Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
I
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing
for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway.
In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space
the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of
canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran
out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed
condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town
on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his
back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that
looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a 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 marsh 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, that to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches
of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories
of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and
served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin,
knights all, titled and untitled—the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships
whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with
her rotund 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 light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships
moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the
upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a
brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that could be said of him was
that he did not represent his class. He was a 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; run overland
across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries—a wonderful lot of
handy men they must have been, too—used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or
two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the
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 like best 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 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. 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 right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously
ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as
a desert, and opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on
straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me—still
knitting with downcast eyes—and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you
would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrellacover, 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 inkstains 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.'
"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 imposter. 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 greyish-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 upcountry?' 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 uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with
that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the
reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its
middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted
his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much
alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a
large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his
exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.
"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang get
out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike
and to fend off. I've had to resist and to attack sometimes—that's only one way of resisting—
without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered
into. I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all
the stars! these were strong, 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 upcountry) 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 deck—' 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 finished 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 the 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 features, in manners,
and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were
perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and
heavy as an 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 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. Anyway, 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
back-biting 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 torchlight 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. Every one 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. Today he is chief of the best station, next
year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and... but I dare-say you know what he will be
in two years' time. You are of the new gang—the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him
specially also recommended you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Light dawned
upon me. My dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing an unexpected effect upon
that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. 'Do you read the Company's confidential
correspondence?' I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I
continued, severely, 'is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.'
"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures
strolled about listlessly, pouring water on the glow, whence proceeded a sound of hissing; steam
ascended in the moonlight, the beaten 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 riverside, 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 that 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, mangled steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about 'the
necessity for every man to get on.' 'And when one comes out here, you conceive, it is not to gaze
at the moon.' Mr. Kurtz was a 'universal genius,' but even a genius would find it easier to work
with 'adequate tools—intelligent men.' He did not make bricks—why, there was a physical
impossibility in the way—as I was well aware; and if he did secretarial work for the manager, it
was because 'no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.' Did I see it? I
saw it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on
with the work—to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast—
cases—piled up—burst—split! You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that station-yard
on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets
for the trouble of stooping down—and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted.
We had plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a
long 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 icthyosaurus 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, campstools, 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."
II
"One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching—and
there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again,
and had nearly lost myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: 'I am as
harmless as a little child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I the manager—or am I not? I was
ordered to send him there. It's incredible.' ... I became aware that the two were standing on the
shore alongside the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I did not move; it did not
occur to me to move: I was sleepy. 'It is unpleasant,' grunted the uncle. 'He has asked the
Administration to be sent there,' said the other, 'with the idea of showing what he could do; and I
was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that man must have. Is it not frightful?' They
both agreed it was frightful, then made several bizarre remarks: 'Make rain and fine weather—
one man—the Council—by the nose'—bits of absurd sentences that got the better of my
drowsiness, so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits about me when the uncle said, 'The
climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there?' 'Yes,' answered the manager;
'he sent his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms: "Clear this poor devil out of
the country, and don't bother sending more of that sort. I had rather be alone than have the kind
of men you can dispose of with me." It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine such
impudence!' 'Anything since then?' asked the other hoarsely. 'Ivory,' 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!' 'Hm'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 traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when
vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an
impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance
of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of
overshadowed distances. On silvery sand-banks 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 for 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 lookout 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. Were 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 grassroofs, 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
woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes—I tell you. I had to watch
the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There
was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to look
after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical
boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a
dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs. A few months of training
had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an
evident effort of intrepidity—and he had filed teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate
shaved into 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
riverside. 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 w...
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