Conrad Joseph. Heart of Darkness

Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, and AP English Test Preparation.The Nellie, 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 sprits. 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. We four
affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On
the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a
pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize
his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the
brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea.
Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had
the effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns-and even convictions. The