The Author's Note now begins to blur, via a tongue-in-cheek conceit, the distinction
between history and fiction. There is a similar device in the novel, where the
supposedly omniscient narrator breaks into the first person ,
which begs the question of whether Conrad is now casting himself as that narrator.
This terrain is covered thematically in the novel as well, which maintains that
history is -- on a very deep level -- a type of sustaining fiction or dream. See
Captain Mitchell's historical narrative in Chapter 3-10.