ABSTRACT
The visitor slowly produced a series of sounds which must have borne sufficient resemblance to the phonetics of English speech for the “baroque apostle” to get their drift. Without ceasing to eat he explained that his business certainly was finding ships, but for young gentlemen who wanted to go to sea as premium apprentices with a view to becoming officers. The mere sight of his uncle’s letters kept reminding him of the relatives and friends in Poland who predicted that he would never amount to anything, that he was a scatterbrain. The bark Palestine in which Conrad sailed was none other than the ship later immortalized in the wonderful story “Youth” under the transparent pseudonym fudea. The story is in fact nothing but an exact transcription of events. The Palestine sailed down the Thames, took more than a week to reach Yarmouth Roads, weathered a gale and did arrive in Newcastle until three weeks later.
