais carcomido pela ferrugem do que um tanque de água condenado. Pertencia a um chinês, estava fretado por um árabe e era comandado por um alemão da Nova Gales do Sul, uma espécie de renegado muito empenhado em amaldiçoar publicamente sua pátria, mas que, apoiado, ao que parecia, na política vitoriosa de Bismarck, brutalizava todos aqueles de quem não tinha medo e ostentava um ar de “sangue e ferro”, combinado com um nariz roxo e um bigode ruivo. Depois que o pintaram por fora e o caiaram por dentro, oitocentos peregrinos (mais ou menos) foram tangidos para bordo enquanto ele jazia, com as caldeiras sob pressão, ao lado de um cais de madeira.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Eles entraram em corrente por três passarelas, movidos pela fé e pela esperança do paraíso. Seus pés descalços produziam um arrastar constante; não falavam nem olhavam para trás. Livres das grades, espalhavam-se pelo convés, iam à proa e à popa e desciam pelas escotilhas, enchendo o interior como água numa cisterna. Eram oitocentos homens e mulheres cheios de fé, esperança, amor e lembranças. Vinham do norte, do sul e de lugares orientais distantes, depois de longas viagens por trilhas, rios, canoas e ilhas. Enfrentaram sofrimento, visões e medos estranhos, guiados por um único desejo. Haviam deixado cabanas solitárias, aldeias cheias, povoados marítimos, florestas, governantes, riqueza ou pobreza, lugares da juventude e túmulos dos pais. Estavam empoeirados, suados, sujos e cobertos de trapos. Havia homens fortes conduzindo famílias, velhos com pouca esperança de retorno, rapazes corajosos, moças tímidas de cabelos desarrumados e mulheres nervosas apertando bebês adormecidos contra o peito. Eram peregrinos conduzidos por uma crença rigorosa.

Original English Version

They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from villages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left their forests, their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity, their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their fathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief.

Tradução Integral em Português

Eles afluíam a bordo por três pranchas, afluíam impelidos pela fé e pela esperança do paraíso, afluíam num pisar e arrastar contínuo de pés descalços, sem uma palavra, um murmúrio ou um olhar para trás; e, quando se viam livres das grades que os confinavam, espalhavam-se por todos os lados do convés, corriam para a proa e para a popa, transbordavam pelas escotilhas escancaradas, enchiam os recessos interiores do navio - como água enchendo uma cisterna, como água penetrando em gretas e frestas, como água subindo em silêncio até a borda. Oitocentos homens e mulheres com fé e esperanças, com afetos e lembranças, haviam se reunido ali, vindos do norte e do sul e dos confins do Oriente, depois de percorrerem as trilhas da selva, descerem os rios, costearem os baixios em praus, atravessarem de ilha em ilha em pequenas canoas, passarem por sofrimentos, depararem com visões estranhas, serem assediados por medos estranhos, sustentados por um único desejo. Vinham de cabanas solitárias no ermo, de campongs, de aldeias à beira-mar. > **Tradução do malaio:** povoados. Ao chamado de uma ideia, tinham deixado suas florestas, suas clareiras, a proteção de seus governantes, sua prosperidade, sua pobreza, os cenários da juventude e os túmulos de seus pais. Chegavam cobertos de poeira, suor, imundície e farrapos - os homens fortes à frente dos grupos familiares, os velhos magros avançando sem esperança de retorno; meninos de olhos destemidos que lançavam olhares curiosos, menininhas tímidas de longos cabelos em desalinho; mulheres acanhadas, abafadas em suas vestes, apertando contra o peito, envoltos nas pontas soltas de lenços de cabeça encardidos, os bebês adormecidos, peregrinos inconscientes de uma fé exigente.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Olhe para esse gado - disse o capitão alemão ao novo imediato.

Um árabe, chefe daquela viagem sagrada, embarcou por último. Caminhava devagar, belo e sério em sua túnica branca e grande turbante. Criados levavam sua bagagem. Então o Patna soltou as amarras e se afastou do cais.

Passou entre duas pequenas ilhas, cruzou a área de ancoragem, virou na sombra de um morro e seguiu junto a uma linha de recifes espumantes. Na popa, o árabe recitou a oração dos viajantes do mar, pedindo ao Altíssimo que abençoasse a viagem, o trabalho dos homens e os desejos secretos de seus corações. Ao anoitecer, o vapor avançava pelas águas calmas do estreito. Muito atrás, um farol num banco perigoso brilhava como olho de fogo, parecendo zombar da missão dos fiéis.

Original English Version

‘Look at dese cattle,’ said the German skipper to his new chief mate.

An Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. He walked slowly aboard, handsome and grave in his white gown and large turban. A string of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and backed away from the wharf.

She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. The Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by sea. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Olhe estes gado”, disse o capitão alemão ao novo imediato.

Um árabe, o guia daquela viagem piedosa, veio por último. Subiu a bordo devagar, belo e grave em sua túnica branca e seu grande turbante. Seguiu-o uma fila de criados carregados com a bagagem; o Patna largou as amarras e se afastou do cais de marcha a ré.

O navio tomou rumo entre duas pequenas ilhotas, atravessou obliquamente a área onde fundeavam os veleiros, descreveu meio círculo à sombra de uma colina e depois passou rente a uma crista de recifes espumantes. O árabe, de pé na popa, recitou em voz alta a oração dos que viajam por mar. Invocou o favor do Altíssimo sobre aquela jornada, implorou Sua bênção para o trabalho dos homens e para os propósitos secretos de seus corações; o vapor batia, no crepúsculo, as águas calmas do estreito; e, muito à popa do navio de peregrinos, um farol sobre estacas helicoidais, plantado por infiéis num baixio traiçoeiro, parecia piscar para ele seu olho de fogo, como que escarnecendo de sua missão de fé.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

O navio saiu do estreito, cruzou a baía, passou pela Passagem de Um Grau e tomou rumo direto ao Mar Vermelho sob um céu claro e ardente. O sol parecia esgotar pensamento e força. Sob aquele brilho estranho, o mar era azul-escuro e imóvel. O Patna avançava com um leve assobio sobre a água lisa. Uma linha negra de fumaça seguia atrás, e uma faixa branca de espuma surgia e desaparecia como o fantasma de uma trilha num mar morto.

Original English Version

She cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, continued on her way through the ‘One-degree’ passage. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.

Tradução Integral em Português

O Patna deixou o estreito para trás, atravessou a baía e prosseguiu pela passagem de “Um Grau”. Avançava em linha reta para o mar Vermelho sob um céu sereno, sob um céu abrasador e sem nuvens, envolto num fulgor de sol que matava todo pensamento, oprimia o coração, crestava todo impulso de força e energia. E, sob o esplendor sinistro daquele céu, o mar, azul e profundo, permanecia imóvel, sem agitação, sem ondulação, sem uma ruga - viscoso, estagnado, morto. O Patna, com um silvo leve, atravessava aquela planície luminosa e lisa, desenrolava no céu uma faixa negra de fumaça, deixava atrás de si na água uma fita branca de espuma que desaparecia imediatamente, como o fantasma de uma esteira traçada sobre um mar sem vida pelo fantasma de um vapor.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Toda manhã, o sol parecia viajar com a peregrinação. Nascia silencioso à mesma distância atrás do navio, alcançava-o ao meio-dia e queimava o propósito dos peregrinos com seus raios. Depois passava e desaparecia todas as noites no mar diante da proa. Os cinco brancos viviam no centro, separados dos passageiros. Toldos cobriam o convés como um teto branco. Apenas um leve rumor revelava a multidão. Os dias imóveis, quentes e pesados seguiam uns aos outros, caindo para sempre no espaço atrás do navio. Sob uma fina faixa de fumaça, o Patna prosseguia sozinho, negro e fumegante na distância brilhante, como se um céu impiedoso o queimasse.

As noites desciam sobre o navio como uma bênção.

Original English Version

Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.

The nights descended on her like a benediction.

Tradução Integral em Português

Todas as manhãs o sol, como se acompanhasse em suas revoluções o avanço da peregrinação, emergia numa explosão silenciosa de luz exatamente à mesma distância à popa do navio, alcançava-o ao meio-dia, derramando o fogo concentrado de seus raios sobre os piedosos propósitos dos homens, deslizava por ele em sua descida e, noite após noite, mergulhava misteriosamente no mar, conservando a mesma distância adiante das proas em avanço. Os cinco brancos a bordo viviam a meia-nau, isolados da carga humana. Os toldos cobriam o convés de proa a popa com um teto branco, e apenas um débil rumor, um murmúrio baixo de vozes tristes, revelava a presença de uma multidão de pessoas sobre a grande ardência do oceano. Assim eram os dias, imóveis, quentes, pesados, desaparecendo um a um no passado como se caíssem num abismo eternamente aberto na esteira do navio; e o navio, solitário sob um fiapo de fumaça, mantinha seu rumo constante, negro e fumegante numa imensidão luminosa, como se crestado por uma língua de fogo lançada contra ele por um céu sem piedade.

As noites desciam sobre o navio como uma bênção.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Chapter 3

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Uma imobilidade maravilhosa preenchia o mundo. As estrelas, com luz calma, pareciam prometer segurança duradoura na Terra. A lua jovem, curva e baixa no oeste, parecia uma lasca de uma barra de ouro. O Mar da Arábia se estendia liso e fresco como gelo até a linha escura do horizonte. A hélice girava constantemente, como se aquele mundo seguro tivesse sido criado para ela. Dois rastros profundos seguiam o Patna; dentro deles, redemoinhos brancos, ondulações e pequenas ondas se quebravam e logo se acalmavam. Depois da passagem, o mar voltava lentamente à perfeita imobilidade, com a forma negra do casco sempre no centro.

Original English Version

A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre.

Tradução Integral em Português

Uma quietude maravilhosa impregnava o mundo, e as estrelas, junto com a serenidade de seus raios, pareciam derramar sobre a terra a certeza de uma segurança eterna. A lua nova recurvada, brilhando baixa no oeste, parecia uma apara delgada saltada de uma barra de ouro, e o mar da Arábia, liso e frio aos olhos como uma camada de gelo, estendia sua superfície perfeitamente plana até o círculo perfeito de um horizonte escuro. A hélice girava sem um engasgo, como se sua pulsação fizesse parte do plano de um universo seguro; e, de cada lado do Patna, duas pregas profundas de água, permanentes e sombrias sobre o brilho sem rugas, encerravam entre suas cristas retas e divergentes alguns brancos remoinhos de espuma que irrompiam com um silvo baixo, algumas pequenas ondas, algumas marolas, algumas ondulações que, deixadas para trás, agitavam a superfície do mar por um instante após a passagem do navio, abrandavam-se num chapinhar suave e por fim se aquietavam na imobilidade circular da água e do céu, enquanto o ponto negro do casco em movimento permanecia eternamente no centro.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Na ponte, Jim sentia profunda segurança e paz no mundo silencioso, como o amor gentil no rosto de uma mãe. Sob os toldos, os peregrinos confiavam nos brancos, em sua coragem e no poder do casco de ferro. Dormiam em esteiras, cobertores ou tábuas, em todos os conveses e cantos escuros, envoltos em tecidos coloridos ou trapos, com a cabeça sobre pequenos embrulhos e o rosto no braço dobrado. Homens, mulheres e crianças dormiam juntos. Velhos e jovens, fracos e fortes eram iguais diante do sono, irmão da morte.

Original English Version

Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s face. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother.

Tradução Integral em Português

Jim, na ponte, estava penetrado pela grande certeza de paz e segurança sem limites que se podia ler no aspecto silencioso da natureza como se lê a certeza do amor protetor na plácida ternura do rosto de uma mãe. Sob o teto dos toldos, entregues à sabedoria dos homens brancos e à coragem deles, confiantes no poder de sua descrença e na carapaça de ferro de seu navio de fogo, os peregrinos de uma fé exigente dormiam sobre esteiras, cobertores, tábuas nuas, em todos os conveses, em todos os cantos escuros, envoltos em tecidos tingidos, abafados em farrapos encardidos, a cabeça apoiada em pequenos embrulhos, o rosto apertado contra o antebraço dobrado: homens, mulheres, crianças; os velhos junto aos jovens, os decrépitos junto aos vigorosos - todos iguais perante o sono, irmão da morte.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Uma corrente de ar atravessava o espaço escuro entre as laterais altas do navio e passava sobre os passageiros adormecidos. Pequenas lâmpadas lançavam luz fraca sobre rostos, mãos, pés descalços, cabeças curvadas e corpos magros sob tecidos rasgados. Famílias ricas fizeram abrigos com caixas e esteiras; pobres dormiam com tudo o que possuíam amarrado num pano sob a cabeça. Velhos deitavam nos tapetes de oração com as mãos sobre as orelhas. Um pai se agachava junto ao filho; uma mulher coberta segurava duas crianças nuas. Perto da popa, os pertences dos árabes formavam uma pilha escura entre potes de latão, lanças, espada, almofadas e cafeteira. O sino da barquinha de velocidade soava a cada milha. Suspiros de sonhos inquietos vinham dos dormentes; sob o convés, ruídos de metal, pás e portas das fornalhas rompiam o silêncio. O navio prosseguia firmemente sobre o mar calmo sob o céu pacífico.

Original English Version

A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. The patent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky.

Tradução Integral em Português

Uma corrente de ar, soprada da proa pela velocidade do navio, percorria incessante a longa penumbra entre as altas amuradas e varria as fileiras de corpos estendidos; algumas chamas mortiças em lampiões globulares pendiam aqui e ali, a pouca altura sob as traves de cumeeira, e, nos círculos imprecisos da luz projetada para baixo, que tremiam de leve com a vibração incessante do navio, apareciam um queixo voltado para cima, duas pálpebras cerradas, uma mão escura com anéis de prata, um membro descarnado coberto por um pano rasgado, uma cabeça tombada para trás, um pé nu, uma garganta descoberta e esticada como se se oferecesse à faca. Os abastados haviam feito abrigos para suas famílias com caixotes pesados e esteiras poeirentas; os pobres repousavam lado a lado, com tudo o que possuíam na terra amarrado num trapo sob a cabeça; os velhos solitários dormiam de pernas encolhidas sobre seus tapetes de oração, as mãos sobre as orelhas e um cotovelo de cada lado do rosto; um pai, os ombros erguidos e os joelhos sob a testa, cochilava abatido ao lado de um menino que dormia de costas, o cabelo revolto e um braço estendido com ar de mando; uma mulher, coberta da cabeça aos pés como um cadáver por um pedaço de lençol branco, tinha uma criança nua no côncavo de cada braço; os pertences do árabe, empilhados bem à popa, formavam um monte pesado de contornos quebrados, com um lampião de carga suspenso por cima e, atrás, uma grande confusão de formas vagas: lampejos de bojudos potes de latão, o apoio para os pés de uma cadeira de convés, lâminas de lanças, a bainha reta de uma velha espada apoiada contra uma pilha de almofadas, o bico de uma cafeteira de lata. O odômetro de patente na borda da popa fazia soar periodicamente uma única nota tilintante por cada milha percorrida numa missão de fé. Acima da massa de adormecidos, às vezes flutuava um suspiro débil e paciente, a exalação de um sonho perturbado; e curtos clangores metálicos, irrompendo de repente nas profundezas do navio, o raspar áspero de uma pá, a batida violenta de uma porta de fornalha, explodiam com brutalidade, como se os homens que manejavam as coisas misteriosas lá embaixo tivessem o peito repleto de uma cólera feroz; enquanto o casco esguio e alto do vapor seguia uniformemente adiante, sem que os mastros desnudos oscilassem, fendendo sem cessar a grande calma das águas sob a serenidade inacessível do céu.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Jim caminhava de um lado para o outro. No grande silêncio, seus passos pareciam altos, como se as estrelas o ouvissem. Olhava o horizonte desejando algo inalcançável, sem ver o perigo à frente. A única sombra no mar era a fumaça negra da chaminé. Dois malaios permaneciam quase imóveis ao leme. Jim olhou bússola e horizonte, depois se espreguiçou até as juntas estalarem. Sentia conforto e força; o mar calmo o tornava ousado. Acreditava poder enfrentar qualquer coisa. Consultou a carta, onde a rota era uma linha reta, e apreciou o avanço firme. Gostava de imaginar ações corajosas e grandes sucessos. Esses sonhos lhe pareciam a parte mais verdadeira da vida, enchendo-o de confiança. Sorrindo, continuou a olhar à frente; atrás, a esteira branca era tão reta quanto a linha de lápis na carta.

Original English Version

Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. The only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in the air. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Jim would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull’s-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship’s position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship’s spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. ‘How steady she goes,’ thought Jim with wonder, with something like gratitude for this high peace of sea and sky. At such times his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship’s keel upon the sea as the black line drawn by the pencil upon the chart.

Tradução Integral em Português

Jim caminhava de um bordo a outro, e seus passos, no vasto silêncio, soavam altos a seus próprios ouvidos, como se ecoados pelas estrelas vigilantes; seus olhos, percorrendo a linha do horizonte, pareciam fitar com avidez o inatingível e não viam a sombra do acontecimento que se aproximava. A única sombra sobre o mar era a da fumaça negra que saía pesadamente da chaminé numa imensa flâmula cuja extremidade se dissolvia sem cessar no ar. Dois malaios, silenciosos e quase imóveis, governavam o leme, um de cada lado da roda, cuja borda de latão brilhava em fragmentos no oval de luz lançado pela bitácula. De quando em quando, aparecia na parte iluminada uma mão de dedos negros que ora soltavam, ora agarravam os raios em rotação; os elos das correntes do leme rangiam pesadamente nas ranhuras do tambor. Jim lançava um olhar à bússola, lançava outro ao redor, para o horizonte inatingível, espreguiçava-se até as articulações estalarem, torcendo o corpo sem pressa, no próprio excesso de bem-estar; e, como que tornado audacioso pelo aspecto invencível da paz, sentia não se importar com nada que lhe pudesse acontecer até o fim de seus dias. De vez em quando olhava ociosamente para uma carta presa com quatro tachinhas a uma mesa baixa de três pernas, a ré da caixa do aparelho de governo. A folha de papel que representava as profundidades do mar oferecia uma superfície reluzente sob a luz de um lampião olho-de-boi amarrado a um montante, superfície tão plana e lisa quanto a superfície cintilante das águas. Sobre ela repousavam réguas paralelas e um compasso; a posição do navio ao meio-dia anterior estava assinalada por uma pequena cruz negra, e a linha reta a lápis, traçada com firmeza até Perim, representava o rumo do navio - o caminho das almas em direção ao lugar santo, a promessa da salvação, a recompensa da vida eterna - , enquanto o lápis, redondo e imóvel, com a ponta afiada tocando a costa da Somália, jazia como uma verga nua flutuando na bacia de uma doca abrigada. “Como ela vai firme”, pensou Jim, maravilhado, com algo semelhante à gratidão por aquela paz sublime do mar e do céu. Em tais momentos, seus pensamentos se enchiam de feitos valorosos: ele amava esses sonhos e o êxito de suas façanhas imaginárias. Eram as melhores partes da vida, sua verdade secreta, sua realidade oculta. Possuíam uma virilidade magnífica, o encanto da imprecisão; passavam diante dele com passo heroico; arrebatavam-lhe a alma e a embriagavam com o filtro divino de uma confiança ilimitada em si mesma. Não havia nada que ele não pudesse enfrentar. A ideia lhe dava tamanho prazer que sorria, mantendo os olhos para a frente apenas por obrigação; e, quando por acaso olhava para trás, via a faixa branca da esteira desenhada pela quilha do navio sobre o mar tão reta quanto a linha negra traçada pelo lápis na carta.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

O ruído dos baldes de cinzas nos ventiladores anunciou o fim do turno. Jim suspirou, feliz e triste: lamentava deixar aquela paz que libertava seus sonhos, mas estava sonolento. O capitão subiu silencioso, de pijama e casaco aberto, rosto vermelho, meio adormecido. Curvou-se sobre a carta e se coçou. Jim achou repulsivo seu corpo nu, o peito gorduroso e úmido como se o sono tivesse derretido a gordura. O capitão disse algo oficial com voz áspera. Jim respondeu educadamente. Mas aquela figura carnal ficou para sempre em sua memória como imagem de tudo o que era baixo e odioso no mundo e nos homens.

Original English Version

The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running through every limb as though all the blood in his body had turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There was something obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs.

Tradução Integral em Português

Os baldes de cinzas faziam estrépito, batendo ao subir e descer pelos dutos de ventilação da casa das caldeiras, e aquele tinido de lata avisou-lhe que sua guarda se aproximava do fim. Ele suspirou satisfeito, mas também pesaroso por ter de separar-se daquela serenidade que alimentava a liberdade aventureira de seus pensamentos. Estava ainda um pouco sonolento e sentia um langor agradável percorrer-lhe todos os membros, como se todo o sangue de seu corpo se houvesse transformado em leite morno. Seu capitão subira sem ruído, de pijama e com o casaco de dormir escancarado. De rosto vermelho, apenas meio desperto, o olho esquerdo parcialmente fechado e o direito fixo, estúpido e vidrado, inclinou a grande cabeça sobre a carta e coçou as costelas com sono. Havia algo de obsceno na visão de sua carne nua. O peito descoberto brilhava, flácido e gorduroso, como se durante o sono ele houvesse transpirado a própria gordura. Proferiu uma observação profissional numa voz áspera e morta, semelhante ao som de uma grosa raspando a borda de uma tábua; a dobra do queixo duplo pendia como um saco içado rente à articulação da mandíbula. Jim sobressaltou-se, e sua resposta foi cheia de deferência; mas a figura odiosa e carnuda, como que vista pela primeira vez num instante revelador, gravou-se para sempre em sua memória como a encarnação de tudo quanto há de vil e abjeto à espreita no mundo que amamos: em nosso próprio coração, no qual confiamos para a salvação; nos homens que nos cercam; nas imagens que enchem nossos olhos; nos sons que enchem nossos ouvidos; e no ar que enche nossos pulmões.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

A lua fina desceu e sumiu na água escura. O céu parecia aproximar-se da Terra, cheio de estrelas sobre o mar plano. O navio avançava tão suavemente que ninguém sentia o movimento, como um planeta lotado viajando entre estrelas. Então uma voz disse: - Lá embaixo, "quente" nem começa a descrever.

Original English Version

The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. ‘Hot is no name for it down below,’ said a voice.

Tradução Integral em Português

A fina apara de ouro da lua, flutuando lentamente para baixo, perdera-se na superfície escurecida das águas, e a eternidade além do céu parecia descer para mais perto da terra, com o brilho intensificado das estrelas, com a sombra mais profunda no fulgor da cúpula semitransparente que cobria o disco plano de um mar opaco. O navio se movia com tamanha suavidade que seu avanço era imperceptível aos sentidos dos homens, como se fosse um planeta apinhado de gente, lançado pelos espaços escuros do éter atrás do enxame de sóis, nas solidões aterradoras e tranquilas que aguardavam o sopro de futuras criações. “Quente nem é palavra para o que está lá embaixo”, disse uma voz.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Jim sorriu sem se virar. O capitão mostrava as costas e costumava fingir que os outros não existiam, salvo quando os atacava com palavrões. Agora apenas grunhiu. Junto à escada, o segundo engenheiro esfregava um pano sujo nas mãos úmidas e reclamava. Dizia que marinheiros levavam vida fácil e inútil, enquanto engenheiros faziam todo o trabalho. O alemão mandou-o calar, mas ele continuou: quando algo dava errado, todos procuravam os engenheiros. Estava meio bêbado e, depois de três dias naquele inferno, pronto para qualquer coisa. A máquina arruinada fazia barulho terrível, e ninguém explicava por que arriscava a vida naquela sucata. O alemão perguntou onde conseguira bebida. Jim sorria para o horizonte, sentindo-se generoso e superior. O engenheiro respondeu que o capitão era mesquinho demais para dar-lhe aguardente. O chefe lhe dera um pouco, mas não saía da cama, onde dormia com conhaque sob o travesseiro. Os dois engenheiros se conheciam havia anos e eram suspeitos de grandes roubos. Um era pesado e cruel; o outro, magro como cavalo velho. Expulso de um navio muito antes, sobrevivia no Oriente e se gabava de sua experiência. Caminhava junto à claraboia fumando tabaco ruim. Não costumava dividir bebida, mas naquela noite o fizera; por isso o segundo estava alegre, ousado e falante. O alemão estava furioso. Jim, divertido, desejava o fim do turno. Não gostava deles, mas se sentia acima. Relaxado e seguro, quase adormeceu em pé.

Original English Version

Jim smiled without looking round. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. The sailors had a good time of it up here, and what was the use of them in the world he would be blowed if he could see. The poor devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they--‘Shut up!’ growled the German stolidly. ‘Oh yes! Shut up--and when anything goes wrong you fly to us, don’t you?’ went on the other. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b’gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. He must have been born reckless, b’gosh. He . . . ‘Where did you get drink?’ inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Jim went on smiling at the retreating horizon; his heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was contemplating his own superiority. ‘Drink!’ repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. ‘Not from you, captain. You’re far too mean, b’gosh. You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of schnapps. That’s what you Germans call economy. Penny wise, pound foolish.’ He became sentimental. The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o’clock--‘only one, s’elp me!’--good old chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn’t do it. Not it. Not to-night anyhow. He was sleeping sweetly like a little child, with a bottle of prime brandy under his pillow. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. He had been stranded out East somewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he probably did not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. He had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly out of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation expanding in these seas and men of his craft being scarce at first, he had ‘got on’ after a sort. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. He was usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren’t bad chaps though. Even the skipper himself . . . His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. The quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life was easy and he was too sure of himself--too sure of himself to . . . The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider’s web.

Tradução Integral em Português

Jim sorriu sem olhar para trás. O capitão exibia a largura impassível das costas: era um hábito do renegado ostentar uma completa inconsciência da existência de alguém, a menos que lhe conviesse voltar-se para a pessoa com um olhar devorador antes de soltar uma torrente de jargão espumoso e injurioso, que vinha como um jorro de esgoto. Naquele momento emitiu apenas um grunhido mal-humorado; no alto da escada da ponte, o segundo-maquinista, amassando entre as palmas úmidas um trapo encardido de suor, prosseguiu sem constrangimento a ladainha de suas queixas. Os marinheiros levavam vida boa ali em cima, e que ele fosse para o inferno se conseguia ver para que serviam neste mundo. Os pobres-diabos dos maquinistas tinham de fazer o navio andar de um jeito ou de outro, e poderiam perfeitamente cuidar do resto também; por Deus, eles... “Cale a boca!”, rosnou o alemão, impassível. “Ah, sim! Cale a boca... e quando alguma coisa dá errado, vocês correm até nós, não correm?”, continuou o outro. Devia estar mais do que meio cozido, supunha; mas, de toda maneira, agora não se importava com o quanto pecasse, pois naqueles últimos três dias recebera um belo curso preparatório para o lugar aonde vão os meninos maus quando morrem - por Deus que recebera - , além de ter ficado completamente surdo com a maldita barulheira lá embaixo. A danada da sucata podre, de expansão composta e condensação de superfície, sacudia-se e batia lá embaixo como um velho guincho de convés, só que muito pior; e o que o levava a arriscar a vida, noite e dia criados por Deus, em meio ao refugo de um estaleiro de demolição que voava ao redor a cinquenta e sete rotações, era mais do que ele próprio sabia dizer. Devia ter nascido temerário, por Deus. Ele... “Onde arranjou bebida?”, perguntou o alemão com grande ferocidade, mas imóvel à luz da bitácula, como a desajeitada efígie de um homem talhada num bloco de gordura. Jim continuou sorrindo para o horizonte que recuava; seu coração estava repleto de impulsos generosos, e seus pensamentos contemplavam a própria superioridade. “Bebida!”, repetiu o maquinista com desdém afável; agarrava-se com as duas mãos ao corrimão, figura sombria de pernas bambas. “Não foi com o senhor, capitão. O senhor é mesquinho demais, por Deus. Deixaria um homem de bem morrer antes de lhe dar uma gota de aguardente. É isso que vocês, alemães, chamam de economia. Poupar no pouco e esbanjar no muito.” Ficou sentimental. O chefe lhe dera uma dose de quatro dedos por volta das dez - “uma só, Deus é testemunha!” - , o bom e velho chefe; mas, quanto a tirar o velho impostor de sua cama, nem um guindaste de cinco toneladas conseguiria. De jeito nenhum. Pelo menos não naquela noite. Dormia docemente como uma criancinha, com uma garrafa de conhaque de primeira sob o travesseiro. Da garganta grossa do comandante do Patna saiu um rumor baixo, sobre o qual o som da palavra schwein adejou para o alto e para baixo como uma pena caprichosa num leve movimento de ar. > **Tradução do alemão:** porco. Ele e o chefe de máquinas eram comparsas havia vários anos - servindo ao mesmo velho chinês jovial e astuto, de óculos com armação de chifre e cordões de seda vermelha trançados entre os veneráveis cabelos grisalhos da trança. A opinião do cais no porto de origem do Patna era que, em matéria de peculato descarado, os dois juntos “tinham feito praticamente tudo o que se possa imaginar”. Por fora, formavam uma dupla malcombinada: um tinha olhos baços, expressão malévola e curvas carnudas e flácidas; o outro era magro, todo cavidades, com a cabeça comprida e ossuda como a de um cavalo velho, faces encovadas, têmporas fundas, um olhar vidrado e indiferente em olhos metidos nas órbitas. Encalhara em algum lugar do Oriente - em Cantão, Xangai ou talvez Yokohama; ele próprio provavelmente não fazia questão de recordar o local exato, tampouco a causa de seu naufrágio. Por misericórdia para com sua juventude, haviam-no apenas expulsado discretamente de seu navio vinte anos antes ou mais, e as coisas poderiam ter sido tão piores que a lembrança do episódio mal continha vestígio de infortúnio. Depois, à medida que a navegação a vapor se expandia por aqueles mares e que a princípio escasseavam homens de seu ofício, ele “progredira” a seu modo. Fazia questão de informar a estranhos, num resmungo lúgubre, que era “um velho veterano por estas bandas”. Quando se movia, um esqueleto parecia balançar solto dentro das roupas; seu andar era puro vaguear, e assim costumava vaguear ao redor da claraboia da casa de máquinas, fumando sem prazer, numa fornilha de latão presa à extremidade de uma haste de cerejeira de quatro pés, tabaco adulterado, com a gravidade imbecil de um pensador que elabora um sistema filosófico a partir do vislumbre enevoado de uma verdade. Em geral, era tudo menos generoso com sua reserva particular de bebida; mas naquela noite se afastara de seus princípios, de modo que seu segundo, um rapaz de Wapping de cabeça fraca, entre o inesperado da oferta e a força da bebida, se tornara muito alegre, insolente e falante. A fúria do alemão da Nova Gales do Sul era extrema; bufava como um tubo de escape, e Jim, vagamente divertido com a cena, aguardava com impaciência o momento em que poderia descer: os dez últimos minutos da guarda irritavam como uma arma que falha ao disparar; aqueles homens não pertenciam ao mundo da aventura heroica; não eram sujeitos ruins, contudo. Até o próprio capitão... Seu estômago se revoltou diante da massa de carne ofegante da qual saíam murmúrios gorgolejantes, um fio turvo de expressões imundas; mas estava mergulhado num langor agradável demais para sentir aversão ativa por aquilo ou por qualquer outra coisa. A qualidade daqueles homens não importava; ele roçava ombros com eles, mas eles não podiam tocá-lo; partilhava o ar que respiravam, mas era diferente... Será que o capitão partiria para cima do maquinista?... A vida era fácil e ele tinha certeza demais de si - certeza demais de si para... A linha que separava sua meditação de uma cochilada furtiva em pé era mais fina do que um fio de teia de aranha.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

O segundo engenheiro passou a falar de seu salário e de sua coragem.

- Bêbado? Eu? Não, capitão! O chefe não é generoso o bastante para embriagar um pardal. Nunca fiquei bêbado. Não existe bebida capaz disso. Eu beberia fogo contra seu uísque e continuaria sóbrio. Se achasse que estava bêbado, saltaria ao mar e me mataria. E não sairei da ponte. Onde respiraria ar fresco nesta noite? No convés com aquela multidão? Claro que não! E não tenho medo de nada que você possa fazer.

Sem falar, o alemão ergueu os dois punhos pesados ao céu e os sacudiu.

Original English Version

The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to the consideration of his finances and of his courage.

‘Who’s drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won’t do. You ought to know by this time the chief ain’t free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk, b’gosh. I’ve never been the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain’t made yet that would make _me_ drunk. I could drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b’gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. If I thought I was drunk I would jump overboard--do away with myself, b’gosh. I would! Straight! And I won’t go off the bridge. Where do you expect me to take the air on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that vermin down there? Likely--ain’t it! And I am not afraid of anything you can do.’

The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little without a word.

Tradução Integral em Português

Por transições naturais, o segundo-maquinista passava a considerar suas finanças e sua coragem.

“Quem está bêbado? Eu? Não, não, capitão! Isso não cola. A esta altura o senhor já devia saber que o chefe não tem coração bastante largo para embebedar um pardal, por Deus. Nunca na vida fiquei alterado por bebida; ainda não fabricaram a coisa capaz de me embebedar. Eu poderia beber fogo líquido, dose por dose contra o seu uísque, por Deus, e continuar fresco como um pepino. Se achasse que estou bêbado, eu me atiraria pela borda - acabaria comigo mesmo, por Deus. Acabaria! Palavra! E não vou sair da ponte. Onde espera que eu tome ar numa noite como esta, hein? Lá embaixo, no convés, no meio daquela bicharada? Até parece! E não tenho medo de nada que o senhor possa fazer.”

O alemão ergueu para o céu dois punhos pesados e agitou-os um pouco, sem dizer palavra.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Não sei o que é medo - continuou o engenheiro, convencido. - Não temo fazer todo o trabalho duro neste navio quebrado. É sorte sua que alguns de nós não temam pela vida. Caso contrário, onde estariam você e este casco de chapas como papel? Você ganha muito dinheiro com ele; eu recebo apenas cento e cinquenta dólares por mês e pago minhas despesas. Quem não abandonaria este emprego maldito? Não é seguro. Mas sou um desses homens sem medo...

Original English Version

‘I don’t know what fear is,’ pursued the engineer, with the enthusiasm of sincere conviction. ‘I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin’ work in this rotten hooker, b’gosh! And a jolly good thing for you that there are some of us about the world that aren’t afraid of their lives, or where would you be--you and this old thing here with her plates like brown paper--brown paper, s’elp me? It’s all very fine for you--you get a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about me--what do I get? A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself. I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who wouldn’t chuck a dratted job like this? ‘Tain’t safe, s’elp me, it ain’t! Only I am one of them fearless fellows . . .’

Tradução Integral em Português

“Eu não sei o que é medo”, prosseguiu o maquinista com o entusiasmo da convicção sincera. “Não tenho medo de fazer todo o maldito trabalho neste trambolho podre, por Deus! E é uma sorte danada para o senhor que haja alguns de nós pelo mundo que não têm medo de arriscar a vida; se não, onde estaria o senhor - o senhor e esta coisa velha aqui, com chapas que parecem papel pardo - papel pardo, Deus é testemunha? Para o senhor é tudo muito bonito - de um jeito ou de outro, o senhor tira dela um dinheirão; mas e eu, o que recebo? Uns míseros cento e cinquenta dólares por mês e ainda tenho de me sustentar. Desejo perguntar-lhe respeitosamente - respeitosamente, veja bem - quem não largaria um emprego desgraçado como este? Não é seguro, Deus é testemunha, não é! Só continuo porque sou um desses sujeitos destemidos...”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Soltou o corrimão e gesticulou, como se desenhasse no ar o tamanho de sua coragem. A voz fina guinchava sobre o mar. Caminhou nas pontas dos pés e, de repente, caiu de cabeça, como se atingido por trás. Ao cair, disse: - Maldição! Seguiu-se breve silêncio. Jim e o capitão avançaram, pararam rígidos e olharam espantados o mar inalterado, depois as estrelas.

Original English Version

He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. He said ‘Damn!’ as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Then they looked upwards at the stars.

Tradução Integral em Português

Ele soltou o corrimão e fez gestos amplos, como se demonstrasse no ar a forma e a extensão de seu valor; sua voz fina disparou em guinchos prolongados sobre o mar, ele andou na ponta dos pés para a frente e para trás a fim de dar maior ênfase às palavras e, de repente, tombou de cabeça como se tivesse levado uma paulada por trás. Disse “Maldição!” ao cair; um instante de silêncio seguiu-se à sua gritaria: Jim e o capitão cambalearam para a frente num impulso comum e, recuperando o equilíbrio, ficaram muito rígidos e imóveis, olhando, espantados, para a superfície imperturbada do mar. Depois ergueram os olhos para as estrelas.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

O que acontecera? A máquina continuava. A Terra parara? O mar calmo e o céu limpo de repente pareceram inseguros, equilibrados sobre uma destruição. O engenheiro se ergueu e voltou a cair, perguntando abafado: - O que foi isso? Um som muito fraco, como trovão distante, passou lentamente - mais vibração que ruído. O navio respondeu com um tremor, como se o trovão estivesse sob a água. Os malaios olharam para os brancos sem largar o leme. O casco pareceu levantar-se repetidamente em todo o comprimento, como se fosse flexível, e tornar a cair enquanto cortava o mar. Então o tremor e o trovão desapareceram, como se o navio atravessasse uma estreita faixa de água vibrante e ar sonoro.

Original English Version

What had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said ‘What’s that?’ in the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air.

Tradução Integral em Português

O que acontecera? O baque asmático das máquinas continuava. Teria a Terra sido detida em seu curso? Eles não conseguiam compreender; e, de repente, o mar tranquilo, o céu sem nuvens, pareceram terrivelmente inseguros em sua imobilidade, como se equilibrados à beira de uma destruição escancarada. O maquinista projetou-se verticalmente em toda a sua altura e tornou a desabar num monte indistinto. O monte disse: “O que foi isso?”, nos tons abafados de uma dor profunda. Um ruído débil, semelhante a um trovão, a um trovão infinitamente remoto, menos do que um som, pouco mais do que uma vibração, passou devagar, e o navio estremeceu em resposta, como se o trovão houvesse rosnado nas profundezas da água. Os olhos dos dois malaios ao leme reluziram na direção dos homens brancos, mas suas mãos escuras permaneceram fechadas nos raios da roda. O casco afilado que abria caminho pareceu erguer-se algumas polegadas, sucessivamente, ao longo de todo o comprimento, como se houvesse se tornado flexível, e tornou a assentar-se, rígido, no trabalho de fender a superfície lisa do mar. Seu tremor cessou, e o ruído débil do trovão parou de uma vez, como se o navio tivesse atravessado uma faixa estreita de água vibrante e ar zumbidor.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Chapter 4

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Cerca de um mês depois, durante o interrogatório, Jim tentou contar honestamente: - Ela passou por cima daquilo com a facilidade de uma cobra rastejando sobre um graveto. Era boa comparação. O inquérito oficial ocorria no tribunal policial de um porto oriental. Jim estava no alto do banco das testemunhas, as faces ardendo na sala fresca. Grandes leques se moviam acima; muitos olhos em rostos escuros, brancos e vermelhos escutavam. Sua voz lhe parecia o único som do mundo, pois as perguntas dolorosas arrancavam respostas de seu coração como sua própria consciência. Fora, o sol queimava; dentro, o vento era frio, a vergonha ardia, e os olhos pareciam facas. O magistrado pálido estava entre dois assessores náuticos de rostos vermelhos. Uma janela iluminava os três, enquanto o público era uma massa de sombras. Queriam fatos. Fatos! Como se fatos explicassem alguma coisa.

Original English Version

A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed questions, tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, he said, speaking of the ship: ‘She went over whatever it was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick.’ The illustration was good: the questions were aiming at facts, and the official Inquiry was being held in the police court of an Eastern port. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one’s conscience. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. The light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed composed of staring shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!

Tradução Integral em Português

Cerca de um mês depois, quando Jim, em resposta a perguntas incisivas, tentou contar com honestidade a verdade daquela experiência, disse, referindo-se ao navio: “Ela passou por cima do que quer que fosse com a mesma facilidade de uma cobra que rasteja sobre uma vara.” A imagem era boa: as perguntas visavam aos fatos, e o Inquérito oficial realizava-se no tribunal de polícia de um porto do Oriente. Ele estava de pé, elevado no banco das testemunhas, o rosto em chamas dentro de uma sala fresca e de teto alto: as grandes armações dos puncás moviam-se suavemente para a frente e para trás muito acima de sua cabeça e, lá embaixo, muitos olhos o contemplavam em rostos escuros, rostos brancos, rostos vermelhos, rostos atentos, fascinados, como se todas aquelas pessoas sentadas em filas ordenadas sobre bancos estreitos tivessem sido escravizadas pelo encanto de sua voz. Ela soava muito alta, retinia de modo alarmante em seus próprios ouvidos, era o único som audível no mundo, pois as perguntas de uma nitidez terrível que lhe arrancavam as respostas pareciam formar-se em angústia e dor dentro de seu peito - chegavam-lhe pungentes e silenciosas como o terrível interrogatório da consciência. Fora do tribunal o sol ardia - lá dentro havia o vento dos grandes puncás, que fazia estremecer; a vergonha, que fazia arder; os olhos atentos, cujo olhar apunhalava. O rosto do magistrado presidente, barbeado e impassível, parecia de uma palidez mortal entre os rostos vermelhos dos dois assessores náuticos. A luz de uma janela larga junto ao teto incidia do alto sobre a cabeça e os ombros dos três homens, que sobressaíam com ferocidade na meia-luz da grande sala do tribunal, onde o público parecia composto de sombras que fitavam. Queriam fatos. Fatos! Exigiam fatos dele, como se os fatos pudessem explicar alguma coisa!

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Depois de concluir que haviam atingido algo parcialmente submerso, talvez um destroço alagado, seu capitão mandou-o verificar danos à vante. Pela força do choque, julgou isso provável? - perguntou o assessor à esquerda, de barba fina em ferradura e olhos azuis atentos, com as mãos ásperas unidas diante do rosto. O outro era pesado e desdenhoso, recostado e batendo os dedos num mata-borrão. No meio, o magistrado estava ereto numa grande poltrona, cabeça inclinada e braços cruzados, com flores junto ao tinteiro.

Original English Version

‘After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from the force of the blow?’ asked the assessor sitting to the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Depois de concluir que haviam colidido com algum objeto flutuando rente à água, digamos, um destroço alagado, o capitão ordenou-lhe que fosse à proa e verificasse se houvera algum dano. Pela força do choque, julgou provável que houvesse?”, perguntou o assessor sentado à esquerda. Tinha uma barba fina em forma de ferradura, maçãs do rosto salientes e, com os dois cotovelos sobre a mesa, apertava as mãos ásperas diante do rosto, fitando Jim com pensativos olhos azuis; o outro, homem corpulento e desdenhoso, recostado no assento, o braço esquerdo estendido por inteiro, tamborilava delicadamente as pontas dos dedos num mata-borrão; no meio, o magistrado, ereto na ampla poltrona, a cabeça ligeiramente inclinada para um ombro, mantinha os braços cruzados sobre o peito e tinha algumas flores num vaso de vidro ao lado do tinteiro.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Não - disse Jim. - Mandaram-me não chamar ninguém nem fazer barulho para evitar pânico. Achei sensato. Peguei uma lâmpada sob os toldos e fui à proa. Ao abrir a escotilha do pique, ouvi água. Baixei a lâmpada pela corda e vi que o compartimento estava mais da metade cheio. Soube que havia um grande rombo abaixo da linha-d'água. Ele parou.

- Sim - disse o assessor grande, sorrindo distraído para o mata-borrão enquanto os dedos continuavam a tocá-lo.

Original English Version

‘I did not,’ said Jim. ‘I was told to call no one and to make no noise for fear of creating a panic. I thought the precaution reasonable. I took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water already. I knew then there must be a big hole below the water-line.’ He paused.

‘Yes,’ said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Não julguei”, disse Jim. “Ordenaram-me que não chamasse ninguém nem fizesse barulho, para não provocar pânico. Achei a precaução razoável. Peguei um dos lampiões pendurados sob os toldos e fui à proa. Depois de abrir a escotilha do pique de vante, ouvi água chapinhando lá dentro. Então baixei o lampião por todo o comprimento de seu cordão e vi que o pique de vante já estava mais da metade cheio de água. Soube então que devia haver uma grande abertura abaixo da linha-d’água.” Ele fez uma pausa.

“Sim”, disse o assessor corpulento, com um sorriso sonhador dirigido ao mata-borrão; seus dedos brincavam incessantemente, tocando o papel sem ruído.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Naquele momento não pensei no perigo. Talvez estivesse chocado, porque tudo aconteceu em silêncio e depressa. Sabia que o único anteparo era o de colisão entre o pique e o porão de vante. Voltei para avisar o capitão. Ao pé da escada encontrei o segundo engenheiro se levantando, confuso, dizendo que quebrara o braço esquerdo ao escorregar. Ele gritou: "Meu Deus! Aquele anteparo podre cederá em um minuto, e esta coisa afundará como chumbo." Empurrou-me com o braço direito e subiu correndo, com o esquerdo pendurado. Vi o capitão derrubá-lo. Não tornou a bater, mas falou zangado em voz baixa, perguntando por que não fora parar as máquinas em vez de causar uma cena. Ouvi: "Levante! Corra! Voe!" O engenheiro desceu a escada de estibordo e correu até a entrada da casa de máquinas a bombordo, gemendo...

Original English Version

‘I did not think of danger just then. I might have been a little startled: all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. I went back to tell the captain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on the top step when getting down while I was forward. He exclaimed, “My God! That rotten bulkhead’ll give way in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead.” He pushed me away with his right arm and ran before me up the ladder, shouting as he climbed. His left arm hung by his side. I followed up in time to see the captain rush at him and knock him down flat on his back. He did not strike him again: he stood bending over him and speaking angrily but quite low. I fancy he was asking him why the devil he didn’t go and stop the engines, instead of making a row about it on deck. I heard him say, “Get up! Run! fly!” He swore also. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine-room companion which was on the port side. He moaned as he ran. . . .’

Tradução Integral em Português

“Naquele momento não pensei em perigo. Talvez tenha me assustado um pouco: tudo aconteceu de maneira tão silenciosa e tão repentina. Eu sabia que não havia no navio outra antepara além da antepara de colisão que separava o pique de vante do porão de vante. Voltei para avisar o capitão. Encontrei o segundo-maquinista levantando-se ao pé da escada da ponte: parecia atordoado e me disse que achava ter quebrado o braço esquerdo; enquanto eu estava na proa, escorregara no degrau superior ao descer. Exclamou: ‘Meu Deus! Essa antepara podre vai ceder dentro de um minuto, e a maldita coisa afundará sob nossos pés como um bloco de chumbo.’ Empurrou-me para o lado com o braço direito e subiu correndo a escada à minha frente, gritando enquanto subia. O braço esquerdo pendia ao lado do corpo. Subi atrás dele a tempo de ver o capitão avançar e derrubá-lo de costas com um golpe. Não voltou a bater: ficou inclinado sobre ele, falando com raiva, mas em voz muito baixa. Imagino que estivesse perguntando por que diabos ele não ia parar as máquinas, em vez de armar escândalo no convés. Ouvi-o dizer: ‘Levante-se! Corra! Voe!’ Também praguejou. O maquinista deslizou pela escada de boreste, disparou ao redor da claraboia e alcançou a escada da casa de máquinas, que ficava a bombordo. Gemia enquanto corria...”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Jim falava devagar, mas lembrava tudo rápida e claramente. Quase poderia imitar os gemidos para ajudar os homens que queriam fatos. Passada a raiva inicial, acreditara que apenas palavras exatas mostrariam o horror. Os fatos eram reais, visíveis e palpáveis; exigiram um vapor de mil e quatrocentas toneladas e vinte e sete minutos. Mas havia algo além: uma força invisível de ruína, como alma má num corpo feio. Queria deixar claro que não fora um acontecimento comum e que cada detalhe importava. Felizmente lembrava tudo. Desejava continuar por amor à verdade e talvez por si mesmo. Enquanto falava, porém, sua mente corria dentro do círculo de fatos que o isolava, como animal preso procurando uma fresta, um ponto fraco ou qualquer saída. Por isso, às vezes fazia pausas...

Original English Version

He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men who wanted facts. After his first feeling of revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted to go on talking for truth’s sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. This awful activity of mind made him hesitate at times in his speech. . . .

Tradução Integral em Português

Ele falava devagar; recordava com rapidez e extrema nitidez; para melhor informar aqueles homens que queriam fatos, teria sido capaz de reproduzir, como um eco, o gemido do maquinista. Depois do primeiro sentimento de revolta, passara a acreditar que somente uma precisão meticulosa no depoimento revelaria o verdadeiro horror por trás da face aterradora das coisas. Os fatos que aqueles homens tanto ansiavam por conhecer haviam sido visíveis, tangíveis, abertos aos sentidos, ocupando seu lugar no espaço e no tempo, exigindo para existir um vapor de mil e quatrocentas toneladas e vinte e sete minutos marcados pelo relógio; constituíam um todo dotado de feições, matizes de expressão, um aspecto complexo que o olho podia recordar, e algo mais além disso, algo invisível, um espírito condutor da perdição que habitava em seu interior como uma alma malévola num corpo detestável. Jim ardia por deixar isso claro. Não fora um acontecimento comum; tudo nele tivera a máxima importância e, por sorte, ele se lembrava de tudo. Queria continuar falando em nome da verdade, talvez também em seu próprio nome; e, enquanto sua expressão era deliberada, sua mente voava literalmente em círculos, vezes sem conta, ao redor do anel cerrado de fatos que se erguera em toda a sua volta para separá-lo do resto de sua espécie: era como uma criatura que, descobrindo-se aprisionada num cercado de altas estacas, se lança em círculos, enlouquecida na noite, tentando encontrar um ponto fraco, uma fresta, um lugar por onde trepar, alguma abertura pela qual possa se espremer e escapar. Essa atividade pavorosa da mente às vezes o fazia hesitar ao falar...

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- O capitão andava pela ponte. Parecia calmo, mas tropeçou várias vezes. Uma vez veio direto contra mim, como se não me visse. Não respondeu claramente. Murmurava, e ouvi "vapor maldito", "vapor infernal" - algo sobre vapor. Eu pensei...

Original English Version

‘The captain kept on moving here and there on the bridge; he seemed calm enough, only he stumbled several times; and once as I stood speaking to him he walked right into me as though he had been stone-blind. He made no definite answer to what I had to tell. He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like “confounded steam!” and “infernal steam!”--something about steam. I thought . . .’

Tradução Integral em Português

“O capitão não parava de andar de um lado para outro na ponte; parecia bastante calmo, só que tropeçou várias vezes; e uma vez, enquanto eu falava com ele, veio diretamente de encontro a mim como se estivesse completamente cego. Não deu resposta clara ao que eu tinha a dizer. Resmungava consigo mesmo; tudo o que consegui ouvir foram algumas palavras que soavam como ‘maldito vapor!’ e ‘vapor infernal!’ - alguma coisa sobre vapor. Eu pensei...”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Uma pergunta direta o interrompeu como dor aguda, deixando-o cansado e desanimado. Tudo o levara àquele simples sim ou não. - Sim, pensei - respondeu honestamente. Jovem, belo e de ombros largos, permaneceu ereto enquanto sofria por dentro. Outra pergunta inútil veio. Sua boca estava seca como poeira, depois salgada e amarga como água do mar. Limpou o suor, passou a língua nos lábios e estremeceu. O assessor grande tamborilava distraído; os olhos do outro pareciam bondosos. O magistrado inclinara o rosto pálido junto às flores e apoiara a cabeça na mão. O vento dos leques passava sobre nativos de roupas soltas, europeus em ternos pesados e funcionários descalços de casacos brancos, faixas e turbantes vermelhos, silenciosos como fantasmas.

Original English Version

He was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut short his speech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely discouraged and weary. He was coming to that, he was coming to that--and now, checked brutally, he had to answer by yes or no. He answered truthfully by a curt ‘Yes, I did’; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. He was made to answer another question so much to the point and so useless, then waited again. His mouth was tastelessly dry, as though he had been eating dust, then salt and bitter as after a drink of sea-water. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run down his back. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers.

Tradução Integral em Português

Ele começava a fugir do assunto; uma pergunta direta cortou-lhe a fala como uma pontada de dor, e ele se sentiu extremamente desanimado e exausto. Estava chegando àquilo, estava chegando àquilo - e agora, brutalmente interrompido, tinha de responder sim ou não. Respondeu com veracidade num seco “Sim”; e, rosto belo, corpo avantajado, olhos jovens e sombrios, manteve os ombros eretos acima do banco enquanto sua alma se contorcia dentro dele. Obrigaram-no a responder a outra pergunta igualmente direta e igualmente inútil, e então ele tornou a esperar. Sua boca estava seca e sem gosto, como se houvesse comido pó; depois ficou salgada e amarga como após um gole de água do mar. Enxugou a testa úmida, passou a língua pelos lábios ressequidos, sentiu um arrepio correr-lhe pelas costas. O assessor corpulento baixara as pálpebras e continuava a tamborilar sem ruído, indiferente e melancólico; os olhos do outro, acima dos dedos bronzeados e entrelaçados, pareciam arder de benevolência; o magistrado se inclinara para a frente; seu rosto pálido pairou perto das flores e então, tombando de lado sobre o braço da cadeira, ele apoiou a têmpora na palma da mão. O vento dos puncás descia em redemoinhos sobre as cabeças, sobre os nativos de rosto escuro envoltos em drapeados volumosos, sobre os europeus sentados em grupo, abrasados de calor em ternos de brim que pareciam ajustar-se tão rente quanto a própria pele, os chapéus redondos de cortiça pousados nos joelhos; enquanto, deslizando ao longo das paredes, os bedéis do tribunal, abotoados até o pescoço em compridos casacos brancos, passavam rapidamente de um lado para outro, correndo na ponta dos pés descalços, faixa vermelha à cintura, turbante vermelho na cabeça, silenciosos como fantasmas e alertas como cães perdigueiros.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Entre respostas, os olhos de Jim pousaram num branco sentado separado. Seu rosto parecia gasto pela preocupação, mas os olhos eram calmos e interessados. Jim quis gritar: "Qual é o sentido?" Bateu o pé, mordeu o lábio e olhou sobre as cabeças, encontrando o olhar do homem. Não era a fascinação dos outros, mas atenção firme e pensativa. Jim achou que ele olhava alguém ou algo atrás de seu ombro. Talvez o tivesse visto na rua; nunca falara com ele. Havia dias não conversava com ninguém, apenas consigo mesmo, como prisioneiro numa cela ou viajante perdido. Agora respondia perguntas sem importância e duvidava que voltasse a falar livremente. Suas próprias respostas mostravam a inutilidade das palavras. Aquele homem parecia compreender seu sofrimento sem esperança. Jim o fitou e desviou-se como após uma despedida final.

Original English Version

Jim’s eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and clear. Jim answered another question and was tempted to cry out, ‘What’s the good of this! what’s the good!’ He tapped with his foot slightly, bit his lip, and looked away over the heads. He met the eyes of the white man. The glance directed at him was not the fascinated stare of the others. It was an act of intelligent volition. Jim between two questions forgot himself so far as to find leisure for a thought. This fellow--ran the thought--looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had come across that man before--in the street perhaps. He was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. At present he was answering questions that did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether he would ever again speak out as long as he lived. The sound of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer. That man there seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty. Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as after a final parting.

Tradução Integral em Português

Os olhos de Jim, que vagueavam nos intervalos entre as respostas, pousaram num homem branco sentado à parte dos demais, de rosto cansado e anuviado, mas olhos tranquilos que o fitavam de frente, interessados e límpidos. Jim respondeu a outra pergunta e sentiu-se tentado a gritar: “De que serve isto? De que serve?” Bateu de leve o pé, mordeu o lábio e desviou os olhos por cima das cabeças. Encontrou o olhar do homem branco. O olhar dirigido a ele não era o pasmo fascinado dos outros. Era um ato de vontade inteligente. Entre duas perguntas, Jim esqueceu-se de si a ponto de dispor de tempo para um pensamento. Esse sujeito - pensou - me olha como se pudesse ver alguém ou alguma coisa além do meu ombro. Já cruzara com aquele homem - na rua, talvez. Tinha certeza de que nunca falara com ele. Havia dias, muitos dias, não falava com ninguém, mas mantinha consigo mesmo uma conversa silenciosa, incoerente e interminável, como um prisioneiro sozinho na cela ou um viajante perdido no ermo. Naquele instante respondia a perguntas que não importavam, embora tivessem um propósito, mas duvidava que tornasse a falar com franqueza pelo resto da vida. O som de suas próprias declarações verídicas confirmava-lhe a opinião deliberada de que, daí em diante, falar não lhe serviria para nada. Aquele homem ali parecia consciente de sua desesperadora dificuldade. Jim fitou-o, depois desviou o olhar com decisão, como após uma despedida definitiva.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Mais tarde, em muitos lugares distantes, Marlow mostrou-se disposto a recordar Jim longa e detalhadamente em voz alta.

Podia acontecer depois do jantar, numa varanda coberta de folhas e flores imóveis, à luz profunda da noite marcada pelas pontas vermelhas dos charutos. Cada cadeira de vime continha um ouvinte quieto. Às vezes um pequeno brilho iluminava dedos preguiçosos, parte de um rosto em repouso ou olhos pensativos. À primeira palavra de Marlow, seu corpo estendido ficava imóvel, como se o espírito retornasse ao passado e falasse por seus lábios.

Original English Version

And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly.

Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past.

Tradução Integral em Português

E mais tarde, muitas vezes, em regiões distantes do mundo, Marlow mostrou-se disposto a recordar Jim, a recordá-lo longamente, em detalhes e em voz alta.

Talvez fosse depois do jantar, numa varanda envolta em folhagem imóvel e coroada de flores, na escuridão profunda salpicada pelas pontas incandescentes dos charutos. O volume alongado de cada cadeira de vime abrigava um ouvinte silencioso. De vez em quando, um pequeno fulgor vermelho movia-se de repente e, expandindo-se, iluminava os dedos de uma mão lânguida, parte de um rosto em repouso profundo, ou lançava um lampejo carmesim num par de olhos pensativos sombreados por um fragmento de testa imperturbada; e, à primeira palavra pronunciada, o corpo de Marlow, estendido em repouso na cadeira, ficava inteiramente imóvel, como se seu espírito houvesse regressado em voo ao tempo transcorrido e falasse do passado através de seus lábios.

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Chapter 5

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Sim, estive no inquérito - diria. - Até hoje não sei por quê. Estou pronto a acreditar que cada um tem um anjo da guarda, se admitirem também um demônio familiar. Não gosto de me sentir especial, e sei que tenho o meu - o demônio. Nunca o vi, mas julgo pelas provas. Ele é mesquinho e me mete nesse tipo de problema: o inquérito, o cão amarelo - quem imaginaria um cão nativo imundo fazendo pessoas tropeçarem na varanda do tribunal? - problemas que, de maneira diabólica, me fazem encontrar homens com fraquezas, durezas e doenças ocultas e levá-los a confessar seus segredos, como se eu não tivesse os meus e preocupações suficientes até morrer. O que fiz para merecer isso? Tenho problemas como qualquer um e memória tão ruim quanto a maioria; não fui feito para carregar confissões. Então por quê? Talvez para passar o tempo depois do jantar. Charley, seu jantar foi excelente e, por causa dele, estes homens acham um jogo de cartas trabalho demais. Sentam em suas boas cadeiras e pensam: "Ao diabo o esforço. Deixem Marlow falar."

Original English Version

‘Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,’ he would say, ‘and to this day I haven’t left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each of us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of us has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because I don’t like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--the devil, I mean. I haven’t seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial evidence. He is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be thus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of confessions. Then why? Can’t tell--unless it be to make time pass away after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous occupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves, “Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk.”

