It was morning and day before I returned with the four sick and
starving journalists who had got permission to come with me, up the
shining river, and past the old grey Tower....
I recall the back views of those journalists very distinctly, going
with a certain damp weariness of movement, along a side street away
from the river. They were good men and bore me no malice, and they
served me up to the public in turgid degenerate Kiplingese, as a modest
button on the complacent stomach of the Empire. Though as a matter of
fact, X2 isn’t intended for the empire, or indeed for the hands of any
European power. We offered it to our own people first, but they would
have nothing to do with me, and I have long since ceased to trouble
much about such questions. I have come to see myself from the outside,
my country from the outside—without illusions. We make and pass.
We are all things that make and pass striving upon a hidden mission,
out to the open sea.