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HEART OF DARKNESS
By Joseph Conrad
I
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 *** 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 Lawyer—the best of old
fellows—had, because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck, and
was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes,
and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning
against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic
aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The
Director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us.
We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For
some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and
fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite
brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity
of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric,
hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the
gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more somber every minute,
as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white
changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken
to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more
profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after
ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil
dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable
stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the
august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the
phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit
of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro
in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest
of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation
is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled—the
great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels
flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full
of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic
tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests—and that never returned. It had
known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith—the
adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains,
admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of
East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream,
bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a
spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into
the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths,
the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore.
The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights
of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther
west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously
on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that could be said of
him was that he did not represent his class. He was a ***, but he was a wanderer, too,
while most *** lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the
stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them—the ship; and so is their country—the
sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability
of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity
of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance;
for there is nothing mysterious to a *** unless it be the sea itself, which is the
mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours
of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret
of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of
*** have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of
a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted),
and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping
the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one
of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in
silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow—
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years
ago—the other day. . . . Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes;
but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We
live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness
was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine—what d'ye call 'em?—trireme
in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in
a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries,—a wonderful lot of handy
men they must have been too—used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two,
if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the
color of lead, a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina—and
going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests,
savages,—precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water
to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost
in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay—cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile,
and death,—death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been
dying like flies here. Oh yes—he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without
thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his
time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by
keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by-and-by, if he had
good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen
in a toga—perhaps too much dice, you know—coming out here in the train of some prefect, or
tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the
woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him,—all
that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the
hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live
in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination,
too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know. Imagine the
growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
He paused.
"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards,
so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European
clothes and without a lotus-flower—"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What
saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really.
They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I
suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast
of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness
of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was
just robbery with violence, aggravated *** on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as
is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means
the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than
ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is
the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and
an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer
a sacrifice to. . . ."
He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red flames, white flames,
pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other—then separating slowly or hastily.
The traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river.
We looked on, waiting patiently—there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood;
but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose
you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated,
before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.
"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he began, showing
in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what
their audience would best like to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought
to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I
first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point
of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me—and
into my thoughts. It was somber enough too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not
very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.
"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific,
China Seas—a regular dose of the East—six years or so, and I was loafing about, hindering
you fellows in your work and invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly
mission to civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tired
of resting. Then I began to look for a ship—I should think the hardest work on earth. But
the ships wouldn't even look at me. And I got tired of that game too.
"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South
America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration.
At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked
particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and
say, 'When I grow up I will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I remember.
Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour's off. Other places
were scattered about the Equator, and in every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres.
I have been in some of them, and . . . well, we won't talk about that. But there was one
yet—the biggest, the most blank, so to speak—that I had a hankering after.
"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood
with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery—a
white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But
there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map,
resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving
afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked
at the map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird—a silly little
bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on that river. Dash it
all! I thought to myself, they can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot
of fresh water—steamboats! Why shouldn't I try to get charge of one? I went on along
Fleet Street, but could not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.
"You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but I have a lot of
relations living on the Continent, because it's cheap and not so nasty as it looks, they
say.
"I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh departure for me.
I was not used to get things that way, you know. I always went my own road and on my
own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then—you
see—I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said
'My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then—would you believe it?—I tried the women. I, Charlie
Marlow, set the women to work—to get a job. Heavens! Well, you see, the notion drove me.
I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote: 'It will be delightful. I am ready
to do anything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high
personage in the Administration, and also a man who has lots of influence with,' &c.,
&c. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat,
if such was my fancy.
"I got my appointment—of course; and I got it very quick. It appears the Company had
received news that one of their captains had been killed in a scuffle with the natives.
This was my chance, and it made me the more anxious to go. It was only months and months
afterwards, when I made the attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I heard the
original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes, two black hens. Fresleven—that
was the fellow's name, a Dane—thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went
ashore and started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it didn't surprise
me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told that Fresleven was the gentlest,
quietest creature that ever walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple
of years already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt
the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way. Therefore he whacked the old
*** mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched him, thunderstruck, till some
man,—I was told the chief's son,—in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative
jab with a spear at the white man—and of course it went quite easy between the shoulder-blades.
Then the whole population cleared into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities
to happen, while, on the other hand, the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad panic,
in charge of the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed to trouble much about Fresleven's
remains, till I got out and stepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest, though; but
when an opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through
his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all there. The supernatural being
had not been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black,
rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The
people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the
bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens I don't know either. I should
think the cause of progress got them, anyhow. However, through this glorious affair I got
my appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope for it.
"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I was crossing the
Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the contract. In a very few hours I arrived
in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulcher. Prejudice no doubt. I had
no difficulty in finding the Company's offices. It was the biggest thing in the town, and
everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over-sea empire, and make
no end of coin by trade.
"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with venetian
blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archways right
and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks,
went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and opened the first
door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs,
knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me—still knitting with
downcast eyes—and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would
for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover,
and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and
looked about. Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large
shining map, marked with all the colors of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red—good
to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of
a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to
show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't
going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the center. And the river
was there—fascinating—deadly—like a snake. Ough! A door opened, a white-haired
secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger
beckoned me into the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted
in the middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in
a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet six, I should judge, and had his
grip on the handle-end of ever so many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely,
was satisfied with my French. Bon voyage.
"In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room with the compassionate
secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign some document. I believe I undertook
amongst other things not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.
"I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there
was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some
conspiracy—I don't know—something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In
the outer room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving, and
the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The old one sat on her chair.
Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap.
She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed
spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift
and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances
were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned
wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me too. An eerie feeling came over
me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. 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 scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned
old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she
looked at ever saw her again—not half, by a long way.
"There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple formality,' assured me the secretary, with
an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows. Accordingly a young chap wearing
his hat over the left eyebrow, some clerk I suppose,—there must have been clerks in
the business, though the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead,—came from
somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with ink-stains on
the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin shaped
like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too early for the doctor, so I proposed a
drink, and thereupon he developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he
glorified the Company's business, and by-and-by I expressed casually my surprise at him not
going out there. He became very cool and collected all at once. 'I am not such a fool as I look,
quoth Plato to his disciples,' he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution, and
we rose.
"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. 'Good, good for
there,' he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him
measure my head. Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers
and got the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He was
an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in slippers,
and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I always ask leave, in the interests of science, to
measure the crania of those going out there,' he said. 'And when they come back, too?' I
asked. 'Oh, I never see them,' he remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place inside,
you know.' He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So you are going out there. Famous.
Interesting too.' He gave me a searching glance, and made another note. 'Ever any madness in
your family?' he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. 'Is that question
in the interests of science too?' 'It would be,' he said, without taking notice of my
irritation, 'interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the
spot, but . . .' 'Are you an alienist?' I interrupted. 'Every doctor should be—a little,'
answered that original, imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you Messieurs who
go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my country shall
reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others.