Tradução Integral em Português

“Ah, sim. Assisti ao inquérito”, dizia ele, “e até hoje não parei de me perguntar por que fui. Estou disposto a acreditar que cada um de nós tem um anjo da guarda, se vocês me concederem que cada um de nós tem também um demônio familiar. Quero que admitam isso, pois não gosto de me sentir excepcional em aspecto algum, e sei que tenho o meu - o demônio, quero dizer. Não o vi, naturalmente, mas me apoio em provas circunstanciais. Ele está lá, sem dúvida, e, como é malicioso, mete-me nesse tipo de coisa. Que tipo de coisa, perguntam? Ora, a coisa do inquérito, a coisa do cachorro amarelo - ninguém imaginaria que um vira-lata nativo e sarnento tivesse licença para fazer as pessoas tropeçarem na varanda de um tribunal de polícia, não é? - , o tipo de coisa que, por vias tortuosas, inesperadas, verdadeiramente diabólicas, faz com que eu esbarre em homens com pontos fracos, pontos duros, chagas ocultas, por Júpiter!, e que, só de me verem, soltem a língua para me fazer suas infernais confidências; como se eu, com efeito, não tivesse confidências a fazer a mim mesmo, como se - Deus me ajude! - não dispusesse de informações confidenciais a meu próprio respeito em quantidade suficiente para dilacerar minha alma até o fim do tempo que me foi destinado. E quero saber o que fiz para receber tamanho favor. Declaro que estou tão cheio de minhas próprias preocupações quanto qualquer outro e possuo tanta memória quanto o peregrino comum neste vale; como veem, portanto, não sou particularmente apto a servir de receptáculo para confissões. Então, por quê? Não sei dizer - a menos que seja para fazer o tempo passar depois do jantar. Charley, meu caro, seu jantar foi excelente e, em consequência disso, estes homens aqui consideram uma tranquila partida de cartas uma ocupação tumultuosa. Refestelam-se em suas boas cadeiras e pensam: ‘Ao diabo o esforço. Deixem esse Marlow falar.’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Falar? Pois bem. É fácil falar de Mestre Jim depois de boa refeição, duzentos pés acima do mar, com bons charutos e uma noite fresca e estrelada que nos faz esquecer que vivemos de tempo emprestado, devemos caminhar com cuidado, vigiar cada minuto e cada erro irreparável e esperar morrer bem no fim - embora nem disso tenhamos certeza - , com pouca ajuda dos companheiros. Há homens para quem a vida inteira parece a hora após o jantar com charuto: fácil, agradável, vazia, talvez animada por alguma história de luta esquecida antes do final - antes do final, se é que existe um.

Original English Version

‘Talk? So be it. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Of course there are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end is told--even if there happens to be any end to it.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Falar? Pois que seja. E é bastante fácil falar do jovem Jim depois de uma boa mesa, a duzentos pés acima do nível do mar, com uma caixa de charutos decentes à mão, numa bendita noite fresca e estrelada que faria o melhor de nós esquecer que estamos aqui apenas por tolerância e temos de escolher o caminho entre luzes cruzadas, vigiando cada minuto precioso e cada passo irremediável, confiando que ainda conseguiremos sair de cena com decência no fim - mas, pensando bem, sem tanta certeza disso - e tendo pouquíssima ajuda a esperar daqueles com quem roçamos os cotovelos à direita e à esquerda. Existem, é claro, aqui e ali, homens para quem toda a vida é como uma hora depois do jantar acompanhada de um charuto: fácil, agradável, vazia, talvez animada por alguma fábula de conflito que será esquecida antes que se conte o desfecho - antes que se conte o desfecho - , caso porventura exista algum.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Nossos olhos se encontraram pela primeira vez no inquérito. Todos ligados ao mar estavam lá, pois a história era famosa desde o estranho telegrama de Áden que nos fizera rir. Era estranho, embora declarasse um fato nu e feio. Ninguém na zona portuária falava de outra coisa. Ao me vestir na cabine, ouvia meu dubash parse conversar com o comissário sobre o Patna. Em terra, todo conhecido perguntava: "Já ouviu coisa pior?" e sorria amargamente, entristecia ou praguejava. Até desconhecidos conversavam para aliviar a mente. Todo vagabundo da cidade conseguiu muitas bebidas com o caso. Ouvia-se no porto, nos corretores, agentes, entre brancos, nativos, mestiços e barqueiros seminus. Havia raiva, piadas e conversa interminável sobre o que lhes acontecera. Depois de duas semanas, pensávamos que o mistério também seria trágico. Uma manhã, à sombra dos degraus do porto, vi quatro homens vindo pelo cais. Perguntei de onde vinham e então pensei: "Aqui estão eles!"

Original English Version

‘My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious, because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, “Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?” and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! There was some indignation, not a few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them, you know. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic as well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing in the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men walking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where that queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself, “Here they are!”

Tradução Integral em Português

“Meus olhos encontraram os dele pela primeira vez naquele inquérito. Vocês precisam saber que todos os que tinham qualquer ligação com o mar estavam presentes, pois o caso se tornara notório havia dias, desde que aquela misteriosa mensagem telegráfica chegou de Áden e nos pôs a todos a cacarejar. Digo misteriosa porque, num certo sentido, era o que parecia, embora contivesse um fato nu, tão nu e hediondo quanto é possível a um fato ser. Em toda a zona portuária não se falava de outra coisa. Logo pela manhã, enquanto me vestia em meu camarote, eu ouvia através da antepara meu dubash parse tagarelar a respeito do Patna com o comissário, enquanto bebia, de favor, uma xícara de chá na copa. Mal punha os pés em terra, encontrava algum conhecido, e sua primeira observação era: ‘Já ouviu alguma coisa capaz de superar isto?’; e, conforme o tipo, o homem sorria com cinismo, assumia um ar triste ou soltava um ou dois palavrões. Perfeitos desconhecidos se abordavam com familiaridade, apenas para aliviar a mente sobre o assunto; cada maldito vadio da cidade colheu uma safra de bebidas graças ao caso; ouvia-se falar dele na capitania, em todos os escritórios de corretores marítimos, no escritório do agente, da boca de brancos, nativos, mestiços, dos próprios barqueiros agachados seminus nos degraus de pedra que se subiam - por Júpiter! Houve certa indignação, não poucas piadas e discussões intermináveis sobre o que teria sido feito deles, vocês sabem. Isso prosseguiu por duas semanas ou mais, e começava a prevalecer a opinião de que tudo quanto havia de misterioso no caso acabaria revelando-se também trágico quando, numa bela manhã, estando eu à sombra junto aos degraus da capitania, avistei quatro homens caminhando em minha direção pelo cais. Durante algum tempo me perguntei de onde saíra aquele grupo esquisito e, de repente, posso dizer, gritei para mim mesmo: ‘Aqui estão eles!’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Eram os quatro. Três pareciam como deviam; um era mais gordo do que qualquer homem deveria ser. Tinham acabado de desembarcar, depois de bom café da manhã, de um vapor da Dale Line. Reconheci o alegre capitão do Patna, o homem mais gordo dos trópicos. Nove meses antes o vira em Samarang. Seu navio carregava na enseada, e ele passava os dias bebendo cerveja no fundo da loja de De Jongh e amaldiçoando o Império Alemão. De Jongh cobrava um florim por garrafa e dizia em particular, torcendo o rosto enrugado: "Negócio é negócio, mas este homem me deixa doente. Tfui!"

Original English Version

‘There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. There could be no mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance: the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come across him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui!”

Tradução Integral em Português

“Lá estavam eles, sem dúvida, três em tamanho natural e um de circunferência muito maior do que qualquer homem vivo tem o direito de possuir, recém-desembarcados, com um bom café da manhã no estômago, de um vapor da Dale Line que seguia para alto-mar e chegara cerca de uma hora depois do nascer do sol. Não havia possibilidade de engano; reconheci à primeira vista o alegre capitão do Patna: o homem mais gordo de toda a bendita faixa tropical que circunda esta nossa boa e velha Terra. Além disso, cerca de nove meses antes, eu cruzara com ele em Samarang. Seu vapor carregava no ancoradouro, e ele passava o dia inteiro e todos os dias a insultar as instituições tirânicas do Império Alemão e a se encharcar de cerveja na loja dos fundos de De Jongh, até que De Jongh, que cobrava um florim por garrafa sem sequer um tremor de pálpebra, me chamava de lado e, enrugando por inteiro seu pequeno rosto de couro, declarava em confidência: ‘Negócios são negócios, mas esse homem, capitão, ele me faz passar muito mal. Tfui!’” > **Tradução do neerlandês:** Que nojo!

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Observei-o da sombra. Ele vinha depressa, enorme sob o sol, como um filhote de elefante treinado a andar nas patas traseiras. Parecia ridículo e grandioso num traje de dormir sujo, listrado de verde e laranja, chinelos de palha rasgados e um velho capacete de outra pessoa, imundo, dois números menor e amarrado à cabeça com corda de manilha. Um homem assim dificilmente conseguiria roupas emprestadas. Passou a menos de um metro e, inocente como criança, subiu correndo ao escritório para entregar sua declaração.

Original English Version

‘I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurrying on a little in advance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk in a startling way. He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like that hasn’t the ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes. Very well. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or report, or whatever you like to call it.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Eu o observava da sombra. Ele avançava depressa, um pouco à frente dos demais, e a luz do sol que o atingia fazia sobressair seu volume de maneira espantosa. Lembrou-me um elefantinho amestrado caminhando sobre as patas traseiras. Estava também extravagantemente magnífico - metido num traje de dormir encardido de listras verticais verde-vivo e laranja-escuro, com um par de chinelos de palha esfarrapados nos pés descalços e um capacete de cortiça descartado por outra pessoa, imundíssimo e dois números menor do que o necessário, amarrado no alto da grande cabeça com um fio de cabo de manilha. Vocês compreendem que um homem assim não tem a mais remota possibilidade de êxito quando precisa pedir roupas emprestadas. Muito bem. Lá vinha ele com pressa febril, sem olhar para a direita nem para a esquerda; passou a menos de um metro de mim e, na inocência de seu coração, continuou a subir aos arrancos a escadaria da capitania, para prestar depoimento, fazer seu relatório ou dar a isso o nome que preferirem.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Parece que falou primeiro com o chefe de navegação. Archie Ruthvel chegara e ia começar o dia repreendendo seu principal funcionário, um pequeno mestiço português de pescoço fino que sempre tentava conseguir carne salgada, biscoitos ou batatas dos capitães. Certa vez lhe dei uma ovelha viva, não por precisar dele - ele não podia ajudar - , mas por sua fé infantil no direito sagrado a presentes. Era quase bela. A raça - ou as duas raças - e o clima... Não importa. Sei onde tenho um amigo para a vida toda.

Original English Version

‘It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to the principal shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn’t, you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. It was so strong as to be almost beautiful. The race--the two races rather--and the climate . . . However, never mind. I know where I have a friend for life.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Ao que parece, dirigiu-se primeiro ao chefe da repartição marítima. Archie Ruthvel acabara de chegar e, segundo conta, preparava-se para começar seu laborioso dia passando uma descompostura no escriturário-chefe. Alguns de vocês talvez o tenham conhecido - um mestiço português, homenzinho prestativo de pescoço miseravelmente magro, sempre saltitante para conseguir dos capitães alguma coisa em matéria de comestíveis - um pedaço de carne de porco salgada, um saco de biscoitos, algumas batatas ou o que houvesse. Lembro-me de que, certa viagem, dei-lhe de gratificação uma ovelha viva que sobrara de minhas provisões de mar: não porque quisesse que fizesse alguma coisa por mim - ele não poderia, sabem - , mas porque sua crença infantil no direito sagrado às propinas comoveu meu coração. Era tão forte que chegava quase a ser bela. A raça - ou melhor, as duas raças - e o clima... Enfim, não importa. Sei onde tenho um amigo para toda a vida.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Ruthvel contou que repreendia o homem sobre moralidade oficial quando ouviu um ruído. Virou-se e viu uma enorme coisa redonda, de flanela listrada, de cabeça para baixo no meio do escritório. Primeiro nem percebeu que estava viva. O arco da antessala estava cheio de curiosos. O homem soltou o chapéu e avançou curvando-se. Falava com voz áspera e triste, mas corajosa. Archie entendeu que era o caso Patna e, ao descobrir quem era, sentiu-se mal. Mandou-o procurar o capitão Elliot, o Master Attendant, e o empurrou ao escritório particular. Na porta, o homem hesitou e bufou como boi assustado. Archie abriu sem bater e anunciou: "O comandante do Patna, senhor." O velho largou os óculos, e a gritaria foi tão terrível que Archie esqueceu o próprio nome. Parecia ter lançado alguém a um leão faminto. O barulho devia alcançar a Esplanada. Elliot tinha enorme reserva de palavras e não se importava com quem ouvia. Dizia ter chegado ao topo, ter pensão segura e preferir voltar para casa a aceitar ideias ruins sobre dever. Só queria ver as três belas filhas casadas, embora se parecessem com ele. Quando estava pessimista sobre o casamento delas, todos temiam que atacasse alguém antes do café. Naquela manhã, não devorou o homem: despedaçou-o com palavras e o expulsou.

Original English Version

‘Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still wondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been transported in front of his desk. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Quite a riot. By that time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of the Patna case. He says that as soon as he understood who it was before him he felt quite unwell--Archie is so sympathetic and easily upset--but pulled himself together and shouted “Stop! I can’t listen to you. You must go to the Master Attendant. I can’t possibly listen to you. Captain Elliot is the man you want to see. This way, this way.” He jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. “Look here! what’s up? Let go! Look here!” Archie flung open the door without knocking. “The master of the Patna, sir,” he shouts. “Go in, captain.” He saw the old man lift his head from some writing so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and fled to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature: but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he couldn’t collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of his own name. Archie’s the most sensitive shipping-master in the two hemispheres. He declares he felt as though he had thrown a man to a hungry lion. No doubt the noise was great. I heard it down below, and I have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as far as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had a great stock of words and could shout--and didn’t mind who he shouted at either. He would have shouted at the Viceroy himself. As he used to tell me: “I am as high as I can get; my pension is safe. I’ve a few pounds laid by, and if they don’t like my notions of duty I would just as soon go home as not. I am an old man, and I have always spoken my mind. All I care for now is to see my girls married before I die.” He was a little crazy on that point. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. However, that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah! ejected him again.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Pois bem, Ruthvel conta que lhe passava um sermão severo - sobre moralidade oficial, suponho - quando ouviu uma espécie de comoção abafada atrás de si e, ao virar a cabeça, viu, em suas próprias palavras, algo redondo e enorme, semelhante a um tonel de açúcar de dezesseis quintais ingleses envolto em flanela listrada e posto de pé no centro do amplo espaço livre do escritório. Declara que ficou tão desconcertado que, durante um intervalo bastante perceptível, não compreendeu que a coisa estava viva, e permaneceu sentado, perguntando-se com que propósito e por quais meios aquele objeto fora transportado até diante de sua mesa. O arco de entrada da antessala estava apinhado de puxadores de puncá, varredores, agentes de polícia, o patrão e a tripulação da lancha a vapor do porto, todos esticando o pescoço e quase trepando nas costas uns dos outros. Um verdadeiro tumulto. A essa altura, o sujeito conseguira arrancar o chapéu da cabeça a puxões e sacudidelas e avançava com pequenas mesuras na direção de Ruthvel, que me contou ter sido a visão tão perturbadora que por algum tempo ele ouviu, inteiramente incapaz de compreender o que queria aquela aparição. Ela falava numa voz áspera e lúgubre, mas intrépida, e pouco a pouco ocorreu a Archie que aquilo era um desdobramento do caso Patna. Ele conta que, assim que entendeu quem estava diante dele, sentiu-se muito mal - Archie é tão solidário e se transtorna com tanta facilidade - , mas dominou-se e gritou: ‘Pare! Não posso escutá-lo. O senhor precisa ir ao Capitão do Porto. É absolutamente impossível que eu o escute. O Capitão Elliot é o homem que o senhor procura. Por aqui, por aqui.’ Levantou-se de um salto, correu ao redor daquele longo balcão, puxou, empurrou: o outro deixou que fizesse, a princípio surpreso, mas obediente, e foi somente à porta do gabinete particular que uma espécie de instinto animal o fez resistir e bufar como um novilho assustado. ‘Veja aqui! O que está acontecendo? Solte-me! Veja aqui!’ Archie abriu a porta de supetão, sem bater. ‘O comandante do Patna, senhor!’, gritou. ‘Entre, capitão.’ Viu o velho erguer a cabeça dos papéis com tamanha brusquidão que o pincenê lhe caiu do nariz, bateu a porta e fugiu para sua mesa, onde havia alguns documentos à espera de sua assinatura; mas afirma que o berreiro que irrompeu lá dentro foi tão terrível que não conseguiu recompor os sentidos o bastante para recordar como se escrevia o próprio nome. Archie é o chefe de repartição marítima mais sensível dos dois hemisférios. Declara que se sentiu como se houvesse atirado um homem a um leão faminto. Sem dúvida o barulho foi grande. Eu o ouvi lá de baixo e tenho todas as razões para acreditar que foi ouvido do outro lado da Esplanada, até o coreto. O velho pai Elliot dispunha de um vasto estoque de palavras e sabia gritar - e tampouco lhe importava com quem gritava. Teria gritado com o próprio Vice-Rei. Como costumava me dizer: ‘Já cheguei ao posto mais alto que posso alcançar; minha aposentadoria está garantida. Tenho algumas libras guardadas e, se não gostam de minhas ideias sobre o dever, para mim tanto faz voltar para casa ou ficar. Sou velho e sempre disse o que penso. Tudo o que me importa agora é ver minhas filhas casadas antes de morrer.’ Nesse ponto era um pouco louco. Suas três filhas eram moças terrivelmente agradáveis, embora se parecessem de maneira espantosa com ele, e nas manhãs em que acordava com uma visão sombria das perspectivas matrimoniais delas, todo o escritório a lia em seus olhos e tremia, pois, segundo diziam, era certo que ele devoraria alguém no café da manhã. Contudo, naquela manhã não devorou o renegado, mas, se me permitem levar adiante a metáfora, mastigou-o em pedacinhos, por assim dizer, e... ah!... tornou a cuspi-lo.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

- Vi o enorme corpo descer correndo e parar nos degraus, perto de mim, pensativo e mordendo o polegar. Notou-me e lançou um olhar irritado. Os outros três estavam afastados. Um era pequeno, pálido e mesquinho, com o braço numa tipoia. Outro era alto e magro, de casaco azul, seco como madeira, bigode grisalho e ar alegre e tolo. O terceiro, jovem, ereto e de ombros largos, tinha as mãos nos bolsos e dava as costas aos companheiros, olhando a Esplanada vazia. Uma carruagem arruinada parou diante deles; o cocheiro estudava os dedos do pé. O jovem não se movia. Foi minha primeira visão de Jim. Parecia calmo e inalcançável como só os jovens conseguem. Tinha corpo e rosto limpos e postura firme. Sabendo o que sabia, senti raiva, como se tentasse me enganar. Não tinha direito de parecer tão confiável. Pensei: se pessoas assim podem falhar... Senti quase vergonha. Perguntei-me se era tolo ou insensível. Parecia pronto para assobiar. Os outros combinavam com a história pública que seria examinada. Então o capitão disse: "Aquele velho louco lá em cima me chamou de cão." Talvez me conhecesse. Nossos olhos se encontraram; ele me encarou, e eu sorri. "Chamou?" respondi. Ele assentiu, praguejou e disse: "O Pacífico é grande, meu amigo. Vocês, ingleses malditos, podem fazer o pior. Há muito espaço para um homem como eu. Conheço gente em Apia, Honolulu e outros lugares..." Parou, e imaginei facilmente que gente era. Também conheci muitos assim. Às vezes é preciso fingir que a vida é agradável em qualquer companhia. Não finjo choque: vários eram mais interessantes e divertidos que os respeitáveis canalhas convidados para jantar por hábito, medo, bondade ou fraqueza.

Original English Version

‘Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste and stand still on the outer steps. He had stopped close to me for the purpose of profound meditation: his large purple cheeks quivered. He was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed look. The other three chaps that had landed with him made a little group waiting at some distance. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly. He stared across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes. The young chap, making no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the sunshine. This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as only the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of me by false pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about the behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale that was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official inquiry. “That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound,” said the captain of the Patna. I can’t tell whether he recognised me--I rather think he did; but at any rate our glances met. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open window. “Did he?” I said from some strange inability to hold my tongue. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--“Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt” with in those places. I won’t make a secret of it that I had been “aguaindt” with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. I’ve known such a time, and, what’s more, I shan’t now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Assim, em pouquíssimos instantes, vi seu volume monstruoso descer às pressas e deter-se nos degraus exteriores. Ele parara bem perto de mim a fim de mergulhar em profunda meditação: as grandes faces roxas tremiam. Mordia o polegar e, passado algum tempo, percebeu-me com um olhar oblíquo e contrariado. Os outros três sujeitos que haviam desembarcado com ele formavam um pequeno grupo à espera, a certa distância. Havia um homenzinho mesquinho, de tez amarelada e braço numa tipoia, e um indivíduo comprido num casaco de flanela azul, seco como uma lasca e não mais grosso do que um cabo de vassoura, com bigodes grisalhos caídos, que olhava ao redor com um ar de imbecilidade garbosa. O terceiro era um jovem alto e ereto, de ombros largos, as mãos nos bolsos, de costas para os outros dois, que pareciam conversar seriamente. Fitava a Esplanada vazia. Uma gharry desconjuntada, toda poeira e venezianas, parou de súbito diante do grupo. > **Tradução do híndi:** carruagem de aluguel. O cocheiro, erguendo o pé direito sobre o joelho, entregou-se a um exame crítico dos dedos. O jovem, sem fazer movimento algum, sem sequer mexer a cabeça, apenas fitava a luz do sol. Foi assim que vi Jim pela primeira vez. Parecia tão despreocupado e inacessível quanto somente os jovens conseguem parecer. Ali estava ele, membros bem-feitos, rosto límpido, firme sobre os pés, um rapaz tão promissor quanto qualquer outro sobre quem o sol já brilhou; e, ao contemplá-lo, sabendo tudo o que ele sabia e um pouco mais, fiquei tão irritado como se o tivesse apanhado tentando obter de mim alguma coisa por meio de falsas alegações. Ele não tinha o direito de parecer tão íntegro. Pensei comigo - bem, se alguém desse tipo pode falhar dessa maneira... e senti vontade de atirar o chapéu ao chão e sapatear em cima dele por pura mortificação, como certa vez vi fazer o capitão de uma barca italiana porque seu idiota de imediato se atrapalhou com as âncoras ao executar uma manobra rápida de amarração num ancoradouro cheio de navios. Ao vê-lo ali, aparentemente tão à vontade, perguntei a mim mesmo: será que é tolo? será que é insensível? Parecia prestes a começar a assobiar uma melodia. E vejam bem, eu não dava a mínima para o comportamento dos outros dois. A pessoa deles de algum modo se ajustava à história que já era de domínio público e seria objeto de um inquérito oficial. ‘Aquele velho louco e patife lá em cima me chamou de cão’, disse o capitão do Patna. Não sei dizer se me reconheceu - inclino-me a pensar que sim; seja como for, nossos olhares se encontraram. Ele me lançou uma mirada feroz - eu sorri; cão era, de longe, o epíteto mais brando que me chegara pela janela aberta. ‘Chamou?’, disse eu, por alguma estranha incapacidade de manter a boca fechada. Ele assentiu, tornou a morder o polegar, praguejou entre dentes; depois ergueu a cabeça e me encarou com uma insolência taciturna e apaixonada. ‘Bah! O Pacífico ser grande, meu amigo. Vocês, ingleses malditos, podem fazer o pior; eu saber onde haver muito espaço para homem como eu: eu ser muito gonhecido em Ápia, em Honolulu, em...’ Fez uma pausa para refletir, enquanto, sem esforço, eu conseguia representar para mim mesmo a espécie de gente com quem ele era ‘gonhecido’ naqueles lugares. Não farei segredo de que eu próprio fora ‘gonhecido’ de não poucos sujeitos dessa espécie. Há ocasiões em que um homem precisa agir como se a vida fosse igualmente doce em qualquer companhia. Conheci uma ocasião assim e, o que é mais, não vou agora fingir uma expressão compungida diante de minha necessidade, pois muitos daquela má companhia, por falta de postura moral - moral... como direi? - ou por outra causa igualmente profunda, eram duas vezes mais instrutivos e vinte vezes mais divertidos do que o ladrão respeitável e comum do comércio que vocês convidam a sentar-se à sua mesa sem nenhuma necessidade real - por hábito, por covardia, por bondade, por uma centena de razões furtivas e insuficientes.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

"Vocês, ingleses, são todos uns patifes", continuou meu patriota de Flensborg ou Stettin. Já nem me lembro qual pequeno porto do Báltico era a terra natal daquela criatura. "Que direito você tem de gritar? Diga. Vocês não são melhores que os outros, e aquele velho patife fez um escândalo terrível comigo. Vocês, ingleses, sempre fazem um grande escândalo por qualquer coisa porque eu não nasci no país de vocês. Podem tirar meu certificado. Não o quero. Um homem como eu não precisa do seu maldito certificado. Cuspo nele." E cuspiu. "Vou me tornar cidadão americano", gritou, furioso e inquieto, arrastando os pés como se algo invisível segurasse seus tornozelos e não o deixasse partir. Ficou tão enfurecido que o alto de sua cabeça redonda parecia soltar fumaça. Nada misterioso me prendia ali. Era apenas curiosidade. Eu queria ver o que aconteceria quando o jovem ouvisse tudo. Jim ainda estava ali, com as mãos nos bolsos e de costas para a calçada, olhando através da Esplanada para o pórtico amarelo do Hotel Malabar, como se fosse sair para passear assim que seu amigo estivesse pronto. Parecia orgulhoso e despreocupado, e eu odiei aquilo. Esperei vê-lo esmagado e abalado, retorcido de vergonha. É terrível observar um homem que foi descoberto, não em um crime, mas em uma fraqueza. Muitas pessoas são afastadas do crime por um autocontrole comum. Mas uma fraqueza, escondida ou apenas meio suspeitada, pode destruir qualquer pessoa. Somos levados a situações que trazem vergonha ou até a morte, e mesmo assim o espírito humano pode sobreviver. E também existem pequenas coisas que podem arruinar completamente alguns de nós. Observei o jovem. Gostei de sua aparência e sabia que vinha do tipo certo de mundo. Ele representava todas as pessoas honestas cuja coragem não é elegante nem exibida, mas simples e natural. Quero dizer a profunda capacidade de enfrentar a tentação com honestidade, sem fingimento. É uma força tranquila contra os perigos dentro e fora de nós, sustentada por uma fé que não pode ser abalada pelos fatos, pelo exemplo dos outros ou pelas ideias. Fora com as ideias! Elas são como mendigos na porta dos fundos da mente, levando embora pedaços de sua crença nas verdades simples de que você precisa para viver bem e morrer em paz!

Original English Version

‘“You Englishmen are all rogues,” went on my patriotic Flensborg or Stettin Australian. I really don’t recollect now what decent little port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that precious bird. “What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me.” His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. “That’s what you English always make--make a tam’ fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your tam’ country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don’t want the certificate. A man like me don’t want your verfluchte certificate. I shpit on it.” He spat. “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his bullet head positively smoked. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. That’s how he looked, and it was odious. I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand what I mean. Nothing more awful than to watch a man who has been found out, not in a crime but in a more than criminal weakness. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of us are totally and completely undone. I watched the youngster there. I liked his appearance; I knew his appearance; he came from the right place; he was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very existence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage. I don’t mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!

Tradução Integral em Português

“‘Vocês ingleses ser todos patifes’, prosseguiu meu patriótico australiano de Flensburgo ou Stettin. Realmente não me lembro agora qual porto pequeno e decente às margens do Báltico foi desonrado por servir de ninho àquela ave preciosa. ‘Quem são vocês para gritar? Hein? Você me dizer? Vocês não ser melhor que outras pessoas, e aquele velho patife fazer uma confusão dos diabos comigo.’ Sua carcaça grossa tremia sobre pernas que pareciam um par de colunas; tremia da cabeça aos pés. ‘É isso que vocês inglês sempre fazer - fazer uma confusão tamada - por qualquer coisinha, porque eu não nascer em seu país tamado. Tirar meu certificado. Tirar. Eu não querer o certificado. Homem como eu não precisar de seu verfluchte certificado.’ > **Tradução do alemão:** maldito. “‘Eu guspir nele.’ Ele cuspiu. ‘Eu vou cidadão amerigano me tornar!’, gritou, agastando-se, fumegando e arrastando os pés como se quisesse libertar os tornozelos de algum aperto invisível e misterioso que não lhe permitia sair daquele lugar. Esquentou-se tanto que o alto de sua cabeça de bala literalmente soltava fumaça. Nada de misterioso me impedia de ir embora: a curiosidade é o mais manifesto dos sentimentos, e ela me reteve ali para ver o efeito de uma informação completa sobre aquele jovem que, com as mãos nos bolsos e de costas para a calçada, fitava através dos gramados da Esplanada o pórtico amarelo do Hotel Malabar, com o ar de um homem que sairá para passear assim que o amigo estiver pronto. Era essa sua aparência, e ela me era odiosa. Esperei para vê-lo esmagado, confundido, atravessado de lado a lado, contorcendo-se como um besouro empalado - e eu também tinha certo medo de ver isso - , se compreendem o que quero dizer. Nada há de mais terrível do que observar um homem que foi desmascarado, não num crime, mas numa fraqueza mais do que criminosa. A mais comum espécie de coragem impede que nos tornemos criminosos no sentido legal; mas da fraqueza desconhecida, embora talvez suspeitada, assim como em certas partes do mundo se suspeita de uma serpente mortal em cada moita - da fraqueza que pode permanecer oculta, vigiada ou não, combatida com preces ou virilmente desprezada, reprimida ou talvez ignorada por mais de metade de uma vida - , nenhum de nós está a salvo. Caímos em armadilhas que nos levam a praticar atos pelos quais somos insultados e atos pelos quais somos enforcados, e ainda assim é bem possível que o espírito sobreviva - sobreviva à condenação, sobreviva à forca, por Júpiter! E há coisas - que às vezes parecem bastante pequenas - pelas quais alguns de nós são inteira e definitivamente destruídos. Observei o jovem ali. Gostava de sua aparência; conhecia aquela aparência; ele vinha do lugar certo; era um de nós. Ali representava toda a ascendência de sua espécie, homens e mulheres que de modo algum eram inteligentes ou divertidos, mas cuja própria existência se fundamentava numa fé honesta e no instinto da coragem. Não me refiro à coragem militar, à coragem civil ou a qualquer espécie particular de coragem. Refiro-me apenas àquela capacidade inata de encarar as tentações de frente - uma disposição bastante alheia ao intelecto, Deus sabe, mas isenta de pose - , a uma força de resistência, pouco graciosa se quiserem, porém inestimável - , uma rigidez irrefletida e abençoada diante dos terrores exteriores e interiores, diante do poder da natureza e da corrupção sedutora dos homens - sustentada por uma fé invulnerável à força dos fatos, ao contágio do exemplo, às solicitações das ideias. Ao diabo as ideias! São andarilhas, vagabundas que batem à porta dos fundos de nossa mente, cada qual levando um pouco de nossa substância, cada qual carregando consigo alguma migalha daquela crença em umas poucas noções simples às quais precisamos nos agarrar se quisermos viver com decência e nos agradaria morrer em paz!”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Isso não diz respeito diretamente a Jim, mas ele parecia o tipo de pessoa boa e simples que gostamos de imaginar ao nosso lado durante a vida. Parecia alguém a quem confiaríamos o comando do convés de um navio. Sei do que estou falando, pois treinei muitos jovens para o serviço no mar. O mar me ensinou muito, e acho que também lhe dei bons homens. Alguns daqueles rapazes já cresceram, e alguns já morreram afogados. Se eu voltasse para casa amanhã, tenho certeza de que, em dois dias, algum jovem oficial queimado de sol me encontraria e diria: "Lembra-se de mim, senhor? Eu era o pequeno Fulano. Foi minha primeira viagem." Então eu me lembraria de um garotinho confuso, com uma mãe ou irmã mais velha no cais, emocionada demais para acenar em despedida, ou de um pai respeitável que fora acompanhar o filho e ficara tempo demais, fascinado pelo cabrestante, até precisar correr para terra sem tempo de se despedir. O prático do porto, na popa, gritaria para manter o navio firme por um momento enquanto um cavalheiro desembarcava. Os rebocadores puxariam, o rio se agitaria, e o homem em terra tiraria a poeira dos joelhos enquanto o comissário talvez jogasse seu guarda-chuva para ele. Tudo estaria em ordem. Ele fizera seu pequeno sacrifício ao mar e agora podia voltar para casa fingindo que aquilo não significava nada. Na manhã seguinte, o jovem principiante estaria enjoado. Mais tarde, depois de aprender os pequenos truques e o único grande segredo do mar, estaria pronto para viver ou morrer conforme o mar decidisse. Então o homem que ajudara nesse jogo, no qual o mar sempre vence, ficaria feliz ao sentir uma mão forte bater em suas costas e ouvir uma voz alegre dizer: "Lembra-se de mim, senhor? O pequeno Fulano."

Original English Version

‘This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. He was the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. I say I would, and I ought to know. Haven’t I turned out youngsters enough in my time, for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft whose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the component part of every waking thought--till it is present in every dream of their young sleep! The sea has been good to me, but when I remember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don’t think I have done badly by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice speaking above my hat would ask: “Don’t you remember me, sir? Why! little So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl, “Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. There’s a gentleman wants to get ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got carried off to Talcahuano, didn’t you? Now’s your time; easy does it. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick before next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy voice: “Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so.”

Tradução Integral em Português

“Isso não tem relação direta com Jim; ocorre apenas que, por fora, ele era um exemplar tão típico daquela espécie boa e estúpida que gostamos de imaginar marchando à nossa direita e à nossa esquerda pela vida, a espécie que não se deixa perturbar pelos caprichos da inteligência e pelas perversões dos... dos nervos, digamos. Era o tipo de sujeito a quem, fiado na aparência, deixaríamos o convés sob seus cuidados - falando em sentido figurado e profissional. Digo que eu deixaria, e devo entender do assunto. Não formei jovens em número suficiente, em meu tempo, para o serviço do Pavilhão Vermelho, para o ofício do mar, o ofício cujo segredo inteiro poderia ser expresso numa frase curta, mas que ainda assim precisa ser inculcado de novo, todos os dias, nas cabeças jovens até tornar-se parte integrante de cada pensamento da vigília - até estar presente em todos os sonhos de seu jovem sono? O mar tem sido bom comigo, mas, quando me lembro de todos esses rapazes que passaram por minhas mãos, alguns já adultos, outros a esta altura afogados, porém todos boa matéria-prima para o mar, não creio que eu o tenha servido mal. Se voltasse amanhã para casa, aposto que antes de se passarem dois dias algum jovem imediato queimado de sol me alcançaria à entrada de uma ou outra doca, e uma voz nova e grave, falando acima do meu chapéu, perguntaria: ‘Não se lembra de mim, senhor? Ora! O pequeno Fulano. O navio Tal. Foi minha primeira viagem.’ E eu me lembraria de um garotinho desnorteado, que não chegava à altura do espaldar desta cadeira, com uma mãe e talvez uma irmã mais velha no cais, muito quietas, mas transtornadas demais para acenar com os lenços ao navio que desliza suavemente entre as extremidades dos molhes; ou talvez de algum pai respeitável, já de meia-idade, que chegou cedo com o menino para vê-lo partir e ficou ali toda a manhã, aparentemente porque o cabrestante lhe interessava, ficou tempo demais e, por fim, teve de se precipitar para terra sem que lhe restasse um instante sequer para se despedir. O prático do estuário, na tolda, grita arrastadamente para mim: ‘Segure-a um instante com o cabo de retenção, Sr. Imediato. Há um cavalheiro querendo ir para terra... Suba, senhor. Quase o levamos para Talcahuano, não foi? Agora é sua vez; com calma... Muito bem. Folguem outra vez o cabo lá na proa.’ Os rebocadores, fumegando como o poço da perdição, agarram o navio e revolvem o velho rio até enfurecê-lo; em terra, o cavalheiro tira a poeira dos joelhos - o solícito comissário arremessou-lhe o guarda-chuva. Tudo muito correto. Ele ofereceu seu pequeno sacrifício ao mar e agora pode voltar para casa fingindo que não dá importância; e a pequena vítima voluntária estará terrivelmente enjoada antes da manhã seguinte. Mais tarde, quando houver aprendido todos os pequenos mistérios e o grande segredo único do ofício, estará apto a viver ou morrer conforme o mar decretar; e o homem que participou desse jogo insensato, no qual o mar vence todo lançamento, ficará satisfeito ao sentir nas costas a palmada de uma jovem mão pesada e ouvir uma alegre voz de filhote do mar: ‘Lembra-se de mim, senhor? O pequeno Fulano.’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Digo que isso é bom porque prova que, pelo menos uma vez na vida, você fez as coisas da maneira certa. Eu mesmo já recebi aquele tapa pesado e, embora tenha doído, senti orgulho e me achei menos sozinho no mundo. Será que não me lembro dos pequenos Fulanos? Sei reconhecer a aparência certa. Depois de um único olhar, eu teria confiado o convés do navio àquele jovem e ido dormir sem preocupação. Mas isso não teria sido seguro. Havia algo inquietante nele. Parecia verdadeiro e honesto, como uma moeda nova, mas havia algum metal ruim misturado. Quanto? Talvez a menor quantidade possível, apenas uma maldita gotinha. Mesmo assim, parado ali com seu jeito despreocupado, ele nos fazia pensar se não era apenas latão.

Original English Version

‘I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least you had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump. Don’t I remember the little So-and-so’s! I tell you I ought to know the right kind of looks. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and, by Jove! it wouldn’t have been safe. There are depths of horror in that thought. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some infernal alloy in his metal. How much? The least thing--the least drop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made you--standing there with his don’t-care-hang air--he made you wonder whether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Digo-lhes que isso é bom; mostra que, ao menos uma vez na vida, fizemos o trabalho da maneira certa. Já recebi palmadas assim e estremeci, pois a mão era pesada, e passei o dia inteiro radiante, indo para a cama com a sensação de estar menos sozinho no mundo graças àquele golpe cordial. Como não me lembraria dos pequenos Fulanos! Digo-lhes que devo saber reconhecer a aparência certa. Eu teria confiado o convés àquele jovem por força de um único olhar e ido dormir com os dois olhos fechados - e, por Júpiter!, não teria sido seguro. Há profundezas de horror nesse pensamento. Ele parecia tão autêntico quanto um soberano recém-cunhado, mas havia alguma liga infernal em seu metal. Quanto? A menor coisa - a menor gota de alguma substância rara e maldita; a menor gota! - , mas ele, ali de pé com aquele ar de não dar a mínima, fazia uma pessoa se perguntar se porventura não seria feito de algo tão pouco raro quanto o latão.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Eu mal conseguia acreditar. Queria vê-lo sofrer pela honra da profissão. Os outros dois homens, que não eram importantes, viram o capitão e vieram devagar em nossa direção. Conversavam enquanto caminhavam, mas não me importei nem um pouco. Um deles estava com o braço quebrado. O homem alto de bigodes grisalhos era o chefe de máquinas, um sujeito conhecido por seu mau caráter. Eles se aproximaram. O capitão olhava para baixo, entre os próprios pés, como se alguma doença terrível o tivesse feito inchar até assumir uma forma estranha. Então ergueu a cabeça, viu os dois homens e abriu a boca para falar, ou assim pensei. Mas pareceu mudar de ideia. Seus grossos lábios roxos se fecharam sem emitir som. Ele caminhou depressa e sem jeito até a carruagem e puxou a maçaneta com uma força selvagem, como se quisesse virar tudo, pônei e carruagem. O cocheiro ficou apavorado de repente e se segurou com força, olhando de seu assento para aquele corpo enorme que tentava entrar. A pequena carruagem tremia e balançava. O pescoço vermelho, as coxas enormes e as costas com listras verdes e alaranjadas tornavam a cena engraçada e assustadora, como um sonho causado pela febre. Então ele desapareceu lá dentro. Achei que o teto fosse se abrir, mas a carruagem apenas afundou sobre as molas e uma persiana caiu. Seus ombros apareceram de novo na pequena abertura. Sua cabeça saiu para fora, enorme e suada, e ele gritou ordens furiosas ao cocheiro. O homem chicoteou o pônei, que partiu a galope. Não ouvi para onde iam. Em um instante, o pônei o levou embora, e nunca mais o vi. Não sei se alguém o viu depois disso. Ele desapareceu como se tivesse voado pelos ares. O homem com a tipoia começou a correr atrás da carruagem, chamando: "Capitão! Capitão!" Mas, depois de alguns passos, parou, baixou a cabeça e voltou devagar. Quando o ruído das rodas se afastou, o jovem se virou no lugar em que estava. Não tornou a se mexer e continuou olhando naquela nova direção mesmo depois que a carruagem desapareceu de vista.

Original English Version

‘I couldn’t believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for the honour of the craft. The other two no-account chaps spotted their captain, and began to move slowly towards us. They chatted together as they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been visible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other--might have been exchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw that with one of them it was a case of a broken arm; and as to the long individual with grey moustaches he was the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious personality. They were nobodies. They approached. The skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to strike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. The driver, shaken out of his meditation over the sole of his foot, displayed at once all the signs of intense terror, and held with both hands, looking round from his box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his conveyance. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. He disappeared. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. He roared at him to be off, to go on. Where? Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Where? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to disport himself in, and I did not hear the precise address. A snorting pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. The Pacific is indeed big; but whether he found a place for a display of his talents in it or not, the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on a broomstick. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after the carriage, bleating, “Captain! I say, Captain! I sa-a-ay!”--but after a few steps stopped short, hung his head, and walked back slowly. At the sharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where he stood. He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in the new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Eu não conseguia acreditar. Digo-lhes que queria vê-lo contorcer-se pela honra do ofício. Os outros dois sujeitos sem importância avistaram o capitão e começaram a avançar devagar em nossa direção. Conversavam enquanto caminhavam, e eu não me importava com eles mais do que me importaria se não fossem visíveis a olho nu. Sorriam um para o outro - pelo que sei, talvez trocassem piadas. Vi que um deles estava com o braço quebrado; quanto ao indivíduo comprido de bigodes grisalhos, era o chefe de máquinas e, sob vários aspectos, uma figura bastante notória. Não eram ninguém. Aproximaram-se. O capitão fitava o espaço entre os próprios pés com um olhar inanimado: parecia ter inchado até um tamanho antinatural sob o efeito de alguma doença terrível, da ação misteriosa de um veneno desconhecido. Ergueu a cabeça, viu os dois à sua frente, esperando, abriu a boca numa contorção extraordinariamente sarcástica do rosto intumescido - para falar com eles, suponho - , e então um pensamento pareceu atingi-lo. Seus lábios grossos e arroxeados se fecharam sem emitir som, e ele partiu num resoluto andar bamboleante em direção à gharry. > **Tradução do híndi:** carruagem de aluguel. Começou a sacudir a maçaneta da porta com uma brutalidade de impaciência tão cega que esperei ver todo o veículo tombar de lado, pônei e tudo. O cocheiro, arrancado de sua meditação sobre a sola do pé, exibiu de imediato todos os sinais de intenso terror e segurou-se com ambas as mãos, olhando para trás do assento enquanto aquela vasta carcaça forçava entrada em seu veículo. A pequena máquina sacudiu-se e oscilou tumultuosamente, e a nuca carmesim daquele pescoço inclinado, o tamanho das coxas retesadas, o imenso soerguer daquelas costas encardidas de listras verdes e alaranjadas, todo o esforço escavador daquela massa espalhafatosa e sórdida perturbavam nosso senso do provável com um efeito cômico e aterrador, como uma daquelas visões grotescas e nítidas que assustam e fascinam durante uma febre. Ele desapareceu. Quase esperei que o teto se partisse em dois, que a caixinha sobre rodas se abrisse de súbito como uma cápsula madura de algodão - mas ela apenas afundou com o estalo das molas achatadas, e uma das venezianas caiu de repente com estrondo. Seus ombros reapareceram, entalados na pequena abertura; a cabeça pendia para fora, distendida e sacudida como um balão cativo, suada, furiosa, cuspindo palavras. Investiu contra o gharry-wallah com golpes maldosos de um punho atarracado e vermelho como um naco de carne crua. > **Tradução do híndi:** cocheiro da carruagem. Berrou para que partisse, que seguisse. Para onde? Para o Pacífico, talvez. O cocheiro chicoteou; o pônei resfolegou, empinou uma vez e disparou a galope. Para onde? Ápia? Honolulu? Ele dispunha de seis mil milhas de faixa tropical onde se divertir, e eu não ouvi o endereço exato. Um pônei resfolegante arrebatou-o para a Ewigkeit num piscar de olhos, e nunca mais o vi. > **Tradução do alemão:** eternidade. E, mais ainda, não sei de pessoa alguma que tenha sequer vislumbrado o homem depois que partiu do alcance do meu conhecimento, sentado dentro de uma pequena gharry desconjuntada que fugiu pela esquina numa sufocante nuvem branca de poeira. Partiu, desapareceu, sumiu, evadiu-se; e, por mais absurdo que seja, parecia ter levado consigo aquela gharry, pois nunca mais cruzei com um pônei alazão de orelha fendida nem com um cocheiro tâmil indolente acometido por uma ferida no pé. O Pacífico é, de fato, grande; mas, tenha ou não encontrado nele um lugar onde exibir seus talentos, permanece o fato de que voou pelo espaço como uma bruxa montada numa vassoura. O homenzinho de braço na tipoia começou a correr atrás da carruagem, balindo: ‘Capitão! Eu digo, capitão! Eu di-i-igo!’ - , mas depois de alguns passos parou de repente, baixou a cabeça e voltou devagar. Ao ruído agudo das rodas, o jovem girou no mesmo lugar. Não fez nenhum outro movimento, nenhum gesto, nenhum sinal, e continuou voltado para a nova direção depois que a gharry desapareceu da vista ao dobrar a esquina.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Tudo isso aconteceu em muito menos tempo do que se leva para contar. Só estou narrando devagar para que vocês possam acompanhar. No momento seguinte, chegou um escriturário mestiço enviado por Archie para cuidar dos pobres sobreviventes do Patna. Ele saiu correndo, sem chapéu e cheio de energia, olhando de um lado para o outro. Estava seguro de seu objetivo, mas não teria sucesso com o homem principal. Mesmo assim, falou com os outros de maneira importante e logo entrou em uma discussão difícil com o homem cujo braço estava em uma tipoia. Aquele homem estava pronto para brigar. Gritou que ninguém lhe daria ordens. Não se deixaria assustar pelas mentiras de um pequeno e orgulhoso escriturário mestiço. Não seria intimidado, fosse a história verdadeira ou não. Berrou que queria ir para a cama. Depois gritou que, se eles não fossem "portugueses abandonados por Deus", saberiam que o hospital era o lugar certo para ele. Enfiou o punho bom debaixo do nariz do outro homem. Uma multidão começou a se reunir. O escriturário, nervoso, mas tentando parecer calmo e respeitável, procurou explicar o que queria dizer. Fui embora antes de ver como aquilo terminou.

Original English Version

‘All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the scene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and very full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn’t going to be ordered about--“not he, b’gosh.” He wouldn’t be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. He was not going to be bullied by “no object of that sort,” if the story were true “ever so”! He bawled his wish, his desire, his determination to go to bed. “If you weren’t a God-forsaken Portuguee,” I heard him yell, “you would know that the hospital is the right place for me.” He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. I went away without waiting to see the end.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Tudo isso aconteceu em muito menos tempo do que se leva para contar, pois tento traduzir para vocês, em palavras lentas, o efeito instantâneo das impressões visuais. No momento seguinte entrou em cena o escriturário mestiço, enviado por Archie para cuidar um pouco dos pobres náufragos do Patna. Saiu correndo, ansioso e sem chapéu, olhando para a direita e para a esquerda, muito compenetrado de sua missão. No que dizia respeito à figura principal, ela estava fadada ao fracasso, mas ele se aproximou dos outros com uma importância atarefada e, quase imediatamente, viu-se envolvido numa altercação violenta com o sujeito que trazia o braço numa tipoia e que se revelou extremamente desejoso de uma briga. Ele não se deixaria mandar - ‘ele não, por Deus’. Não permitiria que um insignificante escrevinhador mestiço e metido o aterrorizasse com um monte de mentiras. Não seria intimidado por ‘um objeto daquela espécie’, ainda que a história fosse ‘verdadeira até não poder mais’! Berrou que queria, desejava, estava decidido a ir para a cama. ‘Se você não fosse um portuga abandonado por Deus’, ouvi-o gritar, ‘saberia que o hospital é o lugar certo para mim.’ Enfiou o punho do braço são debaixo do nariz do outro; uma multidão começou a se juntar; o mestiço, atrapalhado, mas fazendo o possível para parecer digno, tentou explicar suas intenções. Fui embora sem esperar para ver o fim.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Por acaso, porém, eu tinha um homem internado no hospital naquela época. Na véspera da abertura do inquérito, fui visitá-lo e, na enfermaria dos brancos, vi o homenzinho deitado de costas, com o braço preso em talas e a mente confusa. Para minha grande surpresa, o homem alto de bigode branco caído também estava ali. Lembrei-me de vê-lo escapar durante a discussão, movendo-se num estranho passo, metade dança e metade arrastar de pés, e tentando não parecer assustado. Pelo visto, conhecia bem o porto e, em sua dificuldade, foi direto à sala de bilhar e taverna de Mariani, perto do bazar. Mariani, que já o conhecia e havia ajudado em seus maus hábitos em outros lugares, recebeu-o e o escondeu no andar de cima, com garrafas, num quarto sujo de sua pobre casa. Ele parecia temer por sua segurança e queria continuar escondido. Mais tarde, Mariani me disse que teria feito ainda mais por ele, sem fazer perguntas, por causa de algum antigo favor vergonhoso. Bateu no peito e gritou: "Antonio nunca esquece!" Nunca descobri qual era a dívida. Mesmo assim, deram-lhe um lugar atrás de portas trancadas, com uma cadeira, uma mesa, um colchão e pedaços de reboco no chão, enquanto tentava se acalmar com as bebidas que Mariani lhe fornecia. Isso continuou até a noite do terceiro dia. Então ele deu gritos horríveis e precisou fugir para salvar a vida de um enxame de centopeias. Arrombou a porta, voou pela escada frágil, caiu sobre a barriga de Mariani, levantou-se e correu para a rua como um coelho. Na manhã seguinte, a polícia o encontrou sobre um monte de lixo. A princípio, pensou que o levavam para ser enforcado e lutou como um herói. Mas, quando me sentei ao lado de sua cama, já estava quieto havia dois dias. Seu rosto magro e moreno, com o bigode branco, parecia calmo sobre o travesseiro, como o rosto de um velho soldado, exceto por um medo estranho em seus olhos. Como parecia tão tranquilo, comecei a ter esperança de que explicasse o famoso acontecimento do ponto de vista dele. Não consigo explicar totalmente por que eu queria investigar detalhes tão desagradáveis. Talvez minha curiosidade estivesse doente. Talvez eu esperasse encontrar uma razão profunda, alguma misericórdia ou desculpa. Agora vejo que esperava o impossível: afastar o fantasma mais persistente da vida humana, a dúvida que sobe como neblina, rói como um verme e é mais fria que a própria morte. É a dúvida sobre uma regra firme do certo e do errado. Ela pode causar pânico e atos silenciosos de maldade. É a verdadeira sombra do desastre. Eu acreditava num milagre? Por que o desejava tanto? Talvez quisesse encontrar uma desculpa para aquele jovem, que eu nunca conhecera, mas cujo rosto fazia toda a questão parecer pessoal e assustadora, como se apontasse para um destino perigoso à espera de todos nós que um dia fomos jovens como ele. Temo que essa fosse minha razão secreta. Sim, eu procurava um milagre. Agora, a única coisa milagrosa para mim é a dimensão da minha tolice. Eu esperava conseguir algum remédio para a dúvida com aquele homem doente, arruinado e cheio de dúvidas. Assim, depois de algumas palavras educadas, às quais ele respondeu com a indiferença de qualquer paciente respeitável, mencionei o Patna numa pergunta cuidadosa. Fui cuidadoso por motivos egoístas. Não queria chocá-lo. Não me importava o bastante com ele para sentir pena ou raiva. Sua história não tinha importância para mim, nem sua salvação. Ele já estava velho demais em seus pequenos crimes para despertar em mim muito nojo ou compaixão. "Patna?", repetiu, como se pensasse. Depois disse: "Exatamente. Sou um velho experiente por estas bandas. Eu a vi afundar." Eu estava pronto para falar com raiva sobre uma mentira tão estúpida quando ele acrescentou, com calma: "Ela estava cheia de répteis."

Original English Version

‘But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry, I saw in the white men’s ward that little chap tossing on his back, with his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also found his way there. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes. He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani’s stomach, picked himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct, I can’t explain. You may call it an unhealthy curiosity if you like; but I have a distinct notion I wished to find something. Perhaps, unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an excuse. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Was it for my own sake that I wished to find some shadow of an excuse for that young fellow whom I had never seen before, but whose appearance alone added a touch of personal concern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of his weakness--made it a thing of mystery and terror--like a hint of a destructive fate ready for us all whose youth--in its day--had resembled his youth? I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. I was, and no mistake, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. I must have been pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. He repeated Patna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and said: “Quite right. I am an old stager out here. I saw her go down.” I made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added smoothly, “She was full of reptiles.”

Tradução Integral em Português

“Por acaso eu tinha um homem internado no hospital naquela ocasião e, ao ir vê-lo na véspera da abertura do Inquérito, avistei na enfermaria dos brancos aquele homenzinho, deitado de costas, agitando-se, o braço imobilizado por talas e a mente em completo delírio. Para minha grande surpresa, o outro, o indivíduo comprido de bigodes brancos caídos, também encontrara o caminho para lá. Eu me lembrava de tê-lo visto escapar furtivamente durante a briga, num movimento que era metade trote, metade passo arrastado, fazendo o possível para não parecer assustado. Ao que parece, não era estranho no porto e, em sua aflição, conseguira ir direto para o salão de bilhar e botequim de Mariani, perto do bazar. Aquele vagabundo indizível, Mariani, que conhecia o homem e alimentara seus vícios em um ou dois outros lugares, beijou figurativamente o chão diante dele e o trancou, com um suprimento de garrafas, num quarto no andar de cima de seu covil infame. Parece que ele alimentava uma vaga apreensão quanto à própria segurança e desejava permanecer escondido. Contudo, Mariani contou-me muito tempo depois (quando subiu a bordo certo dia para cobrar de meu comissário o preço de alguns charutos) que teria feito ainda mais por ele sem formular perguntas, em gratidão por algum favor profano recebido muitos e muitos anos antes - até onde consegui compreender. Bateu duas vezes no peito musculoso e girou imensos olhos negros e brancos que reluziam cheios de lágrimas: ‘Antonio nunca esquecer - Antonio nunca esquecer!’ Jamais descobri a natureza exata da obrigação imoral, mas, qualquer que fosse, deram-lhe todas as facilidades para permanecer fechado a chave, com uma cadeira, uma mesa, um colchão num canto e uma camada de reboco caído no chão, num estado irracional de pavor, sustentando o ânimo com os tônicos que Mariani fornecia. Isso durou até a noite do terceiro dia, quando, depois de soltar alguns gritos horríveis, ele se viu obrigado a buscar segurança na fuga diante de uma legião de centopeias. Arrebentou a porta, deu um salto desesperado escada abaixo, por aquela pequena estrutura periclitante, aterrissou com o corpo inteiro sobre o estômago de Mariani, levantou-se e disparou para as ruas como um coelho. A polícia o recolheu de uma pilha de lixo nas primeiras horas da manhã. A princípio, teve a ideia de que o levavam para ser enforcado e lutou pela liberdade como um herói; mas, quando me sentei ao lado de sua cama, já estava muito quieto havia dois dias. Sua cabeça magra e bronzeada, de bigodes brancos, parecia bela e serena sobre o travesseiro, como a cabeça de um soldado desgastado pela guerra e dotado de alma infantil, não fosse por um indício de alarme espectral oculto no brilho vazio de seu olhar, semelhante a uma forma indefinível de terror agachada em silêncio atrás de uma vidraça. Estava tão extraordinariamente calmo que comecei a alimentar a excêntrica esperança de ouvir, de seu ponto de vista, alguma explicação para o célebre caso. Não sei explicar por que eu ansiava por escavar os lastimáveis pormenores de uma ocorrência que, afinal, não me dizia respeito senão como membro de um obscuro corpo de homens unidos por uma comunidade de trabalho sem glória e pela fidelidade a certo padrão de conduta. Podem chamar isso de curiosidade doentia, se quiserem; mas tenho a nítida impressão de que desejava encontrar alguma coisa. Talvez, sem saber, esperasse encontrar essa coisa, alguma causa profunda e redentora, alguma explicação misericordiosa, alguma sombra convincente de desculpa. Agora vejo com clareza que eu esperava o impossível - o apaziguamento do fantasma mais obstinado dentre os criados pelo homem, da dúvida inquieta que se ergue como uma névoa, secreta e roedora como um verme, mais gélida do que a certeza da morte - a dúvida quanto ao poder soberano entronizado num padrão fixo de conduta. É a coisa mais dura contra a qual se pode tropeçar; é o que gera pânicos estridentes e pequenas vilanias silenciosas; é a verdadeira sombra da calamidade. Eu acreditava num milagre? E por que o desejava com tamanho ardor? Era em meu próprio benefício que queria encontrar alguma sombra de desculpa para aquele jovem que nunca vira, mas cuja simples aparência acrescentava um toque de interesse pessoal aos pensamentos despertados pelo conhecimento de sua fraqueza - transformava-a numa coisa de mistério e terror - , como a insinuação de um destino destruidor à espera de todos nós cuja juventude, em seu tempo, se parecera com a dele? Receio que esse fosse o motivo secreto de minha intromissão. Eu procurava, não resta dúvida, um milagre. A única coisa que, a esta distância no tempo, me parece milagrosa é a extensão de minha imbecilidade. Eu esperava de verdade obter daquele inválido maltratado e suspeito algum exorcismo contra o fantasma da dúvida. Devo ter estado também bastante desesperado, pois, sem perder tempo, depois de algumas frases indiferentes e amistosas às quais ele respondeu com uma prontidão lânguida, como faria qualquer enfermo respeitável, produzi a palavra Patna envolta numa pergunta delicada como num fiapo de seda. Fui delicado por egoísmo; não queria sobressaltá-lo; não sentia nenhuma solicitude por ele; não estava furioso com ele nem tinha pena dele: sua experiência não possuía importância alguma, sua redenção não teria propósito para mim. Ele envelhecera em pequenas iniquidades e já não era capaz de inspirar aversão ou compaixão. Repetiu ‘Patna?’, em tom interrogativo, pareceu fazer um breve esforço de memória e disse: ‘Exatamente. Sou um velho veterano por estas bandas. Eu a vi afundar.’ Preparei-me para dar vazão à indignação diante de mentira tão estúpida quando ele acrescentou, com brandura: ‘Ela estava cheia de répteis.’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Aquilo me fez parar. O que ele queria dizer? O medo inquieto em seus olhos arregalados pareceu congelar e encarar os meus com uma expressão de súplica. "Eles me tiraram da cama no turno da meia-noite para vê-la afundar", continuou pensativo. De repente, sua voz soou muito forte. Arrependi-me de ter falado de maneira tão tola. Não havia enfermeira à vista e, bem longe na enfermaria, um homem moreno e magro, ferido num acidente a bordo de um navio no porto, estava sentado na cama com uma faixa branca inclinada sobre a testa. Então meu interessante paciente estendeu um braço fino como um tentáculo e agarrou meu ombro. "Só meus olhos eram bons o bastante para ver. Sou famoso por minha visão. Deve ter sido por isso que me chamaram. Nenhum deles foi rápido o bastante para vê-la partir, mas viram muito bem que ela havia desaparecido e gritaram todos juntos, assim." Então veio um uivo de lobo que pareceu vasculhar minha alma. "Ah! Faça ele parar", reclamou o homem acidentado. "Acho que você não acredita em mim", disse o outro, com grande orgulho na voz. "Eu lhe digo que não existem olhos como os meus deste lado do Golfo Pérsico. Olhe debaixo da cama."

Original English Version

‘This made me pause. What did he mean? The unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine wistfully. “They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking,” he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. “Only my eyes were good enough to see. I am famous for my eyesight. That’s why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right enough, and sang out together--like this.” . . . A wolfish howl searched the very recesses of my soul. “Oh! make ‘im dry up,” whined the accident case irritably. “You don’t believe me, I suppose,” went on the other, with an air of ineffable conceit. “I tell you there are no such eyes as mine this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed.”

