and had to lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay was the first thing that shook Kurtz's confidence. One morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photograph — the lot tied together with a shoe-string. 'Keep this for me,” he said. 'This noxious fool' (meaning the manager) 'is capable of prying into my boxes when I am not looking.” In the afternoon I saw him.

He was lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew quietly, but I heard him mutter, 'Live rightly, die, die...” I listened. There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep, or was it a fragment of a phrase from some newspaper article? He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again, 'for the furthering of my ideas. It's a duty.