valuable and useful to me, remained behind through unfortunate accidents of transportation.  I call to mind, for instance, a specially awkward turn of the Congo between Kinchassa and Leopoldsville—­more particularly when one had to take it at night in a big canoe with only half the proper number of paddlers.  I failed in being the second white man on record drowned at that interesting spot through the upsetting of a canoe.  The first was a young Belgian officer, but the accident happened some months before my time, and he, too, I believe, was going home; not perhaps quite so ill as myself—­but still he was going home.  I got round the turn more or less alive, though I was too sick to care whether I did or not, and, always with “Almayer’s Folly” amongst my diminishing baggage, I arrived at that delectable capital Boma, where before the departure of the steamer which was to take me home I had the time to wish myself dead over and over again with perfect sincerity.  At that date there were in existence only seven chapters of “Almayer’s Folly,” but the chapter in my history which followed was that of a long, long illness and very dismal convalescence.  Geneva, or more precisely the hydropathic establishment of Champel, is rendered for ever famous by the termination of the eighth chapter in the history of Almayer’s decline and fall.  The events of the ninth are inextricably mixed up with the details of the proper management of a waterside warehouse owned by a certain city firm whose name does not matter.  But that work, undertaken to accustom myself again to the activities of a healthy existence, soon came to an end.  The earth had nothing 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 fro upon the sea.  Whether this treatment improved its flavour or not, of course I would not like to say.  As far as appearance is concerned it certainly did nothing of the kind.  The whole Ms. acquired a faded look and an ancient, yellowish complexion.  It became at last unreasonable to suppose that anything in the world would ever happen to Almayer and Nina.  And yet something most unlikely to happen on the high seas was to wake them up from their state of suspended animation.

What is it that Novalis says?  “It is certain my conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.”  And what is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men’s existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?  Providence which saved my Ms. from the Congo rapids brought it to the knowledge of a helpful soul far out on the open sea.  It would be on my part the greatest ingratitude ever to forget the sallow, sunken face and the deep-set, dark eyes of the young Cambridge man (he was a “passenger for his health” on board the good ship Torrens