WELL, FORD, MY memory of the next few days is as blurred as things seen through the window of a speeding car. I helped a friend with some brazing work. Otherwise I stayed busy on the Nellie, dawdling over repairs I could have finished in half the time. The hours dragged out interminably or passed in an instant. I would look up and see a ship that seemed not to have moved in an hour. One that had loomed nearby would be reduced to the size of a pinhead in the blink of an eye. When I thought about Conrad it was through the screen of the story of the Brigadier. Always I wondered about his nameless book. At night, when I didn’t feel like visiting a pub, I read in my bunk, wrapped in an ancient afghan my dear old aunt had knitted. For reasons that escape me now, I was going through McCauley again and found some relief in his recording of the Empire’s fall.

I took to walking, wandering down lanes and through squares, moving farther away from my part of the city. There was a sense of relief in venturing into new neighborhoods, even run-down places where voices came from windows or alleys, sounds of the unknown that I welcomed because they helped me keep my feelings in check. I felt as though I were looking for something the way you do in dreams, without knowing whether you’re pursuing a person or an object or a place. This was especially true late at night when the streetlights played tricks, beckoning but revealing nothing. Still I was compelled to go on, half convinced that I was closing in on something, an idea, a way of understanding, a thread I might follow back to its source.

That Friday before the funeral I stayed aboard, in no frame of mind to go out in public. The previous night I had gotten my good suit out, brushed it, and hung it up to let the wrinkles fall out. It swayed on the hanger whenever the Nellie moved, the trouser legs approximating a man shuffling along, an image that brought to mind thoughts about my own mortality and that of the old gang, and left me uneasy over how swiftly time was passing for all of us.

Fortunately there was enough in the way of housekeeping to stay busy, and when I finished tidying up the cabin I put some fish and oysters and vegetables into a pot for chowder, seasoned the mixture, and decided to read while it finished cooking. I chose a little Conrad for the comfort of his voice. All his books were on my shelves, including those I had bought from Thomas and Sons. I tipped out Under Western Eyes. It had been waiting for me at a post office in Sydney when I had arrived at the end of a voyage that had been spoilt by a brush with the tail end of a typhoon. Razumov’s tribulations, his determined slogging toward the light, had taken hold of my imagination for three solid days and nights. I wanted to revisit the book, but as I took it down my attention drifted from the heavy volume with its stout boards and cream-colored cloth with the title and his name in thick black letters to my remembrance of the Fox-Bourne manuscript, which might prove to be the finest thing Conrad had ever written, the last labor of an old man steeped in his art, the equivalent of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He had put all his skill, all his passion into that story, and because of that it seemed as precious as a last will and testament. I had seen other manuscripts of his whose pages bore deep impressions from the pressure of his pen, the marks of a living hand that made the paper curl and emit a brittle sound when it was touched. By the time I finished dinner—it was an excellent chowder as I recall, thick and spicy—the manuscript had assumed the status of a relic, like a bone of a saint displayed under thick glass. I made up my mind to see that it was preserved and properly disposed of, which meant that Fox-Bourne would have to return it directly to Jessie or to me as an intermediary. After I recovered from the funeral I would track him down. When I found him, I would make it clear that as an old and devoted friend of Conrad’s I would respect his decision concerning publication, tell him that I didn’t give a damn whether the story ever came to light, that the important issue, the only one that mattered, was preserving the text. The only difficulty I could foresee lay in convincing him that he was safe. I was certain that Jessie would be willing to vouch for my discretion. With that out of the way, I saw no reason why he would object to returning it.

I poured a whisky and went out on deck. Above the yellow moon rising over the city the stars burned cold and bright, funeral stars, Ford, sadly gleaming. Fox-Bourne was still on my mind. I was wondering what had happened to him and whether he still commanded the Brigadier, which seemed likely, when a vision of him came to me. He was sitting in his quarters, reading the manuscript beneath the dual gaze of Edward and his wife, fascinated, appalled, even sickened by the story Conrad had vividly brought back to life. At that moment Conrad’s belief that Fox-Bourne might sacrifice himself on the altar of the truth seemed preposterous. The man would hate him. If he could get control of his emotions he might very well laugh out loud at the proposal Conrad had made in his cover letter. Asking him to agree to publication was tantamount to suggesting that he have himself keel-hauled as a preface to being drawn and quartered in full view of the Royal Navy. The book would never be published. With that certainty burning as clearly before me as those bright cold stars, I went below.