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

-1-

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

-2-

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

-3-

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

-4-

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

-5-

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, ya 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

-6-

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

-7-

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

-8-

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

-9-

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

-10-

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

-11-

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

-12-

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

-13-

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

-14-

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.

-15-

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 yhappened. 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

-16-

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-

-17-

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

-18-

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 ya 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

-19-

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

-20-

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

-21-

everlasting confab.

"I had given up worrying myself about the
rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly is
more limited than you would suppose. I said
Hang!--and let things slide. I had plenty of
time for meditation, and now and then I
would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't
very interested in him. No. Still, I was
curious to see whether this man, who had
come out equipped with moral ideas of
some sort, would climb to the top after all
and how he would set about his work when
there."

Chapter 2

"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

-22-

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

-23-

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

-24-

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

-25-

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

-26-

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.

-27-

"Towards the evening of the second day we
judged ourselves about eight miles from
Kurtz's station. I wanted to push on; but the
manager looked grave, and told me the
navigation up there was so dangerous that it
would be advisable, the sun being very low
already, to wait where we were till next
morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the
warning to approach cautiously were to be
followed, we must approach in daylight not
at dusk or in the dark. This was sensible
enough. Eight miles meant nearly three
hours' steaming for us, and I could also see
suspicious ripples at the upper end of the
reach. Nevertheless, I was annoyed beyond
expression at the delay, and most
unreasonably, too, since one night more
could not matter much after so many
months. As we had plenty of wood, and
caution was the word, I brought up in the
middle of the stream. The reach was
narrow, straight, with high sides like a
railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it
long before the sun had set. The current ran
smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility sat
on the banks. The living trees, lashed
together by the creepers and every living
bush of the undergrowth, might have been
changed into stone, even to the slenderest
twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep--it
seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not
the faintest sound of any kind could be
heard. You looked on amazed, and began
to suspect yourself of being deaf then the
night came suddenly, and struck you blind
as well. About three in the morning some
large fish leaped, and the loud splash made
me jump as though a gun had been fired.
When the sun rose there was a white fog,
very warm and clammy, and more blinding
than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was
just there, standing all round you like
something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps, it
lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of
the towering multitude of trees, of the
immense matted jungle, with the blazing

-28-

awed voice. `We will be all butchered in this
fog,' murmured another. The faces twitched
with the strain, the hands trembled slightly,
the eyes forgot to wink. It was very curious
to see the contrast of expressions of the
white men and of the black fellows of our
crew, who were as much strangers to that
part of the river as we, though their homes
were only eight hundred miles away. The
whites, of course greatly discomposed,
had besides a curious look of being
painfully shocked by such an outrageous
row. The others had an alert, naturally
interested expression; but their faces were
essentially quiet, even those of the one or
two who grinned as they hauled at the chain.
Several exchanged short, grunting phrases,
which seemed to settle the matter to their
satisfaction. Their headman, a young,
broad-chested black, severely draped in
dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils
and his hair all done up artfully in oily
ringlets, stood near me. `Aha!' I said, just
for good fellowship's sake. `Catch 'im,' he
snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his
eyes and a flash of sharp teeth--'catch 'im.
Give 'im to us.' `To you, eh?' I asked; `what
would you do with them?' `Eat 'im!' he said
curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the rail,
looked out into the fog in a dignified and
profoundly pensive attitude. I would no
doubt have been properly horrified, had it
not occurred to me that he and his chaps
must be very hungry: that they must have
been growing increasingly hungry for at
least this month past. They had been
engaged for six months (I don't think a
single one of them had any clear idea of
time, as we at the end of countless ages
have. They still belonged to the beginnings
of time--had no inherited experience to
teach them as it were), and of course, as
long as there was a piece of paper written
over in accordance with some farcical law
or other made down the river, it didn't enter
anybody's head to trouble how they would

-29-

secrets that baffle probability, had come
into play there. I looked at them with a swift
quickening of interest not because it
occurred to me I might be eaten by them
before very long, though I own to you that
just then I perceived in a new light, as it
were--how unwholesome the pilgrims
looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped,
that my aspect was not so what shall I say?-
-so--unappetizing: a touch of fantastic
vanity which fitted well with the dream-
sensation that pervaded all my days at that
time. Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One
can't live with one's finger everlastingly on
one's pulse. I had often 'a little fever,' or a
little touch of other things the playful paw-
strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary
trifling before the more serious onslaught
which came in due course. Yes; I looked at
them as you would on any human being,
with a curiosity of their impulses, motives,
capacities, weaknesses, when brought to
the test of an inexorable physical necessity.
Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it
superstition, disgust, patience, fear--or
some kind of primitive honour? No fear can
stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it
out, disgust simply does not exist where
hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs,
and what you may call principles, they are
less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know
the devilry of lingering starvation, its
exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its
sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It
takes a man all his inborn strength to fight
hunger properly. It's really easier to face
bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition
of one's soul--than this kind of prolonged
hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too,
had no earthly reason for any kind of
scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have
expected restraint from a hyena prowling
amongst the corpses of a battlefield. But
there was the fact facing me--the fact
dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the
depths of the sea, like a ripple on an

-30-

attack, do you think?' asked the manager,
in a confidential tone.

"I did not think they would attack, for several
obvious reasons. The thick fog was one. If
they left the bank in their canoes they would
get lost in it, as we would be if we
attempted to move. Still, I had also judged
the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable
and yet eyes were in it, eyes that had seen
us. The riverside bushes were certainly very
thick; but the undergrowth behind was
evidently penetrable. However, during the
short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in
the reach--certainly not abreast of the
steamer. But what made the idea of attack
inconceivable to me was the nature of the
noise--of the cries we had heard. They had
not the fierce character boding immediate
hostile intention. Unexpected, wild, and
violent as they had been, they had given me
an irresistible impression of sorrow. The
glimpse of the steamboat had for some
reason filled those savages with
unrestrained grief. The danger, if any, I
expounded, was from our proximity to a
great human passion let loose. Even
extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in
violence--but more generally takes the
form of apathy. . . .

