Joseph Conrad

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. However, they were all waiting - all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them - for something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them was disease - as far as I could see. ‘The groans of this sick person,’ he said, ‘distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.’ The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing, continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinising the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent was lying flushed and insensible[.]

I could get hold of nothing but of some commonplace phrases, those futile phrases that give the measure of our impotence before each other's trials.