Page 123 - HEART OF DARKNESS

Heart of Darkness

last disciple. ‘Well, and you?’ I said. ‘I! I! I am a simple
man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from
anybody. How can you compare me to … ?’ His feelings
were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down.

‘I don’t understand,’ he groaned. ‘I’ve been doing my best
to keep him alive, and that’s enough. I had no hand in all
this. I have no abilities. There hasn’t been a drop of
medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here.
He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such
ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I—I— haven’t slept for the
last ten nights …’
‘His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The
long shadows of the forest had slipped downhill while we
talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond the
symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the gloom, while
we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the stretch
of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and
dazzling splendour, with a murky and overshadowed bend
above and below. Not a living soul was seen on the shore.
The bushes did not rustle.
‘Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of
men appeared, as though they had come up from the
ground. They waded waist-deep in the grass, in a compact
body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their midst.

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