"You should have seen the pilgrims stare!
They had no heart to grin, or even to revile
me: but I believe they thought me gone mad
with fright, maybe. I delivered a regular
lecture. My dear boys, it was no good
bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may
guess I watched the fog for the signs of
lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for
anything else our eyes were of no more use
to us than if we had been buried miles deep
in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too--
choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said,
though it sounded extravagant, was
absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards
alluded to as an attack was really an attempt

-31-

bank, as the sounding-pole informed me.

"One of my hungry and forbearing friends
was sounding in the bows just below me.
This steamboat was exactly like a decked
scow. On the deck, there were two little
teakwood houses, with doors and
windows. The boiler was in the fore-end,
and the machinery right astern. yOver the
whole there was a light roof, supported on
stanchions. The funnel projected through
that roof, and in front of the funnel a small
cabin built of light planks served for a pilot-
house. It contained a couch, two camp-
stools, a loaded Martini-Henry leaning in
one corner, a tiny table, and the steering-
wheel. It had a wide door in front and a
broad shutter at each side. All these were
always thrown open, of course. I spent my
days perched up there on the extreme fore-
end of that roof, before the door. At night I
slept, or tried to, on the couch. An athletic
black belonging to some coast tribe and
educated by my poor predecessor, was the
helmsman. He sported a pair of brass
earrings, wore a blue cloth wrapper from
the waist to the ankles, and thought all the
world of himself. He was the most unstable
kind of fool I had ever seen. He steered with
no end of a swagger while you were by; but
if he lost sight of you, he became instantly
the prey of an abject funk, and would let that
cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand
of him in a minute.

"I was looking down at the sounding-pole,
and feeling much annoyed to see at each try
a little more of it stick out of that river, when I
saw my poleman give up on the business
suddenly, and stretch himself flat on the
deck, without even taking the trouble to haul
his pole in. He kept hold on it though, and it
trailed in the water. At the same time the
fireman, whom I could also see below me,
sat down abruptly before his furnace and
ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had

-32-

snag either. I stood in the doorway, peering,
and the arrows came in swarms. They might
have been poisoned, but they looked as
though they wouldn't kill a cat. The bush
began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a
warlike whoop; the report of a rifle just at
my back deafened me. I glanced over my
shoulder, and the pilot-house was yet full of
noise and smoke when I made a dash at the
wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped
everything, to throw the shutter open and let
off that Martini-Henry. He stood before the
wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at him to
come back, while I straightened the sudden
twist out of that steamboat. There was no
room to turn even if I had wanted to, the
snag was somewhere very near ahead in
that confounded smoke, there was no time
to lose, so I just crowded her into the bank
right into the bank, where I knew the water
was deep.

"We tore slowly along the overhanging
bushes in a whirl of broken twigs and flying
leaves. The fusillade below stopped short,
as I had foreseen it would when the squirts
got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting
whizz that traversed the pilot-house, in at
one shutter-hole and out at the other.
Looking past that mad helmsman, who was
shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the
shore, I saw vague forms of men running
bent double, leaping, gliding, distinct,
incomplete, evanescent. Something big
appeared in the air before the shutter, the
rifle went overboard, and the man stepped
back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder
in an extraordinary, profound, familiar
manner, and fell upon my feet. The side of
his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of
what appeared a long cane clattered round
and knocked over a little camp-stool. It
looked as though after wrenching that thing
from somebody ashore he had lost his
balance in the effort. The thin smoke had
blown away, we were clear of the snag, and

-33-

limb, without twitching a muscle. Only in the
very last moment, as though in response to
some sign we could not see, to some
whisper we could not hear, he frowned
heavily, and that frown gave to his black
death-mask an inconeivably sombre,
brooding, and menacing expression. The
lustre of inquiring glance faded swiftly into
vacant glassiness. `Can you steer?' I asked
the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious;
but I made a grab at his arm, and he
understood at once I meant him to steer
whether or no. To tell you the truth, I was
morbidly anxious to change my shoes and
socks. `He is dead,' murmured the fellow,
immensely impressed. `No doubt about it,'
said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces.
`And by the way, I suppose Mr. Kurtz is
dead as well by this time.'

"For the moment that was the dominant
thought. There was a sense of extreme
disappointment, as though I had found out I
had been striving after something
altogether without a substance. I couldn't
have been more disgusted if I had travelled
all this way for the sole purpose of talking
with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with . . . I flung one
shoe overboard, and became aware that
that was exactly what I had been looking
forward to a talk with Kurtz. I made the
strange discovery that I had never imagined
him as doing, you know, but as discoursing.
I didn't say to myself, `Now I will never see
him,' or `Now I will never shake him by the
hand,' but, `Now I will never hear him.' The
man presented himself as a voice. Not of
course that I did not connect him with some
sort of action. Hadn't I been told in all the
tones of jealousy and admiration that he
had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen
more ivory than all the other agents
together? That was not the point. The point
was in his being a gifted creature, and that
of all his gifts the one that stood out
preeminently, that carried with it a sense of

-34-

I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole,
proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the quick
at the idea of having lost the inestimable
privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of
course I was wrong. The privilege was
waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than
enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He
was very little more than a voice. And I
heard--him--it--this voice--other voices--
all of them were so little more than voices--
and the memory of that time itself lingers
around me, impalpable, like a dying
vibration of one immense jabber, silly,
atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean,
without any kind of sense. Voices, voices--
even the girl herself--now--"

He was silent for a long time.