Pardon my questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my observation. . . .' I
hastened to assure him I was not in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I, 'I wouldn't
be talking like this with you.' 'What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,'
he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you
English say, eh? Good-by. Ah! Good-by. Adieu. In the tropics one must before everything
keep calm.' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . . 'Du calme, du calme. Adieu.'
"One thing more remained to do—say good-by to my excellent aunt. I found her triumphant.
I had a cup of tea—the last decent cup of tea for many days—and in a room that most
soothingly looked just as you would expect a lady's drawing-room to look, we had a long
quiet chat by the fireside. In the course of these confidences it became quite plain
to me I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness knows to
how many more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted creature—a piece of good fortune
for the Company—a man you don't get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going
to take charge of a two-penny-halfpenny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It appeared,
however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital—you know. Something like an emissary
of light, something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose
in print and talk just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush
of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about 'weaning those ignorant millions
from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured
to hint that the Company was run for profit.
"'You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire,' she said, brightly.
It's *** how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and
there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether,
and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded
fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start
up and knock the whole thing over.
"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write often, and so on—and I
left. In the street—I don't know why—a *** feeling came to me that I was an impostor.
Odd thing that I, who used to clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours'
notice, with less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a moment—I
won't say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this commonplace affair. The best way
I can explain it to you is by saying that, for a second or two, I felt as though, instead
of going to the center of a continent, I were about to set off for the center of the earth.
"I left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they have out there,
for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing soldiers and custom-house officers.
I watched the coast. Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an
enigma. There it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid,
or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out.' This one
was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness.
The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white
surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was
blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.
Here and there grayish-whitish specks showed up, clustered inside the white surf, with
a flag flying above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than
pin-heads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along, stopped, landed
soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken
wilderness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers—to take
care of the custom-house clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; but
whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care. They were just flung out there, and
on we went. Every day the coast looked the same, as though we had not moved; but we passed
various places—trading places—with names like Gran' Bassam Little Popo, names that
seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister backcloth. The idleness
of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact, the
oily and languid sea, the uniform somberness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from
the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The voice
of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It
was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from
the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows.
You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their
bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks—these chaps;
but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as
natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They
were a great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of
straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to
scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There
wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of
their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the
long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her
up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky,
and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one
of the eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would
disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing
could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery
in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there
was a camp of natives—he called them enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere.
"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at
the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more places with farcical names, where
the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an
overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature
herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life,
whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted
mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere
did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague
and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for
nightmares.
"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river. We anchored off
the seat of the government. But my work would not begin till some two hundred miles farther
on. So as soon as I could I made a start for a place thirty miles higher up.
"I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for
a ***, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with
lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his
head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been living there?' he asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot
these government chaps—are they not?' he went on, speaking English with great precision
and considerable bitterness. 'It is funny what some people will do for a few francs
a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes up country?' I said to him I
expected to see that soon. 'So-o-o!' he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead
vigilantly. 'Don't be too sure,' he continued. 'The other day I took up a man who hanged
himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.' 'Hanged himself! Why, in God's name?' I cried.
He kept on looking out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps.'
"At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the
shore, houses on a hill, others, with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or
hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over this scene
of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants.
A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden
recrudescence of glare. 'There's your Company's station,' said the Swede, pointing to three
wooden barrack-like structures on the rocky slope. 'I will send your things up. Four boxes
did you say? So. Farewell.'
"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It
turned aside for the bowlders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on
its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass
of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails.
To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark things seemed to stir feebly.
I blinked, the path was steep. A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run.
A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and
that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway.
The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work
going on.
"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file,
toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth
on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round
their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. I could see every rib,
the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his
neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically
clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had
seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could
by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged
law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea.
All their meager *** panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the
eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with
that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the
reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle
by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on
the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white
men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily
reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to
take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great
cause of these high and just proceedings.
"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang
get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender; I've
had to strike and to fend off. I've had to resist and to attack sometimes—that's only
one way of resisting—without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such
sort of life as I had blundered into. I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil
of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, ***,
red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside,
I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a
flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could
be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a
moment I stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards
the trees I had seen.
"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose
of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It
was just a hole. It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the
criminals something to do. I don't know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine, almost
no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage-pipes for
the settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasn't one that was not broken. It was
a wanton smash-up. At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade
for a moment; but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped into a gloomy circle
of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing
noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf
moved, with a mysterious sound—as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had
suddenly become audible.
"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging
to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes
of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a
slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this
was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.
"They were dying slowly—it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals,
they were nothing earthly now,—nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying
confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all
the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they
sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund
shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of eyes under
the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at
full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the
sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in
the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. The man seemed young—almost a boy—but
you know with them it's hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of
my good Swede's ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and
held—there was no other movement and no other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted
round his neck—Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge—an ornament—a charm—a
propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round
his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.
"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One,
with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling
manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and
all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture
of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose
to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out
of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after
a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.
"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards the station. When
near the buildings I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the
first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs,
a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear necktie, and varnished boots. No hat. Hair
parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing,
and had a penholder behind his ear.
"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief accountant, and
that all the bookkeeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment, he
said, 'to get a breath of fresh air.' The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its
suggestion of sedentary desk-life. I wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at all, only
it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is so indissolubly connected
with the memories of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his
collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's
dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's
backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character.
He had been out nearly three years; and, later on, I could not help asking him how he managed
to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly, 'I've been teaching
one of the native women about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the
work.' This man had verily accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books, which were
in apple-pie order.
"Everything else in the station was in a muddle,—heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty ***
with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads,
and brass-wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory.
"I had to wait in the station for ten days—an eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard, but
to be out of the chaos I would sometimes get into the accountant's office. It was built
of horizontal planks, and so badly put together that, as he bent over his high desk, he was
barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to open the
big shutter to see. It was hot there too; big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting,
but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while, of faultless appearance (and even slightly
scented), perching on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for exercise.
When a truckle-bed with a sick man (some invalided agent from up-country) was put in there, he
exhibited a gentle annoyance. '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.'
"One day he remarked, without lifting his head, 'In the interior you will no doubt meet
Mr. Kurtz.' On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a first-class agent; and seeing
my disappointment at this information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, 'He is
a very remarkable person.' Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present
in charge of a trading post, a very important one, in the true ivory-country, at 'the very
bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together. . . .' He began
to write again. The sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.
"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had
come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks.
All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable
voice of the chief agent was heard 'giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time that
day. . . . He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. He crossed the room gently
to look at the sick man, and returning, said to me, 'He does not hear.' 'What! Dead?' I
asked, startled. 'No, not yet,' he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with
a toss of the head to the tumult in the station-yard, 'When one has got to make correct entries,
one comes to hate those savages—hate them to the death.' He remained thoughtful for
a moment. 'When you see Mr. Kurtz,' he went on, 'tell him from me that everything here'—he
glanced at the desk—'is very satisfactory. I don't like to write to him—with those
messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letter—at that Central
Station.' He stared at me for a moment with his mild, bulging eyes. 'Oh, he will go far,
very far,' he began again. 'He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above—the
Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be.'
