"Heart of Darkness"
by Joseph Conrad

  Previous Page   Next Page   Speaker Off
 

     "Fine lot these government chaps -- are they not?" he went on, speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness.

     "It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?"

     I said to him I expected to see that soon.

     "So-o-o!" he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. "Don't be too sure," he continued. "The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too."

     "Hanged himself! Why, in God's name?" I cried.

 

     He kept on looking out watchfully. "Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps."

     At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity.

     A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare.

 
Text provided by Project Gutenberg.
Audio by LiteralSystems, told by David Kirkwood with narration by Tom Franks,
through the generous support of Gordon W. Draper.
Audio copyright, 2007 LoudLit.org, some rights reserved.
Flash mp3 player by Jeroen Wijering. (cc) some rights reserved.
Web page presentation by LoudLit.org.