In a pause I went on meeting instinctively the heavy rolling of the ship, and Jacques put his feet upon the couch.  The curtain of my bed-place swung to and fro as it were a punkah, the bulkhead lamp circled in its gimbals, and now and then the cabin door rattled slightly in the gusts of wind.  It was in latitude 40 south, and nearly in the longitude of Greenwich, as far as I can remember, that these quiet rites of Almayer’s and Nina’s resurrection were taking place.  In the prolonged silence it occurred to me that there was a good deal of retrospective writing in the story as far as it went.  Was it intelligible in its action, I asked myself, as if already the story-teller were being born into the body of a seaman.  But I heard on deck the whistle of the officer of the watch and remained on the alert to catch the order that was to follow this call to attention.  It reached me as a faint, fierce shout to “Square the yards.”  “Aha!” I thought to myself, “a westerly blow coming on.”  Then I turned to my very first reader who, alas! was not 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 as it 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 long period of bad weather set in and I had no thoughts left but for my duties, whilst poor Jacques caught a fatal cold and had to keep close in his cabin.  When we arrived in Adelaide the first reader of my prose went at once up-country, and died rather suddenly in the end, either in Australia or it may be on the passage while going home through the Suez Canal.  I am not sure which it was now, and I do not think I ever heard precisely; though I made inquiries about him from some of our return passengers who, wandering about to “see the country” during the ship’s stay 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 scrawl of the many pages which poor Jacques had had the patience to read with the very shadows of Eternity gathering already in the hollows of his kind, 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 am compelled, unconsciously compelled, now to write volume after volume, as in past years I was compelled to go to sea voyage after voyage.  Leaves must follow upon each other as leagues used to follow in the days gone by, on and on to the appointed end, which, being Truth itself, is One—­one for all men and for all occupations.