"He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently in going out I stopped
at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent was lying flushed and
insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct
transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree-tops of the grove
of death.
"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a two-hundred-mile
***.
"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network of
paths spreading over the empty land, through long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets,
down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a
solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well, if
a lot of mysterious *** armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to
traveling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry
heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon.
Only here the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through several abandoned villages.
There's something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with
the stamp and shuffle of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load.
Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness, at rest
in the long grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and his long staff lying by his
side. A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off
drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and
wild—and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country.
Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort of
lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive—not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep
of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of
a middle-aged ***, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled
three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white
companion too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit
of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade and water. Annoying,
you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over a man's head while he is coming-to. I
couldn't help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of
course. What do you think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in
a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the
carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night—quite a mutiny.
So, one evening, I made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to
the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in
front all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush—man,
hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very
anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered
the old doctor,—'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of
individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However, all that
is to no purpose. On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled
into the Central Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with
a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others inclosed by a crazy
fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the place
was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long
staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take
a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout, excitable
chap with black mustaches, informed me with great volubility and many digressions, as
soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck.
What, how, why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself' was there. All quite correct.
'Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly!'—'you must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the
general manager at once. He is waiting!'
"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now, but I
am not sure—not at all. Certainly the affair was too stupid—when I think of it—to be
altogether natural. Still. . . . But at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded
nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river
with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been
out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the south
bank. I asked myself what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact,
I had plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about it the very
next day. That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station, took some months.
"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my twenty-mile
walk that morning. He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He
was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps
remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy
as an ax. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention.
Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy—a
smile—not a smile—I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious, this smile
was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came
at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest
phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth up employed
in these parts—nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor
even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust—just
uneasiness—nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . faculty
can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident
in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence.
His position had come to him—why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served
three terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions
is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave he rioted on a large scale—pompously.
Jack ashore—with a difference—in externals only. This one could gather from his casual
talk. He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going—that's all. But he was
great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control
such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such
a suspicion made one pause—for out there there were no external checks. Once when various
tropical diseases had laid low almost every 'agent' in the station, he was heard to say,
'Men who come out here should have no entrails.' He sealed the utterance with that smile of
his, as though it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping. You
fancied you had seen things—but the seal was on. When annoyed at meal-times by the
constant quarrels of the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense round table to be made,
for which a special house had to be built. This was the station's mess-room. Where he
sat was the first place—the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable conviction.
He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his 'boy'—an overfed young ***
from the coast—to treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.
"He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the road. He could not
wait. Had to start without me. The up-river stations had to be relieved. There had been
so many delays already that he did not know who was dead and who was alive, and how they
got on—and so on, and so on. He paid no attention to my explanations, and, playing
with a stick of sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation was 'very grave,
very grave.' There were rumors that a very important station was in jeopardy, and its
chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was not true. Mr. Kurtz was . . . I felt weary and
irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on
the coast. 'Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he murmured to himself. Then he began again,
assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance
to the Company; therefore I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said, 'very, very
uneasy.' Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr. Kurtz!' broke
the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumbfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know
'how long it would take to' . . . I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept
on my feet too, I was getting savage. 'How could I tell,' I said. 'I hadn't even seen
the wreck yet—some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to me so futile. 'Some months,'
he said. 'Well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do
the affair.' I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of veranda)
muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot. Afterwards I took
it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated
the time requisite for the 'affair.'
"I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. In that
way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still, one
must look about sometimes; and then I saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly
about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered
here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims
bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was
sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through
it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in
my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth
struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for
the passing away of this fantastic invasion.
"Oh, these months! Well, never mind. Various things happened. One evening a grass shed
full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze
so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume
all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw them all
cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high, when the stout man with mustaches
came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was
'behaving splendidly, splendidly,' dipped about a quart of water and tore back again.
I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail.
"I strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the thing had gone off like a box of matches.
It had been hopeless from the very first. The flame had leaped high, driven everybody
back, lighted up everything—and collapsed. The shed was already a heap of embers glowing
fiercely. A *** was being beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in some way;
be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw him, later on, for several
days, sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick and trying to recover himself: afterwards
he arose and went out—and the wilderness without a sound took him into its *** again.
As I approached the glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two men, talking. I
heard the name of Kurtz pronounced, then the words, 'take advantage of this unfortunate
accident.' One of the men was the manager. I wished him a good evening. 'Did you ever
see anything like it—eh? it is incredible,' he said, and walked off. The other man remained.
He was a first-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked little beard
and a hooked nose. He was stand-offish with the other agents, and they on their side said
he was the manager's spy upon them. As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before.
We got into talk, and by-and-by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked
me to his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck a match, and I perceived
that this young aristocrat had not only a silver-mounted dressing-case but also a whole
candle all to himself. Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have
any right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais,
shields, knives was hung up in trophies. The business intrusted to this fellow was the
making of bricks—so I had been informed; but there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere
in the station, and he had been there more than a year—waiting. It seems he could not
make bricks without something, I don't know what—straw maybe. Anyways, it could not
be found there, and as it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear
to me what he was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. 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. They beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing
against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that station,
but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else—as the philanthropic
pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work.
The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was
to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each
other only on that account,—but as to effectually lifting a little finger—oh, no. By heavens!
there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another
must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he
can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable
of saints into a kick.
"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there it suddenly occurred
to me the fellow was trying to get at something—in fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to
Europe, to the people I was supposed to know there—putting leading questions as to my
acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica
discs—with curiosity,—though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first
I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from
me. I couldn't possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was very
pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full of chills, and my
head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a
perfectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry, and to conceal a movement of
furious annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel,
representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was
somber—almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight
on the face was sinister.
"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding a half-pint champagne bottle (medical
comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he said Mr. Kurtz had painted
this—in this very station more than a year ago—while waiting for means to go to his
trading-post. 'Tell me, pray,' said I, 'who is this Mr. Kurtz?'
"'The chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in a short tone, looking away. 'Much obliged,'
I said, laughing. 'And you are the brickmaker of the Central Station. Everyone knows that.'
He was silent for a while. 'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity,
and science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to declaim suddenly,
'for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence,
wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.' 'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,'
he replied. 'Some even write that; and so he comes here, a special being, as you ought
to know.' 'Why ought I to know?' I interrupted, really surprised. He paid no attention. 'Yes.
To-day he is chief of the best station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two years
more and . . . but I dare say you know what he will be in two years' time. You are of
the new gang—the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also recommended
you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Light dawned upon me. My dear aunt's
influential acquaintances were producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly
burst into a laugh. 'Do you read the Company's confidential correspondence?' I asked. He
hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued severely, 'is General
Manager, you won't have the opportunity.'