Tradução Integral em Português

“Isso me fez parar. O que queria dizer? O vacilante fantasma de terror atrás de seus olhos vidrados pareceu imobilizar-se e contemplar os meus com ar suplicante. ‘Arrancaram-me da cama durante o quarto da meia-noite para vê-la afundar’, prosseguiu em tom reflexivo. Sua voz de repente pareceu alarmantemente forte. Arrependi-me de minha insensatez. Não se via, esvoaçando na perspectiva da enfermaria, a touca branca e alada de uma irmã de caridade; mas, bem ao longe, no meio de uma longa fileira de camas de ferro vazias, um acidentado de algum navio no ancoradouro estava sentado, moreno e descarnado, com uma bandagem branca pousada de modo garboso na testa. De súbito, meu interessante inválido lançou um braço fino como tentáculo e cravou as garras em meu ombro. ‘Só os meus olhos eram bons o bastante para enxergar. Sou famoso pela vista. É por isso que me chamaram, imagino. Nenhum deles foi rápido o bastante para vê-la ir, mas todos viram muito bem que ela tinha ido e gritaram juntos - assim’... Um uivo lupino vasculhou os próprios recessos de minha alma. ‘Ah! faça ele calar a boca’, choramingou com irritação o acidentado. ‘Suponho que o senhor não acredita em mim’, prosseguiu o outro, com um ar de presunção inefável. ‘Digo-lhe que não existem olhos como os meus deste lado do golfo Pérsico. Olhe debaixo da cama.’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

É claro que me abaixei imediatamente. Qualquer pessoa teria feito o mesmo. ‘O que o senhor consegue ver?’, perguntou ele. ‘Nada’, respondi, envergonhado. Ele me olhou com um desprezo feroz. ‘Exatamente. Mas, se eu olhasse, conseguiria ver. Ninguém tem olhos como os meus.’ Puxou-me para mais perto e sussurrou: ‘Milhões de sapos cor-de-rosa. É pior do que ver um navio afundar. Eu poderia passar o dia vendo navios afundarem e fumando. Por que não devolvem meu cachimbo? O navio estava cheio de sapos, e alguém precisa vigiá-los.’ Ele piscou para mim como se dividisse um segredo. O suor caía da minha cabeça, e meu casaco molhado grudava nas costas. O vento da tarde movia as cortinas e as cobertas das camas vazias pela enfermaria, mas eu tremia como se um vento frio de inverno atravessasse um velho celeiro. De longe, o paciente ferido gritou: ‘Não deixe ele começar a berrar, senhor!’ O velho tornou a puxar meu ombro. ‘O navio estava cheio deles, por isso tivemos de sair em absoluto silêncio’, sussurrou depressa. ‘Eram todos cor-de-rosa, grandes como cães enormes, com um olho no alto da cabeça e garras ao redor da boca horrenda.’ As pernas magras dele saltavam sob a coberta, e ele tentava agarrar alguma coisa no ar. Seu corpo inteiro tremia. O rosto nobre e sereno de um velho soldado de repente se encheu de um medo secreto. ‘Silêncio! O que eles estão fazendo lá embaixo agora?’, perguntou, apontando com cuidado para o chão. Entendi o que ele queria dizer e fiquei enojado com minha própria esperteza. ‘Estão todos dormindo’, respondi. Eram as palavras que ele queria ouvir. Respirou fundo. ‘Ótimo. Fique quieto. Conheço esses animais. Bata no primeiro que se mexer. São muitos, e o navio não vai flutuar por mais de dez minutos.’ Então ele gritou de repente: ‘Depressa! Estão todos acordados - milhões deles! Estão passando por cima de mim! Esperem! Vou esmagá-los como moscas. Socorro! Socorro!’ Seu longo grito encheu a enfermaria. O paciente ferido pôs as duas mãos na cabeça enfaixada, e um enfermeiro apareceu ao longe. Admiti minha derrota e escapei por uma janela comprida até a passagem externa. O grito me perseguiu. Num patamar vazio, tudo ficou em silêncio, e desci a escada nua e brilhante enquanto tentava acalmar os pensamentos. No pátio, um jovem médico me deteve. Disse que meu homem talvez pudesse sair no dia seguinte. Depois contou que o chefe de máquinas do navio de peregrinos também estava ali, com um caso terrível de delírio causado pela bebida. O engenheiro passara três dias bebendo num bar de um grego ou italiano, talvez quatro garrafas de conhaque por dia. Sua mente estava perdida, mas havia uma estranha linha de raciocínio em sua fala descontrolada. A maioria dos pacientes via cobras, explicou o médico, mas aquele homem via sapos. O médico nunca achara um caso tão interessante. Depois de tanta bebida, o homem já deveria estar morto, mas era muito resistente após vinte e quatro anos nos trópicos. ‘É um velho bêbado de aparência nobre e um caso médico muito incomum’, disse o médico. ‘Quer vir vê-lo?’

Original English Version

‘Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to have done so. “What can you see?” he asked. “Nothing,” I said, feeling awfully ashamed of myself. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt. “Just so,” he said, “but if I were to look I could see--there’s no eyes like mine, I tell you.” Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. “Millions of pink toads. There’s no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It’s worse than seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke my pipe all day long. Why don’t they give me back my pipe? I would get a smoke while I watched these toads. The ship was full of them. They’ve got to be watched, you know.” He winked facetiously. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter’s gale in an old barn at home. “Don’t you let him start his hollering, mister,” hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. “The ship was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,” he whispered with extreme rapidity. “All pink. All pink--as big as mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their ugly mouths. Ough! Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry--“Ssh! what are they doing now down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. “They are all asleep,” I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That’s what he wanted to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long breath. “Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them brutes. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. There’s too many of them, and she won’t swim more than ten minutes.” He panted again. “Hurry up,” he yelled suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: “They are all awake--millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait! I’ll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!” An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. The howl pursued me like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing, and suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident surgeons who was crossing the courtyard and stopped me. “Been to see your man, Captain? I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no notion of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we’ve got the chief engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.’s of the worst kind. He has been drinking hard in that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop for three days. What can you expect? Four bottles of that kind of brandy a day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I should think. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious part is there’s some sort of method in his raving. I am trying to find out. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium. Traditionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn’t. Good old tradition’s at a discount nowadays. Eh! His--er--visions are batrachian. Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case of jim-jams before. He ought to be dead, don’t you know, after such a festive experiment. Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of the tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble-looking old boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever met--medically, of course. Won’t you?”

Tradução Integral em Português

“Naturalmente me abaixei de imediato. Desafio qualquer pessoa a não ter feito o mesmo. ‘O que consegue ver?’, perguntou. ‘Nada’, respondi, sentindo uma vergonha terrível de mim mesmo. Examinou meu rosto com um desprezo feroz e fulminante. ‘Exatamente’, disse, ‘mas, se eu olhasse, conseguiria ver - não há olhos como os meus, já lhe disse.’ Tornou a cravar as garras, puxando-me para baixo, ansioso por aliviar-se mediante uma comunicação confidencial. ‘Milhões de sapos cor-de-rosa. Não há olhos como os meus. Milhões de sapos cor-de-rosa. É pior do que ver um navio afundar. Eu poderia passar o dia inteiro olhando navios afundarem e fumando meu cachimbo. Por que não devolvem meu cachimbo? Eu daria umas baforadas enquanto vigiasse esses sapos. O navio estava cheio deles. É preciso vigiá-los, sabe.’ Piscou com ar jocoso. O suor de minha cabeça pingava sobre ele, meu casaco de brim colava-se às costas molhadas; a brisa da tarde varria impetuosa a fileira de camas, as pregas duras das cortinas moviam-se a prumo, chocalhando nas hastes de latão, as cobertas das camas vazias esvoaçavam sem ruído perto do chão nu por toda a extensão, e eu estremecia até a medula. O vento suave dos trópicos brincava naquela enfermaria despida, tão desolado quanto uma ventania de inverno num velho celeiro da terra natal. ‘Não deixe ele começar a berrar, moço’, bradou de longe o acidentado num grito aflito e zangado que ressoou entre as paredes como um chamado trêmulo ao longo de um túnel. A mão em garra puxou meu ombro; ele me lançou um sorriso enviesado e cúmplice. ‘O navio estava cheio deles, sabe, e tivemos de dar o fora na mais absoluta surdina’, sussurrou com extrema rapidez. ‘Todos cor-de-rosa. Todos cor-de-rosa - grandes como mastins, com um olho no alto da cabeça e garras em volta inteira da boca horrenda. Ugh! Ugh!’ Sacudidelas rápidas, semelhantes a choques galvânicos, revelaram sob a coberta lisa os contornos de pernas magras e agitadas; ele soltou meu ombro e tentou agarrar alguma coisa no ar; seu corpo tremia tenso como a corda de uma harpa recém-libertada; e, enquanto eu olhava para baixo, o horror espectral dentro dele irrompeu através do olhar vidrado. Num instante, seu rosto de velho soldado, de contornos nobres e serenos, decompôs-se diante dos meus olhos sob a corrupção de uma astúcia furtiva, de uma cautela abominável e de um medo desesperado. Reprimiu um grito. ‘Psiu! O que eles estão fazendo lá embaixo agora?’, perguntou, apontando para o chão com precauções fantásticas de voz e gestos, cujo significado, atingindo minha mente num clarão sinistro, fez com que eu me sentisse profundamente enojado de minha esperteza. ‘Estão todos dormindo’, respondi, observando-o com atenção. Era isso. Era o que queria ouvir; aquelas eram as palavras exatas capazes de acalmá-lo. Respirou fundo. ‘Psiu! Quieto, firme. Sou um velho veterano por estas bandas. Conheço esses brutos. Esmague a cabeça do primeiro que se mexer. São demais, e ela não vai flutuar por mais de dez minutos.’ Tornou a ofegar. ‘Andem logo!’, berrou de repente, e prosseguiu num grito contínuo: ‘Estão todos acordados - milhões deles. Estão me pisoteando! Esperem! Ah, esperem! Vou esmagá-los em montes como moscas. Esperem por mim! Socorro! So-ocorro!’ Um uivo interminável e sustentado completou minha derrota. Vi ao longe o acidentado erguer deploravelmente as duas mãos até a cabeça enfaixada; um enfermeiro, de avental até o queixo, apareceu na perspectiva da enfermaria, como se visto pela extremidade menor de um telescópio. Dei-me por inteiramente vencido e, sem mais cerimônia, passei por uma das janelas compridas e escapei para a galeria externa. O uivo perseguiu-me como uma vingança. Entrei num patamar deserto e, de repente, tudo se tornou muito imóvel e silencioso ao meu redor; desci a escadaria nua e lustrosa num silêncio que me permitiu recompor os pensamentos dispersos. Lá embaixo encontrei um dos médicos residentes, que atravessava o pátio e me deteve. ‘Veio ver seu homem, capitão? Acho que podemos liberá-lo amanhã. Esses tolos, porém, não têm a menor noção de como cuidar de si. Escute, estamos com o chefe de máquinas daquele navio de peregrinos aqui. Um caso curioso. Delirium tremens da pior espécie. Bebeu sem parar no botequim daquele grego ou italiano durante três dias. O que se pode esperar? Quatro garrafas por dia daquele tipo de conhaque, segundo me disseram. Extraordinário, se for verdade. Imagino que seja revestido por dentro de chapa de caldeira. A cabeça, ah! a cabeça, naturalmente, já se foi, mas o curioso é que há uma espécie de método em seu delírio. Estou tentando descobri-lo. Muito incomum - esse fio de lógica em tamanho delírio. Pela tradição, ele deveria ver cobras, mas não vê. Hoje em dia, a boa e velha tradição anda em baixa. Hein? Suas... hum... visões são batráquias. Ha! ha! Não, falando sério, não me lembro de ter me interessado tanto por um caso de delirium tremens. Ele devia estar morto, entende, depois de experimento festivo como esse. Ah! é um espécime resistente. E vinte e quatro anos nos trópicos. O senhor realmente devia dar uma olhada nele. Um velho beberrão de aparência nobre. O homem mais extraordinário que já encontrei - do ponto de vista médico, é claro. Não quer?’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Até então eu havia demonstrado o interesse educado de costume. Naquele momento, fingi estar arrependido, disse que não tinha tempo e apertei a mão dele depressa. ‘Espere’, gritou atrás de mim. ‘Ele não pode comparecer ao inquérito. O senhor acha que o depoimento dele é importante?’

‘De modo algum’, respondi do portão.

Original English Version

‘I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest, but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. “I say,” he cried after me; “he can’t attend that inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?”

‘“Not in the least,” I called back from the gateway.’

Tradução Integral em Português

“Durante todo esse tempo eu exibira os habituais sinais corteses de interesse, mas então, assumindo um ar pesaroso, murmurei que não dispunha de tempo e apertei-lhe a mão às pressas. ‘Escute’, gritou atrás de mim; ‘ele não pode comparecer àquele inquérito. Acha que o depoimento dele é importante?’”

“‘Nem um pouco’, respondi em voz alta já no portão.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Chapter 6

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

As autoridades claramente concordaram. O inquérito não foi adiado. Foi realizado no dia marcado para cumprir a lei, e muitas pessoas compareceram porque o caso era interessante. Não havia dúvida sobre os fatos, pelo menos não sobre o único fato importante. Ninguém conseguia descobrir como o Patna fora danificado, e o tribunal não esperava descobrir. Ninguém na multidão se importava muito com isso. Ainda assim, como já disse, todos os marinheiros do porto compareceram, e o comércio da zona portuária estava bem representado. Soube ou não, cada um deles foi por uma razão mental: queriam alguma verdade profunda sobre o sentimento humano, sua força, seu poder e seu horror. É claro que nada assim poderia ser revelado. O interrogatório do único homem que podia e queria enfrentar a questão apenas continuava girando em torno do fato conhecido. Era tão útil quanto bater com um martelo numa caixa de ferro para descobrir o que havia dentro. Mas um inquérito oficial não podia ser diferente. Sua função não era perguntar o profundo porquê, mas apenas o superficial como.

Original English Version

‘The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry was not adjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law, and it was well attended because of its human interest, no doubt. There was no incertitude as to facts--as to the one material fact, I mean. How the Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the court did not expect to find out; and in the whole audience there was not a man who cared. Yet, as I’ve told you, all the sailors in the port attended, and the waterside business was fully represented. Whether they knew it or not, the interest that drew them here was purely psychological--the expectation of some essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the horror, of human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be disclosed. The examination of the only man able and willing to face it was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on an iron box, were the object to find out what’s inside. However, an official inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair.

Tradução Integral em Português

“As autoridades eram evidentemente da mesma opinião. O inquérito não foi adiado. Realizou-se no dia marcado para satisfazer a lei e contou com grande público, sem dúvida por seu interesse humano. Não havia incerteza alguma quanto aos fatos - quanto ao único fato relevante, quero dizer. Era impossível descobrir como o Patna sofrera o dano; o tribunal não esperava descobrir; e não havia um só homem entre o público que se importasse. Ainda assim, como lhes contei, todos os marinheiros do porto compareceram, e os negócios da zona portuária estavam plenamente representados. Tivessem ou não consciência disso, o interesse que os atraíra para lá era puramente psicológico - a expectativa de alguma revelação essencial sobre a força, o poder, o horror das emoções humanas. Naturalmente, nada disso podia ser revelado. O interrogatório do único homem capaz e disposto a encarar a questão rodeava inutilmente o fato bem conhecido, e o jogo de perguntas dirigido a ele era tão instrutivo quanto bater com um martelo numa caixa de ferro com o objetivo de descobrir o que havia dentro. Um inquérito oficial, porém, não poderia ser de outra maneira. Seu objeto não era o porquê fundamental, mas o como superficial do caso.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

O jovem poderia ter contado a eles. Era isso que o público realmente queria saber, mas as perguntas o afastavam da única verdade que importava para mim. Não se pode esperar que as autoridades examinem a alma de um homem, ou talvez apenas seu fígado. O trabalho delas era lidar com os resultados e, sinceramente, um magistrado de polícia e dois assessores náuticos não servem para muito mais. Não quero dizer que fossem estúpidos. O magistrado era muito paciente. Um dos assessores era capitão de um veleiro, tinha barba ruiva e natureza religiosa. O outro era Brierly, o Grande Brierly. Talvez alguns de vocês já tenham ouvido falar do Grande Brierly, capitão do melhor navio da companhia Blue Star. Era ele.

Original English Version

‘The young chap could have told them, and, though that very thing was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put to him necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance, would have been the only truth worth knowing. You can’t expect the constituted authorities to inquire into the state of a man’s soul--or is it only of his liver? Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not much good for anything else. I don’t mean to imply these fellows were stupid. The magistrate was very patient. One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition. Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some of you must have heard of Big Brierly--the captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line. That’s the man.

Tradução Integral em Português

“O jovem poderia ter-lhes contado e, embora fosse justamente isso o que interessava ao público, as perguntas que lhe faziam necessariamente o afastavam daquilo que, para mim, por exemplo, seria a única verdade que valeria a pena conhecer. Não se pode esperar que as autoridades constituídas investiguem o estado da alma de um homem - ou será apenas o estado de seu fígado? A função delas era pronunciar-se sobre as consequências e, falando com franqueza, um magistrado de polícia qualquer e dois assessores náuticos não servem para muita coisa além disso. Não quero insinuar que esses homens fossem estúpidos. O magistrado tinha grande paciência. Um dos assessores era capitão de veleiro, tinha barba avermelhada e inclinações piedosas. Brierly era o outro. O grande Brierly. Alguns de vocês certamente ouviram falar do grande Brierly - o capitão do navio de ponta da Blue Star Line. Esse era o homem.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Ele parecia muito entediado com a honra que lhe haviam imposto. Em toda a sua vida, nunca cometera um erro, nunca sofrera um acidente, nunca fracassara e nunca fora impedido em sua subida constante. Parecia um daqueles homens de sorte que jamais sentem dúvida ou desconfiança de si mesmos. Aos trinta e dois anos, tinha um dos melhores comandos do comércio oriental, e sabia disso. Achava que nada no mundo se comparava àquilo e, se alguém lhe perguntasse diretamente, provavelmente diria que não havia capitão melhor do que ele. Tinham escolhido o homem certo. Todos os outros, que não comandavam o vapor de aço Ossa, capaz de dezesseis nós, pareciam inferiores em comparação. Ele salvara vidas no mar, resgatara navios em perigo e recebera um cronômetro de ouro das seguradoras e binóculos com uma inscrição de um governo estrangeiro em homenagem ao seu trabalho. Conhecia muito bem o próprio valor e suas recompensas. Eu gostava bastante dele, embora alguns homens bondosos e gentis que conheço não pudessem suportá-lo. Tenho certeza de que se considerava muito superior a mim. Mesmo que você fosse imperador do Oriente e do Ocidente, não conseguiria evitar sentir-se menor perto dele. Ainda assim, eu não conseguia me sentir realmente ofendido. Ele não me desprezava por algo que eu fizera ou por quem eu era; apenas me via como alguém sem importância porque eu não era o homem de sorte do mundo, não era Montague Brierly no comando do Ossa, não era o dono do cronômetro de ouro e dos binóculos com detalhes de prata que elogiavam minha habilidade no mar e minha coragem, nem um homem com um orgulhoso senso do próprio mérito e das próprias recompensas, além do amor de um retriever preto, o exemplar mais extraordinário de sua raça. Sem dúvida era irritante ter tudo aquilo colocado diante de você. Mas, quando me lembrava de que partilhava essas desvantagens com outros mil e duzentos milhões de seres humanos, conseguia suportar sua piedade orgulhosa e irônica. Havia nele algo que me atraía, embora eu nunca tenha conseguido explicar completamente. Às vezes eu até o invejava. O sofrimento da vida não conseguia fazer mais em sua alma calma do que o risco de um alfinete numa pedra lisa. Isso era invejável. Enquanto eu o observava ao lado do magistrado tranquilo e de rosto pálido durante o inquérito, sua satisfação consigo mesmo parecia dura como granito. Pouco tempo depois, ele se matou.

Original English Version

‘He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him. He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust. At thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern trade--and, what’s more, he thought a lot of what he had. There was nothing like it in the world, and I suppose if you had asked him point-blank he would have confessed that in his opinion there was not such another commander. The choice had fallen upon the right man. The rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. He was acutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough, though some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn’t stand him at any price. I haven’t the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my superior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West, you could not have ignored your inferiority in his presence--but I couldn’t get up any real sentiment of offence. He did not despise me for anything I could help, for anything I was--don’t you know? I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. No doubt, to have all this forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. I have never defined to myself this attraction, but there were moments when I envied him. The sting of life could do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. This was enviable. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite. He committed suicide very soon after.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Ele parecia mortalmente entediado com a honra que lhe fora imposta. Nunca cometera um erro na vida, nunca sofrera acidente, revés, contratempo, nunca experimentara interrupção em sua ascensão constante, e parecia pertencer àqueles homens afortunados que nada sabem da indecisão, muito menos da desconfiança de si mesmos. Aos trinta e dois anos exercia um dos melhores comandos existentes no comércio oriental - e, mais do que isso, atribuía grande valor ao que possuía. Não havia nada igual no mundo e, suponho, se lhe perguntassem sem rodeios, teria confessado que, em sua opinião, não existia outro comandante comparável. A escolha recaíra sobre o homem certo. O restante da humanidade que não comandava o vapor de aço Ossa, de dezesseis nós, era composto de criaturas um tanto pobres. Salvara vidas no mar, resgatara navios em perigo, recebera dos seguradores um cronômetro de ouro e, de certo governo estrangeiro, um par de binóculos com inscrição apropriada em homenagem àqueles serviços. Tinha uma consciência aguda de seus méritos e recompensas. Eu gostava bastante dele, embora alguns homens que conheço - mansos e amistosos, diga-se - não o suportassem por preço algum. Não tenho a menor dúvida de que ele se considerava imensamente superior a mim - com efeito, ainda que alguém fosse o Imperador do Oriente e do Ocidente, não conseguiria ignorar a própria inferioridade na presença dele - , mas eu não conseguia despertar em mim nenhum sentimento verdadeiro de ofensa. Ele não me desprezava por coisa alguma que eu pudesse remediar, por coisa alguma que eu fosse - compreendem? Eu era uma quantidade desprezível simplesmente porque não era *o* homem afortunado da Terra, não era Montague Brierly no comando do Ossa, não era o proprietário de um cronômetro de ouro com inscrição nem de binóculos guarnecidos de prata que atestavam a excelência de minha arte náutica e minha coragem indomável; porque não possuía uma consciência aguda de meus méritos e recompensas, além do amor e da adoração de um retriever negro, o mais extraordinário de sua espécie - pois nunca homem como aquele foi assim amado por um cão como aquele. Sem dúvida, ter tudo isso imposto a alguém era exasperante o bastante; mas, quando refleti que partilhava aquelas desvantagens fatais com outros mil e duzentos milhões de seres mais ou menos humanos, descobri que podia suportar minha parcela de sua piedade afável e desdenhosa em consideração a alguma coisa indefinida e atraente naquele homem. Nunca defini para mim mesmo essa atração, mas houve momentos em que o invejei. O aguilhão da vida não poderia fazer mais contra sua alma satisfeita do que a arranhadura de um alfinete na face lisa de uma rocha. Isso era invejável. Enquanto eu o contemplava, flanqueando de um lado o magistrado despretensioso e pálido que presidia ao inquérito, sua satisfação consigo mesmo apresentava a mim e ao mundo uma superfície dura como granito. Muito pouco tempo depois, ele se suicidou.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Não era de admirar que o caso de Jim o entediasse. Eu quase temia a profundidade do desprezo que ele sentia pelo jovem interrogado, mas talvez estivesse realizando em silêncio um inquérito sobre seu próprio caso. O veredito deve ter sido de culpa completa, e ele levou consigo o segredo das provas quando se lançou ao mar. Pelo que sei dos homens, a questão deve ter sido muito séria, uma daquelas pequenas coisas que despertam um pensamento e tornam um homem incapaz de conviver com ele. Sei que não foi dinheiro, bebida nem uma mulher. Ele caiu no mar pouco mais de uma semana depois do fim do inquérito e menos de três dias após sair do porto. Foi como se, de repente, tivesse visto os portões do outro mundo se abrirem para ele naquele ponto exato do oceano.

Original English Version

‘No wonder Jim’s case bored him, and while I thought with something akin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the young man under examination, he was probably holding silent inquiry into his own case. The verdict must have been of unmitigated guilt, and he took the secret of the evidence with him in that leap into the sea. If I understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am in a position to know that it wasn’t money, and it wasn’t drink, and it wasn’t woman. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of the inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward passage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he had suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open wide for his reception.

Tradução Integral em Português

“Não admira que o caso de Jim o entediasse e, enquanto eu pensava, com algo semelhante ao medo, na imensidão de seu desprezo pelo jovem interrogado, ele provavelmente conduzia em silêncio um inquérito sobre o próprio caso. O veredicto deve ter sido de culpa sem atenuante, e naquele salto para o mar ele levou consigo o segredo das provas. Se entendo alguma coisa dos homens, o assunto era sem dúvida da mais grave importância, uma dessas ninharias que despertam ideias - dão vida a algum pensamento com o qual um homem desacostumado a semelhante companhia considera impossível viver. Estou em condições de saber que não foi dinheiro, nem bebida, nem mulher. Ele saltou pela borda no mar apenas uma semana depois do fim do inquérito e menos de três dias depois de deixar o porto em sua viagem de ida; como se, naquele exato ponto em meio às águas, houvesse percebido de súbito os portões do outro mundo escancarados para recebê-lo.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Mesmo assim, não foi um impulso repentino. Seu imediato de cabelos grisalhos era um marinheiro de primeira e um velho agradável com estranhos, mas, com seu capitão, era o oficial mais grosseiro que já vi. Contava a história com lágrimas nos olhos. Parece que, quando subiu ao convés pela manhã, Brierly estava escrevendo na sala de navegação. "Faltavam dez minutos para as quatro", disse ele, "e o turno da meia-noite ainda não havia sido substituído, é claro. Ele ouviu minha voz na ponte falando com o segundo oficial e me chamou para entrar. Eu não queria ir, e essa é a verdade, capitão Marlow. Eu não suportava o pobre capitão Brierly, digo isso com vergonha. Nunca sabemos como um homem realmente é. Ele havia sido promovido passando à frente de muitos, inclusive de mim, e tinha uma maneira terrível de fazer você se sentir pequeno, mesmo quando dizia apenas 'Bom dia'. Nunca falava com ele, exceto sobre o serviço, e mesmo assim precisava me esforçar para continuar educado." Ele estava elogiando a si mesmo. Muitas vezes me perguntei como Brierly suportou seus modos por mais de meia viagem. "Tenho esposa e filhos", continuou, "e estava na Companhia havia dez anos, sempre esperando receber meu próximo comando, como um tolo. Ele disse, assim mesmo: 'Entre aqui, senhor Jones', com aquela sua voz arrogante. Então entrei. 'Vamos marcar a posição do navio', disse ele, curvando-se sobre a carta náutica com um compasso. Segundo as ordens permanentes, o oficial que terminava seu turno deveria ter feito aquilo, mas não disse nada e o observei marcar a posição do navio com uma pequena cruz e escrever a data e a hora. Ainda consigo vê-lo escrevendo aqueles números bem-feitos: dezessete, oito, quatro da manhã. O ano estaria escrito em tinta vermelha na parte superior da carta. O capitão Brierly nunca usava uma carta náutica por mais de um ano. Ainda tenho aquela carta. Quando terminou, ficou olhando para a marca e sorrindo sozinho, depois ergueu os olhos para mim. 'Mais trinta e duas milhas como ela segue', disse, 'e então estaremos livres, e você poderá mudar o rumo vinte graus para o sul.'"

Original English Version

‘Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with his commander the surliest chief officer I’ve ever seen, would tell the story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came on deck in the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room. “It was ten minutes to four,” he said, “and the middle watch was not relieved yet of course. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking to the second mate, and called me in. I was loth to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow--I couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of. He had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but by the way he said ‘Good morning.’ I never addressed him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep a civil tongue in my head.” (He flattered himself there. I often wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half a voyage.) “I’ve a wife and children,” he went on, “and I had been ten years in the Company, always expecting the next command--more fool I. Says he, just like this: ‘Come in here, Mr. Jones,’ in that swagger voice of his--‘Come in here, Mr. Jones.’ In I went. ‘We’ll lay down her position,’ says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand. By the standing orders, the officer going off duty would have done that at the end of his watch. However, I said nothing, and looked on while he marked off the ship’s position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and the time. I can see him this moment writing his neat figures: seventeen, eight, four A.M. The year would be written in red ink at the top of the chart. He never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly didn’t. I’ve the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down at the mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me. ‘Thirty-two miles more as she goes,’ says he, ‘and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.’

Tradução Integral em Português

“Contudo, não foi um impulso repentino. Seu imediato grisalho, marinheiro de primeira e velhote agradável com estranhos, porém, nas relações com o comandante, o oficial mais intratável que já vi, contava a história com lágrimas nos olhos. Parece que, quando subiu ao convés pela manhã, Brierly estivera escrevendo na sala de cartas. ‘Faltavam dez minutos para as quatro’, disse ele, ‘e o quarto da meia-noite naturalmente ainda não fora rendido. Ele ouviu minha voz na ponte, falando com o segundo-oficial, e me chamou para dentro. Eu não queria ir, e essa é a verdade, Capitão Marlow - eu não suportava o pobre Capitão Brierly, digo-lhe isso com vergonha; nunca sabemos de que é feito um homem. Ele fora promovido por cima de gente demais, sem excluir a mim mesmo, e tinha o hábito maldito de fazer uma pessoa se sentir pequena apenas pela maneira como dizia “Bom-dia”. Eu nunca me dirigia a ele, senhor, a não ser por questões de serviço, e nessas ocasiões mal conseguia manter a língua civilizada dentro da boca.’ (Nesse ponto ele se lisonjeava. Muitas vezes me perguntei como Brierly suportara seus modos por mais de meia viagem.) ‘Tenho mulher e filhos’, prosseguiu, ‘e estava havia dez anos na Companhia, sempre à espera do próximo comando - mais tolo eu. Ele diz, assim mesmo: “Entre aqui, Sr. Jones”, naquela voz empertigada - “Entre aqui, Sr. Jones.” Entrei. “Vamos marcar a posição do navio”, diz ele, inclinado sobre a carta, um compasso na mão. Segundo as ordens permanentes, o oficial que saía de serviço faria isso ao terminar sua guarda. Contudo, não disse nada e fiquei olhando enquanto ele assinalava a posição do navio com uma cruz minúscula e escrevia a data e a hora. Posso vê-lo neste instante escrevendo seus algarismos caprichados: dezessete, oito, quatro da manhã. O ano estaria escrito em tinta vermelha no alto da carta. O Capitão Brierly nunca usava suas cartas por mais de um ano. Tenho a carta até hoje. Quando terminou, ficou contemplando a marca que fizera e sorrindo consigo mesmo, depois ergueu os olhos para mim. “Mais trinta e duas milhas nesse rumo”, diz ele, “e então estaremos livres, e o senhor poderá alterar o rumo vinte graus para o sul.”’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

"Naquela viagem, passávamos ao norte do Banco Hector. Eu disse: 'Muito bem, senhor', e me perguntei por que ele fazia tanto caso, pois eu teria de chamá-lo antes de mudar o rumo. Então soaram oito badaladas. Saímos para a ponte e o segundo oficial, antes de partir, disse como sempre: 'Setenta e um no odômetro.' O capitão Brierly olhou para a bússola e depois ao redor. A noite estava escura e limpa, e todas as estrelas brilhavam com a mesma clareza de uma noite gelada em altas latitudes. Então ele disse com um pequeno suspiro: 'Vou até a popa e eu mesmo colocarei o odômetro em zero para você, para não haver engano. Mais trinta e duas milhas neste rumo e estaremos seguros. Deixe-me ver: a correção do odômetro é de seis por cento para mais; então digamos trinta no mostrador, e você pode virar vinte graus para estibordo imediatamente. Não adianta perder distância, não é?' Eu nunca o ouvira falar tanto sem fazer uma pausa, e aquilo me pareceu inútil. Não disse nada. Ele desceu a escada, e o cão, que sempre o seguia dia e noite, foi atrás, escorregando com o focinho à frente. Ouvi os saltos de suas botas baterem no convés de popa. Então ele parou e falou com o cão. 'Volte, Rover. Para a ponte, garoto! Vá, saia daqui.' Depois me chamou da escuridão: 'Prenda esse cão na sala de navegação, senhor Jones, por favor.'"

Original English Version

‘“We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage. I said, ‘All right, sir,’ wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to call him before altering the course anyhow. Just then eight bells were struck: we came out on the bridge, and the second mate before going off mentions in the usual way--‘Seventy-one on the log.’ Captain Brierly looks at the compass and then all round. It was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh: ‘I am going aft, and shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no mistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe. Let’s see--the correction on the log is six per cent. additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once. No use losing any distance--is there?’ I had never heard him talk so much at a stretch, and to no purpose as it seemed to me. I said nothing. He went down the ladder, and the dog, that was always at his heels whenever he moved, night or day, followed, sliding nose first, after him. I heard his boot-heels tap, tap on the after-deck, then he stopped and spoke to the dog--‘Go back, Rover. On the bridge, boy! Go on--get.’ Then he calls out to me from the dark, ‘Shut that dog up in the chart-room, Mr. Jones--will you?’

Tradução Integral em Português

“‘Naquela viagem, passávamos ao norte do banco Hector. Respondi: “Muito bem, senhor”, perguntando-me por que fazia tanto caso, pois, de qualquer modo, eu teria de chamá-lo antes de alterar o rumo. Nesse instante soaram as oito badaladas: saímos para a ponte, e o segundo-oficial, antes de deixar o serviço, informou como de costume: “Setenta e uma no odômetro.” O Capitão Brierly olhou para a bússola e depois ao redor. A noite era escura e límpida, e todas as estrelas estavam tão nítidas quanto numa noite de geada em latitudes elevadas. De repente, disse com uma espécie de pequeno suspiro: “Vou à popa e eu mesmo porei o odômetro no zero para o senhor, para que não possa haver engano. Mais trinta e duas milhas neste rumo, e então estará seguro. Vejamos... a correção do odômetro é de seis por cento a acrescentar; digamos, portanto, trinta no mostrador por percorrer, e o senhor poderá guinar imediatamente vinte graus a boreste. Não adianta perder distância, não é?” Eu nunca o ouvira falar tanto de uma só vez e, ao que me parecia, sem nenhum propósito. Não disse nada. Ele desceu a escada, e o cão, que estava sempre em seus calcanhares quando se movia, de dia ou de noite, seguiu-o, deslizando de focinho à frente. Ouvi os saltos de suas botas baterem, toc, toc, no convés de popa; depois ele parou e falou com o cão: “Volte, Rover. Para a ponte, rapaz! Vamos... vá.” Então me gritou da escuridão: “Feche esse cão na sala de cartas, Sr. Jones, por favor.”’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Essa foi a última vez que ouvi sua voz, capitão Marlow. Foram as últimas palavras que ele disse diante de qualquer pessoa viva. A voz do velho tremeu. Ele temia que o pobre animal saltasse atrás dele. Disse que o capitão Brierly ajustou o odômetro para mim e até colocou nele uma gota de óleo. O lubrificador ficou ali perto. Às cinco e meia, o ajudante do contramestre levou a mangueira à popa para lavar o convés e, mais tarde, voltou à ponte e disse: "Por favor, venha à popa, senhor Jones. Há algo estranho. Não quero tocar nisso." Era o relógio cronômetro de ouro do capitão Brierly, cuidadosamente pendurado pela corrente sob o corrimão.

Original English Version

‘“This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir.” At this point the old chap’s voice got quite unsteady. “He was afraid the poor brute would jump after him, don’t you see?” he pursued with a quaver. “Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he--would you believe it?--he put a drop of oil in it too. There was the oil-feeder where he left it near by. The boat-swain’s mate got the hose along aft to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on the bridge--‘Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,’ he says. ‘There’s a funny thing. I don’t like to touch it.’ It was Captain Brierly’s gold chronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain.

Tradução Integral em Português

“‘Foi a última vez que ouvi sua voz, Capitão Marlow. Essas foram as últimas palavras que pronunciou ao alcance dos ouvidos de qualquer ser humano vivo, senhor.’ Nesse ponto, a voz do velho ficou muito instável. ‘Ele tinha medo de que o pobre animal saltasse atrás dele, entende? Sim, Capitão Marlow. Regulou o odômetro para mim; ele... acreditaria?... pôs até uma gota de óleo. Lá estava o pequeno lubrificador, onde o deixara, bem perto. Às cinco e meia, o ajudante do contramestre levou a mangueira para a popa a fim de lavar o convés; pouco depois interrompe o trabalho e sobe correndo à ponte. “Poderia vir à popa, Sr. Jones?”, diz ele. “Há uma coisa estranha. Não gosto de tocar nela.” Era o cronômetro de ouro do Capitão Brierly, cuidadosamente pendurado sob a amurada pela corrente.’”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Quando o vi, entendi imediatamente. Minhas pernas ficaram fracas. Foi como se eu o tivesse visto cair no mar, e eu podia calcular a distância que ele já havia ficado para trás. O odômetro de popa marcava dezoito milhas e três quartos, e faltavam quatro pinos de amarração de ferro perto do mastro principal. Suponho que os colocou nos bolsos para ajudá-lo a afundar. Mas o que são quatro pinos de ferro para um homem forte como o capitão Brierly? Talvez tenha perdido a confiança no fim. Acho que esse foi o único sinal de pânico que mostrou na vida. Mas posso dizer uma coisa a seu favor: depois de cair no mar, não tentou nadar. Teria tido coragem para se manter flutuando o dia inteiro se tivesse caído por acidente. Sim, senhor. Ele não era inferior a ninguém, como ele próprio dizia. Escrevera duas cartas durante o turno da meia-noite, uma para a Companhia e outra para mim. Deu-me muitas instruções sobre a viagem e sobre como eu deveria me comportar com nosso pessoal em Xangai, para que eu conservasse o comando do Ossa. Escreveu como um pai para o filho favorito, capitão Marlow, embora eu fosse vinte e cinco anos mais velho e tivesse ido para o mar muito antes dele. Na carta aos proprietários, que deixou aberta para eu ler, dizia que sempre cumprira seu dever para com eles e não traía sua confiança, porque deixava o navio nas mãos de um marinheiro tão capaz quanto se poderia encontrar, referindo-se a mim. Dizia que, se seu último ato não destruísse a boa reputação que tinha com eles, deveriam valorizar meus serviços fiéis e sua forte recomendação ao preencherem o posto aberto por sua morte. Eu não conseguia acreditar no que lia. Aquilo me fez sentir muito estranho. Era possível pensar que ele saltara ao mar apenas para dar uma última oportunidade a um homem sem sorte. Depois de um ato tão terrível e impensado, e depois de imaginar que aquilo havia garantido meu futuro, fiquei quase louco por uma semana. Mas não. O capitão do Pelion foi transferido para o Ossa em Xangai. Era um homenzinho exibido, vestido com um terno xadrez cinza e com o cabelo repartido ao meio. "Ah... eu sou... ah... seu novo capitão, senhor... senhor... ah... Jones." Estava coberto de perfume. Acho que meu olhar o fez gaguejar. Murmurou algo sobre minha decepção e disse que seu imediato recebera a promoção para o Pelion. É claro que ele não tinha culpa, e o escritório sabia o que era melhor. Eu disse: "Não se preocupe com o velho Jones, senhor. Que sua alma seja amaldiçoada, ele está acostumado." Percebeu logo que me aborrecera e, em nossa primeira refeição juntos, começou a reclamar do navio de maneira desagradável. Eu nunca ouvira uma voz daquelas. Cerrei os dentes e fiquei calado enquanto pude, mas por fim precisei dizer alguma coisa. Ele se levantou de um salto, andando nas pontas dos pés e estufando o peito como um pequeno galo de briga. "Você descobrirá que está lidando com alguém diferente do falecido capitão Brierly." "Já descobri", respondi, tentando manter a calma enquanto fingia comer meu bife. "Você é um velho grosseiro, senhor... ah... Jones, e todos na companhia sabem disso", guinchou. Os tripulantes estavam em volta, ouvindo e sorrindo muito. "Posso ser grosseiro", eu disse, "mas não ficarei sentado em silêncio enquanto o senhor ocupa a cadeira do capitão Brierly." Então larguei a faca e o garfo. "Você mesmo gostaria de se sentar nela. Esse é o verdadeiro problema", zombou ele. Saí do salão, arrumei minhas coisas e estava no cais com toda a bagagem antes mesmo que os trabalhadores das docas voltassem ao serviço. Sim. Fui parar na rua depois de dez anos de trabalho, com esposa e quatro filhos a dez mil quilômetros de distância, dependendo da metade do meu salário para comer. Fui embora para não ouvir o capitão Brierly ser insultado. Ele me deixou seus binóculos noturnos e queria que eu cuidasse do cão. Aqui está ele. Olá, Rover, pobre garoto. Onde está o capitão, Rover?" O cão ergueu os olhos amarelos e tristes, soltou um único latido solitário e se arrastou para debaixo da mesa.

Original English Version

‘“As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew, sir. My legs got soft under me. It was as if I had seen him go over; and I could tell how far behind he was left too. The taffrail-log marked eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round the mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help him down, I suppose; but, Lord! what’s four iron pins to a powerful man like Captain Brierly. Maybe his confidence in himself was just shook a bit at the last. That’s the only sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but I am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try to swim a stroke, the same as he would have had pluck enough to keep up all day long on the bare chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir. He was second to none--if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He had written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and the other to me. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--I had been in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end of hints as to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I should keep the command of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would to a favourite son, Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years his senior and had tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched. In his letter to the owners--it was left open for me to see--he said that he had always done his duty by them--up to that moment--and even now he was not betraying their confidence, since he was leaving the ship to as competent a seaman as could be found--meaning me, sir, meaning me! He told them that if the last act of his life didn’t take away all his credit with them, they would give weight to my faithful service and to his warm recommendation, when about to fill the vacancy made by his death. And much more like this, sir. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all over,” went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula. “You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only to give an unlucky man a last show to get on. What with the shock of him going in this awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was nearly off my chump for a week. But no fear. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. ‘Aw--I am--aw--your new captain, Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.’ He was drowned in scent--fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look I gave him that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Says I, ‘Don’t you mind old Jones, sir; dam’ his soul, he’s used to it.’ I could see directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy show. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held my peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something. Up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little fighting-cock. ‘You’ll find you have a different person to deal with than the late Captain Brierly.’ ‘I’ve found it,’ says I, very glum, but pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. ‘You are an old ruffian, Mister--aw--Jones; and what’s more, you are known for an old ruffian in the employ,’ he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers stood about listening with their mouths stretched from ear to ear. ‘I may be a hard case,’ answers I, ‘but I ain’t so far gone as to put up with the sight of you sitting in Captain Brierly’s chair.’ With that I lay down my knife and fork. ‘You would like to sit in it yourself--that’s where the shoe pinches,’ he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift--on shore--after ten years’ service--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir! I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his night-glasses--here they are; and he wished me to take care of the dog--here he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Where’s the captain, Rover?” The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under the table.

Tradução Integral em Português

“‘Assim que meus olhos pousaram nele, alguma coisa me atingiu, e eu soube, senhor. Minhas pernas amoleceram. Foi como se eu o tivesse visto cair pela borda; e eu também podia dizer a que distância para trás ele fora deixado. O odômetro de popa marcava dezoito milhas e três quartos, e faltavam quatro malaguetas de ferro ao redor do mastro grande. Imagino que as tenha posto nos bolsos para ajudá-lo a descer; mas, Senhor!, o que são quatro malaguetas de ferro para um homem forte como o Capitão Brierly? Talvez, no último momento, sua confiança em si mesmo tenha sofrido um pequeno abalo. Creio que esse foi o único sinal de perturbação que deu em toda a vida; mas estou pronto a responder por ele que, depois de cair, não tentou dar uma única braçada, assim como teria tido coragem suficiente para se manter à tona o dia inteiro pela mais remota possibilidade, caso houvesse caído acidentalmente pela borda. Sim, senhor. Não ficava atrás de ninguém - se ele próprio o dizia, como o ouvi dizer certa vez. Escrevera duas cartas durante o quarto da meia-noite, uma para a Companhia e outra para mim. Deu-me muitas instruções sobre a travessia - eu já fazia aquela rota antes de ele terminar o aprendizado - e uma infinidade de conselhos quanto à minha conduta com nosso pessoal em Xangai, para que eu conservasse o comando do Ossa. Escreveu como um pai escreveria a um filho predileto, Capitão Marlow, e eu era vinte e cinco anos mais velho do que ele e já provaria água salgada antes que ele tivesse idade para usar calças. Em sua carta aos proprietários - deixara-a aberta para que eu a visse - , dizia que sempre cumprira seu dever para com eles - até aquele momento - e que mesmo agora não traía sua confiança, pois deixava o navio nas mãos do marinheiro mais competente que se poderia encontrar - referia-se a mim, senhor, a mim! Dizia-lhes que, se o último ato de sua vida não lhe tirasse todo o crédito junto a eles, deveriam dar o devido peso a meus serviços fiéis e à sua calorosa recomendação quando fossem preencher a vaga aberta por sua morte. E muito mais nesse sentido, senhor. Eu não conseguia acreditar em meus olhos. Aquilo me deixou esquisito por inteiro’, prosseguiu o velho em grande agitação, esmagando alguma coisa no canto do olho com a ponta de um polegar largo como uma espátula. ‘Uma pessoa pensaria, senhor, que ele saltara pela borda apenas para dar a um homem sem sorte uma última oportunidade de progredir. Entre o choque de ele partir de maneira tão terrivelmente precipitada e a ideia de que o acaso fizera de mim um homem, passei quase uma semana fora do juízo. Mas não houve perigo disso. O capitão do Pelion foi transferido para o Ossa - subiu a bordo em Xangai - , um dândizinho, senhor, de terno xadrez cinza, os cabelos repartidos ao meio. “Ah... eu sou... ah... seu novo capitão, Senhor... Senhor... ah... Jones.” Estava banhado em perfume - positivamente fedia àquilo, Capitão Marlow. Aposto que foi o olhar que lhe dei que o fez gaguejar. Murmurou alguma coisa sobre meu natural desapontamento - era melhor eu saber de imediato que o imediato dele recebera a promoção para o Pelion - ele naturalmente não tivera nada que ver com isso - supunha que o escritório soubesse o que era melhor - lamentava... Eu disse: “Não se preocupe com o velho Jones, senhor; que se dane a alma dele, já está acostumado.” Vi na mesma hora que chocara seu ouvido delicado e, enquanto tomávamos juntos nossa primeira refeição do meio-dia, ele começou a criticar de modo desagradável isto e aquilo no navio. Nunca ouvi voz semelhante fora de um espetáculo de Punch e Judy. Cerrei com força os dentes, preguei os olhos no prato e contive a língua o máximo que pude; por fim, porém, tive de dizer alguma coisa. Ele se levanta de um salto na ponta dos pés, eriçando todas as belas plumas como um galinho de briga. “O senhor descobrirá que tem de lidar com pessoa diferente do falecido Capitão Brierly.” “Já descobri”, respondo, muito taciturno, mas fingindo grande ocupação com meu bife. “O senhor é um velho bruto, Senhor... ah... Jones; e, o que é mais, é conhecido como velho bruto no serviço da Companhia”, guincha para mim. Os malditos lava-garrafas estavam parados ao redor, ouvindo com as bocas abertas de orelha a orelha. “Talvez eu seja um caso perdido”, respondo, “mas ainda não caí tão baixo a ponto de tolerar a visão do senhor sentado na cadeira do Capitão Brierly.” Com isso depus a faca e o garfo. “O senhor gostaria de sentar-se nela - é aí que o sapato aperta”, escarnece. Deixei o salão, juntei meus trapos e estava no cais com toda a bagagem a meus pés antes que os estivadores recomeçassem o trabalho. Sim. À deriva - em terra - depois de dez anos de serviço - e com uma pobre mulher e quatro filhos a seis mil milhas de distância, dependendo do meu meio soldo para cada bocado que comiam. Sim, senhor! Larguei tudo em vez de ouvir insultarem o Capitão Brierly. Ele me deixou seu binóculo noturno - aqui está; e queria que eu cuidasse do cão - aqui está ele. Olá, Rover, pobre rapaz. Onde está o capitão, Rover?’ O cão ergueu para nós os olhos amarelos e melancólicos, soltou um latido desolado e rastejou para baixo da mesa.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Tudo isso aconteceu mais de dois anos depois, a bordo do velho e maltratado Fire-Queen, que Jones conseguira comandar de algum modo, por meio de um estranho acidente envolvendo Matherson - o louco Matherson, como costumavam chamá-lo - , o mesmo homem que vivia em Haiphong antes dos tempos da ocupação. O velho continuou fungando.

Sim, senhor, o capitão Brierly será lembrado aqui, se não for lembrado em nenhum outro lugar do mundo. Escrevi uma carta completa ao pai dele e não recebi uma única palavra em resposta, nem mesmo um obrigado ou um vá para o inferno. Nada. Talvez não quisessem saber.

Ver o velho Jones, com os olhos úmidos, enxugando a cabeça calva com um lenço vermelho de algodão, e ouvir o gemido triste do cão, enquanto aquela cabine suja e cheia de moscas era o único lugar que honrava a memória de Brierly, fazia com que sua figura lembrada parecesse muito pequena e triste. Era a última vingança do destino contra aquele homem, depois que a crença em sua própria grandeza quase o protegera do medo natural da morte. Quase. Talvez por completo. Quem pode dizer que ideia cheia de esperança ele havia criado sobre o próprio suicídio?

Original English Version

‘All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. The old chap snuffled on--

‘“Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there’s no other place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing! Perhaps they did not want to know.”

‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Almost! Perhaps wholly. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide?

Tradução Integral em Português

“Tudo isso acontecia, mais de dois anos depois, a bordo daquela ruína náutica, o Fire-Queen, cujo comando Jones obtivera - também por um curioso acidente - de Matherson - Matherson, o Louco, como costumavam chamá-lo - , o mesmo que vivia em Haiphong, sabem, antes dos tempos da ocupação. O velho prosseguiu, fungando...”

“‘Sim, senhor, o Capitão Brierly será lembrado aqui, ainda que não haja outro lugar na Terra. Escrevi tudo em detalhes ao pai dele e não recebi uma palavra em resposta - nem Obrigado, nem Vá para o inferno! - nada! Talvez eles não quisessem saber.’”

“A visão daquele velho Jones de olhos lacrimosos enxugando a cabeça calva com um lenço vermelho de algodão, o ganido pesaroso do cão, a sordidez daquela saleta infestada de moscas, único santuário de sua memória, lançavam um véu de patetismo indizivelmente mesquinho sobre a figura recordada de Brierly, a vingança póstuma do destino contra a fé em seu próprio esplendor que quase conseguira privar sua vida dos terrores legítimos. Quase! Talvez por inteiro. Quem pode dizer que visão lisonjeira de seu próprio suicídio ele se induzira a adotar?”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

"Por que ele fez algo tão impensado, capitão Marlow? Consegue imaginar?", perguntou Jones, apertando as mãos. "Por quê? Não consigo entender. Por quê?" Bateu na testa baixa e enrugada. "Se fosse pobre, velho, cheio de dívidas e sem futuro, ou se fosse louco... Mas ele não era do tipo que enlouquece. Ele, não. Acredite em mim. Um imediato sabe coisas importantes sobre seu capitão. Jovem, saudável, rico, sem preocupações. Às vezes fico aqui sentado, pensando e pensando, até minha cabeça começar a zumbir. Devia haver algum motivo."

"Pode ter certeza de uma coisa, capitão Jones", eu disse. "Não foi nada que incomodaria muito a qualquer um de nós." Então, como se uma luz tivesse entrado de repente em sua mente confusa, o pobre e velho Jones teve um último pensamento muito profundo. Assoou o nariz e assentiu com tristeza. "Sim, sim. Nem o senhor nem eu jamais tivemos uma opinião muito elevada sobre nós mesmos."

Original English Version

‘“Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you think?” asked Jones, pressing his palms together. “Why? It beats me! Why?” He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead. “If he had been poor and old and in debt--and never a show--or else mad. But he wasn’t of the kind that goes mad, not he. You trust me. What a mate don’t know about his skipper isn’t worth knowing. Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason.”

‘“You may depend on it, Captain Jones,” said I, “it wasn’t anything that would have disturbed much either of us two,” I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me dolefully: “Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of ourselves.”

Tradução Integral em Português

‘“Por que foi ele cometer aquele ato temerário, Capitão Marlow - consegue imaginar?”, perguntou Jones, comprimindo as palmas uma contra a outra. “Por quê? Não consigo entender! Por quê?” Bateu na testa baixa e enrugada. “Se fosse pobre e velho e estivesse endividado - sem perspectiva alguma - , ou então louco. Mas não era do tipo que enlouquece, ele não. Pode acreditar em mim. O que um imediato não sabe de seu capitão não vale a pena saber. Jovem, saudável, bem de vida, sem preocupações... Fico aqui às vezes pensando, pensando, até a cabeça começar de fato a zumbir. Havia algum motivo.”

‘“Pode ter certeza, Capitão Jones”, disse eu, “de que não foi nada que houvesse de perturbar muito a qualquer um de nós dois”, disse; e então, como se uma luz fulgurasse dentro da confusão de seu cérebro, o pobre velho Jones encontrou uma derradeira frase de espantosa profundidade. Assoou o nariz, assentindo para mim com ar pesaroso: “É, é! nem o senhor nem eu, meu senhor, jamais nos tivemos em tão alta conta.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

"Eu colocarei duzentas rúpias se você colocar outras cem e prometer fazer o sujeito partir amanhã cedo. Ele é um cavalheiro, mesmo que não se possa tocá-lo. Vai entender. Precisa entender. Esta terrível publicidade é horrível demais. Lá está ele sentado enquanto todos aqueles malditos nativos, serangs, lascars e contramestres dão depoimentos suficientes para queimar um homem de vergonha. Isto é terrível. Marlow, você também não acha? Não sente isso como marinheiro? Se ele fosse embora, tudo isso terminaria imediatamente." Brierly falava com uma agitação fora do comum e começou a procurar a carteira. Eu o detive e disse friamente que a covardia daqueles quatro homens não me parecia muito importante. "E você se chama de marinheiro, suponho", disse ele com raiva. Respondi que era assim que eu me chamava e esperava ser um. Ele ouviu e então fez um gesto com o braço grande, que pareceu me apagar como pessoa e me empurrar de volta para a multidão. "O pior", disse ele, "é que nenhum de vocês tem qualquer senso de dignidade. Vocês não se importam o bastante com o que deveriam ser."

Original English Version

‘Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. I spoke with him for the last time during the progress of the inquiry. It was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street. He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. “They caught me for that inquiry, you see,” he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. “And goodness knows how long it will last. Three days, I suppose.” I heard him out in silence; in my then opinion it was a way as good as another of putting on side. “What’s the use of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine,” he pursued hotly. I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me with a sort of pent-up violence. “I feel like a fool all the time.” I looked up at him. This was going very far--for Brierly--when talking of Brierly. He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it a slight tug. “Why are we tormenting that young chap?” he asked. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said angrily, “Why, yes. Can’t he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared out? What does he expect to happen? Nothing can save him. He’s done for.” We walked on in silence a few steps. “Why eat all that dirt?” he exclaimed, with an oriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. I wondered greatly at the direction of his thoughts, but now I strongly suspect it was strictly in character: at bottom poor Brierly must have been thinking of himself. I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the means of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was keeping him in the Sailors’ Home for the time being, and probably he hadn’t a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some money to run away. “Does it? Not always,” he said, with a bitter laugh, and to some further remark of mine--“Well, then, let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there! By heavens! _I_ would.” I don’t know why his tone provoked me, and I said, “There is a kind of courage in facing it out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away nobody would trouble to run after him.” “Courage be hanged!” growled Brierly. “That sort of courage is of no use to keep a man straight, and I don’t care a snap for such courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice now--of softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if you put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out early to-morrow morning. The fellow’s a gentleman if he ain’t fit to be touched--he will understand. He must! This infernal publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. This is abominable. Why, Marlow, don’t you think, don’t you feel, that this is abominable; don’t you now--come--as a seaman? If he went away all this would stop at once.” Brierly said these words with a most unusual animation, and made as if to reach after his pocket-book. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance. “And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose,” he pronounced angrily. I said that’s what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. “The worst of it,” he said, “is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity; you don’t think enough of what you are supposed to be.”

Tradução Integral em Português

‘É claro que a lembrança de minha última conversa com Brierly está tingida pelo conhecimento do fim dele, que a ela se seguiu tão de perto. Falei com ele pela última vez no decorrer do inquérito. Foi depois do primeiro adiamento, e ele me alcançou na rua. Estava irritado, o que notei com surpresa, pois sua conduta habitual, quando se dignava a conversar, era de perfeita frieza, com um quê de tolerância divertida, como se a existência de seu interlocutor fosse uma piada até bastante boa. “Agarraram-me para esse inquérito, veja você”, começou ele, e por algum tempo se alongou, queixoso, sobre os inconvenientes de comparecer diariamente ao tribunal. “E só Deus sabe quanto tempo isto vai durar. Três dias, suponho.” Ouvi-o até o fim em silêncio; em minha opinião de então, aquilo era um modo tão bom quanto qualquer outro de se dar ares. “Para que serve? É a mais estúpida encenação que se possa imaginar”, prosseguiu, acalorado. Observei que não havia alternativa. Interrompeu-me com uma espécie de violência contida. “Sinto-me um idiota o tempo todo.” Ergui os olhos para ele. Aquilo era ir muito longe - para Brierly - quando o assunto era Brierly. Ele parou de repente e, agarrando a lapela de meu casaco, deu-lhe um leve puxão. “Por que estamos atormentando esse rapaz?”, perguntou. A pergunta se harmonizou tão bem com o dobre de certo pensamento meu que, tendo diante dos olhos a imagem do renegado em fuga, respondi de imediato: “Que me enforquem se sei, a menos que seja porque ele permite.” Espantou-me vê-lo, por assim dizer, alinhar-se com essa resposta, que deveria ter sido razoavelmente críptica. Disse, furioso: “Ora, sim. Ele não vê que aquele miserável capitão dele sumiu? Que espera que aconteça? Nada pode salvá-lo. Está acabado.” Andamos alguns passos em silêncio. “Para que engolir toda essa sujeira?”, exclamou, com uma energia oriental de expressão - praticamente a única espécie de energia da qual se encontra vestígio a leste do quinquagésimo meridiano. Muito me admirou o rumo de seus pensamentos, mas agora suspeito fortemente que era de todo coerente com seu caráter: no fundo, o pobre Brierly devia estar pensando em si mesmo. Fiz-lhe ver que se sabia que o capitão do Patna enchera muito bem o próprio ninho e podia obter, em quase qualquer lugar, os meios de escapar. Com Jim era diferente: por ora, o Governo o mantinha no Lar dos Marinheiros, e ele provavelmente não tinha no bolso nem um vintém com que se benzer. Fugir custa algum dinheiro. “Custa? Nem sempre”, disse ele, com uma risada amarga, e, a outro comentário meu, respondeu: “Pois então que rasteje até vinte pés debaixo da terra e fique lá! Pelos céus! _Eu_ faria isso.” Não sei por que seu tom me provocou, e eu disse: “Há uma espécie de coragem em enfrentar tudo até o fim, como ele faz, sabendo muito bem que, se partisse, ninguém se daria ao trabalho de correr atrás dele.” “Ao diabo essa coragem!”, rosnou Brierly. “Essa espécie de coragem não serve para manter um homem no caminho certo, e não dou a mínima por uma coragem dessas. Agora, se dissesse que é uma espécie de covardia - de fraqueza... Vou lhe dizer uma coisa: ponho duzentas rúpias se você puser mais cem e se encarregar de fazer o miserável sumir amanhã de manhã bem cedo. O sujeito é um cavalheiro, embora já não seja digno de contato - ele vai entender. Tem de entender! Esta publicidade infernal é chocante demais: ali fica ele sentado, enquanto todos esses malditos nativos, serangs, lascars, timoneiros prestam depoimentos capazes de reduzir um homem a cinzas de vergonha. Isto é abominável. Ora, Marlow, você não acha, não sente que isto é abominável; não sente agora - vamos - como homem do mar? Se ele partisse, tudo isto cessaria imediatamente.” Brierly pronunciou essas palavras com uma animação extremamente incomum e fez menção de levar a mão à carteira. Contive-o e declarei com frieza que a covardia daqueles quatro homens não me parecia assunto de tão grande importância. “E você se considera um homem do mar, suponho”, sentenciou, furioso. Respondi que era assim que me chamava, e que esperava sê-lo de fato. Ele me ouviu até o fim e fez com o braço enorme um gesto que pareceu despojar-me da individualidade, empurrar-me para longe, para dentro da multidão. “O pior”, disse ele, “é que nenhum de vocês tem senso de dignidade; vocês não têm em suficiente conta aquilo que se espera que sejam.”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Tradução da Versão Simplificada (B1)

Estávamos caminhando devagar e então paramos diante da administração do porto, olhando para o mesmo lugar onde o enorme capitão do Patna desaparecera tão completamente quanto uma pequena pena num furacão. Sorri. Brierly continuou: "Isto é vergonhoso. Temos todo tipo de pessoa entre nós, até alguns completos patifes, mas precisamos manter a dignidade profissional ou não seremos melhores que mecânicos soltos andando de um lado para o outro. Confiam em nós. Entende? Confiam. Sinceramente, não me importo nem um pouco com todos os peregrinos que já saíram da Ásia, mas um homem respeitável não teria se comportado assim nem mesmo com um navio cheio de trapos velhos. Não somos uma organização formal, e a única coisa que nos mantém unidos é esse tipo de dignidade. Um caso assim destrói a confiança. Um homem pode passar a maior parte da vida no mar sem precisar mostrar coragem. Mas, quando chega o momento... Ah... se eu..."

