seems amazing that he should belong to it, he to whom so many things “had come.”  Nothing ever came to them; they would never be taken unawares, and never be called upon to grapple with fate.  Here they all are, evoked by the mild gossip of the father, all these brothers and sisters, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, gazing with clear unconscious eyes, while I seem to see him, returned at last, no longer a mere white speck at the heart of an immense mystery, but of full stature, standing disregarded amongst their untroubled shapes, with a stern and romantic aspect, but always mute, dark—­under a cloud.

’The story of the last events you will find in the few pages enclosed here.  You must admit that it is romantic beyond the wildest dreams of his boyhood, and yet there is to my mind a sort of profound and terrifying logic in it, as if it were our imagination alone that could set loose upon us the might of an overwhelming destiny.  The imprudence of our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with the sword shall perish by the sword.  This astounding adventure, of which the most astounding part is that it is true, comes on as an unavoidable consequence.  Something of the sort had to happen.  You repeat this to yourself while you marvel that such a thing could happen in the year of grace before last.  But it has happened—­and there is no disputing its logic.

’I put it down here for you as though I had been an eyewitness.  My information was fragmentary, but I’ve fitted the pieces together, and there is enough of them to make an intelligible picture.  I wonder how he would have related it himself.  He has confided so much in me that at times it seems as though he must come in presently and tell the story in his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, with his offhand manner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, a little hurt, but now and then by a word or a phrase giving one of these glimpses of his very own self that were never any good for purposes of orientation.  It’s difficult to believe he will never come.  I shall never hear his voice again, nor shall I see his smooth tan-and-pink face with a white line on the forehead, and the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue.’

CHAPTER 37

’It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown, who stole with complete success a Spanish schooner out of a small bay near Zamboanga.  Till I discovered the fellow my information was incomplete, but most unexpectedly I did come upon him a few hours before he gave up his arrogant ghost.  Fortunately he was willing and able to talk between the choking fits of asthma, and his racked body writhed with malicious exultation at the bare thought of Jim.  He exulted thus at the idea that he had “paid out the stuck-up beggar after all.”  He gloated over his action.  I had to bear the sunken glare of his fierce crow-footed eyes if I wanted to know; and so I bore it, reflecting how much certain forms of evil are akin to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by resistance, tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to the body.  The story also reveals unsuspected depths of cunning in the wretched Cornelius, whose abject and intense hate acts like a subtle inspiration, pointing out an unerring way towards revenge.