A PERSONAL RECORD

By Joseph Conrad

A FAMILIAR PREFACE

As a general rule we do not want much encouragement to talk aboutourselves; yet this little book is the result of a friendly suggestion, and even of a little friendly pressure. I defended myself with somespirit; but, with characteristic tenacity, the friendly voice insisted, "You know, you really must. "

It was not an argument, but I submitted at once. If one must! . . . 

You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should puthis trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power ofsound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don't say thisby way of disparagement. It is better for mankind to be impressionablethan reflective. Nothing humanely great--great, I mean, as affecting awhole mass of lives--has come from reflection. On the other hand, youcannot fail to see the power of mere words; such words as Glory, forinstance, or Pity. I won't mention any more. They are not far to seek. Shouted with perseverance, with ardour, with conviction, these two bytheir sound alone have set whole nations in motion and upheaved the dry, hard ground on which rests our whole social fabric. There's "virtue"for you if you like! . . . Of course the accent must be attended to. Theright accent. That's very important. The capacious lung, the thunderingor the tender vocal chords. Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. 

He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Giveme the right word and the right accent and I will move the world. 

What a dream for a writer! Because written words have their accent, too. Yes! Let me only find the right word! Surely it must be lying somewhereamong the wreckage of all the plaints and all the exultations poured outaloud since the first day when hope, the undying, came down on earth. Itmay be there, close by, disregarded, invisible, quite at hand. Butit's no good. I believe there are men who can lay hold of a needle in apottle of hay at the first try. For myself, I have never had such luck. And then there is that accent. Another difficulty. For who is going totell whether the accent is right or wrong till the word is shouted, and fails to be heard, perhaps, and goes down-wind, leaving the worldunmoved? Once upon a time there lived an emperor who was a sage andsomething of a literary man. He jotted down on ivory tablets thoughts, maxims, reflections which chance has preserved for the edification ofposterity. Among other sayings--I am quoting from memory--I rememberthis solemn admonition: "Let all thy words have the accent of heroictruth. " The accent of heroic truth! This is very fine, but I am thinkingthat it is an easy matter for an austere emperor to jot down grandioseadvice. Most of the working truths on this earth are humble, not heroic;and there have been times in the history of mankind when the accents ofheroic truth have moved it to nothing but derision. 

Nobody will expect to find between the covers of this little book wordsof extraordinary potency or accents of irresistible heroism. Howeverhumiliating for my self esteem, I must confess that the counsels ofMarcus Aurelius are not for me. They are more fit for a moralist thanfor an artist. Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and alsosincerity. That complete, praise worthy sincerity which, while itdelivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not toembroil one with one's friends. 

"Embroil" is perhaps too strong an expression. I can't imagine amongeither my enemies or my friends a being so hard up for something to doas to quarrel with me. "To disappoint one's friends" would be nearer themark. Most, almost all, friend ships of the writing period of my lifehave come to me through my books; and I know that a novelist lives inhis work. He stands there, the only reality in an invented world, amongimaginary things, happenings, and people. Writing about them, he is onlywriting about himself. But the disclosure is not complete. He remains, to a certain extent, a figure behind the veil; a suspected rather thana seen presence--a movement and a voice behind the draperies of fiction. In these personal notes there is no such veil. And I cannot helpthinking of a passage in the "Imitation of Christ" where the asceticauthor, who knew life so profoundly, says that "there are personsesteemed on their reputation who by showing themselves destroy theopinion one had of them. " This is the danger incurred by an author offiction who sets out to talk about himself without disguise. 

While these reminiscent pages were appearing serially I was remonstratedwith for bad economy; as if such writing were a form of self-indulgencewasting the substance of future volumes. It seems that I am notsufficiently literary. Indeed, a man who never wrote a line for printtill he was thirty-six cannot bring himself to look upon his existenceand his experience, upon the sum of his thoughts, sensations, andemotions, upon his memories and his regrets, and the whole possessionof his past, as only so much material for his hands. Once before, somethree years ago, when I published "The Mirror of the Sea, " a volume ofimpressions and memories, the same remarks were made to me. Practicalremarks. But, truth to say, I have never understood the kind of thriftthey recommend. I wanted to pay my tribute to the sea, its ships andits men, to whom I remain indebted for so much which has gone to make mewhat I am. That seemed to me the only shape in which I could offer it totheir shades. There could not be a question in my mind of anything else. It is quite possible that I am a bad economist; but it is certain that Iam incorrigible. 

Having matured in the surroundings and under the special conditions ofsea life, I have a special piety toward that form of my past; for itsimpressions were vivid, its appeal direct, its demands such as could beresponded to with the natural elation of youth and strength equal to thecall. There was nothing in them to perplex a young conscience. Havingbroken away from my origins under a storm of blame from every quarterwhich had the merest shadow of right to voice an opinion, removed bygreat distances from such natural affections as were still left tome, and even estranged, in a measure, from them by the totallyunintelligible character of the life which had seduced me somysteriously from my allegiance, I may safely say that through the blindforce of circumstances the sea was to be all my world and the merchantservice my only home for a long succession of years. No wonder, then, that in my two exclusively sea books--"The Nigger of the Narcissus, " and"The Mirror of the Sea" (and in the few short sea stories like "Youth"and "Typhoon")--I have tried with an almost filial regard to render thevibration of life in the great world of waters, in the hearts of thesimple men who have for ages traversed its solitudes, and also thatsomething sentient which seems to dwell in ships--the creatures of theirhands and the objects of their care. 

One's literary life must turn frequently for sustenance to memories andseek discourse with the shades, unless one has made up one's mind towrite only in order to reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it forwhat it is not, or--generally--to teach it how to behave. Being neitherquarrelsome, nor a flatterer, nor a sage, I have done none of thesethings, and I am prepared to put up serenely with the insignificancewhich attaches to persons who are not meddlesome in some way or other. But resignation is not indifference. I would not like to be leftstanding as a mere spectator on the bank of the great stream carryingonward so many lives. I would fain claim for myself the faculty of somuch insight as can be expressed in a voice of sympathy and compassion. 

It seems to me that in one, at least, authoritative quarter of criticismI am suspected of a certain unemotional, grim acceptance of facts--ofwhat the French would call _secheresse du coeur_. Fifteen years ofunbroken silence before praise or blame testify sufficiently to myrespect for criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in thegarden of letters. But this is more of a personal matter, reaching theman behind the work, and therefore it may be alluded to in a volumewhich is a personal note in the margin of the public page. Not thatI feel hurt in the least. The charge--if it amounted to a charge atall--was made in the most considerate terms; in a tone of regret. 

My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an element ofautobiography--and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can onlyexpress himself in his creation--then there are some of us to whom anopen display of sentiment is repugnant. 

I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merelytemperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be pride. There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of one'semotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing morehumiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perishunavoidably in disgust or contempt. No artist can be reproached forshrinking from a risk which only fools run to meet and only genius dareconfront with impunity. In a task which mainly consists in laying one'ssoul more or less bare to the world, a regard for decency, even atthe cost of success, is but the regard for one's own dignity which isinseparably united with the dignity of one's work. 

And then--it is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on thisearth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face ofpain; and some of our griefs (some only, not all, for it is the capacityfor suffering which makes man August in the eyes of men) have theirsource in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling com passionas the common inheritance of us all. Joy and sorrow in this world passinto each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilightof life as mysterious as an over shadowed ocean, while the dazzlingbrightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on thedistant edge of the horizon. 

Yes! I, too, would like to hold the magic wand giving that command overlaughter and tears which is declared to be the highest achievement ofimaginative literature. Only, to be a great magician one must surrenderoneself to occult and irresponsible powers, either outside or withinone's breast. We have all heard of simple men selling their souls forlove or power to some grotesque devil. The most ordinary intelligencecan perceive without much reflection that anything of the sort is boundto be a fool's bargain. I don't lay claim to particular wisdom becauseof my dislike and distrust of such transactions. It may be my seatraining acting upon a natural disposition to keep good hold on theone thing really mine, but the fact is that I have a positive horror oflosing even for one moving moment that full possession of my self whichis the first condition of good service. And I have carried my notion ofgood service from my earlier into my later existence. I, who have neversought in the written word anything else but a form of the Beautiful--Ihave carried over that article of creed from the decks of ships to themore circumscribed space of my desk, and by that act, I suppose, I havebecome permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company ofpure esthetes. 

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himselfmostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrownessof his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was notlovable or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some generalprinciple. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I knownot. After the middle turn of life's way we consider dangers and joyswith a tranquil mind. So I proceed in peace to declare that I havealways suspected in the effort to bring into play the extremities ofemotions the debasing touch of insincerity. In order to move othersdeeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyondthe bounds of our normal sensibility--innocently enough, perhaps, andof necessity, like an actor who raises his voice on the stage above thepitch of natural conversation--but still we have to do that. And surelythis is no great sin. But the danger lies in the writer becoming thevictim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, tooblunt for his purpose--as, in fact, not good enough for his insistentemotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling andgiggles. 

These may seem selfish considerations; but you can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clearduty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, howeverhumbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world wherehis thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imaginedadventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstanceor dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to sayNay to his temptations if not his conscience?

And besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of perfectlyopen talk--I think that all ambitions are lawful except those whichclimb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectualand artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limitof prudent sanity. They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then somuch the worse for the artist. Indeed, as virtue is said to be, suchambitions are their own reward. Is it such a very mad presumption tobelieve in the sovereign power of one's art, to try for other means, forother ways of affirming this belief in the deeper appeal of one's work?To try to go deeper is not to be insensible. A historian of hearts isnot a historian of emotions, yet he penetrates further, restrained as hemay be, since his aim is to reach the very fount of laughter and tears. The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. They areworthy of respect, too. And he is not insensible who pays them theundemonstrative tribute of a sigh which is not a sob, and of a smilewhich is not a grin. Resignation, not mystic, not detached, butresignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only oneof our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham. 

Not that I think resignation the last word of wisdom. I am too much thecreature of my time for that. But I think that the proper wisdom is towill what the gods will without, perhaps, being certain what their willis--or even if they have a will of their own. And in this matter of lifeand art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as theHow. As the Frenchman said, "_Il y a toujours la maniere_. " Very true. Yes. There is the manner. The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, inindignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The mannerin which, as in the features and character of a human face, the innertruth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind. 

Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old asthe hills. It rests notably, among others, on the idea of Fidelity. Ata time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other canexpect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in mywritings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, thatit frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absoluteoptimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism andintolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. 

All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and dangerfrom which a philosophical mind should be free. . . . 

I fear that trying to be conversational I have only managed to be undulydiscursive. I have never been very well acquainted with the art ofconversation--that art which, I understand, is supposed to be lost now. My young days, the days when one's habits and character are formed, havebeen rather familiar with long silences. Such voices as broke into themwere anything but conversational. No. I haven't got the habit. Yetthis discursiveness is not so irrelevant to the handful of pages whichfollow. They, too, have been charged with discursiveness, withdisregard of chronological order (which is in itself a crime), withunconventionality of form (which is an impropriety). I was told severelythat the public would view with displeasure the informal character ofmy recollections. "Alas!" I protested, mildly. "Could I begin with thesacramental words, 'I was born on such a date in such a place'? Theremoteness of the locality would have robbed the statement of allinterest. I haven't lived through wonderful adventures to be relatedseriatim. I haven't known distinguished men on whom I could pass fatuousremarks. I haven't been mixed up with great or scandalous affairs. Thisis but a bit of psychological document, and even so, I haven't writtenit with a view to put forward any conclusion of my own. "

But my objector was not placated. These were good reasons for notwriting at all--not a defense of what stood written already, he said. 

I admit that almost anything, anything in the world, would serve as agood reason for not writing at all. But since I have written them, all Iwant to say in their defense is that these memories put down withoutany regard for established conventions have not been thrown off withoutsystem and purpose. They have their hope and their aim. The hope thatfrom the reading of these pages there may emerge at last the vision ofa personality; the man behind the books so fundamentally dissimilaras, for instance, "Almayer's Folly" and "The Secret Agent, " and yet acoherent, justifiable personality both in its origin and in its action. This is the hope. The immediate aim, closely associated with the hope, is to give the record of personal memories by presenting faithfully thefeelings and sensations connected with the writing of my first book andwith my first contact with the sea. 

In the purposely mingled resonance of this double strain a friend hereand there will perhaps detect a subtle accord. 

J. C. K. 

A PERSONAL RECORD

I

Books may be written in all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration mayenter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river inthe middle of a town; and since saints are supposed to look benignantlyon humble believers, I indulge in the pleasant fancy that the shadeof old Flaubert--who imagined himself to be (among other things) adescendant of Vikings--might have hovered with amused interest overthe docks of a 2, 000-ton steamer called the Adowa, on board of which, gripped by the inclement winter alongside a quay in Rouen, the tenthchapter of "Almayer's Folly" was begun. With interest, I say, for wasnot the kind Norman giant with enormous mustaches and a thundering voicethe last of the Romantics? Was he not, in his unworldly, almost ascetic, devotion to his art, a sort of literary, saint-like hermit?

"'It has set at last, ' said Nina to her mother, pointing to the hillsbehind which the sun had sunk. " . . . These words of Almayer's romanticdaughter I remember tracing on the gray paper of a pad which rested onthe blanket of my bed-place. They referred to a sunset in Malayan Islesand shaped themselves in my mind, in a hallucinated vision of forestsand rivers and seas, far removed from a commercial and yet romantic townof the northern hemisphere. But at that moment the mood of visions andwords was cut short by the third officer, a cheerful and casual youth, coming in with a bang of the door and the exclamation: "You've made itjolly warm in here. "

It was warm. I had turned on the steam heater after placing a tin underthe leaky water-cock--for perhaps you do not know that water will leakwhere steam will not. I am not aware of what my young friend hadbeen doing on deck all that morning, but the hands he rubbed togethervigorously were very red and imparted to me a chilly feeling by theirmere aspect. He has remained the only banjoist of my acquaintance, andbeing also a younger son of a retired colonel, the poem of Mr. Kipling, by a strange aberration of associated ideas, always seems to me to havebeen written with an exclusive view to his person. When he did notplay the banjo he loved to sit and look at it. He proceeded to thissentimental inspection, and after meditating a while over the stringsunder my silent scrutiny inquired, airily:

"What are you always scribbling there, if it's fair to ask?"

It was a fair enough question, but I did not answer him, and simplyturned the pad over with a movement of instinctive secrecy: I could nothave told him he had put to flight the psychology of Nina Almayer, heropening speech of the tenth chapter, and the words of Mrs. Almayer'swisdom which were to follow in the ominous oncoming of a tropical night. I could not have told him that Nina had said, "It has set at last. "He would have been extremely surprised and perhaps have dropped hisprecious banjo. Neither could I have told him that the sun of mysea-going was setting, too, even as I wrote the words expressing theimpatience of passionate youth bent on its desire. I did not know thismyself, and it is safe to say he would not have cared, though he was anexcellent young fellow and treated me with more deference than, in ourrelative positions, I was strictly entitled to. 

He lowered a tender gaze on his banjo, and I went on looking through theport-hole. The round opening framed in its brass rim a fragment of thequays, with a row of casks ranged on the frozen ground and the tail endof a great cart. A red-nosed carter in a blouse and a woollen night-capleaned against the wheel. An idle, strolling custom house guard, beltedover his blue capote, had the air of being depressed by exposure to theweather and the monotony of official existence. The background of grimyhouses found a place in the picture framed by my port-hole, across awide stretch of paved quay brown with frozen mud. The colouringwas sombre, and the most conspicuous feature was a little cafe withcurtained windows and a shabby front of white woodwork, correspondingwith the squalor of these poorer quarters bordering the river. We hadbeen shifted down there from another berth in the neighbourhood of theOpera House, where that same port-hole gave me a view of quite anothersoft of cafe--the best in the town, I believe, and the very one wherethe worthy Bovary and his wife, the romantic daughter of old PereRenault, had some refreshment after the memorable performance of anopera which was the tragic story of Lucia di Lammermoor in a setting oflight music. 

I could recall no more the hallucination of the Eastern Archipelagowhich I certainly hoped to see again. The story of "Almayer's Folly"got put away under the pillow for that day. I do not know that I had anyoccupation to keep me away from it; the truth of the matter is that onboard that ship we were leading just then a contemplative life. Iwill not say anything of my privileged position. I was there "just tooblige, " as an actor of standing may take a small part in the benefitperformance of a friend. 

As far as my feelings were concerned I did not wish to be in thatsteamer at that time and in those circumstances. And perhaps I was noteven wanted there in the usual sense in which a ship "wants" anofficer. It was the first and last instance in my sea life when I servedship-owners who have remained completely shadowy to my apprehension. Ido not mean this for the well-known firm of London ship-brokers whichhad chartered the ship to the, I will not say short-lived, but ephemeralFranco-Canadian Transport Company. A death leaves something behind, but there was never anything tangible left from the F. C. T. C. Itflourished no longer than roses live, and unlike the roses it blossomedin the dead of winter, emitted a sort of faint perfume of adventure, anddied before spring set in. But indubitably it was a company, it had evena house-flag, all white with the letters F. C. T. C. Artfully tangledup in a complicated monogram. We flew it at our mainmast head, and nowI have come to the conclusion that it was the only flag of its kind inexistence. All the same we on board, for many days, had the impressionof being a unit of a large fleet with fortnightly departures forMontreal and Quebec as advertised in pamphlets and prospectuses whichcame aboard in a large package in Victoria Dock, London, just before westarted for Rouen, France. And in the shadowy life of the F. C. T. C. Lies the secret of that, my last employment in my calling, which in aremote sense interrupted the rhythmical development of Nina Almayer'sstory. 

The then secretary of the London Shipmasters' Society, with its modestrooms in Fenchurch Street, was a man of indefatigable activity and thegreatest devotion to his task. He is responsible for what was my lastassociation with a ship. I call it that be cause it can hardly be calleda sea-going experience. Dear Captain Froud--it is impossible not topay him the tribute of affectionate familiarity at this distance ofyears--had very sound views as to the advancement of knowledge andstatus for the whole body of the officers of the mercantile marine. Heorganized for us courses of professional lectures, St. John ambulanceclasses, corresponded industriously with public bodies and members ofParliament on subjects touching the interests of the service; and as tothe oncoming of some inquiry or commission relating to matters of thesea and to the work of seamen, it was a perfect godsend to his need ofexerting himself on our corporate behalf. Together with this high senseof his official duties he had in him a vein of personal kindness, astrong disposition to do what good he could to the individual members ofthat craft of which in his time he had been a very excellent master. Andwhat greater kindness can one do to a seaman than to put him in the wayof employment? Captain Froud did not see why the Shipmasters' Society, besides its general guardianship of our interests, should not beunofficially an employment agency of the very highest class. 

"I am trying to persuade all our great ship-owning firms to come tous for their men. There is nothing of a trade-union spirit about oursociety, and I really don't see why they should not, " he said onceto me. "I am always telling the captains, too, that, all things beingequal, they ought to give preference to the members of the society. In my position I can generally find for them what they want among ourmembers or our associate members. "

In my wanderings about London from west to east and back again (I wasvery idle then) the two little rooms in Fenchurch Street were a sortof resting-place where my spirit, hankering after the sea, could feelitself nearer to the ships, the men, and the life of its choice--nearerthere than on any other spot of the solid earth. This resting-place usedto be, at about five o'clock in the afternoon, full of men and tobaccosmoke, but Captain Froud had the smaller room to himself and therehe granted private interviews, whose principal motive was to renderservice. Thus, one murky November afternoon he beckoned me in with acrooked finger and that peculiar glance above his spectacles which isperhaps my strongest physical recollection of the man. 

"I have had in here a shipmaster, this morning, " he said, getting backto his desk and motioning me to a chair, "who is in want of an officer. It's for a steamship. You know, nothing pleases me more than to beasked, but, unfortunately, I do not quite see my way . . . "

As the outer room was full of men I cast a wondering glance at theclosed door; but he shook his head. 

"Oh, yes, I should be only too glad to get that berth for one of them. But the fact of the matter is, the captain of that ship wants an officerwho can speak French fluently, and that's not so easy to find. I donot know anybody myself but you. It's a second officer's berth and, ofcourse, you would not care . . . Would you now? I know that it isn'twhat you are looking for. "

It was not. I had given myself up to the idleness of a haunted man wholooks for nothing but words wherein to capture his visions. But I admitthat outwardly I resembled sufficiently a man who could make a secondofficer for a steamer chartered by a French company. I showed no signof being haunted by the fate of Nina and by the murmurs of tropicalforests; and even my intimate intercourse with Almayer (a person of weakcharacter) had not put a visible mark upon my features. For many yearshe and the world of his story had been the companions of my imaginationwithout, I hope, impairing my ability to deal with the realities ofsea life. I had had the man and his surroundings with me ever since myreturn from the eastern waters--some four years before the day of whichI speak. 

It was in the front sitting-room of furnished apartments in a Pimlicosquare that they first began to live again with a vividness andpoignancy quite foreign to our former real intercourse. I had beentreating myself to a long stay on shore, and in the necessity ofoccupying my mornings Almayer (that old acquaintance) came nobly to therescue. 

Before long, as was only proper, his wife and daughter joined him roundmy table, and then the rest of that Pantai band came full of wordsand gestures. Unknown to my respectable landlady, it was my practicedirectly after my breakfast to hold animated receptions of Malays, Arabs, and half-castes. They did not clamour aloud for my attention. They came with a silent and irresistible appeal--and the appeal, Iaffirm here, was not to my self-love or my vanity. It seems now to havehad a moral character, for why should the memory of these beings, seenin their obscure, sun-bathed existence, demand to express itself in theshape of a novel, except on the ground of that mysterious fellowshipwhich unites in a community of hopes and fears all the dwellers on thisearth?

I did not receive my visitors with boisterous rapture as the bearersof any gifts of profit or fame. There was no vision of a printed bookbefore me as I sat writing at that table, situated in a decayed part ofBelgravia. After all these years, each leaving its evidence of slowlyblackened pages, I can honestly say that it is a sentiment akin to pitywhich prompted me to render in words assembled with conscientious carethe memory of things far distant and of men who had lived. 

But, coming back to Captain Froud and his fixed idea of neverdisappointing ship owners or ship-captains, it was not likely that Ishould fail him in his ambition--to satisfy at a few hours' notice theunusual demand for a French-speaking officer. He explained to me thatthe ship was chartered by a French company intending to establish aregular monthly line of sailings from Rouen, for the transport of Frenchemigrants to Canada. But, frankly, this sort of thing did not interestme very much. I said gravely that if it were really a matter of keepingup the reputation of the Shipmasters' Society I would consider it. Butthe consideration was just for form's sake. The next day I interviewedthe captain, and I believe we were impressed favourably with each other. He explained that his chief mate was an excellent man in every respectand that he could not think of dismissing him so as to give me thehigher position; but that if I consented to come as second officer Iwould be given certain special advantages--and so on. 

I told him that if I came at all the rank really did not matter. 

"I am sure, " he insisted, "you will get on first rate with Mr. Paramor. "

I promised faithfully to stay for two trips at least, and it was inthose circumstances that what was to be my last connection with a shipbegan. And after all there was not even one single trip. It may bethat it was simply the fulfilment of a fate, of that written word on myforehead which apparently for bade me, through all my sea wanderings, ever to achieve the crossing of the Western Ocean--using the words inthat special sense in which sailors speak of Western Ocean trade, of Western Ocean packets, of Western Ocean hard cases. The new lifeattended closely upon the old, and the nine chapters of "Almayer'sFolly" went with me to the Victoria Dock, whence in a few days westarted for Rouen. I won't go so far as saying that the engaging of aman fated never to cross the Western Ocean was the absolute cause ofthe Franco-Canadian Transport Company's failure to achieve even a singlepassage. It might have been that of course; but the obvious, grossobstacle was clearly the want of money. Four hundred and sixty bunksfor emigrants were put together in the 'tween decks by industriouscarpenters while we lay in the Victoria Dock, but never an emigrantturned up in Rouen--of which, being a humane person, I confess I wasglad. Some gentlemen from Paris--I think there were three of them, andone was said to be the chairman--turned up, indeed, and went from endto end of the ship, knocking their silk hats cruelly against the deckbeams. I attended them personally, and I can vouch for it that theinterest they took in things was intelligent enough, though, obviously, they had never seen anything of the sort before. Their faces as theywent ashore wore a cheerfully inconclusive expression. Notwithstandingthat this inspecting ceremony was supposed to be a preliminary toimmediate sailing, it was then, as they filed down our gangway, that Ireceived the inward monition that no sailing within the meaning of ourcharter party would ever take place. 