"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures
strolled about listlessly, pouring water on the glow, whence proceeded a sound of hissing;
steam ascended in the moonlight, the beaten *** groaned somewhere. 'What a row the
brute makes!' said the indefatigable man with the mustaches, appearing near us. 'Serve him
right. Transgression—punishment—***! Pitiless, pitiless. That's the only way. This
will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager . . .' He noticed
my companion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind
of servile heartiness; 'it's so natural. Ha! Danger—agitation.' He vanished. I went on
to the river-side, and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, 'Heap
of muffs—go to.' The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several
had still their staves in their hands. I verily believe they took these sticks to bed with
them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the
dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land
went home to one's very heart,—its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its
concealed life. The hurt *** moaned feebly somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep
sigh that made me mend my pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under my
arm. 'My dear sir,' said the fellow, 'I don't want to be misunderstood, and especially by
you, who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him
to get a false idea of my disposition. . . .'
"I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could
poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt,
maybe. He, don't you see, had been planning to be assistant-manager by-and-by under the
present man, and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little.
He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders against the
wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal. The
smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval
forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread
over everything a thin layer of silver—over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall
of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river
I could see through a somber gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without
a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered
whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal
or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing,
or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn't
talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming
out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it
too—God knows! Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it—no more than if I had
been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might
believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was
certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked
and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about 'walking on all-fours.' If you as much
as smiled, he would—though a man of sixty—offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far
as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest,
and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it
appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies,—which is exactly what
I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick,
like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it
by letting the young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in
Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims.
This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the
time I did not see—you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man
in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?
It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream
can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in
a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which
is of the very essence of dreams. . . ."
He was silent for a while.
". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given
epoch of one's existence,—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating
essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone. . . ."
He paused again as if reflecting, then added—"Of course in this you fellows see more than I
could then. You see me, whom you know. . . ."
It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For a long time
already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice. There was not a word from
anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on
the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clew to the faint uneasiness
inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy
night-air of the river.
". . . Yes—I let him run on," Marlow began again, "and think what he pleased about the
powers that were behind me. I did! And there was nothing behind me! There was nothing but
that wretched, old, mangled steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently
about 'the necessity for every man to get on.' 'And when one comes out here, you conceive,
it is not to gaze at the moon.' Mr. Kurtz was a 'universal genius,' but even a genius
would find it easier to work with 'adequate tools—intelligent men.' He did not make
bricks—why, there was a physical impossibility in the way—as I was well aware; and if he
did secretarial work for the manager, it was because 'no sensible man rejects wantonly
the confidence of his superiors.' Did I see it? I saw it. What more did I want? What I
really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work—to stop the hole.
Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast—cases—piled up—burst—split!
You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that station yard on the hillside. Rivets
had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble
of stooping down—and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had plates
that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a lone
***, letter-bag on shoulder and staff in hand, left our station for the coast. And
several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods,—ghastly glazed calico
that made you shudder only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded
spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that
was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.
"He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated
him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil,
let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certain
quantity of rivets—and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted, if he had only known
it. Now letters went to the coast every week. . . . 'My dear sir,' he cried, 'I write from
dictation.' I demanded rivets. There was a way—for an intelligent man. He changed his
manner; became very cold, and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus; wondered whether
sleeping on board the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day) I wasn't disturbed.
There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at
night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every
rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him. All this
energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life,' he said; 'but you can say
this only of brutes in this country. No man—you apprehend me?—no man here bears a charmed
life.' He stood there for a moment in the moonlight with his delicate hooked nose set
a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink, then, with a curt Good night,
he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled, which made me feel
more hopeful than I had been for days. It was a great comfort to turn from that chap
to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on
board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along
a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had
expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have
served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit—to find out what I could
do. No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that
can be done. I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work,—the chance to
find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever
know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
"I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over
the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station,
whom the other pilgrims naturally despised—on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose.
This was the foreman—a boiler-maker by trade—a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced
man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm
of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered
in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young
children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out there), and the
passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would
rave about pigeons. After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a
talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under
the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white serviette
he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears. In the evening he could
be seen squatted on the bank rinsing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then
spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry.
"I slapped him on the back and shouted, 'We shall have rivets!' He scrambled to his feet
exclaiming 'No! Rivets!' as though he couldn't believe his ears. Then in a low voice, 'You
. . . eh?' I don't know why we behaved like lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my
nose and nodded mysteriously. 'Good for you!' he cried, snapped his fingers above his head,
lifting one foot. I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter came
out of that hulk, and the *** forest on the other bank of the creek sent it back in
a thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit
up in their hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut,
vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished too. We stopped, and
the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back again from the recesses
of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks,
branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion
of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the
creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not.
A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus
had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,' said the boiler-maker
in a reasonable tone, 'why shouldn't we get the rivets?' Why not, indeed! I did not know
of any reason why we shouldn't. 'They'll come in three weeks,' I said confidently.
"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation.
It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying
a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left
to the impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky *** trod on the heels
of the donkeys; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would
be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the
muddle of the station. Five such installments came, with their absurd air of disorderly
flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores, that, one would
think, they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division. It
was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human folly made look
like the spoils of thieving.
"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they were
sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless
without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an
atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not
seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of
the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than
there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise
I don't know; but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy
cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his
gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming
about all day long with their heads close together in an everlasting confab.
"I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly
is more limited than you would suppose. I said Hang!—and let things slide. I had plenty
of time for meditation, and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't
very interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out
equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all, and how he would
set about his work when there."
II
"One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching—and
there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again,
and had nearly lost myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: 'I am
as harmless as a little child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I the manager—or
am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It's incredible.' . . . I became aware that
the two were standing on the shore alongside the forepart of the steamboat, just below
my head. I did not move; it did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy. 'It is unpleasant,'
grunted the uncle. 'He has asked the Administration to be sent there,' said the other, 'with the
idea of showing what he could do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence
that man must have. Is it not frightful?' They both agreed it was frightful, then made
several bizarre remarks: 'Make rain and fine weather—one man—the Council—by the nose'—bits
of absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness, so that I had pretty near the
whole of my wits about me when the uncle said, 'The climate may do away with this difficulty
for you. Is he alone there?' 'Yes,' answered the manager; 'he sent his assistant down the
river with a note to me in these terms: "Clear this poor devil out of the country, and don't
bother sending more of that sort. I had rather be alone than have the kind of men you can
dispose of with me." It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine such impudence!' 'Anything
since then?' asked the other, hoarsely. 'Ivory,' *** the nephew; 'lots of it—prime sort—lots—most
annoying, from him.' 'And with that?' questioned the heavy rumble. 'Invoice,' was the reply
fired out, so to speak. Then silence. They had been talking about Kurtz.
"I was broad awake by this time, but, lying perfectly at ease, remained still, having
no inducement to change my position. 'How did that ivory come all this way?' growled
the elder man, who seemed very vexed. The other explained that it had come with a fleet
of canoes in charge of an English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently
intended to return himself, the station being by that time bare of goods and stores, but
after coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which he started to do
alone in a small dug-out with four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the
river with the ivory. The two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting such
a thing. They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I seemed to see Kurtz for
the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the dug-out, four paddling savages, and the
lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of
home—perhaps; setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness, towards his empty
and desolate station. I did not know the motive. Perhaps he was just simply a fine fellow who
stuck to his work for its own sake. His name, you understand, had not been pronounced once.