"I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie,"
he began, suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I
mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it--
completely. They--the women, I mean are
out of it--should be out of it. We must help
them to stay in that beautiful world of their
own, lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to
be out of it. You should have heard the
disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, `My
Intended.' You would have perceived
directly then how completely she was out of
it. And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz!
They say the hair goes on growing
sometimes, but this ah--specimen, was
impressively bald. The wilderness had
patted him on the head, and, behold, it was
like a ball an ivory ball; it had caressed him,
and--lo!--he had withered; it had taken
him, loved him, embraced him, got into his
veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his
soul to its own by the inconceivable
ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He
was its spoiled and pampered favourite.
Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks
of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with
it. You would think there was not a single
tusk left either above or below the ground in

-35-

even to know you are being assaulted by the
powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever
made a bargain for his soul with the devil;
the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too
much of a devil--I don't know which. Or you
may be such a thunderingly exalted creature
as to be altogether deaf and blind to
anything but heavenly sights and sounds.
Then the earth for you is only a standing
place--and whether to be like this is your
loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. But
most of us are neither one nor the other. The
earth for us is a place to live in, where we
must put up with sights, with sounds, with
smells, too, by Jove!--breathe dead hippo,
so to speak, and not be contaminated. And
there, don't you see? Your strength comes
in, the faith in your ability for the digging of
unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in your
power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an
obscure, back-breaking business. And
that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying
to excuse or even explain--I am trying to
account to myself for--for--Mr. Kurtz--for
the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith
from the back of Nowhere honoured me
with its amazing confidence before it
vanished altogether. This was because it
could speak English to me. The original
Kurtz had been educated partly in England,
and--as he was good enough to say
himself--his sympathies were in the right
place. His mother was half-English, his
father was half-French. All Europe
contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by
and by I learned that, most appropriately,
the International Society for the
Suppression of Savage Customs had
intrusted him with the making of a report, for
its future guidance. And he had written it,
too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent,
vibrating with eloquence, but too high-
strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close
writing he had found time for! But this must
have been before his--let us say--nerves,
went wrong, and caused him to preside at

-36-

everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress,
amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively
speaking, all the dead cats of civilization.
But then, you see, I can't choose. He won't
be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not
common. He had the power to charm or
frighten rudimentary souls into an
aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he
could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims
with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted
friend at least, and he had conquered one
soul in the world that was neither
rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking.
No; I can't forget him, though I am not
prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly
worth the life we lost in getting to him. I
missed my late helmsman awfully I missed
him even while his body was still lying in the
pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it
passing strange this regret for a savage
who was no more account than a grain of
sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see,
he had done something, he had steered; for
months I had him at my back a help--an
instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He
steered for me--I had to look after him, I
worried about his deficiencies, and thus a
subtle bond had been created, of which I
only became aware when it was suddenly
broken. And the intimate profundity of that
look he gave me when he received his hurt
remains to this day in my memory like a
claim of distant kinship affirmed in a
supreme moment.

"Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter
alone. He had no restraint, no restraint--
just like Kurtz--a tree swayed by the wind.
As soon as I had put on a dry pair of
slippers, I dragged him out, after first
jerking the spear out of his side, which
operation I confess I performed with my
eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together
over the little doorstep; his shoulders were
pressed to my breast; I hugged him from
behind desperately. Oh! he was heavy,

-37-

smoke, anyhow.' I had seen, from the way
the tops of the bushes rustled and flew, that
almost all the shots had gone too high. You
can't hit anything unless you take aim and
fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired
from the hip with their eyes shut. The retreat,
I maintained--and I was right--was caused
by the screeching of the steam whistle.
Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and began to
howl at me with indignant protests.

"The manager stood by the wheel
murmuring confidentially about the
necessity of getting well away down the
river before dark at all events, when I saw in
the distance a clearing on the riverside and
the outlines of some sort of building. `What's
this?' I asked. He clapped his hands in
wonder. `The station!' he cried. I edged in at
once, still going half-speed.

"Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill
interspersed with rare trees and perfectly
free from undergrowth. A long decaying
building on the summit was half buried in the
high grass; the large holes in the peaked
roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and
the woods made a background. There was
no enclosure or fence of any kind; but there
had been one apparently, for near the
house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in
a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper
ends ornamented with round carved balls.
The rails, or whatever there had been
between, had disappeared. Of course the
forest surrounded all that. The river-bank
was clear, and on the waterside I saw a
white man under a hat like a cart-wheel
beckoning persistently with his whole arm.
Examining the edge of the forest above and
below, I was almost certain I could see
movements--human forms gliding here and
there. I steamed past prudently, then
stopped the engines and let her drift down.
The man on the shore began to shout,
urging us to land. `We have been attacked,'

-38-

gone to the house this chap came on board.
`I say, I don't like this. These natives are in
the bush,' I said. He assured me earnestly it
was all right. `They are simple people,' he
added; `well, I am glad you came. It took me
all my time to keep them off.' `But you said it
was all right,' I cried. `Oh, they meant no
harm,' he said; and as I stared he corrected
himself, `Not exactly.' Then vivaciously, `My
faith, your pilot-house wants a clean-up!' In
the next breath he advised me to keep
enough steam on the boiler to blow the
whistle in case of any trouble. `One good
screech will do more for you than all your
rifles. They are simple people,' he
repeated. He rattled away at such a rate he
quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be
trying to make up for lots of silence, and
actually hinted, laughing, that such was the
case. `Don't you talk with Mr. Kurtz?' I said.
`You don't talk with that man--you listen to
him,' he exclaimed with severe exaltation.
`But now--' He waved his arm, and in the
twinkling of an eye was in the uttermost
depths of despondency. In a moment he
came up again with a jump, possessed
himself of both my hands, shook them
continuously, while he gabbled: `Brother
sailor . . . honour . . . pleasure . . . delight . . .
introduce myself . . . Russian . . . son of an
arch-priest . . . Government of Tambov . . .
What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the
excellent English tobacco! Now, that's
brotherly. Smoke? Where's a sailor that
does not smoke?"

