board that ship we were leading just then a contemplative life. I
will not say anything of my privileged position. I was there "just to
oblige," as an actor of standing may take a small part in the benefit
performance of a friend.

As far as my feelings were concerned I did not wish to be in that
steamer at that time and in those circumstances. And perhaps I was not
even wanted there in the usual sense in which a ship "wants" an
officer. It was the first and last instance in my sea life when I served
shipowners who have remained completely 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 main-mast 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