Hello there, and welcome to another episode of Down to Sleep, the podcast of softly spoken

stories where I read classic books to you to help you drift off and get a good night's rest.

This is episode 18 of the podcast. We have been going since the beginning of this year. Thank you so

much for joining me tonight. I hope that you are enjoying the podcast. If you are and would like to support it and get more episodes,

there are double the amount of episodes on the Patreon.

You can join our secret little book club at patreon.com slash down to sleep,

where for a few dollars a month, you will get twice the amount of episodes,

and they are all twice as long.

Plus, you occasionally get to vote on what I read

next. We'd love to have you join our little community over there, but otherwise, for right

now, let's go ahead and take a nice deep breath, get ourselves comfortable, and we'll get down

to sleep with Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The Nelly, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails and was at rest.

The flood had made. The wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river the only thing

for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway.

In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint,

and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still, in red clusters of

canvas sharply peaked with gleams of varnished spritz. A haze rested on the low shores that

ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above gravesend and farther back still

seemed condensed into a mournful gloom,

brooding motionless over the biggest and the greatest town on earth.

The director of companies was our captain and our host.

...