. ." He broke off. Flames glided in the river, smal green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other--then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting patiently--there was nothing else to do til the Information prepared by the Project BookishMall.com legal advisor 8

end of the flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fel ows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.

"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personal y," he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tel ers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to hear;

"yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me-and into my thoughts. It was somber enough too--and pitiful--not extraordinary in any way--not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.

"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas--a regular dose of the East--six years or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fel ows in your work and invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tired of resting. Then I began to look for a ship--I should think the hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn't even look at me. And I got tired of that game too.

"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in al the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they al look that) I would put my finger on it and say,

`When I grow up I wil go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Wel , I haven't been there yet, and shal not try now. The glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the Equator, and in every sort of latitude al over the two hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and . . . wel , we won't talk about that. But there was one yet-the biggest, the most blank, so to speak-that I had a hankering after.

"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got fil ed since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery-a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over.