Original English Version

‘We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped opposite the harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which the immense captain of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a hurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: “This is a disgrace. We’ve got all kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many tinkers going about loose. We are trusted. Do you understand?--trusted! Frankly, I don’t care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of old rags in bales. We aren’t an organised body of men, and the only thing that holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency. Such an affair destroys one’s confidence. A man may go pretty near through his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip. But when the call comes . . . Aha! . . . If I . . .”

Tradução Integral em Português

‘Nesse meio-tempo, vínhamos andando devagar e então paramos diante da administração do porto, à vista do próprio lugar de onde o imenso capitão do Patna desaparecera tão completamente quanto uma peninha levada por um furacão. Sorri. Brierly prosseguiu: “Isto é uma desonra. Temos entre nós gente de toda espécie - há no grupo alguns refinados canalhas; mas, com os diabos, precisamos preservar o decoro profissional, ou não seremos melhores do que um bando de funileiros soltos pelo mundo. Confiam em nós. Você entende? - confiam! Francamente, não dou a mínima para todos os peregrinos que jamais saíram da Ásia, mas um homem decente não teria agido assim com um carregamento inteiro de trapos velhos enfardados. Não somos uma corporação organizada, e a única coisa que nos mantém unidos é precisamente a reputação dessa espécie de decoro. Um caso desses abala a confiança da gente. Um homem pode atravessar quase toda a vida no mar sem jamais ser chamado a demonstrar firmeza. Mas, quando chega a hora... Ah!... Se eu...”

Retorna à Versão Inglês Simplificada    Go to the Original English Version

Glossary: New Words (1/4)

Priority words from the simplified reading and post-nominal letters found in this book. Post-nominals are abbreviations placed after a person's name to identify honours, professional memberships, academic titles or qualifications. Each entry shows up to six real uses; Back to B1 opens the exact simplified sentence, while Back to Original opens the exact paragraph in Original English.

abyss /əˈbɪs/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: abismo; voragem

Simple English: A very deep hole that seems to have no bottom.

Example: The path ended above a dark abyss.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. Go to

2. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity. Go to

additive /ˈædətɪv/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: adicional; a ser acrescentado

Simple English: Added to an existing amount or value.

Example: The navigator applied an additive correction to the reading.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Let me see - the correction on the log is six per cent additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once. Go to

Original English Version

1. Let’s see--the correction on the log is six per cent. additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once. Go to

aden /ˈeɪdən/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Áden

Simple English: A port city in present-day Yemen.

Example: Their next cable arrived from Aden at dawn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. You must know that everyone connected with the sea was there, because the story had been famous for days, ever since that strange cable message came from Aden and made us all laugh. Go to

Original English Version

1. You must know that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling. Go to

adventurous /ədˈventʃərəs/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: aventureiro; audacioso

Simple English: Willing to take risks and try new or exciting things.

Example: My adventurous cousin spent a year sailing alone across the Pacific.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was sorry to leave that peaceful feeling, which made his adventurous thoughts feel free. Go to

Original English Version

1. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. Go to

afar /əˈfɑːr/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de longe; ao longe

Simple English: From or at a great distance.

Example: We watched the procession from afar.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. “Don’t you let him start his hollering, mister,” hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. Go to

afloat /əˈfloʊt/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: flutuando; à tona

Simple English: Floating on water and not sinking.

Example: The little boat was still afloat at dawn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He would have had the courage to keep afloat all day if he had fallen in by accident. Go to

aft /æft/ (22 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: à ré; na popa

Simple English: At or towards the back of a ship.

Example: The captain called the men aft.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Once they were free of the rails, they spread across the deck and moved forward and aft. Go to

2. Then he said with a small sigh, 'I am going aft, and I shall set the log at zero for you myself, so there can be no mistake. Go to

3. The boatswain's mate brought the hose aft to wash down at half-past five, and later he came back to the bridge and said, "Please come aft, Mr. Jones. Go to

Original English Version

1. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Go to

2. The Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by sea. Go to

3. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Go to

4. Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh: ‘I am going aft, and shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no mistake. Go to

5. The boat-swain’s mate got the hose along aft to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on the bridge--‘Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,’ he says. Go to

agent's /ˈeɪdʒənts/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do agente; na casa ou no escritório do agente

Simple English: The possessive form of agent, sometimes meaning the agent's home or office.

Example: We left the papers at the agent's before noon.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. You heard about it in the harbour office, at every ship broker's, at your agent's, from white men, natives, mixed-race people, and even from boatmen sitting half naked on the stone steps as you went up. Go to

Original English Version

1. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Go to

aggressive /əˈɡrɛsɪv/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: agressivo

Simple English: Behaving in a forceful or angry way towards others.

Example: His aggressive behavior during the meeting made everyone uncomfortable.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He showed a stubborn confidence, but not in an aggressive way. Go to

alter /ˈɔːltər/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: alterar

Simple English: To cause something to change in a noticeable way.

Example: We need to alter the design to make it more appealing.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. 'Thirty-two miles more as she goes,' he said, 'and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.' Go to

amazement /əˈmeɪzmənt/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: espanto; assombro; admiração

Simple English: A feeling of great surprise and wonder.

Example: She stared in amazement at the castle.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They stopped, very stiff and still, and stared in amazement at the sea, which had not changed at all. Go to

anchoring /ˈæŋkərɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de fundeio; destinado à ancoragem

Simple English: Used or intended as a place for dropping anchor.

Example: They crossed the anchoring ground before turning east.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. She headed between two small islands, crossed the anchoring area for sailing ships, turned halfway around in the shadow of a hill, and then moved close to a line of foaming reefs. Go to

Original English Version

1. She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. Go to

anchors /ˈæŋkərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: âncoras

Simple English: Heavy devices dropped from a vessel to hold it in place.

Example: Both anchors were ready before the storm arrived.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I felt almost ashamed, as I once saw a ship captain dance on his hat because his poor mate got into trouble with the anchors. Go to

Original English Version

1. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. Go to

angle /ˈæŋɡəl/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ângulo

Simple English: Space between two lines or surfaces joined together.

Example: The angle between the two walls is about 90 degrees.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There was no nurse in sight, and far down the ward a brown, thin accident case from a ship in the harbour sat up in bed with a white bandage set at an angle on his forehead. Go to

angrily /ˈæŋɡrɪli/ (22 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: com raiva; furiosamente

Simple English: In a way that shows anger.

Example: He shouted angrily at the door.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He stood over him, speaking angrily but in a low voice. Go to

2. I saw her go down." I was ready to speak angrily about such a stupid lie, when he added calmly, "She was full of reptiles." Go to

3. "And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose," he said angrily. Go to

Original English Version

1. He did not strike him again: he stood bending over him and speaking angrily but quite low. Go to

2. He said angrily, “Why, yes. Go to

3. “And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose,” he pronounced angrily. Go to

ante /ˈænti/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ante- (antes de)

Simple English: A word part meaning before, as in ante-room.

Example: They waited in the ante-room until called.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was full of people craning their necks and almost climbing over each other to see. Go to

Original English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Go to

anyhow /ˈenihaʊ/ (21 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de qualquer modo; em todo caso

Simple English: In any case or by whatever means are possible.

Example: The weather was poor, but we sailed anyhow.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The poor devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they--‘Shut up!’ growled the German stolidly. Go to

2. Not to-night anyhow. Go to

3. I said, ‘All right, sir,’ wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to call him before altering the course anyhow. Go to

apia /ˈɑːpiə/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Apia

Simple English: The capital and main port of Samoa.

Example: The schooner carried mail from Apia that month.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I know people in Apia, in Honolulu, and elsewhere..." He stopped, and I could easily imagine the kind of people he knew there. Go to

Original English Version

1. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt” with in those places. Go to

2. To Apia? Go to

archway /ˈɑːrtʃweɪ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arcada; passagem em arco

Simple English: A curved opening in a wall that you can walk through.

Example: They waited under the stone archway.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was full of people craning their necks and almost climbing over each other to see. Go to

Original English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Go to

armchair /ˈɑːrmtʃer/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: poltrona

Simple English: A comfortable chair with supports for the arms.

Example: He read the paper in the same armchair every evening.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the middle, the magistrate sat upright in a large armchair, his head tilted a little, his arms folded across his chest, with a few flowers in a glass vase beside his inkstand. Go to

artificial /ˌɑːrtɪˈfɪʃəl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: artificial; sintética

Simple English: Made by humans rather than occurring naturally in nature.

Example: Many artificial ingredients can be found in processed foods today.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. That feeling may be right or wrong, and some may call it artificial. Go to

assessor /əˈsesər/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: assessor; perito

Simple English: A person who helps a court or official judge a technical matter.

Example: The nautical assessor questioned the witness about the collision.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. From the force of the blow, did you think that was likely?' asked the assessor on the left. Go to

2. The other assessor was a heavy, scornful man. Go to

3. 'Yes,' said the big assessor, smiling dreamily at the blotting pad. Go to

4. The big assessor had lowered his eyelids and sat drumming silently, careless and sad. Go to

5. One assessor was a sailing-ship captain with a red beard and a religious nature. Go to

Original English Version

1. Did you think it likely from the force of the blow?’ asked the assessor sitting to the left. Go to

2. ‘Yes,’ said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise. Go to

3. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. Go to

assessors /əˈsesərz/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: assessores; peritos

Simple English: People who help a court or official judge technical matters.

Example: Two assessors sat beside the presiding magistrate.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The magistrate, clean-shaven and calm, looked deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. Go to

2. Their job was to deal with the results, and honestly, a police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not suited to much else. Go to

Original English Version

1. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. Go to

2. Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not much good for anything else. Go to

3. One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition. Go to

astonished /əˈstɑːnɪʃt/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: espantou; surpreendeu; deixou pasmo

Simple English: Very surprised.

Example: We were astonished by the news.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. Go to

attentive /əˈtentɪv/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: atento; solícito

Simple English: Listening, watching, or caring with close attention.

Example: The attentive mate noticed the change in the wind.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Go to

2. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. Go to

3. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. Go to

author's /ˈɔːθərz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: do autor; da autora

Simple English: The possessive form of author.

Example: The author's affection for the character was obvious.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I strongly dislike favouritism in public life, private life, and even in an author's relationship with his books. Go to

awfully /ˈɔːfli/ (15 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: muito; terrivelmente

Simple English: Very or extremely, especially in informal speech.

Example: It was awfully kind of you to wait.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Old Symons is awfully excitable--isn’t he? Go to

2. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. Go to

3. “Nothing,” I said, feeling awfully ashamed of myself. Go to

awkwardly /ˈɔːkwərdli/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desajeitadamente; sem jeito

Simple English: In a clumsy or uncomfortable way.

Example: He stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure whether to sit.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He walked quickly and awkwardly to the gharry and pulled at the door handle with wild force, as if he wanted to tear the whole thing over, pony and all. Go to

awnings /ˈɔːnɪŋz/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: toldos

Simple English: Sheets of canvas or other material stretched out to give shade.

Example: White awnings protected the passengers from the sun.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Awnings covered the deck from end to end like a white roof. Go to

2. Below the awnings, the pilgrims trusted the white men and their courage, and they believed in the power of the ship and its iron shell. Go to

3. I took one of the lamps hanging under the awnings and went forward. Go to

Original English Version

1. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the ocean. Go to

2. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Go to

3. I took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward. Go to

bah /bɑː/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Bah!; Ora!

Simple English: A word used to show that you do not respect something.

Example: Bah, that is only an old story.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--“Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. Go to

bandage /ˈbændɪdʒ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: atadura; curativo

Simple English: A long piece of cloth tied over a wound.

Example: The nurse changed the bandage every day.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There was no nurse in sight, and far down the ward a brown, thin accident case from a ship in the harbour sat up in bed with a white bandage set at an angle on his forehead. Go to

Original English Version

1. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Go to

bandaged /ˈbændɪdʒd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: enfaixada; com curativo

Simple English: Covered with a long piece of cloth over a wound.

Example: His bandaged hand rested on the table.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The injured patient put both hands on his bandaged head, and a nurse appeared far away. Go to

Original English Version

1. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. Go to

barefoot /ˈberfʊt/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: descalço

Simple English: Wearing nothing on your feet.

Example: The children ran barefoot across the warm sand.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He also imagined being a lonely castaway, barefoot and half naked, walking on bare reefs to find shellfish and avoid starvation. Go to

bareheaded /ˌbɛrˈhɛdɪd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de cabeça descoberta

Simple English: Not wearing anything on the head.

Example: He ran out bareheaded into the rain.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He came running out, bareheaded and eager, looking from side to side. Go to

Original English Version

1. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and very full of his mission. Go to

barque /bɑːrk/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: barca; veleiro de três ou mais mastros

Simple English: A sailing ship with three or more masts and a particular sail arrangement.

Example: The old barque rode heavily at anchor.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. Go to

batavia /bəˈteɪviə/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Batávia (atual Jacarta)

Simple English: The colonial-era name of present-day Jakarta in Indonesia.

Example: Merchants in Batavia had already heard the news.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Over the years he was known in Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Penang, and Batavia, and in each place he was only Jim the water-clerk. Go to

Original English Version

1. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Go to

bazaar /bəˈzɑːr/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bazar; mercado

Simple English: A market with many small shops, common in Asia.

Example: He bought cloth in the noisy bazaar.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He knew the port well, it seems, and in his trouble he went straight to Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Go to

bedcovers /ˈbedˌkʌvərz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: cobertas; colchas

Simple English: Blankets, sheets, or covers spread over a bed.

Example: A breeze lifted the clean bedcovers.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The afternoon wind moved the curtains and empty bedcovers along the hospital ward, but I shook as if a cold winter wind were blowing through an old barn. Go to

beggar /ˈbɛɡər/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mendigo

Simple English: A person who asks other people for money or food.

Example: A beggar sat at the church door.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if you put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out early to-morrow morning. Go to

beggars /ˈbɛɡərz/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mendigos

Simple English: People who ask others for money or food.

Example: Beggars waited outside the temple door.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They are like beggars at the back door of your mind, taking away pieces of your belief in the simple truths you need if you want to live well and die peacefully! Go to

belaying /bɪˈleɪɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de amarração; usado para prender cabos

Simple English: Used for fastening a rope securely on a ship.

Example: A wet line hung from the belaying pin.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The taffrail-log showed eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing near the mainmast. Go to

Original English Version

1. The taffrail-log marked eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round the mainmast. Go to

believable /bɪˈliːvəbəl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: crível; verossímil

Simple English: Easy to accept as true.

Example: His story was simple and believable.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They said the way the story was told was not believable: no man could speak for so many hours, and no group could listen for so long. Go to

benches /ˈbɛntʃɪz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bancos

Simple English: Long seats for two or more people.

Example: The students sat on wooden benches.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. Go to

berth /bɜːrθ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: beliche; posto a bordo; atracadouro

Simple English: A bed on a ship or train; also a job on a ship, or a place to dock.

Example: He was given the upper berth in the cabin.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. In time, beside the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna. Go to

betraying /bɪˈtreɪɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: delatora; que revela

Simple English: Showing a secret that should stay hidden.

Example: A betraying smile crossed his face.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In his letter to the owners, which he left open for me to read, he said he had always done his duty by them and was not betraying their trust, because he was leaving the ship to a seaman as capable as could be found, meaning me. Go to

Original English Version

1. In his letter to the owners--it was left open for me to see--he said that he had always done his duty by them--up to that moment--and even now he was not betraying their confidence, since he was leaving the ship to as competent a seaman as could be found--meaning me, sir, meaning me! Go to

bill /bɪl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Bill; conta; fatura

Simple English: A request for payment.

Example: The restaurant bill was high.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Later the bill was sent. Go to

billiard /ˈbɪljərd/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de bilhar

Simple English: Relating to the game of billiards.

Example: A broken billiard cue lay beside the table.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He knew the port well, it seems, and in his trouble he went straight to Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Go to

binoculars /bɪˈnɑːkjələrz/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: binóculos

Simple English: A device with two glasses for seeing far away.

Example: He searched the valley with binoculars.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had saved lives at sea, rescued ships in danger, and received a gold chronometer from the underwriters and binoculars with an inscription from a foreign government to honour his work. Go to

2. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. Go to

2. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Go to

bitterly /ˈbɪtərli/ (17 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: amargamente; com amargura

Simple English: In a way that shows deep sadness or anger.

Example: He spoke bitterly about his lost years.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. As soon as I went ashore, I would meet someone I knew, and the first thing he would say was, "Did you ever hear of anything worse than this?" Then he would smile bitterly, look sad, or swear. Go to

blackwood /ˈblækwʊd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Blackwood

Simple English: The surname of the publisher William Blackwood.

Example: Blackwood asked the novelist for another contribution.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I did not take them out again until the late Mr William Blackwood asked me to write something more for his magazine. Go to

Original English Version

1. I didn’t take them out of the drawer till the late Mr. William Blackwood suggested I should give something again to his magazine. Go to

blankly /ˈblæŋkli/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: com ar vazio; inexpressivamente

Simple English: With no expression or understanding on the face.

Example: He stared blankly at the question for a while.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was red-faced and only half awake, with one eye partly closed and the other staring blankly. Go to

blasted /ˈblæstɪd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: maldito; dos diabos

Simple English: Used informally to show anger or strong annoyance.

Example: That blasted engine kept us awake all night.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b’gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. Go to

blazed /bleɪzd/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ardeu; resplandeceu; explodiu em palavras

Simple English: Burned or shone fiercely, or spoke with sudden anger.

Example: The signal fire blazed above the dark beach.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Outside, the sun blazed. Go to

Original English Version

1. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. Go to

blinking /ˈblɪŋkɪŋ/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: que piscam; semicerrados

Simple English: Opening and closing the eyes quickly.

Example: The baby lay blinking at the bright lamp.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. De Jongh, who charged a guilder for each bottle without even blinking, would call me aside and say in a private way, with his small wrinkled face twisted up, 'Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

blotting /ˈblɑːtɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: secando a tinta; mata-borrão

Simple English: Drying wet ink by pressing paper on it.

Example: A blotting pad lay on the desk.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He leaned back in his seat, stretched out one arm, and tapped softly with his fingertips on a blotting pad. Go to

2. 'Yes,' said the big assessor, smiling dreamily at the blotting pad. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Go to

2. ‘Yes,’ said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise. Go to

blurred /blɜːrd/ (10 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: borrado; desfocado

Simple English: Not clear in outline or in memory.

Example: The photograph was blurred and useless.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Go to

boatman /ˈboʊtmən/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: barqueiro

Simple English: A man who rows or steers a boat for others.

Example: The boatman asked for a coin before setting out.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Still, that evening he sat apart and thought about it while the boatman of the cutter, a boy with a girl's face and big grey eyes, was praised as a hero. Go to

boatmen /ˈboʊtmən/ (10 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: barqueiros; homens de barco

Simple English: Men whose work is handling or carrying people in boats.

Example: The boatmen pushed away from the crowded quay.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. You heard about it in the harbour office, at every ship broker's, at your agent's, from white men, natives, mixed-race people, and even from boatmen sitting half naked on the stone steps as you went up. Go to

Original English Version

1. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Go to

boatswain's /ˈboʊsənz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: do contramestre

Simple English: The possessive form of boatswain, the crew member responsible for deck equipment.

Example: The boatswain's mate inspected the hose before use.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The boatswain's mate brought the hose aft to wash down at half-past five, and later he came back to the bridge and said, "Please come aft, Mr. Jones. Go to

bony /ˈboʊni/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ossuda; magra; esquelética

Simple English: Very thin, so that the bones can be seen.

Example: Her hands became thin and bony.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. One was heavy and cruel-looking, the other thin and bony like an old horse. Go to

Original English Version

1. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Go to

boomed /buːmd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ressoou; retumbou

Simple English: Made a deep, loud, echoing sound.

Example: The harbour gun boomed across the water.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The gale had freshened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. Go to

bounced /baʊnst/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: quicou; ricocheteou

Simple English: Moved up or away again after hitting a surface.

Example: The ball bounced twice and went over the fence.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The engineer bounced up straight and fell down again in a loose heap. Go to

bravely /ˈbreɪvli/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: corajosamente; com coragem

Simple English: In a way that shows courage.

Example: She bravely decided to go on.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The man spoke in a harsh, sad voice, but bravely. Go to

breadth /bredθ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: largura; extensão

Simple English: The distance from one side of something to the other.

Example: Only a finger's breadth separated the two marks.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Go to

breathed /briːðd/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: respirou; aspirou

Simple English: Took air into the body through the nose or mouth.

Example: She breathed in the sweet smell of the flowers.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed shoulders with them, but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . . Go to

breathless /ˈbrɛθləs/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sem fôlego; suspensos

Simple English: Not able to breathe easily, often from excitement.

Example: The crowd was breathless before the last jump.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. Go to

breeches /ˈbrɪtʃɪz/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: calções; bombachas

Simple English: Short trousers that end just below the knee.

Example: The shepherds wore striped breeches.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He told them how he had seen a head in the water, thrust his boat-hook down, and caught it in the man's breeches. Go to

2. He even showed the boat-hook and said the man's breeches had held him, not his flesh. Go to

Original English Version

1. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped. Go to

2. It was not his flesh that held him--his breeches did. Go to

brierly /ˈbraɪərli/ (58 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Brierly

Simple English: The surname of Captain Montague Brierly in the novel.

Example: Brierly commanded a highly respected ship.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The other was Brierly, Big Brierly. Go to

2. Some of you may have heard of Big Brierly, the captain of the best ship in the Blue Star line. Go to

3. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

4. It seems that when he came on deck in the morning, Brierly was writing in the chart-room. Go to

5. I could not stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame. Go to

6. I often wondered how Brierly put up with his manners for more than half a voyage. Go to

Original English Version

1. Brierly was the other. Go to

2. Big Brierly. Go to

3. Some of you must have heard of Big Brierly--the captain of the crack ship of the Blue Star line. Go to

4. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Go to

5. It appears that when he came on deck in the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room. Go to

6. I was loth to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow--I couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of. Go to

brierly's /ˈbraɪərliz/ (14 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de Brierly

Simple English: The possessive form of the surname Brierly.

Example: Brierly's watch remained hanging below the rail.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I do not like to touch it." It was Captain Brierly's gold chronometer watch, carefully hung under the rail by its chain. Go to

2. "I may be rough," I said, "but I will not sit quietly while you sit in Captain Brierly's chair." Then I put down my knife and fork. Go to

3. Seeing that old Jones, with watery eyes, wiping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, and hearing the dog's sad cry, while the dirty, fly-ridden cabin stood as the only place to honor Brierly's memory, made his remembered figure seem very small and sad. Go to

Original English Version

1. I don’t like to touch it.’ It was Captain Brierly’s gold chronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain. Go to

2. ‘I may be a hard case,’ answers I, ‘but I ain’t so far gone as to put up with the sight of you sitting in Captain Brierly’s chair.’ With that I lay down my knife and fork. Go to

3. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Go to

broker's /ˈbroʊkərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do corretor; na corretora

Simple English: The possessive form of broker, sometimes meaning the broker's office.

Example: We heard the rumour at the broker's that afternoon.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. You heard about it in the harbour office, at every ship broker's, at your agent's, from white men, natives, mixed-race people, and even from boatmen sitting half naked on the stone steps as you went up. Go to

Original English Version

1. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Go to

bruised /bruːzd/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: machucado; contundido; ferido

Simple English: Hurt so that dark marks appear on the skin.

Example: He felt bruised and sore after the fall.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He spent many days lying on his back, dazed, bruised, hopeless, and trapped in deep unrest. Go to

brute /bruːt/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bruto; besta; animal irracional

Simple English: An animal, or a rough cruel person who behaves like one.

Example: Do not call the poor dog a brute just because it is big.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. “He was afraid the poor brute would jump after him, don’t you see?” he pursued with a quaver. Go to

brutes /bruːts/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: brutos; bestas; sujeitos cruéis

Simple English: Cruel, violent, or unintelligent people or animals.

Example: Those brutes pushed the weaker passengers aside.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I know them brutes. Go to

bulkhead /ˈbʌlkhɛd/ (17 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: compartimento fechado; tabique

Simple English: A small closed room made by a dividing wall.

Example: He kept his goods in a locked bulkhead.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship except the collision bulkhead between the forepeak and the forehold. Go to

2. That rotten bulkhead will give way in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead." He pushed me away with his right arm and ran ahead of me up the ladder, shouting as he climbed. Go to

Original English Version

1. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. Go to

2. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. Go to

bull's /bʊlz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do touro (em bull's-eye, o centro do alvo)

Simple English: Belonging to a bull, the male of the cattle family.

Example: The bull's head was carved above the door.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull’s-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Go to

bullock /ˈbʊlək/ (12 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: boi de carga

Simple English: A young bull used to pull carts.

Example: A slow bullock pulled the loaded cart.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At the door the man hesitated and snorted like a frightened bullock. Go to

Original English Version

1. This way, this way.” He jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. Go to

bunk /bʌŋk/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: beliche; leito de bordo

Simple English: A narrow bed fixed to a wall on a ship or in a hut.

Example: He lay down in his bunk and slept.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He said the chief had already given him a small drink, but the old man could not be made to leave his bunk because he was sleeping with a bottle of brandy under his pillow. Go to

2. "They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking," he continued thoughtfully. Go to

Original English Version

1. The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o’clock--‘only one, s’elp me!’--good old chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn’t do it. Go to

2. “They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking,” he pursued in a reflective tone. Go to

bursting /ˈbɜːrstɪŋ/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: morrendo de vontade; a ponto de estourar

Simple English: Breaking open suddenly, or being completely full of something.

Example: The cupboard was bursting with old letters and photographs.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

2. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Go to

buttoned /ˈbʌtənd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: abotoado

Simple English: Fastened with buttons.

Example: His coat was buttoned to the neck.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Go to

cable /ˈkeɪbəl/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cabo; cabos; telegrama

Simple English: A thick wire or group of wires.

Example: The cable connects the computer to the screen.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. You must know that everyone connected with the sea was there, because the story had been famous for days, ever since that strange cable message came from Aden and made us all laugh. Go to

calmed /kɑːmd/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: acalmou; acalmado; serenou

Simple English: Made someone or something quiet and peaceful again.

Example: A cup of tea and a warm blanket calmed the frightened child.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

campongs /ˈkæmpɒŋz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: kampungs; aldeias ou recintos residenciais malaios

Simple English: Malay villages or enclosed residential compounds.

Example: Small campongs stood along the forest edge.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They came from lonely huts, crowded campongs, and sea villages. Go to

Original English Version

1. They came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from villages by the sea. Go to

canoes /kəˈnuːz/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: canoas

Simple English: Light narrow boats moved with a paddle.

Example: Three canoes crossed the wide river.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They had come from north and south, and from far places in the East, after long journeys through jungle paths, rivers, canoes, and islands. Go to

Original English Version

1. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. Go to

capable /ˈkeɪpəbl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: capaz; capacidade; susceptíveis

Simple English: Having the ability to do something effectively.

Example: She is capable of handling difficult situations with ease.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In his letter to the owners, which he left open for me to read, he said he had always done his duty by them and was not betraying their trust, because he was leaving the ship to a seaman as capable as could be found, meaning me. Go to

captain's /ˈkæptɪnz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: do capitão

Simple English: Belonging to the captain, the person in charge of a ship or a team.

Example: The captain's cabin was the only warm room on the ship.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He would greet the captain warmly, give him the ship-chandler's business card, and on the captain's first visit ashore guide him firmly but without showing off to a huge shop. Go to

carpets /ˈkɑːrpəts/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tapetes

Simple English: Thick covers for floors made of wool or cloth.

Example: Dusty carpets were piled in the corner.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Old men slept on their prayer-carpets with their hands over their ears. Go to

Original English Version

1. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Go to

cast /kæst/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: elenco; fundido; convertido

Simple English: All actors and actresses appearing in a movie or play.

Example: The cast of the play includes many talented performers from around town.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then the Patna cast off and moved away from the wharf. Go to

castaway /ˈkæstəweɪ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: náufrago

Simple English: A person left alone on a shore after a shipwreck.

Example: The castaway built a hut out of branches.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He also imagined being a lonely castaway, barefoot and half naked, walking on bare reefs to find shellfish and avoid starvation. Go to

Original English Version

1. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. Go to

castaways /ˈkæstəweɪz/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: náufragos

Simple English: People left on a shore after their ship is lost.

Example: The castaways searched the beach for food.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Next moment the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the scene. Go to

castes /kæsts/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: castas

Simple English: The fixed social groups of Hindu society.

Example: He believed he knew all the castes.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They served Chinamen, Arabs, and half-castes, and would have served the devil himself if it had been easy enough. Go to

Original English Version

1. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy enough. Go to

2. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Go to

cavern /ˈkævərn/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: caverna; gruta

Simple English: A large deep cave.

Example: The road ended at the mouth of a cavern.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. Go to

cell /sɛl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: célula; cela; pilha

Simple English: The smallest living unit that can perform functions independently.

Example: Each cell in our body has a specific role to play.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. For days, many days, he had spoken to no one, but only talked silently and endlessly to himself, like a prisoner alone in a cell or a traveller lost in a wilderness. Go to

centipedes /ˈsentɪpiːdz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: centopeias

Simple English: Long many-legged arthropods with one pair of legs on each body segment.

Example: Centipedes hid beneath the damp boards.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then he screamed horribly and had to run for his life from a swarm of centipedes. Go to

Original English Version

1. This lasted till the evening of the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes. Go to

chandler's /ˈtʃændlərz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do fornecedor de navios

Simple English: The possessive form of chandler, here a dealer in ship supplies.

Example: The chandler's clerk delivered a card to the captain.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the Eastern ports where he earned his living as a ship-chandler's water-clerk, he was very popular. Go to

2. He would greet the captain warmly, give him the ship-chandler's business card, and on the captain's first visit ashore guide him firmly but without showing off to a huge shop. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular. Go to

charley /ˈtʃɑːrli/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Charley

Simple English: A familiar form of the male personal name Charles.

Example: Charley remembered the little officer very well.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Charley, my dear fellow, your dinner was very good, and because of it these men here think a quiet card game is hard work. Go to

Original English Version

1. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous occupation. Go to

cheekbones /ˈtʃiːkboʊnz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: maçãs do rosto; ossos malares

Simple English: The bones below and beside the eyes.

Example: Her high cheekbones gave her face a sharp outline.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, sharp cheekbones, and both elbows on the desk. Go to

chests /tʃests/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: peitos; arcas; baús

Simple English: The front parts of the body between the neck and the waist; also large boxes.

Example: Two wooden chests stood at the foot of the bed.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There were strong men leading families, old men with little hope of return, brave boys, shy girls with untidy hair, and nervous women holding their sleeping babies close to their chests. Go to

chewed /tʃuːd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mascavam

Simple English: Broke food into small pieces with the teeth.

Example: The cow chewed the long grass slowly.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. However, that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah! ejected him again. Go to

childlike /ˈtʃaɪldlaɪk/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: infantil; de criança

Simple English: Simple and open, like a child.

Example: He wrote in large childlike letters.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I did not need him to do anything for me - he could not, anyway - but I was moved by his childlike belief that he had a sacred right to extras. Go to

Original English Version

1. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn’t, you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. Go to

chimneys /ˈtʃɪmniz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: chaminés

Simple English: Tall pipes that carry smoke out of a building.

Example: Smoke rose from the factory chimneys.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His place was in the fore-top, and from there he often looked down on the peaceful city roofs cut by the brown river, and on the factory chimneys on the plain, standing thin against the dirty sky and sending out smoke like volcanoes. Go to

Original English Version

1. His station was in the fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belching out smoke like a volcano. Go to

chinaman /ˈtʃaɪnəmən/ (9 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: chinês (termo antiquado e hoje ofensivo)

Simple English: An old term for a Chinese man that is now considered offensive.

Example: The historical account calls the shopkeeper a Chinaman.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. Go to

2. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Go to

chinamen /ˈtʃaɪnəmen/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: chineses (termo antiquado e hoje ofensivo)

Simple English: The plural of an old term for Chinese men that is now considered offensive.

Example: The period narrative refers to the sailors as Chinamen.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They served Chinamen, Arabs, and half-castes, and would have served the devil himself if it had been easy enough. Go to

Original English Version

1. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy enough. Go to

chronometer /krəˈnɑːmɪtər/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cronômetro marítimo; relógio de alta precisão

Simple English: A very accurate timepiece, especially one used for navigation at sea.

Example: The captain compared the chronometer with the noon signal.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had saved lives at sea, rescued ships in danger, and received a gold chronometer from the underwriters and binoculars with an inscription from a foreign government to honour his work. Go to

2. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

3. I do not like to touch it." It was Captain Brierly's gold chronometer watch, carefully hung under the rail by its chain. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. Go to

2. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Go to

3. I don’t like to touch it.’ It was Captain Brierly’s gold chronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain. Go to

churn /tʃɜːrn/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: revolver; agitar violentamente

Simple English: To move a liquid around violently.

Example: The propeller began to churn the muddy water.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The tugs would take hold, the river would churn, and the man on shore would brush dust from his knees while the steward perhaps threw his umbrella after him. Go to

Original English Version

1. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. Go to

cigars /sɪˈɡɑːrz/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: charutos

Simple English: Thick rolls of tobacco leaves for smoking.

Example: They smoked cigars after dinner.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There was a cool sitting room, easy chairs, bottles, cigars, writing tools, harbour rules, and a warm welcome that could soften a sailor's heart after a long voyage. Go to

2. It might happen after dinner, on a verandah covered with still leaves and flowers, in the deep evening light marked by the red ends of cigars. Go to

3. And it is easy enough to talk about Master Jim after a good meal, two hundred feet above sea level, with a box of good cigars near at hand, on a fresh and starlit evening that makes the best of us forget that we are only here on borrowed time and must pick our way carefully, watch every precious minute and every mistake we cannot fix, and hope we will still manage to die well in the end - though we are not sure of that - and with very little help from the people beside us. Go to

Original English Version

1. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s heart. Go to

2. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Go to

3. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. Go to

circling /ˈsɜːrklɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: circulando; rodeando; girando em torno

Simple English: Moving in a circle around something.

Example: An eagle was circling slowly above the valley.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The questioning of the only man who could and would face it only kept circling around the known fact. Go to

cistern /ˈsɪstərn/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cisterna; reservatório de água

Simple English: A tank used for storing water.

Example: Rainwater collected in the stone cistern.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then they poured down the open hatchways and filled the inside of the ship, like water filling a cistern. Go to

Original English Version

1. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Go to

citizen (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: cidadão; habitante; morador

Simple English: a legal member of a country or city

Example: Every citizen has the right to vote.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "I will become an American citizen," he cried, angry and restless, shuffling his feet as if something invisible held his ankles and would not let him leave. Go to

civilisation /ˌsɪvələˈzeɪʃən/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: civilização

Simple English: An organized human society with its culture, institutions, and way of life.

Example: The explorers believed they had sailed beyond civilisation.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They seemed to move through a wild maze of plans, hopes, dangers, and journeys, ahead of civilisation and in the dark places of the sea. Go to

Original English Version

1. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement. Go to

clanking /ˈklæŋkɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: retinindo; tinindo de metal

Simple English: Making the hard sound of metal hitting metal.

Example: We heard chains clanking in the yard.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The clanking ash buckets moving through the ventilators told Jim that his watch was almost over. Go to

Original English Version

1. The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. Go to

clasped /klæspt/ (17 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: apertou; segurou firme; entrelaçou

Simple English: Held something tightly, especially with the hands.

Example: He clasped my hand and thanked me again and again.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The eyes of the other man, above his sunburned clasped hands, seemed full of kindness. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Go to

2. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. Go to

clawing /ˈklɔːɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arranhando; agarrando com as unhas

Simple English: Scratching or pulling with nails or claws.

Example: The cat kept clawing at the closed door.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. Go to

clearings /ˈklɪrɪŋz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: clareiras; áreas desmatadas

Simple English: Open areas in a forest where trees have been removed.

Example: Small huts stood in the clearings.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. For this idea, they had left their forests, their clearings, their rulers, their good fortune or poverty, the places of their youth, and their fathers' graves. Go to

Original English Version

1. At the call of an idea they had left their forests, their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity, their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their fathers. Go to

clenched /klɛntʃt/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cerrou

Simple English: Closed the teeth or the hands very tightly.

Example: He clenched his hands and said nothing.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I clenched my teeth and kept quiet as long as I could, but at last I had to say something. Go to

clerks /klɜːrks/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: escriturários; funcionários

Simple English: People who do writing and office work.

Example: The clerks left the office at five.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His job was to race by sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks to reach any ship about to anchor. Go to

2. It was a kind and useful job, so good water-clerks were rare. Go to

Original English Version

1. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. Go to

2. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. Go to

cleverness /ˈklɛvərnəs/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: esperteza; inteligência

Simple English: The ability to learn and think quickly.

Example: Her cleverness saved the whole plan.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I understood his meaning and felt sick at my own cleverness. Go to

Original English Version

1. He restrained a cry--“Ssh! what are they doing now down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. Go to

cling /klɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: agarrar-se; apegar-se

Simple English: To hold tightly to something or refuse to let it go.

Example: The child would cling to the rail in rough weather.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! Go to

cloudless /ˈklaʊdləs/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: sem nuvens; límpido

Simple English: With no clouds in it.

Example: They set out under a wide cloudless sky.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Suddenly the calm sea and the cloudless sky seemed unsafe and frightening, as if they were balanced above some great destruction. Go to

clumsy /ˈklʌmzi/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desajeitado; grosseiro; malfeito

Simple English: Done or made without skill or care.

Example: It was a clumsy trick, and no one believed it.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. ‘Where did you get drink?’ inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Go to

clung /klʌŋ/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: agarrava-se; apegava-se

Simple English: Held onto something very tightly.

Example: The child clung to her father's hand.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Go to

coasting /ˈkoʊstɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: costeiro; navegando ao longo da costa

Simple English: Sailing or operating along a coast.

Example: They spent the summer coasting between small islands.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A coasting ship that was coming in for shelter had hit a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship's instructors had seen it happen. Go to

Original English Version

1. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. Go to

coldly /ˈkoʊldli/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: friamente; com frieza

Simple English: In an unfriendly way, without warmth or feeling.

Example: He answered coldly and turned back to his newspaper.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I stopped him and said coldly that the cowardice of those four men did not seem very important to me. Go to

Original English Version

1. But I can safely assure my readers that he is not the product of coldly perverted thinking. Go to

2. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance. Go to

confounded /kənˈfaʊndɪd/ (20 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: maldito; perplexo

Simple English: Used to mean very annoying, or completely confused.

Example: The confounded engine stopped again at dawn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He muttered to himself, and I only caught a few words like "confounded steam!" and "infernal steam!" - something about steam. Go to

Original English Version

1. They said ‘Confounded fool!’ as soon as his back was turned. Go to

2. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded. Go to

3. He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like “confounded steam!” and “infernal steam!”--something about steam. Go to

4. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Go to

5. I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand what I mean. Go to

6. This infernal publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. Go to

cottages /ˈkɑːtɪdʒɪz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: chalés; casinhas de campo

Simple English: Small simple houses in the country.

Example: Four white cottages stood by the road.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. Go to

cowardice /ˈkaʊərdɪs/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: covardia

Simple English: Lack of courage when facing danger or difficulty.

Example: He was accused of cowardice for leaving early.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I stopped him and said coldly that the cowardice of those four men did not seem very important to me. Go to

Original English Version

1. I’ve known such a time, and, what’s more, I shan’t now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons. Go to

2. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice now--of softness. Go to

3. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance. Go to

craning /ˈkreɪnɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: esticando o pescoço

Simple English: Stretching one's neck in order to see something better.

Example: Passengers stood craning to glimpse the shore.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was full of people craning their necks and almost climbing over each other to see. Go to

Original English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Go to

creature /ˈkriːtʃər/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: criatura

Simple English: Any living being that can move on its own.

Example: The forest is full of strange creatures at night.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I do not even remember now which small Baltic port was the home of that creature. Go to

crept /krɛpt/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: esgueirou-se; foi de mansinho

Simple English: Moved slowly and quietly.

Example: She crept to the hole and caught the dog by the ear.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Where is the captain, Rover?" The dog looked up with sad yellow eyes, gave one lonely bark, and crept under the table. Go to

Original English Version

1. Where’s the captain, Rover?” The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under the table. Go to

crewed /kruːd/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: tripulado; com a tripulação a postos

Simple English: Provided with the people needed to operate a boat or ship.

Example: A fully crewed launch waited beside the ship.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "Lower away!" He saw the boat, already crewed, drop quickly below the rail, and he ran after her. Go to

criticism /ˈkrɪtɪsɪzəm/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: crítica; desaprovação

Simple English: The process of reviewing, evaluating, and giving opinions about creative works.

Example: Her criticism of the painting focused on its use of color and technique.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had to bear other men's criticism, the sea's demands, and the plain hard work that earns bread, but gives its reward only to those who truly love the work. Go to

crooks /krʊks/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: vigaristas; desonestos

Simple English: Dishonest people or criminals.

Example: Respectable clothes did not make the crooks honest.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I will not pretend to be shocked, because many of those bad people were more interesting and far more amusing than the usual respectable crooks people invite to dinner out of habit, fear, kindness, or other weak reasons. Go to

crouched /kraʊtʃt/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: agachou-se; encolheu-se

Simple English: Bent the legs and lowered the body close to the ground.

Example: The big animal crouched down before jumping.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A father crouched beside a boy sleeping with one arm out. Go to

crouching /ˈkraʊtʃɪŋ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: agachado; encolhido

Simple English: Bending the legs so that the body is low.

Example: A man sat crouching by the fire.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. Go to

cruelly /ˈkruːəli/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cruelmente; com crueldade

Simple English: In a way that causes pain or suffering on purpose.

Example: The prisoners were cruelly treated for years.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He liked to curse his own country in public and acted cruelly toward people he was not afraid of. Go to

cunning /ˈkʌnɪŋ/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: astuto; ardiloso; matreiro

Simple English: Clever at getting what you want, often by deceiving.

Example: It took a cunning plan to get past the guard.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. Go to

cure /kjʊər/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cura; curar; curam

Simple English: A treatment that makes an illness go away.

Example: Scientists are looking for a cure.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I hoped to get some kind of cure for doubt from that damaged and doubtful sick man. Go to

curved /kɜːrvd/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: curvo; curva

Simple English: Having a shape that is rounded rather than straight.

Example: The curved path led us through the beautiful forest.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The young moon, curved and low in the west, looked like a thin shaving cut from a bar of gold. Go to

darkened /ˈdɑːrkənd/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: escureceu; ficou escuro

Simple English: Became darker or more serious.

Example: The sky darkened before the storm.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. Go to

darkening /ˈdɑːrkənɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: escurecendo; ficando sombrio

Simple English: Becoming darker, or making something darker.

Example: They walked home in the darkening street.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the darkening light, the cutter could be seen fighting tide and wind, held back for a moment, then tossing beside the ship. Go to

Date /deɪt/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: data; encontro; namorar

Simple English: A day of the month or year.

Example: What is today’s date?

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. By the standing orders, the officer finishing his watch should have done that, but I said nothing and watched him mark the ship's position with a tiny cross and write the date and time. Go to

davits /ˈdeɪvɪts/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: turcos; guindastes para botes

Simple English: Crane-like supports used to raise or lower boats from a ship.

Example: The crew swung the davits out over the water.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A crowd of boys climbed the rails and gathered round the davits. Go to

Original English Version

1. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. Go to

dazed /deɪzd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: atordoados; aturdidos

Simple English: Unable to think clearly after a shock or a blow.

Example: He walked out of the wreck dazed but unhurt.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He spent many days lying on his back, dazed, bruised, hopeless, and trapped in deep unrest. Go to

Original English Version

1. Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. Go to

2. I came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on the top step when getting down while I was forward. Go to

death's /deθs/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: da morte

Simple English: Belonging to death, used when death is spoken of as a person or a power.

Example: The old poem calls the grave death's quiet garden.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Old and young, weak and strong, were equal before sleep, which is death's brother. Go to

Original English Version

1. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Go to

debt /dɛt/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: dívida; débito; endividamento

Simple English: Money or favor that is owed.

Example: She worked hard to pay off her credit card debt last year.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He beat his chest and cried, "Antonio never forget!" I never learned what the debt was. Go to

2. "If he had been poor and old and in debt, and had no future, or if he had been mad. Go to

decent /ˈdiːsənt/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: decente; digno; aceitável

Simple English: Treating others with respect and honesty consistently in behavior.

Example: It’s important to be decent and fair in all your dealings.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was my first voyage." Then I would remember a small confused boy with a mother or an older sister on the quay, too upset to wave goodbye, or a decent father who came to see his son off and stayed too long, fascinated by the windlass, until he had to rush ashore without time to say farewell. Go to

2. So, after a few polite words which he answered lazily like any decent patient, I brought up Patna in a careful question. Go to

3. Honestly, I do not care in the least about all the pilgrims who ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this even to a ship full of old rags. Go to

decently /ˈdiːsəntli/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: decentemente; com dignidade

Simple English: In an acceptable, respectable, or morally proper way.

Example: He hoped to leave the service decently.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Go to

2. They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! Go to

decline /dɪˈklaɪn/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: declínio; declinar; recusar

Simple English: To reduce in size, amount, intensity, or strength.

Example: The company has seen a decline in profits over the last year.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In what they said, in how they acted, and even in how they looked, Jim could see the weak point: a slow decline and a desire to drift safely through life. Go to

Decoration /ˌdɛkəˈreɪʃən/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: decoração; enfeite

Simple English: Adding design and beauty to something for visual appeal.

Example: We chose colorful decoration for the party to make it festive.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. That shop had everything needed for life on a ship, from food and drink to tools and supplies, and even gold leaf for decorations. Go to

deliberate /dɪˈlɪbərət/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: deliberada; proposital; intencional

Simple English: Done intentionally; carefully planned or considered.

Example: He made a deliberate choice to study abroad for a year.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Danger and storms have many levels, and only sometimes do they show a dark, deliberate force. Go to

delirium /dɪˈlɪriəm/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: delírio

Simple English: A confused excited state caused by high fever or great emotion.

Example: In his delirium he called out strange names.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then he told me that the chief engineer from the pilgrim ship was also there with a terrible case of delirium caused by drink. Go to

Original English Version

1. Most unusual--that thread of logic in such a delirium. Go to

demand /dɪˈmænd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: demanda; procura; exigir

Simple English: The desire or need for particular goods or services.

Example: There is a high demand for electric cars in today’s market.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had to bear other men's criticism, the sea's demands, and the plain hard work that earns bread, but gives its reward only to those who truly love the work. Go to

2. They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything. Go to

depth /dɛpθ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: profundidade; aprofundada; detalhada

Simple English: Quality that makes artwork appear three-dimensional.

Example: The depth in the painting gives it a realistic feel.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "It was nothing that would have troubled either of us much." Then, as if a light had suddenly come into his confused mind, poor old Jones gave one last thought of great depth. Go to

dese /diːz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: estes; estas (fala com sotaque alemão)

Simple English: A nonstandard spelling of 'these' used to show a German accent.

Example: The fictional sailor says, 'Dese ropes are no good.'

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "Look at dese cattle," said the German skipper to his new chief mate. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘Look at dese cattle,’ said the German skipper to his new chief mate. Go to

despised /dɪˈspaɪzd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desprezava

Simple English: Felt that something was worth nothing.

Example: He despised easy work and easy money.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I was almost afraid of how deeply he despised the young man under examination, but he was probably holding a silent inquiry into his own case. Go to

devilish /ˈdevəlɪʃ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: diabólico; endiabrado

Simple English: Very cruel or clever in a wicked way.

Example: It was a devilish trick to play on a beginner.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The inquiry trouble, the yellow dog trouble - you would not think a filthy native dog would be allowed to trip people up in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you? - the kind of trouble that, in strange and devilish ways, makes me meet men with soft spots, hard spots, and hidden sickness, by Jove, and makes them tell me their secrets as soon as they see me. Go to

disadvantages /ˌdɪsədˈvæntɪdʒɪz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desvantagens

Simple English: Conditions or features that make success more difficult.

Example: The plan's disadvantages soon became obvious.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. But when I remembered that I shared these disadvantages with twelve hundred million other human beings, I could bear his proud, mocking pity. Go to

Original English Version

1. No doubt, to have all this forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. Go to

dividers /dɪˈvaɪdərz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: compasso de pontas secas; divisores náuticos

Simple English: A two-pointed instrument used to measure distances on a chart.

Example: She used the dividers to measure the route.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. 'We'll lay down her position,' he said, bending over the chart with a pair of dividers. Go to

Original English Version

1. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship’s position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship’s spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. Go to

2. ‘We’ll lay down her position,’ says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand. Go to

dockworkers /ˈdɑːkwɜːrkərz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: trabalhadores portuários; estivadores

Simple English: People who load, unload, or handle ships and cargo at a dock.

Example: The dockworkers rolled the barrels into the shed.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I left the saloon, packed my things, and was on the quay with all my bags before the dockworkers had even gone back to work. Go to

doubted /ˈdaʊtɪd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: duvidou

Simple English: Was not sure that something was true.

Example: Nobody doubted his honest words.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was now answering questions that did not matter, even if they had a purpose, but he doubted he would ever speak freely again. Go to

Original English Version

1. At present he was answering questions that did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether he would ever again speak out as long as he lived. Go to

dozed /doʊzd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cochilou; dormitou

Simple English: Slept lightly for a short time.

Example: He dozed in the chair after dinner.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Go to

draped /dreɪpt/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: coberto com pano; pendurado com dobras

Simple English: Covered or hung loosely with cloth.

Example: A blanket was draped over the back of the chair.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Go to

2. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. Go to

dreamer's /ˈdriːmərz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: de sonhador

Simple English: Belonging to a person who is dreaming.

Example: They moved at a dreamer's slow pace.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They still kept their energy, with pirate-like temper and dreamer's eyes. Go to

dreamers /ˈdriːmərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sonhadores

Simple English: People who think about ideas instead of real life.

Example: The town was full of poets and dreamers.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. Go to

dreamily /ˈdriːmɪli/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sonhadoramente; com ar distraído

Simple English: In a way that shows the mind is far away.

Example: She looked dreamily out of the window.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. 'Yes,' said the big assessor, smiling dreamily at the blotting pad. Go to

dreamy /ˈdriːmi/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sonhador; de quem sonha acordado

Simple English: Sounding or looking as if you are dreaming.

Example: She had a dreamy look on her face.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. ‘Yes,’ said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise. Go to

drooping /ˈdruːpɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pendente; caído; murcho

Simple English: Hanging down weakly, without strength.

Example: The drooping flowers needed water at once.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. To my great surprise, the tall man with the drooping white moustache was there too. Go to

Original English Version

1. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Go to

2. To my great surprise the other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also found his way there. Go to

drumming /ˈdrʌmɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tamborilando; batendo repetidamente

Simple English: Tapping or beating something repeatedly like a drum.

Example: He waited, drumming his fingers on the table.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The big assessor had lowered his eyelids and sat drumming silently, careless and sad. Go to

dubash /ˈduːbæʃ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: intérprete e agente comercial indiano

Simple English: An interpreter and commercial agent in colonial India, usually one who knew two languages.

Example: The dubash arranged supplies and translated the captain's request.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the morning, while I was dressing in my ship cabin, I could hear my Parsee Dubash talking about the Patna with the steward through the wall, while he drank tea in the pantry as a favour. Go to

Original English Version

1. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. Go to

dullness /ˈdʌlnəs/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: entorpecimento; monotonia; falta de vivacidade

Simple English: A lack of sharpness, interest, energy, or feeling.

Example: The dullness of the long afternoon weighed on them.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Go to

dusk /dʌsk/ (18 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: anoitecer; crepúsculo

Simple English: The time when the day is ending and it becomes dark.

Example: The birds go quiet at dusk.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was dusk on a winter day. Go to

2. The steamer thudded through the calm water of the Strait at dusk. Go to

Original English Version

1. It was the dusk of a winter’s day. Go to

2. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Go to

3. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. Go to

dyed /daɪd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tingida

Simple English: Coloured with a special liquid.

Example: His dyed beard was bright red.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They slept on mats, blankets, or bare planks, on every deck and in dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloth or dirty rags, with their heads on small bundles and their faces on bent arms. Go to

Original English Version

1. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Go to

earnestly /ˈɜːrnɪstli/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: atentamente; seriamente

Simple English: In a serious and sincere way.

Example: He spoke earnestly about his plans.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly. Go to

eased /iːzd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: aliviou; abrandou; moveu com cuidado

Simple English: Became less strong or painful; also moved something slowly and gently.

Example: The pain eased after the second day.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Rain came down in slanting sheets, then eased for a moment. Go to

echoed /ˈɛkoʊd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ecoou; ressoou

Simple English: Sent a sound back so that it was heard again.

Example: The empty hall echoed our voices.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. Go to

elbows /ˈɛlboʊz/ (14 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cotovelos

Simple English: The joints in the middle of the arms.

Example: He rested both elbows on the table and sighed.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, sharp cheekbones, and both elbows on the desk. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Go to

2. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Go to

elsewhere /ˈɛlsweər/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: noutro lugar; alhures

Simple English: At, in, or to another place, not here.

Example: I decided to look for a job elsewhere, outside my city.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I know people in Apia, in Honolulu, and elsewhere..." He stopped, and I could easily imagine the kind of people he knew there. Go to

endlessly /ˈendləsli/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sem parar; infinitamente

Simple English: For a very long time, with no end.

Example: They talked endlessly about the voyage.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They talked endlessly about good luck: how one man got an easy boat on the China coast, how another had a fine post in Japan, and how a third was doing well in the Siamese navy. Go to

2. For days, many days, he had spoken to no one, but only talked silently and endlessly to himself, like a prisoner alone in a cell or a traveller lost in a wilderness. Go to

engineer's /ˌendʒəˈnɪrz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do engenheiro

Simple English: The possessive form of engineer, a person responsible for machinery.

Example: The engineer's warning reached the bridge too late.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He could almost repeat the engineer's moaning like an echo, to help these men who wanted facts. Go to

englishmen /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃmən/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ingleses

Simple English: Men from England.

Example: Two Englishmen were waiting at the gate.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. You damned Englishmen can do your worst. Go to

2. "You Englishmen are all rogues," my patriotic man from Flensborg or Stettin went on. Go to

Original English Version

1. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt” with in those places. Go to

2. ‘“You Englishmen are all rogues,” went on my patriotic Flensborg or Stettin Australian. Go to

enviable /ˈenviəbəl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: invejável; digno de inveja

Simple English: So desirable or fortunate that other people might envy it.

Example: Her reputation for courage was enviable.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. That was enviable. Go to

Original English Version

1. This was enviable. Go to

envied /ˈɛnvid/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: invejava

Simple English: Wanted what another person had.

Example: He envied his brother's new bicycle.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At times I even envied him. Go to

Original English Version

1. I have never defined to myself this attraction, but there were moments when I envied him. Go to

esplanade /ˌespləˈneɪd/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Esplanada; passeio público à beira-mar

Simple English: A broad open walkway or public space, often beside the sea.

Example: They crossed the Esplanade as the shops were closing.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I heard the noise below, and I believe it was loud enough to be heard across the Esplanade. Go to

2. He stared across the empty Esplanade. Go to

3. Jim still stood there with his hands in his pockets, his back to the sidewalk, looking across the Esplanade toward the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel as if he were about to go for a walk once his friend was ready. Go to

Original English Version

1. I heard it down below, and I have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as far as the band-stand. Go to

2. He stared across the empty Esplanade. Go to

3. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. Go to

examination /ɪɡˌzæməˈneɪʃən/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: exame; examinação; análise

Simple English: A formal test assessing someone's knowledge or skill in a subject.

Example: The final examination will cover all the topics we studied this semester.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I was almost afraid of how deeply he despised the young man under examination, but he was probably holding a silent inquiry into his own case. Go to

exclaimed /ɪkˈskleɪmd/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: exclamaram; gritaram

Simple English: Said something suddenly and loudly, because of surprise or strong feeling.

Example: The mice exclaimed when they saw their Queen.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He exclaimed, “My God! Go to

2. “Why eat all that dirt?” he exclaimed, with an oriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. Go to

excuse /ɪkˈskjuːs/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desculpa; Desculpe; perdoe

Simple English: To forgive someone for an error or offense.

Example: Please excuse my mistake; I didn't mean to offend anyone.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Perhaps I hoped to find a deep reason, a mercy, or some excuse. Go to

2. Maybe I wanted to find an excuse for that young man, whom I had never met before, but whose face made the whole matter feel personal and frightening, as if it pointed to a dangerous fate waiting for all of us who had once been young like him. Go to

exiled /ˈeɡzaɪld/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: exilado; afastado

Simple English: Forced or made to live away from one's home or usual place.

Example: The defeated prince lived exiled on a remote island.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He stayed in seaports because he was a sailor exiled from the sea, and his special ability was only useful as a water-clerk. Go to

exorcism /ˈeksɔːrsɪzəm/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: exorcismo; tentativa de expulsar um medo

Simple English: An act intended to drive out an evil spirit or harmful influence.

Example: Telling the truth became his private exorcism.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I positively hoped to obtain from that battered and shady invalid some exorcism against the ghost of doubt. Go to

explanatory /ɪkˈsplænətɔːri/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: explicativo; esclarecedor

Simple English: Intended to explain something or make it clearer.

Example: She attached an explanatory note to the map.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He was so extremely calm, that I began to indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the famous affair from his point of view. Go to

extorted /ɪkˈstɔːrtɪd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: extorquiu; arrancado à força

Simple English: Obtained something by force, threats, or severe pressure.

Example: The governor extorted money from poor traders.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one’s conscience. Go to

eyelids /ˈaɪlɪdz/ (16 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pálpebras

Simple English: The pieces of skin that cover the eyes when they close.

Example: His eyelids were heavy with sleep.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The big assessor had lowered his eyelids and sat drumming silently, careless and sad. Go to

Original English Version

1. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Go to

2. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. Go to

eyesight /ˈaɪsaɪt/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vista; acuidade visual

Simple English: The ability to see.

Example: His eyesight was still perfect at eighty.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I'm famous for my eyesight. Go to

Original English Version

1. I am famous for my eyesight. Go to

fainted /ˈfeɪntɪd/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: desmaiou

Simple English: Fell down and stopped being awake for a short time.

Example: He fainted in the hot, crowded room.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He explained that the big man with a beard had groaned about his leg and fainted like a girl. Go to

faintly /ˈfeɪntli/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vagamente; de leve

Simple English: In a way that is not easy to see or hear.