It must be said that in less than three weeks a move took place. Whenwe first arrived we had been taken up with much ceremony well toward thecentre of the town, and, all the street corners being placarded withthe tricolor posters announcing the birth of our company, the petitbourgeois with his wife and family made a Sunday holiday from theinspection of the ship. I was always in evidence in my best uniform togive information as though I had been a Cook's tourists' interpreter, while our quartermasters reaped a harvest of small change frompersonally conducted parties. But when the move was made--that movewhich carried us some mile and a half down the stream to be tied up toan altogether muddier and shabbier quay--then indeed the desolation ofsolitude became our lot. It was a complete and soundless stagnation; foras we had the ship ready for sea to the smallest detail, as the frostwas hard and the days short, we were absolutely idle--idle to the pointof blushing with shame when the thought struck us that all the time oursalaries went on. Young Cole was aggrieved because, as he said, we couldnot enjoy any sort of fun in the evening after loafing like this allday; even the banjo lost its charm since there was nothing to preventhis strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good Paramor--hewas really a most excellent fellow--became unhappy as far as waspossible to his cheery nature, till one dreary day I suggested, out ofsheer mischief, that he should employ the dormant energies of the crewin hauling both cables up on deck and turning them end for end. 

For a moment Mr. Paramor was radiant. "Excellent idea!" but directlyhis face fell. "Why . . . Yes! But we can't make that job last morethan three days, " he muttered, discontentedly. I don't know how long heexpected us to be stuck on the riverside outskirts of Rouen, but I knowthat the cables got hauled up and turned end for end according to mysatanic suggestion, put down again, and their very existence utterlyforgotten, I believe, before a French river pilot came on board to takeour ship down, empty as she came, into the Havre roads. You may thinkthat this state of forced idleness favoured some advance in the fortunesof Almayer and his daughter. Yet it was not so. As if it were some sortof evil spell, my banjoist cabin mate's interruption, as related above, had arrested them short at the point of that fateful sunset for manyweeks together. It was always thus with this book, begun in '89 andfinished in '94--with that shortest of all the novels which it was to bemy lot to write. Between its opening exclamation calling Almayer to hisdinner in his wife's voice and Abdullah's (his enemy) mental referenceto the God of Islam--"The Merciful, the Compassionate"--which closes thebook, there were to come several long sea passages, a visit (to use theelevated phraseology suitable to the occasion) to the scenes (some ofthem) of my childhood and the realization of childhood's vain words, expressing a light-hearted and romantic whim. 

It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while lookingat a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank spacethen representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said tomyself, with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are nolonger in my character now:

"When I grow up I shall go _there_. "

And of course I thought no more about it till after a quarter of acentury or so an opportunity offered to go there--as if the sin ofchildish audacity were to be visited on my mature head. Yes. I did gothere: _there_ being the region of Stanley Falls, which in '68 was theblankest of blank spaces on the earth's figured surface. And the MS. Of "Almayer's Folly, " carried about me as if it were a talisman or atreasure, went _there_, too. That it ever came out of _there_ seemsa special dispensation of Providence, because a good many of my otherproperties, infinitely more valuable and useful to me, remained behindthrough unfortunate accidents of transportation. I call to mind, forinstance, a specially awkward turn of the Congo between Kinchassa andLeopoldsville--more particularly when one had to take it at night ina big canoe with only half the proper number of paddlers. I failed inbeing the second white man on record drowned at that interesting spotthrough the upsetting of a canoe. The first was a young Belgian officer, but the accident happened some months before my time, and he, too, Ibelieve, was going home; not perhaps quite so ill as myself--but stillhe was going home. I got round the turn more or less alive, though Iwas too sick to care whether I did or not, and, always with "Almayer'sFolly" among my diminishing baggage, I arrived at that delectablecapital, Boma, where, before the departure of the steamer which was totake me home, I had the time to wish myself dead over and over againwith perfect sincerity. At that date there were in existence only sevenchapters of "Almayer's Folly, " but the chapter in my history whichfollowed was that of a long, long illness and very dismal convalescence. Geneva, or more precisely the hydropathic establishment of Champel, isrendered forever famous by the termination of the eighth chapter inthe history of Almayer's decline and fall. The events of the ninth areinextricably mixed up with the details of the proper management of awaterside warehouse owned by a certain city firm whose name does notmatter. But that work, undertaken to accustom myself again to theactivities of a healthy existence, soon came to an end. The earth hadnothing to hold me with for very long. And then that memorable story, like a cask of choice Madeira, got carried for three years to and froupon the sea. Whether this treatment improved its flavour or not, ofcourse I would not like to say. As far as appearance is concerned itcertainly did nothing of the kind. The whole MS. Acquired a faded lookand an ancient, yellowish complexion. It became at last unreasonableto suppose that anything in the world would ever happen to Almayer andNina. And yet something most unlikely to happen on the high seas was towake them up from their state of suspended animation. 

What is it that Novalis says: "It is certain my conviction gainsinfinitely the moment an other soul will believe in it. " And what is anovel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough totake upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whoseaccumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the prideof documentary history. Providence which saved my MS. From the Congorapids brought it to the knowledge of a helpful soul far out on the opensea. It would be on my part the greatest ingratitude ever to forget thesallow, sunken face and the deep-set, dark eyes of the young Cambridgeman (he was a "passenger for his health" on board the good ship Torrensoutward bound to Australia) who was the first reader of "Almayer'sFolly"--the very first reader I ever had. 

"Would it bore you very much in reading a MS. In a handwriting likemine?" I asked him one evening, on a sudden impulse at the end of alongish conversation whose subject was Gibbon's History. 

Jacques (that was his name) was sitting in my cabin one stormy dog-watchbelow, after bring me a book to read from his own travelling store. 

"Not at all, " he answered, with his courteous intonation and a faintsmile. As I pulled a drawer open his suddenly aroused curiosity gave hima watchful expression. I wonder what he expected to see. A poem, maybe. All that's beyond guessing now. 

He was not a cold, but a calm man, still more subdued by disease--a manof few words and of an unassuming modesty in general intercourse, butwith something uncommon in the whole of his person which set him apartfrom the undistinguished lot of our sixty passengers. His eyes had athoughtful, introspective look. In his attractive reserved manner and ina veiled sympathetic voice he asked:

"What is this?" "It is a sort of tale, " I answered, with an effort. "Itis not even finished yet. Nevertheless, I would like to know what youthink of it. " He put the MS. In the breast-pocket of his jacket; Iremember perfectly his thin, brown fingers folding it lengthwise. "Iwill read it to-morrow, " he remarked, seizing the door handle; and thenwatching the roll of the ship for a propitious moment, he opened thedoor and was gone. In the moment of his exit I heard the sustainedbooming of the wind, the swish of the water on the decks of the Torrens, and the subdued, as if distant, roar of the rising sea. I noted thegrowing disquiet in the great restlessness of the ocean, and respondedprofessionally to it with the thought that at eight o'clock, in anotherhalf hour or so at the farthest, the topgallant sails would have to comeoff the ship. 

Next day, but this time in the first dog watch, Jacques entered mycabin. He had a thick woollen muffler round his throat, and the MS. Was in his hand. He tendered it to me with a steady look, but withouta word. I took it in silence. He sat down on the couch and still saidnothing. I opened and shut a drawer under my desk, on which a filled-uplog-slate lay wide open in its wooden frame waiting to be copied neatlyinto the sort of book I was accustomed to write with care, the ship'slog-book. I turned my back squarely on the desk. And even then Jacquesnever offered a word. "Well, what do you say?" I asked at last. "Isit worth finishing?" This question expressed exactly the whole of mythoughts. 

"Distinctly, " he answered, in his sedate, veiled voice, and then cougheda little. 

"Were you interested?" I inquired further, almost in a whisper. 

"Very much!"

In a pause I went on meeting instinctively the heavy rolling of theship, and Jacques put his feet upon the couch. The curtain of mybed-place swung to and fro as if it were a punkah, the bulkhead lampcircled in its gimbals, and now and then the cabin door rattled slightlyin the gusts of wind. It was in latitude 40 south, and nearly in thelongitude of Greenwich, as far as I can remember, that these quiet ritesof Almayer's and Nina's resurrection were taking place. In the prolongedsilence it occurred to me that there was a good deal of retrospectivewriting in the story as far as it went. Was it intelligible in itsaction, I asked myself, as if already the story-teller were beingborn into the body of a seaman. But I heard on deck the whistle of theofficer of the watch and remained on the alert to catch the order thatwas to follow this call to attention. It reached me as a faint, fierceshout to "Square the yards. " "Aha!" I thought to myself, "a westerlyblow coming on. " Then I turned to my very first reader, who, alas! wasnot to live long enough to know the end of the tale. 

"Now let me ask you one more thing: is the story quite clear to you asit stands?"

He raised his dark, gentle eyes to my face and seemed surprised. 

"Yes! Perfectly. "

This was all I was to hear from his lips concerning the merits of"Almayer's Folly. " We never spoke together of the book again. A longperiod of bad weather set in and I had no thoughts left but for myduties, while poor Jacques caught a fatal cold and had to keep close inhis cabin. When we arrived in Adelaide the first reader of my prosewent at once up-country, and died rather suddenly in the end, either inAustralia or it may be on the passage while going home through the SuezCanal. I am not sure which it was now, and I do not think I ever heardprecisely; though I made inquiries about him from some of our returnpassengers who, wandering about to "see the country" during the ship'sstay in port, had come upon him here and there. At last we sailed, homeward bound, and still not one line was added to the careless scrawlof the many pages which poor Jacques had had the patience to read withthe very shadows of Eternity gathering already in the hollows of hiskind, steadfast eyes. 

The purpose instilled into me by his simple and final "Distinctly"remained dormant, yet alive to await its opportunity. I dare say I amcompelled--unconsciously compelled--now to write volume after volume, asin past years I was compelled to go to sea voyage after voyage. Leavesmust follow upon one an other as leagues used to follow in the daysgone by, on and on to the appointed end, which, being Truth itself, isOne--one for all men and for all occupations. 

I do not know which of the two impulses has appeared more mysterious andmore wonderful to me. Still, in writing, as in going to sea, I had towait my opportunity. Let me confess here that I was never one of thosewonderful fellows that would go afloat in a wash-tub for the sake of thefun, and if I may pride myself upon my consistency, it was ever justthe same with my writing. Some men, I have heard, write in railwaycarriages, and could do it, perhaps, sitting crossed-legged on aclothes-line; but I must confess that my sybaritic disposition will notconsent to write without something at least resembling a chair. Line byline, rather than page by page, was the growth of "Almayer's Folly. "

And so it happened that I very nearly lost the MS. , advanced now to thefirst words of the ninth chapter, in the Friedrichstrasse Poland, ormore precisely to Ukraine. On an early, sleepy morning changing trainsin a hurry I left my Gladstone bag in a refreshment-room. A worthyand intelligent Koffertrager rescued it. Yet in my anxiety I was notthinking of the MS. , but of all the other things that were packed in thebag. 

In Warsaw, where I spent two days, those wandering pages were neverexposed to the light, except once to candle-light, while the bag layopen on the chair. I was dressing hurriedly to dine at a sporting club. A friend of my childhood (he had been in the Diplomatic Service, buthad turned to growing wheat on paternal acres, and we had not seen eachother for over twenty years) was sitting on the hotel sofa waiting tocarry me off there. 

"You might tell me something of your life while you are dressing, " hesuggested, kindly. 

I do not think I told him much of my life story either then or later. The talk of the select little party with which he made me dine wasextremely animated and embraced most subjects under heaven, frombig-game shooting in Africa to the last poem published in a verymodernist review, edited by the very young and patronized by the highestsociety. But it never touched upon "Almayer's Folly, " and next morning, in uninterrupted obscurity, this inseparable companion went on rollingwith me in the southeast direction toward the government of Kiev. 

At that time there was an eight hours' drive, if not more, from therailway station to the country-house which was my destination. 

"Dear boy" (these words were always written in English), so ran the lastletter from that house received in London--"Get yourself driven to theonly inn in the place, dine as well as you can, and some time in theevening my own confidential servant, factotum and majordomo, a Mr. V. S. (I warn you he is of noble extraction), will present himself before you, reporting the arrival of the small sledge which will take you here onthe next day. I send with him my heaviest fur, which I suppose with suchovercoats as you may have with you will keep you from freezing on theroad. "

Sure enough, as I was dining, served by a Hebrew waiter, in an enormousbarn-like bedroom with a freshly painted floor, the door opened and, ina travelling costume of long boots, big sheepskin cap, and a short coatgirt with a leather belt, the Mr. V. S. (of noble extraction), a man ofabout thirty-five, appeared with an air of perplexity on his openand mustached countenance. I got up from the table and greeted him inPolish, with, I hope, the right shade of consideration demanded by hisnoble blood and his confidential position. His face cleared up in awonderful way. It appeared that, notwithstanding my uncle's earnestassurances, the good fellow had remained in doubt of our understandingeach other. He imagined I would talk to him in some foreign language. 

I was told that his last words on getting into the sledge to come tomeet me shaped an anxious exclamation:

"Well! Well! Here I am going, but God only knows how I am to make myselfunderstood to our master's nephew. "

We understood each other very well from the first. He took charge ofme as if I were not quite of age. I had a delightful boyish feelingof coming home from school when he muffled me up next morning in anenormous bearskin travelling-coat and took his seat protectively bymy side. The sledge was a very small one, and it looked utterlyinsignificant, almost like a toy behind the four big bays harnessed twoand two. We three, counting the coachman, filled it completely. He wasa young fellow with clear blue eyes; the high collar of his livery furcoat framed his cheery countenance and stood all round level with thetop of his head. 

"Now, Joseph, " my companion addressed him, "do you think we shall manageto get home before six?" His answer was that we would surely, withGod's help, and providing there were no heavy drifts in the long stretchbetween certain villages whose names came with an extremely familiarsound to my ears. He turned out an excellent coachman, with an instinctfor keeping the road among the snow-covered fields and a natural gift ofgetting the best out of his horses. 

"He is the son of that Joseph that I suppose the Captain remembers. He who used to drive the Captain's late grandmother of holy memory, "remarked V. S. , busy tucking fur rugs about my feet. 

I remembered perfectly the trusty Joseph who used to drive mygrandmother. Why! he it was who let me hold the reins for the firsttime in my life and allowed me to play with the great four-in-hand whipoutside the doors of the coach-house. 

"What became of him?" I asked. "He is no longer serving, I suppose. "

"He served our master, " was the reply. "But he died of cholera ten yearsago now--that great epidemic that we had. And his wife died at the sametime--the whole houseful of them, and this is the only boy that wasleft. "

The MS. Of "Almayer's Folly" was reposing in the bag under our feet. 

I saw again the sun setting on the plains as I saw it in the travels ofmy childhood. It set, clear and red, dipping into the snow in full viewas if it were setting on the sea. It was twenty-three years since I hadseen the sun set over that land; and we drove on in the darkness whichfell swiftly upon the livid expanse of snows till, out of the waste of awhite earth joining a bestarred sky, surged up black shapes, the clumpsof trees about a village of the Ukrainian plain. A cottage or two glidedby, a low interminable wall, and then, glimmering and winking through ascreen of fir-trees, the lights of the master's house. 

That very evening the wandering MS. Of "Almayer's Folly" was unpackedand unostentatiously laid on the writing-table in my room, theguest-room which had been, I was informed in an affectionately carelesstone, awaiting me for some fifteen years or so. It attracted noattention from the affectionate presence hovering round the son of thefavourite sister. 

"You won't have many hours to yourself while you are staying with me, brother, " he said--this form of address borrowed from the speech ofour peasants being the usual expression of the highest good humour ina moment of affectionate elation. "I shall be always coming in for achat. "

As a matter of fact, we had the whole house to chat in, and wereeverlastingly intruding upon each other. I invaded the retirement ofhis study where the principal feature was a colossal silver inkstandpresented to him on his fiftieth year by a subscription of all hiswards then living. He had been guardian of many orphans of land-owningfamilies from the three southern provinces--ever since the year 1860. Some of them had been my school fellows and playmates, but not one ofthem, girls or boys, that I know of has ever written a novel. One or twowere older than myself--considerably older, too. One of them, a visitorI remember in my early years, was the man who first put me on horseback, and his four-horse bachelor turnout, his perfect horsemanship andgeneral skill in manly exercises, was one of my earliest admirations. Iseem to remember my mother looking on from a colonnade in front of thedining-room windows as I was lifted upon the pony, held, for all I know, by the very Joseph--the groom attached specially to my grandmother'sservice--who died of cholera. It was certainly a young man in adark-blue, tailless coat and huge Cossack trousers, that being thelivery of the men about the stables. It must have been in 1864, butreckoning by another mode of calculating time, it was certainly in theyear in which my mother obtained permission to travel south and visither family, from the exile into which she had followed my father. Forthat, too, she had had to ask permission, and I know that one of theconditions of that favour was that she should be treated exactly as acondemned exile herself. Yet a couple of years later, in memory of hereldest brother, who had served in the Guards and dying early left hostsof friends and a loved memory in the great world of St. Petersburg, some influential personages procured for her this permission--it wasofficially called the "Highest Grace"--of a four months' leave fromexile. 

This is also the year in which I first begin to remember my mother withmore distinctness than a mere loving, wide-browed, silent, protectingpresence, whose eyes had a sort of commanding sweetness; and I alsoremember the great gathering of all the relations from near and far, andthe gray heads of the family friends paying her the homage of respectand love in the house of her favourite brother, who, a few years later, was to take the place for me of both my parents. 

I did not understand the tragic significance of it all at the time, though, indeed, I remember that doctors also came. There were no signsof invalidism about her--but I think that already they had pronouncedher doom unless perhaps the change to a southern climate couldre-establish her declining strength. For me it seems the veryhappiest period of my existence. There was my cousin, a delightful, quick-tempered little girl, some months younger than myself, whose life, lovingly watched over as if she were a royal princess, came to an endwith her fifteenth year. There were other children, too, many of whomare dead now, and not a few whose very names I have forgotten. Over allthis hung the oppressive shadow of the great Russian empire--the shadowlowering with the darkness of a new-born national hatred fostered bythe Moscow school of journalists against the Poles after the ill-omenedrising of 1863. 

This is a far cry back from the MS. Of "Almayer's Folly, " but the publicrecord of these formative impressions is not the whim of an uneasyegotism. These, too, are things human, already distant in their appeal. It is meet that something more should be left for the novelist'schildren than the colours and figures of his own hard-won creation. Thatwhich in their grown-up years may appear to the world about them as themost enigmatic side of their natures and perhaps must remain foreverobscure even to themselves, will be their unconscious response to thestill voice of that inexorable past from which his work of fiction andtheir personalities are remotely derived. 

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective andundeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme masterof art as of life. An imaginative and exact rendering of authenticmemories may serve worthily that spirit of piety toward all things humanwhich sanctions the conceptions of a writer of tales, and the emotionsof the man reviewing his own experience. 

II

As I have said, I was unpacking my luggage after a journey from Londoninto Ukraine. The MS. Of "Almayer's Folly"--my companion already forsome three years or more, and then in the ninth chapter of its age--wasdeposited unostentatiously on the writing-table placed between twowindows. It didn't occur to me to put it away in the drawer the tablewas fitted with, but my eye was attracted by the good form of the samedrawer's brass handles. Two candelabra, with four candles each, lightedup festally the room which had waited so many years for the wanderingnephew. The blinds were down. 

Within five hundred yards of the chair on which I sat stood the firstpeasant hut of the village--part of my maternal grandfather's estate, the only part remaining in the possession of a member of the family; andbeyond the village in the limitless blackness of a winter's night therelay the great unfenced fields--not a flat and severe plain, but a kindlybread-giving land of low rounded ridges, all white now, with the blackpatches of timber nestling in the hollows. The road by which I had comeran through the village with a turn just outside the gates closing theshort drive. Somebody was abroad on the deep snow track; a quick tinkleof bells stole gradually into the stillness of the room like a tunefulwhisper. 

My unpacking had been watched over by the servant who had come to helpme, and, for the most part, had been standing attentive but unnecessaryat the door of the room. I did not want him in the least, but I did notlike to tell him to go away. He was a young fellow, certainly morethan ten years younger than myself; I had not been--I won't say in thatplace, but within sixty miles of it, ever since the year '67; yethis guileless physiognomy of the open peasant type seemed strangelyfamiliar. It was quite possible that he might have been a descendant, ason, or even a grandson, of the servants whose friendly faces had beenfamiliar to me in my early childhood. As a matter of fact he had no suchclaim on my consideration. He was the product of some village near byand was there on his promotion, having learned the service in one or twohouses as pantry boy. I know this because I asked the worthy V---- nextday. I might well have spared the question. I discovered before longthat all the faces about the house and all the faces in the village:the grave faces with long mustaches of the heads of families, the downyfaces of the young men, the faces of the little fair-haired children, the handsome, tanned, wide-browed faces of the mothers seen at the doorsof the huts, were as familiar to me as though I had known them all fromchildhood and my childhood were a matter of the day before yesterday. 

The tinkle of the traveller's bells, after growing louder, had fadedaway quickly, and the tumult of barking dogs in the village had calmeddown at last. My uncle, lounging in the corner of a small couch, smokedhis long Turkish chibouk in silence. 

"This is an extremely nice writing-table you have got for my room, " Iremarked. 

"It is really your property, " he said, keeping his eyes on me, withan interested and wistful expression, as he had done ever since I hadentered the house. "Forty years ago your mother used to write at thisvery table. In our house in Oratow, it stood in the little sitting-roomwhich, by a tacit arrangement, was given up to the girls--I mean toyour mother and her sister who died so young. It was a present to themjointly from your uncle Nicholas B. When your mother was seventeen andyour aunt two years younger. She was a very dear, delightful girl, thataunt of yours, of whom I suppose you know nothing more than the name. She did not shine so much by personal beauty and a cultivated mind inwhich your mother was far superior. It was her good sense, the admirablesweetness of her nature, her exceptional facility and ease in dailyrelations, that endeared her to every body. Her death was a terriblegrief and a serious moral loss for us all. Had she lived she would havebrought the greatest blessings to the house it would have been her lotto enter, as wife, mother, and mistress of a household. She would havecreated round herself an atmosphere of peace and content which onlythose who can love unselfishly are able to evoke. Your mother--of fargreater beauty, exceptionally distinguished in person, manner, andintellect--had a less easy disposition. Being more brilliantly gifted, she also expected more from life. At that trying time especially, wewere greatly concerned about her state. Suffering in her health from theshock of her father's death (she was alone in the house with him when hedied suddenly), she was torn by the inward struggle between her love forthe man whom she was to marry in the end and her knowledge of her deadfather's declared objection to that match. Unable to bring herselfto disregard that cherished memory and that judgment she had alwaysrespected and trusted, and, on the other hand, feeling the impossibilityto resist a sentiment so deep and so true, she could not have beenexpected to preserve her mental and moral balance. At war with herself, she could not give to others that feeling of peace which was not herown. It was only later, when united at last with the man of herchoice, that she developed those uncommon gifts of mind and heart whichcompelled the respect and admiration even of our foes. Meeting with calmfortitude the cruel trials of a life reflecting all the nationaland social misfortunes of the community, she realized the highestconceptions of duty as a wife, a mother, and a patriot, sharingthe exile of her husband and representing nobly the ideal of Polishwomanhood. Our uncle Nicholas was not a man very accessible to feelingsof affection. Apart from his worship for Napoleon the Great, he lovedreally, I believe, only three people in the world: his mother--yourgreat-grandmother, whom you have seen but cannot possibly remember; hisbrother, our father, in whose house he lived for so many years; andof all of us, his nephews and nieces grown up around him, your motheralone. The modest, lovable qualities of the youngest sister he did notseem able to see. It was I who felt most profoundly this unexpectedstroke of death falling upon the family less than a year after I hadbecome its head. It was terribly unexpected. Driving home one wintryafternoon to keep me company in our empty house, where I had to remainpermanently administering the estate and at tending to the complicatedaffairs--(the girls took it in turn week and week about)--driving, asI said, from the house of the Countess Tekla Potocka, where our invalidmother was staying then to be near a doctor, they lost the road and gotstuck in a snow drift. She was alone with the coachman and old Valery, the personal servant of our late father. Impatient of delay while theywere trying to dig themselves out, she jumped out of the sledge and wentto look for the road herself. All this happened in '51, not ten milesfrom the house in which we are sitting now. 

"The road was soon found, but snow had begun to fall thickly again, andthey were four more hours getting home. Both the men took off theirsheepskin lined greatcoats and used all their own rugs to wrap her upagainst the cold, notwithstanding her protests, positive orders, andeven struggles, as Valery afterward related to me. 'How could I, ' heremonstrated with her, 'go to meet the blessed soul of my late masterif I let any harm come to you while there's a spark of life left in mybody?' When they reached home at last the poor old man was stiff andspeechless from exposure, and the coachman was in not much betterplight, though he had the strength to drive round to the stableshimself. To my reproaches for venturing out at all in such weather, sheanswered, characteristically, that she could not bear the thought ofabandoning me to my cheerless solitude. It is incomprehensible how itwas that she was allowed to start. I suppose it had to be! She madelight of the cough which came on next day, but shortly afterwardinflammation of the lungs set in, and in three weeks she was no more!She was the first to be taken away of the young generation under mycare. Behold the vanity of all hopes and fears! I was the most frailat birth of all the children. For years I remained so delicate that myparents had but little hope of bringing me up; and yet I have survivedfive brothers and two sisters, and many of my contemporaries; I haveoutlived my wife and daughter, too--and from all those who have had someknowledge at least of these old times you alone are left. It has beenmy lot to lay in an early grave many honest hearts, many brilliantpromises, many hopes full of life. "

He got up briskly, sighed, and left me saying, "We will dine in half anhour. "

Without moving, I listened to his quick steps resounding on the waxedfloor of the next room, traversing the anteroom lined with bookshelves, where he paused to put his chibouk in the pipe-stand before passing intothe drawing-room (these were all en suite), where he became inaudibleon the thick carpet. But I heard the door of his study-bedroom close. Hewas then sixty-two years old and had been for a quarter of a century thewisest, the firmest, the most indulgent of guardians, extending over mea paternal care and affection, a moral support which I seemed to feelalways near me in the most distant parts of the earth. 

As to Mr. Nicholas B. , sub-lieutenant of 1808, lieutenant of 1813 inthe French army, and for a short time _Officier d'Ordonnance_ of MarshalMarmont; afterward captain in the 2d Regiment of Mounted Rifles inthe Polish army--such as it existed up to 1830 in the reduced kingdomestablished by the Congress of Vienna--I must say that from all thatmore distant past, known to me traditionally and a little _de visu_, andcalled out by the words of the man just gone away, he remains the mostincomplete figure. It is obvious that I must have seen him in '64, forit is certain that he would not have missed the opportunity of seeing mymother for what he must have known would be the last time. From my earlyboyhood to this day, if I try to call up his image, a sort of mist risesbefore my eyes, mist in which I perceive vaguely only a neatly brushedhead of white hair (which is exceptional in the case of the B. Family, where it is the rule for men to go bald in a becoming manner beforethirty) and a thin, curved, dignified nose, a feature in strictaccordance with the physical tradition of the B. Family. But it is notby these fragmentary remains of perishable mortality that he lives in mymemory. I knew, at a very early age, that my granduncle Nicholas B. Wasa Knight of the Legion of Honour and that he had also the Polish Crossfor _valour Virtuti Militari_. The knowledge of these glorious factsinspired in me an admiring veneration; yet it is not that sentiment, strong as it was, which resumes for me the force and the significance ofhis personality. It is over borne by another and complex impressionof awe, compassion, and horror. Mr. Nicholas B. Remains for me theunfortunate and miserable (but heroic) being who once upon a time hadeaten a dog. 

It is a good forty years since I heard the tale, and the effect has notworn off yet. I believe this is the very first, say, realistic, story Iheard in my life; but all the same I don't know why I should have beenso frightfully impressed. Of course I know what our village dogs looklike--but still. . . . No! At this very day, recalling the horrorand compassion of my childhood, I ask myself whether I am right indisclosing to a cold and fastidious world that awful episode in thefamily history. I ask myself--is it right?--especially as the B. Familyhad always been honourably known in a wide countryside for the delicacyof their tastes in the matter of eating and drinking. But upon thewhole, and considering that this gastronomical degradation overtaking agallant young officer lies really at the door of the Great Napoleon, I think that to cover it up by silence would be an exaggeration ofliterary restraint. Let the truth stand here. The responsibility restswith the Man of St. Helena in view of his deplorable levity in theconduct of the Russian campaign. It was during the memorable retreatfrom Moscow that Mr. Nicholas B. , in company of two brother officers--asto whose morality and natural refinement I know nothing--bagged a dogon the outskirts of a village and subsequently devoured him. As far asI can remember the weapon used was a cavalry sabre, and the issue of thesporting episode was rather more of a matter of life and death than ifit had been an encounter with a tiger. A picket of Cossacks was sleepingin that village lost in the depths of the great Lithuanian forest. Thethree sportsmen had observed them from a hiding-place making themselvesvery much at home among the huts just before the early winter darknessset in at four o'clock. They had observed them with disgust and, perhaps, with despair. Late in the night the rash counsels of hungerovercame the dictates of prudence. Crawling through the snow they creptup to the fence of dry branches which generally encloses a village inthat part of Lithuania. What they expected to get and in what manner, and whether this expectation was worth the risk, goodness only knows. 

However, these Cossack parties, in most cases wandering without anofficer, were known to guard themselves badly and often not at all. Inaddition, the village lying at a great distance from the line of Frenchretreat, they could not suspect the presence of stragglers from theGrand Army. The three officers had strayed away in a blizzard from themain column and had been lost for days in the woods, which explainssufficiently the terrible straits to which they were reduced. Their planwas to try and attract the attention of the peasants in that one of thehuts which was nearest to the enclosure; but as they were preparing toventure into the very jaws of the lion, so to speak, a dog (it is mightystrange that there was but one), a creature quite as formidable underthe circumstances as a lion, began to bark on the other side of thefence. . . . 

At this stage of the narrative, which I heard many times (by request)from the lips of Captain Nicholas B. 's sister-in-law, my grandmother, Iused to tremble with excitement. 

The dog barked. And if he had done no more than bark, three officers ofthe Great Napoleon's army would have perished honourably on the pointsof Cossacks' lances, or perchance escaping the chase would have dieddecently of starvation. But before they had time to think of runningaway that fatal and revolting dog, being carried away by the excess ofthe zeal, dashed out through a gap in the fence. He dashed out anddied. His head, I understand, was severed at one blow from his body. I understand also that later on, within the gloomy solitudes of thesnow-laden woods, when, in a sheltering hollow, a fire had been lit bythe party, the condition of the quarry was discovered to be distinctlyunsatisfactory. It was not thin--on the contrary, it seemed unhealthilyobese; its skin showed bare patches of an unpleasant character. However, they had not killed that dog for the sake of the pelt. He was large. . . . He was eaten. . . . The rest is silence. . . . 

A silence in which a small boy shudders and says firmly:

"I could not have eaten that dog. "

And his grandmother remarks with a smile:

"Perhaps you don't know what it is to be hungry. "

I have learned something of it since. Not that I have been reduced toeat dog. I have fed on the emblematical animal, which, in the languageof the volatile Gauls, is called la vache enragee; I have lived onancient salt junk, I know the taste of shark, of trepang, of snake, of nondescript dishes containing things without a name--but of theLithuanian village dog--never! I wish it to be distinctly understoodthat it is not I, but my granduncle Nicholas, of the Polish landedgentry, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, etc. , who in his young days, had eaten the Lithuanian dog. 

I wish he had not. The childish horror of the deed clings absurdlyto the grizzled man. I am perfectly helpless against it. Still, ifhe really had to, let us charitably remember that he had eaten him onactive service, while bearing up bravely against the greatest militarydisaster of modern history, and, in a manner, for the sake of hiscountry. He had eaten him to appease his hunger, no doubt, but also forthe sake of an unappeasable and patriotic desire, in the glow of a greatfaith that lives still, and in the pursuit of a great illusion kindledlike a false beacon by a great man to lead astray the effort of a bravenation. 

_Pro patria!_

Looked at in that light, it appears a sweet and decorous meal. 

And looked at in the same light, my own diet of la vache enragee appearsa fatuous and extravagant form of self-indulgence; for why should I, the son of a land which such men as these have turned up with theirplowshares and bedewed with their blood, undertake the pursuit offantastic meals of salt junk and hardtack upon the wide seas? Onthe kindest view it seems an unanswerable question. Alas! I have theconviction that there are men of unstained rectitude who are readyto murmur scornfully the word desertion. Thus the taste of innocentadventure may be made bitter to the palate. The part of the inexplicableshould be al lowed for in appraising the conduct of men in a world whereno explanation is final. No charge of faithlessness ought to be lightlyuttered. The appearances of this perishable life are deceptive, likeeverything that falls under the judgment of our imperfect senses. Theinner voice may remain true enough in its secret counsel. The fidelityto a special tradition may last through the events of an unrelatedexistence, following faithfully, too, the traced way of an inexplicableimpulse. 

It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance ofcontradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at timesthe desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possibleexplanation. Indulgence--as somebody said--is the most intelligent ofall the virtues. I venture to think that it is one of the least common, if not the most uncommon of all. I would not imply by this that menare foolish--or even most men. Far from it. The barber and the priest, backed by the whole opinion of the village, condemned justly the conductof the ingenious hidalgo, who, sallying forth from his native place, broke the head of the muleteer, put to death a flock of inoffensivesheep, and went through very doleful experiences in a certain stable. God forbid that an unworthy churl should escape merited censure byhanging on to the stirrup-leather of the sublime caballero. His was avery noble, a very unselfish fantasy, fit for nothing except to raisethe envy of baser mortals. But there is more than one aspect to thecharm of that exalted and dangerous figure. He, too, had his frailties. After reading so many romances he desired naively to escape with hisvery body from the intolerable reality of things. He wished to meet, eyeto eye, the valorous giant Brandabarbaran, Lord of Arabia, whose armouris made of the skin of a dragon, and whose shield, strapped to his arm, is the gate of a fortified city. Oh, amiable and natural weakness!Oh, blessed simplicity of a gentle heart without guile! Who would notsuccumb to such a consoling temptation? Nevertheless, it was a form ofself-indulgence, and the ingenious hidalgo of La Mancha was not agood citizen. The priest and the barber were not unreasonable in theirstrictures. Without going so far as the old King Louis-Philippe, whoused to say in his exile, "The people are never in fault"--one may admitthat there must be some righteousness in the assent of a whole village. Mad! Mad! He who kept in pious meditation the ritual vigil-of-arms bythe well of an inn and knelt reverently to be knighted at daybreak bythe fat, sly rogue of a landlord has come very near perfection. Herides forth, his head encircled by a halo--the patron saint of all livesspoiled or saved by the irresistible grace of imagination. But he wasnot a good citizen. 

Perhaps that and nothing else was meant by the well-rememberedexclamation of my tutor. 

It was in the jolly year 1873, the very last year in which I have had ajolly holiday. There have been idle years afterward, jolly enough in away and not altogether without their lesson, but this year of whichI speak was the year of my last school-boy holiday. There are otherreasons why I should remember that year, but they are too long to stateformally in this place. Moreover, they have nothing to do with thatholiday. What has to do with the holiday is that before the day on whichthe remark was made we had seen Vienna, the Upper Danube, Munich, theFalls of the Rhine, the Lake of Constance, --in fact, it was a memorableholiday of travel. Of late we had been tramping slowly up the Valley ofthe Reuss. It was a delightful time. It was much more like a stroll thana tramp. Landing from a Lake of Lucerne steamer in Fluelen, we foundourselves at the end of the second day, with the dusk overtaking ourleisurely footsteps, a little way beyond Hospenthal. This is not the dayon which the remark was made: in the shadows of the deep valley and withthe habitations of men left some way behind, our thoughts ran not uponthe ethics of conduct, but upon the simpler human problem of shelterand food. There did not seem anything of the kind in sight, and we werethinking of turning back when suddenly, at a bend of the road, we cameupon a building, ghostly in the twilight. 

At that time the work on the St. Gothard Tunnel was going on, and thatmagnificent enterprise of burrowing was directly responsible for theunexpected building, standing all alone upon the very roots of themountains. It was long, though not big at all; it was low; it was builtof boards, without ornamentation, in barrack-hut style, with the whitewindow-frames quite flush with the yellow face of its plain front. Andyet it was a hotel; it had even a name, which I have forgotten. Butthere was no gold laced doorkeeper at its humble door. A plain butvigorous servant-girl answered our inquiries, then a man and woman whoowned the place appeared. It was clear that no travellers were expected, or perhaps even desired, in this strange hostelry, which in its severestyle resembled the house which sur mounts the unseaworthy-looking hullsof the toy Noah's Arks, the universal possession of European childhood. However, its roof was not hinged and it was not full to the brim ofslab-sided and painted animals of wood. Even the live tourist animal wasnowhere in evidence. We had something to eat in a long, narrow room atone end of a long, narrow table, which, to my tired perception and to mysleepy eyes, seemed as if it would tilt up like a see saw plank, sincethere was no one at the other end to balance it against our two dustyand travel-stained figures. Then we hastened up stairs to bed in a roomsmelling of pine planks, and I was fast asleep before my head touchedthe pillow. 

In the morning my tutor (he was a student of the Cracow University) wokeme up early, and as we were dressing remarked: "There seems to be a lotof people staying in this hotel. I have heard a noise of talking uptill eleven o'clock. " This statement surprised me; I had heard no noisewhatever, having slept like a top. 

We went down-stairs into the long and narrow dining-room with its longand narrow table. There were two rows of plates on it. At one of themany curtained windows stood a tall, bony man with a bald head set offby a bunch of black hair above each ear, and with a long, black beard. He glanced up from the paper he was reading and seemed genuinelyastonished at our intrusion. By and by more men came in. Not one of themlooked like a tourist. Not a single woman appeared. These men seemed toknow each other with some intimacy, but I cannot say they were a verytalkative lot. The bald-headed man sat down gravely at the head of thetable. It all had the air of a family party. By and by, from one of thevigorous servant-girls in national costume, we discovered that the placewas really a boarding house for some English engineers engaged at theworks of the St. Gothard Tunnel; and I could listen my fill tothe sounds of the English language, as far as it is used at abreakfast-table by men who do not believe in wasting many words on themere amenities of life. 

This was my first contact with British mankind apart from the touristkind seen in the hotels of Zurich and Lucerne--the kind which has noreal existence in a workaday world. I know now that the bald-headed manspoke with a strong Scotch accent. I have met many of his kind ashoreand afloat. The second engineer of the steamer Mavis, for instance, ought to have been his twin brother. I cannot help thinking that hereally was, though for some reason of his own he assured me that henever had a twin brother. Anyway, the deliberate, bald-headed Scot withthe coal-black beard appeared to my boyish eyes a very romantic andmysterious person. 

We slipped out unnoticed. Our mapped-out route led over the Furca Passtoward the Rhone Glacier, with the further intention of following downthe trend of the Hasli Valley. The sun was already declining when wefound ourselves on the top of the pass, and the remark alluded to waspresently uttered. 

We sat down by the side of the road to continue the argument begun halfa mile or so before. I am certain it was an argument, because I rememberperfectly how my tutor argued and how without the power of reply Ilistened, with my eyes fixed obstinately on the ground. A stir on theroad made me look up--and then I saw my unforgettable Englishman. Thereare acquaintances of later years, familiars, shipmates, whom I rememberless clearly. He marched rapidly toward the east (attended by a hang-dogSwiss guide), with the mien of an ardent and fearless traveller. Hewas clad in a knickerbocker suit, but as at the same time he wore shortsocks under his laced boots, for reasons which, whether hygienic orconscientious, were surely imaginative, his calves, exposed to thepublic gaze and to the tonic air of high altitudes, dazzled the beholderby the splendour of their marble-like condition and their rich toneof young ivory. He was the leader of a small caravan. The light of aheadlong, exalted satisfaction with the world of men and the sceneryof mountains illumined his clean-cut, very red face, his short, silver-white whiskers, his innocently eager and triumphant eyes. Inpassing he cast a glance of kindly curiosity and a friendly gleam ofbig, sound, shiny teeth toward the man and the boy sitting like dustytramps by the roadside, with a modest knapsack lying at their feet. Hiswhite calves twinkled sturdily, the uncouth Swiss guide with a surlymouth stalked like an unwilling bear at his elbow; a small trainof three mules followed in single file the lead of this inspiringenthusiast. Two ladies rode past, one behind the other, but from the waythey sat I saw only their calm, uniform backs, and the long ends of blueveils hanging behind far down over their identical hat-brims. His twodaughters, surely. An industrious luggage-mule, with unstarched ears andguarded by a slouching, sallow driver, brought up the rear. My tutor, after pausing for a look and a faint smile, resumed his earnestargument. 

I tell you it was a memorable year! One does not meet such an Englishmantwice in a lifetime. Was he in the mystic ordering of common events theambassador of my future, sent out to turn the scale at a critical momenton the top of an Alpine pass, with the peaks of the Bernese Oberland formute and solemn witnesses? His glance, his smile, the unextinguishableand comic ardour of his striving-forward appearance, helped me topull myself together. It must be stated that on that day and in theexhilarating atmosphere of that elevated spot I had been feeling utterlycrushed. It was the year in which I had first spoken aloud of my desireto go to sea. At first like those sounds that, ranging outside thescale to which men's ears are attuned, remain inaudible to our sense ofhearing, this declaration passed unperceived. It was as if it had notbeen. Later on, by trying various tones, I managed to arouse hereand there a surprised momentary attention--the "What was that funnynoise?"--sort of inquiry. Later on it was: "Did you hear what that boysaid? What an extraordinary outbreak!" Presently a wave of scandalizedastonishment (it could not have been greater if I had announcedthe intention of entering a Carthusian monastery) ebbing out of theeducational and academical town of Cracow spread itself over severalprovinces. It spread itself shallow but far-reaching. It stirred up amass of remonstrance, indignation, pitying wonder, bitter irony, anddownright chaff. I could hardly breathe under its weight, and certainlyhad no words for an answer. People wondered what Mr. T. B. Would do nowwith his worrying nephew and, I dare say, hoped kindly that he wouldmake short work of my nonsense. 

What he did was to come down all the way from Ukraine to have it outwith me and to judge by himself, unprejudiced, impartial, and just, taking his stand on the ground of wisdom and affection. As far as ispossible for a boy whose power of expression is still unformed I openedthe secret of my thoughts to him, and he in return allowed me a glimpseinto his mind and heart; the first glimpse of an inexhaustible and nobletreasure of clear thought and warm feeling, which through life was tobe mine to draw upon with a never-deceived love and confidence. Practically, after several exhaustive conversations, he concluded thathe would not have me later on reproach him for having spoiled my lifeby an unconditional opposition. But I must take time for seriousreflection. And I must think not only of myself but of others; weigh theclaims of affection and conscience against my own sincerity of purpose. "Think well what it all means in the larger issues--my boy, " he exhortedme, finally, with special friendliness. "And meantime try to get thebest place you can at the yearly examinations. "

The scholastic year came to an end. I took a fairly good place atthe exams, which for me (for certain reasons) happened to be a moredifficult task than for other boys. In that respect I could enter witha good conscience upon that holiday which was like a long visit _pourprendre conge_ of the mainland of old Europe I was to see so little offor the next four-and-twenty years. Such, however, was not the avowedpurpose of that tour. It was rather, I suspect, planned in order todistract and occupy my thoughts in other directions. Nothing had beensaid for months of my going to sea. But my attachment to my young tutorand his influence over me were so well known that he must have receiveda confidential mission to talk me out of my romantic folly. It was anexcellently appropriate arrangement, as neither he nor I had ever had asingle glimpse of the sea in our lives. That was to come by and by forboth of us in Venice, from the outer shore of Lido. Meantime he hadtaken his mission to heart so well that I began to feel crushed beforewe reached Zurich. He argued in railway trains, in lake steamboats, hehad argued away for me the obligatory sunrise on the Righi, by Jove! Ofhis devotion to his unworthy pupil there can be no doubt. He had provedit already by two years of unremitting and arduous care. I could nothate him. But he had been crushing me slowly, and when he started toargue on the top of the Furca Pass he was perhaps nearer a successthan either he or I imagined. I listened to him in despairing silence, feeling that ghostly, unrealized, and desired sea of my dreams escapefrom the unnerved grip of my will. 

The enthusiastic old Englishman had passed--and the argument went on. What reward could I expect from such a life at the end of my years, either in ambition, honour, or conscience? An unanswerable question. ButI felt no longer crushed. Then our eyes met and a genuine emotion wasvisible in his as well as in mine. The end came all at once. He pickedup the knapsack suddenly and got onto his feet. 

"You are an incorrigible, hopeless Don Quixote. That's what you are. "

I was surprised. I was only fifteen and did not know what he meantexactly. But I felt vaguely flattered at the name of the immortal knightturning up in connection with my own folly, as some people would call itto my face. Alas! I don't think there was anything to be proud of. Minewas not the stuff of protectors of forlorn damsels, the redressers ofthis world's wrong are made of; and my tutor was the man to know thatbest. Therein, in his indignation, he was superior to the barber and thepriest when he flung at me an honoured name like a reproach. 

I walked behind him for full five minutes; then without looking back hestopped. The shadows of distant peaks were lengthening over the FurcaPass. When I came up to him he turned to me and in full view of theFinster Aarhorn, with his band of giant brothers rearing theirmonstrous heads against a brilliant sky, put his hand on my shoulderaffectionately. 

"Well! That's enough. We will have no more of it. "

And indeed there was no more question of my mysterious vocation betweenus. There was to be no more question of it at all, no where or with anyone. We began the descent of the Furca Pass conversing merrily. 

Eleven years later, month for month, I stood on Tower Hill on the stepsof the St. Katherine's Dockhouse, a master in the British MerchantService. But the man who put his hand on my shoulder at the top of theFurca Pass was no longer living. 

That very year of our travels he took his degree of the PhilosophicalFaculty--and only then his true vocation declared itself. Obedient tothe call, he entered at once upon the four-year course of the MedicalSchools. A day came when, on the deck of a ship moored in Calcutta, Iopened a letter telling me of the end of an enviable existence. He hadmade for himself a practice in some obscure little town of AustrianGalicia. And the letter went on to tell me how all the bereaved poor ofthe district, Christians and Jews alike, had mobbed the good doctor'scoffin with sobs and lamentations at the very gate of the cemetery. 

How short his years and how clear his vision! What greater reward inambition, honour, and conscience could he have hoped to win for himselfwhen, on the top of the Furca Pass, he bade me look well to the end ofmy opening life?

III

The devouring in a dismal forest of a luckless Lithuanian dog by mygranduncle Nicholas B. In company of two other military and famishedscarecrows, symbolized, to my childish imagination, the whole horror ofthe retreat from Moscow, and the immorality of a conqueror's ambition. An extreme distaste for that objectionable episode has tinged the viewsI hold as to the character and achievements of Napoleon the Great. Ineed not say that these are unfavourable. It was morally reprehensiblefor that great captain to induce a simple-minded Polish gentleman to eatdog by raising in his breast a false hope of national independence. Ithas been the fate of that credulous nation to starve for upward of ahundred years on a diet of false hopes and--well--dog. It is, when onethinks of it, a singularly poisonous regimen. Some pride in the nationalconstitution which has survived a long course of such dishes is reallyexcusable. 

But enough of generalizing. Returning to particulars, Mr. Nicholas B. Confided to his sister-in-law (my grandmother) in his misanthropicallylaconic manner that this supper in the woods had been nearly "the deathof him. " This is not surprising. What surprises me is that the storywas ever heard of; for granduncle Nicholas differed in this from thegenerality of military men of Napoleon's time (and perhaps of all time)that he did not like to talk of his campaigns, which began at Friedlandand ended some where in the neighbourhood of Bar-le-Duc. His admirationof the great Emperor was unreserved in everything but expression. Likethe religion of earnest men, it was too profound a sentiment to bedisplayed before a world of little faith. Apart from that he seemed ascompletely devoid of military anecdotes as though he had hardly everseen a soldier in his life. Proud of his decorations earned before hewas twenty-five, he refused to wear the ribbons at the buttonhole in themanner practised to this day in Europe and even was unwilling to displaythe insignia on festive occasions, as though he wished to conceal themin the fear of appearing boastful. 

"It is enough that I have them, " he used to mutter. In the course ofthirty years they were seen on his breast only twice--at an auspiciousmarriage in the family and at the funeral of an old friend. That thewedding which was thus honoured was not the wedding of my motherI learned only late in life, too late to bear a grudge againstMr. Nicholas B. , who made amends at my birth by a long letter ofcongratulation containing the following prophecy: "He will see bettertimes. " Even in his embittered heart there lived a hope. But he was nota true prophet. 

He was a man of strange contradictions. Living for many years in hisbrother's house, the home of many children, a house full of life, ofanimation, noisy with a constant coming and going of many guests, hekept his habits of solitude and silence. Considered as obstinatelysecretive in all his purposes, he was in reality the victim of a mostpainful irresolution in all matters of civil life. Under his taciturn, phlegmatic behaviour was hidden a faculty of short-lived passionateanger. I suspect he had no talent for narrative; but it seemed to affordhim sombre satisfaction to declare that he was the last man to ride overthe bridge of the river Elster after the battle of Leipsic. Lest someconstruction favourable to his valour should be put on the fact hecondescended to explain how it came to pass. It seems that shortly afterthe retreat began he was sent back to the town where some divisionsof the French army (and among them the Polish corps of Prince JosephPoniatowski), jammed hopelessly in the streets, were being simplyexterminated by the troops of the Allied Powers. When asked what it waslike in there, Mr. Nicholas B. Muttered only the word "Shambles. " Havingdelivered his message to the Prince he hastened away at once to renderan account of his mission to the superior who had sent him. By that timethe advance of the enemy had enveloped the town, and he was shot at fromhouses and chased all the way to the river-bank by a disorderly mob ofAustrian Dragoons and Prussian Hussars. The bridge had been mined earlyin the morning, and his opinion was that the sight of the horsemenconverging from many sides in the pursuit of his person alarmed theofficer in command of the sappers and caused the premature firing of thecharges. He had not gone more than two hundred yards on the otherside when he heard the sound of the fatal explosions. Mr. Nicholas B. Concluded his bald narrative with the word "Imbecile, " uttered with theutmost deliberation. It testified to his indignation at the loss of somany thousands of lives. But his phlegmatic physiognomy lighted up whenhe spoke of his only wound, with something resembling satisfaction. Youwill see that there was some reason for it when you learn that he waswounded in the heel. "Like his Majesty the Emperor Napoleon himself, " hereminded his hearers, with assumed indifference. There can be nodoubt that the indifference was assumed, if one thinks what a verydistinguished sort of wound it was. In all the history of warfare thereare, I believe, only three warriors publicly known to have been woundedin the heel--Achilles and Napoleon--demigods indeed--to whom thefamilial piety of an unworthy descendant adds the name of the simplemortal, Nicholas B. 

