intensified as the great logs slowly burned into rosy embers, and I
could smell a whiff of scorching trouser legs; but the courageous
man dared not move, for fear of breaking the spell. Marlow's tale
was a powerful one: I could hear Mrs. Marlow suspire faintly, ever
so faintly--the troubled, small, soft sigh of a brave woman
indefinably stricken. The gallantry of women! In a remote part of
the house a ship's clock tingled its quick double strokes.... Eight
o'clock, I thought, unconsciously translating nautical horology into
the dull measurements of landsmen. None of us moved. The discipline
of the sea!

Mrs. Marlow was very pale. It began to come over me that there was
an alien presence, something spectral and immanent, something empty
and yet compelling, in the mysterious shadow and vagueness of the
chamber. More than once, as Marlow had coasted us along those
shining seascapes of Malaya--we had set sail from Malacca at tea
time, and had now got as far as Batu Beru--I had had an uneasy
impression that a disturbed white figure had glanced pallidly
through the curtains, had made a dim gesture, and had vanished
again.... I had tried to concentrate on Marlow's narrative. The dear
fellow looked more like a monkey than ever, squatting there, as he
took the _Soliloquy_ across the China Sea and up the coast of
Surinam. Surinam must have a very long coast-line, I was thinking.
But perhaps it was that typhoon that delayed us.... Really, he ought
not to make his descriptions so graphic, for Mrs. Marlow, I feared,
was a bad sailor, and she was beginning to look quite ill.... I
caught her looking over her shoulder in a frightened shudder, as
though seeking the companionway.

It was quite true. By the time we had reached Tonking, I felt sure
there was someone else in the room. In my agitation I stole a
cautious glance from the taff-rail of my eye and saw a white figure
standing hesitantly by the door, in an appalled and embarrassed
silence. The Director saw it, too, for he was leaning as far away
from the fire as he could without jibing his chair, and through the
delicate haze of roasting tweed that surrounded him I could see
something wistfully appealing in his glance. The Lawyer, too, had a
mysterious shimmer in his loyal eyes, but his old training in the
P. and O. service had been too strong for him. He would never speak,
I felt sure, while his commanding officer had the floor.

I began to realize that, in a sense, the resp