it worth finishing?" This question expressed exactly the whole of my
thoughts.

"Distinctly," he answered, in his sedate, veiled voice, and then coughed
a little.

"Were you interested?" I inquired further, almost in a whisper.

"Very much!"

In a pause I went on meeting instinctively the heavy rolling of the
ship, and Jacques put his feet upon the couch. The curtain of my
bed-place swung to and fro as if it were a punkah, the bulkhead lamp
circled in its gimbals, and now and then the cabin door rattled slightly
in the gusts of wind. It was in latitude 40 south, and nearly in the
longitude of Greenwich, as far as I can remember, that these quiet rites
of Almayer's and Nina's resurrection were taking place. In the prolonged
silence it occurred to me that there was a good deal of retrospective
writing in the story as far as it went. Was it intelligible in its
action, I asked myself, as if already the story-teller were being
born into the body of a seaman. But I heard on deck the whistle of the
officer of the watch and remained on the alert to catch the order that
was to follow this call to attention. It reached me as a faint, fierce
shout to "Square the yards." "Aha!" I thought to myself, "a westerly
blow coming on." Then I turned to my very first reader, who, alas! was
not to live long enough to know the end of the tale.

"Now let me ask you one more thing: is the story quite clear to you as
it stands?"