The Hundred Days found Mr. Nicholas B. Staying with a distant relativeof ours, owner of a small estate in Galicia. How he got there across thebreadth of an armed Europe, and after what adventures, I am afraid willnever be known now. All his papers were destroyed shortly before hisdeath; but if there was among them, as he affirmed, a concise recordof his life, then I am pretty sure it did not take up more than ahalf sheet of foolscap or so. This relative of ours happened to bean Austrian officer who had left the service after the battle ofAusterlitz. Unlike Mr. Nicholas B. , who concealed his decorations, heliked to display his honourable discharge in which he was mentioned asun schreckbar (fearless) before the enemy. No conjunction could seemmore unpromising, yet it stands in the family tradition that these twogot on very well together in their rural solitude. 

When asked whether he had not been sorely tempted during the HundredDays to make his way again to France and join the service of his belovedEmperor, Mr. Nicholas B. Used to mutter: "No money. No horse. Too far towalk. "

The fall of Napoleon and the ruin of national hopes affected adverselythe character of Mr. Nicholas B. He shrank from returning to hisprovince. But for that there was also another reason. Mr. Nicholas B. And his brother--my maternal grand father--had lost their father early, while they were quite children. Their mother, young still and leftvery well off, married again a man of great charm and of an amiabledisposition, but without a penny. He turned out an affectionate andcareful stepfather; it was unfortunate, though, that while directing theboys' education and forming their character by wise counsel, he did hisbest to get hold of the fortune by buying and selling land in his ownname and investing capital in such a manner as to cover up the tracesof the real ownership. It seems that such practices can be successful ifone is charming enough to dazzle one's own wife permanently, and braveenough to defy the vain terrors of public opinion. The critical timecame when the elder of the boys on attaining his majority, in the year1811, asked for the accounts and some part at least of the inheritanceto begin life upon. It was then that the stepfather declared withcalm finality that there were no accounts to render and no property toinherit. The whole fortune was his very own. He was very good-naturedabout the young man's misapprehension of the true state of affairs, but, of course, felt obliged to maintain his position firmly. Old friendscame and went busily, voluntary mediators appeared travelling on mosthorrible roads from the most distant corners of the three provinces;and the Marshal of the Nobility (ex-officio guardian of all well-bornorphans) called a meeting of landowners to "ascertain in a friendlyway how the misunderstanding between X and his stepsons had arisen anddevise proper measures to remove the same. " A deputation to that effectvisited X, who treated them to excellent wines, but absolutely refusedhis ear to their remonstrances. As to the proposals for arbitration hesimply laughed at them; yet the whole province must have been awarethat fourteen years before, when he married the widow, all hisvisible fortune consisted (apart from his social qualities) in a smartfour-horse turnout with two servants, with whom he went about visitingfrom house to house; and as to any funds he might have possessed at thattime their existence could only be inferred from the fact that he wasvery punctual in settling his modest losses at cards. But by the magicpower of stubborn and constant assertion, there were found presently, here and there, people who mumbled that surely "there must be some thingin it. " However, on his next name-day (which he used to celebrate bya great three days' shooting party), of all the invited crowd only twoguests turned up, distant neighbours of no importance; one notoriouslya fool, and the other a very pious and honest person, but such apassionate lover of the gun that on his own confession he could not haverefused an invitation to a shooting party from the devil himself. X metthis manifestation of public opinion with the serenity of an unstainedconscience. He refused to be crushed. Yet he must have been a manof deep feeling, because, when his wife took openly the part of herchildren, he lost his beautiful tranquillity, proclaimed himselfheartbroken, and drove her out of the house, neglecting in his grief togive her enough time to pack her trunks. 

This was the beginning of a lawsuit, an abominable marvel of chicane, which by the use of every legal subterfuge was made to last for manyyears. It was also the occasion for a display of much kindness andsympathy. All the neighbouring houses flew open for the reception of thehomeless. Neither legal aid nor material assistance in the prosecutionof the suit was ever wanting. X, on his side, went about sheddingtears publicly over his stepchildren's ingratitude and his wife's blindinfatuation; but as at the same time he displayed great clevernessin the art of concealing material documents (he was even suspected ofhaving burned a lot of historically interesting family papers) thisscandalous litigation had to be ended by a compromise lest worse shouldbefall. It was settled finally by a surrender, out of the disputedestate, in full satisfaction of all claims, of two villages with thenames of which I do not intend to trouble my readers. After this lameand impotent conclusion neither the wife nor the stepsons had anythingto say to the man who had presented the world with such a successfulexample of self-help based on character, determination, and industry;and my great-grandmother, her health completely broken down, died acouple of years later in Carlsbad. Legally secured by a decree in thepossession of his plunder, X regained his wonted serenity, and went onliving in the neighbourhood in a comfortable style and in apparent peaceof mind. His big shoots were fairly well attended again. He was nevertired of assuring people that he bore no grudge for what was past;he protested loudly of his constant affection for his wife andstepchildren. It was true, he said, that they had tried to strip him asnaked as a Turkish saint in the decline of his days; and because he haddefended himself from spoliation, as anybody else in his place wouldhave done, they had abandoned him now to the horrors of a solitary oldage. Nevertheless, his love for them survived these cruel blows. 

And there might have been some truth in his protestations. Very soon hebegan to make overtures of friendship to his eldest stepson, my maternalgrandfather; and when these were peremptorily rejected he went onrenewing them again and again with characteristic obstinacy. For yearshe persisted in his efforts at reconciliation, promising my grandfatherto execute a will in his favour if he only would be friends again to theextent of calling now and then (it was fairly close neighbourhood forthese parts, forty miles or so), or even of putting in an appearance forthe great shoot on the name-day. My grandfather was an ardent lover ofevery sport. His temperament was as free from hardness and animosity ascan be imagined. Pupil of the liberal-minded Benedictines who directedthe only public school of some standing then in the south, he had alsoread deeply the authors of the eighteenth century. In him Christiancharity was joined to a philosophical indulgence for the failings ofhuman nature. But the memory of those miserably anxious early years, hisyoung man's years robbed of all generous illusions by the cynicism ofthe sordid lawsuit, stood in the way of forgiveness. He never succumbedto the fascination of the great shoot; and X, his heart set to the laston reconciliation, with the draft of the will ready for signature keptby his bedside, died intestate. 

The fortune thus acquired and augmented by a wise and careful managementpassed to some distant relatives whom he had never seen and who even didnot bear his name. 

Meantime the blessing of general peace descended upon Europe. Mr. Nicholas B. , bidding good-bye to his hospitable relative, the "fearless"Austrian officer, departed from Galicia, and without going near hisnative place, where the odious lawsuit was still going on, proceededstraight to Warsaw and entered the army of the newly constituted Polishkingdom under the sceptre of Alexander I, Autocrat of all the Russias. 

This kingdom, created by the Vienna Congress as an acknowledgment to anation of its former independent existence, included only the centralprovinces of the old Polish patrimony. A brother of the Emperor, theGrand Duke Constantine (Pavlovitch), its Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief, married morganatically to a Polish lady to whom he was fiercelyattached, extended this affection to what he called "My Poles" ina capricious and savage manner. Sallow in complexion, with a Tartarphysiognomy and fierce little eyes, he walked with his fists clenched, his body bent forward, darting suspicious glances from under an enormouscocked hat. His intelligence was limited, and his sanity itself wasdoubtful. The hereditary taint expressed itself, in his case, not bymystic leanings as in his two brothers, Alexander and Nicholas (in theirvarious ways, for one was mystically liberal and the other mysticallyautocratic), but by the fury of an uncontrollable temper which generallybroke out in disgusting abuse on the parade ground. He was a passionatemilitarist and an amazing drill-master. He treated his Polish army as aspoiled child treats a favourite toy, except that he did not take it tobed with him at night. It was not small enough for that. But he playedwith it all day and every day, delighting in the variety of prettyuniforms and in the fun of incessant drilling. This childish passion, not for war, but for mere militarism, achieved a desirable result. ThePolish army, in its equipment, in its armament, and in its battle-fieldefficiency, as then understood, became, by the end of the year 1830, afirst-rate tactical instrument. Polish peasantry (not serfs) served inthe ranks by enlistment, and the officers belonged mainly to the smallernobility. Mr. Nicholas B. , with his Napoleonic record, had no difficultyin obtaining a lieutenancy, but the promotion in the Polish army wasslow, because, being a separate organization, it took no part in thewars of the Russian Empire against either Persia or Turkey. Its firstcampaign, against Russia itself, was to be its last. In 1831, on theoutbreak of the Revolution, Mr. Nicholas B. Was the senior captain ofhis regiment. Some time before he had been made head of the remountestablishment quartered outside the kingdom in our southern provinces, whence almost all the horses for the Polish cavalry were drawn. For thefirst time since he went away from home at the age of eighteen to beginhis military life by the battle of Friedland, Mr. Nicholas B. Breathedthe air of the "Border, " his native air. Unkind fate was lying in waitfor him among the scenes of his youth. At the first news of the risingin Warsaw all the remount establishment, officers, "vets. , " and thevery troopers, were put promptly under arrest and hurried off in a bodybeyond the Dnieper to the nearest town in Russia proper. From there theywere dispersed to the distant parts of the empire. On this occasion poorMr. Nicholas B. Penetrated into Russia much farther than he ever did inthe times of Napoleonic invasion, if much less willingly. Astrakan washis destination. He remained there three years, allowed to live atlarge in the town, but having to report himself every day at noon to themilitary commandant, who used to detain him frequently for a pipe anda chat. It is difficult to form a just idea of what a chat with Mr. Nicholas B. Could have been like. There must have been much compressedrage under his taciturnity, for the commandant communicated to himthe news from the theatre of war, and this news was such as it couldbe--that is, very bad for the Poles. Mr. Nicholas B. Received thesecommunications with outward phlegm, but the Russian showed a warmsympathy for his prisoner. "As a soldier myself I understand yourfeelings. You, of course, would like to be in the thick of it. Byheavens! I am fond of you. If it were not for the terms of the militaryoath I would let you go on my own responsibility. What difference couldit make to us, one more or less of you?"

At other times he wondered with simplicity. 

"Tell me, Nicholas Stepanovitch" (my great-grandfather's namewas Stephen, and the commandant used the Russian form of politeaddress)--"tell me why is it that you Poles are always looking fortrouble? What else could you expect from running up against Russia?"

He was capable, too, of philosophical reflections. 

"Look at your Napoleon now. A great man. There is no denying it that hewas a great man as long as he was content to thrash those Germans andAustrians and all those nations. But no! He must go to Russia lookingfor trouble, and what's the consequence? Such as you see me; I haverattled this sabre of mine on the pavements of Paris. "

After his return to Poland Mr. Nicholas B. Described him as a "worthyman but stupid, " whenever he could be induced to speak of the conditionsof his exile. Declining the option offered him to enter the Russianarmy, he was retired with only half the pension of his rank. His nephew(my uncle and guardian) told me that the first lasting impression onhis memory as a child of four was the glad excitement reigning in hisparents' house on the day when Mr. Nicholas B. Arrived home from hisdetention in Russia. 

Every generation has its memories. The first memories of Mr. NicholasB. Might have been shaped by the events of the last partition of Poland, and he lived long enough to suffer from the last armed rising in 1863, an event which affected the future of all my generation and has colouredmy earliest impressions. His brother, in whose house he had shelteredfor some seventeen years his misanthropical timidity before thecommonest problems of life, having died in the early fifties, Mr. Nicholas B. Had to screw his courage up to the sticking-point and cometo some decision as to the future. After a long and agonizing hesitationhe was persuaded at last to become the tenant of some fifteen hundredacres out of the estate of a friend in the neighbourhood. 

The terms of the lease were very advantageous, but the retired situationof the village and a plain, comfortable house in good repair were, Ifancy, the greatest inducements. He lived there quietly for about tenyears, seeing very few people and taking no part in the public lifeof the province, such as it could be under an arbitrary bureaucratictyranny. His character and his patriotism were above suspicion; butthe organizers of the rising in their frequent journeys up and down theprovince scrupulously avoided coming near his house. It was generallyfelt that the repose of the old man's last years ought not tobe disturbed. Even such intimates as my paternal grandfather, comrade-in-arms during Napoleon's Moscow campaign, and later on a fellowofficer in the Polish army, refrained from visiting his crony as thedate of the outbreak approached. My paternal grandfather's two sons andhis only daughter were all deeply involved in the revolutionary work; hehimself was of that type of Polish squire whose only ideal of patrioticaction was to "get into the saddle and drive them out. " But even heagreed that "dear Nicholas must not be worried. " All this consideratecaution on the part of friends, both conspirators and others, did notprevent Mr. Nicholas B. Being made to feel the misfortunes of thatill-omened year. 

Less than forty-eight hours after the beginning of the rebellion in thatpart of the country, a squadron of scouting Cossacks passed through thevillage and invaded the homestead. Most of them remained, formed betweenthe house and the stables, while several, dismounting, ransacked thevarious outbuildings. The officer in command, accompanied by two men, walked up to the front door. All the blinds on that side were down. The officer told the servant who received him that he wanted to see hismaster. He was answered that the master was away from home, which wasperfectly true. 

I follow here the tale as told afterward by the servant to mygranduncle's friends and relatives, and as I have heard it repeated. 

On receiving this answer the Cossack officer, who had been standing inthe porch, stepped into the house. 

"Where is the master gone, then?"

"Our master went to J----" (the government town some fifty miles off)"the day before yesterday. "

"There are only two horses in the stables. Where are the others?"

"Our master always travels with his own horses" (meaning: not by post). "He will be away a week or more. He was pleased to mention to me that hehad to attend to some business in the Civil Court. "

While the servant was speaking the officer looked about the hall. 

There was a door facing him, a door to the right, and a door to theleft. The officer chose to enter the room on the left, and ordered theblinds to be pulled up. It was Mr. Nicholas B. 's study, with a couple oftall bookcases, some pictures on the walls, and so on. Besides thebig centre-table, with books and papers, there was a quite smallwriting-table, with several drawers, standing between the door and thewindow in a good light; and at this table my granduncle usually sateither to read or write. 

On pulling up the blind the servant was startled by the discovery thatthe whole male population of the village was massed in front, tramplingdown the flower-beds. There were also a few women among them. He wasglad to observe the village priest (of the Orthodox Church) coming upthe drive. The good man in his haste had tucked up his cassock as highas the top of his boots. 

The officer had been looking at the backs of the books in the bookcases. Then he perched himself on the edge of the centre table and remarkedeasily:

"Your master did not take you to town with him, then?"

"I am the head servant, and he leaves me in charge of the house. It's astrong, young chap that travels with our master. If--God forbid--therewas some accident on the road, he would be of much more use than I. "

Glancing through the window, he saw the priest arguing vehemently in thethick of the crowd, which seemed subdued by his interference. Three orfour men, however, were talking with the Cossacks at the door. 

"And you don't think your master has gone to join the rebels maybe--eh?"asked the officer. 

"Our master would be too old for that, surely. He's well over seventy, and he's getting feeble, too. It's some years now since he's been onhorseback, and he can't walk much, either, now. "

The officer sat there swinging his leg, very quiet and indifferent. Bythat time the peasants who had been talking with the Cossack troopers atthe door had been permitted to get into the hall. One or two more leftthe crowd and followed them in. They were seven in all, and among themthe blacksmith, an ex-soldier. The servant appealed deferentially to theofficer. 

"Won't your honour be pleased to tell the people to go back to theirhomes? What do they want to push themselves into the house like thisfor? It's not proper for them to behave like this while our master'saway and I am responsible for everything here. "

The officer only laughed a little, and after a while inquired:

"Have you any arms in the house?"

"Yes. We have. Some old things. "

"Bring them all here, onto this table. "

The servant made another attempt to obtain protection. 

"Won't your honour tell these chaps. . . ?"

But the officer looked at him in silence, in such a way that he gave itup at once and hurried off to call the pantry-boy to help him collectthe arms. Meantime, the officer walked slowly through all the rooms inthe house, examining them attentively but touching nothing. The peasantsin the hall fell back and took off their caps when he passed through. He said nothing whatever to them. When he came back to the study all thearms to be found in the house were lying on the table. There was a pairof big, flint-lock holster pistols from Napoleonic times, two cavalryswords, one of the French, the other of the Polish army pattern, with afowling-piece or two. 

The officer, opening the window, flung out pistols, swords, and guns, one after another, and his troopers ran to pick them up. The peasants inthe hall, encouraged by his manner, had stolen after him into the study. He gave not the slightest sign of being conscious of their existence, and, his business being apparently concluded, strode out of the housewithout a word. Directly he left, the peasants in the study put on theircaps and began to smile at each other. 

The Cossacks rode away, passing through the yards of the home farmstraight into the fields. The priest, still arguing with the peasants, moved gradually down the drive and his earnest eloquence was drawing thesilent mob after him, away from the house. This justice must be renderedto the parish priests of the Greek Church that, strangers to the countryas they were (being all drawn from the interior of Russia), the majorityof them used such influence as they had over their flocks in the causeof peace and humanity. True to the spirit of their calling, they triedto soothe the passions of the excited peasantry, and opposed rapine andviolence, whenever they could, with all their might. And this conductthey pursued against the express wishes of the authorities. Later onsome of them were made to suffer for this disobedience by being removedabruptly to the far north or sent away to Siberian parishes. 

The servant was anxious to get rid of the few peasants who had got intothe house. What sort of conduct was that, he asked them, toward a manwho was only a tenant, had been invariably good and considerate to thevillagers for years, and only the other day had agreed to give up twomeadows for the use of the village herd? He reminded them, too, of Mr. Nicholas B. 's devotion to the sick in time of cholera. Every word ofthis was true, and so far effective that the fellows began to scratchtheir heads and look irresolute. The speaker then pointed at the window, exclaiming: "Look! there's all your crowd going away quietly, and yousilly chaps had better go after them and pray God to forgive you yourevil thoughts. "

This appeal was an unlucky inspiration. 

In crowding clumsily to the window to see whether he was speaking thetruth, the fellows overturned the little writing-table. As it fell overa chink of loose coin was heard. "There's money in that thing, " criedthe blacksmith. In a moment the top of the delicate piece of furniturewas smashed and there lay exposed in a drawer eighty half imperials. Gold coin was a rare sight in Russia even at that time; it put thepeasants beside themselves. "There must be more of that in the house, and we shall have it, " yelled the ex-soldier blacksmith. "This iswar-time. " The others were already shouting out of the window, urgingthe crowd to come back and help. The priest, abandoned suddenly at thegate, flung his arms up and hurried away so as not to see what was goingto happen. 

In their search for money that bucolic mob smashed everything in thehouse, ripping with knives, splitting with hatchets, so that, as theservant said, there were no two pieces of wood holding together left inthe whole house. They broke some very fine mirrors, all the windows, andevery piece of glass and china. They threw the books and papers outon the lawn and set fire to the heap for the mere fun of the thing, apparently. Absolutely the only one solitary thing which they left wholewas a small ivory crucifix, which remained hanging on the wall inthe wrecked bedroom above a wild heap of rags, broken mahogany, andsplintered boards which had been Mr. Nicholas B. 's bedstead. Detectingthe servant in the act of stealing away with a japanned tin box, theytore it from him, and because he resisted they threw him out of thedining-room window. The house was on one floor, but raised well abovethe ground, and the fall was so serious that the man remained lyingstunned till the cook and a stable-boy ventured forth at dusk from theirhiding-places and picked him up. But by that time the mob had departed, carrying off the tin box, which they supposed to be full of paper money. Some distance from the house, in the middle of a field, they broke itopen. They found in side documents engrossed on parchment and the twocrosses of the Legion of Honour and For Valour. At the sight of theseobjects, which, the blacksmith explained, were marks of honour givenonly by the Tsar, they became extremely frightened at what they haddone. They threw the whole lot away into a ditch and dispersed hastily. 

On learning of this particular loss Mr. Nicholas B. Broke downcompletely. The mere sacking of his house did not seem to affect himmuch. While he was still in bed from the shock, the two crosses werefound and returned to him. It helped somewhat his slow convalescence, but the tin box and the parchments, though searched for in all theditches around, never turned up again. He could not get over the loss ofhis Legion of Honour Patent, whose preamble, setting forth his services, he knew by heart to the very letter, and after this blow volunteeredsometimes to recite, tears standing in his eyes the while. Its termshaunted him apparently during the last two years of his life to such anextent that he used to repeat them to himself. This is confirmed bythe remark made more than once by his old servant to the more intimatefriends. "What makes my heart heavy is to hear our master in his room atnight walking up and down and praying aloud in the French language. "

It must have been somewhat over a year afterward that I saw Mr. NicholasB. --or, more correctly, that he saw me--for the last time. It was, as Ihave already said, at the time when my mother had a three months' leavefrom exile, which she was spending in the house of her brother, andfriends and relations were coming from far and near to do her honour. It is inconceivable that Mr. Nicholas B. Should not have been of thenumber. The little child a few months old he had taken up in his arms onthe day of his home-coming, after years of war and exile, was confessingher faith in national salvation by suffering exile in her turn. I do notknow whether he was present on the very day of our departure. 

I have already admitted that for me he is more especially the man whoin his youth had eaten roast dog in the depths of a gloomy forest ofsnow-loaded pines. My memory cannot place him in any remembered scene. A hooked nose, some sleek white hair, an unrelated evanescent impressionof a meagre, slight, rigid figure militarily buttoned up to the throat, is all that now exists on earth of Mr. Nicholas B. ; only this vagueshadow pursued by the memory of his grandnephew, the last survivinghuman being, I suppose, of all those he had seen in the course of histaciturn life. 

But I remember well the day of our departure back to exile. Theelongated, bizarre, shabby travelling-carriage with four post-horses, standing before the long front of the house with its eight columns, four on each side of the broad flight of stairs. On the steps, groupsof servants, a few relations, one or two friends from the nearestneighbourhood, a perfect silence; on all the faces an air of soberconcentration; my grandmother, all in black, gazing stoically; my unclegiving his arm to my mother down to the carriage in which I had beenplaced already; at the top of the flight my little cousin in a shortskirt of a tartan pattern with a deal of red in it, and like asmall princess attended by the women of her own household; the headgouvernante, our dear, corpulent Francesca (who had been for thirtyyears in the service of the B. Family), the former nurse, now outdoorattendant, a handsome peasant face wearing a compassionate expression, and the good, ugly Mlle. Durand, the governess, with her black eyebrowsmeeting over a short, thick nose, and a complexion like pale-brownpaper. Of all the eyes turned toward the carriage, her good-natured eyesonly were dropping tears, and it was her sobbing voice alone thatbroke the silence with an appeal to me: "_N'oublie pas ton francais, moncheri_. " In three months, simply by playing with us, she had taught menot only to speak French, but to read it as well. She was indeed anexcellent playmate. In the distance, half-way down to the great gates, alight, open trap, harnessed with three horses in Russian fashion, stooddrawn up on one side, with the police captain of the district sitting init, the vizor of his flat cap with a red band pulled down over his eyes. 

It seems strange that he should have been there to watch our going socarefully. Without wishing to treat with levity the just timidites ofImperialists all the world over, I may allow myself the reflection thata woman, practically condemned by the doctors, and a small boy not quitesix years old, could not be regarded as seriously dangerous, even forthe largest of conceivable empires saddled with the most sacred ofresponsibilities. And this good man I believe did not think so, either. 

I learned afterward why he was present on that day. I don't remember anyoutward signs; but it seems that, about a month before, my mother becameso unwell that there was a doubt whether she could be made fit totravel in the time. In this uncertainty the Governor-General in Kiev waspetitioned to grant her a fortnight's extension of stay in her brother'shouse. No answer whatever was returned to this prayer, but one day atdusk the police captain of the district drove up to the house and toldmy uncle's valet, who ran out to meet him, that he wanted to speak withthe master in private, at once. Very much impressed (he thought it wasgoing to be an arrest), the servant, "more dead than alive with fright, "as he related afterward, smuggled him through the big drawing-room, which was dark (that room was not lighted every evening), on tiptoe, soas not to attract the attention of the ladies in the house, and led himby way of the orangery to my uncle's private apartments. 

The policeman, without any preliminaries, thrust a paper into my uncle'shands. 

"There. Pray read this. I have no business to show this paper to you. Itis wrong of me. But I can't either eat or sleep with such a job hangingover me. "

That police captain, a native of Great Russia, had been for many yearsserving in the district. 

