NCE on the Amber River," said Locquialton.
We almost held our breath and were suddenly silent round that old table where Locquialton sat. There were five of us there besides him. An old stained table and a low room in an inn; a fire-place behind Locquialton, huge and old. You could almost have burned trees on it. The embers were low now, the fire dying; it was dark outside, and inside a few candles. Pale-blue cigar smoke filled much of the room. As I see it now, I see the pale-blue smoke, the dark blue of the night beyond the uncurtained windows, the huge chestnut-brown table, and Locquialton leaning forward. I hear that voice of his as we heard it then, "Once on the Amber River," suddenly out of the silence. We knew what a traveler he had been. That is to say, we did not know; no man knew. We remembered long years and no Locquialton. No Locquialton anywhere, no rumor, and then his return. We knew Locquialton's silences. And then—why, then, the world invented tales for itself, tales of amazing rivers and unknown lands where he went. He came back perfectly silent; nobody knew his business; none knew where he went and none knew why. And then one day as we smoked, "Once on the Amber River." The words held us spellbound. And seated there so long ago, he told us one of his stories. None of us had ever heard him speak of himself before. Soon afterward other things happened. So this, as far as any one ever heard, is Locquialton's only story. I cannot vouch for it, and no man can. I knew Locquialton as well as any man and know he was grimly unimaginative. "Once on the Amber River"—those words alone I remember as he said them. And the rest of the story, after this lapse of time, I rather see as pictures that floated under the pale-blue cigar smoke, past our attentive faces, going away from the fire-place. And the story—it throws no light on the man, for it is as strange as himself, I think the strangest story I ever heard; but of that the reader shall judge, if I can remember it.
Once on the Amber River Locquialton was in a boat, a long boat that he did not describe, with thirteen rowers, black men; he had some strange name for it. He was so far from civilization then that at evening he used to take out a white-linen collar, all starched, and look at it. I imagine that he gazed on it wistfully, thinking of London ballrooms, but that I do not know, you never got what Locquialton was thinking. He just mentioned that collar. It gave me the idea of the sort of place better than latitude and longitude. Then he told us about the songs the rowers sang, odd songs. But I cannot remember that, though I see to-day Locquialton's eyes as he spoke of them. And after that they came to the bend of the river, and the reed hut on the left bank, and a white man there. A white man all alone by the Amber River. Locquialton landed and went up to the hut; he thought the black men looked contemptuous of it, but could not tell, though he knew them as well as most; it was in any case poor in comparison to a native hut, no more than six feet high, about the size of a summer-house. And here this man lived alone. He was sitting outside his hut when Locquialton came, a man with a yellow beard, looking genially out at the river as though he owned the earth. Behind the hut was a heap of untidy boxes, and from these Locquialton says he brought two bottles of the best champagne he had ever tasted. This strange white man would not drink himself, saying that he despised champagne, and looking on with a kind of amused toleration while Locquialton drank. His only talk was of mountains.
Locquialton had news to give him that was worth little less than ivory in such a place as that. He could have told him what the latest dance was in London, the latest song, the new election cry. He could have told him just the kind of gloves men wore now when they went dancing; he could have brought back something that men have lost who live by the Amber River; and yet this strange man spoke only of mountains. He seemed content where he was, at ease, even happy, yet he dwelt on alluvial plains that the Amber River divided, where there was not a mountain for hundreds and hundreds of miles, and all his talk was of mountains. Mountains were clearly to him what London must have been to Locquialton, the London of lights and dances.