Example: A light burned faintly in the far window.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A yelling voice in her reached him faintly: ‘Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save anybody! Go to

2. The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren’t bad chaps though. Go to

faraway /ˌfɑːrəˈweɪ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: distante; longínquo; absorto

Simple English: Very distant; also describing a look that shows the mind is elsewhere.

Example: She spoke of faraway countries she had never seen.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Later, many times, in faraway places around the world, Marlow showed that he was willing to remember Jim, and to remember him at length and in detail when he spoke aloud. Go to

fate's /feɪts/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: do destino

Simple English: The possessive form of fate, the power or course believed to determine events.

Example: They accepted fate's final judgment in silence.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was fate's last revenge on the man, after his belief in his own greatness had almost protected him from the natural fear of death. Go to

fatter /ˈfætər/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: mais gordo

Simple English: Having more fat on the body than someone else.

Example: The younger pig was fatter than the rest.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Three looked just as they should, and one was much fatter than any living man has any right to be. Go to

fattest /ˈfætɪst/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mais gordo; o mais gordo

Simple English: The superlative form of fat: having the most body fat.

Example: The fattest pig won a prize at the fair.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I recognized the cheerful captain of the Patna at once: he was the fattest man in the whole hot tropical world. Go to

Original English Version

1. There could be no mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance: the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good old earth of ours. Go to

favouritism /ˈfeɪvərɪtɪzəm/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: favoritismo; favorecimento indevido

Simple English: The unfair practice of giving special treatment to preferred people or things.

Example: The captain denied accusations of favouritism.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I strongly dislike favouritism in public life, private life, and even in an author's relationship with his books. Go to

Original English Version

1. I am a great foe to favouritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works. Go to

feather /ˈfɛðər/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: pluma; pena; penas

Simple English: Any light and soft covering on a bird's body.

Example: The feather floated gently down from the sky before landing softly.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. We had been walking slowly, and then we stopped opposite the harbour office, looking at the very place where the huge captain of the Patna had disappeared as completely as a tiny feather in a hurricane. Go to

feeder /ˈfiːdər/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: lubrificador; recipiente para alimentar óleo

Simple English: A container or device that supplies oil or another material to a machine.

Example: The mechanic filled the oil-feeder before starting the engine.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The oil-feeder was left nearby. Go to

Original English Version

1. There was the oil-feeder where he left it near by. Go to

Glossary: New Words (2/4)

fellow's /ˈfeloʊz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do sujeito; do camarada

Simple English: The possessive form of fellow, meaning a man or companion.

Example: The fellow's nervous smile betrayed him.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The fellow’s a gentleman if he ain’t fit to be touched--he will understand. Go to

ferries /ˈferiz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: balsas; barcos de travessia

Simple English: Boats that regularly carry people, vehicles, or goods across water.

Example: The ferries stopped running when the gale began.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He could also see the big ships leaving, the wide ferries always moving, the small boats below, and the faint beauty of the sea in the distance. Go to

2. Between the gusts, Jim could see the rough tide, small boats tossed along the shore, still buildings in the blowing mist, large ferries pitching at anchor, and huge landing-stages rising and falling under spray. Go to

Original English Version

1. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure. Go to

fiercely /ˈfɪrsli/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ferozmente; intensamente

Simple English: In a strong and violent way.

Example: The ball of fire burned fiercely.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from above on the heads and shoulders of the three men, and they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big court-room where the audience seemed composed of staring shadows. Go to

fingertips /ˈfɪŋɡərtɪps/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pontas dos dedos

Simple English: The ends of the fingers.

Example: She touched the glass with her fingertips.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He leaned back in his seat, stretched out one arm, and tapped softly with his fingertips on a blotting pad. Go to

fir /fɜːr/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: abeto

Simple English: A tall tree with thin sharp leaves that stay green.

Example: A small fir grew beside the gate.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Below it, the red front of the rectory shone warmly among grass, flower beds, and fir trees. Go to

Original English Version

1. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. Go to

fists /fɪsts/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: punhos

Simple English: Hands closed tightly with the fingers inside.

Example: The boy pressed his fists against his eyes.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Without speaking, the German raised both heavy fists toward the sky and shook them a little. Go to

Original English Version

1. The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook them a little without a word. Go to

flannel /ˈflænəl/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: flanela

Simple English: A soft woollen or cotton cloth used for warm clothes.

Example: He wore a grey flannel shirt all winter.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Another was tall and thin, wearing a blue flannel coat, dry as wood, with grey moustaches and a silly, jaunty look. Go to

Original English Version

1. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Go to

flannelette /ˌflænəˈlet/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: flanela leve; tecido semelhante à flanela

Simple English: A brushed cotton cloth made to look and feel like flannel.

Example: She sewed a warm shirt from red flannelette.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He turned and saw, to his surprise, a huge round thing in striped flannelette standing upside down in the middle of the office floor. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. Go to

flashed /flæʃt/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: lampejaram; refletiram

Simple English: Shone with a sudden bright light.

Example: The mirror flashed in the morning sun.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. ‘“You may depend on it, Captain Jones,” said I, “it wasn’t anything that would have disturbed much either of us two,” I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. Go to

flattering /ˈflætərɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: lisonjeiro; elogioso; favorecedor

Simple English: Saying pleasant things to please someone; also making someone look better.

Example: The photograph was flattering enough to hang in the hall.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had been promoted over too many heads, mine included, and he had a terrible way of making you feel small, even when he only said 'Good morning.' I never spoke to him except about duty, and then I had to work hard to stay polite." He was flattering himself there. Go to

Original English Version

1. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide? Go to

flensborg /ˈflenzbɔːrɡ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Flensborg

Simple English: An older English spelling of Flensburg, a port city in northern Germany.

Example: He claimed to come from Flensborg, near the Danish border.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "You Englishmen are all rogues," my patriotic man from Flensborg or Stettin went on. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘“You Englishmen are all rogues,” went on my patriotic Flensborg or Stettin Australian. Go to

fleshy /ˈfleʃi/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: carnudo; corpulento

Simple English: Having a large amount of soft flesh or a plump appearance.

Example: His fleshy hands gripped the rail.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. But that ugly, fleshy figure stayed in his memory forever as the image of all that is base and hateful in the world and in people. Go to

Original English Version

1. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. Go to

2. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Go to

flexible /ˈflɛksɪbl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: flexível

Simple English: Capable of bending easily without breaking.

Example: The yoga class is great for improving flexibility and reducing stress.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The sharp hull seemed to lift a little again and again along its whole length, as if it had become flexible, and then settle back hard as it cut through the smooth sea. Go to

fling /flɪŋ/ (9 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: atirar; lançar com força

Simple English: To throw something suddenly and forcefully.

Example: Do not fling the rope into the current.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. Go to

floated /ˈfloʊtɪd/ (19 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: flutuou; boiou

Simple English: Moved along on the top of water.

Example: The raft floated down the stream.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Go to

fluttered /ˈflʌtərd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: esvoaçavam; adejavam

Simple English: Moved quickly and lightly in the air.

Example: The flag fluttered above the gate.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. Go to

foaming /ˈfoʊmɪŋ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: espumante; espumejante

Simple English: Covered with white bubbles, or producing them.

Example: The foaming river had risen almost to the bridge.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. She headed between two small islands, crossed the anchoring area for sailing ships, turned halfway around in the shadow of a hill, and then moved close to a line of foaming reefs. Go to

Original English Version

1. She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. Go to

foamy /ˈfoʊmi/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: espumoso; coberto de espuma

Simple English: Covered with or full of foam.

Example: Foamy water broke against the hull.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The river beside the ship boiled with foamy streaks. Go to

Original English Version

1. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Go to

folds /foʊldz/ (14 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: dobras; pregas

Simple English: Parts of cloth that lie one over another.

Example: He hid the letter in the folds of his coat.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

2. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Go to

foolishly /ˈfuːlɪʃli/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tolamente

Simple English: In a way that shows no good sense.

Example: He foolishly spent all his money in one day.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I was sorry I had spoken so foolishly. Go to

2. "I have a wife and children," he went on, "and I had been with the Company for ten years, always expecting my next command, foolishly enough. Go to

forehold /ˈfɔːrˌhoʊld/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: porão de vante; porão de proa

Simple English: The forward cargo hold of a ship.

Example: The carpenter inspected the forehold for leaks.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship except the collision bulkhead between the forepeak and the forehold. Go to

Original English Version

1. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. Go to

forepeak /ˈfɔːrˌpiːk/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pique de proa; compartimento extremo da proa

Simple English: The compartment inside the extreme forward end of a ship.

Example: A loose chain rattled in the forepeak.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. After I opened the forepeak hatch, I heard water splashing inside. Go to

2. Then I lowered the lamp down on its cord and saw that the forepeak was already more than half full of water. Go to

3. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship except the collision bulkhead between the forepeak and the forehold. Go to

Original English Version

1. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. Go to

2. I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water already. Go to

3. I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. Go to

forsaken /fərˈseɪkən/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: abandonado; desamparado

Simple English: Left alone and without help.

Example: The house stood forsaken at the end of the road.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then he cried that if they were not "God-forsaken Portuguee," they would know the hospital was the right place for him. Go to

Original English Version

1. “If you weren’t a God-forsaken Portuguee,” I heard him yell, “you would know that the hospital is the right place for me.” He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. Go to

fortune /ˈfɔːrtʃən/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: fortuna; sorte; fonseca

Simple English: Very large sum of money or valuable assets.

Example: She inherited a fortune from her grandparents and became very wealthy.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. For this idea, they had left their forests, their clearings, their rulers, their good fortune or poverty, the places of their youth, and their fathers' graves. Go to

freshness /ˈfrɛʃnəs/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: frescor; viço

Simple English: The quality of being cool, new, lively, or recently made.

Example: The evening breeze brought freshness to the hot room.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Go to

frosty /ˈfrɔːsti/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: gelado; com geada

Simple English: Very cold, with thin white ice on the ground.

Example: We walked home on a clear frosty evening.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was dark and clear, and all the stars shone as plainly as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Go to

Original English Version

1. It was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Go to

funnel /ˈfʌnl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: funil

Simple English: A tube wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, used for pouring.

Example: He poured the oil through a small funnel.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The only shadow on the sea was the black smoke from the funnel. Go to

Original English Version

1. The only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in the air. Go to

gales /ɡeɪlz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vendavais; tempestades de vento

Simple English: Very strong winds, especially at sea.

Example: Winter gales kept the fishing boats in harbor.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Go to

gallant /ˈɡælənt/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: galante; bravo; garboso

Simple English: Brave and noble; also polite and attentive, especially towards women.

Example: It was a gallant rescue that everyone talked about for weeks.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There he learned a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. Go to

Original English Version

1. He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. Go to

gallop /ˈɡæləp/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: galope

Simple English: The fastest running pace of a horse.

Example: The frightened horse broke into a gallop.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The driver whipped the pony, and it leapt forward at a gallop. Go to

Original English Version

1. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Go to

gangways /ˈɡæŋweɪz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: passarelas de embarque; pranchas de acesso

Simple English: Walkways used for boarding or leaving a ship.

Example: The crew secured both gangways before departure.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They came aboard in streams over three gangways. Go to

Original English Version

1. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Go to

garlands /ˈɡɑːrləndz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: guirlandas; grinaldas

Simple English: Decorative chains of flowers, leaves, or other material.

Example: Children hung bright garlands across the doorway.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There he saw small island shapes with garlands, bright sunshine, tiny ships, and lively movement like a holiday scene, under the calm Eastern sky and the peaceful Eastern sea reaching to the horizon. Go to

gasp /ɡæsp/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arquejo; suspiro de espanto

Simple English: A quick loud breath taken in surprise.

Example: A gasp went through the room.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. But now and then, sudden pain would seize him, making him gasp and twist under the blankets. Go to

Original English Version

1. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Go to

gharry /ˈɡɑːri/ (12 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: carruagem de aluguel da Índia colonial

Simple English: A horse-drawn carriage formerly used for hire in South Asia.

Example: They hired a battered gharry outside the station.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A broken-down gharry stopped across from them, and the driver just sat with one foot up, studying his toes. Go to

2. He walked quickly and awkwardly to the gharry and pulled at the door handle with wild force, as if he wanted to tear the whole thing over, pony and all. Go to

3. I thought the roof might split open, but the gharry only sank on its springs and one blind fell down. Go to

4. He did not move again, and he kept facing that new direction after the gharry had gone from sight. Go to

Original English Version

1. A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes. Go to

2. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. Go to

3. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. Go to

4. A snorting pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. Go to

5. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. Go to

6. He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in the new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight. Go to

glancing /ˈɡlænsɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: olhando de relance; dando uma olhada

Simple English: Looking at something very quickly.

Example: She kept glancing at the clock.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Go to

glare /ɡlɛr/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: brilho ofuscante; clarão

Simple English: A strong angry look, or a very bright light.

Example: She gave him an angry glare and turned away.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Go to

glared /ɡlɛrd/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: lançou um olhar furioso

Simple English: Looked at someone with anger, or shone very brightly.

Example: He glared at me across the table and said nothing.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He glared, and I smiled. Go to

Original English Version

1. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open window. Go to

glassy /ˈɡlæsi/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vítreo; vidrado; sem expressão

Simple English: Shiny, fixed, and without normal life or expression.

Example: He answered with a glassy stare.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. Go to

2. The unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine wistfully. Go to

3. Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Go to

gloom /ɡluːm/ (19 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: escuridão; penumbra; tristeza

Simple English: Partial darkness or a feeling of deep sadness.

Example: The last lamp barely softened the gloom.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Go to

gloomy /ˈɡluːmi/ (12 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sombrio; escuro; lúgubre

Simple English: Dark and depressing, or sad and without hope.

Example: The waiting room was gloomy even at midday.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He answered truthfully by a curt ‘Yes, I did’; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. Go to

2. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. Go to

glowed /ɡloʊd/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: brilhavam; reluziam

Simple English: Gave out a soft warm light without flames.

Example: The coals glowed red in the dark kitchen.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump. Go to

gnaws /nɔːz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: corrói; rói continuamente

Simple English: Bites or wears away at something persistently.

Example: A private fear gnaws at him every night.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Now I see that I was hoping for the impossible: to remove the most stubborn ghost of human life, the doubt that rises like mist and gnaws like a worm, and is colder than death itself. Go to

gradually /ˈɡrædʒuəli/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: gradualmente; progressivamente; forma gradual

Simple English: In small amounts over an extended period of time.

Example: The weather gradually warmed up as spring approached, making it pleasant outside.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The second engineer was gradually turning his thoughts to his money and his courage. Go to

greasy /ˈɡriːsi/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: gorduroso; ensebado

Simple English: Covered with fat or oil.

Example: He wiped his greasy fingers on a rag.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His chest looked greasy and wet, as if he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. Go to

Original English Version

1. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. Go to

greenhouses /ˈɡriːnˌhaʊzɪz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: estufas

Simple English: Glass buildings in which plants are grown under controlled warmth.

Example: The gardener opened the greenhouses at dawn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There was an orchard behind it, a paved stable yard on the left, and glass greenhouses fixed along a brick wall. Go to

Original English Version

1. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. Go to

greyhound /ˈɡreɪhaʊnd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: galgo

Simple English: A tall thin dog that can run very fast.

Example: His greyhound followed him everywhere.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was thin like a greyhound and badly covered with rust. Go to

Original English Version

1. The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. Go to

grinning /ˈɡrɪnɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arreganhando os dentes; sorrindo largamente

Simple English: Smiling widely so that the teeth show.

Example: He came back grinning with the prize in his hand.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The crew stood around listening, grinning widely. Go to

gripped /ɡrɪpt/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: agarrou; tomou conta de

Simple English: Held very tightly, or took hold of someone's attention or feelings.

Example: She gripped the rail as the boat rolled.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. Go to

groaned /ɡroʊnd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: gemeu

Simple English: Made a deep sound to show pain or displeasure.

Example: The old man groaned as he stood up.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He explained that the big man with a beard had groaned about his leg and fainted like a girl. Go to

Original English Version

1. When we pulled him in he groaned, “Oh, my leg! oh, my leg!” and turned up his eyes. Go to

grog /ɡrɑːɡ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: grogue; bebida alcoólica diluída

Simple English: A strong alcoholic drink, traditionally rum mixed with water.

Example: The sailors were served a small cup of grog.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He knew the port well, it seems, and in his trouble he went straight to Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Go to

2. He has been drinking hard in that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop for three days. Go to

growled /ɡraʊld/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: rosnou

Simple English: Made a low, angry sound.

Example: He often growled at the Scarecrow.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The poor devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they--‘Shut up!’ growled the German stolidly. Go to

2. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep down in the water. Go to

3. By heavens! _I_ would.” I don’t know why his tone provoked me, and I said, “There is a kind of courage in facing it out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away nobody would trouble to run after him.” “Courage be hanged!” growled Brierly. Go to

grumpy /ˈɡrʌmpi/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: rabugento

Simple English: Easily annoyed and often complaining.

Example: The old man was grumpy before breakfast.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He said old Symons was a good man, even if he was grumpy and kept swearing. Go to

Original English Version

1. I don’t mind a bit him being grumpy with us. Go to

grunt /ɡrʌnt/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: grunhido; resmungo

Simple English: A short low sound made in the throat.

Example: He answered with a grunt and kept working.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Now he only gave a bad-tempered grunt. Go to

Original English Version

1. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. Go to

guilder /ˈɡɪldər/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: florim; antiga unidade monetária neerlandesa

Simple English: A former unit of money used in the Netherlands and its colonies.

Example: A bottle there cost one guilder.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. De Jongh, who charged a guilder for each bottle without even blinking, would call me aside and say in a private way, with his small wrinkled face twisted up, 'Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

Original English Version

1. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

gunboat /ˈɡʌnboʊt/ (12 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: canhoneira

Simple English: A small military vessel armed with guns.

Example: A gunboat entered the harbor under a white flag.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. One was the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg when he fell down a hatchway. Go to

Original English Version

1. There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. Go to

gurgling /ˈɡɜːrɡəlɪŋ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: gorgolejantes; que borbulham

Simple English: Making a bubbling sound, like flowing water.

Example: A gurgling brook ran beside the path.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. Go to

gust /ɡʌst/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: rajada de vento; ímpeto

Simple English: A sudden strong rush of wind.

Example: A gust took his hat straight off his head.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The next gust seemed to blow all this away. Go to

gusts /ɡʌsts/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: rajadas de vento

Simple English: Short, sudden bursts of strong wind.

Example: Sharp gusts shook the shutters all afternoon.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Between the gusts, Jim could see the rough tide, small boats tossed along the shore, still buildings in the blowing mist, large ferries pitching at anchor, and huge landing-stages rising and falling under spray. Go to

hallo /həˈloʊ/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: olá!; eh!

Simple English: A call used to greet someone or to get attention.

Example: Hallo, he cried from the gate.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Go to

Original English Version

1. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Go to

halter /ˈhɔːltər/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cabresto; corda da forca

Simple English: A rope or strap put on a horse's head to lead it.

Example: I must find a halter for him, said the boy.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! Go to

handkerchief /ˈhæŋkərtʃɪf/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: lenço

Simple English: A small square of cloth used for wiping the nose or face.

Example: He folded his handkerchief and put it back in his pocket.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Seeing that old Jones, with watery eyes, wiping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, and hearing the dog's sad cry, while the dirty, fly-ridden cabin stood as the only place to honor Brierly's memory, made his remembered figure seem very small and sad. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Go to

harshest /ˈhɑːrʃɪst/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: mais severo; mais duro

Simple English: Most severe, cruel, or unpleasant.

Example: The harshest officer sometimes spoke gently to children.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His grey-haired mate was a first-rate sailor and a pleasant old man with strangers, but with his captain he was the harshest chief officer I have ever seen. Go to

hatchway /ˈhætʃweɪ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: escotilha; passagem pela escotilha

Simple English: An opening in a ship's deck, often with steps or a ladder.

Example: Smoke rose suddenly through the hatchway.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Above him there was a lot of running and shouting, and when he came through the hatchway, he stopped, as if shocked and unable to understand. Go to

2. One was the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg when he fell down a hatchway. Go to

Original English Version

1. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded. Go to

2. There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. Go to

hatchways /ˈhætʃweɪz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: escotilhas; passagens pelas escotilhas

Simple English: Openings in a ship's decks used for access below.

Example: Guards stood beside the open hatchways.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then they poured down the open hatchways and filled the inside of the ship, like water filling a cistern. Go to

Original English Version

1. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Go to

hazy /ˈheɪzi/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: enevoado; nebuloso; confuso

Simple English: Slightly obscured by mist or unclear in thought.

Example: The island was only a hazy shape at sunrise.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure. Go to

2. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Go to

3. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal safety, and wished to be concealed. Go to

heartless /ˈhɑːrtləs/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desalmado; sem coração

Simple English: Showing no pity or kindness at all.

Example: It was heartless to leave the dog out in that cold.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I wondered whether Jim was foolish or heartless. Go to

heaviness /ˈhɛvinəs/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: peso; sensação de peso; torpor

Simple English: The quality or feeling of being heavy, slow, or tired.

Example: A pleasant heaviness came over him after dinner.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was also getting sleepy, and a warm, pleasant heaviness ran through him. Go to

heroism /ˈheroʊɪzəm/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: heroísmo

Simple English: Very great courage.

Example: The story tells of quiet heroism.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The storm had created a false heroism, just as it had pretended to be terrible. Go to

Original English Version

1. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. Go to

hesitated /ˈhɛzɪteɪtɪd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: hesitou; vacilou

Simple English: Waited before acting because of doubt or fear.

Example: The Lion no longer hesitated.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At the door the man hesitated and snorted like a frightened bullock. Go to

hiss /hɪs/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: silvo; sibilar

Simple English: To make a long sound like the letter s, as a snake does.

Example: The kettle began to hiss on the fire.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The Patna moved on with a soft hiss over the smooth, bright water. Go to

Original English Version

1. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer. Go to

2. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

Holy /ˈhoʊli/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Santo; sagrado; Santa

Simple English: Sacred and respected within a religious context or belief system.

Example: The church is a holy place for many people to worship.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. An Arab, the leader of that holy journey, came last. Go to

horribly /ˈhɔːrəbli/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: horrivelmente; terrivelmente

Simple English: In a very unpleasant or frightening way.

Example: The wind howled horribly around her.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then he screamed horribly and had to run for his life from a swarm of centipedes. Go to

horseshoe /ˈhɔːrsʃuː/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ferradura; em forma de ferradura

Simple English: A U-shaped iron shoe for a horse, or anything shaped like one.

Example: He wore a neat horseshoe moustache.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, sharp cheekbones, and both elbows on the desk. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Go to

hotly /ˈhɑːtli/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: com veemência; irritadamente

Simple English: In an angry, excited, or strongly felt manner.

Example: She hotly denied the accusation.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine,” he pursued hotly. Go to

hound /haʊnd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cão de caça; perseguir sem trégua

Simple English: A dog used for hunting; also to chase someone without stopping.

Example: The hound picked up the scent at once.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then the captain of the Patna said, "That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound." He may have known me; I think he did. Go to

Original English Version

1. “That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound,” said the captain of the Patna. Go to

2. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open window. Go to

hour's /ˈaʊərz/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de uma hora

Simple English: Belonging to or lasting one hour.

Example: The village is an hour's walk from here.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The pronouncement gave me food for an hour’s anxious thought. Go to

hovered /ˈhʌvərd/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pairou; rondou; ficou suspenso

Simple English: Stayed in one place in the air, or stayed close without acting.

Example: A hawk hovered above the field for a long minute.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. Go to

howl /haʊl/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: uivo; lamúria

Simple English: A long loud cry, like that of a wolf or a dog.

Example: A howl came out of the dark forest.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. None of them was quick enough to see her go, but they saw she was gone all right, and they shouted together - like this." Then came a wolf-like howl that seemed to search through my soul. Go to

Original English Version

1. A wolfish howl searched the very recesses of my soul. Go to

2. H-e-elp!” An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. Go to

3. The howl pursued me like a vengeance. Go to

hummed /hʌmd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cantarolou; sussurrou uma melodia

Simple English: Sang with the lips closed, or made a low steady sound.

Example: He hummed an old tune while he washed the car.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. She turned her bow gently into the wind, and her thin rigging hummed like the deep voice of her old sea life. Go to

humming /ˈhʌmɪŋ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cantarolando

Simple English: Singing a tune with the lips closed.

Example: She was humming while she washed the plates.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The shaking stopped, and the faint thunder died away at once, as if the ship had crossed a narrow band of vibrating water and humming air. Go to

Original English Version

1. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. Go to

2. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air. Go to

hungrily /ˈhʌŋɡrəli/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: famintamente; com fome

Simple English: In a way that shows you want something very much.

Example: The boy ate hungrily and said nothing.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. Go to

hurrying /ˈhɜːriɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: correndo; apressando-se

Simple English: Moving faster than usual.

Example: People were hurrying to catch the last bus.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was hurrying a little ahead, and the sunlight on him made his size look shocking. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was hurrying on a little in advance, and the sunlight beating on him brought out his bulk in a startling way. Go to

huts /hʌts/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cabanas; choupanas

Simple English: Small simple houses made of wood, mud or grass.

Example: Ten huts stood beside the lake.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They came from lonely huts, crowded campongs, and sea villages. Go to

Original English Version

1. They came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from villages by the sea. Go to

impatience /ɪmˈpeɪʃəns/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: impaciência

Simple English: The feeling of not wanting to wait.

Example: His impatience showed in his quick steps.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. Go to

indifference /ɪnˈdɪfərəns/ (9 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: indiferença

Simple English: A lack of interest or feeling about something.

Example: He listened with complete indifference.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. Go to

infernal /ɪnˈfɜːrnəl/ (19 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: infernal; maldito

Simple English: Extremely unpleasant or, literally, relating to hell.

Example: That infernal noise continued until dawn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He muttered to himself, and I only caught a few words like "confounded steam!" and "infernal steam!" - something about steam. Go to

Original English Version

1. He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like “confounded steam!” and “infernal steam!”--something about steam. Go to

2. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Go to

3. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some infernal alloy in his metal. Go to

4. This infernal publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. Go to

inkstand /ˈɪŋkstænd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tinteiro

Simple English: A small pot that holds ink for writing.

Example: He dipped his pen in the inkstand.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the middle, the magistrate sat upright in a large armchair, his head tilted a little, his arms folded across his chest, with a few flowers in a glass vase beside his inkstand. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Go to

interruptions /ˌɪntəˈrʌpʃənz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: interrupções

Simple English: Events that briefly stop an activity or conversation.

Example: Despite frequent interruptions, the meeting continued.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions affording some measure of relief; and in regard to the listeners’ endurance, the postulate must be accepted that the story was interesting. Go to

irritation /ˌɪrɪˈteɪʃən/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: irritação; aborrecimento

Simple English: A feeling of annoyance or the act of causing discomfort.

Example: His irritation grew with every delay.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. Go to

jaunty /ˈdʒɔːnti/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: garboso

Simple English: Cheerful and confident in manner.

Example: He wore his hat at a jaunty angle.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Another was tall and thin, wearing a blue flannel coat, dry as wood, with grey moustaches and a silly, jaunty look. Go to

Original English Version

1. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Go to

jerks /dʒɜːrks/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: solavancos; espasmos

Simple English: Sudden short sharp movements.

Example: The cart moved forward in jerks.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Go to

jetty /ˈdʒɛti/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cais; molhe; píer

Simple English: A structure extending from the shore where boats can land.

Example: The launch tied up beside the wooden jetty.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. After she was painted outside and whitewashed inside, about eight hundred pilgrims were driven aboard while she lay with steam up beside a wooden jetty. Go to

Original English Version

1. After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a wooden jetty. Go to

jim's /dʒɪmz/ (143 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de Jim; forma possessiva do nome Jim

Simple English: The possessive form of the personal name Jim.

Example: Jim's decision surprised his closest friend.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Jim's father had enough religious knowledge to guide poor people without troubling the comfort of those who lived in mansions. Go to

2. Between his answers, Jim's wandering eyes rested on a white man who sat apart from the others. Go to

3. No wonder Jim's case bored him. Go to

Original English Version

1. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. Go to

2. Jim’s eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and clear. Go to

3. ‘No wonder Jim’s case bored him, and while I thought with something akin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the young man under examination, he was probably holding silent inquiry into his own case. Go to

jongh /jɒŋ/ (10 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Jongh; sobrenome preservado em De Jongh

Simple English: The surname in the Dutch personal name De Jongh.

Example: Jongh kept careful accounts behind the shop.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. De Jongh, who charged a guilder for each bottle without even blinking, would call me aside and say in a private way, with his small wrinkled face twisted up, 'Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

Original English Version

1. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

jongh's /jɒŋz/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de Jongh; forma possessiva do sobrenome Jongh

Simple English: The possessive form of the surname Jongh.

Example: Jongh's assistant locked the store at sunset.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he spent all day after day drinking beer in De Jongh's back-shop while he cursed the tyrannical German Empire. Go to

Original English Version

1. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

jove /dʒoʊv/ (52 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Júpiter (em By Jove!, Puxa!)

Simple English: An old name for the Roman god Jupiter, used in the phrase By Jove.

Example: By Jove, that was a fine shot.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The inquiry trouble, the yellow dog trouble - you would not think a filthy native dog would be allowed to trip people up in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you? - the kind of trouble that, in strange and devilish ways, makes me meet men with soft spots, hard spots, and hidden sickness, by Jove, and makes them tell me their secrets as soon as they see me. Go to

2. By Jove! Go to

Original English Version

1. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Go to

2. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Go to

3. We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! Go to

4. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and, by Jove! it wouldn’t have been safe. Go to

keel /kiːl/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: quilha

Simple English: The long piece of wood or metal along the bottom of a ship.

Example: The keel scraped on the sand.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship’s keel upon the sea as the black line drawn by the pencil upon the chart. Go to

ladders /ˈlædərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: escadas de mão; escadas portáteis

Simple English: Frames with steps used for climbing up and down.

Example: Two ladders leaned against the wall of the barn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The boys were rushing up the ladders. Go to

Original English Version

1. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Go to

lascars /ˈlæskərz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: lascars; marinheiros asiáticos de navios europeus, em uso histórico

Simple English: South Asian sailors employed on European ships, in historical usage.

Example: The lascars waited for the serang's command.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There he sits while all those damned natives, serangs, lascars, and quartermasters give evidence that is enough to burn a man with shame. Go to

Original English Version

1. This infernal publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. Go to

latitudes /ˈlætɪtuːdz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: latitudes

Simple English: Distances north or south of the equator, measured in degrees.

Example: Ice was common in those northern latitudes.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was dark and clear, and all the stars shone as plainly as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Go to

Original English Version

1. It was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Go to

lazily /ˈleɪzɪli/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: preguiçosamente

Simple English: In a slow way, without effort.

Example: The cat stretched lazily in the sun.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. So, after a few polite words which he answered lazily like any decent patient, I brought up Patna in a careful question. Go to

leaned /liːnd/ (36 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: apoiou; encostou

Simple English: Rested part of the body against something for support.

Example: Dorothy leaned her chin upon her hand.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "Let go; clear the falls!" He leaned over. Go to

2. He leaned back in his seat, stretched out one arm, and tapped softly with his fingertips on a blotting pad. Go to

3. The magistrate had leaned forward, his pale face near the flowers, and then he dropped to one side, resting his temple in his hand. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘Let go; clear the falls!’ He leaned over. Go to

leaped /liːpt/ (16 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: saltou

Simple English: Jumped a long way or high into the air.

Example: The cat leaped onto the wall.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The verdict must have been complete guilt, and he carried the secret of the evidence with him when he leaped into the sea. Go to

Original English Version

1. He leaped to his feet. Go to

leapt /lɛpt/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: saltou; pulou

Simple English: Jumped suddenly or over a distance.

Example: The cat leapt from the wall to the roof.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The driver whipped the pony, and it leapt forward at a gallop. Go to

leathery /ˈleðəri/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: coriáceo

Simple English: Tough and hard like leather.

Example: The beast had thick leathery skin.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

lighted /ˈlaɪtɪd/ (10 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: aceso

Simple English: Burning, or set on fire.

Example: It is a lighted match.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Go to

limbed /lɪmd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de membros bem proporcionados; bem constituído

Simple English: Having limbs of the stated kind or shape.

Example: The clean-limbed youth moved easily across the deck.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was clean-limbed, clean-faced, and steady on his feet. Go to

Original English Version

1. There he stood, clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of me by false pretences. Go to

loafer /ˈloʊfər/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vagabundo; vadio

Simple English: An idle person who avoids useful work.

Example: The harbour loafer spent his days asking sailors for drinks.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Every worthless loafer in town made a lot of drinks out of this affair. Go to

Original English Version

1. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Go to

longed /lɔːŋd/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ansiava; desejava muito

Simple English: Wanted something very much for a long time.

Example: She longed for a letter from home.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct, I can’t explain. Go to

lurked /lɜːrkt/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: espreitava; ocultava-se

Simple English: Stayed hidden while watching or waiting.

Example: A silent figure lurked beyond the last house.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. Go to

maga /ˈmæɡə/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Maga; apelido da revista Blackwood's Magazine

Simple English: A familiar literary nickname for Blackwood's Magazine.

Example: The story appeared in several numbers of Maga.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I did not expect, however, that it would fill thirteen issues of Maga. Go to

Original English Version

1. When I sat down to it I knew it would be a long book, though I didn’t foresee that it would spread itself over thirteen numbers of Maga. Go to

magistrate's /ˈmædʒɪstreɪts/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do magistrado

Simple English: The possessive form of magistrate.

Example: The magistrate's questions made the witness uneasy.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The inquiry trouble, the yellow dog trouble - you would not think a filthy native dog would be allowed to trip people up in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you? - the kind of trouble that, in strange and devilish ways, makes me meet men with soft spots, hard spots, and hidden sickness, by Jove, and makes them tell me their secrets as soon as they see me. Go to

Original English Version

1. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Go to

mainmast /ˈmeɪnmæst/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mastro principal

Simple English: The principal mast of a sailing vessel.

Example: Two ropes had come loose beside the mainmast.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The taffrail-log showed eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing near the mainmast. Go to

Original English Version

1. The taffrail-log marked eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round the mainmast. Go to

malabar /ˈmæləbɑːr/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Malabar

Simple English: The name used in the novel for the Malabar Hotel and Malabar House.

Example: The guests dined in the long gallery of Malabar House.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Jim still stood there with his hands in his pockets, his back to the sidewalk, looking across the Esplanade toward the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel as if he were about to go for a walk once his friend was ready. Go to

Original English Version

1. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. Go to

malays /məˈleɪz/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: malaios

Simple English: People belonging to the Malay ethnic group.

Example: Two Malays remained quietly at the wheel.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Later, when his strong sense of what he could not bear finally drove him away from seaports and white men and even into the deep forest, the Malays in the jungle village, where he tried to hide his unfortunate gift, added a title to his name. Go to

2. Two Malays stood almost still at the wheel, one on each side. Go to

3. The two Malays at the wheel looked at the white men, but their dark hands stayed on the spokes. Go to

Original English Version

1. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. Go to

2. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Go to

3. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. Go to

manned /mænd/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tripulado; guarnecido por uma tripulação

Simple English: Supplied with the people needed to operate a boat or post.

Example: The launch was manned and ready within minutes.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. ‘Lower away!’ He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail, and rushed after her. Go to

mansions /ˈmænʃənz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mansões

Simple English: Very large fine houses.

Example: Great mansions lined both sides of the avenue.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Jim's father had enough religious knowledge to guide poor people without troubling the comfort of those who lived in mansions. Go to

Original English Version

1. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. Go to

mariani /ˌmæriˈɑːni/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Mariani

Simple English: The surname of the keeper who shelters a fugitive in the novel.

Example: Mariani brought another bottle to the upstairs room.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Mariani, who had known him before and had helped with his bad habits in other places, welcomed him and hid him upstairs with bottles in a dirty room in his poor house. Go to

2. Later Mariani told me he would have done even more for him, without asking questions, because of some old bad favor long ago. Go to

3. Still, he was given a place to stay behind locked doors, with a chair, a table, a mattress, and broken plaster on the floor, while he tried to calm himself with the drinks Mariani gave him. Go to

Original English Version

1. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. Go to

2. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. Go to

3. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. Go to

mariani's /ˌmæriˈɑːniz/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de Mariani

Simple English: The possessive form of the surname Mariani.

Example: They met behind Mariani's noisy drinking shop.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He knew the port well, it seems, and in his trouble he went straight to Mariani's billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Go to

2. He burst the door open, flew down the shaky stairs, landed on Mariani's stomach, got up, and ran like a rabbit into the street. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room and grog-shop near the bazaar. Go to

2. He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani’s stomach, picked himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. Go to

marlow /ˈmɑːrloʊ/ (75 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Marlow

Simple English: The surname of the sailor who narrates much of the novel.

Example: Marlow continued his account after the guests sat down.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Marlow tells only one story, and there are breaks that give the listeners some rest. Go to

2. Later, many times, in faraway places around the world, Marlow showed that he was willing to remember Jim, and to remember him at length and in detail when he spoke aloud. Go to

3. Let Marlow talk." Go to

4. I did not want to go, and that is the truth, Captain Marlow. Go to

5. This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. Go to

6. He wrote like a father to a favorite son, Captain Marlow, though I was twenty-five years older than he was and had gone to sea long before him. Go to

Original English Version

1. And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly. Go to

2. Let that Marlow talk.” Go to

3. I was loth to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow--I couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of. Go to

4. ‘“This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow. Go to

5. “Yes, Captain Marlow. Go to

6. He wrote like a father would to a favourite son, Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years his senior and had tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched. Go to

marlow's /ˈmɑːrloʊz/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de Marlow

Simple English: The possessive form of the surname Marlow.

Example: Marlow's voice carried across the dark verandah.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Some speeches in Parliament have lasted almost six hours, while Marlow's whole part can be read aloud in less than three. Go to

2. Then, at Marlow's first word, his body, stretched out in the chair, would become very still, as if his spirit had gone back into the past and was speaking through his lips. Go to

Original English Version

1. As to the mere physical possibility we all know that some speeches in Parliament have taken nearer six than three hours in delivery; whereas all that part of the book which is Marlow’s narrative can be read through aloud, I should say, in less than three hours. Go to

2. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. Go to

marvellous /ˈmɑːrvələs/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: maravilhoso; assombroso

Simple English: Causing great wonder or admiration.

Example: A marvellous calm settled over the harbour.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. Go to

mass /mæs/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: massa; missa; maciça

Simple English: Affecting a large number of people or things together.

Example: The mass protest gathered thousands of people in the city center.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A bright window high in the ceiling shone down on the three men, making them stand out strongly in the dim court, where the audience seemed like a mass of staring shadows. Go to

masts /mæsts/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mastros

Simple English: Tall poles on a ship that hold the sails.

Example: The masts of the ship broke in the storm.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, or swimming through rough surf with a rope. Go to

Original English Version

1. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. Go to

2. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Go to

matherson /ˈmæθərsən/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Matherson

Simple English: The surname of the seaman known as mad Matherson in the novel.

Example: Matherson once owned the ruined vessel.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. All this happened more than two years later on board the broken-down Fire-Queen, which Jones had somehow got in charge of, through a strange accident involving Matherson, the mad Matherson they usually called him, the same man who used to stay in Hai-phong before the occupation days. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. Go to

meeracle /ˈmiːrəkəl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: milagre (grafia que imita sotaque escocês)

Simple English: A dialect spelling that represents a Scottish pronunciation of miracle.

Example: The captain called their survival a meeracle.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At the start of a week that his Scottish captain later called "a pairfect meeracle," Jim was hurt by a falling spar. Go to

Original English Version

1. Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. Go to

merciful /ˈmɜːrsɪfəl/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: clemente; misericordioso

Simple English: Ready to forgive and not punish.

Example: The judge was merciful to the young man.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Perhaps, unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an excuse. Go to

merciless /ˈmɜːrsɪləs/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: impiedoso; implacável

Simple English: Showing no pity at all.

Example: The merciless sun beat down all afternoon.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Under a thin trail of smoke, the ship went on alone, black and smoking in the bright distance, as if a merciless sky were burning her. Go to

mildest /ˈmaɪldɪst/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: o mais suave

Simple English: Least strong, harsh or severe.

Example: It was the mildest weather they had found.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open window. Go to

mineral /ˈmɪnərəl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: mineral

Simple English: A solid naturally occurring substance with specific chemical composition.

Example: Quartz is a common mineral found in many types of rocks.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. We may also imagine that the listeners had drinks that night, perhaps a glass of mineral water to help the storyteller continue. Go to

miraculous /mɪˈrækjələs/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: milagroso; prodigioso

Simple English: So extraordinary that it seems caused by a miracle.

Example: Their escape from the reef seemed miraculous.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Now the only miraculous thing to me is how foolish I was. Go to

Original English Version

1. The only thing that at this distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of my imbecility. Go to

misfortune /mɪsˈfɔːrtʃən/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: infortúnio; desgraça; azar

Simple English: Bad luck, or an unhappy event.

Example: By some misfortune the letter was lost.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly out of his ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Go to

mission /ˈmɪʃən/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: missão

Simple English: A specific operation carried out in outer space.

Example: The mission aims to gather data about Jupiter's atmosphere and moons.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Far behind, a lighthouse on a dangerous shoal shone like an eye of fire, as if mocking the ship's faithful mission. Go to

mistrust /mɪsˈtrʌst/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desconfiança

Simple English: The feeling that you cannot trust someone.

Example: There was mistrust between the two families.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He seemed to be one of those lucky men who never feel doubt or self-mistrust. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust. Go to

mists /mɪsts/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: névoas; brumas

Simple English: Clouds of tiny water drops close to the ground or sea.

Example: The morning mists concealed the river mouth.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. But I can assure my readers that he did not come from cold or twisted thought, and he is not a figure from the northern mists. Go to

Original English Version

1. He’s not a figure of Northern Mists either. Go to

mizzen /ˈmɪzən/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mezena; de mezena

Simple English: The mast or sail situated behind a ship's mainmast.

Example: He caught a line beside the mizzen mast.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Mr. Symons saw it." A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he grabbed a rope. Go to

Original English Version

1. Mr. Symons saw it.’ A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. Go to

moaned /moʊnd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: gemeu; lamentou-se

Simple English: Made a long low crying sound.

Example: The wind moaned around the empty house.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He moaned as he ran. . . .’ Go to

moaning /ˈmoʊnɪŋ/ (9 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: gemendo; lamentando-se

Simple English: Making a long low sound because of pain or unhappiness.

Example: The wind was moaning in the chimney all night.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was moaning as he ran...' Go to

2. He could almost repeat the engineer's moaning like an echo, to help these men who wanted facts. Go to

Original English Version

1. He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men who wanted facts. Go to

montague /ˈmɒntəɡjuː/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Montague

Simple English: The given name of Captain Montague Brierly.

Example: Montague Brierly was proud of his command.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

Original English Version

1. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Go to

moorings /ˈmʊrɪŋz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: amarras; pontos de amarração

Simple English: Ropes, chains, or fixed places used to hold a vessel.

Example: The training ship strained against her moorings.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The old training-ship, tied to her moorings, shook all over. Go to

Original English Version

1. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. Go to

motionless /ˈmoʊʃənləs/ (22 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: imóvel; sem se mexer

Simple English: Not moving at all.

Example: He stood motionless in the doorway.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Go to

2. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Go to

3. ‘Where did you get drink?’ inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Go to

4. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. Go to

mount /maʊnt/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: montagem; montar; monte

Simple English: To increase gradually over time, especially intensity or frequency.

Example: The tension began to mount as the deadline approached quickly.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

moustache /ˈmʌstæʃ/ (12 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bigode

Simple English: Hair that grows above a man's mouth.

Example: He curled the ends of his moustache.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had a harsh "blood-and-iron" look, with a purple nose and a red moustache. Go to

2. To my great surprise, the tall man with the drooping white moustache was there too. Go to

3. His thin brown face, with the white moustache, looked calm on the pillow, like an old soldier's face, except for a strange fear in his eyes. Go to

Original English Version

1. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. Go to

2. To my great surprise the other one, the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also found his way there. Go to

moustaches /ˈmʌstæʃɪz/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bigodes

Simple English: The hair that grows above a man's mouth.

Example: He twisted his white moustaches.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Another was tall and thin, wearing a blue flannel coat, dry as wood, with grey moustaches and a silly, jaunty look. Go to

2. The tall one with grey moustaches was the chief engineer, a well-known bad character. Go to

Original English Version

1. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Go to

2. I saw that with one of them it was a case of a broken arm; and as to the long individual with grey moustaches he was the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious personality. Go to

3. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. Go to

muffled /ˈmʌfəld/ (18 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: abafada; surda

Simple English: Not clear because something covers the sound.

Example: We heard a muffled cry behind the wall.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. From that heap came the muffled words, 'What's that?' in a voice full of deep misery. Go to

Original English Version

1. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Go to

2. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Go to

3. This heap said ‘What’s that?’ in the muffled accents of profound grief. Go to

mumble /ˈmʌmbl/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: resmungar baixinho

Simple English: To speak quietly and unclearly.

Example: Do not mumble when you answer me.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Go to

mumbled /ˈmʌmbəld/ (17 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: balbuciou; disse entre dentes

Simple English: Spoke quietly and not clearly.

Example: He mumbled an answer and looked away.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He mumbled something about my disappointment and said his chief officer had got the promotion to the Pelion. Go to

Original English Version

1. He mumbled to himself; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like “confounded steam!” and “infernal steam!”--something about steam. Go to

2. He mumbled something about my natural disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Go to

murmur /ˈmɜːrmər/ (26 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: murmúrio; queixa

Simple English: A soft low continuous sound, or to speak very quietly.

Example: A murmur of agreement ran through the room.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Go to

2. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the ocean. Go to

murmured /ˈmɜːrmərd/ (27 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: murmuraram

Simple English: Said something in a soft, low voice.

Example: The crowd murmured when the lights went out.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. ‘I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest, but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. Go to

murmuring /ˈmɜːrmərɪŋ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: murmurando; sussurrando

Simple English: The sound of soft low voices.

Example: A murmuring rose from the back of the hall.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Only a faint hum and low murmuring voices showed that many people were there. Go to

mutiny /ˈmjuːtəni/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: motim; revolta

Simple English: A refusal by soldiers or sailors to obey their leaders.

Example: The mutiny began on the second ship.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He faced wild people on tropical shores, stopped mutiny on the open sea, and in a small boat on the ocean kept up the spirits of desperate men. Go to

muttered /ˈmʌtərd/ (42 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: resmungou; murmurou

Simple English: Said something in a low voice that was hard to hear.

Example: He muttered a few words and walked away.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He muttered to himself, and I only caught a few words like "confounded steam!" and "infernal steam!" - something about steam. Go to

2. He nodded, bit his thumb again, and muttered a curse. Go to

mutters /ˈmʌtərz/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: resmunga; murmura

Simple English: Speaks quietly and unclearly, often in complaint.

Example: He mutters to himself when he is worried.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. Go to

mysterious /mɪˈstɪriəs/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: misterioso

Simple English: Having puzzling qualities suggesting hidden motives or secrets.

Example: The old house had a mysterious aura that intrigued the children.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. This went on for more than two weeks, and people started to think that whatever was mysterious about it would also turn out to be tragic. Go to

2. Nothing mysterious kept me there. Go to

natured /ˈneɪtʃərd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de índole; de temperamento

Simple English: Having a nature of a certain kind, as in good-natured.

Example: He was a slow but good-natured man.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. No doubt, to have all this forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. Go to

nautical /ˈnɔːtɪkəl/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: náutico; marítimo

Simple English: Having to do with ships and the sea.

Example: He used a nautical word for the strange craft.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The magistrate, clean-shaven and calm, looked deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. Go to

2. Their job was to deal with the results, and honestly, a police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not suited to much else. Go to

Original English Version

1. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. Go to

2. Their business was to come down upon the consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not much good for anything else. Go to

3. ‘All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. Go to

nearer /ˈnɪrər/ (12 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mais perto; mais próximo

Simple English: Closer in distance.

Example: The land grows beautiful as one comes nearer the city.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. As to the mere physical possibility we all know that some speeches in Parliament have taken nearer six than three hours in delivery; whereas all that part of the book which is Marlow’s narrative can be read through aloud, I should say, in less than three hours. Go to

2. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. Go to

necks /nɛks/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pescoços

Simple English: The parts of the body that join the head to the shoulders.

Example: The Scarecrow twisted forty necks.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was full of people craning their necks and almost climbing over each other to see. Go to

Original English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Go to

nodded /ˈnɑːdɪd/ (23 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: acenou com a cabeça

Simple English: Moved the head up and down to say yes or to greet someone.

Example: The figure nodded kindly at her.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He nodded, bit his thumb again, and muttered a curse. Go to

2. He blew his nose and nodded sadly. Go to

Original English Version

1. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--“Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. Go to

nodding /ˈnɑːdɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: acenando com a cabeça

Simple English: Moving the head down and up to show yes.

Example: He kept nodding while she talked.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He blew his nose, nodding at me dolefully: “Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of ourselves.” Go to

oars /ɔːrz/ (16 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: remos

Simple English: Long poles with flat ends used to row a boat.

Example: He pulled the oars in and let the boat drift.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His job was to race by sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks to reach any ship about to anchor. Go to

2. Keep stroke!" Then suddenly she lifted her bow high, and, with her oars raised over a wave, broke free from the wind and tide. Go to

Original English Version

1. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. Go to

2. Keep stroke!’ And suddenly she lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide. Go to

obedient /oʊˈbiːdiənt/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: obediente; submisso

Simple English: Doing what you are told to do by someone in authority.

Example: The dog is obedient with everyone except the postman.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. This way, this way.” He jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. Go to

offend /əˈfɛnd/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: ofender

Simple English: To cause someone to feel disrespected or upset.

Example: His comment might offend people who take the issue seriously.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Yet I could not truly feel offended. Go to

orderly /ˈɔːrdərli/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ordenada; bem arrumada

Simple English: Neat and well arranged.

Example: The books stood in orderly rows.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He moved on in an orderly way toward the rising sun, while the truth followed him, almost by chance but surely. Go to

Original English Version

1. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. Go to

ossa /ˈɒsə/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Ossa

Simple English: The name of the steel steamship commanded by Brierly.

Example: The Ossa reached Shanghai ahead of schedule.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Everyone else who did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa seemed lesser by comparison. Go to

2. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

3. He gave me many instructions about the voyage and about how I should behave with our people in Shanghai, so that I would keep command of the Ossa. Go to

4. The captain of the Pelion was moved to the Ossa in Shanghai. Go to

Original English Version

1. The rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures. Go to

2. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Go to

3. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--I had been in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end of hints as to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I should keep the command of the Ossa. Go to

4. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. Go to

otherwise /ˈʌðərwaɪz/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: caso contrário; senão; contrariamente

Simple English: If not, then a different result would occur.

Example: You must hurry; otherwise, you'll miss the train.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Otherwise where would you be, you and this old ship with her plates like brown paper? Go to

ough /ʌx/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ugh!; argh!; gemido de dor ou horror

Simple English: A written representation of a rough groan or exclamation.

Example: Ough! he cried as the pain returned.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Ough! Go to

2. Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Go to

outer /ˈaʊtər/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: exterior

Simple English: Located on the outside surface or edge of something.

Example: The outer part of the house needs a fresh coat of paint.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In a few moments I saw the man's huge body hurry down and stop on the outer steps. Go to

outwardly /ˈaʊtwərdli/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: exteriormente; na aparência

Simple English: As seen from the outside, though reality may be different.

Example: Outwardly, the two officers seemed calm.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Outwardly, they were very different. Go to

Original English Version

1. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Go to

2. ‘This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. Go to

overboard /ˈoʊvərbɔːrd/ (31 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ao mar; pela borda

Simple English: Over the side of a ship and into the water.

Example: A crate went overboard during the storm.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He stopped the boy, who seemed ready to jump overboard. Go to

2. He nearly went overboard too, but old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed his legs. Go to

3. If I ever thought I was drunk, I would jump overboard and kill myself. Go to

4. He went overboard at sea barely a week after the inquiry ended, and less than three days after leaving port. Go to

5. It was as if I had seen him go overboard, and I could tell how far behind he had been left. Go to

6. But I can say this for him: once he was overboard, he did not try to swim. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘Too late, youngster.’ The captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious defeat in his eyes. Go to

2. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped. Go to

3. If I thought I was drunk I would jump overboard--do away with myself, b’gosh. Go to

4. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of the inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward passage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he had suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open wide for his reception. Go to

5. That’s the only sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but I am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try to swim a stroke, the same as he would have had pluck enough to keep up all day long on the bare chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Go to

6. “You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only to give an unlucky man a last show to get on. Go to

pairfect /ˈpeərfekt/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: perfeito (grafia que imita sotaque escocês)

Simple English: A dialect spelling that represents a Scottish pronunciation of perfect.

Example: The engineer called the repair a pairfect success.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At the start of a week that his Scottish captain later called "a pairfect meeracle," Jim was hurt by a falling spar. Go to

Original English Version

1. Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. Go to

pajamas /pəˈdʒɑːməz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: pijama; roupas de dormir

Simple English: Loose clothes worn for sleeping.

Example: The skipper appeared on deck in striped pajamas.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His skipper came up quietly in pajamas and an open sleeping jacket. Go to

pantry /ˈpæntri/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: despensa; copa

Simple English: A small room or cupboard where food is kept.

Example: There was nothing in the pantry but rice and salt.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the morning, while I was dressing in my ship cabin, I could hear my Parsee Dubash talking about the Patna with the steward through the wall, while he drank tea in the pantry as a favour. Go to

Original English Version

1. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. Go to

Parliament /ˈpɑːrləmənt/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: Parlamento; assembleia

Simple English: Elected representatives who create and amend laws.

Example: Parliament meets regularly to discuss and pass new pieces of legislation.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Some speeches in Parliament have lasted almost six hours, while Marlow's whole part can be read aloud in less than three. Go to

parlour /ˈpɑːrlər/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sala de visitas (grafia britânica)

Simple English: A room for receiving visitors, in British spelling.

Example: They took tea in the little parlour.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s heart. Go to

parsee /ˈpɑːrsiː/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: parse

Simple English: A member of an old religious group in India.

Example: A Parsee company came to the town.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the morning, while I was dressing in my ship cabin, I could hear my Parsee Dubash talking about the Patna with the steward through the wall, while he drank tea in the pantry as a favour. Go to

Original English Version

1. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. Go to

parsonage /ˈpɑːrsənɪdʒ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: casa paroquial

Simple English: The house provided for a parish priest or minister.

Example: He grew up in a quiet country parsonage.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He originally came from a parsonage. Go to

Original English Version

1. Originally he came from a parsonage. Go to

parted /ˈpɑːrtɪd/ (12 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: nos separamos

Simple English: Went away from each other.

Example: We parted at the gate and never met again.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was a little showy man in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. Go to

Original English Version

1. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. Go to

passage /ˈpæsɪdʒ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: passagem; trecho

Simple English: A narrow corridor giving access to rooms or areas.

Example: The passage led us to the library at the end of the hall.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. She cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, and went on through the One-degree passage. Go to

2. I accepted defeat and escaped through a long window into the outside passage. Go to

patna /ˈpætnə/ (64 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Patna

Simple English: The name of the ageing pilgrim steamship abandoned by Jim and its officers.

Example: The Patna left port with hundreds of pilgrims aboard.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then, suddenly, he gave up the idea of going home and signed on as chief mate of the Patna. Go to

2. The Patna was an old local steamer. Go to

3. Then the Patna cast off and moved away from the wharf. Go to

4. The Patna moved on with a soft hiss over the smooth, bright water. Go to

5. On both sides of the Patna, two deep trails of water followed her. Go to

6. In the morning, while I was dressing in my ship cabin, I could hear my Parsee Dubash talking about the Patna with the steward through the wall, while he drank tea in the pantry as a favour. Go to

Original English Version

1. In time, beside the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna. Go to

2. The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. Go to

3. A string of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and backed away from the wharf. Go to

4. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer. Go to

5. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

6. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. Go to

paused /pɔːzd/ (23 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pararam; detiveram-se

Simple English: Stopped for a short time before going on.

Example: She paused at the door and looked back.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Because his mind was so active, he sometimes paused in his speech... Go to

Original English Version

1. I knew then there must be a big hole below the water-line.’ He paused. Go to

2. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt” with in those places. Go to

pelion /ˈpiːliən/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Pelion

Simple English: The name of a steamship in the novel.

Example: The Pelion required a new captain at Shanghai.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The captain of the Pelion was moved to the Ossa in Shanghai. Go to

2. He mumbled something about my disappointment and said his chief officer had got the promotion to the Pelion. Go to

Original English Version

1. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. Go to

2. He mumbled something about my natural disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Go to

penang /pəˈnæŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Penang

Simple English: An island and state on the northwestern coast of Malaysia.

Example: Jim found temporary work in Penang.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Over the years he was known in Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Penang, and Batavia, and in each place he was only Jim the water-clerk. Go to

Original English Version

1. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Go to

pension /ˈpɛnʃən/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: pensão; Pensões; previdência

Simple English: Regular payments given to someone after retirement from their job.

Example: She plans to travel the world with her pension after she retires.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He used to say that he had reached the highest point in his job, his pension was safe, and he would rather go home than accept bad ideas of duty. Go to

peons /ˈpiːənz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: serventes; policiais subalternos na Índia colonial

Simple English: Low-ranking attendants, labourers, or police orderlies in colonial South Asia.

Example: Court peons carried messages between the rooms.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Along the walls, the court peons in long white coats moved quickly back and forth on bare toes, with red sashes and red turbans, as quiet as ghosts and alert as retrievers. Go to

Original English Version

1. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Go to

2. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Go to

phong /fɔːŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Phong; parte do topônimo Hai-Phong

Simple English: The second component of the Vietnamese place name Hai-Phong.

Example: The old record spells the port with Phong after Hai.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. All this happened more than two years later on board the broken-down Fire-Queen, which Jones had somehow got in charge of, through a strange accident involving Matherson, the mad Matherson they usually called him, the same man who used to stay in Hai-phong before the occupation days. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. Go to

pierced /pɪrst/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: trespassou; atravessou

Simple English: Made a hole through something with a sharp point.

Example: A nail had pierced the tyre near the rim.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand what I mean. Go to

pilgrim /ˈpɪlɡrɪm/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: peregrino

Simple English: A person who travels to a holy place.

Example: He walked as a pilgrim for three months.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. But the truth is that I first planned a short story only about the pilgrim ship. Go to

2. Only then did I see that the event on the pilgrim ship was a good beginning for a free, wandering story. Go to

3. Then he told me that the chief engineer from the pilgrim ship was also there with a terrible case of delirium caused by drink. Go to

Original English Version

1. But, seriously, the truth of the matter is, that my first thought was of a short story, concerned only with the pilgrim ship episode; nothing more. Go to

2. It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim ship episode was a good starting-point for a free and wandering tale; that it was an event, too, which could conceivably colour the whole ‘sentiment of existence’ in a simple and sensitive character. Go to

3. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Go to

4. I declare I am as full of my own concerns as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of confessions. Go to

5. I say, we’ve got the chief engineer of that pilgrim ship here. Go to

pilgrims /ˈpɪlɡrɪmz/ (14 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: peregrinos

Simple English: People who travel to a holy place.

Example: Pilgrims walked barefoot to the shrine.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. After she was painted outside and whitewashed inside, about eight hundred pilgrims were driven aboard while she lay with steam up beside a wooden jetty. Go to

2. They were pilgrims, driven by a strict belief. Go to

3. It rose silently at the same distance behind the ship, caught up with her at noon, and burned down on the pilgrims' purpose with its strong rays. Go to

4. Below the awnings, the pilgrims trusted the white men and their courage, and they believed in the power of the ship and its iron shell. Go to

5. Honestly, I do not care in the least about all the pilgrims who ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this even to a ship full of old rags. Go to

Original English Version

1. After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a wooden jetty. Go to

2. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Go to

3. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Go to

4. Frankly, I don’t care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of old rags in bales. Go to

pious /ˈpaɪəs/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: piedoso; devoto

Simple English: Showing deep respect for religion.

Example: A pious old woman lit the lamps.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. An Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. Go to

2. Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows. Go to

3. One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition. Go to

pitch /pɪtʃ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arremesso; passo; campo

Simple English: It refers to how high or low a sound is.