"The pipe soothed him, and gradually I
made out he had run away from school, had
gone to sea in a Russian ship; ran away
again; served some time in English ships;
was now reconciled with the arch-priest.
He made a point of that. `But when one is
young one must see things, gather
experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.'
`Here!' I interrupted. `You can never tell!
Here I met Mr. Kurtz,' he said, youthfully

-39-

He opened his arms wide, staring at me
with his little blue eyes that were perfectly
round."

Chapte 3

"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There
he was before me, in motley, as though he
had absconded from a troupe of mimes,
enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence
was improbable, inexplicable, and
altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble
problem. It was inconceivable how he had
existed, how he had succeeded in getting
so far, how he had managed to remain why
he did not instantly disappear. `I went a little
farther,' he said, `then still a little farther--till
I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll
ever get back. Never mind. Plenty time. I can
manage. You take Kurtz away quick--
quick--I tell you.' The glamour of youth
enveloped his parti-coloured rags, his
destitution, his loneliness, the essential
desolation of his futile wanderings. For
months--for years--his life hadn't been
worth a day's purchase; and there he was
gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all
appearances indestructible solely by the
virtue of his few years and of his
unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into
something like admiration like envy.
Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him
unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from
the wilderness but space to breathe in and
to push on through. His need was to exist,
and to move onwards at the greatest
possible risk, and with a maximum of
privation. If the absolutely pure,
uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure
had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this
bepatched youth. I almost envied him the
possession of this modest and clear flame.
It seemed to have consumed all thought of
self so completely, that even while he was
talking to you, you forgot that it was he the
man before your eyes--who had gone

-40-

turn up,' he said. `Ah, it was worth waiting
for!--sometimes.' `What was he doing?
exploring or what?' I asked. `Oh, yes, of
course'; he had discovered lots of villages,
a lake, too--he did not know exactly in what
direction; it was dangerous to inquire too
much--but mostly his expeditions had been
for ivory. `But he had no goods to trade with
by that time,' I objected. `There's a good lot
of cartridges left even yet,' he answered,
looking away. `To speak plainly, he raided
the country,' I said. He nodded. `Not alone,
surely!' He muttered something about the
villages round that lake. `Kurtz got the tribe
to follow him, did he?' I suggested. He
fidgeted a little. `They adored him,' he said.
The tone of these words was so
extraordinary that I looked at him
searchingly. It was curious to see his
mingled eagerness and reluctance to speak
of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his
thoughts, swayed his emotions. `What can
you expect?' he burst out; `he came to them
with thunder and lightning, you know and
they had never seen anything like it--and
very terrible. He could be very terrible. You
can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an
ordinary man. No, no, no! Now--just to give
you an idea I don't mind telling you, he
wanted to shoot me, too, one day but I don't
judge him.' `Shoot you!' I cried `What for?'
`Well, I had a small lot of ivory the chief of
that village near my house gave me. You
see I used to shoot game for them. Well, he
wanted it, and wouldn't hear reason. He
declared he would shoot me unless I gave
him the ivory and then cleared out of the
country, because he could do so, and had a
fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth
to prevent him killing whom he jolly well
pleased. And it was true, too. I gave him the
ivory. What did I care! But I didn't clear out.
No, no. I couldn't leave him. I had to be
careful, of course, till we got friendly again
for a time. He had his second illness then.
Afterwards I had to keep out of the way; but I

-41-

helpless, and so I came up--took my
chance,' said the Russian. `Oh, he is bad,
very bad.' I directed my glass to the house.
There were no signs of life, but there was
the ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping
above the grass, with three little square
window-holes, no two of the same size; all
this brought within reach of my hand, as it
were. And then I made a brusque
movement, and one of the remaining posts
of that vanished fence leaped up in the field
of my glass. You remember I told you I had
been struck at the distance by certain
attempts at ornamentation, rather
remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the
place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view,
and its first result was to make me throw my
head back as if before a blow. Then I went
carefully from post to post with my glass,
and I saw my mistake. These round knobs
were not ornamental but symbolic; they
were expressive and puzzling, striking and
disturbing food for thought and also for
vultures if there had been any looking down
from the sky; but at all events for such ants
as were industrious enough to ascend the
pole. They would have been even more
impressive, those heads on the stakes, if
their faces had not been turned to the
house. Only one, the first I had made out,
was facing my way. I was not so shocked as
you may think. The start back I had given
was really nothing but a movement of
surprise. I had expected to see a knob of
wood there, you know. I returned
deliberately to the first I had seen--and
there it was, black, dried, sunken, with
closed eyelids--a head that seemed to
sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the
shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white
line of the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling
continuously at some endless and jocose
dream of that eternal slumber.

"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In
fact, the manager said afterwards that Mr.

