What they wanted to keep that body hanging about for I can't guess.
Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and a very ominous,
murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood-cutters were likewise
scandalized, and with a better show of reason--though I admit that the
reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had made up my mind
that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone should have
him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while alive, but now he was
dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and possibly cause
some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the
man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business.
"This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going
half-speed, keeping right in the middle of the stream, and I listened
to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they had given up the
station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burnt--and so on--and
so on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that
at least this poor Kurtz had been properly avenged. 'Say! We must have
made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? What do you think?
Say?' He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar.
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