Example: The singer hit the perfect pitch during the concert last night.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Between the gusts, Jim could see the rough tide, small boats tossed along the shore, still buildings in the blowing mist, large ferries pitching at anchor, and huge landing-stages rising and falling under spray. Go to

pith /pɪθ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de cortiça vegetal; de fibra leve

Simple English: Made from the light inner tissue of certain plants, especially in a tropical helmet.

Example: He shaded his face with a battered pith hat.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The punkah wind moved over the heads of the dark-skinned natives wrapped in loose cloth, over the Europeans sitting together in heavy heat in drill suits that fit them tightly like skin, and holding their round pith hats on their knees. Go to

2. He also looked very ridiculous and grand, wearing a dirty sleeping suit with bright green and deep orange stripes, ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and someone else's old pith hat. Go to

Original English Version

1. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Go to

2. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. Go to

pitiful /ˈpɪtɪfəl/ (14 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: lastimável; deplorável; que dá pena

Simple English: Making you feel sorry, or so poor in quality that it deserves scorn.

Example: The wet kitten made a pitiful sound at the door.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. Go to

plainly /ˈpleɪnli/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: claramente; nitidamente

Simple English: In a clear and simple way.

Example: She told him plainly that she would not go.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was dark and clear, and all the stars shone as plainly as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Go to

planks /plæŋks/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tábuas

Simple English: Long flat pieces of wood.

Example: The bridge was made of loose planks.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They slept on mats, blankets, or bare planks, on every deck and in dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloth or dirty rags, with their heads on small bundles and their faces on bent arms. Go to

Original English Version

1. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Go to

politely /pəˈlaɪtli/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: educadamente; com cortesia

Simple English: In a way that shows good manners.

Example: I am quite well, thank you, she replied politely.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Jim jumped and answered politely. Go to

2. I ask you politely, who would not throw up such a cursed job? Go to

portico /ˈpɔːrtɪkoʊ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pórtico

Simple English: A roofed entrance supported by columns.

Example: They waited beneath the hotel's yellow portico.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Jim still stood there with his hands in his pockets, his back to the sidewalk, looking across the Esplanade toward the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel as if he were about to go for a walk once his friend was ready. Go to

Original English Version

1. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. Go to

portuguee /ˌpɔːrtʃəˈɡiː/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: português (forma coloquial depreciativa)

Simple English: A nonstandard and disparaging historical form of Portuguese used for a person.

Example: The angry sailor called the clerk a Portuguee.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then he cried that if they were not "God-forsaken Portuguee," they would know the hospital was the right place for him. Go to

Original English Version

1. “If you weren’t a God-forsaken Portuguee,” I heard him yell, “you would know that the hospital is the right place for me.” He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. Go to

pose /poʊz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pose; posar; representar

Simple English: To introduce a threat, danger, or problem.

Example: High temperatures can pose a risk to people's health and safety.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I mean the deep ability to face temptation honestly, without posing. Go to

praise /preɪz/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: louvor; louvar; elogios

Simple English: To express admiration or approval toward someone or something.

Example: The teacher will praise students who submit their projects on time.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Still, that evening he sat apart and thought about it while the boatman of the cutter, a boy with a girl's face and big grey eyes, was praised as a hero. Go to

2. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

Glossary: New Words (3/4)

prance /præns/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: empinar-se

Simple English: To move with high lively steps, the way a proud horse does.

Example: The pony began to prance across the field.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I remembered seeing him slip away during the quarrel, moving in a strange half-prance, half-shuffle and trying not to look afraid. Go to

Original English Version

1. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. Go to

professional /prəˈfɛʃənəl/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: profissional

Simple English: Doing an activity as a job rather than just for pleasure.

Example: He is a professional chef with many years of experience.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. We have all kinds among us, even some complete scoundrels, but we must keep professional decency or we become no better than loose repairmen wandering around. Go to

propeller /prəˈpelər/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: hélice

Simple English: A set of turning blades that drives a ship or an aircraft.

Example: The propeller began to spin faster and faster.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The propeller turned steadily, as if this safe world had been planned for it. Go to

Original English Version

1. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

puffed /pʌft/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: estufado; inchado

Simple English: Swollen out, or made bigger with air.

Example: His head was puffed out at the top with brains.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren’t bad chaps though. Go to

2. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to strike him. Go to

puffing /ˈpʌfɪŋ/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: estufando; enchendo de ar

Simple English: Breathing hard and quickly, or blowing out air.

Example: He came up the hill puffing badly.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He jumped up, tiptoeing and puffing himself up like a little fighting cock. Go to

punkah /ˈpʌŋkə/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: punkah (abanador de teto)

Simple English: A large cloth fan hung from the ceiling and pulled by a rope.

Example: The punkah moved slowly above the beds.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The punkah wind moved over the heads of the dark-skinned natives wrapped in loose cloth, over the Europeans sitting together in heavy heat in drill suits that fit them tightly like skin, and holding their round pith hats on their knees. Go to

Original English Version

1. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Go to

punkahs /ˈpʌŋkəz/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: punkahs; abanadores de teto

Simple English: Large cloth fans hung from ceilings and pulled by ropes.

Example: Boys pulled the punkahs all night.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Above him, the large punkahs moved gently. Go to

2. Inside, the punkahs made a cold wind, his shame made him burn, and the watching eyes felt like knives. Go to

Original English Version

1. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. Go to

2. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. Go to

3. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Go to

purposeful /ˈpɜːrpəsfəl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: deliberado; cheio de propósito

Simple English: Showing clear intention and determination.

Example: Her purposeful steps carried her straight to the gate.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The storm felt fierce and purposeful, and the screaming wind and wild confusion of earth and sky seemed aimed at him. Go to

purser /ˈpɜːrsər/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: comissário de bordo; tesoureiro do navio

Simple English: The officer responsible for money, accounts, and supplies on a ship.

Example: The purser checked the passenger list twice.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. One was the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg when he fell down a hatchway. Go to

Original English Version

1. There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. Go to

puzzled /ˈpʌzəld/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: intrigada; confusa

Simple English: Not able to understand something.

Example: The strange note left her puzzled.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. But one comment about the book once puzzled and surprised me. Go to

Original English Version

1. But once I had occasion to be puzzled and surprised. Go to

pyjamas /pəˈdʒɑːməz/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pijamas; calças largas

Simple English: Loose light trousers, first worn in India.

Example: He wore green pyjamas and soft shoes.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The three men told each other about their lives, played cards a little, or spent the day in pyjamas, yawning in easy chairs and saying nothing. Go to

Original English Version

1. They told each other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word. Go to

2. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Go to

quarrel /ˈkwɔːrəl/ (10 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: briga; disputa (em quarrel-some, briguento)

Simple English: An angry argument, or to argue angrily.

Example: They had a short quarrel about money and made peace the next day.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I remembered seeing him slip away during the quarrel, moving in a strange half-prance, half-shuffle and trying not to look afraid. Go to

Original English Version

1. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. Go to

quartermasters /ˈkwɔːrtərmæstərz/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: timoneiros; mestres de quarto

Simple English: Seamen who steer a vessel or perform responsible watch duties.

Example: Two quartermasters remained beside the towing lines.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There he sits while all those damned natives, serangs, lascars, and quartermasters give evidence that is enough to burn a man with shame. Go to

Original English Version

1. This infernal publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. Go to

quay /kiː/ (14 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cais

Simple English: A solid landing place beside water where ships load and unload.

Example: The four officers walked slowly along the quay.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then, one fine morning, while I was standing in the shade by the harbour office steps, I saw four men walking toward me along the quay. Go to

2. It was my first voyage." Then I would remember a small confused boy with a mother or an older sister on the quay, too upset to wave goodbye, or a decent father who came to see his son off and stayed too long, fascinated by the windlass, until he had to rush ashore without time to say farewell. Go to

3. I left the saloon, packed my things, and was on the quay with all my bags before the dockworkers had even gone back to work. Go to

Original English Version

1. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Go to

2. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic as well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing in the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men walking towards me along the quay. Go to

3. It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. Go to

4. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Go to

ragged /ˈræɡɪd/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: esfarrapada; maltrapilha

Simple English: Old and torn in many places.

Example: The child wore a ragged coat.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He also looked very ridiculous and grand, wearing a dirty sleeping suit with bright green and deep orange stripes, ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and someone else's old pith hat. Go to

Original English Version

1. The little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. Go to

2. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. Go to

rags /ræɡz/ (16 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: trapos; farrapos

Simple English: Old torn pieces of cloth, or very worn clothes.

Example: He wiped his hands on a bundle of oily rags.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They were dusty, sweaty, dirty, and in rags. Go to

2. They slept on mats, blankets, or bare planks, on every deck and in dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloth or dirty rags, with their heads on small bundles and their faces on bent arms. Go to

3. Honestly, I do not care in the least about all the pilgrims who ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this even to a ship full of old rags. Go to

Original English Version

1. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Go to

2. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Go to

3. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Go to

4. Frankly, I don’t care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of old rags in bales. Go to

rangoon /ræŋˈɡuːn/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Rangum; atual Yangon

Simple English: The former English name of Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar.

Example: A merchant in Rangoon offered Jim new employment.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Over the years he was known in Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Penang, and Batavia, and in each place he was only Jim the water-clerk. Go to

Original English Version

1. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Go to

rate /reɪt/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: taxa; tarifa; ritmo

Simple English: The amount of money charged or paid for something.

Example: The interest rate on my savings account has increased recently.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His grey-haired mate was a first-rate sailor and a pleasant old man with strangers, but with his captain he was the harshest chief officer I have ever seen. Go to

rattle /ˈrætəl/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: chocalhar; matraquear; estrépito

Simple English: To make a series of short hard sounds, or that sound itself.

Example: The loose window began to rattle in the wind.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. At the sharp rattle of the wheels the young fellow spun round where he stood. Go to

rattled /ˈrætəld/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sacudiu; fez chocalhar

Simple English: Made a series of short hard sounds; also made someone nervous.

Example: The windows rattled every time a lorry went by.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. When the wheels rattled away, the young man turned round where he stood. Go to

Original English Version

1. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. Go to

2. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind rattled down. Go to

reasonable /ˈriːzənəbəl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: razoável; sensato; racional

Simple English: Showing good judgment fairness and sensible decision-making in situations.

Example: It is reasonable to ask for a raise after working hard for a year.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. That was a reasonable idea. Go to

recover /rɪˈkʌvər/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: recuperar

Simple English: To regain full health after illness, injury, or surgery.

Example: She hopes to recover quickly after her surgery next week.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He recovered slowly, and the ship left without him. Go to

rectory /ˈrektəri/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: casa paroquial; residência do pároco

Simple English: The house where a rector or parish priest lives.

Example: The old rectory stood beside the village church.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Below it, the red front of the rectory shone warmly among grass, flower beds, and fir trees. Go to

Original English Version

1. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. Go to

reefs /riːfs/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: recifes

Simple English: Lines of rock or coral just under the sea.

Example: The reefs are dangerous at low tide.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He also imagined being a lonely castaway, barefoot and half naked, walking on bare reefs to find shellfish and avoid starvation. Go to

2. She headed between two small islands, crossed the anchoring area for sailing ships, turned halfway around in the shadow of a hill, and then moved close to a line of foaming reefs. Go to

Original English Version

1. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. Go to

2. She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. Go to

repairmen /rɪˈpermən/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: reparadores; mecânicos de manutenção

Simple English: Men whose job is to repair machines, structures, or equipment.

Example: The repairmen examined the damaged engine.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. We have all kinds among us, even some complete scoundrels, but we must keep professional decency or we become no better than loose repairmen wandering around. Go to

reptiles /ˈreptaɪlz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: répteis

Simple English: Cold-blooded animals such as snakes and lizards.

Example: The island was full of small reptiles.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I saw her go down." I was ready to speak angrily about such a stupid lie, when he added calmly, "She was full of reptiles." Go to

Original English Version

1. I saw her go down.” I made ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he added smoothly, “She was full of reptiles.” Go to

rescue /ˈrɛskjuː/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: resgate; resgatar; salvamento

Simple English: To save someone or something from danger or harm.

Example: The firefighters worked hard to rescue the cat from the tree.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He felt he had learned more than the men who had done the rescue. Go to

2. He had saved lives at sea, rescued ships in danger, and received a gold chronometer from the underwriters and binoculars with an inscription from a foreign government to honour his work. Go to

respectfully /rɪˈspɛktfəli/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: respeitosamente; com respeito

Simple English: In a polite way that shows respect.

Example: He bowed respectfully to the old teacher.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who wouldn’t chuck a dratted job like this? Go to

retriever /rɪˈtriːvər/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cão retriever; cão de busca

Simple English: A type of dog bred to find and bring back game or objects.

Example: The black retriever followed its master onto the quay.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

Original English Version

1. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Go to

retrievers /rɪˈtriːvərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cães retriever; cães de busca

Simple English: Dogs bred to find and bring back game or objects.

Example: The retrievers waited alertly beside the hunters.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Along the walls, the court peons in long white coats moved quickly back and forth on bare toes, with red sashes and red turbans, as quiet as ghosts and alert as retrievers. Go to

Original English Version

1. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Go to

reviewers /rɪˈvjuːərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: críticos; resenhistas

Simple English: People who examine books, performances, or other works and give opinions about them.

Example: Several reviewers praised the novel's unusual structure.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A few reviewers believed they could prove this from the text, and they seemed amused. Go to

Original English Version

1. Some reviewers maintained that the work starting as a short story had got beyond the writer’s control. Go to

rewrote /ˌriːˈroʊt/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: reescreveu

Simple English: Wrote something again in a different or improved form.

Example: She rewrote the opening chapter from memory.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The pages I had put away still influenced my choice of subject, but I carefully rewrote everything. Go to

rigging /ˈrɪɡɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cordame; enxárcia

Simple English: All the ropes and chains that hold up the sails of a ship.

Example: Two men climbed into the rigging at dawn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had a steady head and a strong body, so he was very quick up in the rigging. Go to

2. She turned her bow gently into the wind, and her thin rigging hummed like the deep voice of her old sea life. Go to

Original English Version

1. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. Go to

ripple /ˈrɪpəl/ (10 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: onda; frêmito que se propaga

Simple English: A very small wave on the surface of water.

Example: Not one ripple broke the still lake.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Beneath that strange, shining sky, the sea was deep blue and still, with no ripple at all. Go to

Original English Version

1. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. Go to

ripples /ˈrɪpəlz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ondulações; ondinhas

Simple English: Small waves moving across a surface.

Example: They saw ripples moving through the grass.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Inside them, a few white swirls of foam, ripples, and small waves broke and then grew calm again. Go to

Original English Version

1. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

risked /rɪskt/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arriscou

Simple English: Put something in danger of being lost.

Example: He risked his job to help his friend.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The broken-down engine below made terrible noise, and no one could say why he risked his life day and night among such junk. Go to

roadstead /ˈroʊdsted/ (9 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: fundeadouro; enseada de ancoragem

Simple English: An area near a coast where ships can anchor, usually less sheltered than a harbour.

Example: Three merchant ships lay in the roadstead.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Every day Jim looked out over gardens, beyond the town roofs, and past the palms by the shore to the busy roadstead that led to the East. Go to

Original English Version

1. One sunny morning, in the commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, I saw his form pass by--appealing--significant--under a cloud--perfectly silent. Go to

2. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Go to

3. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. Go to

roared /rɔːrd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: rugiu

Simple English: Made a very loud, deep sound, as a lion does.

Example: He learned that if he roared loudly, everything ran away.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He roared at him to be off, to go on. Go to

rogues /roʊɡz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: velhacos; patifes

Simple English: Dishonest people who cannot be trusted.

Example: He called the sellers a pack of rogues.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "You Englishmen are all rogues," my patriotic man from Flensborg or Stettin went on. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘“You Englishmen are all rogues,” went on my patriotic Flensborg or Stettin Australian. Go to

roomy /ˈruːmi/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: espaçoso

Simple English: Having plenty of space inside.

Example: The cart was old but roomy.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Go to

ruffian /ˈrʌfiən/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: rufião; brutamontes

Simple English: A rough and violent man.

Example: A ruffian stopped them on the road.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "You are an old ruffian, Mister--aw--Jones, and everyone in the company knows it," he squeaked. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘You are an old ruffian, Mister--aw--Jones; and what’s more, you are known for an old ruffian in the employ,’ he squeaks at me. Go to

rumble /ˈrʌmbəl/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ronco; estrondo surdo

Simple English: A long low sound, like distant thunder.

Example: A rumble came from the far hills.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. Go to

rupees /ruːˈpiːz/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: rupias

Simple English: The units of money used in India.

Example: He paid three rupees for the shawl.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I will put up two hundred rupees if you put up another hundred and promise to make the fellow clear out early tomorrow morning. Go to

Original English Version

1. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if you put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out early to-morrow morning. Go to

ruthvel /ˈrʌθvəl/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Ruthvel

Simple English: The surname of Archie Ruthvel, an official known to Marlow.

Example: Ruthvel listened while the clerk explained the disturbance.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Archie Ruthvel had just arrived and, according to his own story, was about to begin his hard day by scolding his chief clerk. Go to

2. Ruthvel says he was giving the man a strong lecture about official morality when he heard a small noise behind him. Go to

3. The man then pulled his hat free and went forward with small bows to Ruthvel, who was so upset that he could hardly understand what this strange figure wanted. Go to

Original English Version

1. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. Go to

2. ‘Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. Go to

3. By that time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition wanted. Go to

sailor's /ˈseɪlərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do marinheiro

Simple English: Belonging to a sailor.

Example: The sailor's coat hung by the door.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There was a cool sitting room, easy chairs, bottles, cigars, writing tools, harbour rules, and a warm welcome that could soften a sailor's heart after a long voyage. Go to

saloon /səˈluːn/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: salão; bar

Simple English: A public room where drinks are served, or a large room on a ship.

Example: The men gathered in the saloon after dark.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I left the saloon, packed my things, and was on the quay with all my bags before the dockworkers had even gone back to work. Go to

Original English Version

1. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Go to

samarang /ˌsɑːməˈrɑːŋ/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Samarang

Simple English: An older spelling of Semarang, a port city on the island of Java.

Example: The trader sailed from Samarang with a new cargo.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. And about nine months earlier, I had seen him in Samarang. Go to

Original English Version

1. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come across him in Samarang. Go to

sashes /ˈsæʃɪz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: faixas; cintos de tecido

Simple English: Long strips of cloth worn around the waist or over the shoulder.

Example: The guards wore red sashes over their white coats.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Along the walls, the court peons in long white coats moved quickly back and forth on bare toes, with red sashes and red turbans, as quiet as ghosts and alert as retrievers. Go to

Satisfy /ˈsætɪsfaɪ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: satisfazer; atender; saciar

Simple English: To make someone happy by meeting their desires.

Example: You need to satisfy your customers to keep them coming back.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was held on the set day to satisfy the law, and many people came because the case was interesting. Go to

saving /ˈseɪvɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: salvar; poupança; economia

Simple English: Money set aside and not spent.

Example: I started saving money for a vacation to the beach next year.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, or swimming through rough surf with a rope. Go to

scents /sɛnts/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: cheiros; aromas

Simple English: Pleasant smells given off by flowers or plants.

Example: Sweet scents drifted over the mountain ranges.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There were scents in the air and a feeling of deep rest, like endless dreaming. Go to

schnapps /ʃnæps/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: schnapps; aguardente forte

Simple English: A strong alcoholic drink, especially one from Germany or northern Europe.

Example: He asked the steward for a glass of schnapps.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The engineer said the captain was too mean to give a man even a little schnapps. Go to

Original English Version

1. You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop of schnapps. Go to

schooner /ˈskuːnər/ (44 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: escuna

Simple English: A sailing ship with two or more masts, usually with fore-and-aft sails.

Example: A small schooner entered the bay at sunset.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A coasting ship that was coming in for shelter had hit a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship's instructors had seen it happen. Go to

Original English Version

1. A coaster running in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship’s instructors had seen the accident. Go to

scolding /ˈskoʊldɪŋ/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ralhador; que grita zangado

Simple English: Speaking angrily to someone in a loud voice.

Example: A scolding voice came from the kitchen.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Archie Ruthvel had just arrived and, according to his own story, was about to begin his hard day by scolding his chief clerk. Go to

scorn /skɔːrn/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desdém; desprezo

Simple English: A strong feeling that someone or something is worth nothing.

Example: She looked at the cheap copy with scorn.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. ‘Drink!’ repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. Go to

scornful /ˈskɔːrnfəl/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: desdenhoso; de desprezo

Simple English: Showing that you think someone or something is worthless.

Example: She gave a short scornful laugh.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The other assessor was a heavy, scornful man. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Go to

scoundrels /ˈskaʊndrəlz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: canalhas; patifes

Simple English: Bad and dishonest people.

Example: Those scoundrels sold him a lame horse.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. We have all kinds among us, even some complete scoundrels, but we must keep professional decency or we become no better than loose repairmen wandering around. Go to

Original English Version

1. We’ve got all kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many tinkers going about loose. Go to

scrape /skreɪp/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: raspar; arranhar; apuro

Simple English: To rub something hard against a surface; also a difficult situation.

Example: Use a knife to scrape the label off the jar.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Go to

scratched /skrætʃt/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arranharam; riscaram

Simple English: Rubbed or cut a surface with something sharp.

Example: When they scratched the tin, he felt a cold shiver.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He bent over the chart and scratched himself. Go to

Original English Version

1. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. Go to

screech /skriːtʃ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: guincho; grito agudo

Simple English: A loud, harsh, high-pitched cry or sound.

Example: A sudden screech came from the darkness.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. Go to

sea's /siːz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: do mar

Simple English: The possessive form of sea.

Example: The sea's power humbled the experienced captain.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had to bear other men's criticism, the sea's demands, and the plain hard work that earns bread, but gives its reward only to those who truly love the work. Go to

2. Only once in all that time did he again see how serious the sea's anger could be. Go to

seaman /ˈsiːmən/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: marinheiro

Simple English: A man who works on a ship.

Example: He was a seaman for thirty years.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In his letter to the owners, which he left open for me to read, he said he had always done his duty by them and was not betraying their trust, because he was leaving the ship to a seaman as capable as could be found, meaning me. Go to

2. Marlow, don't you think so too, don't you feel it as a seaman? Go to

3. "And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose," he said angrily. Go to

Original English Version

1. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. Go to

2. In his letter to the owners--it was left open for me to see--he said that he had always done his duty by them--up to that moment--and even now he was not betraying their confidence, since he was leaving the ship to as competent a seaman as could be found--meaning me, sir, meaning me! Go to

3. Why, Marlow, don’t you think, don’t you feel, that this is abominable; don’t you now--come--as a seaman? Go to

4. “And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose,” he pronounced angrily. Go to

seamanship /ˈsiːmənʃɪp/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: marinharia; habilidade náutica

Simple English: Skill in handling, navigating, and caring for a ship or boat.

Example: Her seamanship brought the damaged vessel safely home.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

Original English Version

1. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Go to

seamen /ˈsiːmən/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: marinheiros

Simple English: Men who work on ships.

Example: Three seamen came ashore that night.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At first, Jim saw that talkative crowd as seamen and thought they were less solid than shadows. Go to

Original English Version

1. To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows. Go to

seaport /ˈsiːpɔːrt/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: porto marítimo; cidade portuária

Simple English: A town or harbour where sea-going ships load, unload, or shelter.

Example: He found work in a crowded eastern seaport.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. When that fact came out, he would leave the seaport where he was and move to another one, usually farther east. Go to

Original English Version

1. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to another--generally farther east. Go to

seaports /ˈsiːpɔːrts/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: portos de mar

Simple English: Towns with a harbour where ships load and unload.

Example: Both seaports were busy that season.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He stayed in seaports because he was a sailor exiled from the sea, and his special ability was only useful as a water-clerk. Go to

2. Later, when his strong sense of what he could not bear finally drove him away from seaports and white men and even into the deep forest, the Malays in the jungle village, where he tried to hide his unfortunate gift, added a title to his name. Go to

Original English Version

1. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. Go to

2. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. Go to

seasick /ˈsiːsɪk/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: enjoado no mar

Simple English: Feeling sick because of the movement of a boat.

Example: He grew seasick before the ship left harbor.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The young beginner would be seasick by the next morning. Go to

seaworthy /ˈsiːwɜːrði/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: em condições de navegar; próprio para o mar

Simple English: In a safe and suitable condition for a voyage at sea.

Example: The inspector declared the repaired ship seaworthy.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. Go to

sensibilities /ˌsensəˈbɪlətiz/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sensibilidades

Simple English: The feelings that can easily be hurt or moved.

Example: The song touched the sensibilities of everyone there.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Finally I arrived at the conclusion that, making due allowances for the subject itself being rather foreign to women’s normal sensibilities, the lady could not have been an Italian. Go to

sensitive /ˈsɛnsɪtɪv/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sensível; confidenciais; minúsculas

Simple English: Aware of others' feelings and responsive with care emotionally.

Example: She is sensitive to how her friends feel during difficult times.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It could also change the whole way a simple and sensitive person felt about life. Go to

2. That was their answer to his very sensitive nature. Go to

serangs /səˈræŋz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: serangues; contramestres asiáticos

Simple English: Native boatswains or officers in charge of lascar crews.

Example: The serangs reported separately to the inquiry.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There he sits while all those damned natives, serangs, lascars, and quartermasters give evidence that is enough to burn a man with shame. Go to

Original English Version

1. This infernal publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. Go to

shadowy /ˈʃædoʊi/ (9 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sombrio; envolto em sombra

Simple English: Full of shadows, or hard to see and hard to know about.

Example: A shadowy figure stood at the end of the corridor.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Go to

2. ‘Drink!’ repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. Go to

shaky /ˈʃeɪki/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: trêmulo; vacilante

Simple English: Not firm or steady; trembling.

Example: She thought the Voice sounded a little shaky.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He burst the door open, flew down the shaky stairs, landed on Mariani's stomach, got up, and ran like a rabbit into the street. Go to

shaven /ˈʃeɪvən/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: rapado; de cabeça raspada

Simple English: With the hair cut off very close to the skin.

Example: A shaven monk opened the door.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The magistrate, clean-shaven and calm, looked deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. Go to

shellfish /ˈʃelfɪʃ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mariscos

Simple English: Sea animals with shells, such as crabs and oysters.

Example: The market sold fresh shellfish every morning.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He also imagined being a lonely castaway, barefoot and half naked, walking on bare reefs to find shellfish and avoid starvation. Go to

Original English Version

1. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. Go to

shipmasters /ˈʃɪpmæstərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: capitães de navio; comandantes de embarcação

Simple English: People who command merchant ships.

Example: The supplier knew many shipmasters by name.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Some of you may have known him: he was a helpful little Portuguese half-caste with a very thin neck, always trying to get food from shipmasters, such as salt pork, biscuits, potatoes, or anything else. Go to

Original English Version

1. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. Go to

shipwreck /ˈʃɪprek/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: naufrágio

Simple English: The loss of a ship at sea.

Example: Only two men survived the shipwreck.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He had been stranded out East somewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he probably did not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. Go to

shiver /ˈʃɪvər/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arrepio; calafrio

Simple English: A sudden shaking of the body from cold or fear.

Example: It sent a cold shiver down his back.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He wiped sweat from his forehead, ran his tongue over his dry lips, and felt a shiver go down his back. Go to

Original English Version

1. Outside the court the sun blazed--within was the wind of great punkahs that made you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive eyes whose glance stabbed. Go to

2. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run down his back. Go to

shivered /ˈʃɪvərd/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: estremeceu; teve um arrepio

Simple English: Shook for a moment because of cold or fear.

Example: The children shivered in the cold rain.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Go to

shoal /ʃoʊl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: banco de areia; baixio

Simple English: A shallow area of water that can be dangerous to ships.

Example: The lighthouse warned vessels away from the shoal.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Far behind, a lighthouse on a dangerous shoal shone like an eye of fire, as if mocking the ship's faithful mission. Go to

Original English Version

1. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Go to

shone /ʃoʊn/ (28 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: brilhavam; reluziam

Simple English: Gave out or reflected light.

Example: The little stars shone in the sun like diamonds.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Below it, the red front of the rectory shone warmly among grass, flower beds, and fir trees. Go to

2. Far behind, a lighthouse on a dangerous shoal shone like an eye of fire, as if mocking the ship's faithful mission. Go to

3. A bright window high in the ceiling shone down on the three men, making them stand out strongly in the dim court, where the audience seemed like a mass of staring shadows. Go to

4. It was dark and clear, and all the stars shone as plainly as on a frosty night in high latitudes. Go to

Original English Version

1. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Go to

2. There he stood, clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of me by false pretences. Go to

shouldered /ˈʃoʊldərd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pôs ao ombro; carregou no ombro

Simple English: Lifted something onto the shoulder.

Example: He shouldered his heavy stick and left.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He answered honestly, saying, 'Yes, I did.' He was handsome, broad-shouldered, and young, with sad eyes. Go to

2. The third was a straight, broad-shouldered young man with his hands in his pockets. Go to

Original English Version

1. The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly. Go to

shoved /ʃʌvd/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: empurrou; enfiou bruscamente

Simple English: Pushed roughly, or put something somewhere quickly and carelessly.

Example: He shoved the letter into his pocket and left.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was shoved aside. Go to

Original English Version

1. This way, this way.” He jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. Go to

shovels /ˈʃʌvlz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: pás

Simple English: Tools with a broad blade, used for digging or lifting.

Example: They dug the pit with two heavy shovels.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Above the sleepers came quiet sighs from troubled dreams, while below deck sudden metal noises, shovels, and furnace doors broke the silence. Go to

showy /ˈʃoʊi/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vistoso; espalhafatoso

Simple English: Bright and easy to notice, sometimes too much.

Example: He wore a showy gold ring.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He stood for all the honest people whose courage is not fancy or showy, but simple and natural. Go to

2. He was a little showy man in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. Go to

shrill /ʃrɪl/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: agudo; estridente

Simple English: High-pitched, sharp, and unpleasantly loud.

Example: A shrill whistle sounded from the pier.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. Go to

shuffle /ˈʃʌfəl/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arrastar de pés; passo arrastado

Simple English: A movement or sound made by dragging the feet along the ground.

Example: We heard the shuffle of tired feet in the passage.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I remembered seeing him slip away during the quarrel, moving in a strange half-prance, half-shuffle and trying not to look afraid. Go to

Original English Version

1. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Go to

2. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. Go to

shuffling /ˈʃʌfəlɪŋ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arrastando; levantando aos pés

Simple English: Walking without lifting the feet properly.

Example: A shuffling step came along the hall.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Their bare feet made a steady shuffling sound, and they said nothing and never looked back. Go to

2. "I will become an American citizen," he cried, angry and restless, shuffling his feet as if something invisible held his ankles and would not let him leave. Go to

Original English Version

1. “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. Go to

siamese /ˌsaɪəˈmiːz/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: siamês; do antigo Sião

Simple English: Relating to Siam, the former name of Thailand, or to its people.

Example: He served for several years in the Siamese navy.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They talked endlessly about good luck: how one man got an easy boat on the China coast, how another had a fine post in Japan, and how a third was doing well in the Siamese navy. Go to

Original English Version

1. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in their persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence. Go to

sighed /saɪd/ (16 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: suspirou

Simple English: Let out a long, slow breath to show sadness or relief.

Example: The Scarecrow sighed and said nothing.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He sighed because he was glad and sorry at the same time. Go to

Original English Version

1. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. Go to

sighs /saɪz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: suspira

Simple English: Lets out a long breath to show tiredness or sadness.

Example: He sighs every time he sees the bill.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Above the sleepers came quiet sighs from troubled dreams, while below deck sudden metal noises, shovels, and furnace doors broke the silence. Go to

sinned /sɪnd/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pecou

Simple English: Did something that religion or morality forbids.

Example: He believed he had sinned and went to confession.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b’gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. Go to

skylight /ˈskaɪlaɪt/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: claraboia; abertura envidraçada no convés

Simple English: A window or glazed opening in a roof or ship's deck that admits light.

Example: Smoke drifted through the engine-room skylight.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He walked around the engine-room skylight like a man thinking deep thoughts, smoking bad tobacco in a long pipe. Go to

2. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and ran round the skylight to the engine-room companion on the port side. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Go to

2. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine-room companion which was on the port side. Go to

slanting /ˈslæntɪŋ/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: inclinado; oblíquo; enviesado

Simple English: Sloping rather than straight up or level.

Example: Slanting light came through the shutters.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Rain came down in slanting sheets, then eased for a moment. Go to

sleepers /ˈsliːpərz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pessoas adormecidas; os que dormiam

Simple English: People who are sleeping.

Example: The bell woke the sleepers below deck.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Above the sleepers came quiet sighs from troubled dreams, while below deck sudden metal noises, shovels, and furnace doors broke the silence. Go to

Original English Version

1. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Go to

sleepily /ˈsliːpɪli/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sonolentamente

Simple English: In a way that shows you want to sleep.

Example: The child answered sleepily from his bed.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. Go to

slide (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: deslizar; escorregar; slide

Simple English: to move smoothly over a surface

Example: The glass began to slide off the table.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He went down the ladder, and the dog, who was always at his heels day and night, followed him, sliding nose first after him. Go to

sling /slɪŋ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: funda; tipoia

Simple English: A band of leather used to throw stones, or a cloth that holds an injured arm.

Example: The boy killed the bird with a sling.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. One was a pale, mean little man with his arm in a sling. Go to

2. The man with the sling began to run after the carriage, calling, "Captain! Go to

3. Still, he spoke to the others in an important way and soon got into a hard argument with the man whose arm was in a sling. Go to

Original English Version

1. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Go to

2. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after the carriage, bleating, “Captain! Go to

3. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. Go to

slippers /ˈslɪpərz/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: chinelos; pantufas

Simple English: Soft light shoes worn inside a house.

Example: He left his slippers beside the bed.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He also looked very ridiculous and grand, wearing a dirty sleeping suit with bright green and deep orange stripes, ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and someone else's old pith hat. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. Go to

sloping /ˈsloʊpɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: descendo; baixando no céu

Simple English: Going down at an angle.

Example: A sloping path led to the river.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. Go to

smouldering /ˈsmoʊldərɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ardendo sem chama; latente

Simple English: Burning slowly with smoke but with no flame.

Example: A smouldering log lay in the grate.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity. Go to

smuggle /ˈsmʌɡəl/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: contrabandear; introduzir às escondidas

Simple English: To move goods or people secretly and illegally into or out of a place.

Example: They tried to smuggle rifles past the patrol.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. Go to

snatched /snætʃt/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arrebatou; arrancou

Simple English: Took something quickly and roughly.

Example: The bird snatched the bread and flew off.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A snorting pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. Go to

sneaking /ˈsniːkɪŋ/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: furtivo; sorrateiro; secreto

Simple English: Moving or acting secretly; also a feeling you do not admit.

Example: I have a sneaking suspicion that he already knows.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I’ve known such a time, and, what’s more, I shan’t now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons. Go to

sneered /snɪrd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: disse com escárnio; escarneceu

Simple English: Spoke or smiled in a way that shows scorn.

Example: He sneered at the small gift.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "You would like to sit in it yourself--that is the real problem," he sneered. Go to

sneers /snɪrz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: zombarias; expressões de desprezo; escarnece

Simple English: Contemptuous smiles or remarks, or the act of making them.

Example: His sneers angered the younger officers.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. ‘You would like to sit in it yourself--that’s where the shoe pinches,’ he sneers. Go to

sniffing /ˈsnɪfɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: de fungadela; que funga

Simple English: Taking air in quickly through the nose.

Example: He made a small sniffing noise.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The old man went on sniffing. Go to

snorted /snɔːrtɪd/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bufou

Simple English: Pushed air noisily out through the nose.

Example: The bull snorted and shook its head.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At the door the man hesitated and snorted like a frightened bullock. Go to

Original English Version

1. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Go to

snorting /ˈsnɔːrtɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bufando

Simple English: Pushing air noisily out through the nose.

Example: The horse came snorting up the slope.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A snorting pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. Go to

soften /ˈsɔːfən/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: amolecer; suavizar; abrandar

Simple English: To make something less hard, less strong or less severe.

Example: Warm water will soften the dry paint on the brush.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There was a cool sitting room, easy chairs, bottles, cigars, writing tools, harbour rules, and a warm welcome that could soften a sailor's heart after a long voyage. Go to

soldier's /ˈsoʊldʒərz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: do soldado

Simple English: Belonging to a person in an army.

Example: The soldier's coat lay on the bench.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His thin brown face, with the white moustache, looked calm on the pillow, like an old soldier's face, except for a strange fear in his eyes. Go to

southward /ˈsaʊθwərd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: para o sul; em direção ao sul

Simple English: Toward the south.

Example: At noon the vessel turned southward.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. 'Thirty-two miles more as she goes,' he said, 'and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.' Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘Thirty-two miles more as she goes,’ says he, ‘and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.’ Go to

spar /spɑːr/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: verga; mastro ou peça longa de madeira do navio

Simple English: A strong pole used as a mast, boom, or yard on a ship.

Example: The broken spar fell across the deck.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At the start of a week that his Scottish captain later called "a pairfect meeracle," Jim was hurt by a falling spar. Go to

Original English Version

1. Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. Go to

2. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship’s position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship’s spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. Go to

sparrow /ˈspæroʊ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pardal

Simple English: A small brown and grey bird, common in towns.

Example: A sparrow hopped along the sill.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. You know the chief is not generous enough to make even a sparrow drunk. Go to

Original English Version

1. You ought to know by this time the chief ain’t free-hearted enough to make a sparrow drunk, b’gosh. Go to

spat /spæt/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cuspiram

Simple English: Pushed liquid out of the mouth.

Example: He spat the bitter medicine onto the ground.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I spit on it." He spat. Go to

Original English Version

1. I shpit on it.” He spat. Go to

speck /spek/ (12 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: partícula; pontinho; mancha minúscula

Simple English: A very small spot or piece of something.

Example: A speck of dust on the lens ruined the photograph.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

splashing /ˈsplæʃɪŋ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: chapinhando; atravessando a água

Simple English: Walking through water so that it flies about.

Example: The dog came splashing through the stream.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. After I opened the forepeak hatch, I heard water splashing inside. Go to

Original English Version

1. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

2. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. Go to

splints /splɪnts/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: talas

Simple English: Rigid supports used to keep an injured arm or leg from moving.

Example: The doctor secured his broken arm with splints.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The day before the Inquiry opened, I went there to see him, and in the white men's ward I saw the little chap lying on his back, his arm in splints and his mind confused. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry, I saw in the white men’s ward that little chap tossing on his back, with his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. Go to

spluttering /ˈsplʌtərɪŋ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: balbuciando com pressa

Simple English: Speaking quickly and unclearly, often with surprise.

Example: He kept spluttering with excitement.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. Go to

spokes /spoʊks/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: raios; feixes

Simple English: Straight bars that go out from a centre like a wheel.

Example: Sunlight came down in golden spokes.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The two Malays at the wheel looked at the white men, but their dark hands stayed on the spokes. Go to

Original English Version

1. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Go to

2. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. Go to

sprays /spreɪz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: raminhos floridos

Simple English: Small branches with leaves or flowers on them.

Example: She carried two sprays of white blossom.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Go to

sprung /sprʌŋ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: abriu; surgiu; foi imposto de repente

Simple English: Past participle of spring: opened or developed suddenly, came from somewhere, or was presented without warning.

Example: The old vessel had sprung a leak during the night.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I wondered for a while where that queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself, “Here they are!” Go to

squeaked /skwiːkt/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: guinchou; rangeu

Simple English: Made a short very high sound.

Example: The gate squeaked as it opened.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "You are an old ruffian, Mister--aw--Jones, and everyone in the company knows it," he squeaked. Go to

squeaks /skwiːks/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: guinchos; sons agudos; guincha

Simple English: Short, high-pitched sounds, or the act of making such sounds.

Example: The rusty hinge gave several squeaks.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His thin voice rose into long squeaks over the sea. Go to

Original English Version

1. He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. Go to

2. ‘You are an old ruffian, Mister--aw--Jones; and what’s more, you are known for an old ruffian in the employ,’ he squeaks at me. Go to

Stable /ˈsteɪbəl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: estável; estábulo; estabilidade

Simple English: Farm building designed to house horses or livestock.

Example: The horses live in a stable near the big red barn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There was an orchard behind it, a paved stable yard on the left, and glass greenhouses fixed along a brick wall. Go to

stage /steɪdʒ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: palco; estágio; fase

Simple English: An elevated platform where performers present plays, shows, or musical acts.

Example: The actors will perform on the stage at 7 PM tonight.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Between the gusts, Jim could see the rough tide, small boats tossed along the shore, still buildings in the blowing mist, large ferries pitching at anchor, and huge landing-stages rising and falling under spray. Go to

stager /ˈsteɪdʒər/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: veterano; pessoa experiente

Simple English: An experienced person who has spent a long time in a place or occupation.

Example: The old stager knew every harbour in the region.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I am an old stager out here. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Go to

2. I am an old stager out here. Go to

3. I am an old stager out here. Go to

stagger /ˈstæɡər/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cambalear; vacilar

Simple English: To walk unsteadily, as if about to fall.

Example: He was so tired that he began to stagger on the last hill.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Mr. Symons saw it." A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he grabbed a rope. Go to

Original English Version

1. Mr. Symons saw it.’ A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. Go to

stammer /ˈstæmər/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: gaguejar; falar com hesitação

Simple English: To speak with repeated or blocked sounds because of difficulty or nervousness.

Example: The witness began to stammer under questioning.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I think my look made him stammer. Go to

Original English Version

1. I dare say it was the look I gave him that made him stammer. Go to

starboard /ˈstɑːrbərd/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: boreste; lado direito do navio

Simple English: The right side of a ship, looking forward.

Example: A light showed on the starboard side.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and ran round the skylight to the engine-room companion on the port side. Go to

2. Let me see - the correction on the log is six per cent additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once. Go to

Original English Version

1. The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted round the skylight to the engine-room companion which was on the port side. Go to

2. Let’s see--the correction on the log is six per cent. additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once. Go to

starlight /ˈstɑːrlaɪt/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: luz das estrelas

Simple English: The light that comes from the stars at night.

Example: We found the path by starlight alone.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Go to

starlit /ˈstɑːrlɪt/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: iluminado pelas estrelas

Simple English: Lit by the light of the stars.

Example: They crossed the field on a starlit night.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. And it is easy enough to talk about Master Jim after a good meal, two hundred feet above sea level, with a box of good cigars near at hand, on a fresh and starlit evening that makes the best of us forget that we are only here on borrowed time and must pick our way carefully, watch every precious minute and every mistake we cannot fix, and hope we will still manage to die well in the end - though we are not sure of that - and with very little help from the people beside us. Go to

startled /ˈstɑːrtəld/ (24 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: assustada; sobressaltada

Simple English: Suddenly surprised or frightened.

Example: Aunt Em was startled by the child's laughter.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I might have been a little startled: all this happened in such a quiet way and so very suddenly. Go to

status (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: status; situação; condição

Simple English: the official position or condition of something

Example: Check the status of your application online.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They liked short trips, comfortable deck-chairs, large native crews, and the special status of being white. Go to

steamed /stiːmd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: navegou a vapor; avançou movido a vapor

Simple English: Travelled in a steam-powered ship or moved under steam power.

Example: The gunboat steamed toward the open sea.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air. Go to

steamer /ˈstiːmər/ (42 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vapor; navio a vapor

Simple English: A ship that moves by steam power.

Example: The old steamer left the port at dawn.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The Patna was an old local steamer. Go to

2. The steamer thudded through the calm water of the Strait at dusk. Go to

3. They had taken place in space and time, and needed a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes on the clock. Go to

4. They had just landed after a good breakfast from an outward-bound Dale Line steamer that had arrived about an hour after sunrise. Go to

5. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he spent all day after day drinking beer in De Jongh's back-shop while he cursed the tyrannical German Empire. Go to

6. Everyone else who did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa seemed lesser by comparison. Go to

Original English Version

1. The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. Go to

2. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Go to

3. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer. Go to

4. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Go to

5. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. Go to

6. ‘There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. Go to

steel (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: aço; metal; liga de ferro

Simple English: a strong metal made mainly from iron

Example: The bridge is made of steel.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Everyone else who did not command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa seemed lesser by comparison. Go to

steered /stɪrd/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: guiava-se; orientava o rumo

Simple English: Made a boat or a vehicle go in a certain direction.

Example: He steered the boat into the bay.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Go to

stettin /ʃteˈtiːn/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Stettin

Simple English: The former German name of Szczecin, a port city now in Poland.

Example: He claimed to have sailed from Stettin as a young man.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "You Englishmen are all rogues," my patriotic man from Flensborg or Stettin went on. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘“You Englishmen are all rogues,” went on my patriotic Flensborg or Stettin Australian. Go to

steward /ˈstuːərd/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: mordomo; administrador; comissário de bordo

Simple English: A person who manages a household or an estate, or who serves meals on a ship or plane.

Example: The steward brought us blankets and hot tea.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the morning, while I was dressing in my ship cabin, I could hear my Parsee Dubash talking about the Patna with the steward through the wall, while he drank tea in the pantry as a favour. Go to

2. The tugs would take hold, the river would churn, and the man on shore would brush dust from his knees while the steward perhaps threw his umbrella after him. Go to

Original English Version

1. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. Go to

2. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. Go to

3. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. Go to

stillness /ˈstɪlnəs/ (39 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: silêncio; imobilidade

Simple English: A state with no movement and no sound.

Example: The stillness of the night was complete.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A wonderful stillness filled the world. Go to

2. After the ship passed, the sea slowly returned to perfect stillness, with the black shape of the moving hull always at the center. Go to

Original English Version

1. A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. Go to

2. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

stirred /stɜːrd/ (10 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sacudiu; despertou

Simple English: Moved someone or something a little.

Example: A soft wind stirred the long grass.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Go to

stormy /ˈstɔːrmi/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tempestuoso; agitado

Simple English: With strong wind and rain; also full of angry feeling.

Example: They crossed on a stormy night and everyone was sick.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Now they feared home service, with its harder life, stricter duty, and stormy seas. Go to

Original English Version

1. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. Go to

storyteller /ˈstɔːritelər/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: contador de histórias; narrador

Simple English: A person who tells or writes stories.

Example: The storyteller paused while the listeners filled their glasses.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. We may also imagine that the listeners had drinks that night, perhaps a glass of mineral water to help the storyteller continue. Go to

straining /ˈstreɪnɪŋ/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: forçando; tensionando; aguçando ao máximo

Simple English: Making a great physical or mental effort, or stretching something to its limit.

Example: She stood straining to hear the distant signal.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Go to

streaks /striːks/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: listras; riscas

Simple English: Long thin lines of a different colour.

Example: Red streaks crossed the evening sky.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The river beside the ship boiled with foamy streaks. Go to

Original English Version

1. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. Go to

strict /strɪkt/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: estrita; rigoroso; rígidas

Simple English: Absolute rules that must always be obeyed.

Example: The school has strict rules about student behavior during classes.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They were pilgrims, driven by a strict belief. Go to

stricter /ˈstrɪktər/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: mais rigoroso; mais severo

Simple English: More demanding about rules, duties, or behaviour.

Example: The new captain imposed stricter discipline.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Now they feared home service, with its harder life, stricter duty, and stormy seas. Go to

subject /səbˈdʒɛkt/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: assunto; sujeito; objecto

Simple English: The topic being discussed or studied.

Example: History is my favorite subject.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The pages I had put away still influenced my choice of subject, but I carefully rewrote everything. Go to

2. At last I decided that, because the subject might be outside what women normally feel, the lady could not have been Italian. Go to

sulky /ˈsʌlki/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: emburrado; amuado

Simple English: Silent and bad-tempered because of being upset.

Example: She picked up the leg with a sulky look.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. Go to

sunburned /ˈsʌnbɜːrnd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: queimado de sol

Simple English: With skin made red or brown by the sun.

Example: His neck was sunburned from the fields.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The eyes of the other man, above his sunburned clasped hands, seemed full of kindness. Go to

2. If I went home tomorrow, I am sure that within two days some sunburned young officer would find me and say, "Do you remember me, sir? Go to

surround /səˈraʊnd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: surround; cercam; rodeiam

Simple English: To be all around something or someone on every side.

Example: The garden is surrounded by a tall stone wall for privacy.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. But while he spoke carefully, his mind raced around the hard circle of facts that surrounded him and cut him off from other people. Go to

suspect /səˈspɛkt/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: suspeito; suspeitar; desconfiar

Simple English: To think someone may have committed a crime.

Example: I suspect he took the money when nobody was looking.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. But weakness, hidden or only half suspected, can destroy anyone. Go to

swagger /ˈswæɡər/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ar de arrogância; fanfarronice

Simple English: A manner of speaking or moving that shows excessive confidence.

Example: His youthful swagger amused the older officers.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. I often wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half a voyage.) “I’ve a wife and children,” he went on, “and I had been ten years in the Company, always expecting the next command--more fool I. Says he, just like this: ‘Come in here, Mr. Jones,’ in that swagger voice of his--‘Come in here, Mr. Jones.’ In I went. Go to

swaggering /ˈswæɡərɪŋ/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: fanfarrão; arrogante

Simple English: Showing excessive confidence in a boastful way.

Example: The stranger used a swaggering tone at the bar.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He said, just like that, 'Come in here, Mr. Jones,' in that swaggering voice of his. Go to

swarm /swɔːrm/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: enxame

Simple English: A large group of insects flying together.

Example: A swarm of black bees flew toward her.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then he screamed horribly and had to run for his life from a swarm of centipedes. Go to

Original English Version

1. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. Go to

swayed /sweɪd/ (13 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: balançou; oscilou

Simple English: Moved slowly from side to side.

Example: The house swayed and the wind wailed.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. Go to

sweated /ˈswɛtɪd/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: suou

Simple English: Lost water through the skin because of heat or work.

Example: He sweated as he carried the sacks.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His chest looked greasy and wet, as if he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. Go to

Original English Version

1. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. Go to

sweep /swiːp/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: varrer; varredura; varra

Simple English: To clean an area by removing dirt with a broom.

Example: I sweep the patio every morning to keep it clean.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then the next wind would seem to sweep it all away. Go to

swirls /swɜːrlz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: redemoinhos; espirais

Simple English: Circular patterns or movements in water, air, smoke, or another substance.

Example: Small swirls formed behind the slow boat.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Inside them, a few white swirls of foam, ripples, and small waves broke and then grew calm again. Go to

Original English Version

1. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Go to

swung /swʌŋ/ (19 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: abriu-se girando; balançou

Simple English: Moved smoothly in a curve, as a door does.

Example: The big gate swung slowly open.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. Go to

2. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Go to

3. He made no other movement, no gesture, no sign, and remained facing in the new direction after the gharry had swung out of sight. Go to

symons /ˈsaɪmənz/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: Symons; sobrenome de um marinheiro

Simple English: The surname of a sailor in the story.

Example: Symons held the tiller through the squall.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Mr. Symons saw it." A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he grabbed a rope. Go to

2. He nearly went overboard too, but old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed his legs. Go to

3. He said old Symons was a good man, even if he was grumpy and kept swearing. Go to

Original English Version

1. Mr. Symons saw it.’ A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. Go to

2. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped. Go to

3. Old Symons is a fine old chap. Go to

4. Old Symons is awfully excitable--isn’t he? Go to

taffrail /ˈtæfreɪl/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: balaustrada da popa; corrimão de popa

Simple English: The rail around the stern of a ship.

Example: The patent log was fixed near the taffrail.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The taffrail-log showed eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing near the mainmast. Go to

Original English Version

1. The patent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Go to

2. The taffrail-log marked eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing round the mainmast. Go to

talkative /ˈtɔːkətɪv/ (9 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tagarelas; faladores

Simple English: Liking to talk a lot.

Example: Our new neighbour is very talkative.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. At first, Jim saw that talkative crowd as seamen and thought they were less solid than shadows. Go to

2. As a result, his second engineer was very cheerful, bold, and talkative. Go to

Original English Version

1. He was usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. Go to

tasteless /ˈteɪstləs/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: sem sabor; insípido

Simple English: Having no flavor or sense of taste.

Example: The medicine left his mouth dry and tasteless.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His mouth was dry and tasteless, as if he had eaten dust. Go to

tenderness /ˈtendərnəs/ (9 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ternura; carinho; sensibilidade

Simple English: Gentle and loving feeling; also soreness when a part of the body is touched.

Example: He spoke of his old teacher with real tenderness.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s face. Go to

tentacle /ˈtɛntəkəl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tentáculo

Simple English: A long flexible limb of an animal such as an octopus, or something shaped like one.

Example: One pale tentacle curled around the rock.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then my interesting patient shot out a thin arm like a tentacle and grabbed my shoulder. Go to

Original English Version

1. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. Go to

tfui /tfuːi/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: eca; credo; interjeição de repulsa

Simple English: An exclamation of disgust, related to the interjection pfui.

Example: Tfui, he cried, pushing the foul glass away.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Tfui!' Go to

Original English Version

1. Tfui!” Go to

thoughtfully /ˈθɔːtfəli/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pensativamente; com ar pensativo

Simple English: In a quiet way, while thinking carefully.

Example: She gazed thoughtfully at the Scarecrow.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "They turned me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sinking," he continued thoughtfully. Go to

threat /θrɛt/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ameaça

Simple English: Something posing danger or potential harm.

Example: The storm was a serious threat to the coastal community.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He believed that when others feared, he would know how to deal with the fake threat of wind and waves. Go to

thudded /ˈθʌdɪd/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: bateu com som surdo; avançou retumbando

Simple English: Made a heavy, dull sound while striking or moving.

Example: The old engine thudded steadily beneath the deck.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The steamer thudded through the calm water of the Strait at dusk. Go to

thump /θʌmp/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: baque; pancada surda

Simple English: A heavy dull sound, or a hard blow.

Example: The box fell with a thump.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Go to

2. I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump. Go to

thumping /ˈθʌmpɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: batendo pesadamente

Simple English: Making heavy dull repeated sounds.

Example: His heart was thumping in his chest.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The engine kept thumping on. Go to

tiffin /ˈtɪfɪn/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: almoço leve; refeição do meio-dia no sul da Ásia

Simple English: A light midday meal, especially in South Asian usage.

Example: They discussed the journey over tiffin.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Says I, ‘Don’t you mind old Jones, sir; dam’ his soul, he’s used to it.’ I could see directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and that in the ship. Go to

tiller /ˈtɪlər/ (18 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cana do leme

Simple English: The bar used to turn the rudder of a boat.

Example: The old sailor kept one hand on the tiller.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He nearly went overboard too, but old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed his legs. Go to

Original English Version

1. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped. Go to

tilted /ˈtɪltɪd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: inclinados; em declive

Simple English: Sloping to one side and not flat.

Example: The tilted floor made the ball roll away.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the middle, the magistrate sat upright in a large armchair, his head tilted a little, his arms folded across his chest, with a few flowers in a glass vase beside his inkstand. Go to

tiptoed /ˈtɪptoʊd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: andou na ponta dos pés

Simple English: Walked quietly on the front part of the feet.

Example: She tiptoed past the sleeping child.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He tiptoed back and forth to stress his words, then suddenly fell head-first, as if someone had hit him from behind. Go to

Original English Version

1. He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. Go to

tiptoeing /ˈtɪpˌtoʊɪŋ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: andando na ponta dos pés; erguendo-se na ponta dos pés

Simple English: Walking or standing quietly on the tips of the toes.

Example: He came tiptoeing along the dark passage.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He jumped up, tiptoeing and puffing himself up like a little fighting cock. Go to

Original English Version

1. Up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little fighting-cock. Go to

title /ˈtaɪtəl/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: título; denominação

Simple English: Name given to a book, movie, or other work.

Example: The title of the book was intriguing and made me curious to read it.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Later, when his strong sense of what he could not bear finally drove him away from seaports and white men and even into the deep forest, the Malays in the jungle village, where he tried to hide his unfortunate gift, added a title to his name. Go to

toads /toʊdz/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sapos

Simple English: Small animals like frogs, usually with dry, rough skin and short legs.

Example: Several toads hid beneath the wet leaves.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. No one has eyes like mine.’ He pulled me closer and whispered, ‘Millions of pink toads. Go to

2. The ship was full of toads, and someone must watch them.’ He gave me a knowing wink. Go to

3. Most patients saw snakes, the doctor said, but this man saw toads. Go to

Original English Version

1. “Millions of pink toads. Go to

2. Millions of pink toads. Go to

3. I would get a smoke while I watched these toads. Go to

torment /ˈtɔːrmɛnt/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tormento; suplício

Simple English: Severe physical or mental suffering.

Example: Uncertainty became a daily torment for the crew.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It is as if I had no secrets of my own, as if I did not have enough private worries to torment my soul until I die. Go to

tormented /ˈtɔːrmɛntɪd/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: atormentados

Simple English: Suffering great pain of body or mind.

Example: He had the face of a tormented man.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. Go to

tossing /ˈtɔːsɪŋ/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: atirando; lançando

Simple English: Throwing something lightly.

Example: He walked in, tossing his keys in the air.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. In the darkening light, the cutter could be seen fighting tide and wind, held back for a moment, then tossing beside the ship. Go to

Original English Version

1. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Go to

2. The cutter could be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind, that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship. Go to

3. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. Go to

4. ‘But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at the time, and going there to see about him the day before the opening of the Inquiry, I saw in the white men’s ward that little chap tossing on his back, with his arm in splints, and quite light-headed. Go to

track /træk/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: faixa; pista; trilha

Simple English: Path or course used by vehicles or trains.

Example: The train travels on the track through the mountains.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A black line of smoke trailed behind her, and a white line of foam appeared on the sea, then vanished at once, like the ghost of a track on a dead sea. Go to

trailed /treɪld/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: arrastou-se; seguiu atrás; desvaneceu

Simple English: Followed behind, or hung down and dragged along.

Example: Her scarf trailed on the wet ground.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A black line of smoke trailed behind her, and a white line of foam appeared on the sea, then vanished at once, like the ghost of a track on a dead sea. Go to

trampling /ˈtræmpəlɪŋ/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: pisoteando; tropel

Simple English: Walking heavily on something and crushing it.

Example: The horses were trampling the young corn.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. They are trampling on me! Go to

traveller /ˈtrævələr/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: viajante

Simple English: A person who is on a journey or who travels often.

Example: A tired traveller asked for a room and a hot meal.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. For days, many days, he had spoken to no one, but only talked silently and endlessly to himself, like a prisoner alone in a cell or a traveller lost in a wilderness. Go to

treacherous /ˈtretʃərəs/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: traiçoeiro; pérfido; perigoso

Simple English: Ready to betray you, or dangerous in a hidden way.

Example: The path is treacherous after rain.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Go to

tremble /ˈtrɛmbəl/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tremer

Simple English: To shake slightly because of fear or cold.

Example: The Lion began to tremble.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. Go to

trembled /ˈtrɛmbəld/ (11 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tremeu; vacilou

Simple English: Shook because of fear or strong feeling.

Example: The old house trembled when the train passed.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. You no better than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me.” His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. Go to

2. Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Go to

trembling /ˈtrɛmblɪŋ/ (10 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: trêmulo; que treme

Simple English: Shaking a little because of fear, cold or strong feeling.

Example: His hands were trembling when he opened the letter.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Go to

trigonometry /ˌtrɪɡəˈnɑːmətri/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: trigonometria

Simple English: The branch of mathematics dealing with angles and triangles.

Example: The cadets studied trigonometry before learning navigation.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There he learned a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. Go to

Original English Version

1. He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. Go to

tropical /ˈtrɒpɪkl/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tropical

Simple English: Very warm and humid weather often with lots of rain.

Example: The tropical climate in the region makes it perfect for growing bananas.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He faced wild people on tropical shores, stopped mutiny on the open sea, and in a small boat on the ocean kept up the spirits of desperate men. Go to

2. The other was a kind railway contractor from a nearby province, who had a strange tropical disease. Go to

3. I recognized the cheerful captain of the Patna at once: he was the fattest man in the whole hot tropical world. Go to

tropics /ˈtrɑːpɪks/ (6 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: trópicos

Simple English: The very hot regions near the equator.

Example: The plant grows only in the tropics.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. After that much drink, the man should have been dead, but he was very strong after twenty-four years in the tropics. Go to

Original English Version

1. Men have been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night ‘swapping yarns’. Go to

2. The soft wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter’s gale in an old barn at home. Go to

3. Four-and-twenty years of the tropics too. Go to

truest /ˈtruːəst/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: o mais verdadeiro

Simple English: The most true or the most faithful.

