Heart of Darkness

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.