Sentence No. 40 · 6 May 2026
He steered for me—I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad — Heart of Darkness (1899) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The phrase "of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken" is a relative clause deliberately delayed to the end. Whenever you see "of which" or "in which" mid-sentence, it anchors to a noun just before it — here "bond" — so that noun-plus-clause chunk always stays together.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A traveller reflects on the strange bond formed with a fallen companion. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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