Example: He was the truest friend she had.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. These dreams seemed to him the truest part of life. Go to

tuan /ˈtuːɑːn/ (36 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tuan; senhor; título malaio de respeito

Simple English: A Malay title of respect for a man, similar to lord or sir.

Example: The villagers addressed the officer as Tuan Robert.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. They called him Tuan Jim, which is like saying Lord Jim. Go to

Original English Version

1. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say--Lord Jim. Go to

tugs /tʌɡz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: rebocadores

Simple English: Small powerful boats used to pull or guide larger vessels.

Example: Two tugs guided the steamer away from the quay.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The tugs would take hold, the river would churn, and the man on shore would brush dust from his knees while the steward perhaps threw his umbrella after him. Go to

Original English Version

1. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. Go to

tune (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: melodia; música; toada

Simple English: a series of musical notes

Example: I cannot remember the tune of that song.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He seemed ready to whistle a tune. Go to

turban /ˈtɜːrbən/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: turbante

Simple English: A long cloth wound around the head.

Example: He wound a clean white turban on his head.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He walked slowly aboard, handsome and serious in his white robe and large turban. Go to

Original English Version

1. He walked slowly aboard, handsome and grave in his white gown and large turban. Go to

2. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Go to

turbans /ˈtɜːrbənz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: turbantes

Simple English: Long cloths wound around the head.

Example: White turbans filled the whole street.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Along the walls, the court peons in long white coats moved quickly back and forth on bare toes, with red sashes and red turbans, as quiet as ghosts and alert as retrievers. Go to

Glossary: New Words (4/4)

tyrannical /təˈrænɪkəl/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: tirânico

Simple English: Using power in a cruel and unfair way.

Example: The town suffered under a tyrannical lord.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he spent all day after day drinking beer in De Jongh's back-shop while he cursed the tyrannical German Empire. Go to

Original English Version

1. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

unbelievers /ˌʌnbɪˈliːvərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: descrentes; infiéis

Simple English: People who do not follow a religion.

Example: He would not eat with unbelievers.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Go to

underwriters /ˈʌndərˌraɪtərz/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: seguradores; subscritores de seguros

Simple English: People or companies that accept and price insurance risks.

Example: The underwriters rewarded the captain for saving the vessel.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He had saved lives at sea, rescued ships in danger, and received a gold chronometer from the underwriters and binoculars with an inscription from a foreign government to honour his work. Go to

Original English Version

1. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. Go to

uneasy /ʌnˈiːzi/ (15 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: inquieto; pouco à vontade

Simple English: Feeling worried or not comfortable.

Example: The Scarecrow felt a little uneasy.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The uneasy fear in his staring eyes seemed to freeze and look into mine with a pleading look. Go to

Original English Version

1. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. Go to

unimportant /ˌʌnɪmˈpɔːrtənt/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sem importância

Simple English: Not mattering very much.

Example: He forgot the date because it seemed unimportant.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He did not despise me for anything I had done or was; he simply saw me as unimportant because I was not the lucky man of the world, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of the gold chronometer and silver-mounted binoculars that praised my seamanship and courage, and not a man with a proud sense of his own merit and rewards, plus the love of a black retriever, the most wonderful one of its kind. Go to

unknowable /ʌnˈnoʊəbəl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: incognoscível; impossível de conhecer

Simple English: Impossible for people to know or understand fully.

Example: His final motive remained unknowable.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. Go to

unnatural /ʌnˈnætʃərəl/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: antinatural; artificial; desumano

Simple English: Not normal, or not the way nature usually works.

Example: The room was filled with an unnatural silence.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. Go to

unnoticed /ʌnˈnoʊtɪst/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: despercebido; sem ser notado

Simple English: Not seen or noticed by anyone.

Example: He slipped out unnoticed during the applause.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage. Go to

unreachable /ʌnˈriːtʃəbəl/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: inalcançável; inacessível

Simple English: Impossible to reach, contact, or obtain.

Example: The village became unreachable after the bridge collapsed.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He looked as calm and unreachable as only the young can look. Go to

unselfish /ʌnˈselfɪʃ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: altruísta; desprendido

Simple English: Thinking of other people before yourself.

Example: It was an unselfish decision that cost him a lot.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He was loyal like a friend, caring like a son, patient, unselfish, and cheerful. Go to

Original English Version

1. To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Go to

unsteady /ʌnˈstɛdi/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: trêmulo; vacilante

Simple English: Not firm, or not regular in movement.

Example: The ladder felt unsteady, so I asked him to hold it.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine wistfully. Go to

2. These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir.” At this point the old chap’s voice got quite unsteady. Go to

untidy /ʌnˈtaɪdi/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: desarrumado; desordenado

Simple English: Not clean and not in good order.

Example: His untidy room made his mother angry.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. There were strong men leading families, old men with little hope of return, brave boys, shy girls with untidy hair, and nervous women holding their sleeping babies close to their chests. Go to

unwell /ʌnˈwel/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: indisposto; adoentado

Simple English: Not in good health.

Example: He felt unwell and went to bed.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Perhaps I was unwell in my curiosity. Go to

Original English Version

1. He says that as soon as he understood who it was before him he felt quite unwell--Archie is so sympathetic and easily upset--but pulled himself together and shouted “Stop! Go to

vagabond /ˈvæɡəbɑːnd/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vagabundo; vadio

Simple English: A person who wanders without a settled home or regular work.

Example: The vagabond slept beneath an abandoned shed.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. Go to

vagabonds /ˈvæɡəbɑːndz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vagabundos; vadios

Simple English: People who wander without settled homes or regular work.

Example: The innkeeper drove the noisy vagabonds outside.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! Go to

ventilators /ˈvɛntəleɪtərz/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: ventiladores; dutos de ventilação do navio

Simple English: Devices or openings that move fresh air into an enclosed space.

Example: Warm air rose through the engine-room ventilators.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The clanking ash buckets moving through the ventilators told Jim that his watch was almost over. Go to

Original English Version

1. The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. Go to

verandah /vəˈrændə/ (49 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: varanda; alpendre

Simple English: A roofed platform along the outside of a building.

Example: They drank coffee on the shaded verandah.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It might happen after dinner, on a verandah covered with still leaves and flowers, in the deep evening light marked by the red ends of cigars. Go to

2. The inquiry trouble, the yellow dog trouble - you would not think a filthy native dog would be allowed to trip people up in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you? - the kind of trouble that, in strange and devilish ways, makes me meet men with soft spots, hard spots, and hidden sickness, by Jove, and makes them tell me their secrets as soon as they see me. Go to

Original English Version

1. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. Go to

2. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Go to

vermin /ˈvɜːrmɪn/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bichos daninhos; gentalha

Simple English: Small harmful animals such as rats, or bad people.

Example: The barn was full of vermin.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. On deck amongst that vermin down there? Go to

vibrating /ˈvaɪbreɪtɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vibrante; que vibra

Simple English: Moving rapidly back and forth or trembling with emotion.

Example: A vibrating wire produced a low note.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The shaking stopped, and the faint thunder died away at once, as if the ship had crossed a narrow band of vibrating water and humming air. Go to

Original English Version

1. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air. Go to

volcanoes /vɑːlˈkeɪnoʊz/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: vulcões

Simple English: Mountains that can throw out fire and melted rock.

Example: Old volcanoes rose along the horizon.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. His place was in the fore-top, and from there he often looked down on the peaceful city roofs cut by the brown river, and on the factory chimneys on the plain, standing thin against the dirty sky and sending out smoke like volcanoes. Go to

voyages /ˈvɔɪɪdʒɪz/ (3 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: viagens marítimas

Simple English: Long journeys by sea or in space.

Example: He wrote of his voyages to the East.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He made many voyages. Go to

Original English Version

1. He made many voyages. Go to

wage /weɪdʒ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: salário; travar; empreender

Simple English: The amount of money paid to a worker for their labor.

Example: Her wage increased after she worked there for over two years successfully.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Jim always had good wages and plenty of patience from his employers. Go to

warmly /ˈwɔːrmli/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: calorosamente; com cordialidade

Simple English: In a friendly, kind way.

Example: Come along, said the Scarecrow warmly.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. He would greet the captain warmly, give him the ship-chandler's business card, and on the captain's first visit ashore guide him firmly but without showing off to a huge shop. Go to

2. Below it, the red front of the rectory shone warmly among grass, flower beds, and fir trees. Go to

watchful /ˈwɑːtʃfəl/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: vigilante; atento

Simple English: Careful to notice everything that happens around you.

Example: A watchful dog lay across the doorway.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. Go to

waterline /ˈwɔːtərlaɪn/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: linha-d'água

Simple English: The level at which water reaches the side of a floating vessel.

Example: The damage lay just below the waterline.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. I knew then that there must be a big hole below the waterline.' He stopped. Go to

waterlogged /ˈwɔːtərlɔːɡd/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: encharcado; alagado; saturado de água

Simple English: So full of water that movement or normal use is difficult.

Example: They found a waterlogged boat drifting offshore.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. 'After you had decided that you had struck something floating partly above water, say a waterlogged wreck, your captain ordered you to go forward and see whether there was any damage. Go to

watery /ˈwɔːtəri/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: aguado; lacrimejante; ralo

Simple English: Containing too much water, or full of tears.

Example: The soup was thin and watery.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Seeing that old Jones, with watery eyes, wiping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, and hearing the dog's sad cry, while the dirty, fly-ridden cabin stood as the only place to honor Brierly's memory, made his remembered figure seem very small and sad. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Go to

wharf /wɔːrf/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: cais

Simple English: A flat structure by the water where ships load.

Example: The boat was tied at the wharf.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Then the Patna cast off and moved away from the wharf. Go to

Original English Version

1. A string of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and backed away from the wharf. Go to

whelps /wɛlps/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: filhotes; fedelhos, em uso insultuoso

Simple English: Young animals, or an insulting term for young people.

Example: Keep pulling, you lazy whelps!

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. A voice shouted from her: "Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save anybody! Go to

Original English Version

1. A yelling voice in her reached him faintly: ‘Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save anybody! Go to

whispered /ˈwɪspərd/ (46 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: sussurraram; cochicharam

Simple English: Spoke very quietly, so that few people could hear.

Example: They stopped and whispered among themselves.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. No one has eyes like mine.’ He pulled me closer and whispered, ‘Millions of pink toads. Go to

2. ‘The ship was full of them, so we had to leave very quietly,’ he whispered quickly. Go to

Original English Version

1. “The ship was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,” he whispered with extreme rapidity. Go to

whitewashed /ˈwaɪtwɑːʃt/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: caiadas

Simple English: Painted white with a thin mixture of lime and water.

Example: The whitewashed walls shone in the sun.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. After she was painted outside and whitewashed inside, about eight hundred pilgrims were driven aboard while she lay with steam up beside a wooden jetty. Go to

Original English Version

1. After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a wooden jetty. Go to

widely /ˈwaɪdli/ (1 occurrence in the simplified text)

Português: amplamente; extensamente; largamente

Simple English: To a great extent; covering or affecting many areas or people.

Example: This technology is widely used across various industries around the world.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The crew stood around listening, grinning widely. Go to

willing /ˈwɪlɪŋ/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: disposto; desejando; querendo

Simple English: Ready and enthusiastic to do something or agree.

Example: She is willing to help us with the project this weekend.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Later, many times, in faraway places around the world, Marlow showed that he was willing to remember Jim, and to remember him at length and in detail when he spoke aloud. Go to

winch /wɪntʃ/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: guincho; cabrestante

Simple English: A machine with a turning drum used to pull or lift heavy loads.

Example: They built a simple winch to raise the gun.

Use in this Book:

Original English Version

1. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. Go to

windlass /ˈwɪndləs/ (4 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: guincho manual

Simple English: A machine with a turning drum, used to lift heavy loads.

Example: They used a windlass to raise the anchor.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. It was my first voyage." Then I would remember a small confused boy with a mother or an older sister on the quay, too upset to wave goodbye, or a decent father who came to see his son off and stayed too long, fascinated by the windlass, until he had to rush ashore without time to say farewell. Go to

Original English Version

1. It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. Go to

wiping /ˈwaɪpɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: enxugando; limpando

Simple English: Rubbing something to make it clean or dry.

Example: The Lion spoke, wiping a tear from his eye.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Seeing that old Jones, with watery eyes, wiping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, and hearing the dog's sad cry, while the dirty, fly-ridden cabin stood as the only place to honor Brierly's memory, made his remembered figure seem very small and sad. Go to

witness /ˈwɪtnəs/ (2 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: testemunha; testemunhar; presenciar

Simple English: To see an event or crime happen directly.

Example: I was a witness to the accident that occurred last night on the street.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. Jim stood high in the witness box, his cheeks burning in the cool, high room. Go to

wrinkled /ˈrɪŋkəld/ (7 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: enrugado

Simple English: Covered with small lines and folds.

Example: Behind the screen stood a little man with a wrinkled face.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. De Jongh, who charged a guilder for each bottle without even blinking, would call me aside and say in a private way, with his small wrinkled face twisted up, 'Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Go to

2. Why?" He hit his low, wrinkled forehead. Go to

Original English Version

1. Why?” He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead. Go to

yawning /ˈjɔːnɪŋ/ (5 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: bocejando

Simple English: Opening the mouth wide because of being tired.

Example: He sat down, yawning.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. The three men told each other about their lives, played cards a little, or spent the day in pyjamas, yawning in easy chairs and saying nothing. Go to

Original English Version

1. They told each other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word. Go to

2. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Go to

3. They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. Go to

youngster /ˈjʌŋstər/ (8 occurrences in the simplified text)

Português: garoto; jovem

Simple English: A child or young person.

Example: The brave youngster offered to carry the message.

Use in this Book:

Simplified (B1) English Version

1. "Too late, youngster," said the captain. Go to

Original English Version

1. ‘Too late, youngster.’ The captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious defeat in his eyes. Go to

2. I watched the youngster there. Go to

3. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and, by Jove! it wouldn’t have been safe. Go to

Original Text: Rare Words (1/5)

Compact help for additional rare words found only in the original text. Each entry gives the spelling, pronunciation, common Portuguese meanings and one exact return to the source paragraph.

aback /əˈbæk/ — desconcertado, em taken aback; para trás. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still wondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been transported in front of his desk. Return to Original English Version

abaft /əˈbæft/ — a ré de; atrás de. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. Return to Original English Version

abodes /əˈboʊdz/ — moradas; habitações. Many commanders of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Return to Original English Version

abominable /əˈbɑːmɪnəbəl/ — abominável; detestável. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. Return to Original English Version

abreast /əˈbrest/ — lado a lado; emparelhado; a par de. The cutter could be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind, that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship. Return to Original English Version

absconded /əbˈskɑːndɪd/ — fugiu às escondidas; escapou. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. Return to Original English Version

absconding /əbˈskɑːndɪŋ/ — fugitivo; que fugiu às escondidas. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. Return to Original English Version

absurdly /əbˈsɜːrdli/ — absurdamente; ridiculamente. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. Return to Original English Version

accost /əˈkɔːst/ — abordar; dirigir-se a. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Return to Original English Version

accursed /əˈkɜːrsɪd/ — maldito; amaldiçoado. The least thing--the least drop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made you--standing there with his don’t-care-hang air--he made you wonder whether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass. Return to Original English Version

acutely /əˈkjuːtli/ — agudamente; intensamente. He was acutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. Return to Original English Version

adjourned /əˈdʒɜːrnd/ — adiada; suspensa. The inquiry was not adjourned. Return to Original English Version

adjournment /əˈdʒɜːrnmənt/ — adiamento; suspensão da sessão. It was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street. Return to Original English Version

ado /əˈduː/ — alarde; rodeios; agitação. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. Return to Original English Version

adrift /əˈdrɪft/ — à deriva. Adrift--on shore--after ten years’ service--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Return to Original English Version

affections /əˈfekʃənz/ — afetos; afeições. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. Return to Original English Version

afflicted /əˈflɪktɪd/ — afligidas; atormentadas. There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. Return to Original English Version

affording /əˈfɔːrdɪŋ/ — proporcionando; oferecendo. This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions affording some measure of relief; and in regard to the listeners’ endurance, the postulate must be accepted that the story was interesting. Return to Original English Version

affront /əˈfrʌnt/ — afronta; insulto. He could affront greater perils. Return to Original English Version

afresh /əˈfrɛʃ/ — de novo; novamente; do início. Haven’t I turned out youngsters enough in my time, for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft whose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the component part of every waking thought--till it is present in every dream of their young sleep! Return to Original English Version

agitated /ˈædʒɪteɪtɪd/ — agitado; perturbado. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Return to Original English Version

aguaindt /əˈɡweɪnt/ — conhecido; bem relacionado (forma corrompida de acquainted). You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt” with in those places. Return to Original English Version

alarmingly /əˈlɑːrmɪŋli/ — alarmantemente. His voice sounded alarmingly strong all at once. Return to Original English Version

allowances /əˈlaʊənsɪz/ — concessões; ressalvas; mesadas. Finally I arrived at the conclusion that, making due allowances for the subject itself being rather foreign to women’s normal sensibilities, the lady could not have been an Italian. Return to Original English Version

aloft /əˈlɔːft/ — no alto; ao alto; em cima, no cordame. Having a steady head with an excellent physique, he was very smart aloft. Return to Original English Version

altercation /ˌɔːltərˈkeɪʃən/ — altercação; bate-boca. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. Return to Original English Version

alternately /ˈɔːltərnətli/ — alternadamente; ora de um modo, ora de outro. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Return to Original English Version

amerigan /əˈmerɪɡən/ — americano (forma corrompida pelo sotaque alemão). “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. Return to Original English Version

amiable /ˈeɪmiəbəl/ — amável; afável. ‘Drink!’ repeated the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. Return to Original English Version

amidships /əˈmɪdʃɪps/ — a meia-nau; no meio do navio. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from the human cargo. Return to Original English Version

amuse /əˈmjuːz/ — divertir; entreter. One or two discovered internal evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse them. Return to Original English Version

anguish /ˈæŋɡwɪʃ/ — angústia; aflição. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Return to Original English Version

annihilate /əˈnaɪəleɪt/ — aniquilar; exterminar. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Return to Original English Version

anointed /əˈnɔɪntɪd/ — rematados; consumados. We’ve got all kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many tinkers going about loose. Return to Original English Version

appalling /əˈpɔːlɪŋ/ — assombroso; aterrador. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Return to Original English Version

apparelled /əˈpærəld/ — trajado; vestido. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular. Return to Original English Version

apparition /ˌæpəˈrɪʃən/ — aparição; espectro. By that time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition wanted. Return to Original English Version

appreciable /əˈpriːʃəbəl/ — apreciável; considerável. He declares he was so taken aback that for quite an appreciable time he did not realise the thing was alive, and sat still wondering for what purpose and by what means that object had been transported in front of his desk. Return to Original English Version

apprehension /ˌæprɪˈhenʃən/ — apreensão; receio; captura. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal safety, and wished to be concealed. Return to Original English Version

aproned /ˈeɪprənd/ — de avental; coberto por um avental. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. Return to Original English Version

arab's /ˈærəbz/ — do árabe. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

archie's /ˈɑːrtʃiz/ — Archie é. Archie’s the most sensitive shipping-master in the two hemispheres. Return to Original English Version

ardently /ˈɑːrdəntli/ — ardentemente. Did I believe in a miracle? and why did I desire it so ardently? Return to Original English Version

arduous /ˈɑːrdʒuəs/ — árduo; penoso. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. Return to Original English Version

ascertain /ˌæsərˈteɪn/ — averiguar; apurar. ‘After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Return to Original English Version

astern /əˈstɜːrn/ — à ré; para trás. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Return to Original English Version

athwart /əˈθwɔːrt/ — atravessado sobre; de través. Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. Return to Original English Version

attuned /əˈtuːnd/ — sintonizado com. They were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. Return to Original English Version

audacious /ɔːˈdeɪʃəs/ — audacioso; atrevido. Jim would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. Return to Original English Version

audible /ˈɔːdəbəl/ — audível. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one’s conscience. Return to Original English Version

audibly /ˈɔːdəbli/ — audivelmente; em voz alta. And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly. Return to Original English Version

aversion /əˈvɜːrʒən/ — aversão; repulsa. He had grown old in minor iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. Return to Original English Version

avidity /əˈvɪdəti/ — avidez. He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage. Return to Original English Version

awaken /əˈweɪkən/ — acordar; despertar. If I understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. Return to Original English Version

awash /əˈwɑːʃ/ — inundado; encharcado. ‘After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Return to Original English Version

b'gosh /bəˈɡɑːʃ/ — por Deus!; puxa!. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b’gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. Return to Original English Version

babel /ˈbeɪbəl/ — Babel; confusão de vozes. On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. Return to Original English Version

bales /beɪlz/ — fardos. Frankly, I don’t care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of old rags in bales. Return to Original English Version

banged /bæŋd/ — bateu com força; deu pancadas. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. Return to Original English Version

bared /bɛrd/ — desnudou; descobriu. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Return to Original English Version

barefooted /ˌberˈfʊtɪd/ — descalço. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. Return to Original English Version

barren /ˈbærən/ — estéreis; improdutivos. After two years of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so well known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure. Return to Original English Version

batrachian /bəˈtreɪkiən/ — batráquio; semelhante a sapo. His--er--visions are batrachian. Return to Original English Version

battened /ˈbætənd/ — fechado e preso lá embaixo. He lay there battened down in the midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck. Return to Original English Version

battered /ˈbætərd/ — amassado; surrado; maltratado. Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, ‘Man! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!’ spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. Return to Original English Version

bawled /bɔːld/ — berrou; gritou. He bawled his wish, his desire, his determination to go to bed. Return to Original English Version

beamed /biːmd/ — sorriu radiante; irradiou. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure. Return to Original English Version

beckon /ˈbɛkən/ — acenar; chamar com um gesto; convidar. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Return to Original English Version

bedsteads /ˈbedstedz/ — armações de cama; camas. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Return to Original English Version

begome /bɪˈɡʌm/ — tornar-se; virar (forma corrompida de become). “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. Return to Original English Version

belching /ˈbeltʃɪŋ/ — expelindo; vomitando fumaça. His station was in the fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belching out smoke like a volcano. Return to Original English Version

benediction /ˌbɛnɪˈdɪkʃən/ — bênção. The nights descended on her like a benediction. Return to Original English Version

benevolent /bɪˈnɛvələnt/ — benevolente; bondoso. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. Return to Original English Version

beset /bɪˈset/ — assediado; acossado; cercar. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. Return to Original English Version

bewildered /bɪˈwɪldərd/ — desconcertado; confuso. It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. Return to Original English Version

bewitching /bɪˈwɪtʃɪŋ/ — encantador; fascinante. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. Return to Original English Version

billet /ˈbɪlɪt/ — alojamento; posto. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in their persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence. Return to Original English Version

binnacle /ˈbɪnəkəl/ — bitácula. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Return to Original English Version

bismarck's /ˈbɪzmɑːrks/ — de Bismarck. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. Return to Original English Version

bleak /bliːk/ — desolado; inóspito; sombrio. The soft wind of the tropics played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter’s gale in an old barn at home. Return to Original English Version

bleating /ˈbliːtɪŋ/ — balindo; choramingando. The little chap with his arm in a sling started to run after the carriage, bleating, “Captain! Return to Original English Version

blinds /blaɪndz/ — persianas; venezianas; cega. A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes. Return to Original English Version

bloomin /ˈbluːmɪn/ — maldito; desgraçado (grafia cockney de blooming). ‘I am not afraid of doing all the bloomin’ work in this rotten hooker, b’gosh! Return to Original English Version

blowed /bloʊd/ — danado; maldito (na expressão coloquial I'll be blowed). The sailors had a good time of it up here, and what was the use of them in the world he would be blowed if he could see. Return to Original English Version

bobbing /ˈbɑːbɪŋ/ — balançando; saltitando. He narrated: ‘I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. Return to Original English Version

bolted /ˈboʊltɪd/ — disparou; trancou com ferrolho; engoliu depressa. When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got about that I had been bolted away with. Return to Original English Version

boon /buːn/ — benesse; graça pedida; dádiva. To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Return to Original English Version

boozer /ˈbuːzər/ — beberrão. Noble-looking old boozer. Return to Original English Version

bowing /ˈbaʊɪŋ/ — curvando-se; fazendo reverência. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. Return to Original English Version

bowman /ˈboʊmən/ — proeiro; remador da proa. Nevertheless he brooded apart that evening while the bowman of the cutter--a boy with a face like a girl’s and big grey eyes--was the hero of the lower deck. Return to Original English Version

brawny /ˈbrɔːni/ — musculoso; robusto. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. Return to Original English Version

brazen /ˈbreɪzən/ — descarado; atrevido. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Return to Original English Version

breeched /briːtʃt/ — vestido de calções; saído da primeira infância. He wrote like a father would to a favourite son, Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years his senior and had tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched. Return to Original English Version

bronzed /brɑːnzd/ — bronzeado; tostado. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. Return to Original English Version

brooded /ˈbruːdɪd/ — remoeu; ficou matutando. Nevertheless he brooded apart that evening while the bowman of the cutter--a boy with a face like a girl’s and big grey eyes--was the hero of the lower deck. Return to Original English Version

broomstick /ˈbruːmstɪk/ — cabo de vassoura. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Return to Original English Version

brutalised /ˈbruːtəlaɪzd/ — maltratava brutalmente; embrutecia. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. Return to Original English Version

buccaneers /ˌbʌkəˈnɪrz/ — bucaneiros; piratas. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. Return to Original English Version

bulkhead'll /ˈbʌlkhedəl/ — a antepara vai (contração de bulkhead will). That rotten bulkhead’ll give way in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us like a lump of lead.” He pushed me away with his right arm and ran before me up the ladder, shouting as he climbed. Return to Original English Version

bulwarks /ˈbʊlwərks/ — amuradas do navio; baluartes; defesas. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Return to Original English Version

burrowing /ˈbɜːroʊɪŋ/ — cavando toca; escavando. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

cackling /ˈkæklɪŋ/ — cacarejando; cacarejo. You must know that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling. Return to Original English Version

calamity /kəˈlæməti/ — calamidade; desgraça. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Return to Original English Version

callous /ˈkæləs/ — insensível; calejado. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? Return to Original English Version

capricious /kəˈprɪʃəs/ — caprichoso; volúvel. From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. Return to Original English Version

carcass /ˈkɑːrkəs/ — carcaça; corpanzil. You no better than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me.” His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. Return to Original English Version

carvings /ˈkɑːrvɪŋz/ — entalhes; esculturas. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. Return to Original English Version

certitude /ˈsɜːrtɪtuːd/ — certeza absoluta. He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage. Return to Original English Version

chained /tʃeɪnd/ — acorrentado; preso por correntes. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. Return to Original English Version

chap's /tʃæps/ — do sujeito; do rapaz. These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir.” At this point the old chap’s voice got quite unsteady. Return to Original English Version

chaps /tʃæps/ — sujeitos; camaradas. The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating like a gun that hangs fire; those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure; they weren’t bad chaps though. Return to Original English Version

chatted /tʃætɪd/ — conversaram; bateram papo. They chatted together as they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been visible to the naked eye. Return to Original English Version

cheerily /ˈtʃɪrəli/ — alegremente; com bom humor. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. Return to Original English Version

cheery /ˈtʃɪri/ — animado; alegre. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy voice: “Do you remember me, sir? Return to Original English Version

cherrywood /ˈtʃeriwʊd/ — madeira de cerejeira; haste de cerejeira. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Return to Original English Version

chimed /tʃaɪmd/ — interveio; combinou harmoniosamente. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. Return to Original English Version

chucked /tʃʌkt/ — atirou; largou. I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. Return to Original English Version

chump /tʃʌmp/ — otário; trouxa. What with the shock of him going in this awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was nearly off my chump for a week. Return to Original English Version

circumstantial /ˌsɜːrkəmˈstænʃəl/ — circunstancial; indireto. I haven’t seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial evidence. Return to Original English Version

clambered /ˈklæmbərd/ — trepou com dificuldade; galgou. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. Return to Original English Version

clangs /klæŋz/ — estrondos metálicos; clangores. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Return to Original English Version

clasping /ˈklæspɪŋ/ — apertando; juntando (as mãos). They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Return to Original English Version

clatter /ˈklætər/ — estrondo; estrépito; barulho de coisas caindo. The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. Return to Original English Version

clawed /klɔːd/ — arranhou; agarrou com as garras. Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. Return to Original English Version

cleaving /ˈkliːvɪŋ/ — fendendo; sulcando; aderindo a. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Return to Original English Version

cloths /klɔːðz/ — panos. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Return to Original English Version

clouded /ˈklaʊdɪd/ — anuviado; sombrio. Jim’s eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes that glanced straight, interested and clear. Return to Original English Version

clubbed /klʌbd/ — golpeado com um porrete. He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. Return to Original English Version

clustered /ˈklʌstərd/ — agrupado; aglomerado. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. Return to Original English Version

cocky /ˈkɑːki/ — arrogante; convencido. He wasn’t going to be ordered about--“not he, b’gosh.” He wouldn’t be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. Return to Original English Version

coif /kɔɪf/ — touca. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Return to Original English Version

collided /kəˈlaɪdɪd/ — colidiu. ‘After you had concluded you had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Return to Original English Version

commandingly /kəˈmændɪŋli/ — de modo imperioso; como quem dá ordens. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

commemoration /kəˌmeməˈreɪʃən/ — comemoração. He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. Return to Original English Version

commonest /ˈkɑːmənɪst/ — o mais comum; o mais banal. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. Return to Original English Version

commonness /ˈkɑːmənnəs/ — caráter comum; ampla frequência. Such a consciousness may be wrong, or it may be right, or it may be condemned as artificial; and, perhaps, my Jim is not a type of wide commonness. Return to Original English Version

commonplace /ˈkɑːmənpleɪs/ — lugar-comum; banal. One sunny morning, in the commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, I saw his form pass by--appealing--significant--under a cloud--perfectly silent. Return to Original English Version

commotion /kəˈmoʊʃən/ — comoção; alvoroço; tumulto. ‘Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. Return to Original English Version

companionship /kəmˈpænjənʃɪp/ — convívio; companheirismo. If I understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. Return to Original English Version

complacent /kəmˈpleɪsənt/ — satisfeito consigo; acomodado. The sting of life could do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. Return to Original English Version

complainingly /kəmˈpleɪnɪŋli/ — em tom de queixa; queixosamente. “They caught me for that inquiry, you see,” he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. Return to Original English Version

complication /ˌkɑːmpləˈkeɪʃən/ — complicação. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Return to Original English Version

compose /kəmˈpoʊz/ — compor; redigir; serenar. I turned into a deserted landing, and suddenly all became very still and quiet around me, and I descended the bare and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose my distracted thoughts. Return to Original English Version

concede /kənˈsiːd/ — conceder; admitir. I am willing to believe each of us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of us has a familiar devil as well. Return to Original English Version

conceit /kənˈsiːt/ — presunção; ideia rebuscada; imagem literária. “You don’t believe me, I suppose,” went on the other, with an air of ineffable conceit. Return to Original English Version

conceivably /kənˈsiːvəbli/ — possivelmente; é concebível que. It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim ship episode was a good starting-point for a free and wandering tale; that it was an event, too, which could conceivably colour the whole ‘sentiment of existence’ in a simple and sensitive character. Return to Original English Version

condensing /kənˈdensɪŋ/ — de condensação; condensador. The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. Return to Original English Version

condescended /ˌkɑːndɪˈsendɪd/ — dignou-se; condescendeu. He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. Return to Original English Version

confidences /ˈkɑːnfɪdənsɪz/ — confidências; segredos. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

confidentially /ˌkɑːnfɪˈdɛnʃəli/ — em confidência; em segredo. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Return to Original English Version

confining /kənˈfaɪnɪŋ/ — confinando; limitando. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Return to Original English Version

consumedly /kənˈsuːmɪdli/ — extremamente; enormemente (arcaico). ‘He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him. Return to Original English Version

contagion /kənˈteɪdʒən/ — contágio; propagação. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

contemptible /kənˈtemptəbəl/ — desprezível. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace. Return to Original English Version

contemptuous /kənˈtɛmptʃuəs/ — desdenhoso; desprezador. No doubt, to have all this forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. Return to Original English Version

contortion /kənˈtɔːrʃən/ — contorção. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to strike him. Return to Original English Version

converse /kənˈvɜːrs/ — conversar; falar. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. Return to Original English Version

conveyance /kənˈveɪəns/ — veículo; transporte; escritura de transmissão. The driver, shaken out of his meditation over the sole of his foot, displayed at once all the signs of intense terror, and held with both hands, looking round from his box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his conveyance. Return to Original English Version

coverlet /ˈkʌvərlət/ — colcha. Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Return to Original English Version

coxswain /ˈkɑːksən/ — patrão de embarcação; timoneiro. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Return to Original English Version

crafty /ˈkræfti/ — astuto; manhoso. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Return to Original English Version

crannies /ˈkræniz/ — fendas; frestas. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Return to Original English Version

crevice /ˈkrevɪs/ — fenda; greta. He wanted to go on talking for truth’s sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. Return to Original English Version

crevices /ˈkrevɪsɪz/ — fendas; frestas. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Return to Original English Version

cronies /ˈkroʊniz/ — companheiros de sempre. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Return to Original English Version

crumb /krʌm/ — migalha; farelo. They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! Return to Original English Version

cryptic /ˈkrɪptɪk/ — enigmático; obscuro. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. Return to Original English Version

cucumber /ˈkjuːkʌmbər/ — pepino; em 'cool as a cucumber', muito calmo. I could drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b’gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. Return to Original English Version

cuddy /ˈkʌdi/ — cabine; pequeno salão de navio. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Return to Original English Version

curiously /ˈkjʊriəsli/ — com curiosidade; curiosamente. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Return to Original English Version

curt /kɜːrt/ — seco; lacônico. He answered truthfully by a curt ‘Yes, I did’; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. Return to Original English Version

cynically /ˈsɪnɪkli/ — cinicamente. No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, “Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?” and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Return to Original English Version

damnable /ˈdæmnəbəl/ — execrável; maldito. He had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but by the way he said ‘Good morning.’ I never addressed him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep a civil tongue in my head.” (He flattered himself there. Return to Original English Version

darted /ˈdɑːrtɪd/ — disparou; arremessou-se; lançou um olhar. He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. Return to Original English Version

dashed /dæʃt/ — espatifada; arremessada; lançada com força. He narrated: ‘I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. Return to Original English Version

dashes /ˈdæʃɪz/ — arremessa-se; pitadas; travessões. He wanted to go on talking for truth’s sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. Return to Original English Version

dawned /dɔːnd/ — amanheceu; despontou; ocorreu de repente. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of the Patna case. Return to Original English Version

debaucheries /dɪˈbɔːtʃəriz/ — excessos; devassidões. There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. Return to Original English Version

decomposed /ˌdiːkəmˈpoʊzd/ — decomposto. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. Return to Original English Version

decrepit /dɪˈkrepɪt/ — decrépito; caduco. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Return to Original English Version

deference /ˈdefərəns/ — deferência; respeito. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. Return to Original English Version

defiled /dɪˈfaɪld/ — profanou; conspurcou. I really don’t recollect now what decent little port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that precious bird. Return to Original English Version

defy /dɪˈfaɪ/ — desafiar; enfrentar. I defy anybody not to have done so. Return to Original English Version

dejectedly /dɪˈdʒektɪdli/ — desanimadamente. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

delicately /ˈdelɪkətli/ — delicadamente; com sutileza. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Return to Original English Version

depict /dɪˈpɪkt/ — retratar; representar. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt” with in those places. Return to Original English Version

deplorable /dɪˈplɔːrəbəl/ — deplorável; lamentável. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. Return to Original English Version

deplorably /dɪˈplɔːrəbli/ — deploravelmente; lastimavelmente. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. Return to Original English Version

deprive /dɪˈpraɪv/ — privar; tirar de. He heard me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. Return to Original English Version

derision /dɪˈrɪʒən/ — escárnio; irrisão. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Return to Original English Version

desolate /ˈdɛsələt/ — desolado; vazio. Where’s the captain, Rover?” The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under the table. Return to Original English Version

despairing /dɪˈspɛrɪŋ/ — desesperado; de desespero. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book. Return to Original English Version

detestable /dɪˈtɛstəbəl/ — detestável; odioso. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. Return to Original English Version

devastation /ˌdevəˈsteɪʃən/ — devastação. He lay there battened down in the midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck. Return to Original English Version

devious /ˈdiːviəs/ — tortuoso; sinuoso; ardiloso. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

devouring /dɪˈvaʊərɪŋ/ — devorador; voraz. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Return to Original English Version

diabolical /ˌdaɪəˈbɑːlɪkəl/ — diabólico; infernal. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

dignified /ˈdɪɡnɪfaɪd/ — digno; solene; de porte nobre. “If you weren’t a God-forsaken Portuguee,” I heard him yell, “you would know that the hospital is the right place for me.” He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. Return to Original English Version

dingy /ˈdɪndʒi/ — encardido; sujo e desbotado. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

discomfiture /dɪsˈkʌmfɪtʃər/ — embaraço; desconcerto. H-e-elp!” An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. Return to Original English Version

Original Text: Rare Words (2/5)

discomposing /ˌdɪskəmˈpoʊzɪŋ/ — perturbador; desconcertante. By that time the fellow had managed to tug and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight bows at Ruthvel, who told me the sight was so discomposing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make out what that apparition wanted. Return to Original English Version

discontented /ˌdɪskənˈtentɪd/ — descontente; insatisfeito. After writing a few pages, however, I became for some reason discontented and I laid them aside for a time. Return to Original English Version

disdain /dɪsˈdeɪn/ — desdém; desprezo. In time, beside the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna. Return to Original English Version

disenchanting /ˌdɪsɪnˈtʃæntɪŋ/ — desencantador; que desfaz ilusões. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Return to Original English Version

dismal /ˈdɪzməl/ — sombrio; lúgubre; triste. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Return to Original English Version

dispassionately /dɪsˈpæʃənətli/ — com serenidade; sem se exaltar. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible. Return to Original English Version

dispensed /dɪˈspenst/ — distribuiu; dispensou; ministrou. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. Return to Original English Version

disport /dɪˈspɔːrt/ — divertir-se; andar a passear. He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to disport himself in, and I did not hear the precise address. Return to Original English Version

disposition /ˌdɪspəˈzɪʃən/ — índole; disposição de ânimo. One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition. Return to Original English Version

dissolving /dɪˈzɑːlvɪŋ/ — dissolvendo-se; desfazendo-se. The only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in the air. Return to Original English Version

distended /dɪˈstendɪd/ — distendido; dilatado. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. Return to Original English Version

diverging /daɪˈvɜːrdʒɪŋ/ — divergindo; que se afasta. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Return to Original English Version

doctored /ˈdɑːktərd/ — adulterado; tratado. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Return to Original English Version

dogged /ˈdɑːɡɪd/ — obstinado; tenaz. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. Return to Original English Version

dolefully /ˈdoʊlfəli/ — tristemente; com desânimo. He blew his nose, nodding at me dolefully: “Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of ourselves.” Return to Original English Version

dotted /ˈdɑːtɪd/ — pontilhado; salpicado. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Return to Original English Version

downwards /ˈdaʊnwərdz/ — para baixo. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. Return to Original English Version

doze /doʊz/ — cochilo; cochilar. The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider’s web. Return to Original English Version

draperies /ˈdreɪpəriz/ — panejamentos; dobras da veste. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Return to Original English Version

dratted /ˈdrætɪd/ — maldito; danado (eufemismo). I wish to ask you respectfully--respectfully, mind--who wouldn’t chuck a dratted job like this? Return to Original English Version

draught /dræft/ — gole; trago. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Return to Original English Version

drawl /drɔːl/ — fala arrastada; tom arrastado. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl, “Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. Return to Original English Version

dresser /ˈdresər/ — assistente hospitalar; enfermeiro que faz curativos. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. Return to Original English Version

dripped /drɪpt/ — pingou; escorreu. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Return to Original English Version

droll /droʊl/ — cômico; esquisito e engraçado. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

drummed /drʌmd/ — tamborilou; batucou. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Return to Original English Version

duffer /ˈdʌfər/ — incompetente; sujeito inepto. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. Return to Original English Version

dumpy /ˈdʌmpi/ — atarracado; curto e grosso. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. Return to Original English Version

dun /dʌn/ — o baio; cavalo pardo. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. Return to Original English Version

dunnage /ˈdʌnɪdʒ/ — bagagem miúda; tralha. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Return to Original English Version

durned /dɜːrnd/ — maldito; danado (forma dialetal de 'darned'). The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap-heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, only more so; and what made him risk his life every night and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking-up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more than _he_ could tell. Return to Original English Version

dusting /ˈdʌstɪŋ/ — limpando o pó; sacudindo. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. Return to Original English Version

dwelt /dwɛlt/ — moravam; habitavam. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. Return to Original English Version

eagerness /ˈiːɡərnəs/ — ânsia; entusiasmo; avidez. “Just so,” he said, “but if I were to look I could see--there’s no eyes like mine, I tell you.” Again he clawed, pulling at me downwards in his eagerness to relieve himself by a confidential communication. Return to Original English Version

earnestness /ˈɜːrnɪstnəs/ — seriedade; fervor; empenho. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. Return to Original English Version

easing /ˈiːzɪŋ/ — aliviando. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Return to Original English Version

eatables /ˈiːtəbəlz/ — comestíveis. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. Return to Original English Version

eddied /ˈedid/ — redemoinhou. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Return to Original English Version

effigy /ˈefɪdʒi/ — efígie; figura imóvel. ‘Where did you get drink?’ inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Return to Original English Version

ejected /ɪˈdʒektɪd/ — expulso; ejetado. However, that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and--ah! ejected him again. Return to Original English Version

elemental /ˌeləˈmentəl/ — elementar; primordial. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Return to Original English Version

elongated /ɪˈlɔːŋɡeɪtɪd/ — alongado; esticado. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Return to Original English Version

elp /help/ — ajuda!; socorro! (parte de um grito alongado). H-e-elp!” An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. Return to Original English Version

eluded /ɪˈluːdɪd/ — iludiu; escapou de. This reward eluded him. Return to Original English Version

emitted /ɪˈmɪtɪd/ — emitiu. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. Return to Original English Version

enlivened /ɪnˈlaɪvənd/ — animado; avivado. Of course there are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end is told--even if there happens to be any end to it. Return to Original English Version

enslaved /ɪnˈsleɪvd/ — escravizado; escravizou. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. Return to Original English Version

enslaving /ɪnˈsleɪvɪŋ/ — escravizante; que aprisiona. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Return to Original English Version

enthroned /ɪnˈθroʊnd/ — entronizado. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. Return to Original English Version

enticing /ɪnˈtaɪsɪŋ/ — tentador; atraente. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Return to Original English Version

enveloped /ɪnˈveləpt/ — envolvido; embuçado. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. Return to Original English Version

epithet /ˈepɪθet/ — epíteto; qualificativo. He glared--I smiled; hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open window. Return to Original English Version

errand /ˈɛrənd/ — incumbência; recado; missão. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Return to Original English Version

ether /ˈiːθər/ — éter; espaço celeste. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. Return to Original English Version

everlasting /ˌɛvərˈlæstɪŋ/ — eterno; sem fim. A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. Return to Original English Version

everlastingly /ˌevərˈlæstɪŋli/ — eternamente; sem parar. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in their persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence. Return to Original English Version

ewigkeit /ˈeːvɪçkaɪt/ — eternidade (em alemão). A snorting pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. Return to Original English Version

exacting /ɪɡˈzæktɪŋ/ — exigente; exigindo. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Return to Original English Version

exactions /ɪɡˈzækʃənz/ — exigências opressivas; cobranças. He knew the magic monotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. Return to Original English Version

exasperating /ɪɡˈzæspəreɪtɪŋ/ — exasperante; irritante. No doubt, to have all this forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. Return to Original English Version

exchanging /ɪksˈtʃeɪndʒɪŋ/ — trocando; permutando. They grinned at each other--might have been exchanging jokes, for all I know. Return to Original English Version

excitable /ɪkˈsaɪtəbəl/ — excitável; facilmente agitado. Old Symons is awfully excitable--isn’t he? Return to Original English Version

exertion /ɪɡˈzɜːrʃən/ — esforço; empenho físico. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves, “Hang exertion. Return to Original English Version

exhalation /ˌekshəˈleɪʃən/ — exalação. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Return to Original English Version

exhibiting /ɪɡˈzɪbɪtɪŋ/ — exibindo; apresentando. ‘I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest, but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. Return to Original English Version

extravagantly /ɪkˈstrævəɡəntli/ — extravagantemente. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. Return to Original English Version

exulted /ɪɡˈzʌltɪd/ — exultou. He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage. Return to Original English Version

eyelid /ˈaɪlɪd/ — pálpebra. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Return to Original English Version

fable /ˈfeɪbəl/ — fábula; história inventada. Of course there are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end is told--even if there happens to be any end to it. Return to Original English Version

facetiously /fəˈsiːʃəsli/ — jocosamente; de modo brincalhão. They’ve got to be watched, you know.” He winked facetiously. Return to Original English Version

fainting /ˈfeɪntɪŋ/ — desfalecidos; sem forças. Fancy such a big chap fainting like a girl. Return to Original English Version

familiarly /fəˈmɪliərli/ — familiarmente; com intimidade. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Return to Original English Version

fanned /fænd/ — abanaram; sopraram sobre. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Return to Original English Version

fascinate /ˈfæsəneɪt/ — fascinar. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

fascination /ˌfæsɪˈneɪʃən/ — fascínio; encanto. But at length he found a fascination in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on such a small allowance of danger and toil. Return to Original English Version

fearsome /ˈfɪrsəm/ — temível; assustador. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

feathered /ˈfɛðərd/ — emplumado; coberto de folhagem leve. I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the means of getting away. Return to Original English Version

festal /ˈfestəl/ — festivo; de festa. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Return to Original English Version

fiend /fiːnd/ — demônio; espírito maligno. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Return to Original English Version

fiftieth /ˈfɪftiəθ/ — quinquagésimo. “Why eat all that dirt?” he exclaimed, with an oriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. Return to Original English Version

figuratively /ˈfɪɡjərətɪvli/ — figuradamente. He was the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck--figuratively and professionally speaking. Return to Original English Version

fitful /ˈfɪtfəl/ — intermitente; irregular; aos arrancos. The gale had freshened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. Return to Original English Version

flanking /ˈflæŋkɪŋ/ — ladeando; flanqueando. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite. Return to Original English Version

flattened /ˈflætənd/ — achatado; amassado. I half expected the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod--but it only sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one venetian blind rattled down. Return to Original English Version

flattered /ˈflætərd/ — lisonjeou; lisonjeado. He had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but by the way he said ‘Good morning.’ I never addressed him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep a civil tongue in my head.” (He flattered himself there. Return to Original English Version

flicked /flɪkt/ — deu um peteleco; açoitou de leve. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

flinched /flɪntʃt/ — estremeceu; recuou. When all men flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone would know how to deal with the spurious menace of wind and seas. Return to Original English Version

flitted /ˈflɪtɪd/ — esgueirou-se; passou veloz. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Return to Original English Version

flitting /ˈflɪtɪŋ/ — esvoaçante; fugidio. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Return to Original English Version

floss /flɔːs/ — fibras soltas de seda; fio de seda macio. I must have been pretty desperate too, for, without loss of time, after a few indifferent and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. Return to Original English Version

flourishes /ˈflɜːrɪʃɪz/ — gesticulações; volteios. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. Return to Original English Version

flowed /floʊd/ — corria; estendia-se. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Return to Original English Version

flung /flʌŋ/ — atirado; lançado. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. Return to Original English Version

fluster /ˈflʌstər/ — atrapalhação; atrapalhar. That’s the only sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but I am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try to swim a stroke, the same as he would have had pluck enough to keep up all day long on the bare chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Return to Original English Version

flustered /ˈflʌstərd/ — perturbado; atrapalhado. “If you weren’t a God-forsaken Portuguee,” I heard him yell, “you would know that the hospital is the right place for me.” He pushed the fist of his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. Return to Original English Version

foliage /ˈfoʊliɪdʒ/ — folhagem. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. Return to Original English Version

folly /ˈfɑːli/ — tolice; loucura. I was sorry for my folly. Return to Original English Version

forearms /ˈfɔːrɑːrmz/ — antebraços. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Return to Original English Version

foresee /fɔːrˈsiː/ — prever; antever. When I sat down to it I knew it would be a long book, though I didn’t foresee that it would spread itself over thirteen numbers of Maga. Return to Original English Version

formidably /ˈfɔːrmɪdəbli/ — ameaçadoramente; de modo temível. They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. Return to Original English Version

forsooth /fərˈsuːθ/ — em verdade; pois sim (arcaico). Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

fortitude /ˈfɔːrtɪtuːd/ — fortaleza de ânimo; coragem serena. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. Return to Original English Version

fostered /ˈfɔːstərd/ — fomentou; criou. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. Return to Original English Version

fostering /ˈfɔːstərɪŋ/ — protetor; que nutre e favorece. Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s face. Return to Original English Version

fragmentarily /ˌfræɡmənˈterəli/ — fragmentariamente; em trechos. Two Malays, silent and almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light thrown out by the binnacle. Return to Original English Version

freshened /ˈfreʃənd/ — se intensificou; ficou mais forte. The gale had freshened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. Return to Original English Version

fretting /ˈfretɪŋ/ — afligindo-se; impacientando-se. “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. Return to Original English Version

friendt /frɛnt/ — amigo (grafia que imita sotaque alemão). He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--“Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. Return to Original English Version

fro /froʊ/ — de volta (em to and fro, de um lado para o outro). He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. Return to Original English Version

fronds /frɑːndz/ — frondes; folhas de palmeira. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Return to Original English Version

frothy /ˈfrɔːθi/ — espumoso. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. Return to Original English Version

fulgor /ˈfʌlɡər/ — fulgor; brilho intenso. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. Return to Original English Version

fuming /ˈfjuːmɪŋ/ — bufando de raiva; furioso. “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. Return to Original English Version

furies /ˈfjʊriz/ — fúrias; forças naturais violentas. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Return to Original English Version

fussing /ˈfʌsɪŋ/ — fazendo alarde; importunando; agitando-se. I said, ‘All right, sir,’ wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to call him before altering the course anyhow. Return to Original English Version

fussy /ˈfʌsi/ — exigente; cheio de manias; rebuscado. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. Return to Original English Version

futilely /ˈfjuːtaɪli/ — inutilmente; em vão. The examination of the only man able and willing to face it was beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on an iron box, were the object to find out what’s inside. Return to Original English Version

galvanic /ɡælˈvænɪk/ — galvânico; semelhante a choque elétrico. Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Return to Original English Version

garlanded /ˈɡɑːrləndɪd/ — engrinaldado. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Return to Original English Version

gaudy /ˈɡɔːdi/ — espalhafatoso; berrante. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

gaunt /ɡɔːnt/ — descarnado; magro e abatido. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Return to Original English Version

gazed /ɡeɪzd/ — fitou; contemplou. Nothing mysterious prevented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a full information upon that young fellow who, hands in pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed across the grass-plots of the Esplanade at the yellow portico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. Return to Original English Version

gazing /ˈɡeɪzɪŋ/ — fitando; contemplando. He said ‘Damn!’ as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Return to Original English Version

gentlemanly /ˈdʒentəlmənli/ — cavalheiresco. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself. Return to Original English Version

girth /ɡɜːrθ/ — circunferência; cilha. ‘There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. Return to Original English Version

glanced /ɡlænst/ — lançou um olhar; deu uma olhada. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. Return to Original English Version

glances /ˈɡlænsɪz/ — olhares rápidos; olhadelas. I can’t tell whether he recognised me--I rather think he did; but at any rate our glances met. Return to Original English Version

glazed /ɡleɪzd/ — vidrado; envidraçado; vítreo. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Return to Original English Version

gleam /ɡliːm/ — clarão; brilho trêmulo. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. Return to Original English Version

gleamed /ɡliːmd/ — reluziu; brilhou. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. Return to Original English Version

gleams /ɡliːmz/ — lampejos; brilhos fugazes; reluz. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

glided /ˈɡlaɪdɪd/ — deslizou; escorregou. Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows. Return to Original English Version

glides /ɡlaɪdz/ — desliza; plana. It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. Return to Original English Version

gliding /ˈɡlaɪdɪŋ/ — deslizando; planando. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Return to Original English Version

glimmering /ˈɡlɪmərɪŋ/ — bruxuleante; cintilando fracamente. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull’s-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Return to Original English Version

glimpses /ˈɡlɪmpsɪz/ — vislumbres; relances. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

glistened /ˈɡlɪsənd/ — reluziam; cintilavam. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. Return to Original English Version

glistening /ˈɡlɪsənɪŋ/ — cintilando; reluzindo. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. Return to Original English Version

glittered /ˈɡlɪtərd/ — brilhavam; faiscavam. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. Return to Original English Version

glued /ɡluːd/ — colada; grudada. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held my peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something. Return to Original English Version

glum /ɡlʌm/ — tristonho; carrancudo. ‘You’ll find you have a different person to deal with than the late Captain Brierly.’ ‘I’ve found it,’ says I, very glum, but pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. Return to Original English Version

gnawing /ˈnɔːɪŋ/ — roendo; lancinante; que corrói. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. Return to Original English Version

goggles /ˈɡɑːɡəlz/ — óculos de proteção; óculos grandes. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Return to Original English Version

gorge /ɡɔːrdʒ/ — desfiladeiro; garganta. His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. Return to Original English Version

gossiping /ˈɡɑːsɪpɪŋ/ — fofocando; mexericando. To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows. Return to Original English Version

gottam /ˈɡɑːtæm/ — maldito; grafia que imita fala estrangeira. You no better than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me.” His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. Return to Original English Version

gravest /ˈɡreɪvəst/ — o mais grave. If I understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. Return to Original English Version

greek's /ɡriːks/ — do grego. He has been drinking hard in that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop for three days. Return to Original English Version

greyness /ˈɡreɪnəs/ — cor cinzenta; aspecto acinzentado. The little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. Return to Original English Version

grieved /ɡriːvd/ — entristeceu-se; ficou magoado. As a matter of principle I will have no favourites; but I don’t go so far as to feel grieved and annoyed by the preference some people give to my Lord Jim. Return to Original English Version

grime /ɡraɪm/ — sujeira incrustada; fuligem. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Return to Original English Version

grimy /ˈɡraɪmi/ — encardido; sujo de fuligem. His station was in the fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belching out smoke like a volcano. Return to Original English Version

grinned /ɡrɪnd/ — sorriu de orelha a orelha. They grinned at each other--might have been exchanging jokes, for all I know. Return to Original English Version

grooves /ɡruːvz/ — sulcos; ranhuras. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Return to Original English Version

grotesque /ɡroʊˈtesk/ — grotesco; bizarro. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

grubbing /ˈɡrʌbɪŋ/ — escavando; fuçando por comida. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct, I can’t explain. Return to Original English Version

gush /ɡʌʃ/ — jorro; efusão; jorrar. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Return to Original English Version

hailed /heɪld/ — chamou; saudou em voz alta. “Don’t you let him start his hollering, mister,” hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. Return to Original English Version

halting /ˈhɔːltɪŋ/ — detendo-se; parando. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Return to Original English Version

handkerchiefs /ˈhæŋkərtʃɪfs/ — lenços. It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. Return to Original English Version

harboured /ˈhɑːrbərd/ — acolheu; nutriu (grafia britânica). The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Return to Original English Version

harp /hɑːrp/ — harpa. Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Return to Original English Version

harrow /ˈhæroʊ/ — atormentar; afligir profundamente. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

haste /heɪst/ — pressa; urgência. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or report, or whatever you like to call it. Return to Original English Version

hauled /hɔːld/ — arrastou; puxou com força. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. Return to Original English Version

heaps /hiːps/ — montes; montinhos. I’ll smash them in heaps like flies. Return to Original English Version

hearty /ˈhɑːrti/ — farto; abundante; caloroso. I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump. Return to Original English Version

heaving /ˈhiːvɪŋ/ — arfante; ondulante; erguendo com esforço. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

hemispheres /ˈhɛmɪsfɪrz/ — hemisférios. Archie’s the most sensitive shipping-master in the two hemispheres. Return to Original English Version

hinge /hɪndʒ/ — dobradiça; ponto crucial. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Return to Original English Version

hogshead /ˈhɑːɡzˌhɛd/ — barril grande; tonel. ‘Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. Return to Original English Version

hollering /ˈhɑːlərɪŋ/ — gritaria; berreiro. “Don’t you let him start his hollering, mister,” hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. Return to Original English Version

hollows /ˈhɑːloʊz/ — depressões; cavidades; baixadas. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Return to Original English Version

hovel /ˈhʌvəl/ — casebre; choupana miserável. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. Return to Original English Version

humouring /ˈhjuːmərɪŋ/ — fazendo-lhe a vontade; dando corda. When a water-clerk who possesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of having been brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money and some humouring. Return to Original English Version

idly /ˈaɪdli/ — ociosamente; à toa. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. Return to Original English Version

illumined /ɪˈluːmɪnd/ — iluminado; alumiado. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Return to Original English Version

imbecile /ˈɪmbəsɪl/ — imbecil; débil. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Return to Original English Version

imbecility /ˌɪmbəˈsɪləti/ — imbecilidade; fraqueza mental. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Return to Original English Version

immaculate /ɪˈmækjələt/ — imaculado; impecável. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular. Return to Original English Version

immensity /ɪˈmensəti/ — imensidão. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity. Return to Original English Version

immobility /ˌɪmoʊˈbɪləti/ — imobilidade. They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. Return to Original English Version

immoral /ɪˈmɔːrəl/ — imoral. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. Return to Original English Version

impaled /ɪmˈpeɪld/ — empalado; atravessado por objeto pontiagudo. I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand what I mean. Return to Original English Version

impassible /ɪmˈpæsəbəl/ — impassível; sem demonstrar emoção; uso raro por impassível. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. Return to Original English Version

imperceptible /ˌɪmpərˈseptəbəl/ — imperceptível. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. Return to Original English Version

imperfect /ɪmˈpɜːrfɪkt/ — imperfeito; incompleto; defeituoso. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. Return to Original English Version

impetuously /ɪmˈpetʃuəsli/ — impetuosamente; arrebatadamente. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Return to Original English Version

implements /ˈɪmplɪmənts/ — instrumentos; utensílios; executa. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s heart. Return to Original English Version

implored /ɪmˈplɔːrd/ — implorou; suplicado. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Return to Original English Version

impudence /ˈɪmpjədəns/ — impudência; descaramento. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--“Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. Return to Original English Version

impulses /ˈɪmpʌlsɪz/ — impulsos. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. Return to Original English Version

inaccessible /ˌɪnəkˈsesəbəl/ — inacessível. Above the mass of sleepers a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation of a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, without a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity of the sky. Return to Original English Version

inanimate /ɪnˈænɪmət/ — inanimado; sem vida. The skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. Return to Original English Version

inborn /ˈɪnbɔːrn/ — inato; congênito. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

incarnation /ˌɪnkɑːrˈneɪʃən/ — encarnação; vida seguinte. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. Return to Original English Version

incertitude /ɪnˈsɜːrtɪtuːd/ — incerteza; dúvida. There was no incertitude as to facts--as to the one material fact, I mean. Return to Original English Version

incessantly /ɪnˈsesəntli/ — incessantemente. ‘Yes,’ said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the paper without noise. Return to Original English Version

incognito /ˌɪnkɑːɡˈniːtoʊ/ — incógnito. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a fact. Return to Original English Version

incoherent /ˌɪnkoʊˈhɪrənt/ — incoerente; desconexo. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. Return to Original English Version

