"Heart of Darkness"
by Joseph Conrad

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     One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching -- and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank.

     I laid my head on my arm again, and had nearly lost myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: "I am as harmless as a little child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I the manager -- or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It's incredible."

     . . . I became aware that the two were standing on the shore alongside the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I did not move; it did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy.

 

     "It is unpleasant," grunted the uncle.

     "He has asked the Administration to be sent there," said the other, "with the idea of showing what he could do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that man must have. Is it not frightful?"

     They both agreed it was frightful, then made several bizarre remarks: "Make rain and fine weather -- one man -- the Council -- by the nose" -- bits of absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness, so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits about me when the uncle said, "The climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there?"

 
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