-42-

savagery was a positive relief, being
something that had a right to exist--
obviously--in the sunshine. The young man
looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did
not occur to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of
mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these
splendid monologues on, what was it? on
love, justice, conduct of life--or what not. If
it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he
crawled as much as the veriest savage of
them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he
said: these heads were the heads of rebels.
I shocked him excessively by laughing.
Rebels! What would be the next definition I
was to hear? There had been enemies,
criminals, workers--and these were rebels.
Those rebellious heads looked very
subdued to me on their sticks. `You don't
know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,'
cried Kurtz's last disciple. `Well, and you?' I
said. `I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great
thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How
can you compare me to . . . ?' His feelings
were too much for speech, and suddenly he
broke down. `I don't understand,' he
groaned. `I've been doing my best to keep
him alive, and that's enough. I had no hand
in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't
been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of
invalid food for months here. He was
shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with
such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I--I
haven't slept for the last ten nights . . .'

"His voice lost itself in the calm of the
evening. The long shadows of the forest
had slipped downhill while we talked, had
gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond
the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in
the gloom, while we down there were yet in
the sunshine, and the stretch of the river
abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and
dazzling splendour, with a murky and
overshadowed bend above and below. Not
a living soul was seen on the shore. The
bushes did not rustle.

-43-

image of death carved out of old ivory had
been shaking its hand with menaces at a
motionless crowd of men made of dark and
glittering bronze. I saw him open his mouth
wide--it gave him a weirdly voracious
aspect, as though he had wanted to
swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men
before him. A deep voice reached me
faintly. He must have been shouting. He fell
back suddenly. The stretcher shook as the
bearers staggered forward again, and
almost at the same time I noticed that the
crowd of savages was vanishing without
any perceptible movement of retreat, as if
the forest that had ejected these beings so
suddenly had drawn them in again as the
breath is drawn in a long aspiration.

"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher
carried his arms two shot-guns, a heavy
rifle, and a light revolver-carbine the
thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter. The
manager bent over him murmuring as he
walked beside his head. They laid him
down in one of the little cabins--just a room
for a bed place and a camp-stool or two,
you know. We had brought his belated
correspondence, and a lot of torn
envelopes and open letters littered his bed.
His hand roamed feebly amongst these
papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes
and the composed languor of his
expression. It was not so much the
exhaustion of disease. He did not seem in
pain. This shadow looked satiated and
calm, as though for the moment it had had
its fill of all the emotions.

"He rustled one of the letters, and looking
straight in my face said, `I am glad.'
Somebody had been writing to him about
me. These special recommendations were
turning up again. The volume of tone he
emitted without effort, almost without the
trouble of moving his lips, amazed me. A
voice! a voice! It was grave, profound,

-44-

"She came abreast of the steamer, stood
still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to
the water's edge. Her face had a tragic and
fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb
pain mingled with the fear of some
struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood
looking at us without a stir, and like the
wilderness itself, with an air of brooding
over an inscrutable purpose. A whole
minute passed, and then she made a step
forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of
yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies,
and she stopped as if her heart had failed
her. The young fellow by my side growled.
The pilgrims murmured at my back. She
looked at us all as if her life had depended
upon the unswerving steadiness of her
glance. Suddenly she opened her bared
arms and0threw them up rigid above her
head, as though in an uncontrollable desire
to touch the sky, and at the same time the
swift shadows darted out on the earth,
swept around on the river, gathering the
steamer into a shadowy embrace. A
formidable silence hung over the scene.

"She turned away slowly, walked on,
following the bank, and passed into the
bushes to the left. Once only her eyes
gleamed back at us in the dusk of the
thickets before she disappeared.

"`If she had offered to come aboard I really
think I would have tried to shoot her,' said
the man of patches, nervously. `I have been
risking my life every day for the last fortnight
to keep her out of the house. She got in one
day and kicked up a row about those
miserable rags I picked up in the storeroom
to mend my clothes with. I wasn't decent. At
least it must have been that, for she talked
like a fury to Kurtz for an hour, pointing at me
now and then. I don't understand the dialect
of this tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt
too ill that day to care, or there would have
been mischief. I don't understand. . . . No--

-45-

remarkable man,' I said with emphasis. He
started, dropped on me a heavy glance,
said very quietly, `he was,' and turned his
back on me. My hour of favour was over; I
found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a
partisan of methods for which the time was
not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but it was
something to have at least a choice of
nightmares.

"I had turned to the wilderness really, not to
Mr. Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as
good as buried. And for a moment it
seemed to me as if I also were buried in a
vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt
an intolerable weight oppressing my breast,
the smell of the damp earth, the unseen
presence of victorious corruption, the
darkness of an impenetrable night. . . . The
Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard
him mumbling and stammering something
about `brother seaman--couldn't conceal
knowledge of matters that would affect Mr.
Kurtz's reputation.' I waited. For him
evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I
suspect that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the
immortals. `Well!' said I at last, `speak out.
As it happens, I am Mr. Kurtz's friend--in a
way.'

"He stated with a good deal of formality that
had we not been `of the same profession,'
he would have kept the matter to himself
without regard to consequences. `He
suspected there was an active ill-will
towards him on the part of these white men
that--' `You are right,' I said, remembering
a certain conversation I had overheard. `The
manager thinks you ought to be hanged.' He
showed a concern at this intelligence which
amused me at first. `I had better get out of
the way quietly,' he said earnestly. `I can do
no more for Kurtz now, and they would soon
find some excuse. What's to stop them?
There's a military post three hundred miles
from here.' `Well, upon my word,' said I,

-46-

equipped for a renewed encounter with the
wilderness. `Ah! I'll never, never meet such
a man again. You ought to have heard him
recite poetry his own, too, it was, he told
me. Poetry!' He rolled his eyes at the
recollection of these delights. `Oh, he
enlarged my mind!' `Good-bye,' said I. He
shook hands and vanished in the night.
Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever
really seen him whether it was possible to
meet such a phenomenon! . . .

