Chapter 38 Summary

Having finished Marlow's letter, the man turns to the story, in which Marlow begins by talking of the man called Brown. A latter-day buccaneer, he enters the tale as a result of having stolen a Spanish schooner out of a small bay near Zamboanga. Brown and his crew had been captured by a Spanish patrol cutter and forced to dock in Zamboanga. There, he bribed an official to secure his freedom and have the cutter sent away. Then, while the crew of an anchored schooner was ashore, him and his crew – sixteen in all – stole aboard the vessel, killed the two shipkeepers left behind and made off with the ship.

However, in their haste they had not transferred enough provisions to the ship and shortly into their trip were left short of food and water. They plundered what they could from passing ships...