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<Chapter 1>
!Author's !Note
When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got
about that I had been bolted away with. Some reviewers
maintained that the work starting as a short story had got
beyond the writer's control. One or two discovered internal
evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse them. They
pointed out the limitations of the narrative form. They
argued that no man could have been expected to talk all that
time, and other men to listen so long. It was not, they
said, very credible.
After thinking it over for something like sixteen years I
am not so sure about that. Men have been known, both in the
tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night
"swapping yarns." This, however, is but one yarn, yet with
interruptions affording some measure of relief; and in
regard to the listeners' endurance, the postulate must be
accepted that the story !was interesting. It is the
necessary preliminary assumption. If I hadn't believed that
it !was intere . . .