My uncle unfolded and read the document. It was a service order issuedfrom the Governor-General's secretariat, dealing with the matter of thepetition and directing the police captain to disregard all remonstrancesand explanations in regard to that illness either from medical men orothers, "and if she has not left her brother's house"--it went on tosay--"on the morning of the day specified on her permit, you areto despatch her at once under escort, direct" (underlined) "to theprison-hospital in Kiev, where she will be treated as her case demands. "

"For God's sake, Mr. B. , see that your sister goes away punctually onthat day. Don't give me this work to do with a woman--and with one ofyour family, too. I simply cannot bear to think of it. "

He was absolutely wringing his hands. My uncle looked at him in silence. 

"Thank you for this warning. I assure you that even if she were dyingshe would be carried out to the carriage. "

"Yes--indeed--and what difference would it make--travel to Kiev or backto her husband? For she would have to go--death or no death. And mind, Mr. B. , I will be here on the day, not that I doubt your promise, butbecause I must. I have got to. Duty. All the same my trade is not fitfor a dog since some of you Poles will persist in rebelling, and all ofyou have got to suffer for it. "

This is the reason why he was there in an open three-horse trap pulledup between the house and the great gates. I regret not being able togive up his name to the scorn of all believers in the right of conquest, as a reprehensibly sensitive guardian of Imperial greatness. On theother hand, I am in a position to state the name of the Governor-Generalwho signed the order with the marginal note "to be carried out to theletter" in his own handwriting. The gentleman's name was Bezak. A highdignitary, an energetic official, the idol for a time of the Russianpatriotic press. 

Each generation has its memories. 

IV

It must not be supposed that, in setting forth the memories of thishalf-hour between the moment my uncle left my room till we met again atdinner, I am losing sight of "Almayer's Folly. " Having confessed that myfirst novel was begun in idleness--a holiday task--I think I have alsogiven the impression that it was a much-delayed book. It was neverdismissed from my mind, even when the hope of ever finishing it was veryfaint. Many things came in its way: daily duties, new impressions, old memories. It was not the outcome of a need--the famous need ofself-expression which artists find in their search for motives. The necessity which impelled me was a hidden, obscure necessity, acompletely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps some idle andfrivolous magician (there must be magicians in London) had cast a spellover me through his parlour window as I explored the maze of streetseast and west in solitary leisurely walks without chart and compass. Till I began to write that novel I had written nothing but letters, andnot very many of these. I never made a note of a fact, of an impression, or of an anecdote in my life. The conception of a planned book wasentirely outside my mental range when I sat down to write; the ambitionof being an author had never turned up among those gracious imaginaryexistences one creates fondly for oneself at times in the stillness andimmobility of a day-dream: yet it stands clear as the sun at noondaythat from the moment I had done blackening over the first manuscriptpage of "Almayer's Folly" (it contained about two hundred words and thisproportion of words to a page has remained with me through the fifteenyears of my writing life), from the moment I had, in the simplicity ofmy heart and the amazing ignorance of my mind, written that page the diewas cast. Never had Rubicon been more blindly forded without invocationto the gods, without fear of men. 

That morning I got up from my breakfast, pushing the chair back, andrang the bell violently, or perhaps I should say resolutely, or perhapsI should say eagerly--I do not know. But manifestly it must have beena special ring of the bell, a common sound made impressive, like theringing of a bell for the raising of the curtain upon a new scene. It was an unusual thing for me to do. Generally, I dawdled over mybreakfast and I seldom took the trouble to ring the bell for the tableto be cleared away; but on that morning, for some reason hidden in thegeneral mysteriousness of the event, I did not dawdle. And yet I wasnot in a hurry. I pulled the cord casually, and while the faint tinklingsomewhere down in the basement went on, I charged my pipe in the usualway and I looked for the match-box with glances distraught indeed, but exhibiting, I am ready to swear, no signs of a fine frenzy. I wascomposed enough to perceive after some considerable time the match-boxlying there on the mantelpiece right under my nose. And all this wasbeautifully and safely usual. Before I had thrown down the match mylandlady's daughter appeared with her calm, pale face and an inquisitivelook, in the doorway. Of late it was the landlady's daughter whoanswered my bell. I mention this little fact with pride, because itproves that during the thirty or forty days of my tenancy I had produceda favourable impression. For a fortnight past I had been spared theunattractive sight of the domestic slave. The girls in that BessboroughGardens house were often changed, but whether short or long, fair ordark, they were always untidy and particularly bedraggled, as if in asordid version of the fairy tale the ash-bin cat had been changed intoa maid. I was infinitely sensible of the privilege of being waited on bymy landlady's daughter. She was neat if anemic. 

"Will you please clear away all this at once?" I addressed her inconvulsive accents, being at the same time engaged in getting my pipeto draw. This, I admit, was an unusual request. Generally, on getting upfrom breakfast I would sit down in the window with a book and let themclear the table when they liked; but if you think that on that morningI was in the least impatient, you are mistaken. I remember that I wasperfectly calm. As a matter of fact I was not at all certain that Iwanted to write, or that I meant to write, or that I had anything towrite about. No, I was not impatient. I lounged between the mantelpieceand the window, not even consciously waiting for the table to becleared. It was ten to one that before my landlady's daughter was done Iwould pick up a book and sit down with it all the morning in a spirit ofenjoyable indolence. I affirm it with assurance, and I don't even knownow what were the books then lying about the room. What ever they were, they were not the works of great masters, where the secret of clearthought and exact expression can be found. Since the age of five I havebeen a great reader, as is not perhaps wonderful in a child who wasnever aware of learning to read. At ten years of age I had read muchof Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" inabridged editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and someFrench poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening before I beganto write myself. I believe it was a novel, and it is quite possiblethat it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels. It is very likely. Myacquaintance with him was then very recent. He is one of the Englishnovelists whose works I read for the first time in English. With men ofEuropean reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it wasotherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative literature was"Nicholas Nickleby. " It is extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby couldchatter disconnectedly in Polish and the sinister Ralph rage in thatlanguage. As to the Crummles family and the family of the learnedSqueers it seemed as natural to them as their native speech. It was, Ihave no doubt, an excellent translation. This must have been in the year'70. But I really believe that I am wrong. That book was not my firstintroduction to English literature. My first acquaintance was (or were)the "Two Gentlemen of Verona, " and that in the very MS. Of my father'stranslation. It was during our exile in Russia, and it must have beenless than a year after my mother's death, because I remember myselfin the black blouse with a white border of my heavy mourning. We wereliving together, quite alone, in a small house on the outskirts of thetown of T----. That afternoon, instead of going out to play in the largeyard which we shared with our landlord, I had lingered in the room inwhich my father generally wrote. What emboldened me to clamber intohis chair I am sure I don't know, but a couple of hours afterward hediscovered me kneeling in it with my elbows on the table and my headheld in both hands over the MS. Of loose pages. I was greatly confused, expecting to get into trouble. He stood in the doorway looking at mewith some surprise, but the only thing he said after a moment of silencewas:

"Read the page aloud. "

Luckily the page lying before me was not overblotted with erasuresand corrections, and my father's handwriting was otherwise extremelylegible. When I got to the end he nodded, and I flew out-of-doors, thinking myself lucky to have escaped reproof for that piece ofimpulsive audacity. I have tried to discover since the reason for thismildness, and I imagine that all unknown to myself I had earned, inmy father's mind, the right to some latitude in my relations with hiswriting-table. It was only a month before--or perhaps it was only a weekbefore--that I had read to him aloud from beginning to end, and to hisperfect satisfaction, as he lay on his bed, not being very well at thetime, the proofs of his translation of Victor Hugo's "Toilers of theSea. " Such was my title to consideration, I believe, and also my firstintroduction to the sea in literature. 

If I do not remember where, how, and when I learned to read, I am notlikely to forget the process of being trained in the art of readingaloud. My poor father, an admirable reader himself, was the mostexacting of masters. I reflect proudly that I must have read that pageof "Two Gentlemen of Verona" tolerably well at the age of eight. Thenext time I met them was in a 5s. One-volume edition of the dramaticworks of William Shakespeare, read in Falmouth, at odd moments of theday, to the noisy accompaniment of calkers' mallets driving oakuminto the deck-seams of a ship in dry-dock. We had run in, in a sinkingcondition and with the crew refusing duty after a month of wearybattling with the gales of the North Atlantic. Books are an integralpart of one's life, and my Shakespearian associations are with thatfirst year of our bereavement, the last I spent with my father in exile(he sent me away to Poland to my mother's brother directly he couldbrace himself up for the separation), and with the year of hard gales, the year in which I came nearest to death at sea, first by water andthen by fire. 

Those things I remember, but what I was reading the day before mywriting life began I have forgotten. I have only a vague notion that itmight have been one of Trollope's political novels. And I remember, too, the character of the day. It was an autumn day with an opalineatmosphere, a veiled, semi-opaque, lustrous day, with fiery points andflashes of red sunlight on the roofs and windows opposite, while thetrees of the square, with all their leaves gone, were like the tracingsof India ink on a sheet of tissue-paper. It was one of those London daysthat have the charm of mysterious amenity, of fascinating softness. The effect of opaline mist was often repeated at Bessborough Gardens onaccount of the nearness to the river. 

There is no reason why I should remember that effect more on that daythan on any other day, except that I stood for a long time looking outof the window after the landlady's daughter was gone with her spoilof cups and saucers. I heard her put the tray down in the passage andfinally shut the door; and still I remained smoking, with my back to theroom. It is very clear that I was in no haste to take the plunge into mywriting life, if as plunge this first attempt may be described. My wholebeing was steeped deep in the indolence of a sailor away from thesea, the scene of never-ending labour and of unceasing duty. For uttersurrender to in indolence you cannot beat a sailor ashore when that moodis on him--the mood of absolute irresponsibility tasted to the full. It seems to me that I thought of nothing whatever, but this is animpression which is hardly to be believed at this distance of years. What I am certain of is that I was very far from thinking of writing astory, though it is possible and even likely that I was thinking of theman Almayer. 

I had seen him for the first time, some four years before, from thebridge of a steamer moored to a rickety little wharf forty miles up, more or less, a Bornean river. It was very early morning, and a slightmist--an opaline mist as in Bessborough Gardens, only without thefiery flicks on roof and chimney-pot from the rays of the red Londonsun--promised to turn presently into a woolly fog. Barring a smalldug-out canoe on the river there was nothing moving within sight. I hadjust come up yawning from my cabin. The serang and the Malay crewwere overhauling the cargo chains and trying the winches; their voicessounded subdued on the deck below, and their movements were languid. That tropical daybreak was chilly. The Malay quartermaster, coming upto get something from the lockers on the bridge, shivered visibly. Theforests above and below and on the opposite bank looked black and dank;wet dripped from the rigging upon the tightly stretched deck awnings, and it was in the middle of a shuddering yawn that I caught sightof Almayer. He was moving across a patch of burned grass, a blurred, shadowy shape with the blurred bulk of a house behind him, a low houseof mats, bamboos, and palm leaves, with a high-pitched roof of grass. 

He stepped upon the jetty. He was clad simply in flapping pajamas ofcretonne pattern (enormous flowers with yellow petals on a disagreeableblue ground) and a thin cotton singlet with short sleeves. His arms, bare to the elbow, were crossed on his chest. His black hair lookedas if it had not been cut for a very long time, and a curly wisp ofit strayed across his forehead. I had heard of him at Singapore; I hadheard of him on board; I had heard of him early in the morning and lateat night; I had heard of him at tiffin and at dinner; I had heard ofhim in a place called Pulo Laut from a half-caste gentleman there, whodescribed himself as the manager of a coal-mine; which sounded civilizedand progressive till you heard that the mine could not be worked atpresent because it was haunted by some particularly atrocious ghosts. I had heard of him in a place called Dongola, in the Island of Celebes, when the Rajah of that little-known seaport (you can get no anchoragethere in less than fifteen fathom, which is extremely inconvenient) cameon board in a friendly way, with only two attendants, and drank bottleafter bottle of soda-water on the after-sky light with my good friendand commander, Captain C----. At least I heard his name distinctlypronounced several times in a lot of talk in Malay language. Oh, yes, I heard it quite distinctly--Almayer, Almayer--and saw Captain C----smile, while the fat, dingy Rajah laughed audibly. To hear a Malay Rajahlaugh outright is a rare experience, I can as sure you. And I overheardmore of Almayer's name among our deck passengers (mostly wanderingtraders of good repute) as they sat all over the ship--each man fencedround with bundles and boxes--on mats, on pillows, on quilts, on billetsof wood, conversing of Island affairs. Upon my word, I heard the mutterof Almayer's name faintly at midnight, while making my way aft from thebridge to look at the patent taffrail-log tinkling its quarter miles inthe great silence of the sea. I don't mean to say that our passengersdreamed aloud of Almayer, but it is indubitable that two of them atleast, who could not sleep, apparently, and were trying to charm awaythe trouble of insomnia by a little whispered talk at that ghostly hour, were referring in some way or other to Almayer. It was really impossibleon board that ship to get away definitely from Almayer; and a very smallpony tied up forward and whisking its tail inside the galley, to thegreat embarrassment of our Chinaman cook, was destined for Almayer. Whathe wanted with a pony goodness only knows, since I am perfectly certainhe could not ride it; but here you have the man, ambitious, aiming atthe grandiose, importing a pony, whereas in the whole settlement atwhich he used to shake daily his impotent fist there was only one paththat was practicable for a pony: a quarter of a mile at most, hedgedin by hundreds of square leagues of virgin forest. But who knows? Theimportation of that Bali pony might have been part of some deep scheme, of some diplomatic plan, of some hopeful intrigue. With Almayer onecould never tell. He governed his conduct by considerations removedfrom the obvious, by incredible assumptions, which rendered his logicimpenetrable to any reasonable person. I learned all this later. Thatmorning, seeing the figure in pajamas moving in the mist, I said tomyself, "That's the man. "

He came quite close to the ship's side and raised a harassedcountenance, round and flat, with that curl of black hair over theforehead and a heavy, pained glance. 

"Good morning. "

"Good morning. "

He looked hard at me: I was a new face, having just replaced the chiefmate he was accustomed to see; and I think that this novelty inspiredhim, as things generally did, with deep-seated mistrust. 

"Didn't expect you till this evening, " he remarked, suspiciously. 

I didn't know why he should have been aggrieved, but he seemed to be. I took pains to explain to him that, having picked up the beacon at themouth of the river just before dark and the tide serving, Captain C----was enabled to cross the bar and there was nothing to prevent him goingup the river at night. 

"Captain C---- knows this river like his own pocket, " I concluded, discursively, trying to get on terms. 

"Better, " said Almayer. 

Leaning over the rail of the bridge, I looked at Almayer, who lookeddown at the wharf in aggrieved thought. He shuffled his feet a little;he wore straw slippers with thick soles. The morning fog had thickenedconsiderably. Everything round us dripped--the derricks, the rails, every single rope in the ship--as if a fit of crying had come upon theuniverse. 

Almayer again raised his head and, in the accents of a man accustomed tothe buffets of evil fortune, asked, hardly audibly:

"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a pony on board?"

I told him, almost in a whisper, for he attuned my communications to hisminor key, that we had such a thing as a pony, and I hinted, as gentlyas I could, that he was confoundedly in the way, too. I was very anxiousto have him landed before I began to handle the cargo. Almayer remainedlooking up at me for a long while, with incredulous and melancholy eyes, as though it were not a safe thing to believe in my statement. Thispathetic mistrust in the favourable issue of any sort of affair touchedme deeply, and I added:

"He doesn't seem a bit the worse for the passage. He's a nice pony, too. "

Almayer was not to be cheered up; for all answer he cleared his throatand looked down again at his feet. I tried to close with him on anothertack. 

"By Jove!" I said. "Aren't you afraid of catching pneumonia orbronchitis or some thing, walking about in a singlet in such a wet fog?"

He was not to be propitiated by a show of interest in his health. 

His answer was a sinister "No fear, " as much as to say that even thatway of escape from inclement fortune was closed to him. 

"I just came down . . . " he mumbled after a while. 

"Well, then, now you're here I will land that pony for you at once, and you can lead him home. I really don't want him on deck. He's in theway. "

Almayer seemed doubtful. I insisted:

"Why, I will just swing him out and land him on the wharf right in frontof you. I'd much rather do it before the hatches are off. The littledevil may jump down the hold or do some other deadly thing. "

"There's a halter?" postulated Almayer. 

"Yes, of course there's a halter. " And without waiting any more I leanedover the bridge rail. 

"Serang, land Tuan Almayer's pony. "

The cook hastened to shut the door of the galley, and a moment later agreat scuffle began on deck. The pony kicked with extreme energy, thekalashes skipped out of the way, the serang issued many orders in acracked voice. Suddenly the pony leaped upon the fore-hatch. His littlehoofs thundered tremendously; he plunged and reared. He had tossed hismane and his forelock into a state of amazing wildness, he dilated hisnostrils, bits of foam flecked his broad little chest, his eyes blazed. He was something under eleven hands; he was fierce, terrible, angry, warlike; he said ha! ha! distinctly; he raged and thumped--and sixteenable-bodied kalashes stood round him like disconcerted nurses round aspoiled and passionate child. He whisked his tail incessantly; he archedhis pretty neck; he was perfectly delightful; he was charmingly naughty. There was not an atom of vice in that performance; no savage baring ofteeth and laying back of ears. On the contrary, he pricked them forwardin a comically aggressive manner. He was totally unmoral and lovable; Iwould have liked to give him bread, sugar, carrots. But life is a sternthing and the sense of duty the only safe guide. So I steeled my heart, and from my elevated position on the bridge I ordered the men to flingthemselves upon him in a body. 

The elderly serang, emitting a strange, inarticulate cry, gave theexample. He was an excellent petty officer--very competent, indeed, anda moderate opium-smoker. The rest of them in one great rush smotheredthat pony. They hung on to his ears, to his mane, to his tail; they layin piles across his back, seventeen in all. The carpenter, seizingthe hook of the cargo-chain, flung himself on the top of them. A verysatisfactory petty officer, too, but he stuttered. Have you ever hearda light-yellow, lean, sad, earnest Chinaman stutter in Pidgin-English?It's very weird, indeed. He made the eighteenth. I could not see thepony at all; but from the swaying and heaving of that heap of men I knewthat there was something alive inside. 

From the wharf Almayer hailed, in quavering tones:

"Oh, I say!"

Where he stood he could not see what was going on on deck, unless, perhaps, the tops of the men's heads; he could only hear the scuffle, the mighty thuds, as if the ship were being knocked to pieces. I lookedover: "What is it?"

"Don't let them break his legs, " he entreated me, plaintively. 

"Oh, nonsense! He's all right now. He can't move. "

By that time the cargo-chain had been hooked to the broad canvas beltround the pony's body; the kalashes sprang off simultaneously in alldirections, rolling over each other; and the worthy serang, making adash behind the winch, turned the steam on. 

"Steady!" I yelled, in great apprehension of seeing the animal snatchedup to the very head of the derrick. 

On the wharf Almayer shuffled his straw slippers uneasily. The rattle ofthe winch stopped, and in a tense, impressive silence that pony began toswing across the deck. 

How limp he was! Directly he felt himself in the air he relaxed everymuscle in a most wonderful manner. His four hoofs knocked together in abunch, his head hung down, and his tail remained pendent in a nervelessand absolute immobility. He reminded me vividly of the pathetic littlesheep which hangs on the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. I hadno idea that anything in the shape of a horse could be so limp as that, either living or dead. His wild mane hung down lumpily, a mere mass ofinanimate horsehair; his aggressive ears had collapsed, but as he wentswaying slowly across the front of the bridge I noticed an astute gleamin his dreamy, half-closed eye. A trustworthy quartermaster, his glanceanxious and his mouth on the broad grin, was easing over the derrickwatchfully. I superintended, greatly interested. 

"So! That will do. "

The derrick-head stopped. The kalashes lined the rail. The rope of thehalter hung perpendicular and motionless like a bell-pull in front ofAlmayer. Everything was very still. I suggested amicably that heshould catch hold of the rope and mind what he was about. He extended aprovokingly casual and superior hand. 

"Look out, then! Lower away!"

Almayer gathered in the rope intelligently enough, but when the pony'shoofs touched the wharf he gave way all at once to a most foolishoptimism. Without pausing, without thinking, almost without looking, hedisengaged the hook suddenly from the sling, and the cargo-chain, afterhitting the pony's quarters, swung back against the ship's side witha noisy, rattling slap. I suppose I must have blinked. I know I missedsomething, because the next thing I saw was Almayer lying flat on hisback on the jetty. He was alone. 

Astonishment deprived me of speech long enough to give Almayer time topick himself up in a leisurely and painful manner. The kalashes liningthe rail all had their mouths open. The mist flew in the light breeze, and it had come over quite thick enough to hide the shore completely. 

"How on earth did you manage to let him get away?" I asked, scandalized. 

Almayer looked into the smarting palm of his right hand, but did notanswer my inquiry. 

"Where do you think he will get to?" I cried. "Are there any fencesanywhere in this fog? Can he bolt into the forest? What's to be donenow?"

Almayer shrugged his shoulders. 

"Some of my men are sure to be about. They will get hold of him sooneror later. "

"Sooner or later! That's all very fine, but what about my canvassling?--he's carried it off. I want it now, at once, to land two Celebescows. "

Since Dongola we had on board a pair of the pretty little island cattlein addition to the pony. Tied up on the other side of the fore-deck theyhad been whisking their tails into the other door of the galley. Thesecows were not for Almayer, however; they were invoiced to Abdullah binSelim, his enemy. Almayer's disregard of my requirements was complete. 

"If I were you I would try to find out where he's gone, " I insisted. "Hadn't you better call your men together or something? He will throwhimself down and cut his knees. He may even break a leg, you know. "

But Almayer, plunged in abstracted thought, did not seem to want thatpony any more. Amazed at this sudden indifference, I turned all handsout on shore to hunt for him on my own account, or, at any rate, to huntfor the canvas sling which he had round his body. The whole crew ofthe steamer, with the exception of firemen and engineers, rushed upthe jetty, past the thoughtful Almayer, and vanished from my sight. Thewhite fog swallowed them up; and again there was a deep silence thatseemed to extend for miles up and down the stream. Still taciturn, Almayer started to climb on board, and I went down from the bridge tomeet him on the after-deck. 

"Would you mind telling the captain that I want to see him veryparticularly?" he asked me, in a low tone, letting his eyes stray allover the place. 

"Very well. I will go and see. "

With the door of his cabin wide open, Captain C----, just back fromthe bath-room, big and broad-chested, was brushing his thick, damp, iron-gray hair with two large brushes. 

"Mr. Almayer told me he wanted to see you very particularly, sir. "

Saying these words, I smiled. I don't know why I smiled, except that itseemed absolutely impossible to mention Almayer's name without a smileof a sort. It had not to be necessarily a mirthful smile. Turning hishead toward me, Captain C---- smiled, too, rather joylessly. 

"The pony got away from him--eh?"

"Yes, sir. He did. "

"Where is he?"

"Goodness only knows. "

"No. I mean Almayer. Let him come along. "

The captain's stateroom opening straight on deck under the bridge, I hadonly to beckon from the doorway to Almayer, who had remained aft, withdowncast eyes, on the very spot where I had left him. He strolled upmoodily, shook hands, and at once asked permission to shut the cabindoor. 

"I have a pretty story to tell you, " were the last words I heard. 

The bitterness of tone was remarkable. 

I went away from the door, of course. For the moment I had no crew onboard; only the Chinaman carpenter, with a canvas bag hung round hisneck and a hammer in his hand, roamed about the empty decks, knocking out the wedges of the hatches and dropping them into the bagconscientiously. Having nothing to do I joined our two engineers at thedoor of the engine-room. It was near breakfast-time. 

"He's turned up early, hasn't he?" commented the second engineer, andsmiled indifferently. He was an abstemious man, with a good digestionand a placid, reasonable view of life even when hungry. 

"Yes, " I said. "Shut up with the old man. Some very particularbusiness. "

"He will spin him a damned endless yarn, " observed the chief engineer. 

He smiled rather sourly. He was dyspeptic, and suffered from gnawinghunger in the morning. The second smiled broadly, a smile that made twovertical folds on his shaven cheeks. And I smiled, too, but I was notexactly amused. In that man, whose name apparently could not be utteredanywhere in the Malay Archipelago without a smile, there was nothingamusing whatever. That morning he breakfasted with us silently, lookingmostly into his cup. I informed him that my men came upon his ponycapering in the fog on the very brink of the eight-foot-deep well inwhich he kept his store of guttah. The cover was off, with no one nearby, and the whole of my crew just missed going heels over head intothat beastly hole. Jurumudi Itam, our best quartermaster, deft at fineneedlework, he who mended the ship's flags and sewed buttons on ourcoats, was disabled by a kick on the shoulder. 

Both remorse and gratitude seemed foreign to Almayer's character. 

He mumbled:

"Do you mean that pirate fellow?"