He was 'that man.' The half-caste, who, as far as I could see, had conducted a difficult
trip with great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as 'that scoundrel.' The 'scoundrel'
had reported that the 'man' had been very ill—had recovered imperfectly. . . . The
two below me moved away then a few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little
distance. I heard: 'Military post—doctor—two hundred miles—quite alone now—unavoidable
delays—nine months—no news—strange rumors.' They approached again, just as the manager
was saying, 'No one, as far as I know, unless a species of wandering trader—a pestilential
fellow, snapping ivory from the natives.' Who was it they were talking about now? I
gathered in snatches that this was some man supposed to be in Kurtz's district, and of
whom the manager did not approve. 'We will not be free from unfair competition till one
of these fellows is hanged for an example,' he said. 'Certainly,' grunted the other; 'get
him hanged! Why not? Anything—anything can be done in this country. That's what I say;
nobody here, you understand, here, can endanger your position. And why? You stand the climate—you
outlast them all. The danger is in Europe; but there before I left I took care to—'
They moved off and whispered, then their voices rose again. 'The extraordinary series of delays
is not my fault. I did my possible.' The fat man sighed, 'Very sad.' 'And the pestiferous
absurdity of his talk,' continued the other; 'he bothered me enough when he was here. "Each
station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade
of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing." Conceive you—that ***! And
he wants to be manager! No, it's—' Here he got choked by excessive indignation, and
I lifted my head the least bit. I was surprised to see how near they were—right under me.
I could have spat upon their hats. They were looking on the ground, absorbed in thought.
The manager was switching his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious relative lifted his head.
'You have been well since you came out this time?' he asked. The other gave a start. 'Who?
I? Oh! Like a charm—like a charm. But the rest—oh, my goodness! All sick. They die
so quick, too, that I haven't the time to send them out of the country—it's incredible!'
'H'm. Just so,' grunted the uncle. 'Ah! my boy, trust to this—I say, trust to this.'
I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the
creek, the mud, the river,—seemed to beckon with a dishonoring flourish before the sunlit
face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the
profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling that I leaped to my feet and looked
back at the edge of the forest, as though I had expected an answer of some sort to that
black display of confidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one sometimes.
The high stillness confronted these two figures with its ominous patience, waiting for the
passing away of a fantastic invasion.
"They swore aloud together—out of sheer fright, I believe—then pretending not to
know anything of my existence, turned back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning
forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows
of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending
a single blade.
"In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon
it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead.
I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the
rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I was then rather excited at
the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say very soon I mean it comparatively. It
was just two months from the day we left the creek when we came to the bank below Kurtz's
station.
"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when
vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great
silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no
joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted,
into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators
sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands;
you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against
shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for
ever from everything you had known once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps. There
were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not
a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream,
remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants,
and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace.
It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It
looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any
more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by
inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning
to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal
sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all
the pilgrims; I had to keep a look-out for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in
the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to
the mere incidents of the surface, the reality—the reality, I tell you—fades. The inner truth
is hidden—luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious
stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing
on your respective tight-ropes for—what is it? half-a-crown a tumble—"
"Try to be civil, Marlow," growled a voice, and I knew there was at least one listener
awake besides myself.
"I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which makes up the rest of the price. And
indeed what does the price matter, if the trick be well done? You do your tricks very
well. And I didn't do badly either, since I managed not to sink that steamboat on my
first trip. It's a wonder to me yet. Imagine a blindfolded man set to drive a van over
a bad road. I sweated and shivered over that business considerably, I can tell you. After
all, for a ***, to scrape the bottom of the thing that's supposed to float all the
time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it, but you never forget
the thump—eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you wake
up at night and think of it—years after—and go hot and cold all over. I don't pretend
to say that steamboat floated all the time. More than once she had to wade for a bit,
with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps
on the way for a crew. Fine fellows—cannibals—in their place. They were men one could work
with, and I am grateful to them. And, after all, they did not eat each other before my
face: they had brought along a provision of hippo-meat which went rotten, and made the
mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now. I had the manager
on board and three or four pilgrims with their staves—all complete. Sometimes we came upon
a station close by the bank, clinging to the skirts of the unknown, and the white men rushing
out of a tumble-down hovel, with great gestures of joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very
strange,—had the appearance of being held there captive by a spell. The word ivory would
ring in the air for a while—and on we went again into the silence, along empty reaches,
round the still bends, between the high walls of our winding way, reverberating in hollow
claps the ponderous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive,
immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept
the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico.
It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that
feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on—which was just what
you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know. To some place
where they expected to get something, I bet! For me it crawled toward Kurtz—exclusively;
but when the steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened before
us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar
the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It
was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees
would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over
our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not
tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the woodcutters slept,
their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers
on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could
have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to
be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we
struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst
of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies
swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer
toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric
man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell? We were cut off from
the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly
appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand,
because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of
first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign—and no memories.
"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered
monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly,
and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this
suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped,
and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their
humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate
uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to
yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness
of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote
from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of
anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was
there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth
stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can
look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore.
He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with his own inborn strength. Principles?
Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags—rags that would fly off at the
first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row—is
there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is
the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments,
is always safe. Who's that grunting? You wonder I didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance?
Well, no—I didn't. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no
time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put
bandages on those leaky steam-pipes—I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and circumvent
those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface-truth
enough in these things to save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to look after the
savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler.
He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a
dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs. A few months
of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at
the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity—and he had filed teeth too,
the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into *** patterns, and three ornamental
scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet
on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full
of improving knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he knew was
this—that should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the
boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance.
So he sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu charm,
made of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck
flatways through his lower lip), while the wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the short
noise was left behind, the interminable miles of silence—and we crept on, towards Kurtz.
But the snags were thick, the water was treacherous and shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have
a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that fireman nor I had any time to peer into our
creepy thoughts.
"Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and
melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a flag of some sort flying
from it, and a neatly stacked woodpile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on
the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil-writing on it.
When deciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously.' There was a signature,
but it was illegible—not Kurtz—a much longer word. 'Hurry up.' Where? Up the river?
'Approach cautiously.' We had not done so. But the warning could not have been meant
for the place where it could be only found after approach. Something was wrong above.
But what—and how much? That was the question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility
of that telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and would not let us look very
far, either. A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway of the hut, and flapped sadly
in our faces. The dwelling was dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there
not very long ago. There remained a rude table—a plank on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed
in a dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book. It had lost its covers, and the
pages had been thumbed into a state of extremely dirty softness; but the back had been lovingly
stitched afresh with white cotton thread, which looked clean yet. It was an extraordinary
find. Its title was, 'An Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship,' by a man Tower, Towson—some
such name—Master in his Majesty's Navy. The matter looked dreary reading enough, with
illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures, and the copy was sixty years old.
