Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

1. PART I (continued)

"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard `giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time that day. . . . He rose slowly. `What a frightful row,' he said. He crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning, said to me, `He does not hear.' `What! Dead?' I asked, startled. `No, not yet,' he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the head to the tumult in the station-yard, `When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages-- hate them to the death.' He remained thoughtful for a moment. `When you see Mr. Kurtz,' he went on, `tell him from me that everything here'--he glanced at the desk--'is very satisfactory. I don't like to write to him--with those messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letter--at that Central Station.' He stared at me for a moment with his mild, bulging eyes. `Oh, he will go far, very far,' he began again. `He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above--the Council in Europe, you know--mean him to be.'

"He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently in going out I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree-tops of the grove of death.

"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a two-hundred-mile tramp.