Читать книгу Сердце тьмы. Уровень 2 / Heart of Darkness - Джозеф Конрад, Ford Madox Hueffer - Страница 10

In thirty days I saw the mouth of the big river[20]. We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work did not begin there. I must go two hundred miles more. So I went to a place thirty miles higher up.

I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. The captain was a Swede. He invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore.

“Did you live there?” he asked.

I said,

“Yes.”

“Fine lot these government chaps – are they not?” he went on.

He was 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 them when they go inside the country.”

I said that I expected to see that soon.

“So-o-o!” he exclaimed.

He shuffled athwart.

“Don’t be too sure,” he continued. “The other day I took up a man who hanged himself[21] on the road. He was a Swede, too.”

“Hanged himself! Why, in God’s name?” I cried.

He looked out watchfully.

“Who knows? Too much sun for him, or the country perhaps.”

At last the river became wide. 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. A continuous noise of the rapids above. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river.

“There’s your Company’s station,” said the Swede.

He pointed to three wooden barrack-like structures on the rocky slope.

“I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell.”