The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

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Title: Heart of Darkness

Author: Joseph Conrad

Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #526]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Note: See also etext #219 which is a different version of this eBook]

HEART OF DARKNESS

By Joseph Conrad

I

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of
the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly
calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come
to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of
an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded
together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails
of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red
clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A
haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.
The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed
condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest,
and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four
affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to
seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so
nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness
personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in
the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of
the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of
separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's
yarns--and even convictions. The Lawyer--the best of old fellows--had,
because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck,
and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a
box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow
sat cro