I handled this amazing antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should
dissolve in my hands. Within, Towson or Towser was inquiring earnestly into the breaking
strain of ships' chains and tackle, and other such matters. Not a very enthralling book;
but at the first glance you could see there a singleness of intention, an honest concern
for the right way of going to work, which made these humble pages, thought out so many
years ago, luminous with another than a professional light. The simple old sailor, with his talk
of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation
of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful
enough; but still more astounding were the notes penciled in the margin, and plainly
referring to the text. I couldn't believe my eyes! They were in cipher! Yes, it looked
like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him a book of that description into this nowhere
and studying it—and making notes—in cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery.
"I had been dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise, and when I lifted my eyes
I saw the wood-pile was gone, and the manager, aided by all the pilgrims, was shouting at
me from the river-side. I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off
reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.
"I started the lame engine ahead. 'It must be this miserable trader—this intruder,'
exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently at the place we had left. 'He must be English,'
I said. 'It will not save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful,' muttered
the manager darkly. I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble
in this world.
"The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp, the stern-wheel flopped
languidly, and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for
in sober truth I expected the wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching
the last flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a tree
a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost it invariably
before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human patience.
The manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with
myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could come to any conclusion
it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere
futility. What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager?
One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair lay deep under
the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling.
"Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight miles from Kurtz's
station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked grave, and told me the navigation up
there was so dangerous that it would be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait where
we were till next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to approach cautiously
were to be followed, we must approach in daylight—not at dusk, or in the dark. This was sensible
enough. Eight miles meant nearly three hours' steaming for us, and I could also see suspicious
ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I was annoyed beyond expression at the delay,
and most unreasonably too, since one night more could not matter much after so many months.
As we had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought up in the middle of the
stream. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides like a railway cutting. The dusk
came gliding into it long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but
a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and
every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even to the
slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep—it seemed unnatural, like
a state of trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on
amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf—then the night came suddenly, and struck
you blind as well. About three in the morning some large fish leaped, and the loud splash
made me jump as though a gun had been fired. When the sun rose there was a white fog, very
warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just
there, standing all round you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps, it lifted
as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the towering multitude of trees, of the immense
matted jungle, with the blazing little ball of the sun hanging over it—all perfectly
still—and then the white shutter came down again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased
grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to heave in, to be paid out again. Before
it stopped running with a muffled rattle, a cry, a very loud cry, as of infinite desolation,
soared slowly in the opaque air. It ceased. A complaining clamor, modulated in savage
discords, filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of it made my hair stir under my cap. I don't
know how it struck the others: to me it seemed as though the mist itself had screamed, so
suddenly, and apparently from all sides at once, did this tumultuous and mournful uproar
arise. It culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive shrieking,
which stopped short, leaving us stiffened in a variety of silly attitudes, and obstinately
listening to the nearly as appalling and excessive silence. 'Good God! What is the meaning—?'
stammered at my elbow one of the pilgrims,—a little fat man, with sandy hair and red whiskers,
who wore side-spring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his socks. Two others remained
open-mouthed a whole minute, then dashed into the little cabin, to rush out incontinently
and stand darting scared glances, with Winchesters at 'ready' in their hands. What we could see
was just the steamer we were on, her outlines blurred as though she had been on the point
of dissolving, and a misty strip of water, perhaps two feet broad, around her—and that
was all. The rest of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned.
Just nowhere. Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a whisper or a shadow behind.
"I went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to be ready to trip
the anchor and move the steamboat at once if necessary. 'Will they attack?' whispered
an awed voice. 'We will all be butchered in this fog,' murmured another. The faces twitched
with the strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It was very curious
to see the contrast of expressions of the white men and of the black fellows of our
crew, who were as much strangers to that part of the river as we, though their homes were
only eight hundred miles away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had besides
a curious look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others had
an alert, naturally interested expression; but their faces were essentially quiet, even
those of the one or two who grinned as they hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short,
grunting phrases, which seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman,
a young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils
and his hair all done up artfully in oily ringlets, stood near me. 'Aha!' I said, just
for good fellowship's sake. 'Catch 'im,' he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his
eyes and a flash of sharp teeth—'catch 'im. Give 'im to us.' 'To you, eh?' I asked; 'what
would you do with them?' 'Eat 'im!' he said curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the rail,
looked out into the fog in a dignified and profoundly pensive attitude. I would no doubt
have been properly horrified, had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be very hungry:
that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at least this month past. They
had been engaged for six months (I don't think a single one of them had any clear idea of
time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time—had
no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of course, as long as there was
a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down
the river, it didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they would live. Certainly
they had brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn't have lasted very long, anyway,
even if the pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable
quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really
a case of legitimate self-defense. You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating,
and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence. Besides that, they had
given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the
theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in river-side villages.
You can see how that worked. There were either no villages, or the people were hostile, or
the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat
thrown in, didn't want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So,
unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with,
I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must say it was paid with
a regularity worthy of a large and honorable trading company. For the rest, the only thing
to eat—though it didn't look eatable in the least—I saw in their possession was
a few lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender color, they kept
wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but so small that it seemed done
more for the looks of the thing than for any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the
name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn't go for us—they were thirty to five—and
have a good tuck in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful
men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though
their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that something
restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there.
I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest—not because it occurred to me I
might be eaten by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceived—in
a new light, as it were—how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively
hoped, that my aspect was not so—what shall I say?—so—unappetizing: a touch of fantastic
vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time. Perhaps
I had a little fever too. One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse.
I had often 'a little fever,' or a little touch of other things—the playful paw-strokes
of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came
in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity
of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable
physical necessity. Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience,
fear—or some kind of primitive honor? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can
wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs,
and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know
the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its somber and
brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger
properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition of one's soul—than
this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps too had no earthly reason
for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from
a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing
me—the fact dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple
on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater—when I thought of it—than the curious, inexplicable
note of desperate grief in this savage clamor that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind
the blind whiteness of the fog.
"Two pilgrims were quarreling in hurried whispers as to which bank. 'Left.' 'No, no; how can
you? Right, right, of course.' 'It is very serious,' said the manager's voice behind
me; 'I would be desolated if anything should happen to Mr. Kurtz before we came up.' I
looked at him, and had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the kind of man
who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his restraint. But when he muttered something
about going on at once, I did not even take the trouble to answer him. I knew, and he
knew, that it was impossible. Were we to let go our hold of the bottom, we would be absolutely
in the air—in space. We wouldn't be able to tell where we were going to—whether up
or down stream, or across—till we fetched against one bank or the other,—and then
we wouldn't know at first which it was. Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a
smash-up. You couldn't imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether drowned at
once or not, we were sure to perish speedily in one way or another. 'I authorize you to
take all the risks,' he said, after a short silence. 'I refuse to take any,' I said shortly;
which was just the answer he expected, though its tone might have surprised him. 'Well,
I must defer to your judgment. You are captain,' he said, with marked civility. I turned my
shoulder to him in sign of my appreciation, and looked into the fog. How long would it
last? It was the most hopeless look-out. The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory
in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted
princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. 'Will they attack, do you think?' asked the manager,
in a confidential tone.
