And later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed
himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail
and audibly.

Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped in motionless
foliage and crowned with flowers, in the deep dusk speckled by fiery
cigar-ends. The elongated bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent
listener. Now and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and
expanding light up the fingers of a languid hand, part of a face in
profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam into a pair of pensive eyes
overshadowed by a fragment of an unruffled forehead; and with the very
first word uttered Marlow's body, extended at rest in the seat, would
become very still, as though his spirit had winged its way back into the
lapse of time and were speaking through his lips from the past.



CHAPTER 5


'Oh yes. I attended the inquiry,' he would say, 'and to this day I
haven't left off wondering why I went. I am willing to believe each of
us has a guardian angel, if you fellows will concede to me that each of
us has a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because I don't
like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know I have him--the devil,
I mean. I haven't seen him, of course, but I go upon circumstantial
evidence. He is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in
for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry
thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn't think a mangy, native tyke
would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate's