shit, can you make it hot like this? from conrad, "heart of darkness".


Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became lessbrilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach restedunruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to therace that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of awaterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at thevenerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes anddeparts for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. Andindeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes,"followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke thegreat spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidalcurrent runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memoriesof men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battlesof the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation isproud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titledand untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all theships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, fromthe Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to bevisited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale,to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests--and that neverreturned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed fromDeptford, from Greenwich, from Erith--the adventurers and the settlers;kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, thedark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals"of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they allhad gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch,messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from thesacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that riverinto the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seedof commonwealths, the germs of empires.