account of the nearness to the river.

There is no reason why I should remember that effect more on that day
than on any other day, except that I stood for a long time looking out
of the window after the landlady's daughter was gone with her spoil
of cups and saucers. I heard her put the tray down in the passage and
finally shut the door; and still I remained smoking with my back to the
room. It is very clear that I was in no haste to take the plunge into my
writing life, if as plunge this first attempt may be described. My whole
being was steeped deep in the indolence of a sailor away from the
sea, the scene of never-ending labour and of unceasing duty. For utter
surrender to indolence you cannot beat a sailor ashore when that mood
is on him, the mood of absolute irresponsibility tasted to the full.
It seems to me that I thought of nothing whatever, but this is an
impression which is hardly to be believed at this distance of years.
What I am certain of is, that I was very far from thinking of writing a
story, though it is possible and even likely that I was thinking of the
man Almayer.

I had seen him for the first time some four years before from the bridge
of a steamer moored to a rickety little wharf forty miles up, more or
less, a Bornean river. It was very early morning and a slight mist, an
opaline mist as in Bessborough Gardens only without the fiery flicks on
roof and chimney-pot from the rays of the red London sun, promised to
turn presently into a woolly fog. Barring a small dug-out canoe on the
river there was nothing moving within sight. I had just come up yawning
from my cabin. The serang and the Malay crew were overhauling the cargo
chains and trying the winches; their voices sounded subdued on the
deck below and their movements were languid. That tropical daybreak was
chilly. The Malay quartermaster, coming up to get something from the