"I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons. The thick fog was one. If
they left the bank in their canoes they would get lost in it, as we would be if we attempted
to move. Still, I had also judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable—and yet
eyes were in it, eyes that had seen us. The river-side bushes were certainly very thick;
but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift I had seen
no canoes anywhere in the reach—certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made
the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise—of the cries we
had heard. They had not the fierce character boding of immediate hostile intention. Unexpected,
wild, and violent as they had been, they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow.
The glimpse of the steamboat had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained
grief. The danger, if any, I expounded, was from our proximity to a great human passion
let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally
takes the form of apathy. . . .
"You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or even to revile
me; but I believe they thought me gone mad—with fright, maybe. I delivered a regular lecture.
My dear boys, it was no good bothering. Keep a look-out? Well, you may guess I watched
the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our
eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool.
It felt like it too—choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant,
was absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt
at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive—it was not even defensive, in
the usual sense: it was undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence
was purely protective.
"It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and its commencement
was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a half below Kurtz's station. We had just
floundered and flopped round a bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright
green, in the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened
the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sandbank, or rather of a chain of
shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river. They were discolored, just awash,
and the whole lot was seen just under the water, exactly as a man's backbone is seen
running down the middle of his back under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I could
go to the right or to the left of this. I didn't know either channel, of course. The
banks looked pretty well alike, the depth appeared the same; but as I had been informed
the station was on the west side, I naturally headed for the western passage.
"No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had
supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right
a high, steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in
serried ranks. The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large
limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well on in the afternoon,
the face of the forest was gloomy, and a broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the
water. In this shadow we steamed up—very slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her
well inshore—the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding-pole informed me.
"One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just below me. This steamboat
was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck there were two little teak-wood houses, with
doors and windows. The boiler was in the fore-end, and the machinery right astern. Over the whole
there was a light roof, supported on stanchions. The funnel projected through that roof, and
in front of the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served for a pilot-house.
It contained a couch, two camp-stools, a loaded Martini-Henry leaning in one corner, a tiny
table, and the steering-wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad shutter at each
side. All these were always thrown open, of course. I spent my days perched up there on
the extreme fore-end of that roof, before the door. At night I slept, or tried to, on
the couch. An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe, and educated by my poor
predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings, wore a blue cloth
wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all the world of himself. He was the
most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while
you were by; but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject
funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a minute.
"I was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to see at each try
a little more of it stick out of that river, when I saw my poleman give up the business
suddenly, and stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul
his pole in. He kept hold on it though, and it trailed in the water. At the same time
the fireman, whom I could also see below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked
his head. I was amazed. Then I had to look at the river mighty quick, because there was
a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little sticks, were flying about—thick: they were whizzing
before my nose, dropping below me, striking behind me against my pilot-house. All this
time the river, the shore, the woods, were very quiet—perfectly quiet. I could only
hear the heavy splashing thump of the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared
the snag clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at! I stepped in quickly to close
the shutter on the land side. That fool-helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees
high, stamping his feet, champing his mouth, like a reined-in horse. Confound him! And
we were staggering within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean right out to swing the
heavy shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at
me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had been removed from my
eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked ***, arms, legs, glaring eyes,—the
bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze color. The twigs shook,
swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the shutter came to. 'Steer
her straight,' I said to the helmsman. He held his head rigid, face forward; but his
eyes rolled, he kept on lifting and setting down his feet gently, his mouth foamed a little.
'Keep quiet!' I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in
the wind. I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle of feet on the iron deck;
confused exclamations; a voice screamed, 'Can you turn back?' I caught shape of a V-shaped
ripple on the water ahead. What? Another snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims
had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush. A deuce
of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward. I swore at it. Now I couldn't see
the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the doorway, peering, and the arrows came
in swarms. They might have been poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn't kill
a cat. The bush began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a rifle
just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the pilot-house was yet full
of noise and smoke when I made a dash at the wheel. The fool-*** had dropped everything,
to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before the wide opening,
glaring, and I yelled at him to come back, while I straightened the sudden twist out
of that steamboat. There was no room to turn even if I had wanted to, the snag was somewhere
very near ahead in that confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded
her into the bank—right into the bank, where I knew the water was deep.
"We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves.
The fusillade below stopped short, as I had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty.
I threw my head back to a glinting whizz that traversed the pilot-house, in at one shutter-hole
and out at the other. Looking past that mad helmsman, who was shaking the empty rifle
and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men running bent double, leaping, gliding,
distinct, incomplete, evanescent. Something big appeared in the air before the shutter,
the rifle went overboard, and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder
in an extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The side of his head
hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over
a little camp-stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore
he had lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away, we were clear of
the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in another hundred yards or so I would be
free to sheer off, away from the bank; but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had
to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both his hands
clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that, either thrown or lunged through
the opening, had caught him in the side just below the ribs; the blade had gone in out
of sight, after making a frightful gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very
still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing luster. The
fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something
precious, with an air of being afraid I would try to take it away from him. I had to make
an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand I felt
above my head for the line of the steam-whistle, and *** out screech after screech hurriedly.
The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths
of the woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter
despair as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was
a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang
out sharply—then silence, in which the languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my
ears. I put the helm hard a-starboard at the moment when the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very
hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway. 'The manager sends me—' he began in an official
tone, and stopped short. 'Good God!' he said, glaring at the wounded man.
"We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance enveloped us both. I
declare it looked as though he would presently put to us some question in an understandable
language; but he died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a
muscle. Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could not see,
to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black
death-mask an inconceivably somber, brooding, and menacing expression. The luster of inquiring
glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. 'Can you steer?' I asked the agent eagerly.
He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once I meant
him to steer whether or no. To tell you the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my
shoes and socks. 'He is dead,' murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. 'No doubt about
it,' said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces. 'And, by the way, I suppose Mr. Kurtz is dead
as well by this time.'
"For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of extreme disappointment,
as though I had found out I had been striving after something altogether without a substance.
I couldn't have been more disgusted if I had traveled all this way for the sole purpose
of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with. . . . I flung one shoe overboard, and became aware
that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to—a talk with Kurtz. I made the
strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing.
I didn't say to myself, 'Now I will never see him,' or 'Now I will never shake him by
the hand,' but, 'Now I will never hear him.' The man presented himself as a voice. Not
of course that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadn't I been told in
all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen
more ivory than all the other agents together? That was not the point. The point was in his
being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently,
that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words—the gift
of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible,
the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.
"The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought, 'By Jove! it's all
over. We are too late; he has vanished—the gift has vanished, by means of some spear,
arrow, or club. I will never hear that chap speak after all,'—and my sorrow had a startling
extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages
in the bush. I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed
of a belief or had missed my destiny in life. . . . Why do you sigh in this beastly way,
somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd. Good Lord! mustn't a man ever—Here, give me some tobacco."
There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and Marlow's lean face appeared,
worn, hollow, with downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention;
and as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out of the
night in the regular flicker of the tiny flame. The match went out.