"When I woke up shortly after midnight his
warning came to my mind with its hint of
danger that seemed, in the starred
darkness, real enough to make me get up
for the purpose of having a look round. On
the hill a big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a
crooked corner of the station-house. One of
the agents with a picket of a few of our
blacks, armed for the purpose, was
keeping guard over the ivory; but deep
within the forest, red gleams that wavered,
that seemed to sink and rise from the
ground amongst confused columnar
shapes of intense blackness, showed the
exact position of the camp where Mr.
Kurtz's adorers were keeping their uneasy
vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum
filled the air with muffled shocks and a
lingering vibration. A steady droning sound
of many men chanting each to himself some
weird incantation came out from the black,
flat wall of the woods as the humming of
bees comes out of a hive, and had a
strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake
senses. I believe I dozed off leaning over the
rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an
overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and
mysterious frenzy, woke me up in a
bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at
once, and the low droning went on with an
effect of audible and soothing silence. I
glanced casually into the little cabin. A light
was burning within, but Mr. Kurtz was not
there.

-47-

person to be sitting at the other end of such
an affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting
lead in the air out of Winchesters held to the
hip. I thought I would never get back to the
steamer, and imagined myself living alone
and unarmed in the woods to an advanced
age. Such silly things--you know. And I
remember I confounded the beat of the
drum with the beating of my heart, and was
pleased at its calm regularity.

"I kept to the track though--then stopped to
listen. The night was very clear; a dark blue
space, sparkling with dew and starlight, in
which black things stood very still. I thought I
could see a kind of motion ahead of me. I
was strangely cocksure of everything that
night. I actually left the track and ran in a
wide semicircle (I verily believe chuckling to
myself) so as to get in front of that stir, of
that motion I had seen--if indeed I had seen
anything. I was circumventing Kurtz as
though it had been a boyish game.

"I came upon him, and, if he had not heard
me coming, I would have fallen over him,
too, but he got up in time. He rose,
unsteady, long, pale, indistinct, like a
vapour exhaled by the earth, and swayed
slightly, misty and silent before me; while at
my back the fires loomed between the
trees, and the murmur of many voices
issued from the forest. I had cut him off
cleverly; but when actually confronting him I
seemed to come to my senses, I saw the
danger in its right proportion. It was by no
means over yet. Suppose he began to
shout? Though he could hardly stand, there
was still plenty of vigour in his voice. `Go
away--hide yourself,' he said, in that
profound tone. It was very awful. I glanced
back. We were within thirty yards from the
nearest fire. A black figure stood up, strode
on long black legs, waving long black arms,
across the glow. It had horns--antelope
horns, I think--on its head. Some sorcerer,

-48-

knocked on the head though I had a very
lively sense of that danger, too--but in this,
that I had to deal with a being to whom I
could not appeal in the name of anything
high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to
invoke him--himself--his own exalted and
incredible degradation. There was nothing
either above or below him, and I knew it. He
had kicked himself loose of the earth.
Confound the man! he had kicked the very
earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before
him did not know whether I stood on the
ground or floated in the air. I've been telling
you what we said repeating the phrases we
pronounced--but what's the good? They
were common everyday words--the
familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every
waking day of life. But what of that? They
had behind them, to my mind, the terrific
suggestiveness of words heard in dreams,
of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If
anybody ever struggled with a soul, I am the
man. And I wasn't arguing with a lunatic
either. Believe me or not, his intelligence
was perfectly clear--concentrated, it is
true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet
clear; and therein was my only chance--
barring, of course, the killing him there and
then, which wasn't so good, on account of
unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad.
Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked
within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it
had gone mad. I had--for my sins, I
suppose--to go through the ordeal of
looking into it myself. No eloquence could
have been so withering to one's belief in
mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He
struggled with himself, too. I saw it--I heard
it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul
that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear,
yet struggling blindly with itself. I kept my
head pretty well; but when I had him at last
stretched on the couch, I wiped my
forehead, while my legs shook under me as
though I had carried half a ton on my back
down that hill. And yet I had only supported

-49-

wistfulness and hate. He made no answer,
but I saw a smile, a smile of indefinable
meaning, appear on his colourless lips that
a moment after twitched convulsively. `Do I
not?' he said slowly, gasping, as if the
words had been torn out of him by a
supernatural power.

"I pulled the string of the whistle, and I did
this because I saw the pilgrims on deck
getting out their rifles with an air of
anticipating a jolly lark. At the sudden
screech there was a movement of abject
terror through that wedged mass of bodies.
`Don't! don't you frighten them away,' cried
some one on deck disconsolately. I pulled
the string time after time. They broke and
ran, they leaped, they crouched, they
swerved, they dodged the flying terror of the
sound. The three red chaps had fallen flat,
face down on the shore, as though they had
been shot dead. Only the barbarous and
superb woman did not so much as flinch,
and stretched tragically her bare arms after
us over the sombre and glittering river.

"And then that imbecile crowd down on the
deck started their little fun, and I could see
nothing more for smoke.

"The brown current ran swiftly out of the
heart of darkness, bearing us down
towards the sea with twice the speed of our
upward progress; and Kurtz's life was
running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of
his heart into the sea of inexorable time. The
manager was very placid, he had no vital
anxieties now, he took us both in with a
comprehensive and satisfied glance: the
`affair' had come off as well as could be
wished. I saw the time approaching when I
would be left alone of the party of `unsound
method.' The pilgrims looked upon me with
disfavour. I was, so to speak, numbered
with the dead. It is strange how I accepted
this unforeseen partnership, this choice of

-50-

at this.' I did so. There was a silence. `Oh,
but I will wring your heart yet!' he cried at the
invisible wilderness.