"What pirate fellow? The man has been in the ship eleven years, " I said, indignantly. 

"It's his looks, " Almayer muttered, for all apology. 

The sun had eaten up the fog. From where we sat under the after-awningwe could see in the distance the pony tied up, in front of Almayer'shouse, to a post of the veranda. We were silent for a long time. All atonce Almayer, alluding evidently to the subject of his conversation inthe captain's cabin, exclaimed anxiously across the table:

"I really don't know what I can do now!"

Captain C---- only raised his eyebrows at him, and got up from hischair. We dispersed to our duties, but Almayer, half dressed as he wasin his cretonne pajamas and the thin cotton singlet, remained on board, lingering near the gangway, as though he could not make up his mindwhether to go home or stay with us for good. 

Our Chinamen boys gave him side glances as they went to and fro; andAh Sing, our chief steward, the handsomest and most sympathetic ofChinamen, catching my eye, nodded knowingly at his burly back. In thecourse of the morning I approached him for a moment. 

"Well, Mr. Almayer, " I addressed him, easily, "you haven't started onyour letters yet. "

We had brought him his mail, and he had held the bundle in his hand eversince we got up from breakfast. He glanced at it when I spoke, and fora moment it looked as if he were on the point of opening his fingers andletting the whole lot fall overboard. I believe he was tempted to do so. I shall never forget that man afraid of his letters. 

"Have you been long out from Europe?" he asked me. 

"Not very. Not quite eight months, " I told him. "I left a ship inSamarang with a hurt back, and have been in the hospital in Singaporesome weeks. "

He sighed. 

"Trade is very bad here. "

"Indeed!"

"Hopeless! . . . See these geese?"

With the hand holding the letters he pointed out to me what resembleda patch of snow creeping and swaying across the distant part of hiscompound. It disappeared behind some bushes. 

"The only geese on the East Coast, " Almayer informed me, in aperfunctory mutter without a spark of faith, hope, or pride. Thereupon, with the same absence of any sort of sustaining spirit, he declared hisintention to select a fat bird and send him on board for us not laterthan next day. 

I had heard of these largesses before. He conferred a goose as if itwere a sort of court decoration given only to the tried friends of thehouse. I had expected more pomp in the ceremony. The gift had surelyits special quality, multiple and rare. From the only flock on the EastCoast! He did not make half enough of it. That man did not understandhis opportunities. However, I thanked him at some length. 

"You see, " he interrupted, abruptly, in a very peculiar tone, "the worstof this country is that one is not able to realize . . . It's impossibleto realize. . . . " His voice sank into a languid mutter. "And whenone has very large interests . . . Very important interests . . . " hefinished, faintly . . . "up the river. "

We looked at each other. He astonished me by giving a start and making avery queer grimace. 

"Well, I must be off, " he burst out, hurriedly. "So long!"

At the moment of stepping over the gang way he checked himself, though, to give me a mumbled invitation to dine at his house that evening withmy captain, an invitation which I accepted. I don't think it could havebeen possible for me to refuse. 

I like the worthy folk who will talk to you of the exercise offree-will, "at any rate for practical purposes. " Free, is it? Forpractical purposes! Bosh! How could I have refused to dine with thatman? I did not refuse, simply because I could not refuse. Curiosity, ahealthy desire for a change of cooking, common civility, the talk andthe smiles of the previous twenty days, every condition of my existenceat that moment and place made irresistibly for acceptance; and, crowningall that, there was the ignorance--the ignorance, I say--the fatal wantof fore knowledge to counterbalance these imperative conditions of theproblem. A refusal would have appeared perverse and insane. Nobody, unless a surly lunatic, would have refused. But if I had not got to knowAlmayer pretty well it is almost certain there would never have been aline of mine in print. 

I accepted then--and I am paying yet the price of my sanity. Thepossessor of the only flock of geese on the East Coast is responsiblefor the existence of some fourteen volumes, so far. The number ofgeese he had called into being under adverse climatic conditions wasconsiderably more than fourteen. The tale of volumes will never overtakethe counting of heads, I am safe to say; but my ambitions point notexactly that way, and whatever the pangs the toil of writing has cost meI have always thought kindly of Almayer. 

I wonder, had he known anything of it, what his attitude would havebeen? This is something not to be discovered in this world. 

But if we ever meet in the Elysian Fields--where I cannot depict himto myself otherwise than attended in the distance by his flock of geese(birds sacred to Jupiter)--and he addresses me in the stillness ofthat passionless region, neither light nor darkness, neither sound norsilence, and heaving endlessly with billowy mists from the impalpablemultitudes of the swarming dead, I think I know what answer to make. 

I would say, after listening courteously to the unvibrating tone of hismeasured remonstrances, which should not disturb, of course, the solemneternity of stillness in the least--I would say something like this:

"It is true, Almayer, that in the world below I have converted your nameto my own uses. But that is a very small larceny. What's in a name, OShade? If so much of your old mortal weakness clings to you yet asto make you feel aggrieved (it was the note of your earthly voice, Almayer), then, I entreat you, seek speech without delay with oursublime fellow-Shade--with him who, in his transient existence as apoet, commented upon the smell of the rose. He will comfort you. Youcame to me stripped of all prestige by men's queer smiles and thedisrespectful chatter of every vagrant trader in the Islands. Your namewas the common property of the winds; it, as it were, floated naked overthe waters about the equator. I wrapped round its unhonoured form theroyal mantle of the tropics, and have essayed to put into the hollowsound the very anguish of paternity--feats which you did not demand fromme--but remember that all the toil and all the pain were mine. In yourearthly life you haunted me, Almayer. Consider that this was taking agreat liberty. Since you were always complaining of being lost to theworld, you should remember that if I had not believed enough in yourexistence to let you haunt my rooms in Bessborough Gardens, you wouldhave been much more lost. You affirm that had I been capable of lookingat you with a more perfect detachment and a greater simplicity, I mighthave perceived better the inward marvellousness which, you insist, attended your career upon that tiny pin-point of light, hardly visiblefar, far below us, where both our graves lie. No doubt! But reflect, Ocomplaining Shade! that this was not so much my fault as your crowningmisfortune. I believed in you in the only way it was possible for me tobelieve. It was not worthy of your merits? So be it. But you were alwaysan unlucky man, Almayer. Nothing was ever quite worthy of you. What madeyou so real to me was that you held this lofty theory with some force ofconviction and with an admirable consistency. "

It is with some such words translated into the proper shadowyexpressions that I am prepared to placate Almayer in the Elysian Abodeof Shades, since it has come to pass that, having parted many years ago, we are never to meet again in this world. 

V

In the career of the most unliterary of writers, in the sense thatliterary ambition had never entered the world of his imagination, thecoming into existence of the first book is quite an inexplicable event. In my own case I cannot trace it back to any mental or psychologicalcause which one could point out and hold to. The greatest of my giftsbeing a consummate capacity for doing nothing, I cannot even point toboredom as a rational stimulus for taking up a pen. The pen, at anyrate, was there, and there is nothing wonderful in that. Everybody keepsa pen (the cold steel of our days) in his rooms, in this enlightened ageof penny stamps and halfpenny post-cards. In fact, this was the epochwhen by means of postcard and pen Mr. Gladstone had made the reputationof a novel or two. And I, too, had a pen rolling about somewhere--theseldom-used, the reluctantly taken-up pen of a sailor ashore, the penrugged with the dried ink of abandoned attempts, of answers delayedlonger than decency permitted, of letters begun with infinitereluctance, and put off suddenly till next day--till next week, as likeas not! The neglected, uncared-for pen, flung away at the slightestprovocation, and under the stress of dire necessity hunted for withoutenthusiasm, in a perfunctory, grumpy worry, in the "Where the devil _is_the beastly thing gone to?" ungracious spirit. Where, indeed! It mighthave been reposing behind the sofa for a day or so. My landlady's anemicdaughter (as Ollendorff would have expressed it), though commendablyneat, had a lordly, careless manner of approaching her domestic duties. Or it might even be resting delicately poised on its point by the sideof the table-leg, and when picked up show a gaping, inefficient beakwhich would have discouraged any man of literary instincts. But not me!"Never mind. This will do. "

O days without guile! If anybody had told me then that a devotedhousehold, having a generally exaggerated idea of my talents andimportance, would be put into a state of tremor and flurry by the fussI would make because of a suspicion that somebody had touched mysacrosanct pen of authorship, I would have never deigned as much as thecontemptuous smile of unbelief. There are imaginings too unlikely forany kind of notice, too wild for indulgence itself, too absurd for asmile. Perhaps, had that seer of the future been a friend, I should havebeen secretly saddened. "Alas!" I would have thought, looking at himwith an unmoved face, "the poor fellow is going mad. "

I would have been, without doubt, saddened; for in this world where thejournalists read the signs of the sky, and the wind of heaven itself, blowing where it listeth, does so under the prophetical management ofthe meteorological office, but where the secret of human hearts cannotbe captured by prying or praying, it was infinitely more likely thatthe sanest of my friends should nurse the germ of incipient madness thanthat I should turn into a writer of tales. 

To survey with wonder the changes of one's own self is a fascinatingpursuit for idle hours. The field is so wide, the surprises so varied, the subject so full of unprofitable but curious hints as to the work ofunseen forces, that one does not weary easily of it. I am not speakinghere of megalomaniacs who rest uneasy under the crown of their unboundedconceit--who really never rest in this world, and when out of it goon fretting and fuming on the straitened circumstances of their lasthabitation, where all men must lie in obscure equality. Neither am Ithinking of those ambitious minds who, always looking forward to someaim of aggrandizement, can spare no time for a detached, impersonalglance upon them selves. 

And that's a pity. They are unlucky. These two kinds, together withthe much larger band of the totally unimaginative, of those unfortunatebeings in whose empty and unseeing gaze (as a great French writer hasput it) "the whole universe vanishes into blank nothingness, " miss, perhaps, the true task of us men whose day is short on this earth, theabode of conflicting opinions. The ethical view of the universe involvesus at last in so many cruel and absurd contradictions, where the lastvestiges of faith, hope, charity, and even of reason itself, seem readyto perish, that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannotbe ethical at all. I would fondly believe that its object is purelyspectacular: a spectacle for awe, love, adoration, or hate, if youlike, but in this view--and in this view alone--never for despair! Thosevisions, delicious or poignant, are a moral end in themselves. The restis our affair--the laughter, the tears, the tenderness, the indignation, the high tranquillity of a steeled heart, the detached curiosity ofa subtle mind--that's our affair! And the unwearied self-forgetfulattention to every phase of the living universe reflected in ourconsciousness may be our appointed task on this earth--a task in whichfate has perhaps engaged nothing of us except our conscience, giftedwith a voice in order to bear true testimony to the visible wonder, thehaunting terror, the infinite passion, and the illimitable serenity; tothe supreme law and the abiding mystery of the sublime spectacle. 

Chi lo sa? It may be true. In this view there is room for every religionexcept for the inverted creed of impiety, the mask and cloak of ariddespair; for every joy and every sorrow, for every fair dream, for everycharitable hope. The great aim is to remain true to the emotions calledout of the deep encircled by the firmament of stars, whose infinitenumbers and awful distances may move us to laughter or tears (was it theWalrus or the Carpenter, in the poem, who "wept to see such quantitiesof sand"?), or, again, to a properly steeled heart, may matter nothingat all. 

The casual quotation, which had suggested itself out of a poem full ofmerit, leads me to remark that in the conception of a purely spectacularuniverse, where inspiration of every sort has a rational existence, theartist of every kind finds a natural place; and among them the poet asthe seer par excellence. Even the writer of prose, who in his less nobleand more toilsome task should be a man with the steeled heart, is worthyof a place, providing he looks on with undimmed eyes and keeps laughterout of his voice, let who will laugh or cry. Yes! Even he, the proseartist of fiction, which after all is but truth often dragged out of awell and clothed in the painted robe of imagined phrases--even he hashis place among kings, demagogues, priests, charlatans, dukes, giraffes, cabinet ministers, Fabians, bricklayers, apostles, ants, scientists, Kafirs, soldiers, sailors, elephants, lawyers, dandies, microbes, andconstellations of a universe whose amazing spectacle is a moral end initself. 

Here I perceive (without speaking offense) the reader assuming a subtleexpression, as if the cat were out of the bag. I take the novelist'sfreedom to observe the reader's mind formulating the exclamation:"That's it! The fellow talks pro domo. "

Indeed it was not the intention! When I shouldered the bag I was notaware of the cat inside. But, after all, why not? The fair courtyards ofthe House of Art are thronged by many humble retainers. And there isno retainer so devoted as he who is allowed to sit on the doorstep. Thefellows who have got inside are apt to think too much of themselves. This last remark, I beg to state, is not malicious within the definitionof the law of libel. It's fair comment on a matter of public interest. But never mind. _Pro domo_. So be it. For his house _tant que vousvoudrez_. And yet in truth I was by no means anxious to justify myexistence. The attempt would have been not only needless and absurd, butalmost inconceivable, in a purely spectacular universe, where no suchdisagreeable necessity can possibly arise. It is sufficient for me tosay (and I am saying it at some length in these pages): _J'ai vecu_. Ihave existed, obscure among the wonders and terrors of my time, as theAbbe Sieyes, the original utterer of the quoted words, had managed toexist through the violences, the crimes, and the enthusiasms of theFrench Revolution. _J'ai vecu_, as I apprehend most of us manage toexist, missing all along the varied forms of destruction by ahair's-breadth, saving my body, that's clear, and perhaps my soul also, but not without some damage here and there to the fine edge of myconscience, that heirloom of the ages, of the race, of the group, of thefamily, colourable and plastic, fashioned by the words, the looks, theacts, and even by the silences and abstentions surrounding one'schildhood; tinged in a complete scheme of delicate shadesand crude colours by the inherited traditions, beliefs, orprejudices--unaccountable, despotic, persuasive, and often, in its texture, romantic. 

And often romantic! . . . The matter in hand, however, is to keep thesereminiscences from turning into confessions, a form of literaryactivity discredited by Jean Jacques Rousseau on account of the extremethoroughness he brought to the work of justifying his own existence;for that such was his purpose is palpably, even grossly, visible toan unprejudiced eye. But then, you see, the man was not a writer offiction. He was an artless moralist, as is clearly demonstrated by hisanniversaries being celebrated with marked emphasis by the heirs ofthe French Revolution, which was not a political movement at all, buta great outburst of morality. He had no imagination, as the most casualperusal of "Emile" will prove. He was no novelist, whose first virtue isthe exact understanding of the limits traced by the reality of his timeto the play of his invention. Inspiration comes from the earth, whichhas a past, a history, a future, not from the cold and immutable heaven. A writer of imaginative prose (even more than any other sort of artist)stands confessed in his works. His conscience, his deeper sense ofthings, lawful and unlawful, gives him his attitude before the world. Indeed, everyone who puts pen to paper for the reading of strangers(unless a moralist, who, generally speaking, has no conscience exceptthe one he is at pains to produce for the use of others) can speak ofnothing else. It is M. Anatole France, the most eloquent and just ofFrench prose-writers, who says that we must recognize at last that, "failing the resolution to hold our peace, we can only talk ofourselves. "

This remark, if I remember rightly, was made in the course of a sparringmatch with the late Ferdinand Brunetiere over the principles and rulesof literary criticism. As was fitting for a man to whom we owe thememorable saying, "The good critic is he who relates the adventures ofhis soul among masterpieces, " M. Anatole France maintained that therewere no rules and no principles. And that may be very true. Rules, principles, and standards die and vanish every day. Perhaps they are alldead and vanished by this time. These, if ever, are the brave, free daysof destroyed landmarks, while the ingenious minds are busy inventing theforms of the new beacons which, it is consoling to think, will be set uppresently in the old places. But what is interesting to a writer is thepossession of an inward certitude that literary criticism will neverdie, for man (so variously defined) is, before everything else, acritical animal. And as long as distinguished minds are ready to treatit in the spirit of high adventure literary criticism shall appeal tous with all the charm and wisdom of a well-told tale of personalexperience. 

For Englishmen especially, of all the races of the earth, a task, anytask, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance. But the critics as a rule exhibit but little of an adventurous spirit. They take risks, of course--one can hardly live with out that. The dailybread is served out to us (however sparingly) with a pinch of salt. Otherwise one would get sick of the diet one prays for, and that wouldbe not only improper, but impious. From impiety of that or any otherkind--save us! An ideal of reserved manner, adhered to from a senseof proprieties, from shyness, perhaps, or caution, or simply fromweariness, induces, I suspect, some writers of criticism to conceal theadventurous side of their calling, and then the criticism becomes a mere"notice, " as it were, the relation of a journey where nothing but thedistances and the geology of a new country should be set down; theglimpses of strange beasts, the dangers of flood and field, thehairbreadth escapes, and the sufferings (oh, the sufferings, too! I haveno doubt of the sufferings) of the traveller being carefully kept out;no shady spot, no fruitful plant being ever mentioned either; so thatthe whole performance looks like a mere feat of agility on the part ofa trained pen running in a desert. A cruel spectacle--a most deplorableadventure! "Life, " in the words of an immortal thinker of, I shouldsay, bucolic origin, but whose perishable name is lost to the worship ofposterity--"life is not all beer and skittles. " Neither is the writingof novels. It isn't, really. Je vous donne ma parole d'honneur thatit--is--not. Not _all_. I am thus emphatic because some years ago, Iremember, the daughter of a general. . . . 

Sudden revelations of the profane world must have come now and thento hermits in their cells, to the cloistered monks of middle ages, tolonely sages, men of science, reformers; the revelations of the world'ssuperficial judgment, shocking to the souls concentrated upon theirown bitter labour in the cause of sanctity, or of knowledge, or oftemperance, let us say, or of art, if only the art of cracking jokesor playing the flute. And thus this general's daughter came to me--or Ishould say one of the general's daughters did. There were three ofthese bachelor ladies, of nicely graduated ages, who held a neighbouringfarm-house in a united and more or less military occupation. Theeldest warred against the decay of manners in the village children, andexecuted frontal attacks upon the village mothers for the conquest ofcourtesies. It sounds futile, but it was really a war for an idea. Thesecond skirmished and scouted all over the country; and it was that onewho pushed a reconnaissance right to my very table--I mean the one whowore stand-up collars. 

She was really calling upon my wife in the soft spirit of afternoonfriendliness, but with her usual martial determination. She marched intomy room swinging her stick . . . But no--I mustn't exaggerate. It is notmy specialty. I am not a humoristic writer. In all soberness, then, allI am certain of is that she had a stick to swing. 

No ditch or wall encompassed my abode. The window was open; the door, too, stood open to that best friend of my work, the warm, still sunshineof the wide fields. They lay around me infinitely helpful, but, truth tosay, I had not known for weeks whether the sun shone upon the earth andwhether the stars above still moved on their appointed courses. I wasjust then giving up some days of my allotted span to the last chaptersof the novel "Nostromo, " a tale of an imaginary (but true) seaboard, which is still mentioned now and again, and indeed kindly, sometimes inconnection with the word "failure" and sometimes in conjunction with theword "astonishing. " I have no opinion on this discrepancy. It's the sortof difference that can never be settled. All I know is that, for twentymonths, neglecting the common joys of life that fall to the lot of thehumblest on this earth, I had, like the prophet of old, "wrestled withthe Lord" for my creation, for the headlands of the coast, for thedarkness of the Placid Gulf, the light on the snows, the clouds in thesky, and for the breath of life that had to be blown into the shapesof men and women, of Latin and Saxon, of Jew and Gentile. These are, perhaps, strong words, but it is difficult to characterize other wisethe intimacy and the strain of a creative effort in which mind and willand conscience are engaged to the full, hour after hour, day after day, away from the world, and to the exclusion of all that makes life reallylovable and gentle--something for which a material parallel can only befound in the everlasting sombre stress of the westward winter passageround Cape Horn. For that, too, is the wrestling of men with the mightof their Creator, in a great isolation from the world, without theamenities and consolations of life, a lonely struggle under a sense ofovermatched littleness, for no reward that could be adequate, but forthe mere winning of a longitude. Yet a certain longitude, once won, cannot be disputed. The sun and the stars and the shape of your earthare the witnesses of your gain; whereas a handful of pages, no matterhow much you have made them your own, are at best but an obscure andquestionable spoil. Here they are. "Failure"--"Astonishing": take yourchoice; or perhaps both, or neither--a mere rustle and flutter of piecesof paper settling down in the night, and undistinguishable, like thesnowflakes of a great drift destined to melt away in sunshine. 

"How do you do?"

It was the greeting of the general's daughter. I had heard nothing--norustle, no footsteps. I had felt only a moment before a sort ofpremonition of evil; I had the sense of an inauspicious presence--justthat much warning and no more; and then came the sound of the voice andthe jar as of a terrible fall from a great height--a fall, let us say, from the highest of the clouds floating in gentle procession over thefields in the faint westerly air of that July afternoon. I picked myselfup quickly, of course; in other words, I jumped up from my chair stunnedand dazed, every nerve quivering with the pain of being uprooted out ofone world and flung down into another--perfectly civil. 

"Oh! How do you do? Won't you sit down?"

That's what I said. This horrible but, I assure you, perfectly truereminiscence tells you more than a whole volume of confessions a la JeanJacques Rousseau would do. Observe! I didn't howl at her, or startup setting furniture, or throw myself on the floor and kick, or allowmyself to hint in any other way at the appalling magnitude of thedisaster. The whole world of Costaguana (the country, you may remember, of my seaboard tale), men, women, headlands, houses, mountains, town, campo (there was not a single brick, stone, or grain of sand of itssoil I had not placed in position with my own hands); all the history, geography, politics, finance; the wealth of Charles Gould's silver-mine, and the splendour of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, whose name, cried out in the night (Dr. Monygham heard it pass over his head--inLinda Viola's voice), dominated even after death the dark gulfcontaining his conquests of treasure and love--all that had come downcrashing about my ears. 

I felt I could never pick up the pieces--and in that very moment I wassaying, "Won't you sit down?"

The sea is strong medicine. Behold what the quarter-deck training evenin a merchant ship will do! This episode should give you a new view ofthe English and Scots seamen (a much-caricatured folk) who had the lastsay in the formation of my character. One is nothing if not modest, but in this disaster I think I have done some honour to their simpleteaching. "Won't you sit down?" Very fair; very fair, indeed. She satdown. Her amused glance strayed all over the room. 

There were pages of MS. On the table and under the table, a batch oftyped copy on a chair, single leaves had fluttered away into distantcorners; there were there living pages, pages scored and wounded, deadpages that would be burned at the end of the day--the litter of a cruelbattle-field, of a long, long, and desperate fray. Long! I supposeI went to bed sometimes, and got up the same number of times. Yes, Isuppose I slept, and ate the food put before me, and talked connectedlyto my household on suitable occasions. But I had never been aware ofthe even flow of daily life, made easy and noiseless for me by a silent, watchful, tireless affection. Indeed, it seemed to me that I had beensitting at that table surrounded by the litter of a desperate fray fordays and nights on end. It seemed so, because of the intense wearinessof which that interruption had made me aware--the awful disenchantmentof a mind realizing suddenly the futility of an enormous task, joinedto a bodily fatigue such as no ordinary amount of fairly heavy physicallabour could ever account for. I have carried bags of wheat on my back, bent almost double under a ship's deck-beams, from six in the morningtill six in the evening (with an hour and a half off for meals), so Iought to know. 

And I love letters. I am jealous of their honour and concerned for thedignity and comeliness of their service. I was, most likely, the onlywriter that neat lady had ever caught in the exercise of his craft, andit distressed me not to be able to remember when it was that I dressedmyself last, and how. No doubt that would be all right in essentials. The fortune of the house included a pair of gray-blue watchful eyes thatwould see to that. But I felt, somehow, as grimy as a Costaguana leperoafter a day's fighting in the streets, rumpled all over and dishevelleddown to my very heels. And I am afraid I blinked stupidly. All this wasbad for the honour of letters and the dignity of their service. Seenindistinctly through the dust of my collapsed universe, the good ladyglanced about the room with a slightly amused serenity. And she wassmiling. What on earth was she smiling at? She remarked casually:

"I am afraid I interrupted you. "

"Not at all. "

She accepted the denial in perfect good faith. And it was strictly true. Interrupted--indeed! She had robbed me of at least twenty lives, eachinfinitely more poignant and real than her own, because informed withpassion, possessed of convictions, involved in great affairs created outof my own substance for an anxiously meditated end. 

She remained silent for a while, then said, with a last glance all roundat the litter of the fray:

"And you sit like this here writing your--your . . . "

"I--what? Oh, yes! I sit here all day. "

"It must be perfectly delightful. "

I suppose that, being no longer very young, I might have been on theverge of having a stroke; but she had left her dog in the porch, and myboy's dog, patrolling the field in front, had espied him from afar. He came on straight and swift like a cannon-ball, and the noise of thefight, which burst suddenly upon our ears, was more than enough to scareaway a fit of apoplexy. We went out hastily and separated the gallantanimals. Afterward I told the lady where she would find my wife--justround the corner, under the trees. She nodded and went off with her dog, leaving me appalled before the death and devastation she had lightlymade--and with the awfully instructive sound of the word "delightful"lingering in my ears. 

