Over claret around a mahogany table, Marlow tells four old seamen how, at twenty, he shipped as second mate on the Judea, a battered barque carrying coal to Bangkok. Gales, leaks and a fire smouldering in the hold beset her, yet what he remembers most is the glory of being young and bound for the East.
The story that introduced Marlow, narrator of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, first printed in 1898. Download the free EPUB.