Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint: a sound weird, appalling, suggestive and wild perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. New York, Dell Publishing Co., 1960, p. 49.
PLACE: Congo
TIME:
CIRCUMSTANCE:
The word "Ivory" rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. New York, Dell Publishing Co., 1960, p. 53.
PLACE: Congo
TIME: Pre-Colonial
CIRCUMSTANCE: First rush of Ivory-hunters.
It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tinpot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, from Tales of Land and Sea, Hanover House, Garden City, N.Y., 1953, p. 58.
PLACE: a French Colony in Africa
TIME: l8th or 19th century
CIRCUMSTANCE: Talking about his boat.
home