I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys, it was no good
bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for
the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our
eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in
a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too--choking, warm, stifling.
Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely
true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an
attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive--it
was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was undertaken under the
stress of desperation, and in its essence was purely protective.
"It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and
its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a
half below Kurtz's station. We had just floundered and flopped round a
bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in the
middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened
the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank, or
rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the
river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was seen
just under the water, exactly as a man's backbone is seen running down
the middle of his back under the skin.
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