Original Text: Rare Words (3/5)

inconveniences /ˌɪnkənˈviːniənsɪz/ — inconvenientes; incômodos. “They caught me for that inquiry, you see,” he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. Return to Original English Version

indecision /ˌɪndɪˈsɪʒən/ — indecisão; hesitação. He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust. Return to Original English Version

indefinable /ˌɪndɪˈfaɪnəbəl/ — indefinível. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Return to Original English Version

indefinite /ɪnˈdefɪnət/ — indefinido; impreciso. No doubt, to have all this forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. Return to Original English Version

indifferent /ɪnˈdɪfrənt/ — indiferente; apático; medíocre. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Return to Original English Version

indignation /ˌɪndɪɡˈneɪʃən/ — indignação; revolta. There was some indignation, not a few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them, you know. Return to Original English Version

individuality /ˌɪndɪvɪdʒuˈæləti/ — individualidade. He heard me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. Return to Original English Version

indomitable /ɪnˈdɑːmɪtəbəl/ — indomável; inquebrantável. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Return to Original English Version

indulged /ɪnˈdʌldʒd/ — permitiu-se; comprazeu-se; satisfeito. There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. Return to Original English Version

ineffable /ɪnˈefəbəl/ — inefável; indizível. “You don’t believe me, I suppose,” went on the other, with an air of ineffable conceit. Return to Original English Version

inefficient /ˌɪnɪˈfɪʃənt/ — ineficaz; ineficiente. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace. Return to Original English Version

inexpressibly /ˌɪnɪkˈspresəbli/ — inexprimivelmente. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Return to Original English Version

inferiority /ɪnˌfɪriˈɔːrəti/ — inferioridade. I haven’t the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my superior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West, you could not have ignored your inferiority in his presence--but I couldn’t get up any real sentiment of offence. Return to Original English Version

inglorious /ɪnˈɡlɔːriəs/ — inglório; sem glória. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain standard of conduct, I can’t explain. Return to Original English Version

ingratitude /ɪnˈɡrætɪtuːd/ — ingratidão. Nevertheless, with black ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. Return to Original English Version

iniquities /ɪˈnɪkwətiz/ — iniquidades; maldades. He had grown old in minor iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. Return to Original English Version

inquire /ɪnˈkwaɪər/ — indagar; informar-se. You can’t expect the constituted authorities to inquire into the state of a man’s soul--or is it only of his liver? Return to Original English Version

inquired /ɪnˈkwaɪərd/ — perguntou; indagou. ‘Where did you get drink?’ inquired the German, very savage; but motionless in the light of the binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat. Return to Original English Version

inscribed /ɪnˈskraɪbd/ — inscritas; com letras gravadas. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Return to Original English Version

instantaneous /ˌɪnstənˈteɪniəs/ — instantâneo; do próprio momento. ‘All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions. Return to Original English Version

instructive /ɪnˈstrʌktɪv/ — instrutivo. I’ve known such a time, and, what’s more, I shan’t now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons. Return to Original English Version

interlocutor /ˌɪntərˈlɑːkjətər/ — interlocutor; pessoa com quem se conversa. He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. Return to Original English Version

interminable /ɪnˈtɜːrmɪnəbəl/ — interminável; sem fim. H-e-elp!” An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. Return to Original English Version

interrogatively /ˌɪntəˈrɑːɡətɪvli/ — interrogativamente; em tom de pergunta. He repeated Patna? interrogatively, seemed to make a short effort of memory, and said: “Quite right. Return to Original English Version

intolerable /ɪnˈtɑːlərəbəl/ — intolerável; insuportável. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. Return to Original English Version

intrepid /ɪnˈtrepɪd/ — intrépido. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of the Patna case. Return to Original English Version

invincible /ɪnˈvɪnsəbəl/ — invencível. Jim would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. Return to Original English Version

invoked /ɪnˈvoʊkt/ — invocou. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Return to Original English Version

invulnerable /ɪnˈvʌlnərəbəl/ — invulnerável. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

inward /ˈɪnwərd/ — para dentro; interior; íntimo. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

irremediable /ˌɪrɪˈmiːdiəbəl/ — irremediável; sem solução. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Return to Original English Version

irritably /ˈɪrɪtəbli/ — irritadamente; com irritação. “Oh! make ‘im dry up,” whined the accident case irritably. Return to Original English Version

islets /ˈaɪlɪts/ — ilhotas. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Return to Original English Version

italian's /ɪˈtæljənz/ — do italiano. He has been drinking hard in that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop for three days. Return to Original English Version

jab /dʒæb/ — golpe; estocada; furada. Would any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook?--I wouldn’t. Return to Original English Version

jabbering /ˈdʒæbərɪŋ/ — tagarelas; que falam sem parar. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. Return to Original English Version

jammed /dʒæmd/ — entalado; espremido. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. Return to Original English Version

jams /dʒæmz/ — nervosismo intenso; delírio causado pela abstinência alcoólica, em expressão coloquial. No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case of jim-jams before. Return to Original English Version

jargon /ˈdʒɑːrɡən/ — jargão; fala incompreensível. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Return to Original English Version

jollity /ˈdʒɑːləti/ — jovialidade; folia. To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Return to Original English Version

jostled /ˈdʒɑːsəld/ — empurrada; acotovelada. He was jostled. Return to Original English Version

jovial /ˈdʒoʊviəl/ — jovial; folgazão. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Return to Original English Version

jumbled /ˈdʒʌmbəld/ — embaralhado; misturado sem ordem. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

kindliness /ˈkaɪndlinəs/ — bondade; doçura de trato. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. Return to Original English Version

kneading /ˈniːdɪŋ/ — amassando; apertando repetidamente. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. Return to Original English Version

lackadaisical /ˌlækəˈdeɪzɪkəl/ — apático; negligente; sem entusiasmo. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. Return to Original English Version

lameness /ˈleɪmnəs/ — claudicação; dificuldade para andar; falta de vigor. His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. Return to Original English Version

languid /ˈlæŋɡwɪd/ — lânguido; frouxo. His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. Return to Original English Version

languor /ˈlæŋɡər/ — langor; moleza. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. Return to Original English Version

lanyard /ˈlænjərd/ — cordão; cabo curto. I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water already. Return to Original English Version

lapel /ləˈpɛl/ — lapela. He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it a slight tug. Return to Original English Version

lapse /læps/ — lapso; decurso; recaída. But all these preliminary moods and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the time, and they do not appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so many years. Return to Original English Version

lashed /læʃt/ — amarrou firme; açoitou; fustigou. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull’s-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Return to Original English Version

leaping /ˈliːpɪŋ/ — saltando; pulando. Keep stroke!’ And suddenly she lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide. Return to Original English Version

ledge /lɛdʒ/ — saliência; borda de rocha. She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. Return to Original English Version

leered /lɪrd/ — lançou um olhar malicioso; sorriu de modo insinuante. The clawing hand hauled at my shoulder; he leered at me knowingly. Return to Original English Version

leisurely /ˈliːʒərli/ — sem pressa; com vagar. Jim would glance at the compass, would glance around the unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints cracked, with a leisurely twist of the body, in the very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. Return to Original English Version

lifeless /ˈlaɪfləs/ — sem vida; inanimado; apático. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer. Return to Original English Version

lofty /ˈlɔːfti/ — altiva; enfunada. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. Return to Original English Version

loosens /ˈluːsənz/ — solta; afrouxa; faz falar livremente. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

loth /loʊθ/ — relutante (grafia antiga de loath). I was loth to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow--I couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of. Return to Original English Version

lounged /laʊndʒd/ — vadiou; recostou-se preguiçosamente. They told each other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word. Return to Original English Version

lucid /ˈluːsɪd/ — lúcido; claro. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. Return to Original English Version

lugubrious /luːˈɡuːbriəs/ — lúgubre. It spoke in a voice harsh and lugubrious but intrepid, and little by little it dawned upon Archie that this was a development of the Patna case. Return to Original English Version

luminous /ˈluːmɪnəs/ — luminosos; brilhantes. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer. Return to Original English Version

lurid /ˈlʊrɪd/ — lívido; sinistro; de brilho doentio. He restrained a cry--“Ssh! what are they doing now down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. Return to Original English Version

lurks /lɜːrks/ — espreita; espera escondido. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. Return to Original English Version

lustre /ˈlʌstər/ — lustro; brilho. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. Return to Original English Version

lusty /ˈlʌsti/ — vigoroso; robusto; sonoro. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Return to Original English Version

malevolent /məˈlevələnt/ — malévolo. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Return to Original English Version

malice /ˈmælɪs/ — malícia; malvadez. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Return to Original English Version

manfully /ˈmænfəli/ — varonilmente; com brio. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. Return to Original English Version

mangy /ˈmeɪndʒi/ — sarnento; maltratado; decadente. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

manilla /məˈnɪlə/ — de cânhamo-de-manila; feito de fibra de abacá. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. Return to Original English Version

mastiffs /ˈmæstɪfs/ — mastins; cães grandes e fortes. All pink--as big as mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the head and claws all round their ugly mouths. Return to Original English Version

matrimonial /ˌmætrɪˈmoʊniəl/ — matrimonial; conjugal. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. Return to Original English Version

meagre /ˈmiːɡər/ — escasso; magro; parco. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Return to Original English Version

measly /ˈmiːzli/ — mísero; insignificante. A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself. Return to Original English Version

medically /ˈmɛdɪkli/ — clinicamente; do ponto de vista médico. Most extraordinary man I ever met--medically, of course. Return to Original English Version

meek /miːk/ — manso; humilde. I liked him well enough, though some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn’t stand him at any price. Return to Original English Version

melts /melts/ — derrete; dissolve; faz desaparecer. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s heart. Return to Original English Version

mercantile /ˈmɜːrkəntaɪl/ — mercantil; comercial. The living had belonged to the family for generations; but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, he was sent at once to a ‘training-ship for officers of the mercantile marine.’ Return to Original English Version

meridian /məˈrɪdiən/ — meridiano; zênite; apogeu. “Why eat all that dirt?” he exclaimed, with an oriental energy of expression--about the only sort of energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. Return to Original English Version

meticulous /məˈtɪkjələs/ — meticuloso; minucioso. After his first feeling of revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous precision of statement would bring out the true horror behind the appalling face of things. Return to Original English Version

ministered /ˈmɪnɪstərd/ — assistiu; atendeu às necessidades de. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. Return to Original English Version

miserably /ˈmɪzərəbli/ — miseravelmente; tristemente; lamentavelmente. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. Return to Original English Version

mishap /ˈmɪshæp/ — contratempo; percalço. He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust. Return to Original English Version

monosyllable /ˈmɑːnəsɪləbəl/ — monossílabo. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. Return to Original English Version

monotony /məˈnɑːtəni/ — monotonia. He knew the magic monotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. Return to Original English Version

monstrous /ˈmɑːnstrəs/ — monstruoso; enorme e assustador. ‘Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste and stand still on the outer steps. Return to Original English Version

moods /muːdz/ — estados de espírito; humores. But all these preliminary moods and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the time, and they do not appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so many years. Return to Original English Version

moor /mʊr/ — atracar; charneca; mouro. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. Return to Original English Version

mopping /ˈmɑːpɪŋ/ — enxugando; esfregando. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Return to Original English Version

morbid /ˈmɔːrbɪd/ — mórbido; doentio. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it is all so morbid.’ Return to Original English Version

morrow /ˈmɒroʊ/ — dia seguinte; amanhã (arcaico). Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice speaking above my hat would ask: “Don’t you remember me, sir? Return to Original English Version

mortification /ˌmɔːrtɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/ — mortificação; humilhação. I thought to myself--well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. Return to Original English Version

mossy /ˈmɔːsi/ — musgoso; coberto de musgo. The little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. Return to Original English Version

mournful /ˈmɔːrnfəl/ — lastimoso; pesaroso; fúnebre. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. Return to Original English Version

mouthful /ˈmaʊθfʊl/ — bocado; porção de uma boca. Adrift--on shore--after ten years’ service--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Return to Original English Version

muddle /ˈmʌdl/ — confusão. ‘“You may depend on it, Captain Jones,” said I, “it wasn’t anything that would have disturbed much either of us two,” I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. Return to Original English Version

mutinies /ˈmjuːtəniz/ — motins; rebeliões a bordo. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book. Return to Original English Version

mysteriously /mɪˈstɪriəsli/ — misteriosamente. Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows. Return to Original English Version

nape /neɪp/ — nuca; cangote. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

narrated /ˈnæreɪtɪd/ — narrou. He narrated: ‘I just saw his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. Return to Original English Version

negligible /ˈneɡlɪdʒəbəl/ — insignificante. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Return to Original English Version

nip /nɪp/ — trago pequeno; beliscão. The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o’clock--‘only one, s’elp me!’--good old chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn’t do it. Return to Original English Version

nippers /ˈnɪpərz/ — óculos pince-nez; pinça nasal. “Go in, captain.” He saw the old man lift his head from some writing so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off, banged the door to, and fled to his desk, where he had some papers waiting for his signature: but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he couldn’t collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of his own name. Return to Original English Version

nobodies /ˈnoʊbɑːdiz/ — pessoas sem importância; zés-ninguém. They were nobodies. Return to Original English Version

noiseless /ˈnɔɪzləs/ — silencioso; sem ruído. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Return to Original English Version

noiselessly /ˈnɔɪzləsli/ — sem ruído; silenciosamente. His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Return to Original English Version

nondescript /ˈnɑːndɪskrɪpt/ — sem traços marcantes; banal. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. Return to Original English Version

now's /naʊz/ — agora é; agora chegou (contração de now is). Now’s your time; easy does it. . . . Return to Original English Version

obliging /əˈblaɪdʒɪŋ/ — prestativo; solícito. Some of you might have known him--an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables--a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. Return to Original English Version

obliquely /oʊˈbliːkli/ — obliquamente; de través. She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. Return to Original English Version

obscene /əbˈsiːn/ — obsceno; indecente. There was something obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. Return to Original English Version

obstinate /ˈɑːbstɪnət/ — obstinado; renitente. I see well enough now that I hoped for the impossible--for the laying of what is the most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the uneasy doubt uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and more chilling than the certitude of death--the doubt of the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct. Return to Original English Version

odious /ˈoʊdiəs/ — odioso; detestável. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. Return to Original English Version

onward /ˈɑːnwərd/ — adiante; para a frente; em diante. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. Return to Original English Version

opaque /oʊˈpeɪk/ — opaco; impenetrável à luz. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. Return to Original English Version

ostentation /ˌɑːstenˈteɪʃən/ — ostentação; exibicionismo. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. Return to Original English Version

overflowed /ˌoʊvərˈfloʊd/ — transbordou; extravasou. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Return to Original English Version

overshadowed /ˌoʊvərˈʃædoʊd/ — ofuscou; ensombrou. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. Return to Original English Version

overtake /ˌoʊvərˈteɪk/ — acompanhar; dar conta de. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice speaking above my hat would ask: “Don’t you remember me, sir? Return to Original English Version

overturned /ˌoʊvərˈtɜːrnd/ — virou; tombou. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. Return to Original English Version

overvalued /ˌoʊvərˈvæljuːd/ — superestimou; atribuiu valor excessivo. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. Return to Original English Version

pane /peɪn/ — vidraça; painel de vidro. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. Return to Original English Version

pang /pæŋ/ — pontada; aperto no peito. He was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut short his speech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely discouraged and weary. Return to Original English Version

panics /ˈpænɪks/ — pânicos; crises de pânico. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Return to Original English Version

panted /ˈpæntɪd/ — ofegou; arquejou. There’s too many of them, and she won’t swim more than ten minutes.” He panted again. Return to Original English Version

panting /ˈpæntɪŋ/ — ofegante; arquejante. His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. Return to Original English Version

parched /pɑːrtʃt/ — ressequido; sedento; torrado. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run down his back. Return to Original English Version

parentage /ˈpɛrəntɪdʒ/ — filiação; origem familiar. He stood there for all the parentage of his kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very existence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage. Return to Original English Version

parting /ˈpɑːrtɪŋ/ — despedida; separação. Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as after a final parting. Return to Original English Version

pathos /ˈpeɪθɑːs/ — patético; comoção. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Return to Original English Version

patna's /ˈpætnəz/ — do Patna; do navio Patna. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Return to Original English Version

paunchy /ˈpɔːntʃi/ — barrigudo; pançudo. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

pecker /ˈpekər/ — ânimo; coragem (na expressão keep up one's pecker). He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. Return to Original English Version

peculation /ˌpekjəˈleɪʃən/ — peculato; desvio de dinheiro. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Return to Original English Version

peep /piːp/ — espiadela; olhada rápida. You ought really to take a peep at him. Return to Original English Version

peg /pɛɡ/ — cabide; pino de madeira. I could drink liquid fire against your whisky peg for peg, b’gosh, and keep as cool as a cucumber. Return to Original English Version

pegged /peɡd/ — preso com tachinhas; fixado. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. Return to Original English Version

pelting /ˈpeltɪŋ/ — caindo com força; apedrejando. On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart went on pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his deposition, or report, or whatever you like to call it. Return to Original English Version

penetrated /ˈpɛnɪtreɪtɪd/ — penetravam; embrenhavam-se. Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s face. Return to Original English Version

pensive /ˈpensɪv/ — pensativo. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. Return to Original English Version

pent /pent/ — confinado; represado. He interrupted me with a sort of pent-up violence. Return to Original English Version

perchance /pərˈtʃæns/ — porventura; talvez, arcaico. The least thing--the least drop of something rare and accursed; the least drop!--but he made you--standing there with his don’t-care-hang air--he made you wonder whether perchance he were nothing more rare than brass. Return to Original English Version

perdition /pərˈdɪʃən/ — perdição; danação eterna. The facts those men were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requiring for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole that had features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. Return to Original English Version

perfumes /pərˈfjuːmz/ — perfumes; fragrâncias. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams. Return to Original English Version

perfunctorily /pərˈfʌŋktərəli/ — superficialmente; de modo mecânico. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship’s keel upon the sea as the black line drawn by the pencil upon the chart. Return to Original English Version

perils /ˈperəlz/ — perigos; riscos graves. He could affront greater perils. Return to Original English Version

perim /ˈperɪm/ — Perim. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship’s position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship’s spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. Return to Original English Version

perpendicular /ˌpɜːrpənˈdɪkjələr/ — perpendicular; a prumo. His station was in the fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belching out smoke like a volcano. Return to Original English Version

perpendicularly /ˌpɜːrpənˈdɪkjələrli/ — perpendicularmente; a prumo. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Return to Original English Version

perquisites /ˈpɜːrkwɪzɪts/ — regalias; vantagens adicionais. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn’t, you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. Return to Original English Version

persisted /pərˈsɪstɪd/ — persistiu; insistiu. His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. Return to Original English Version

perspiration /ˌpɜːrspəˈreɪʃən/ — transpiração; suor. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Return to Original English Version

perspiring /pərˈspaɪərɪŋ/ — suado; a transpirar. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. Return to Original English Version

perturbation /ˌpɜːrtərˈbeɪʃən/ — perturbação; agitação. It made me feel queer all over,” went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula. Return to Original English Version

pervaded /pərˈveɪdɪd/ — impregnou; permeou. A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. Return to Original English Version

perversions /pərˈvɜːrʒənz/ — perversões; distorções. ‘This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. Return to Original English Version

perverted /pərˈvɜːrtɪd/ — pervertido; deturpado. But I can safely assure my readers that he is not the product of coldly perverted thinking. Return to Original English Version

philtre /ˈfɪltər/ — filtro; poção mágica. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. Return to Original English Version

physique /fɪˈziːk/ — físico; compleição. Having a steady head with an excellent physique, he was very smart aloft. Return to Original English Version

piety /ˈpaɪəti/ — piedade; devoção. Many commanders of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Return to Original English Version

pigtail /ˈpɪɡteɪl/ — trança; rabicho. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Return to Original English Version

piled /paɪld/ — amontoamos; empilhamos. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

piloting /ˈpaɪlətɪŋ/ — guiando; conduzindo. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. Return to Original English Version

pinches /ˈpɪntʃɪz/ — aperta; dói (na expressão onde o sapato aperta). ‘You would like to sit in it yourself--that’s where the shoe pinches,’ he sneers. Return to Original English Version

placid /ˈplæsɪd/ — plácido; sereno. Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s face. Return to Original English Version

plaited /ˈplætɪd/ — trançado. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Return to Original English Version

plank /plæŋk/ — tábua. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Return to Original English Version

pleasurable /ˈpleʒərəbəl/ — agradável; aprazível. He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running through every limb as though all the blood in his body had turned to warm milk. Return to Original English Version

pleasurably /ˈpleʒərəbli/ — agradavelmente; com prazer. His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. Return to Original English Version

pliable /ˈplaɪəbəl/ — maleável; dócil. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Return to Original English Version

pluck /plʌk/ — colher; depenar; coragem. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Return to Original English Version

plucked /plʌkt/ — puxou; arrancou com os dedos. The police plucked him off a garbage-heap in the early morning. Return to Original English Version

plumes /pluːmz/ — plumas; penachos. Up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little fighting-cock. Return to Original English Version

poignant /ˈpɔɪnjənt/ — pungente; cortante. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one’s conscience. Return to Original English Version

pointedly /ˈpɔɪntɪdli/ — de modo incisivo; com intenção. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Return to Original English Version

poised /pɔɪzd/ — erguida; suspensa no ar. They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. Return to Original English Version

ponderously /ˈpɑːndərəsli/ — pesadamente; com lentidão. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

popinjay /ˈpɑːpɪndʒeɪ/ — janota vaidoso; pavão. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa--came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. Return to Original English Version

populous /ˈpɑːpjələs/ — populoso. They came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from villages by the sea. Return to Original English Version

portraying /pɔːrˈtreɪɪŋ/ — retratando; representando. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull’s-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Return to Original English Version

posthumous /ˈpɑːstʃəməs/ — póstumo. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Return to Original English Version

postulate /ˈpɑːstʃələt/ — postulado; premissa aceita. This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions affording some measure of relief; and in regard to the listeners’ endurance, the postulate must be accepted that the story was interesting. Return to Original English Version

pounded /ˈpaʊndɪd/ — socaram; bateram com força. He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of faith. Return to Original English Version

powerfully /ˈpaʊərfəli/ — fortemente; com violência. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. Return to Original English Version

praus /praʊz/ — praus; barcos à vela malaios. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. Return to Original English Version

precariously /prɪˈkeriəsli/ — precariamente; de modo inseguro. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy enough. Return to Original English Version

precaution /prɪˈkɔːʃən/ — precaução; cautela. I thought the precaution reasonable. Return to Original English Version

presided /prɪˈzaɪdɪd/ — presidiu. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite. Return to Original English Version

presiding /prɪˈzaɪdɪŋ/ — presidindo; que preside. The face of the presiding magistrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. Return to Original English Version

pretence /ˈpriːtɛns/ — fingimento; simulação. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. Return to Original English Version

pretences /prɪˈtensɪz/ — pretextos; fingimentos. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself. Return to Original English Version

procure /prəˈkjʊr/ — conseguir; obter; providenciar. I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the means of getting away. Return to Original English Version

profundity /prəˈfʌndəti/ — profundidade de pensamento. ‘“You may depend on it, Captain Jones,” said I, “it wasn’t anything that would have disturbed much either of us two,” I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. Return to Original English Version

pronouncement /prəˈnaʊnsmənt/ — pronunciamento; declaração solene. The pronouncement gave me food for an hour’s anxious thought. Return to Original English Version

prosaic /proʊˈzeɪɪk/ — prosaico; banal. He knew the magic monotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. Return to Original English Version

prying /ˈpraɪɪŋ/ — bisbilhotando; xereta. I fear that such was the secret motive of my prying. Return to Original English Version

Original Text: Rare Words (4/5)

puckered /ˈpʌkərd/ — franziu-se; enrugou. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Return to Original English Version

pullers /ˈpʊlərz/ — puxadores; criados que acionavam os punkahs. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Return to Original English Version

purplish /ˈpɜːrplɪʃ/ — arroxeado. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. Return to Original English Version

quaver /ˈkweɪvər/ — tremor na voz. “He was afraid the poor brute would jump after him, don’t you see?” he pursued with a quaver. Return to Original English Version

quavering /ˈkweɪvərɪŋ/ — trêmulo; vacilante. “Don’t you let him start his hollering, mister,” hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a quavering call down a tunnel. Return to Original English Version

quelled /kweld/ — reprimiu; sufocou. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book. Return to Original English Version

questioners /ˈkwestʃənərz/ — interrogadores; pessoas que faziam perguntas. Eager questioners crowded round him. Return to Original English Version

quill /kwɪl/ — espinho; pena. He wasn’t going to be ordered about--“not he, b’gosh.” He wouldn’t be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. Return to Original English Version

quiver /ˈkwɪvər/ — aljava; carcás. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Return to Original English Version

quivered /ˈkwɪvərd/ — tremeram; estremeceram. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. Return to Original English Version

quivering /ˈkwɪvərɪŋ/ — tremendo; estremecendo. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air. Return to Original English Version

racket /ˈrækɪt/ — barulheira; algazarra. He was more than half cooked, he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much he sinned, because these last three days he had passed through a fine course of training for the place where the bad boys go when they die--b’gosh, he had--besides being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. Return to Original English Version

racketed /ˈrækətɪd/ — fez barulho; estrondeou. The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. Return to Original English Version

rakishly /ˈreɪkɪʃli/ — de modo atrevido; inclinado com ar galante. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Return to Original English Version

ramshackle /ˈræmʃækəl/ — caindo aos pedaços. A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes. Return to Original English Version

rapidity /rəˈpɪdəti/ — rapidez; celeridade. “The ship was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the strict Q.T.,” he whispered with extreme rapidity. Return to Original English Version

rasping /ˈræspɪŋ/ — áspero; que range. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Return to Original English Version

rattling /ˈrætəlɪŋ/ — chacoalhando; sacudindo com ruído. The perspiration dripped on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I shivered to the very marrow. Return to Original English Version

raving /ˈreɪvɪŋ/ — delirante; furioso. The head, ah! the head, of course, gone, but the curious part is there’s some sort of method in his raving. Return to Original English Version

reappeared /ˌriːəˈpɪrd/ — reapareceram; voltaram a surgir. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. Return to Original English Version

reared /rɪrd/ — criados; educados. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Return to Original English Version

rebounded /rɪˈbaʊndɪd/ — ricocheteou; recuperou-se. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. Return to Original English Version

receptacle /rɪˈseptəkəl/ — receptáculo; depositário. I declare I am as full of my own concerns as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of confessions. Return to Original English Version

recesses /ˈriːsesɪz/ — reentrâncias; recônditos; nichos. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Return to Original English Version

recited /rɪˈsaɪtɪd/ — recitou; declamou. The Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by sea. Return to Original English Version

recollect /ˌrekəˈlekt/ — recordar; recompor-se. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn’t, you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. Return to Original English Version

recollection /ˌrekəˈlekʃən/ — recordação; lembrança. ‘Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. Return to Original English Version

recurved /ˌriːˈkɜːrvd/ — recurvado; curvado para trás. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. Return to Original English Version

reddish /ˈrɛdɪʃ/ — avermelhado. One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious disposition. Return to Original English Version

redeeming /rɪˈdiːmɪŋ/ — redentor; que compensa. Perhaps, unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an excuse. Return to Original English Version

reflectively /rɪˈflɛktɪvli/ — pensativamente; com ar reflexivo. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .” He paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was “aguaindt” with in those places. Return to Original English Version

refreshments /rɪˈfreʃmənts/ — refrescos e petiscos. Besides--though I have kept strictly all such insignificant details out of the tale--we may presume that there must have been refreshments on that night, a glass of mineral water of some sort to help the narrator on. Return to Original English Version

regretted /rɪˈɡretɪd/ — lamentou; arrependeu-se de. I regretted that, of course, but what surprised me was the ground of her dislike. Return to Original English Version

relish /ˈrɛlɪʃ/ — gosto; deleite. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Return to Original English Version

remnant /ˈremnənt/ — remanescente; resto; vestígio. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me--he couldn’t, you know--but because his childlike belief in the sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. Return to Original English Version

renegade /ˈrɛnɪɡeɪd/ — renegado; traidor. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. Return to Original English Version

renegade's /ˈrenəɡeɪdz/ — do renegado. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Return to Original English Version

repose /rɪˈpoʊz/ — repouso; descanso; repousar. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams. Return to Original English Version

reposed /rɪˈpoʊzd/ — repousou; depositado (confiança). The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

repressed /rɪˈprest/ — reprimiu; contido. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. Return to Original English Version

reproduced /ˌriːprəˈduːst/ — reproduziu. He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men who wanted facts. Return to Original English Version

resembled /rɪˈzɛmbəld/ — assemelhava-se a; parecia. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. Return to Original English Version

resolute /ˈrɛzəluːt/ — resoluto; firme. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. Return to Original English Version

resolutely /ˈrɛzəluːtli/ — resolutamente; com firmeza. Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as after a final parting. Return to Original English Version

restrained /rɪˈstreɪnd/ — contido; comedido; refreou. He restrained a cry--“Ssh! what are they doing now down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. Return to Original English Version

restraining /rɪˈstreɪnɪŋ/ — contendo; refreando. ‘Too late, youngster.’ The captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious defeat in his eyes. Return to Original English Version

retreated /rɪˈtriːtɪd/ — recolheu-se; retirou-se. He retreated in good order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but inevitably. Return to Original English Version

retreating /rɪˈtriːtɪŋ/ — que se afastam; em retirada. Jim went on smiling at the retreating horizon; his heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was contemplating his own superiority. Return to Original English Version

revolutions /ˌrevəˈluːʃənz/ — revoluções; voltas completas. Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows. Return to Original English Version

revolving /rɪˈvɑːlvɪŋ/ — remoendo; matutando sobre. Now and then a hand, with black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel. Return to Original English Version

ridges /ˈrɪdʒɪz/ — cristas; espinhaços. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Return to Original English Version

righteousness /ˈraɪtʃəsnəs/ — retidão; convicção de justiça. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. Return to Original English Version

rigidly /ˈrɪdʒɪdli/ — rigidamente; de modo inflexível. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Return to Original English Version

rimmed /rɪmd/ — de aro; com armação. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Return to Original English Version

routed /ˈraʊtɪd/ — derrotado; posto em debandada. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped into the outside gallery. Return to Original English Version

ruffling /ˈrʌflɪŋ/ — eriçando as penas. Up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little fighting-cock. Return to Original English Version

s'elp /selp/ — que Deus me ajude; juro (forma dialetal de 'so help me'). The chief had given him a four-finger nip about ten o’clock--‘only one, s’elp me!’--good old chief; but as to getting the old fraud out of his bunk--a five-ton crane couldn’t do it. Return to Original English Version

salient /ˈseɪliənt/ — saliente; proeminente. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magistrate upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. Return to Original English Version

sallow /ˈsæloʊ/ — amarelado; macilento. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Return to Original English Version

salvoes /ˈsælvoʊz/ — salvas; descargas simultâneas de tiros. The gale had freshened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. Return to Original English Version

sashed /sæʃt/ — cingido com uma faixa; de faixa vermelha. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Return to Original English Version

savages /ˈsævɪdʒɪz/ — selvagens. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book. Return to Original English Version

scabbard /ˈskæbərd/ — bainha de espada. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

scanty /ˈskænti/ — escasso; exíguo; sumário. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. Return to Original English Version

schwein /ʃvaɪn/ — porco; canalha (insulto em alemão). From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air. Return to Original English Version

scorched /skɔːrtʃt/ — chamuscado; queimado; ressequido. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity. Return to Original English Version

scorching /ˈskɔːrtʃɪŋ/ — escaldante; abrasador. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. Return to Original English Version

scorned /skɔːrnd/ — desprezou; desdenhou. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. Return to Original English Version

scramble /ˈskræmbəl/ — trepar; subir com dificuldade. It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. Return to Original English Version

screeching /ˈskriːtʃɪŋ/ — guinchando; estridente. He said ‘Damn!’ as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Return to Original English Version

scrutinised /ˈskruːtənaɪzd/ — examinou a fundo (grafia britânica). He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt. Return to Original English Version

scurrying /ˈskɜːriɪŋ/ — correria de passos curtos. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded. Return to Original English Version

seaman's /ˈsiːmənz/ — do marinheiro. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s heart. Return to Original English Version

seductive /sɪˈdʌktɪv/ — sedutor. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

seethed /siːðd/ — fervia; fervilhou de raiva. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. Return to Original English Version

seizing /ˈsiːzɪŋ/ — agarrando; apoderando-se de; aproveitando. He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it a slight tug. Return to Original English Version

selfishly /ˈselfɪʃli/ — egoisticamente. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would have had no point for me. Return to Original English Version

sensations /sɛnˈseɪʃənz/ — sensações; percepções do corpo. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Return to Original English Version

sensibility /ˌsensəˈbɪləti/ — sensibilidade. This was their criticism on his exquisite sensibility. Return to Original English Version

serene /səˈriːn/ — serenos; tranquilos. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. Return to Original English Version

serenity /səˈrenəti/ — serenidade. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Return to Original English Version

serried /ˈserid/ — cerrado; densamente agrupado. He wanted to go on talking for truth’s sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. Return to Original English Version

severer /səˈvɪrər/ — mais severo. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. Return to Original English Version

shallows /ˈʃæloʊz/ — águas rasas; baixios. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. Return to Original English Version

shan't /ʃænt/ — não vamos; não haveremos de. I’ve known such a time, and, what’s more, I shan’t now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons. Return to Original English Version

shaver /ˈʃeɪvər/ — garotinho; pequeno sujeito (arcaico). It was my first voyage.” And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye. Return to Original English Version

sheeted /ˈʃiːtɪd/ — envoltos em lençóis; amortalhados. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside I should think. Return to Original English Version

sheeting /ˈʃiːtɪŋ/ — tecido para lençóis; pano em folhas largas. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

sheltered /ˈʃeltərd/ — abrigado; protegido; acolheu. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the ship’s position at last noon was marked with a small black cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as Perim figured the course of the ship--the path of souls towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of eternal life--while the pencil with its sharp end touching the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship’s spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. Return to Original English Version

shied /ʃaɪd/ — espantou-se; deu um salto. Slack away again forward there.” The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him. Return to Original English Version

shimmer /ˈʃɪmər/ — cintilação; brilho trêmulo. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Return to Original English Version

shpit /ʃpɪt/ — cuspo (grafia que imita sotaque alemão). I shpit on it.” He spat. Return to Original English Version

shuddered /ˈʃʌdərd/ — estremeceu; teve um arrepio. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy enough. Return to Original English Version

sidelong /ˈsaɪdlɔːŋ/ — de esguelha; de soslaio. He was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed look. Return to Original English Version

sieve /sɪv/ — peneira; crivo. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a fact. Return to Original English Version

sinks /sɪŋks/ — afunda; declina; pias. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Return to Original English Version

slanted /ˈslæntɪd/ — eram oblíquos; puxavam para cima. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

slinking /ˈslɪŋkɪŋ/ — escapulindo; saindo de fininho. I remembered I had seen him slinking away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not to look scared. Return to Original English Version

slit /slɪt/ — fenda estreita; corte fino; rasgar. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. Return to Original English Version

smother /ˈsmʌðər/ — espuma sufocante; nuvem densa. A snorting pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. Return to Original English Version

smothered /ˈsmʌðərd/ — sufocado; abafado; contido. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

snared /snerd/ — enredado; apanhado numa armadilha. We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive--survive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove! Return to Original English Version

sneering /ˈsnɪrɪŋ/ — escarnecedor; zombeteiro; desdenhoso. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face--to speak to them, I suppose--and then a thought seemed to strike him. Return to Original English Version

snort /snɔːrt/ — bufo; resfolego. This way, this way.” He jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. Return to Original English Version

snowy /ˈsnoʊi/ — nevados; cobertos de neve. There was no snowy-winged coif of a nursing sister to be seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an accident case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. Return to Original English Version

snuffled /ˈsnʌfəld/ — fungou; falou com voz fanhosa. The old chap snuffled on-- Return to Original English Version

so's /soʊz/ — para que; assim é. Don’t I remember the little So-and-so’s! Return to Original English Version

soaking /ˈsoʊkɪŋ/ — encharcando; molhando toda. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, “Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very sick. Return to Original English Version

softness /ˈsɔːftnəs/ — maciez; suavidade; brandura. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. Return to Original English Version

soiled /sɔɪld/ — sujo; manchado. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Return to Original English Version

solicitation /səˌlɪsɪˈteɪʃən/ — apelo; tentação; influência insistente. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

solicitude /səˈlɪsɪtuːd/ — solicitude; desvelo; preocupação. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would have had no point for me. Return to Original English Version

solitudes /ˈsɑːlətuːdz/ — solidões; ermos. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. Return to Original English Version

sombre /ˈsɑːmbər/ — sombrio. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Return to Original English Version

sombreness /ˈsɑːmbərnəs/ — sombriedade; escuridão grave. The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. Return to Original English Version

somebody's /ˈsʌmbɑːdiz/ — de alguém. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. Return to Original English Version

something's /ˈsʌmθɪŋz/ — alguma coisa está. ‘Something’s up. Return to Original English Version

sordid /ˈsɔːrdɪd/ — sórdido; imundo. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

sorrel /ˈsɔːrəl/ — alazão; castanho-avermelhado. He departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted by a sore foot. Return to Original English Version

sorrowing /ˈsɔːroʊɪŋ/ — pesaroso. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Return to Original English Version

spatula /ˈspætʃələ/ — espátula. It made me feel queer all over,” went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula. Return to Original English Version

speckled /ˈspɛkəld/ — salpicado; pintalgado. Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. Return to Original English Version

spectral /ˈspektrəl/ — espectral; fantasmagórico. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. Return to Original English Version

spellbound /ˈspelbaʊnd/ — enfeitiçado; fascinado. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room: the big framework of punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fascination of his voice. Return to Original English Version

spider's /ˈspaɪdərz/ — da aranha. The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider’s web. Return to Original English Version

splendour /ˈsplɛndər/ — esplendor; brilho. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure. Return to Original English Version

spotlessly /ˈspɑːtləsli/ — impecavelmente; sem uma mancha. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular. Return to Original English Version

spout /spaʊt/ — bico; bocal de recipiente. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

spurious /ˈspjʊriəs/ — falso; ilegítimo. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. Return to Original English Version

squalor /ˈskwɑːlər/ — sordidez; miséria imunda. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Return to Original English Version

squashing /ˈskwɑːʃɪŋ/ — esmagando; amassando. It made me feel queer all over,” went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula. Return to Original English Version

squatting /ˈskwɑːtɪŋ/ — agachado; de cócoras. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! Return to Original English Version

squirm /skwɜːrm/ — contorcer-se; retorcer-se. I tell you I wanted to see him squirm for the honour of the craft. Return to Original English Version

squirming /ˈskwɜːrmɪŋ/ — contorcendo-se; retorcendo-se. I waited to see him overwhelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirming like an impaled beetle--and I was half afraid to see it too--if you understand what I mean. Return to Original English Version

ssh /ʃː/ — psiu; silêncio. He restrained a cry--“Ssh! what are they doing now down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. Return to Original English Version

staggered /ˈstæɡərd/ — cambaleou. He said ‘Damn!’ as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Return to Original English Version

stagnant /ˈstæɡnənt/ — estagnado; parado. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. Return to Original English Version

stairway /ˈsterweɪ/ — escadaria; lance de escadas. He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani’s stomach, picked himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. Return to Original English Version

stanchion /ˈstæntʃən/ — montante; escora vertical. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull’s-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Return to Original English Version

startle /ˈstɑːrtəl/ — assustar; sobressaltar. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would have had no point for me. Return to Original English Version

startling /ˈstɑːrtlɪŋ/ — surpreendente; assustador. It was very loud, it rang startling in his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his breast,--came to him poignant and silent like the terrible questioning of one’s conscience. Return to Original English Version

stave /steɪv/ — vara; bastão. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. Return to Original English Version

steadfast /ˈstɛdfæst/ — imutáveis; firmes. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity. Return to Original English Version

stealthy /ˈstɛlθi/ — furtivo; silencioso. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable caution and of desperate fear. Return to Original English Version

stevedores /ˈstiːvədɔːrz/ — estivadores. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Return to Original English Version

stiffness /ˈstɪfnəs/ — rigidez; dureza. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

stirrings /ˈstɜːrɪŋz/ — movimentos iniciais; impulsos. But all these preliminary moods and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the time, and they do not appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so many years. Return to Original English Version

stirs /stɜːrz/ — move-se; se mexe. Bash in the head of the first that stirs. Return to Original English Version

stolidly /ˈstɑːlɪdli/ — impassivelmente. The poor devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they--‘Shut up!’ growled the German stolidly. Return to Original English Version

stoop /stuːp/ — inclinação; curvatura do corpo. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. Return to Original English Version

stooped /stuːpt/ — abaixou-se; curvou-se. ‘Of course I stooped instantly. Return to Original English Version

stooping /ˈstuːpɪŋ/ — curvando-se; inclinado sobre. ‘We’ll lay down her position,’ says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand. Return to Original English Version

stouter /ˈstaʊtər/ — mais corpulento; mais firme. There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. Return to Original English Version

streamed /striːmd/ — jorrou; fluiu; esvoaçou. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Return to Original English Version

streamer /ˈstriːmər/ — faixa longa; rastro alongado. The only shadow on the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was constantly dissolving in the air. Return to Original English Version

strife /straɪf/ — contenda; discórdia. Of course there are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end is told--even if there happens to be any end to it. Return to Original English Version

strolled /stroʊld/ — caminharam sem pressa; passearam. They chatted together as they strolled, and I did not care any more than if they had not been visible to the naked eye. Return to Original English Version

stumble /ˈstʌmbəl/ — tropeçar. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Return to Original English Version

stunk /stʌŋk/ — fedia; cheirava muito mal. ‘Aw--I am--aw--your new captain, Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.’ He was drowned in scent--fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. Return to Original English Version

stupidest /ˈstuːpɪdɪst/ — mais estúpido; o mais absurdo. It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine,” he pursued hotly. Return to Original English Version

subdued /səbˈduːd/ — contido; abafado; subjugado. ‘Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture--on official morality, I suppose--when he heard a kind of subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, resembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar-hogshead wrapped in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large floor space in the office. Return to Original English Version

subsided /səbˈsaɪdɪd/ — acalmou-se; cessou. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

successively /səkˈsesɪvli/ — sucessivamente. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Return to Original English Version

sufferance /ˈsʌfərəns/ — tolerância tácita. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Return to Original English Version

sullen /ˈsʌlən/ — emburrados; mal-humorados. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--“Bah! the Pacific is big, my friendt. Return to Original English Version

sunburnt /ˈsʌnbɜːrnt/ — queimado de sol; crestado. The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping sideways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the palm of his hand. Return to Original English Version

sunken /ˈsʌŋkən/ — afundado; submerso; encovado. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was that these two in the way of brazen peculation ‘had done together pretty well everything you can think of.’ Outwardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevolent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indifferent glazed glance of sunken eyes. Return to Original English Version

surged /sɜːrdʒd/ — irrompeu; avançou em massa; subiu de golpe. He wanted to go on talking for truth’s sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. Return to Original English Version

surliest /ˈsɜːrliɪst/ — mais carrancudo; mais mal-humorado. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with his commander the surliest chief officer I’ve ever seen, would tell the story with tears in his eyes. Return to Original English Version

surreptitious /ˌsɜːrəpˈtɪʃəs/ — furtivo; às escondidas. The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider’s web. Return to Original English Version

swain's /sweɪnz/ — do contramestre (fragmento de 'boat-swain's'). The boat-swain’s mate got the hose along aft to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on the bridge--‘Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,’ he says. Return to Original English Version

swamped /swɑːmpt/ — alagado; quase afundado pela entrada de água. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped. Return to Original English Version

swapping /ˈswɑːpɪŋ/ — trocando; trocando histórias. Men have been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night ‘swapping yarns’. Return to Original English Version

sweepers /ˈswiːpərz/ — varredores. The archway from the ante-room was crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. Return to Original English Version

sweetly /ˈswiːtli/ — docemente; suavemente. He was sleeping sweetly like a little child, with a bottle of prime brandy under his pillow. Return to Original English Version

sympathetically /ˌsɪmpəˈθɛtɪkli/ — com simpatia; solidariamente. The captain smiled sympathetically. Return to Original English Version

tacked /tækt/ — pregado com tachinhas. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. Return to Original English Version

tain't /teɪnt/ — não é (forma dialetal de it is not). ‘Tain’t safe, s’elp me, it ain’t! Return to Original English Version

talcahuano /ˌtælkəˈwɑːnoʊ/ — Talcahuano; cidade portuária do Chile. Nearly got carried off to Talcahuano, didn’t you? Return to Original English Version

tam /tæm/ — boina escocesa. “That’s what you English always make--make a tam’ fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your tam’ country. Return to Original English Version

tastelessly /ˈteɪstləsli/ — sem sabor; de modo insípido. His mouth was tastelessly dry, as though he had been eating dust, then salt and bitter as after a drink of sea-water. Return to Original English Version

temperament /ˈtemprəmənt/ — temperamento; índole. In any case, no Latin temperament would have perceived anything morbid in the acute consciousness of lost honour. Return to Original English Version

temperate /ˈtɛmpərət/ — ameno; temperado. Men have been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night ‘swapping yarns’. Return to Original English Version

temptations /tɛmpˈteɪʃənz/ — tentações. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

tensely /ˈtɛnsli/ — tensamente; com grande tensão. Ough!” Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his body trembled tensely like a released harp-string; and while I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his glassy gaze. Return to Original English Version

terrors /ˈterərz/ — terrores; pavores. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Return to Original English Version

testifying /ˈtɛstəfaɪɪŋ/ — atestando; dando testemunho. I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_ fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was such a man loved thus by such a dog. Return to Original English Version

thickets /ˈθɪkɪts/ — matagais; moitas. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Return to Original English Version

thinker /ˈθɪŋkər/ — pensador. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was ‘an old stager out here.’ When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. Return to Original English Version

thoroughfare /ˈθɜːroʊfer/ — via pública; rua principal. Jim looked every day over the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon. Return to Original English Version

thumped /θʌmpt/ — bateu com pancada surda. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. Return to Original English Version

timid /ˈtɪmɪd/ — tímido; receoso. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Return to Original English Version

tinged /tɪndʒd/ — tingido; marcado por. ‘Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. Return to Original English Version

tinkers /ˈtɪŋkərz/ — funileiros. We’ve got all kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many tinkers going about loose. Return to Original English Version

tinkling /ˈtɪŋklɪŋ/ — tilintando. The patent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Return to Original English Version

tint /tɪnt/ — tom; matiz; tonalidade. Below, the red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. Return to Original English Version

toil /tɔɪl/ — labuta; lida; trabalhar duro. But at length he found a fascination in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on such a small allowance of danger and toil. Return to Original English Version

tolerably /ˈtɑːlərəbli/ — razoavelmente; passavelmente. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. Return to Original English Version

tolling /ˈtoʊlɪŋ/ — dobrar de sino; ressoar lento e repetido. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, “Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.” I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. Return to Original English Version

tongues /tʌŋz/ — línguas; bocas. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

Original Text: Rare Words (5/5)

tonics /ˈtɑːnɪks/ — tônicos; estimulantes medicinais. He thumped twice his brawny chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears: “Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!” What was the precise nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. Return to Original English Version

tormenting /tɔːrˈmɛntɪŋ/ — atormentando; causando sofrimento. “Why are we tormenting that young chap?” he asked. Return to Original English Version

torrent /ˈtɔːrənt/ — torrente; enxurrada. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Return to Original English Version

tousled /ˈtaʊzəld/ — despenteado; desgrenhado. The well-to-do had made for their families shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face; a father, his shoulders up and his knees under his forehead, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hollow of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo-lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout of a tin coffee-pot. Return to Original English Version

tractable /ˈtræktəbəl/ — dócil; manejável. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself. Return to Original English Version

tradition's /trəˈdɪʃənz/ — da tradição. Good old tradition’s at a discount nowadays. Return to Original English Version

tramp /træmp/ — andarilho; caminhante. They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Return to Original English Version

tramps /træmps/ — andarilhos; vagabundos. They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! Return to Original English Version

traversed /trəˈvɜːrst/ — atravessou; percorreu. The patent log on the taffrail periodically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile traversed on an errand of faith. Return to Original English Version

treading /ˈtredɪŋ/ — pisando; caminhando sobre. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. Return to Original English Version

triced /traɪst/ — içado e preso; retesado. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Return to Original English Version

trickle /ˈtrɪkəl/ — fio; filete. His gorge rose at the mass of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a cloudy trickle of filthy expressions; but he was too pleasurably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. Return to Original English Version

trifles /ˈtraɪfəlz/ — bugigangas; ninharias. If I understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken ideas--start into life some thought with which a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. Return to Original English Version

truth's /truːθs/ — da verdade. He wanted to go on talking for truth’s sake, perhaps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. Return to Original English Version

truthful /ˈtruːθfəl/ — veraz; sincero. The sound of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer. Return to Original English Version

truthfully /ˈtruːθfəli/ — com verdade; sem mentir. He answered truthfully by a curt ‘Yes, I did’; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. Return to Original English Version

tumbled /ˈtʌmbəld/ — despencou; entrou aos trambolhões. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief. Return to Original English Version

tumbling /ˈtʌmblɪŋ/ — caindo; rolando. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

tumult /ˈtuːmʌlt/ — tumulto; alvoroço. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath in awe. Return to Original English Version

tumultuous /tuːˈmʌltʃuəs/ — tumultuoso; agitado; estrondoso. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous occupation. Return to Original English Version

tumultuously /tuːˈmʌltʃuəsli/ — tumultuosamente. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fascinate one in a fever. Return to Original English Version

twinkling /ˈtwɪŋklɪŋ/ — um piscar de olhos; um instante. A snorting pony snatched him into “Ewigkeit” in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. Return to Original English Version

tyke /taɪk/ — cão vira-lata; cão desprezível. Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn’t think a mangy, native tyke would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I didn’t have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of my appointed time. Return to Original English Version

unabashed /ˌʌnəˈbæʃt/ — sem constrangimento. Now he emitted only a sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge-ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, unabashed, continued the tale of his complaints. Return to Original English Version

unapproachable /ˌʌnəˈproʊtʃəbəl/ — inabordável. He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as only the young can look. Return to Original English Version

unassuming /ˌʌnəˈsuːmɪŋ/ — modesto; sem pretensões. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite. Return to Original English Version

unattainable /ˌʌnəˈteɪnəbəl/ — inatingível. Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not see the shadow of the coming event. Return to Original English Version

unawares /ˌʌnəˈwɛrz/ — sem querer; de improviso. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Return to Original English Version

unbelief /ˌʌnbɪˈliːf/ — incredulidade. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty--all equal before sleep, death’s brother. Return to Original English Version

unbounded /ʌnˈbaʊndɪd/ — sem limites; ilimitada. Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s face. Return to Original English Version

unbridled /ʌnˈbraɪdəld/ — desenfreado; sem rédeas. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. Return to Original English Version

unceasing /ʌnˈsiːsɪŋ/ — incessante. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Return to Original English Version

unclouded /ʌnˈklaʊdɪd/ — sem nuvens; sereno. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. Return to Original English Version

unconcerned /ˌʌnkənˈsɜːrnd/ — despreocupado; indiferente. He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as only the young can look. Return to Original English Version

unconsciously /ʌnˈkɑːnʃəsli/ — inconscientemente; sem se dar conta. Perhaps, unconsciously, I hoped I would find that something, some profound and redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some convincing shadow of an excuse. Return to Original English Version

uncontrollable /ˌʌnkənˈtroʊləbəl/ — incontrolável. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Return to Original English Version

undefaced /ˌʌndɪˈfeɪst/ — não desfigurado; intacto. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. Return to Original English Version

undisturbed /ˌʌndɪˈstɜːrbd/ — imperturbado; intacto; tranquilo. He said ‘Damn!’ as he tumbled; an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catching themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, at the undisturbed level of the sea. Return to Original English Version

undone /ʌnˈdʌn/ — desapertado; solto. And there are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of us are totally and completely undone. Return to Original English Version

undulations /ˌʌndʒuˈleɪʃənz/ — ondulações. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Return to Original English Version

unerring /ʌnˈɜːrɪŋ/ — infalível; certeira. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. Return to Original English Version

unexpectedness /ˌʌnɪkˈspektɪdnəs/ — o caráter inesperado. He was usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. Return to Original English Version

unfairly /ʌnˈfɛrli/ — injustamente. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Return to Original English Version

unflinching /ʌnˈflɪntʃɪŋ/ — destemido; inabalável. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book. Return to Original English Version

ungracious /ʌnˈɡreɪʃəs/ — descortês. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

unholy /ʌnˈhoʊli/ — profano; ímpio. However, Mariani told me a long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very many years ago--as far as I could make out. Return to Original English Version

unintellectual /ˌʌnˌɪntəˈlɛktʃuəl/ — não intelectual; instintivo. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

unintelligent /ˌʌnɪnˈtelɪdʒənt/ — pouco inteligente. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Return to Original English Version

unmitigated /ʌnˈmɪtɪɡeɪtɪd/ — completo; sem atenuantes. The verdict must have been of unmitigated guilt, and he took the secret of the evidence with him in that leap into the sea. Return to Original English Version

unmoved /ʌnˈmuːvd/ — impassível; indiferente; imperturbável. The skipper presented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that came like a gush from a sewer. Return to Original English Version

unrolled /ʌnˈroʊld/ — desenrolou; desenrolado. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer. Return to Original English Version

unruffled /ʌnˈrʌfəld/ — imperturbável; liso. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. Return to Original English Version

unspeakable /ʌnˈspiːkəbəl/ — indizível; que não se pode dizer. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. Return to Original English Version

unstimulated /ʌnˈstɪmjəleɪtɪd/ — não estimulado; sem incentivo. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Return to Original English Version

unsubstantial /ˌʌnsəbˈstænʃəl/ — insubstancial; etéreo. To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows. Return to Original English Version

unthinking /ʌnˈθɪŋkɪŋ/ — irrefletido; inconsciente; incapaz de pensar. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face--a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose--a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless--an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive corruption of men--backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Return to Original English Version

unwatched /ʌnˈwɑːtʃt/ — sem vigilância; não observado. The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a deadly snake in every bush--from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. Return to Original English Version

unwearied /ʌnˈwɪrid/ — incansável; não fatigado. There were only two other patients in the white men’s ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. Return to Original English Version

unwrinkled /ʌnˈrɪŋkəld/ — sem rugas; liso. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Return to Original English Version

upstanding /ˌʌpˈstændɪŋ/ — íntegro; ereto. The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly. Return to Original English Version

upturned /ʌpˈtɜːrnd/ — voltado para cima; erguido. A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceasing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife. Return to Original English Version

utterance /ˈʌtərəns/ — enunciado; fala; modo de falar. He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. Return to Original English Version

uttered /ˈʌtərd/ — pronunciou; proferiu. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. Return to Original English Version

vagaries /ˈveɪɡəriz/ — caprichos; oscilações. ‘This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of--of nerves, let us say. Return to Original English Version

vagueness /ˈveɪɡnəs/ — imprecisão. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. Return to Original English Version

valorous /ˈvælərəs/ — valoroso. At such times his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. Return to Original English Version

valour /ˈvælər/ — valor; bravura. He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demonstrating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been clubbed from behind. Return to Original English Version

venerable /ˈvɛnərəbəl/ — venerável. He and the chief engineer had been cronies for a good few years--serving the same jovial, crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pigtail. Return to Original English Version

venetian /vəˈniːʃən/ — veneziano; no contexto, relativo a persianas venezianas. A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes. Return to Original English Version

verfluchte /fɛɐ̯ˈfluːxtə/ — maldito; amaldiçoado; palavra alemã. A man like me don’t want your verfluchte certificate. Return to Original English Version

vertically /ˈvɜːrtɪkli/ — verticalmente. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. Return to Original English Version

vexed /vɛkst/ — irritados; contrariados. He was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed look. Return to Original English Version

viceroy /ˈvaɪsrɔɪ/ — vice-rei. He would have shouted at the Viceroy himself. Return to Original English Version

vices /ˈvaɪsɪz/ — vícios; tornos de bancada. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. Return to Original English Version

vill /vɪl/ — vou; forma que imita sotaque alemão. “I vill an Amerigan citizen begome,” he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from that spot. Return to Original English Version

villainies /ˈvɪləniz/ — vilanias; maldades. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet villainies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Return to Original English Version

virility /vəˈrɪləti/ — virilidade; vigor masculino. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with an heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. Return to Original English Version

viscous /ˈvɪskəs/ — viscoso; espesso e pegajoso. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. Return to Original English Version

vividness /ˈvɪvɪdnəs/ — vividez; nitidez; intensidade. He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo the moaning of the engineer for the better information of these men who wanted facts. Return to Original English Version

vocation /voʊˈkeɪʃən/ — vocação; ofício. The living had belonged to the family for generations; but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, he was sent at once to a ‘training-ship for officers of the mercantile marine.’ Return to Original English Version

volition /voʊˈlɪʃən/ — volição; vontade própria. It was an act of intelligent volition. Return to Original English Version

voluminous /vəˈluːmɪnəs/ — volumoso; amplo. The wind of the punkahs eddied down on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together very hot and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, buttoned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers. Return to Original English Version

waddle /ˈwɑːdəl/ — bambolear-se ao andar. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see the whole concern overturned on its side, pony and all. Return to Original English Version

wallah /ˈwɑːlə/ — condutor; trabalhador associado a uma atividade, em termo anglo-indiano. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. Return to Original English Version

wallow /ˈwɑːloʊ/ — espojar-se; refestelar-se. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves, “Hang exertion. Return to Original English Version

wapping /ˈwɑːpɪŋ/ — Wapping; bairro portuário de Londres. He was usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; but on that night he had departed from his principles, so that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of the stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. Return to Original English Version

washers /ˈwɑːʃərz/ — lavadores; no contexto, lavadores de garrafas usados como insulto. The damned bottle-washers stood about listening with their mouths stretched from ear to ear. Return to Original English Version

waterside /ˈwɔːtərsaɪd/ — zona portuária; área à beira d'água. To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships he was just Jim--nothing more. Return to Original English Version

wavelets /ˈweɪvləts/ — ondinhas. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. Return to Original English Version

wayfarer /ˈweɪfɛrər/ — viandante; caminhante. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. Return to Original English Version

wheezy /ˈwiːzi/ — sibilante; ofegante. The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Return to Original English Version

whiles /waɪlz/ — intervalos (em between whiles, de quando em quando). The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. Return to Original English Version

whined /waɪnd/ — ganiu; choramingou. “Oh! make ‘im dry up,” whined the accident case irritably. Return to Original English Version

whirled /wɜːrld/ — girou; rodopiou. It seemed to him he was whirled around. Return to Original English Version

whistling /ˈwɪslɪŋ/ — assobio; silvo. He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. Return to Original English Version

winced /wɪnst/ — estremeceu; recuou. I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump. Return to Original English Version

winged /wɪŋd/ — Alados (nos Macacos Alados, nome próprio). Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very first word uttered Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, would become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past. Return to Original English Version

winked /wɪŋkt/ — piscou. They’ve got to be watched, you know.” He winked facetiously. Return to Original English Version

winter's /ˈwɪntərz/ — de inverno. It was the dusk of a winter’s day. Return to Original English Version

wisp /wɪsp/ — fio tênue; mecha. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity. Return to Original English Version

wistfully /ˈwɪstfəli/ — com melancolia; com pesar. The unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed to stand still and look into mine wistfully. Return to Original English Version

withered /ˈwɪðərd/ — engelhado; ressequido. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. Return to Original English Version

withering /ˈwɪðərɪŋ/ — fulminante; que murcha. He scrutinised my face with wild and withering contempt. Return to Original English Version

wolfish /ˈwʊlfɪʃ/ — lupino; feroz como um lobo. A wolfish howl searched the very recesses of my soul. Return to Original English Version

wretched /ˈretʃɪd/ — miserável; desgraçado; péssimo. Can’t he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared out? Return to Original English Version

wrinkle /ˈrɪŋkəl/ — ruga. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. Return to Original English Version

writer's /ˈraɪtərz/ — do escrevente. Some reviewers maintained that the work starting as a short story had got beyond the writer’s control. Return to Original English Version

writhe /raɪð/ — contorcer-se. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Return to Original English Version

writhed /raɪðd/ — contorceu-se; retorceu-se. He answered truthfully by a curt ‘Yes, I did’; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box while his soul writhed within him. Return to Original English Version

yarns /jɑːrnz/ — histórias; lorotas. Men have been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night ‘swapping yarns’. Return to Original English Version

yelp /jelp/ — ganido; latido agudo. ‘The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Return to Original English Version

yokohama /ˌjoʊkoʊˈhɑːmə/ — Yokohama; cidade portuária do Japão. He had been stranded out East somewhere--in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps in Yokohama; he probably did not care to remember himself the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. Return to Original English Version