Nevertheless, later on, I duly escorted her to the field gate. I wantedto be civil, of course (what are twenty lives in a mere novel that oneshould be rude to a lady on their account?), but mainly, to adopt thegood, sound Ollendorffian style, because I did not want the dog of thegeneral's daughter to fight again (encore) with the faithful dog ofmy infant son (mon petit garcon). --Was I afraid that the dog of thegeneral's daughter would be able to overcome (_vaincre_) the dog of mychild?--No, I was not afraid. . . . But away with the Ollendorffmethod. How ever appropriate and seemingly unavoidable when I touch uponanything appertaining to the lady, it is most unsuitable to the origin, character, and history of the dog; for the dog was the gift to the childfrom a man for whom words had anything but an Ollendorffian value, a manalmost childlike in the impulsive movements of his untutored genius, themost single-minded of verbal impressionists, using his great gifts ofstraight feeling and right expression with a fine sincerity and a strongif, perhaps, not fully conscious conviction. His art did not obtain, I fear, all the credit its unsophisticated inspiration deserved. I amalluding to the late Stephen Crane, the author of "The Red Badgeof Courage, " a work of imagination which found its short moment ofcelebrity in the last decade of the departed century. Other booksfollowed. Not many. He had not the time. It was an individual andcomplete talent which obtained but a grudging, somewhat superciliousrecognition from the world at large. For himself one hesitates to regrethis early death. Like one of the men in his "Open Boat, " one felt thathe was of those whom fate seldom allows to make a safe landing aftermuch toil and bitterness at the oar. I confess to an abiding affectionfor that energetic, slight, fragile, intensely living and transientfigure. He liked me, even before we met, on the strength of a page ortwo of my writing, and after we had met I am glad to think he liked mestill. He used to point out to me with great earnestness, and even withsome severity, that "a boy _ought_ to have a dog. " I suspect that he wasshocked at my neglect of parental duties. 

Ultimately it was he who provided the dog. Shortly afterward, one day, after playing with the child on the rug for an hour or so with the mostintense absorption, he raised his head and declared firmly, "I shallteach your boy to ride. " That was not to be. He was not given the time. 

But here is the dog--an old dog now. Broad and low on his bandy paws, with a black head on a white body and a ridiculous black spot atthe other end of him, he provokes, when he walks abroad, smilesnot altogether unkind. Grotesque and engaging in the whole of hisappearance, his usual attitudes are meek, but his temperament disclosesitself unexpectedly pugnacious in the presence of his kind. As he liesin the firelight, his head well up, and a fixed, far away gaze directedat the shadows of the room, he achieves a striking nobility of pose inthe calm consciousness of an unstained life. He has brought up one baby, and now, after seeing his first charge off to school, he is bringing upanother with the same conscientious devotion, but with a more deliberategravity of manner, the sign of greater wisdom and riper experience, but also of rheumatism, I fear. From the morning bath to the eveningceremonies of the cot, you attend the little two-legged creature of youradoption, being yourself treated in the exercise of your duties withevery possible regard, with infinite consideration, by every person inthe house--even as I myself am treated; only you deserve it more. 

The general's daughter would tell you that it must be "perfectlydelightful. "

Aha! old dog. She never heard you yelp with acute pain (it's that poorleft ear) the while, with incredible self-command, you preserve a rigidimmobility for fear of overturning the little two-legged creature. Shehas never seen your resigned smile when the little two-legged creature, interrogated, sternly, "What are you doing to the good dog?" answers, with a wide, innocent stare: "Nothing. Only loving him, mamma dear!"

The general's daughter does not know the secret terms of self-imposedtasks, good dog, the pain that may lurk in the very rewards of rigidself-command. But we have lived together many years. We have grownolder, too; and though our work is not quite done yet we may indulge nowand then in a little introspection before the fire--meditate on the artof bringing up babies and on the perfect delight of writing tales whereso many lives come and go at the cost of one which slips imperceptiblyaway. 

VI

In the retrospect of a life which had, besides its preliminary stageof childhood and early youth, two distinct developments, and even twodistinct elements, such as earth and water, for its successive scenes, a certain amount of naiveness is unavoidable. I am conscious of it inthese pages. This remark is put forward in no apologetic spirit. Asyears go by and the number of pages grows steadily, the feeling growsupon one, too, that one can write only for friends. Then why should oneput them to the necessity of protesting (as a friend would do) that noapology is necessary, or put, perchance, into their heads the doubt ofone's discretion? So much as to the care due to those friends whom aword here, a line there, a fortunate page of just feeling in the rightplace, some happy simplicity, or even some lucky subtlety, has drawnfrom the great multitude of fellow beings even as a fish is drawn fromthe depths of the sea. Fishing is notoriously (I am talking now of thedeep sea) a matter of luck. As to one's enemies, they will take care ofthemselves. 

There is a gentleman, for instance, who, metaphorically speaking, jumpsupon me with both feet. This image has no grace, but it is exceedinglyapt to the occasion--to the several occasions. I don't know preciselyhow long he has been indulging in that intermittent exercise, whoseseasons are ruled by the custom of the publishing trade. Somebodypointed him out (in printed shape, of course) to my attention some timeago, and straightway I experienced a sort of reluctant affection forthat robust man. He leaves not a shred of my substance untrodden: forthe writer's substance is his writing; the rest of him is but a vainshadow, cherished or hated on uncritical grounds. Not a shred! Yet thesentiment owned to is not a freak of affectation or perversity. It hasa deeper, and, I venture to think, a more estimable origin than thecaprice of emotional lawlessness. It is, indeed, lawful, in so muchthat it is given (reluctantly) for a consideration, for severalconsiderations. There is that robustness, for instance, so often thesign of good moral balance. That's a consideration. It is not, indeed, pleasant to be stamped upon, but the very thoroughness of the operation, implying not only a careful reading, but some real insight into workwhose qualities and defects, whatever they may be, are not so much onthe surface, is something to be thankful for in view of the fact that itmay happen to one's work to be condemned without being read at all. Thisis the most fatuous adventure that can well happen to a writer venturinghis soul among criticisms. It can do one no harm, of course, but itis disagreeable. It is disagreeable in the same way as discoveringa three-card-trick man among a decent lot of folk in a third-classcompartment. The open impudence of the whole transaction, appealinginsidiously to the folly and credulity of man kind, the brazen, shameless patter, proclaiming the fraud openly while insisting on thefairness of the game, give one a feeling of sickening disgust. Thehonest violence of a plain man playing a fair game fairly--even if hemeans to knock you over--may appear shocking, but it remains within thepale of decency. Damaging as it may be, it is in no sense offensive. Onemay well feel some regard for honesty, even if practised upon one's ownvile body. But it is very obvious that an enemy of that sort will not bestayed by explanations or placated by apologies. Were I to advance theplea of youth in excuse of the naiveness to be found in these pages, hewould be likely to say "Bosh!" in a column and a half of fierce print. Yet a writer is no older than his first published book, and, notwithstanding the vain appearances of decay which attend us in thistransitory life, I stand here with the wreath of only fifteen shortsummers on my brow. 

With the remark, then, that at such tender age some naiveness of feelingand expression is excusable, I proceed to admit that, upon the whole, my previous state of existence was not a good equipment for a literarylife. Perhaps I should not have used the word literary. That wordpresupposes an intimacy of acquaintance with letters, a turn of mind, and a manner of feeling to which I dare lay no claim. I only loveletters; but the love of letters does not make a literary man, any morethan the love of the sea makes a seaman. And it is very possible, too, that I love the letters in the same way a literary man may love thesea he looks at from the shore--a scene of great endeavour and of greatachievements changing the face of the world, the great open way to allsorts of undiscovered countries. No, perhaps I had better say that thelife at sea--and I don't mean a mere taste of it, but a good broad spanof years, something that really counts as real service--is not, upon thewhole, a good equipment for a writing life. God forbid, though, that Ishould be thought of as denying my masters of the quarter-deck. I am notcapable of that sort of apostasy. I have confessed my attitude of pietytoward their shades in three or four tales, and if any man on earth morethan another needs to be true to himself as he hopes to be saved, it iscertainly the writer of fiction. 

What I meant to say, simply, is that the quarter-deck training does notprepare one sufficiently for the reception of literary criticism. Onlythat, and no more. But this defect is not without gravity. If it bepermissible to twist, invert, adapt (and spoil) Mr. Anatole France'sdefinition of a good critic, then let us say that the good author is hewho contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventuresof his soul among criticisms. Far be from me the intention to mislead anattentive public into the belief that there is no criticism at sea. Thatwould be dishonest, and even impolite. Ever thing can be found atsea, according to the spirit of your quest--strife, peace, romance, naturalism of the most pronounced kind, ideals, boredom, disgust, inspiration--and every conceivable opportunity, including theopportunity to make a fool of yourself, exactly as in the pursuit ofliterature. But the quarter-deck criticism is somewhat different fromliterary criticism. This much they have in common, that before the oneand the other the answering back, as a general rule, does not pay. 

Yes, you find criticism at sea, and even appreciation--I tell youeverything is to be found on salt water--criticism generally impromptu, and always _viva voce_, which is the outward, obvious difference from theliterary operation of that kind, with consequent freshness and vigourwhich may be lacking in the printed word. With appreciation, which comesat the end, when the critic and the criticised are about to part, itis otherwise. The sea appreciation of one's humble talents has thepermanency of the written word, seldom the charm of variety, is formalin its phrasing. There the literary master has the superiority, thoughhe, too, can in effect but say--and often says it in the very phrase--"Ican highly recommend. " Only usually he uses the word "We, " there beingsome occult virtue in the first person plural which makes it speciallyfit for critical and royal declarations. I have a small handful of thesesea appreciations, signed by various masters, yellowing slowly in mywriting-table's left hand drawer, rustling under my reverent touch, likea handful of dry leaves plucked for a tender memento from the tree ofknowledge. Strange! It seems that it is for these few bits of paper, headed by the names of a few Scots and English shipmasters, that I havefaced the astonished indignations, the mockeries, and the reproaches ofa sort hard to bear for a boy of fifteen; that I have been charged withthe want of patriotism, the want of sense, and the want of heart, too;that I went through agonies of self-conflict and shed secret tears nota few, and had the beauties of the Furca Pass spoiled for me, and havebeen called an "incorrigible Don Quixote, " in allusion to the book-bornmadness of the knight. For that spoil! They rustle, those bits ofpaper--some dozen of them in all. In that faint, ghostly sound therelive the memories of twenty years, the voices of rough men now nomore, the strong voice of the everlasting winds, and the whisper of amysterious spell, the murmur of the great sea, which must have somehowreached my inland cradle and entered my unconscious ear, like thatformula of Mohammedan faith the Mussulman father whispers into the earof his new-born infant, making him one of the faithful almost with hisfirst breath. I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but Iknow I have been a very faithful one. And, after all, there is thathandful of "characters" from various ships to prove that all these yearshave not been altogether a dream. There they are, brief, and monotonousin tone, but as suggestive bits of writing to me as any inspired page tobe found in literature. But then, you see, I have been called romantic. Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I havebeen called a realist, also. And as that charge, too, can be made out, let us try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change. With thisend in view, I will confide to you coyly, and only because there isno one about to see my blushes by the light of the midnight lamp, thatthese suggestive bits of quarter-deck appreciation, one and all, containthe words "strictly sober. "

Did I overhear a civil murmur, "That's very gratifying, to be sure?"Well, yes, it is gratifying--thank you. It is at least as gratifying tobe certified sober as to be certified romantic, though such certificateswould not qualify one for the secretaryship of a temperance associationor for the post of official troubadour to some lordly democraticinstitution such as the London County Council, for instance. The aboveprosaic reflection is put down here only in order to prove the generalsobriety of my judgment in mundane affairs. I make a point of it becausea couple of years ago, a certain short story of mine being published ina French translation, a Parisian critic--I am almost certain it was M. Gustave Kahn in the "Gil Blas"--giving me a short notice, summed uphis rapid impression of the writer's quality in the words _un puissantreveur_. So be it! Who could cavil at the words of a friendly reader? Yetperhaps not such an unconditional dreamer as all that. I will make boldto say that neither at sea nor ashore have I ever lost the sense ofresponsibility. There is more than one sort of intoxication. Even beforethe most seductive reveries I have remained mindful of that sobriety ofinterior life, that asceticism of sentiment, in which alone the nakedform of truth, such as one conceives it, such as one feels it, can berendered without shame. It is but a maudlin and indecent verity thatcomes out through the strength of wine. I have tried to be a soberworker all my life--all my two lives. I did so from taste, no doubt, having an instinctive horror of losing my sense of full self-possession, but also from artistic conviction. Yet there are so many pitfalls oneach side of the true path that, having gone some way, and feeling alittle battered and weary, as a middle-aged traveller will from themere daily difficulties of the march, I ask myself whether I have keptalways, always faithful to that sobriety where in there is power andtruth and peace. 

As to my sea sobriety, that is quite properly certified under thesign-manual of several trustworthy shipmasters of some standing in theirtime. I seem to hear your polite murmur that "Surely this might havebeen taken for granted. " Well, no. It might not have been. That Augustacademical body, the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, takesnothing for granted in the granting of its learned degrees. By itsregulations issued under the first Merchant Shipping Act, the very word_sober_ must be written, or a whole sackful, a ton, a mountain of themost enthusiastic appreciation will avail you nothing. The door of theexamination rooms shall remain closed to your tears and entreaties. The most fanatical advocate of temperance could not be more pitilesslyfierce in his rectitude than the Marine Department of the Board ofTrade. As I have been face to face at various times with all theexaminers of the Port of London in my generation, there can be no doubtas to the force and the continuity of my abstemiousness. Three of themwere examiners in seamanship, and it was my fate to be delivered intothe hands of each of them at proper intervals of sea service. The firstof all, tall, spare, with a perfectly white head and mustache, a quiet, kindly manner, and an air of benign intelligence, must, I am forcedto conclude, have been unfavourably impressed by something in myappearance. His old, thin hands loosely clasped resting on his crossedlegs, he began by an elementary question, in a mild voice, and wenton, went on. . . . It lasted for hours, for hours. Had I been a strangemicrobe with potentialities of deadly mischief to the Merchant Service Icould not have been submitted to a more microscopic examination. Greatlyreassured by his apparent benevolence, I had been at first very alert inmy answers. But at length the feeling of my brain getting addled creptupon me. And still the passionless process went on, with a sense ofuntold ages having been spent already on mere preliminaries. Then I gotfrightened. I was not frightened of being plucked; that eventuality didnot even present itself to my mind. It was something much more seriousand weird. "This ancient person, " I said to myself, terrified, "isso near his grave that he must have lost all notion of time. He isconsidering this examination in terms of eternity. It is all very wellfor him. His race is run. But I may find myself coming out of thisroom into the world of men a stranger, friendless, forgotten by my verylandlady, even were I able after this endless experience to rememberthe way to my hired home. " This statement is not so much of a verbalexaggeration as may be supposed. Some very queer thoughts passed throughmy head while I was considering my answers; thoughts which had nothingto do with seamanship, nor yet with anything reasonable known to thisearth. I verily believe that at times I was light-headed in a sort oflanguid way. At last there fell a silence, and that, too, seemed tolast for ages, while, bending over his desk, the examiner wrote out mypass-slip slowly with a noiseless pen. He extended the scrap of paper tome without a word, inclined his white head gravely to my partingbow. . . . 

When I got out of the room I felt limply flat, like a squeezed lemon, and the doorkeeper in his glass cage, where I stopped to get my hat andtip him a shilling, said:

"Well! I thought you were never coming out. "

"How long have I been in there?" I asked, faintly. 

He pulled out his watch. 

"He kept you, sir, just under three hours. I don't think this everhappened with any of the gentlemen before. "

It was only when I got out of the building that I began to walk onair. And the human animal being averse from change and timid before theunknown, I said to myself that I really would not mind being examinedby the same man on a future occasion. But when the time of ordealcame round again the doorkeeper let me into another room, with thenow familiar paraphernalia of models of ships and tackle, a board forsignals on the wall, a big, long table covered with official formsand having an unrigged mast fixed to the edge. The solitary tenantwas unknown to me by sight, though not by reputation, which was simplyexecrable. Short and sturdy, as far as I could judge, clad in an oldbrown morning-suit, he sat leaning on his elbow, his hand shading hiseyes, and half averted from the chair I was to occupy on the other sideof the table. He was motionless, mysterious, remote, enigmatical, withsomething mournful, too, in the pose, like that statue of Giugliano (Ithink) de Medici shading his face on the tomb by Michael Angelo, though, of course, he was far, far from being beautiful. He began by trying tomake me talk nonsense. But I had been warned of that fiendish trait, andcontradicted him with great assurance. After a while he left off. Sofar good. But his immobility, the thick elbow on the table, theabrupt, unhappy voice, the shaded and averted face grew more and moreimpressive. He kept inscrutably silent for a moment, and then, placingme in a ship of a certain size, at sea, under conditions of weather, season, locality, etc. --all very clear and precise--ordered me toexecute a certain manoeuvre. Before I was half through with it he didsome material damage to the ship. Directly I had grappled with thedifficulty he caused another to present itself, and when that, too, was met he stuck another ship before me, creating a very dangeroussituation. I felt slightly outraged by this ingenuity in piling troubleupon a man. 

"I wouldn't have got into that mess, " I suggested, mildly. "I could haveseen that ship before. "

He never stirred the least bit. 

"No, you couldn't. The weather's thick. "

"Oh! I didn't know, " I apologized blankly. 

I suppose that after all I managed to stave off the smash withsufficient approach to verisimilitude, and the ghastly business went on. You must understand that the scheme of the test he was applying to mewas, I gathered, a homeward passage--the sort of passage I would notwish to my bitterest enemy. That imaginary ship seemed to labour undera most comprehensive curse. It's no use enlarging on these never-endingmisfortunes; suffice it to say that long before the end I would havewelcomed with gratitude an opportunity to exchange into the FlyingDutchman. Finally he shoved me into the North Sea (I suppose) andprovided me with a lee shore with outlying sand-banks--the Dutch coast, presumably. Distance, eight miles. The evidence of such implacableanimosity deprived me of speech for quite half a minute. 

"Well, " he said--for our pace had been very smart, indeed, till then. 

"I will have to think a little, sir. "

"Doesn't look as if there were much time to think, " he muttered, sardonically, from under his hand. 

"No, sir, " I said, with some warmth. "Not on board a ship, I could see. But so many accidents have happened that I really can't remember whatthere's left for me to work with. "

Still half averted, and with his eyes concealed, he made unexpectedly agrunting remark. 

"You've done very well. "

"Have I the two anchors at the bow, sir?" I asked. 

"Yes. "

I prepared myself then, as a last hope for the ship, to let them bothgo in the most effectual manner, when his infernal system of testingresourcefulness came into play again. 

"But there's only one cable. You've lost the other. "

It was exasperating. 

"Then I would back them, if I could, and tail the heaviest hawser onboard on the end of the chain before letting go, and if she parted fromthat, which is quite likely, I would just do nothing. She would have togo. "

"Nothing more to do, eh?"

"No, sir. I could do no more. "

He gave a bitter half-laugh. 

"You could always say your prayers. "

He got up, stretched himself, and yawned slightly. It was a sallow, strong, unamiable face. He put me, in a surly, bored fashion, throughthe usual questions as to lights and signals, and I escaped from theroom thank fully--passed! Forty minutes! And again I walked on airalong Tower Hill, where so many good men had lost their heads because, Isuppose, they were not resourceful enough to save them. And in my heartof hearts I had no objection to meeting that examiner once more when thethird and last ordeal became due in another year or so. I even hopedI should. I knew the worst of him now, and forty minutes is not anunreasonable time. Yes, I distinctly hoped. . . . 

But not a bit of it. When I presented my self to be examined for masterthe examiner who received me was short, plump, with a round, soft facein gray, fluffy whiskers, and fresh, loquacious lips. 

He commenced operations with an easy going "Let's see. H'm. Suppose youtell me all you know of charter-parties. " He kept it up in that styleall through, wandering off in the shape of comment into bits out of hisown life, then pulling himself up short and returning to the business inhand. It was very interesting. "What's your idea of a jury-rudder now?"he queried, suddenly, at the end of an instructive anecdote bearing upona point of stowage. 

I warned him that I had no experience of a lost rudder at sea, and gavehim two classical examples of makeshifts out of a text-book. In exchangehe described to me a jury-rudder he had invented himself years before, when in command of a three-thousand-ton steamer. It was, I declare, thecleverest contrivance imaginable. "May be of use to you some day, "he concluded. "You will go into steam presently. Everybody goes intosteam. "

There he was wrong. I never went into steam--not really. If I only livelong enough I shall become a bizarre relic of a dead barbarism, a sortof monstrous antiquity, the only seaman of the dark ages who had nevergone into steam--not really. 

Before the examination was over he imparted to me a few interestingdetails of the transport service in the time of the Crimean War. 

"The use of wire rigging became general about that time, too, " heobserved. "I was a very young master then. That was before you wereborn. "

"Yes, sir. I am of the year of 1857. "

"The Mutiny year, " he commented, as if to himself, adding in a loudertone that his ship happened then to be in the Gulf of Bengal, employedunder a government charter. 

Clearly the transport service had been the making of this examiner, whoso unexpectedly had given me an insight into his existence, awakening inme the sense of the continuity of that sea life into which I had steppedfrom outside; giving a touch of human intimacy to the machinery ofofficial relations. I felt adopted. His experience was for me, too, asthough he had been an ancestor. 

Writing my long name (it has twelve letters) with laborious care on theslip of blue paper, he remarked:

"You are of Polish extraction. "

"Born there, sir. "

He laid down the pen and leaned back to look at me as it were for thefirst time. 

"Not many of your nationality in our service, I should think. I neverremember meeting one either before or after I left the sea. Don'tremember ever hearing of one. An inland people, aren't you?"

I said yes--very much so. We were remote from the sea not only bysituation, but also from a complete absence of indirect association, notbeing a commercial nation at all, but purely agricultural. He made thenthe quaint reflection that it was "a long way for me to come out tobegin a sea life"; as if sea life were not precisely a life in which onegoes a long way from home. 

I told him, smiling, that no doubt I could have found a ship much nearermy native place, but I had thought to myself that if I was to be aseaman, then I would be a British seaman and no other. It was a matterof deliberate choice. 

He nodded slightly at that; and, as he kept on looking at meinterrogatively, I enlarged a little, confessing that I had spent alittle time on the way in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies. Idid not want to present myself to the British Merchant Service in analtogether green state. It was no use telling him that my mysteriousvocation was so strong that my very wild oats had to be sown at sea. It was the exact truth, but he would not have understood the somewhatexceptional psychology of my sea-going, I fear. 

"I suppose you've never come across one of your countrymen at sea. Haveyou, now?"

I admitted I never had. The examiner had given himself up to the spiritof gossiping idleness. For myself, I was in no haste to leave that room. Not in the least. The era of examinations was over. I would neveragain see that friendly man who was a professional ancestor, a sort ofgrandfather in the craft. Moreover, I had to wait till he dismissed me, and of that there was no sign. As he remained silent, looking at me, Iadded:

"But I have heard of one, some years ago. He seems to have been a boyserving his time on board a Liverpool ship, if I am not mistaken. "

"What was his name?"

I told him. 

"How did you say that?" he asked, puckering up his eyes at the uncouthsound. 

I repeated the name very distinctly. 

"How do you spell it?"

I told him. He moved his head at the impracticable nature of that name, and observed:

"It's quite as long as your own--isn't it?"

There was no hurry. I had passed for master, and I had all the rest ofmy life before me to make the best of it. That seemed a long time. Iwent leisurely through a small mental calculation, and said:

"Not quite. Shorter by two letters, sir. "

"Is it?" The examiner pushed the signed blue slip across the table tome, and rose from his chair. Somehow this seemed a very abrupt ending ofour relations, and I felt almost sorry to part from that excellent man, who was master of a ship before the whisper of the sea had reached mycradle. He offered me his hand and wished me well. He even made a fewsteps toward the door with me, and ended with good-natured advice. 

