drawn to these rites, appears to Marlow as a " shadow--that wandering and tormented thing" (p. 111 in Bantam and p.143 in Signet Classics); and at the very end of the story, after Marlow's tale is finished, as the unnamed narrator describes the scene before him, we see that it is a shadow over all mankind: "the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness" (p. 132 in Bantam; p. 158 in Signet Classics).