The Secret Sharer — Vocabulary
Joseph Conrad
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A sufficiently fierce story to make an old judge and a respectable jury sit up a bit.†3 more

His obscure tenacity on that point had in it something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it were, mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should not be suspected of "countenancing any doings of that sort."†3 more

All its phases were familiar enough to me, every characteristic, all the alternatives which were likely to face me on the high seas--everything! … except the novel responsibility of command.1 more

My nerves were so shaken that I could not govern my voice and conceal my agitation.†1 more

His dominant trait was to take all things into earnest consideration.†1 more

"But all this doesn't tell me how you came to hang on to our side ladder," I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after he had told me something more of the proceedings on board the Sephora once the bad weather was over.†3 more

"Are you going to try that, sir?" he stammered out incredulously.†1 more

His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous.†1 more

A grave, preoccupied manner, as though he were in possession of some perplexing intelligence, did not leave him henceforth.†1 more

And then I could at last shut, with a clear conscience, the door of my stateroom and get my double back into the recessed part.†2 more

My action might have made me appear eccentric.†1 more

The why and the wherefore of that scorpion—how it got on board and came to select his room rather than the pantry (which was a dark place and more what a scorpion would be partial to), and how on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell of his writing desk—had exercised him infinitely.†1 more

The man had been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out of his mind.†1 more

The phosphorescence flashed in the swirl of the water all about his limbs, his other hand seized the ladder.3 more

"Unless you manage to recover him before tomorrow," I assented, dispassionately...."I mean, alive."†1 more

Before an hour had elapsed since the ship had begun to move, having occasion to ask the mate (he stood by my side) to take a compass bearing of the pagoda, I caught myself reaching up to his ear in whispers.†1 more

It was this maddening course of being shouted at, checked without rhyme or reason, arbitrarily chased out of my cabin, suddenly called into it, sent flying out of his pantry on incomprehensible errands, that accounted for the growing wretchedness of his expression.†

"Be careful," he murmured, warningly—and I realized suddenly that all my future, the only future for which I was fit, would perhaps go irretrievably to pieces in any mishap to my first command.†

These are trifling instances, though it's to no commander's advantage to be suspected of ludicrous eccentricities.†1 more

It was, as it were, trifling with the terrific character of his whiskers; but my object was to give him an opportunity for a good look at my cabin.†1 more