"I don't know what may be your plans, but you ought to go into steam. When a man has got his master's certificate it's the proper time. If Iwere you I would go into steam. "

I thanked him, and shut the door behind me definitely on the era ofexaminations. But that time I did not walk on air, as on the first twooccasions. I walked across the hill of many beheadings with measuredsteps. It was a fact, I said to myself, that I was now a British mastermariner beyond a doubt. It was not that I had an exaggerated sense ofthat very modest achievement, with which, however, luck, opportunity, or any extraneous influence could have had nothing to do. Thatfact, satisfactory and obscure in itself, had for me a certain idealsignificance. It was an answer to certain outspoken scepticism and evento some not very kind aspersions. I had vindicated myself from what hadbeen cried upon as a stupid obstinacy or a fantastic caprice. I don'tmean to say that a whole country had been convulsed by my desire to goto sea. But for a boy between fifteen and sixteen, sensitive enough, in all conscience, the commotion of his little world had seemed a veryconsiderable thing indeed. So considerable that, absurdly enough, theechoes of it linger to this day. I catch myself in hours of solitude andretrospect meeting arguments and charges made thirty-five years ago byvoices now forever still; finding things to say that an assailed boycould not have found, simply because of the mysteriousness of hisimpulses to himself. I understood no more than the people who calledupon me to explain myself. There was no precedent. I verily believe minewas the only case of a boy of my nationality and antecedents takinga, so to speak, standing jump out of his racial surroundings andassociations. For you must understand that there was no idea of any sortof "career" in my call. Of Russia or Germany there could be no question. The nationality, the antecedents, made it impossible. The feelingagainst the Austrian service was not so strong, and I dare say therewould have been no difficulty in finding my way into the Naval School atPola. It would have meant six months' extra grinding at German, perhaps;but I was not past the age of admission, and in other respects I waswell qualified. This expedient to palliate my folly was thought of--butnot by me. I must admit that in that respect my negative was acceptedat once. That order of feeling was comprehensible enough to the mostinimical of my critics. I was not called upon to offer explanations;but the truth is that what I had in view was not a naval career, butthe sea. There seemed no way open to it but through France. I had thelanguage, at any rate, and of all the countries in Europe it is withFrance that Poland has most connection. There were some facilities forhaving me a little looked after, at first. Letters were being written, answers were being received, arrangements were being made for mydeparture for Marseilles, where an excellent fellow called Solary, got at in a round about fashion through various French channels, hadpromised good-naturedly to put le jeune homme in the way of getting adecent ship for his first start if he really wanted a taste of ce metierde chien. 

I watched all these preparations gratefully, and kept my own counsel. But what I told the last of my examiners was perfectly true. Alreadythe determined resolve that "if a seaman, then an English seaman" wasformulated in my head, though, of course, in the Polish language. I didnot know six words of English, and I was astute enough to understandthat it was much better to say nothing of my purpose. As it was I wasalready looked upon as partly insane, at least by the more distantacquaintances. The principal thing was to get away. I put my trust inthe good-natured Solary's very civil letter to my uncle, though I wasshocked a little by the phrase about the metier de chien. 

This Solary (Baptistin), when I beheld him in the flesh, turned out aquite young man, very good-looking, with a fine black, short beard, afresh complexion, and soft, merry black eyes. He was as jovial and goodnatured as any boy could desire. I was still asleep in my room in amodest hotel near the quays of the old port, after the fatigues ofthe journey via Vienna, Zurich, Lyons, when he burst in, flinging theshutters open to the sun of Provence and chiding me boisterously forlying abed. How pleasantly he startled me by his noisy objurgations tobe up and off instantly for a "three years' campaign in the South Seas!"O magic words! "_Une campagne de trois ans dans les mers du sud_"--thatis the French for a three years' deep-water voyage. 

He gave me a delightful waking, and his friendliness was unwearied;but I fear he did not enter upon the quest for a ship for me in a verysolemn spirit. He had been at sea himself, but had left off at the ageof twenty-five, finding he could earn his living on shore in a much moreagreeable manner. He was related to an incredible number of Marseilleswell-to-do families of a certain class. One of his uncles was aship-broker of good standing, with a large connection among Englishships; other relatives of his dealt in ships' stores, owned sail-lofts, sold chains and anchors, were master-stevedores, calkers, shipwrights. 

His grandfather (I think) was a dignitary of a kind, the Syndic of thePilots. I made acquaintances among these people, but mainly among thepilots. The very first whole day I ever spent on salt water was byinvitation, in a big half-decked pilot-boat, cruising under close reefson the lookout, in misty, blowing weather, for the sails of ships andthe smoke of steamers rising out there, beyond the slim and tall Planierlighthouse cutting the line of the wind-swept horizon with a whiteperpendicular stroke. They were hospitable souls, these sturdy Provencalseamen. Under the general designation of le petit ami de Baptistin Iwas made the guest of the corporation of pilots, and had the freedom oftheir boats night or day. And many a day and a night, too, did I spendcruising with these rough, kindly men, under whose auspices my intimacywith the sea began. Many a time "the little friend of Baptistin" had thehooded cloak of the Mediterranean sailor thrown over him by their honesthands while dodging at night under the lee of Chateau daft on the watchfor the lights of ships. Their sea tanned faces, whiskered or shaved, lean or full, with the intent, wrinkled sea eyes of the pilot breed, andhere and there a thin gold hoop at the lobe of a hairy ear, bent over mysea infancy. The first operation of seamanship I had an opportunity ofobserving was the boarding of ships at sea, at all times, in all statesof the weather. They gave it to me to the full. And I have been invitedto sit in more than one tall, dark house of the old town at theirhospitable board, had the bouillabaisse ladled out into a thick plateby their high-voiced, broad-browed wives, talked to theirdaughters--thick-set girls, with pure profiles, glorious masses of blackhair arranged with complicated art, dark eyes, and dazzlingly whiteteeth. 

I had also other acquaintances of quite a different sort. One of them, Madame Delestang, an imperious, handsome lady in a statuesque style, would carry me off now and then on the front seat of her carriage to thePrado, at the hour of fashionable airing. She belonged to one of the oldaristocratic families in the south. In her haughty weariness she used tomake me think of Lady Dedlock in Dickens's "Bleak House, " a work of themaster for which I have such an admiration, or rather such an intenseand unreasoning affection, dating from the days of my childhood, thatits very weaknesses are more precious to me than the strength of othermen's work. I have read it innumerable times, both in Polish andin English; I have read it only the other day, and, by a not verysurprising inversion, the Lady Dedlock of the book reminded me stronglyof the "belle Madame Delestang. "

Her husband (as I sat facing them both), with his thin, bony nose and aperfectly bloodless, narrow physiognomy clamped together, as it were, by short, formal side whiskers, had nothing of Sir Leicester Dedlock's"grand air" and courtly solemnity. He belonged to the haute bourgeoisieonly, and was a banker, with whom a modest credit had been opened for myneeds. He was such an ardent--no, such a frozen-up, mummified Royalistthat he used in current conversation turns of speech contemporary, I should say, with the good Henri Quatre; and when talking of moneymatters, reckoned not in francs, like the common, godless herd ofpost-Revolutionary Frenchmen, but in obsolete and forgotten ecus--ecusof all money units in the world!--as though Louis Quatorze were stillpromenading in royal splendour the gardens of Versailles, and Monsieurde Colbert busy with the direction of maritime affairs. You must admitthat in a banker of the nineteenth century it was a quaint idiosyncrasy. Luckily, in the counting-house (it occupied part of the ground floor ofthe Delestang town residence, in a silent, shady street) the accountswere kept in modern money, so that I never had any difficulty inmaking my wants known to the grave, low-voiced, decorous, Legitimist(I suppose) clerks, sitting in the perpetual gloom of heavily barredwindows behind the sombre, ancient counters, beneath lofty ceilings withheavily molded cornices. I always felt, on going out, as though Ihad been in the temple of some very dignified but completely temporalreligion. And it was generally on these occasions that under the greatcarriage gateway Lady Ded--I mean Madame Delestang--catching sight of myraised hat, would beckon me with an amiable imperiousness to the side ofthe carriage, and suggest with an air of amused nonchalance, "_Venez doncfaire un tour avec nous_, " to which the husband would add an encouraging"_C'est ca. Allons, montez, jeune homme_. " He questioned me some times, significantly but with perfect tact and delicacy, as to the way Iemployed my time, and never failed to express the hope that I wroteregularly to my "honoured uncle. " I made no secret of the way I employedmy time, and I rather fancy that my artless tales of the pilots and soon entertained Madame Delestang so far as that ineffable woman couldbe entertained by the prattle of a youngster very full of his newexperience among strange men and strange sensations. She expressed noopinions, and talked to me very little; yet her portrait hangs in thegallery of my intimate memories, fixed there by a short and fleetingepisode. One day, after putting me down at the corner of a street, she offered me her hand, and detained me, by a slight pressure, for amoment. While the husband sat motionless and looking straight beforehim, she leaned forward in the carriage to say, with just a shade ofwarning in her leisurely tone: "_Il faut, cependant, faire attention ane pas gater sa vie_. " I had never seen her face so close to mine before. She made my heart beat and caused me to remain thoughtful for a wholeevening. Certainly one must, after all, take care not to spoil one'slife. But she did not know--nobody could know--how impossible thatdanger seemed to me. 

VII

Can the transports of first love be calmed, checked, turned to a coldsuspicion of the future by a grave quotation from a work on politicaleconomy? I ask--is it conceivable? Is it possible? Would it be right?With my feet on the very shores of the sea and about to embrace myblue-eyed dream, what could a good-natured warning as to spoiling one'slife mean to my youthful passion? It was the most unexpected and thelast, too, of the many warnings I had received. It sounded to me verybizarre--and, uttered as it was in the very presence of my enchantress, like the voice of folly, the voice of ignorance. But I was not socallous or so stupid as not to recognize there also the voice ofkindness. And then the vagueness of the warning--because what can be themeaning of the phrase: to spoil one's life?--arrested one's attentionby its air of wise profundity. At any rate, as I have said before, the words of la belle Madame Delestang made me thoughtful for a wholeevening. I tried to understand and tried in vain, not having any notionof life as an enterprise that could be mi managed. But I left off beingthoughtful shortly before midnight, at which hour, haunted by no ghostsof the past and by no visions of the future, I walked down the quay ofthe Vieux Port to join the pilot-boat of my friends. I knew where shewould be waiting for her crew, in the little bit of a canal behind thefort at the entrance of the harbour. The deserted quays looked verywhite and dry in the moonlight, and as if frostbound in the sharp airof that December night. A prowler or two slunk by noiselessly; acustom-house guard, soldier-like, a sword by his side, paced close underthe bowsprits of the long row of ships moored bows on opposite the long, slightly curved, continuous flat wall of the tall houses that seemedto be one immense abandoned building with innumerable windows shutteredclosely. Only here and there a small, dingy cafe for sailors cast ayellow gleam on the bluish sheen of the flagstones. Passing by, oneheard a deep murmur of voices inside--nothing more. How quiet everythingwas at the end of the quays on the last night on which I went out fora service cruise as a guest of the Marseilles pilots! Not a footstep, except my own, not a sigh, not a whispering echo of the usual revelrygoing on in the narrow, unspeakable lanes of the Old Town reached myear--and suddenly, with a terrific jingling rattle of iron and glass, the omnibus of the Jolliette on its last journey swung around the cornerof the dead wall which faces across the paved road the characteristicangular mass of the Fort St. Jean. Three horses trotted abreast, withthe clatter of hoofs on the granite setts, and the yellow, uproariousmachine jolted violently behind them, fantastic, lighted up, perfectlyempty, and with the driver apparently asleep on his swaying perch abovethat amazing racket. I flattened myself against the wall and gasped. Itwas a stunning experience. Then after staggering on a few paces inthe shadow of the fort, casting a darkness more intense than that of aclouded night upon the canal, I saw the tiny light of a lantern standingon the quay, and became aware of muffled figures making toward it fromvarious directions. Pilots of the Third Company hastening to embark. Too sleepy to be talkative, they step on board in silence. But a few lowgrunts and an enormous yawn are heard. Somebody even ejaculates: "_Ah!Coquin de sort!_" and sighs wearily at his hard fate. 

The patron of the Third Company (there were five companies of pilotsat that time, I believe) is the brother-in-law of my friend Solary(Baptistin), a broad-shouldered, deep chested man of forty, with a keen, frank glance which always seeks your eyes. 

He greets me by a low, hearty "_He, l'ami. Comment va_?" With his clippedmustache and massive open face, energetic and at the same time placidin expression, he is a fine specimen of the southerner of the calmtype. For there is such a type in which the volatile southern passionis transmuted into solid force. He is fair, but no one could mistake himfor a man of the north even by the dim gleam of the lantern standing onthe quay. He is worth a dozen of your ordinary Normans or Bretons, butthen, in the whole immense sweep of the Mediterranean shores, you couldnot find half a dozen men of his stamp. 

Standing by the tiller, he pulls out his watch from under a thick jacketand bends his head over it in the light cast into the boat. Time's up. His pleasant voice commands, in a quiet undertone, "_Larguez_. " A suddenlyprojected arm snatches the lantern off the quay--and, warped along bya line at first, then with the regular tug of four heavy sweeps inthe bow, the big half-decked boat full of men glides out of the black, breathless shadow of the fort. The open water of the avant-port glittersunder the moon as if sown over with millions of sequins, and the longwhite break water shines like a thick bar of solid silver. With a quickrattle of blocks and one single silky swish, the sail is filled by alittle breeze keen enough to have come straight down from the frozenmoon, and the boat, after the clatter of the hauled-in sweeps, seemsto stand at rest, surrounded by a mysterious whispering so faint andunearthly that it may be the rustling of the brilliant, overpoweringmoon rays breaking like a rain-shower upon the hard, smooth, shadowlesssea. 

I may well remember that last night spent with the pilots of the ThirdCompany. I have known the spell of moonlight since, on various seasand coasts--coasts of forests, of rocks, of sand dunes--but no magic soperfect in its revelation of unsuspected character, as though one wereallowed to look upon the mystic nature of material things. For hours Isuppose no word was spoken in that boat. The pilots, seated in two rowsfacing each other, dozed, with their arms folded and their chins restingupon their breasts. They displayed a great variety of caps: cloth, wool, leather, peaks, ear-flaps, tassels, with a picturesque round beret ortwo pulled down over the brows; and one grandfather, with a shaved, bonyface and a great beak of a nose, had a cloak with a hood which made himlook in our midst like a cowled monk being carried off goodness knowswhere by that silent company of seamen--quiet enough to be dead. 

My fingers itched for the tiller, and in due course my friend, thepatron, surrendered it to me in the same spirit in which the familycoachman lets a boy hold the reins on an easy bit of road. 

There was a great solitude around us; the islets ahead, Monte Cristo andthe Chateau daft in full light, seemed to float toward us--so steady, soimperceptible was the progress of our boat. "Keep her in the furrowof the moon, " the patron directed me, in a quiet murmur, sitting downponderously in the stern-sheets and reaching for his pipe. 

The pilot station in weather like this was only a mile or two to thewestward of the islets; and presently, as we approached the spot, theboat we were going to relieve swam into our view suddenly, on her wayhome, cutting black and sinister into the wake of the moon under asable wing, while to them our sail must have been a vision of whiteand dazzling radiance. Without altering the course a hair's breadth weslipped by each other within an oar's length. A drawling, sardonic hailcame out of her. Instantly, as if by magic, our dozing pilots got ontheir feet in a body. An incredible babel of bantering shouts burst out, a jocular, passionate, voluble chatter, which lasted till the boats werestern to stern, theirs all bright now, and, with a shining sail to oureyes, we turned all black to their vision, and drew away from them undera sable wing. That extraordinary uproar died away almost as suddenlyas it had begun; first one had enough of it and sat down, then another, then three or four together; and when all had left off with muttersand growling half-laughs the sound of hearty chuckling became audible, persistent, unnoticed. The cowled grandfather was very much entertainedsomewhere within his hood. 

He had not joined in the shouting of jokes, neither had he moved theleast bit. He had remained quietly in his place against the foot of themast. I had been given to understand long before that he had the ratingof a second-class able seaman (matelot leger) in the fleet which sailedfrom Toulon for the conquest of Algeria in the year of grace 1830. And, indeed, I had seen and examined one of the buttons of his old brown, patched coat, the only brass button of the miscellaneous lot, flat andthin, with the words Equipages de ligne engraved on it. That sort ofbutton, I believe, went out with the last of the French Bourbons. 

"I preserved it from the time of my navy service, " he explained, noddingrapidly his frail, vulture-like head. It was not very likely that he hadpicked up that relic in the street. He looked certainly old enough tohave fought at Trafalgar--or, at any rate, to have played his littlepart there as a powder monkey. Shortly after we had been introduced hehad informed me in a Franco-Provencal jargon, mumbling tremulously withhis toothless jaws, that when he was a "shaver no higher than that" hehad seen the Emperor Napoleon returning from Elba. It was at night, he narrated vaguely, without animation, at a spot between Frejus andAntibes, in the open country. A big fire had been lit at the side of thecross-roads. The population from several villages had collected there, old and young--down to the very children in arms, because the women hadrefused to stay at home. Tall soldiers wearing high, hairy caps stoodin a circle, facing the people silently, and their stern eyes and bigmustaches were enough to make everybody keep at a distance. He, "beingan impudent little shaver, " wriggled out of the crowd, creeping on hishands and knees as near as he dared to the grenadiers' legs, and peepingthrough discovered, standing perfectly still in the light of the fire, "a little fat fellow in a three-cornered hat, buttoned up in a longstraight coat, with a big, pale face inclined on one shoulder, lookingsomething like a priest. His hands were clasped behind his back. . . . It appears that this was the Emperor, " the ancient commented, with afaint sigh. He was staring from the ground with all his might, when"my poor father, " who had been searching for his boy frantically everywhere, pounced upon him and hauled him away by the ear. 

The tale seems an authentic recollection. He related it to me manytimes, using the very same words. The grandfather honoured me by aspecial and somewhat embarrassing predilection. Extremes touch. He wasthe oldest member by a long way in that company, and I was, if I may sayso, its temporarily adopted baby. He had been a pilot longer than anyman in the boat could remember; thirty--forty years. He did not seemcertain himself, but it could be found out, he suggested, in thearchives of the Pilot-office. He had been pensioned off years before, but he went out from force of habit; and, as my friend the patron of thecompany once confided to me in a whisper, "the old chap did no harm. He was not in the way. " They treated him with rough deference. One andanother would address some insignificant remark to him now and again, but nobody really took any notice of what he had to say. He had survivedhis strength, his usefulness, his very wisdom. He wore long, green, worsted stockings pulled up above the knee over his trousers, a sort ofwoollen nightcap on his hairless cranium, and wooden clogs on his feet. Without his hooded cloak he looked like a peasant. Half a dozen handswould be extended to help him on board, but afterward he was left prettymuch to his own thoughts. Of course he never did any work, except, perhaps, to cast off some rope when hailed, "_He, l'Ancien!_ let go thehalyards there, at your hand"--or some such request of an easy kind. 

No one took notice in any way of the chuckling within the shadow of thehood. He kept it up for a long time with intense enjoyment. Obviously hehad preserved intact the innocence of mind which is easily amused. Butwhen his hilarity had exhausted itself, he made a professional remark ina self-assertive but quavering voice:

"Can't expect much work on a night like this. "

No one took it up. It was a mere truism. Nothing under canvas could beexpected to make a port on such an idle night of dreamy splendour andspiritual stillness. We would have to glide idly to and fro, keeping ourstation within the appointed bearings, and, unless a fresh breeze sprangup with the dawn, we would land before sunrise on a small islet that, within two miles of us, shone like a lump of frozen moonlight, to "breaka crust and take a pull at the wine bottle. " I was familiar with theprocedure. The stout boat emptied of her crowd would nestle her buoyant, capable side against the very rock--such is the perfectly smooth amenityof the classic sea when in a gentle mood. The crust broken and themouthful of wine swallowed--it was literally no more than that with thisabstemious race--the pilots would pass the time stamping their feet onthe slabs of sea-salted stone and blowing into their nipped fingers. Oneor two misanthropists would sit apart, perched on boulders likemanlike sea-fowl of solitary habits; the sociably disposed wouldgossip scandalously in little gesticulating knots; and there would beperpetually one or another of my hosts taking aim at the empty horizonwith the long, brass tube of the telescope, a heavy, murderous-lookingpiece of collective property, everlastingly changing hands withbrandishing and levelling movements. Then about noon (it was a shortturn of duty--the long turn lasted twenty-four hours) another boatfulof pilots would relieve us--and we should steer for the old Phoenicianport, dominated, watched over from the ridge of a dust-gray, arid hillby the red-and-white striped pile of the Notre Dame de la Garde. 

All this came to pass as I had foreseen in the fullness of my veryrecent experience. But also something not foreseen by me did happen, something which causes me to remember my last outing with the pilots. Itwas on this occasion that my hand touched, for the first time, the sideof an English ship. 

No fresh breeze had come with the dawn, only the steady little draughtgot a more keen edge on it as the eastern sky became bright and glassywith a clean, colourless light. I t was while we were all ashore on theislet that a steamer was picked up by the telescope, a black speck likean insect posed on the hard edge of the offing. She emerged rapidly toher water-line and came on steadily, a slim hull with a long streak ofsmoke slanting away from the rising sun. We embarked in a hurry, andheaded the boat out for our prey, but we hardly moved three miles anhour. 

She was a big, high-class cargo-steamer of a type that is to be met onthe sea no more--black hull, with low, white superstructures, powerfullyrigged with three masts and a lot of yards on the fore; two hands at herenormous wheel--steam steering-gear was not a matter of course in thesedays--and with them on the bridge three others, bulky in thick bluejackets, ruddy-faced, muffled up, with peak caps--I suppose all herofficers. There are ships I have met more than once and known well bysight whose names I have forgotten; but the name of that ship seen onceso many years ago in the clear flush of a cold, pale sunrise I have notforgotten. How could I--the first English ship on whose side I everlaid my hand! The name--I read it letter by letter on the bow--wasJames Westoll. Not very romantic, you will say. The name of a veryconsiderable, well-known, and universally respected North countryship-owner, I believe. James Westoll! What better name could anhonourable hard-working ship have? To me the very grouping of theletters is alive with the romantic feeling of her reality as I saw herfloating motionless and borrowing an ideal grace from the austere purityof the light. 

We were then very near her and, on a sudden impulse, I volunteered topull bow in the dinghy which shoved off at once to put the pilot onboard while our boat, fanned by the faint air which had attended us allthrough the night, went on gliding gently past the black, glisteninglength of the ship. A few strokes brought us alongside, and it was thenthat, for the very first time in my life, I heard myself addressedin English--the speech of my secret choice, of my future, of longfriendships, of the deepest affections, of hours of toil and hours ofease, and of solitary hours, too, of books read, of thoughts pursued, of remembered emotions--of my very dreams! And if (after being thusfashioned by it in that part of me which cannot decay) I dare not claimit aloud as my own, then, at any rate, the speech of my children. Thussmall events grow memorable by the passage of time. As to the qualityof the address itself I cannot say it was very striking. Too short foreloquence and devoid of all charm of tone, it consisted precisely of thethree words "Look out there!" growled out huskily above my head. 

It proceeded from a big fat fellow (he had an obtrusive, hairy doublechin) in a blue woollen shirt and roomy breeches pulled up very high, even to the level of his breastbone, by a pair of braces quite exposedto public view. As where he stood there was no bulwark, but only arail and stanchions, I was able to take in at a glance the whole of hisvoluminous person from his feet to the high crown of his soft black hat, which sat like an absurd flanged cone on his big head. The grotesque andmassive aspect of that deck hand (I suppose he was that--very likely thelamp-trimmer) surprised me very much. My course of reading, of dreaming, and longing for the sea had not prepared me for a sea brother of thatsort. I never met again a figure in the least like his except in theillustrations to Mr. W. W. Jacobs's most entertaining tales of bargesand coasters; but the inspired talent of Mr. Jacobs for poking endlessfun at poor, innocent sailors in a prose which, however extravagant inits felicitous invention, is always artistically adjusted to observedtruth, was not yet. Perhaps Mr. Jacobs himself was not yet. I fancythat, at most, if he had made his nurse laugh it was about all he hadachieved at that early date. 

Therefore, I repeat, other disabilities apart, I could not have beenprepared for the sight of that husky old porpoise. The object ofhis concise address was to call my attention to a rope which heincontinently flung down for me to catch. I caught it, though it wasnot really necessary, the ship having no way on her by that time. Theneverything went on very swiftly. The dinghy came with a slight bumpagainst the steamer's side; the pilot, grabbing for the rope ladder, hadscrambled half-way up before I knew that our task of boarding was done;the harsh, muffled clanging of the engine-room telegraph struck my earthrough the iron plate; my companion in the dinghy was urging me to"shove off--push hard"; and when I bore against the smooth flank ofthe first English ship I ever touched in my life, I felt it alreadythrobbing under my open palm. 

Her head swung a little to the west, pointing toward the miniaturelighthouse of the Jolliette breakwater, far away there, hardlydistinguishable against the land. The dinghy danced a squashy, splashyjig in the wash of the wake; and, turning in my seat, I followed theJames Westoll with my eyes. Before she had gone in a quarter of a mileshe hoisted her flag, as the harbour regulations prescribe for arrivingand departing ships. I saw it suddenly flicker and stream out on theflag staff. The Red Ensign! In the pellucid, colourless atmospherebathing the drab and gray masses of that southern land, the lividislets, the sea of pale, glassy blue under the pale, glassy sky of thatcold sunrise, it was, as far as the eye could reach, the only spot ofardent colour--flame-like, intense, and presently as minute as the tinyred spark the concentrated reflection of a great fire kindles inthe clear heart of a globe of crystal. The Red Ensign--the symbolic, protecting, warm bit of bunting flung wide upon the seas, and destinedfor so many years to be the only roof over my head.