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"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more.
It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names.
It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery--a white patch
for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness.
But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you
could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its
head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country,
and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map
of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird--
a silly little bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern,
a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself,
they can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot of
fresh water--steamboats! Why shouldn't I try to get charge of one?
I went on along Fleet Street, but could not shake off the idea.
The snake had charmed me.
"You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society;
but I have a lot of relations living on the Continent, because it's
cheap and not so nasty as it looks, they say.
"I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh
departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know.
I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.
I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then--you see--I felt
somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them.
The men said `My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then--would you
believe it?--I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work--
to get a job. Heavens! Well, you see, the notion drove me.
I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote: `It will be delightful.
I am ready to do anything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea.
I know the wife of a very high personage in the Administration,
and also a man who has lots of influence with,' &c., &c. She was determined
to make no end of fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat,
if such was my fancy.
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