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.