AMY FOSTER

By Joseph Conrad


Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of
Eastbay. The high ground rising abruptly behind the red roofs of the
little town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defends
it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast
and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of
Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of
trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse,
looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the
vanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is
low and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from the seas, and
occasionally a big ship, windbound or through stress of weather, makes
use of the anchoring ground a mile and a half due north from you as
you stand at the back door of the "Ship Inn" in Brenzett. A dilapidated
windmill near by lifting its shattered arms from a mound no loftier than
a rubbish heap, and a Martello tower squatting at the water's edge half
a mile to the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to the
skippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for the
patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by an
irregular oval of dots enclosing several figures six, with a tiny anchor
engraved among them, and the legend "mud and shells" over all.

The brow of the upland overtops the square tower of the Colebrook
Church. The slope is green and looped by a white road. Ascending along
this road, you open a valley broad and shallow, a wide green trough
of pastures and hedges merging inland into a vista of purple tints and