"We broke down--as I had expected--and
had to lie up for repairs at the head of an
island. This delay was the first thing that
shook Kurtz's confidence. One morning he
gave me a packet of papers and a
photograph the lot tied together with a shoe-
string. `Keep this for me,' he said. `This
noxious fool' (meaning the manager) `is
capable of prying into my boxes when I am
not looking.' In the afternoon I saw him. He
was lying on his back with closed eyes, and
I withdrew quietly, but I heard him mutter,
`Live rightly, die, die . . .' I listened. There
was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some
speech in his sleep, or was it a fragment of
a phrase from some newspaper article? He
had been writing for the papers and meant
to do so again, `for the furthering of my
ideas. It's a duty.'

"His was an impenetrable darkness. I
looked at him as you peer down at a man
who is lying at the bottom of a precipice
where the sun never shines. But I had not
much time to give him, because I was
helping the engine-driver to take to pieces
the leaky cylinders, to straighten a bent
connecting-rod, and in other such matters. I
lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts,
bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchet-drills--
things I abominate, because I don't get on
with them. I tended the little forge we
fortunately had aboard; I toiled wearily in a
wretched scrap-heap--unless I had the
shakes too bad to stand.

"One evening coming in with a candle I was
startled to hear him say a little tremulously, `I
am lying here in the dark waiting for death.'
The light was within a foot of his eyes. I
forced myself to murmur, `Oh, nonsense!'
and stood over him as if transfixed.

-51-

"And then they very nearly buried me.

"However, as you see, I did not go to join
Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to
dream the nightmare out to the end, and to
show my loyalty to Kurtz once more.
Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is that
mysterious arrangement of merciless logic
for a futile purpose. The most you can hope
from it is some knowledge of yourself--that
comes too late--a crop of unextinguishable
regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the
most unexciting contest you can imagine. It
takes place in an impalpable greyness, with
nothing underfoot, with nothing around,
without spectators, without clamour, without
glory, without the great desire of victory,
without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly
atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without
much belief in your own right, and still less in
that of your adversary. If such is the form of
ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle
than some of us think it to be. I was within a
hair's breadth of the last opportunity for
pronouncement, and I found with humiliation
that probably I would have nothing to say.
This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was
a remarkable man. He had something to
say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the
edge myself, I understand better the
meaning of his stare, that could not see the
flame of the candle, but was wide enough to
embrace the whole universe, piercing
enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat
in the darkness. He had summed up--he
had judged. `The horror!' He was a
remarkable man. After all, this was the
expression of some sort of belief; it had
candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating
note of revolt in its whisper, it had the
appalling face of a glimpsed truth--the
strange commingling of desire and hate.
And it is not my own extremity I remember
best a vision of greyness without form filled
with physical pain, and a careless contempt
for the evanescence of all things--even of

-52-

laughing in their faces so full of stupid
importance. I dareway I was not very well at
that time. I tottered about the streets--there
were various affairs to settle--grinning
bitterly at perfectly respectable persons. I
admit my behaviour was inexcusable, but
then my temperature was seldom normal in
these days. My dear aunt's endeavours to
`nurse up my strength' seemed altogether
beside the mark. It was not my strength that
wanted nursing, it was my imagination that
wanted soothing. I kept the bundle of
papers given me by Kurtz, not knowing
exactly what to do with it. His mother had
died lately, watched over, as I was told, by
his Intended. A clean-shaved man, with an
official manner and wearing gold-rimmed
spectacles, called on me one day and
made inquiries, at first circuitous,
afterwards suavely pressing, about what he
was pleased to denominate certain
`documents.' I was not surprised, because I
had had two rows with the manager on the
subject out there. I had refused to give up
the smallest scrap out of that package, and I
took the same attitude with the spectacled
man. He became darkly menacing at last,
and with much heat argued that the
Company had the right to every bit of
information about its `territories.' And said
he, `Mr. Kurtz's knowledge of unexplored
regions must have been necessarily
extensive and peculiar owing to his great
abilities and to the deplorable
circumstances in which he had been
placed: therefore--' I assured him Mr.
Kurtz's knowledge, however extensive, did
not bear upon the problems of commerce or
administration. He invoked then the name of
science. `It would be an incalculable loss if,'
etc., etc. I offered him the report on the
`Suppression of Savage Customs,' with the
postscriptum torn off. He took it up eagerly,
but ended by sniffing at it with an air of
contempt. `This is not what we had a right to
expect,' he remarked. `Expect nothing

-53-

said I, and forthwith handed him the famous
Report for publication, if he thought fit. He
glanced through it hurriedly, mumbling all
the time, judged `it would do,' and took
himself off with this plunder.

"Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of
letters and the girl's portrait. She struck me
as beautiful I mean she had a beautiful
expression. I know that the sunlight ycan be
made to lie, too, yet one felt that no
manipulation of light and pose could have
conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness
upon those features. She seemed ready to
listen without mental reservation, without
suspicion, without a thought for herself. I
concluded I would go and give her back her
portrait and those letters myself. Curiosity?
Yes; and also some other feeling perhaps.
All that had been Kurtz's had passed out of
my hands: his soul, his body, his station, his
plans, his ivory, his career. There remained
only his memory and his Intended and I
wanted to give that up, too, to the past, in a
way to surrender personally all that
remained of him with me to that oblivion
which is the last word of our common fate. I
don't defend myself. I had no clear
perception of what it was I really wanted.
Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious
loyalty, or the fulfilment of one of those
ironic necessities that lurk in the facts of
human existence. I don't know. I can't tell.
But I went.

