'I don't suppose any of you have ever heard of Patusan?' Marlow resumed, after a silence occupied in the careful lighting¹ of a cigar. 'It does not matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of a night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphere of its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to the astronomers³ who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition, weight, path -- the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations⁴ of its light -- a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. Thus with Patusan. It was referred to knowingly in the inner government circles in Batavia, especially as to its irregularities and aberrations, and it was known by name to some few, very few, in the mercantile world. Nobody, however, had been there, and I suspect no one desired to go there in person -- just as an astronomer², I should fancy, would strongly object to being transported into a distant heavenly body, where, parted from his earthly emoluments⁵, he would be bewildered by the view of an unfamiliar⁶ heaven. However, neither heavenly bodies nor astronomers have anything to do with Patusan. It was Jim who went there. I only meant you to understand that had Stein arranged to send him into a star of the fifth magnitude the change could not have been greater. He left his earthly failings behind him and what sort of reputation he had, and there was a totally new set of conditions for his imaginative faculty⁷ to work upon. Entirely⁸ new, entirely remarkable⁹. And he got hold of them in a remarkable way.

'Stein was the man who knew more about Patusan than anybody else. More than was known in the government circles I suspect. I have no doubt he had been there, either in his butterfly-hunting days or later on, when he tried in his

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