EXCERPT 1

"The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadn't I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all other agents together. That was not the point. The point was in his being a gifted creature and of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words- the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and most contemptible, the pulling stream of light or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness" (Conrad 47).