"I thought his memory was like the other
memories of the dead that accumulate in
every man's life--a vague impress on the
brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their
swift and final passage; but before the high
and ponderous door, between the tall
houses of a street as still and decorous as a
well-kept alley in a cemetery, I had a vision
of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth
voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with
all its mankind. He lived then before me; he

-54-

from floor to ceiling that were like three
luminous and bedraped columns. The bent
gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in
indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace
had a cold and monumental whiteness. A
grand piano stood massively in a corner;
with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a
sombre and polished sarcophagus. A high
door opened--closed. I rose.

"She came forward, all in black, with a pale
head, floating towards me in the dusk. She
was in mourning. It was more than a year
since his death, more than a year since the
news came; she seemed as though she
would remember and mourn forever. She
took both my hands in hers and murmured, `I
had heard you were coming.' I noticed she
was not very young--I mean not girlish. She
had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief,
for suffering. The room seemed to have
grown darker, as if all the sad light of the
cloudy evening had taken refuge on her
forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage,
this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an
ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked
out at me. Their glance was guileless,
profound, confident, and trustful. She
carried her sorrowful head as though she
were proud of that sorrow, as though she
would say, `I--I alone know how to mourn
for him as he deserves.' But while we were
still shaking hands, such a look of awful
desolation came upon her face that I
perceived she was one of those creatures
that are not the playthings of Time. For her
he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove!
the impression was so powerful that for me,
too, he seemed to have died only
yesterday--nay, this very minute. I saw her
and him in the same instant of time--his
death and her sorrow--I saw her sorrow in
the very moment of his death. Do you
understand? I saw them together--I heard
them together. She had said, with a deep
catch of the breath, `I have survived' while

-55-

have heard his last words to know I have
been worthy of him. . . . It is not pride. . . .
Yes! I am proud to know I understood him
better than any one on earth he told me so
himself. And since his mother died I have
had no one no one--to--to--'

"I listened. The darkness deepened. I was
not even sure whether he had given me the
right bundle. I rather suspect he wanted me
to take care of another batch of his papers
which, after his death, I saw the manager
examining under the lamp. And the girl
talked, easing her pain in the certitude of my
sympathy; she talked as thirsty men drink. I
had heard that her engagement with Kurtz
had been disapproved by her people. He
wasn't rich enough or something. And
indeed I don't know whether he had not
been a pauper all his life. He had given me
some reason to infer that it was his
impatience of comparative poverty that
drove him out there.

"`. . . Who was not his friend who had heard
him speak once?' she was saying. `He
drew men towards him by what was best in
them.' She looked at me with intensity. `It is
the gift of the great,' she went on, and the
sound of her low voice seemed to have the
accompaniment of all the other sounds, full
of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had
ever heard--the ripple of the river, the
soughing of the trees swayed by the wind,
the murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of
incomprehensible words cried from afar,
the whisper of a voice speaking from
beyond the threshold of an eternal
darkness. `But you have heard him! You
know!' she cried.

"`Yes, I know,' I said with something like
despair in my heart, but bowing my head
before the faith that was in her, before that
great and saving illusion that shone with an
unearthly glow in the darkness, in the

-56-

"But I do not. I cannot--I cannot believe--not
yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see
him again, that nobody will see him again,
never, never, never.'

"She put out her arms as if after a retreating
figure, stretching them back and with
clasped pale hands across the fading and
narrow sheen of the window. Never see
him! I saw him clearly enough then. I shall
see this eloquent phantom as long as I live,
and I shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar
Shade, resembling in this gesture another
one, tragic also, and bedecked with
powerless charms, stretching bare brown
arms over the glitter of the infernal stream,
the stream of darkness. She said suddenly
very low, `He died as he lived.'

"`His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in
me, `was in every way worthy of his life.'

"`And I was not with him,' she murmured. My
anger subsided before a feeling of infinite
pity.

"`Everything that could be done--' I
mumbled.

"`Ah, but I believed in him more than any one
on earth--more than his own mother, more
than--himself. He needed me! Me! I would
have treasured every sigh, every word,
every sign, every glance.'

"I felt like a chill grip on my chest. `Don't,' I
said, in a muffled voice.

"`Forgive me. I--I have mourned so long in
silence--in silence. . . . You were with him--
to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody
near to understand him as I would have
understood. Perhaps no one to hear. . . .'

"`To the very end,' I said, shakily. `I heard his
very last words. . . .' I stopped in a fright.

-57-

"`Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-
broken tone. `I want--I want--something--
something--to--to live with.'

"I was on the point of crying at her, `Don't
you hear them?' The dusk was repeating
them in a persistent whisper all around us,
in a whisper that seemed to swell
menacingly like the first whisper of a rising
wind. `The horror! The horror!'

"`His last word--to live with,' she insisted.
`Don't you understand I loved him--I loved
him--I loved him!'

"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

"`The last word he pronounced was--your
name.'

"I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood
still, stopped dead short by an exulting and
terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable
triumph and of unspeakable pain. `I knew it-
-I was sure!' . . . She knew. She was sure. I
heard her weeping; she had hidden her
face in her hands. It seemed to me that the
house would collapse before I could
escape, that the heavens would fall upon my
head. But nothing happened. The heavens
do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have
fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that
justice which was his due? Hadn't he said
he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I
could not tell her. It would have been too
dark--too dark altogether. . . ." Marlow
ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent,
in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody
moved for a time. "We have lost the first of
the ebb," said the Director suddenly. I
raised my head. The offing was barred by a
black bank of clouds, and the tranquil
waterway leading to the uttermost ends of
the earth flowed sombre under an overcast
sky seemed to lead into the heart of an
immense darkness.

-58-