A Set of Six - Page 2

between the years 1824 and 1828, senior officer of a small British
Squadron on the West Coast of South America. His book published in the
thirties obtained a certain celebrity and I suppose is to be found still
in some libraries. The curious who may be mistrusting my imagination are
referred to that printed document, Vol. II, I forget the page, but it is
somewhere not far from the end. Another document connected with this
story is a letter of a biting and ironic kind from a friend then in
Burma, passing certain strictures upon "the gentleman with the gun on
his back" which I do not intend to make accessible to the public. Yet
the gun episode did really happen, or at least I am bound to believe it
because I remember it, described in an extremely matter-of-fact tone, in
some book I read in my boyhood; and I am not going to discard the
beliefs of my boyhood for anybody on earth.

The Brute, which is the only sea-story in the volume, is, like Il Conde,
associated with a direct narrative and based on a suggestion gathered on
warm human lips. I will not disclose the real name of the criminal ship
but the first I heard of her homicidal habits was from the late Captain
Blake, commanding a London ship in which I served in 1884 as Second
Officer. Captain Blake was, of all my commanders, the one I remember
with the greatest affection. I have sketched in his personality, without
however mentioning his name, in the first paper of "The Mirror of the
Sea." In his young days he had had a personal experience of the brute
and it is perhaps for that reason that I have put the story into the
mouth of a young man and made of it what the reader will see. The
existence of the brute was a fact. The end of the brute as related in
the story is also a fact, well-known at the time though it really
happened to another ship, of great beauty of form and of blameless
character, which certainly deserved a better fate. I have unscrupulously
adapted it to the needs of my story thinking that I had there something
in the nature of poetical justice. I hope that little villainy will not
cast a shadow upon the general honesty of my proceedings as a writer of
tales.

Of The Informer and The Anarchist I will say next to nothing. The
pedigree of these tales is hopelessly complicated and not worth
disentangling at this distance of time. I found them and here they are.
The discriminating reader will guess that I have found them within my
mind; but how they or their elements came in there I have forgotten for
the most part; and for the rest I really don't see why I should give
myself away more than I have done already.

It remains for me only now to mention The Duel, the longest story in the
book. That story attained the