Heart of Darkness E-book

                                 1902

                          HEART OF DARKNESS

                           by Joseph Conrad








Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)



                             CHAPTER ONE
-
  THE "NELLIE," A CRUISING YAWL, swung to her anchor without a flutter
of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly
calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to
come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
  The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning
of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were
welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the
tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand
still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of
varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to
sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and
farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding
motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
  The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four
affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to
seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so
nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness
personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in
the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.
  Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond
of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods
of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's
yarns- and even convictions. The 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 sombre
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, tided 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 on 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 seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen 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 seaman 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 seamen 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; ran overland across the Gauls in a
hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries- a
wonderful lot of handymen 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 colour
of lead, a sky the colour 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. Sand-banks, 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 murder 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 pretence 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 sombre 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,' etc., etc. 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
nigger 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 sepulchre. 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 down-cast 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 colours 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 centre. 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-bye.
Ah! Good-bye. 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-bye 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-half-penny 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 labourer is worthy of his
hire,' she said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth
women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has 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 queer
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 centre of a continent, I were about to set off
for the centre 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 pinheads 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 back-cloth. 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 sombreness 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 six-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 six-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 seaman, 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 boulders, 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 waggled 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 the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the
violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily
up-hill. 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, lusty, 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 the 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 the
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 clean 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 book-keeping 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, 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.' Thus 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 niggers 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 invalid 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 tramp.
                                                         
  "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 niggers armed with
all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to travelling 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 negro, 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 enclosed 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 moustaches, 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 feature, 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 axe. 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 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 negro 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 rumours
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 dumfounded 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 can I tell?' I said. 'I haven'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
verandah) 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 moustaches 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 nigger 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, 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 bosom 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 pretence 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 only 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 sombre-
almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of
the torch-light on the face was sinister.
  "It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding an empty 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 daresay 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 nigger groaned somewhere. 'What a row the
brute makes!' said the indefatigable man with the moustaches,
appearing near us. 'Serve him right. Transgression- punishment-
bang! 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 nigger 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 sombre 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 flavour 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 pretence 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 clue 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, mingled
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 negro,
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
virgin 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 niggers
trod on the heels of the donkey; 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 instalments 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 neighbourhood, 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."


                             CHAPTER TWO
-
  "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,' jerked 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 dugout 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 dugout, 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 rumours.' 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 best.'
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 centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing,
improving, instructing." Conceive you- that ass! 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 dishonouring 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 travelling 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 seaman, 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 towards
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 wood-cutters 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 travelling
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, valour, 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 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 woollen 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
queer 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 wood-pile. 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 Towser, 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 pencilled
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 any one 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 clamour,
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 be
all butchered in this fog,' murmured another. The faces twitched
with the strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eves 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-defence. 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 honourable 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 colour, 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
honour? 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 sombre 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,
dishonour, 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 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 clamour
that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind whiteness
of the fog.
  "Two pilgrims were quarrelling 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
r