shadowy to my apprehension. I do not mean this for the

well-known firm of London ship-brokers which had chartered the
ship to the, I will not say short-lived, but ephemeral

Franco-Canadian Transport Company. A death leaves something
behind, but there was never anything tangible left from the F. C.

T. C. It flourished no longer than roses live, and unlike the
roses it blossomed in the dead of winter, emitted a sort of faint

perfume of adventure, and died before spring set in. But
indubitably it was a company, it had even a house-flag, all white

with the letters F. C. T. C. artfully tangled up in a complicated
monogram. We flew it at our mainmast head, and now I have come

to the conclusion that it was the only flag of its kind in
existence. All the same we on board, for many days, had the

impression of being a unit of a large fleet with fortnightly
departures for Montreal and Quebec as advertised in pamphlets and

prospectuses which came aboard in a large package in Victoria
Dock, London, just before we started 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 a remote sense

interrupted the rhythmical development of Nina Almayer's story.
The then secretary of the London Shipmasters' Society, with its

modest rooms in Fenchurch Street, was a man of indefatigable
activity and the greatest devotion to his task. He is

responsible for what was my last association with a ship. I call
it that be cause it can hardly be called a sea-going experience.

Dear Captain Froud--it is impossible not to pay him the tribute
of affectionatefamiliarity at this distance of years--had very

sound views as to the advancement of knowledge and status for the
whole body of the officers of the mercantile marine. He organized

for us courses of professional lectures, St. John ambulance
classes, corresponded industriously with public bodies and

members of Parliament on subjects touching the interests of the
service; and as to the oncoming of some inquiry or commission

relating to matters of the sea and to the work of seamen, it was
a perfect godsend to his need of exerting himself on our

corporate behalf. Together with this high sense of his official
duties he had in him a vein of personal kindness, a strong

disposition to do what good he could to the individual members of
that craft of which in his time he had been a very excellent

master. And what greater kindness can one do to a seaman than to
put him in the way of employment? Captain Froud did not see why

the Shipmasters' Society, besides its general guardianship of our
interests, should not be unofficially an employmentagency of the

very highest class.
"I am trying to persuade all our great ship-owning firms to come

to us for their men. There is nothing of a trade-union spirit
about our society, and I really don't see why they should not,"

he said once to me. "I am always telling the captains, too,
that, all things being equal, they ought to give preference to

the members of the society. In my position I can generally find
for them what they want among our members or our associate

members."
In my wanderings about London from west to east and back again (I

was very idle then) the two little rooms in Fenchurch Street were
a sort of resting-place where my spirit, hankering after the sea,

could feel itself nearer to the ships, the men, and the life of
its choice--nearer there than on any other spot of the solid

earth. This resting-place used to be, at about five o'clock in
the afternoon, full of men and tobacco smoke, but Captain Froud

had the smaller room to himself and there he granted private
interviews, whose principalmotive was to render service. Thus,

one murky November afternoon he beckoned me in with a crooked
finger and that peculiar glance above his spectacles which is

perhaps my strongest physicalrecollection of the man.
"I have had in here a shipmaster, this morning," he said, getting

back to 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 be asked, but, unfortunately, I do not quite see my
way . . ."

As the outer room was full of men I cast a wondering glance at
the closed 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 officer who can speak French fluently, and that's not so
easy to find. I do not know anybody myself but you. It's a

second officer's berth and, of course, you would not care . . .
would you now? I know that it isn't what you are looking for."

It was not. I had given myself up to the idleness of a haunted
man who looks for nothing but words wherein to capture his

visions. But I admit that outwardly I resembled sufficiently a
man who could make a second officer for a steamer chartered by a

French company. I showed no sign of being haunted by the fate of
Nina and by the murmurs of tropical forests; and even my intimate

intercourse with Almayer (a person of weak character) had not put
a visible mark upon my features. For many years he and the world

of his story had been the companions of my imagination without, I
hope, impairing my ability to deal with the realities of sea

life. I had had the man and his surroundings with me ever since
my return from the eastern waters--some four years before the day

of which I speak.
It was in the front sitting-room of furnished apartments in a

Pimlico square that they first began to live again with a
vividness and poignancy quite foreign to our former real

intercourse. I had been treating myself to a long stay on shore,
and in the necessity of occupying my mornings Almayer (that old

acquaintance) came nobly to the rescue.
Before long, as was only proper, his wife and daughter joined him

round my table, and then the rest of that Pantai band came full
of words and gestures. Unknown to my respectablelandlady, it

was my practice directly 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, I affirm here, was not to my

self-love or my vanity. It seems now to have had a moral
character, for why should the memory of these beings, seen in

their obscure, sun-bathed existence, demand to express itself in
the shape of a novel, except on the ground of that mysterious

fellowship which unites in a community of hopes and fears all the
dwellers on this earth?

I did not receive my visitors with boisterousrapture as the
bearers of any gifts of profit or fame. There was no vision of a

printed book before me as I sat writing at that table, situated
in a decayed part of Belgravia. After all these years, each

leaving its evidence of slowly blackened pages, I can honestly
say that it is a sentiment akin to pity which prompted me to

render in words assembled with conscientious care the memory of
things far distant and of men who had lived.

But, coming back to Captain Froud and his fixed idea of never
disappointing ship owners or ship-captains, it was not likely

that I should fail him in his ambition--to satisfy at a few
hours' notice the unusual demand for a French-speaking officer.

He explained to me that the ship was chartered by a French
company intending to establish a regular monthly line of sailings

from Rouen, for the transport of French emigrants to Canada.
But, frankly, this sort of thing did not interest me very much.

I said gravely that if it were really a matter of keeping up the
reputation of the Shipmasters' Society I would consider it. But

the consideration was just for form's sake. The next day I
interviewed the captain, and I believe we were impressed

favourably with each other. He explained that his chief mate was
an excellent man in every respect and that he could not think of

dismissing him so as to give me the higher position; but that if
I consented to come as second officer I would be given certain

special advantages--and so on.
I told him that if I came at all the rank really did not matter.