"Absurd!" he cried. "This is the worst of trying to tell. . . . Here you all are, each
moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner,
a policeman round another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal—you hear—normal
from year's end to year's end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be—exploded! Absurd! My dear
boys, what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung overboard
a pair of new shoes. Now I think of it, it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon
the whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the
inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege
was waiting for me. Oh yes, I heard more than enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He
was very little more than a voice. And I heard—him—it—this voice—other voices—all of them were so
little more than voices—and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable,
like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply
mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices—even the girl herself—now—"
He was silent for a long time.
"I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie," he began suddenly. "Girl! What? Did
I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it—completely. They—the women, I mean—are out of it—should
be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours
gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of
Mr. Kurtz saying, 'My Intended.' You would have perceived directly then how completely
she was out of it. And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing
sometimes, but this—ah specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the
head, and, behold, it was like a ball—an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and—lo!—he
had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed
his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish
initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps
of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was
not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. 'Mostly fossil,'
the manager had remarked disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they call
it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these *** do bury the tusks sometimes—but
evidently they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his
fate. We filled the steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could
see and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this favor had remained
with him to the last. You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh yes, I heard him.
'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—' everything belonged to him. It made
me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal
of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him—but
that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness
claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible—it
was not good for one either—trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils
of the land—I mean literally. You can't understand. How could you?—with solid pavement
under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping
delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows
and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a
man's untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without
a policeman—by the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind
neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the
great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon
your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong—too
dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool
ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil: the fool is too much of a fool, or
the devil too much of a devil—I don't know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted
creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds.
Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and whether to be like this is your
loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.
The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with
smells too, by Jove!—breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And
there, don't you see? Your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging
of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in—your power of devotion, not to yourself,
but to an obscure, back-breaking business. And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not
trying to excuse or even explain—I am trying to account to myself for—for—Mr. Kurtz—for
the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honored me with its
amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to
me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and—as he was good enough to
say himself—his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father
was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by-and-by I learned
that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs
had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written
it too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too
high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must
have been before his—let us say—nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain
midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which—as far as I reluctantly gathered from
what I heard at various times—were offered up to him—do you understand?—to Mr. Kurtz
himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light
of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites,
from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages]
in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might as of a deity,'
and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good
practically unbounded,' &c., &c. From that point he soared and took me with him. The
peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion
of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm.
This was the unbounded power of eloquence—of words—of burning noble words. There were
no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note
at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded
as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal
to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash
of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The curious part was that
he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on,
when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of 'my pamphlet'
(he called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career.
I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as it turned out, I was to have
the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay
it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the
sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then, you
see, I can't choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had
the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his
honor; he could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he
had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither
rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can't forget him, though I am not prepared
to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my
late helmsman awfully,—I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house.
Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account
than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see, he had done something, he had
steered; for months I had him at my back—a help—an instrument. It was a kind of partnership.
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.
And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains
to this day in my memory—like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.
"Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no restraint, no restraint—just
like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers,
I dragged him out, after first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess
I performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the little door-step;
his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him from behind desperately. Oh! he
was heavy, heavy; heavier than any man on earth, I should imagine. Then without more
ado I tipped him overboard. The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass,
and I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it for ever. All the pilgrims
and the manager were then congregated on the awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering
at each other like a flock of excited magpies, and there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless
promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging about for I can't guess. Embalm
it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and a very ominous, murmur on the deck below.
My friends the wood-cutters were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason—though
I admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had made up my mind that if my
late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone should have him. He had been a very
second-rate helmsman while alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class
temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the
wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business.
"This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going half-speed, keeping right
in the middle of the stream, and I listened to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz,
they had given up the station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burnt—and so on—and
so on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that at least this poor Kurtz
had been properly revenged. 'Say! We must have made a glorious slaughter of them in
the bush. Eh? What do you think? Say?' He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little
gingery beggar. And he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man! I could not help
saying, 'You made a glorious lot of smoke, anyhow.' I had seen, from the way the tops
of the bushes rustled and flew, that almost all the shots had gone too high. You can't
hit anything unless you take aim and fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired from
the hip with their eyes shut. The retreat, I maintained—and I was right—was caused
by the screeching of the steam-whistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and began to howl
at me with indignant protests.
"The manager stood by the wheel murmuring confidentially about the necessity of getting
well away down the river before dark at all events, when I saw in the distance a clearing
on the river-side and the outlines of some sort of building. 'What's this?' I asked.
He clapped his hands in wonder. 'The station!' he cried. I edged in at once, still going
half-speed.
"Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare trees and perfectly
free from undergrowth. A long decaying building on the summit was half buried in the high
grass; the large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the
woods made a background. There was no inclosure or fence of any kind; but there had been one
apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed,
and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls. The rails, or whatever
there had been between, had disappeared. Of course the forest surrounded all that. The
river-bank was clear, and on the water-side I saw a white man under a hat like a cart-wheel
beckoning persistently with his whole arm. Examining the edge of the forest above and
below, I was almost certain I could see movements—human forms gliding here and there. I steamed past
prudently, then stopped the engines and let her drift down. The man on the shore began
to shout, urging us to land. 'We have been attacked,' screamed the manager. 'I know—I
know. It's all right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. 'Come along. It's
all right. I am glad.'
"His aspect reminded me of something I had seen—something funny I had seen somewhere.
As I maneuvered to get alongside, I was asking myself, 'What does this fellow look like?'
Suddenly I got it. He looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that
was brown holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright patches,
blue, red, and yellow,—patches on the back, patches on front, patches on elbows, on knees;
colored binding round his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and
the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could
see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very
fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing
each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a windswept plain.
'Look out, captain!' he cried; 'there's a snag lodged in here last night.' What! Another
snag? I confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish off that
charming trip. The harlequin on the bank turned his little pug nose up to me. 'You English?'
he asked, all smiles. 'Are you?' I shouted from the wheel. The smiles vanished, and he
shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment. Then he brightened up. 'Never mind!' he cried
encouragingly. 'Are we in time?' I asked. 'He is up there,' he replied, with a toss
of the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy all of a sudden. His face was like the autumn
sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.
"When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the teeth, had gone to
the house, this chap came on board. 'I say, I don't like this. These natives are in the
bush,' I said. He assured me earnestly it was all right. 'They are simple people,' he
added; 'well, I am glad you came. It took me all my time to keep them off.' 'But you
said it was all right,' I cried. 'Oh, they meant no harm,' he said; and as I stared he
corrected himself, 'Not exactly.' Then vivaciously, 'My faith, your pilot-house wants a clean
up!' In the next breath he advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the whistle
in case of any trouble. 'One good screech will do more for you than all your rifles.
They are simple people,' he repeated. He rattled away at such a rate he quite overwhelmed me.
He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing,
that such was the case. 'Don't you talk with Mr. Kurtz?' I said. 'You don't talk with that
man—you listen to him,' he exclaimed with severe exaltation. 'But now—' He waved his
arm, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the uttermost depths of despondency. In a
moment he came up again with a jump, possessed himself of both my hands, shook them continuously,
to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.